On Halloween night, 1996, after hours of drinking and partying, a zombified Troy Gregory picked up his guitar and recorded 13 songs. That he was able to hold his head upright to sing into the microphone was miracle enough. That he planted the seed that has blossomed into the dark rose called The Witches is pure magic. That tape was given the title "The Witches" and Gregory showed it to friends and acquaintances in the music business. Matt Smith of Outrageous Cherry became an instant fan and advised Gregory to build a band around himself to perform the songs live. Good advice.

Among the musicians who joined Gregory was guitarist Johnny Na$hinal, who had worked with him in an earlier band called Mice Termite. Others come and go, but the core of Gregory and Na$hinal remain. The musical chemistry between the two has been an important key to the artistic success of The Witches ever since the beginning.

But this is the real world of independent label rock. Artistic success doesn't equate to commercial success. So not very many people know about this most unusual band. Damn shame, too. They are players, but they are also characters, interesting on many levels, far more so than the flavor of the week at the major label level. And they're not a put on. What you see is what you get.

When I started this interview, I thought I was the top Halloween junkie in the land. Troy Gregory has me beat. First of all, he lives in Detroit, famous for cars but also famous, among those in the know, as one heavily haunted city. And in that city is a house that is decorated for Halloween all year long. Troy and his wife live in perpetual October. In a city that exudes the same. I want that house.

I haven't been able to stop listening to The Witches' new CD, Universal Mall, for the past few weeks. Certain songs call me back over and over, and I find myself anxious to ask Troy about them, hoping he's not like most musicians who, for reasons I've never understood, hate talking about their songs. I've hit the replay button twice on the song "Demons All Around Her," my favorite track and the one that raises the hairs on the back of my neck, and finally it's time to talk.

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Cosmik: "Demons All Around Her" creeps me out, but we're talking Detroit here. What's the deal with that place? Do you ALL see dead people?

Troy: Detroit is a extremely haunted city...plenty of burned out front porches, derelict homes and bird nest buildings. You can be sure to witness a little brood of crack zombies doing a Romero strut through the sewer steam. We also have the Detroit folk legend of the Red Dwarf, a small beast like thing in a red cloak that appears as a omen before something extremely lousy happens. I imagine that he is something like the homicidal dwarf in "Don't Look Now" but with the face of a baby and a rat. Also see a lot of people that drive like they are dead, or are on their way to pulling it off and bringing a couple folks with them. The freeways are definitely stinking of Death Race 2000. Yes, Detroit is spooky.

Cosmik: That song's at track three. The first two kind of lull us and make us feel all safe and shit and then BAM! The demons are all around her, but what is going on inside the observer's mind?

Troy: The whole song is about being paranoid, lonely and really hating all the people that this girl hangs out with.

Cosmik: Just hating them? It sounds like he sees them as malevolent toward him AND her. That's an effective song.

Troy: Oh yes, extremely. The kind of malevolence that erupts from being alone, pacing nervously around the house talking and shouting at yourself and everyone. A social holy war. Yeah, those folks are demons. Big time slime. They are going to ruin her and damn his whole existence. Kind of like Taxi Driver meets Rosemary's Baby. Travis is afraid that Cybil Shepard is going to give birth to Satan's brat via Albert Brooks. Or it could be Betty really pissed off at Veronica because she is out with Archie and Reggie at the rock show. Betty is home doing whippets spinning Scott Walker records while hanging a wicker doll of Veronica over a Bic.

Cosmik: There! Right there! You say it so casually it sounds safe. (Laughs.) So much of your music sounds safe and pleasant if you're not paying attention. Nothing dangerous to hear here... move along folks. But if anyone takes the time to listen they get sucked in where it's not so safe. What got you interested in misdirection like that?

Troy: I never thought of any direction at all in the first place, so I guess it is impossible to misdirect when there was nowhere really set direct to go in the first place. Except maybe out.

Cosmik: But the music sometimes lures. It's dreamy and pleasant and when we get there the ax comes down.

Troy: Gee whizz DJ! Man, I don't know! Maybe it comes unconsciously. Like a Sun Ra tune where you are floating in quiet space and then suddenly you're coiled in another valued dimension and your bones are being sucked through the pores of your flesh. A skeleton is pretty useless in space. Jellyfish will do a lot better on the interplanetary spaceways than say a squirrel or an A&R guy.

Cosmik: All the A&R reps just turned and ran, by the way. Okay... The sound that you make is hard to define and label and stick in a box, but I have a genre of my own called Halloween music, and Blue Oyster Cult's there and Sabbath's there and Johnny Dowd and Harmless, and you're definitely there. Halloween isn't just another day to you, is it?

Troy: That is an honor to be called Halloween music. Would you call Roky Erickson Halloween music as well?

Cosmik: With AND without the 13th Floor Elevators, personally.

Troy: Joe Meek to me is very Halloween. Played a loop of Penderecki and the Disney Chilling Thrilling Sounds of The Haunted House record at different speeds for the trick and or treat beggars one year, it scared the hell out of them and it sounded amazing.

Cosmik: Man, I'd love to hear that sometime. Maybe on a Witches album.

Troy: I still put that together every now and then and really dig listening to it. Halloween has never been just a day for me, the calendar just satellites Halloween.

Cosmik: How do people react to the way you keep Halloween alive all year long?

Troy: I don't know, they probably think I'm a dope. We lived on this street where we were an Ed Gorey comic placed directly into a panel of Family Circus. The neighborhood guys would all work on their cars and see me walk with my guitar into a house with orange and black spiders and pumpkin garland all over the porch and they would just shake their heads. Although we do have friends that come over and really admire some of the neat junk that we have too much of.

Cosmik: Like what? What's some of the junk?

Troy: Dolls, shrunken heads, skulls, toys, paintings. Ghastly bric-a-brac.

Cosmik: So take us inside! Give us a verbal tour of the place so I can start redecorating mine.

Troy: Well, now it's just a cluttered mess of cardboard boxes because we are moving. I plan on making the basement in the new home a cross between a cheap spookhouse, Living Island, the Bat Cave, and Lee Perry's studio The [Black] Ark, before it went up in flames of course. I also really like the digs that Dr. Phibes had, especially the clockwork toy orchestra.

But I'm lazy when it comes to actually getting around to decorating something. Most things are displayed by accident.

Cosmik: What do the ladies think when someone brings one home?

Troy: They wonder when my wife is going to get home! Seriously, my wife has a lot to do with the atmosphere of our dwellings. She makes the money, she buys all the groovy junk. She is really into all the Universal Monster stuff. When the post office was doing their Monster promotion, she bought all the stamps, pencils, erasers and stuff. She's really turned on by Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Tony Perkins. Marc Bolan too!

Cosmik: Anyone's parents offered to pay for psychiatric counseling or anything like that? Mine would.

Troy: I have known plenty of people that have thought a shrink or pills would do me some good. That's a lot of crap. All I really need is rock n roll. Otherwise there is nothing going down at all. Maybe.

Cosmik: So is this the place you practice in and write songs in?

Troy: I write the songs here at home, but we make noise as a band in either Eugene's Christmas drag ball basement or John Nash's Tex-Mex haunted house basement.

Cosmik: Can you feel a definite influence from the house when you're writing? From the atmosphere and decor?

Troy: I usually end up writing tunes somewhere between midnight and five in the morning with the streetlight being my only light source. The house settles a lot and the cars going by create this interesting hum, especially in the winter. The old man downstairs, Lester, died last year, he spent the last two weeks of his life just sitting behind the wheel of his parked car all day. One day he is sitting in the passenger seat. Next day he died. He still walks around down there sometimes. I like to play guitar and sing at night.

Cosmik: I was on your website and I downloaded the MP3 from when you were first together... Well, I assume you were just forming at the time. 1996. Is that right?

Troy: Kind of still forming actually. Like a silly putty shark that has to keep moving or else it dies. Something has been chasing this band since 1996. With scissors and a bag in a clear plastic mask. It already caught and ate a few of us.

Cosmik: At least it's spared you, or The Witches would be toast.

Troy: Someone put a hex on me, but now I think it went away and found someone that goes out to clubs all the time. That song you are talking about, "Spirit World Rising," we still play from time to time. It is actually one of my favorites.

Cosmik: I listened to it and it had seeds of what was going to happen, but obviously you're light years ahead of that now. Have you done a lot of recording of your progress over the years?

Troy: There are a ton of things that have never come out. One being something that I wanted to release on two 45's called Ready Steady Ghosts. 23 songs all a minute long. Songs like "We Wear The Masks Of Our Animal Friends" and "Creepin Thru Yer Galaxy" sadly may never hit the newsstand. Kids miss out. Need a nice bank roll to spin that out with the rest of the refreshments someday. I am working on a money project called N' Sult to finance my film.

Cosmik: (Laughing) Yeah, I can see that. There's the sexy one, the brooding one, you're the bloody one...

Troy: I will regret it and end up shooting the film for the price of a six pack on video. Bet you I do.

Cosmik: I guess anything can get better, but I listen to this album and I feel like The Witches' sound shouldn't be messed with at this point. Ever feel like "if we could freeze it riiiight here..."

Troy: Really wouldn't want to harness any type of sound. It is always very natural and an accurate representation of whoever the players may happen to be as a collective at that point of time in our lives. The Stones try to sound like an idea of what The Stones are supposed to sound like rather than just making the sound that they really make right now at this point of their lives. They pull the charade, it's dull. Same with James Brown. I would prefer to hear him sing in the same voice that he sings Happy Birthday in rather than attempt to recreate the voice his legend is founded upon. James should say "fuck the legend hall of fame shit" and go into the studio with just him on a B-3 coming up with lyrics in real time with Elvin Jones on drums and Roland Howard on guitar. Have Lee Perry mix it after Quincy Jones puts in some string arrangements that move like The Shaggs. The Stones should just change instruments with each other, get drunk and record.

Cosmik: You mean they don't? Okay, sorry... What's the significance of the album's title, Universal Mall?

Troy: It is a grotesque mall by where I grew up. People cruise the toilets there and hang out with twelve year olds smoking Basics playing the latest video games. It used to have a cool mosaic of the milky way out front, but they tore it down for this dull honky facade sometime around the late seventies. When I was a kid there was a head shop there called the Fad Factory, it was where we used to get rock posters and band belt buckles. They closed that up and put in some shop that sells twelve dollar pretzels or something. Like those shops that only sell things with angel motifs. I very much feel uncomfortable in a mall, I avoid it like death.

Cosmik: I love the range of feeling on the album. I love how there's acoustic strum-driven stuff, but it's still dark when you're paying attention, and there's REALLY dark fuzz soup stuff with sounds I can't even identify. Like "Devil Made 'em Run." What the hell is that back in the mix? A toy piano?

Troy: A Fender Rhodes being banged on with this locket that has a tiny music grinder in it. Beautiful locket.

Cosmik: Holy shit, a locket? That's gotta be a first. Was that song as crazy as it sounds because of doubling and doubling again, or is the kitchen sink really in there?

Troy: About three guitars, bass, the Rhodes, the locket, 2 talking stuffed toys, drums, and about three tracks of all of us playing whatever drums or boxes that were around. And there is a harmonica too. We don't like to record anyone separate and by themselves, we like there being people playing together there in real time. We recorded, mixed and mastered the whole album in one week. What kind of idiot takes six months to a year recording a 45 minute "rock" record?!

Cosmik: Um... do we want to list 'em?

Troy: Plenty of folks actually! Dim wits.

Cosmik: You follow that with "What It Really," which is totally gorgeous. People, I'm sure, just stamp "GARAGE BAND" on your CD crates, but this is a versatile band. Do you intend to stay out of boxes?

Troy: The naming of things always sucks the life out of possibilities. We usually jam in a basement anyway.

Cosmik: You guys like to play with sonics, like the way everything on "Some Girl's Basement," not just the guitar but everything, phases in and out until you feel like you're spinning. Is that everyone, or is Johnny the mad scientist on that stuff?

Troy: All of us enjoy the carnival of souls Coffin Joe spookhouse echo. I have always loved the sound of reverb. What we like to do with the echo, reverb, and drones is probably closer to the idea of dub from where we are coming from. I prefer the sound of John playing with his tone rather than thru some R-2 unit ADA blah blah thing-a-mabob. The minute you're not using the latest gear they think you are being "retro". Man, you can be talking into an old telephone or the newest cyber adaptation of it and it still comes down to "what you have to say motherfucker?". John don't talk no trash, he's an all modern man. He's here to go, not even close to trying to pretend that it's sixty six on Carnaby street.

Cosmik: Sonics, sounds... you were talking about the Disney thing, the Sounds Of The Haunted House, which comes up in like almost every Halloween interview with the truly cool bands. Ever get tempted to break the taboo and do some sampling? Cuz that one would be forgivable, y'know.

Troy: Wasn't going to sample it, but I was planning on writing a bunch of songs with those exact titles and call the record "Chilling Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted Louse." Songs called "Your Pet Cat" and "The Unsafe Bridge." I started writing it and it may be on a tape somewhere, I don't know.

Cosmik: It sounds like there are a lot of tapes in your house that need to be dubbed off, Troy. When you're messing with sounds, do songs ever spring FROM the sounds?

Troy: I'm sure that they do. Songs spring from pictures, films, climate, your predicaments as well as others', all the time. So definitely the sounds do the same damage as well. Like the car hum thru the winter-fied plastic on the windows. The breeze whispering Louise and all that.

Cosmik: We've talked a lot about sounds, because there are a lot of vastly different sounds on Universal Mall, but we haven't talked about the thing that drew me in in the first place, and the thing that separates a very good band from the throng of bands. You actually focus on the song itself. What's your writing process like?

Troy: I keep a guitar out all the time as well as a small tape recorder. Sometimes I instantly get a song in my head and grab the guitar and try to get it down. Many times I pick up the guitar, hit play and record, and then just start to sing and play. "Given Up Girls" is exactly word for word from the very first time I sat down and played it. Plenty of the tunes are written in real time like that. John plays something off his head, I sing off my head, we get the "Headless Horseman" and a party of favorites onto the tape. Some go through slight alterations, some go through complete metamorphosis, some don't get touched at all. Free Improvisation is a key approach to how these songs are written and executed. No Witches tune has ever sounded the same twice. There is always an encouragement of divination to where we are with this music at the moment of its release rather than paint by numbers.

Cosmik: How fully developed is a song before you'll take it into the studio?

Troy: Usually they are numbers that have been in our set and then some have been off the cuff. They go through another odd metamorphosis after the studio recording as well. Then someone new may come in the band or someone fills in for, say, someone who can't make the gig, and the song will take on another interpretation. Before we recorded "Around You" we always did it uptempo with mosquito guitars, we just decided in the studio to do it with acoustic guitars and no drums. At the last second I sang it in a lower register, we kept the first and only take. I enjoy when things move like that rather than try to control it into the corral of a pre-conditioned idea.

Cosmik: Is there ever a point where you feel like the tricks are overtaking the song and you say "back off a bit" and strip it back down?

Troy: Tricks? I thought those were the treats! Some messed up folks put needles and sewing pins in their Almond Joys and Mounds and hand them out as Halloween candy. I am afraid of those people.

Cosmik: Mmmmkaay, we'll just mark that one "No." Where do you think the music's going from here? What will the next Witches album be like?

Troy: We are ready to record it right now, it will be the feel good hit of the summer. Cannons Jug Stompers just getting back from the Crusades where they have been followed by a television set and a Tang orange rabid wolf. John Fahey's ghost escapes with a snapping turtle down the elevator shaft of Ghetto Recorders. Iannis Xenakis gives advice from beyond the grave to Boyce and Hart to bet on Lucky Lady in the ninth. Everyone goes home naked and no one is bored anymore.

Cosmik: If anyone else had given me that answer I'd say "yeah, I'm bein' jerked off here," but I've heard your music. Here's something I've really been wondering lately... You live in Halloweenland. What do you do to pull out the stops for Halloween to make it stand out and make it special?

Troy: I really like having a gig on Halloween. Unfortunately we have nothing booked this year, although I believe we will be playing Toledo on Devils Night! It has always been a time of year that agrees with me. The climate in autumn, to me, is just perfect. I'm usually so much more focused and awake at that time of year, usually very happy too. I don't do anything really fancy or extravagant. I dig pumpkin carving, hitting the cider mills, filming people on the street in their costumes. But I usually just try even more to savor that particular moment, and that is which ever particular moment that I just happen to be at. I don't do that enough. Spend too much time thinking something is going to creep up behind me.

(C) 2001 - DJ Johnson