Episode 120 Hillbilly Moon Explosion feat Oliver Baroni

Formed from the ashes of the Hillbilly Headhunters & Moon MD in 1998, the Hillbilly Moon Explosion have since released several successful albums culminating with their latest album "Back in time" featuring the singles "Sometimes at night" & "Knocked down" .  In this episode I discussed with Oliver Baroni how his Hillbilly Headhunters merged with Emanuela Hutter's Moon MD so many years ago, & how they've managed to keep recording & touring internationally, even advancing their craft in spite of a global pandemic. 

You can keep up with the Hillbilly Moon Explosion on their FB page

 https://www.facebook.com/hillbillymoonexplosion

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Episode Transcript

(00:23):
Welcome to Tommy Solo's Famous Friends.This is where I get the chat with
people who I've connected with over theyears in the world of arts and entertainment,
and today I'm pleased to have withme from the Zurich rock band Hillbilly
Moon Explosion, Oliver Baroni. Welcometo the show, Oliver. Thanks for
having me my pleasure. So,from what I understand, Hillbilly Moon Explosion

(00:46):
has been around now for quite sometime. Originally formed in nineteen ninety nine.
Wow, man, and you guyshave had over ten albums up to
date, is that right? Thatcould very well be Actually, now that
you say it sounds kind of scary, was it ten? I haven't counted
them recently. I mean maybe there'sone or two which are kind of like

(01:06):
samper albums, kind of like bestoff albums. Not quite sure if we
should count those, but it couldbe around that. Okay, So a
long time on the road and you'vetoured extensively all over Europe, and I
understand that you even were on theWest coast of the US in twenty eighteen
and twenty nineteen. One thing I'mcurious about. You're a bass player and

(01:27):
singer, and your principal songwriter inthe band. At one point in time,
you all opened for Jeff Beck.Is that right, that's correct.
Yes, So as a bass playerbackstage, what did that feel like watching
Jeff Beck do his magic. Well, we got to watch him a couple
of times on the side of thestage. I remember that his crew was

(01:49):
really cool about everything. They werereally nice. He was really nice too.
I think the first couple of gigshis band was more or less in
and out, but from the gigonwards, I remember he just knock on
our dressing room door and there hewas with a bottle of champagne some glasses,
saying, listen, I can't drinkthis all by myself, and he

(02:10):
was loving it. Was actually alot of fun watching him backstage noodle around,
and at the time he was exclusivelyplaying rockabilly stuff. He was doing
Grady Martin and Cliff Gallup because Ithink either he had just come out or
he was on his way to doingthat rockabilly set thing that would then became
a live album. Okay, backstage, that's kind of all he was doing.

(02:32):
It was all you know, hewas. I'd forgotten about his rockabillity
stage honestly, and I was wonderingit's kind of a weird mix because you
guys are definitely, you know,that rockabillity style and surf punk. We
got this slot because he specifically askedfor a retro nineteen fifties sixties oriented rock

(02:53):
and roll band. He specifically askedfor that, and I think on various
stages of the European tour. Wewere on the French leg, Yeah,
but we gone well. I meanI didn't get to know super well,
you know, but we had abunch of drinks and it's nice. Obviously
our guitar player at one stage justsort of honed in on him and then
they started talking nerd for about anhour. So yeah, now you guys

(03:17):
are definitely that ilk and it's along enduring style. I'm curious what got
you into rockabilly initially, I mean, there were so many other things that
you could have done back in thenineties. Yeah, well, as usual,
it was a combination of things.Personally, I'm a pianist by trade.

(03:38):
I never actually learned the bass.I had piano lessons, I had
classical piano and jazz and arrangement andstuff. And then obviously as a teenager,
you just look at the base andthink, hey, piano's got eighty
eight strings and this thing just asfour, so how hard can it be?
So with the piano, I always, as a small kid, I

(04:00):
always enjoyed the boogie woogie the mostout of all the things I got to
play in the piano, and Ivery soon wanted to, you know,
do my own twist version of that. Then, you know, becoming an
early teenager, you want to dosomething that's a bit more obnoxious, and
so you go from the natural progression. I mean it's sort of like a
very sort of musical logical natural progressionif you look at it from an ethno

(04:25):
music logical historical point of view,that you go from boogie blues to to
rock and roll. I mean,that's actually what happened back in the forties
and fifties. So yeah, youknow, I obviously learned how to play
the Chuck Berry and Little Richard songsfairly early on, and as a teenager
I decided, well, no,I want to you know, a band

(04:45):
with a noxious guitar and you know, some screaming into a microphone, and
that's sort of where the sort ofpsycho billy punk rock edge sort of came
in, so it was still inthat vibe, but it was a bit
more annoying, I suppose. Soit's an organic thing for you. It
came naturally. I'm interested in thefact that there were two bands that kind
of came together. Yourself, youwere with the Hillbilly Headhunters, and Manuela

(05:12):
had another band. How did thetwo of you connect and how did this
thing happen between you? Her bandwas called MD Moon. It was a
sort of out pop like singer songwritery, sort of indie pop kind of thing,
and both of our bands individually hadrather good reputation as live bands,

(05:33):
and so when we started off thisproject, which was supposed to be this
retro rock and roll project, shesort of suggested, let's call it the
Hillbilly Moon Explosion, because here we'resort of like getting together and we wanted
to be a bit you know,exciting and explosive, and also in the
hope that we could sort of likecapitalize on the work we put into the
other bands with our live following.And it actually worked because we locally,

(05:58):
we never made to an empty house. We were able to sort of like
inherit our respective fans. Downside is, as I always say, you're stuck
with a slightly too long and slightlysilly band name. And now it's been
more than twenty years and we can'tchange the name. It's that really long
name that you never are able toread on festival posters because it's you know

(06:21):
that the font gets squished in You'llsee you, you know, you'll see
ives or you two you know,and huge letters and then underneath there's the
He'll be the moon explosion from hell. Well that's stand out, you know,
from one extreme tod the other Likeyou say, you too, that's
pretty straightforward. But are you yes? T shirt we should have got?

(06:44):
Ah? It's a Shane Duncan,isn't he. He's thee our guitar player.
He's a massive prog rock fan.Ah, And you usually tease him
about it because I will say,I'm a bit wary about a style of
music that has no female fans.But yeah, I guess I can see
the fascination though. No, he'smassively into Yes and King Crimson and all

(07:06):
those bands. Yeah, I'm nothugely obsessed with the band. Yes,
I appreciate them more from a musician'sperspective than as a fan. To be
honest with you, they are brilliantartists, as we all know. That's
it. Back to the Hillbilly Moonexplosion. I'm curious brilliant artists by the
way, Yeah, curious the nameHillbilly. Are you familiar with the history

(07:31):
of where that name came from?Yeah, I mean the whole Appalachia thing
and everything. I guess it's that. I mean, it's obviously wildly inaccurate
for us, because first of all, we're not from North America, and
I mean I'm from London and havelived in Zurich for most of my lives.

(07:51):
I've always lived in cities. Iguess she's from a small town and
Duncan he's from his tiny place inShropshire in the west of England, which
is I mean, he was alreadymentioned in the doomsday books, so we're
talking William the Conqueror, and Ithink back then it had something like two
hundred inhabitants and now it has twohundred inhabitants. So he would, I

(08:15):
would say, him and Manuela theycould qualify as Hilberies technically, but of
course none of us are North Americans. Well, you mentioned William the Conqueror,
and that's what I was driving at, really, is that the religious
wars in the sixteen hundreds in Scotland, and oh, of course the Islanders
were called hillboys, Yeah, andthose who supported William were billy boys,

(08:39):
and then it kind of became hillbilliesand then it followed them over to America.
So I was interested in that partof it. I mean, it
is a unique name, absolutely,but there's certainly somehy I mean, alas,
I didn't delve that far into historywhen I was a you know,
a sixteen year old kid trying tofigure out a cool name. I just
thought it sounded I remember at thetime, I thought it's cool and funny

(09:01):
in the sort of you know,psychobilic context, playing on this sort of
backward redneck theme that of course weweren't. Yeah, we played around with
that. I think psychobility isn't avery serious style of music, and it's
also one which I think, youknow, lends itself very well to your
teenage years. It's like all thosemusic you know, like metal or punk

(09:22):
rock. It's really good to ventyour teenage frustrations with. And we'll be
right back after this. So thereis a brand new album just released.

(09:52):
Sometimes Late at Night is the single. The album is back in Time Now.
I watched the video for Sometimes Lateat Night, and perfect representation of
the style. I mean, you'reall wearing vintage clothing, you're playing vintage
instruments, and it is it isthe epitome of rockabilly. Yeah. Well,
because Sometimes Late at Night that's ina Mana Eela song and it's got

(10:15):
a bit more of that nineteen seventiesGo Go's blondie punk rock vibe to it,
and I'm actually not playing my uprightbass in that song. I'm actually
playing the bass, guitar and that. But you know, I'm not.
I do think the whole style thing, you know, it's a double edged
soled the labeling as whatever, rockabillyor whatever, because on one hand,

(10:37):
it's definitely a style of music whichI love and continue to love and I
have great admiration for, and it'sa great scene by the way out there's
a great fan scene and music scene. But it does sort of pigeonhole you
into something that maybe if you lookat it closely, you're not necessarily and
then people might come with wrong expectations. First problems I know. I don't

(11:01):
think we've ever had a problem withthat anyway. The music is awesome.
It's distributed in North America by Casablanca. I understand you've got all the media
formats available. Yes, we've gotit in vinyl. That's how modern way
are. We've got it in vinyl. I had a conversation with Canadian rocker

(11:24):
Rick Emmett from the band Triumph recently, and he's not a big fan of
vinyl. He doesn't want to hearthat sh at the beginning. But you
know, there's a real following andappreciation for vinyl out there today. It
seems to really be on the riseagain. It's taken off. I think
people now view it more like asort of souvenir. It's something that you

(11:48):
go to a gig, you buythe vinyl, you buy the T shirt,
and that is basically a way ofenhancing your experience. So you go
and see a band that you like, You enjoy yourself, and you want
to be reminded of that hopefully greatnight that you've had. Every morning you
put on the T shirt and everytime you even if you're not actually playing
the vinyl record, every time yousort of see it there in your bookshelf

(12:11):
for something. So I think that'sthe way it works. People will,
of cause you streaming services is farmore practical when you're you know, I
don't know, doing your morning runnerin your morning commute in the car obviously,
but vinyl is just a nice thingto have. It's a bit like
a trophy. Either way, I'mhappy right Well, for me, it

(12:31):
gives you a sense of ownership.You know, you've got something you can
put in your hand. And forthose of us of a certain age,
it brings a certain amount of nostalgia. Hey, you know liner notes.
I am also off a certain agewhere I remember, I mean, I
probably still can remember individual musicians' namesfrom albums that I bought on my teams,
because at the time, you wouldjust put the album on, and

(12:54):
while you're listening to the album,of course, you're reading the liner notes.
And if you're a bit of anerd like me, you're reading them,
you know, really, you know, you're really sort of memorizing them.
I wasn't very good at memorizing myschool homework, but boy, did
I know who played on what trackof that one sampler? You know that's
right? Yeah, yeah, itwas certainly an occupation that said, you

(13:15):
guys are playing live shows now topromote the album, So you're over in
Switzerland. Are you traveling any otherparts of the world for this or Unfortunately,
we don't have that many gigs inSwitzerland itself, which is a bit
of a shame because it's a smallcountry, meaning you know, distances aren't
long. We do actually have acouple of lineup, but we have I
think it's this year. We've gotEngland is becoming a bit more of a

(13:39):
thing again, So we've got we'regoing to England twice. We've got Germany,
we've got France in the cards.We're playing a bunch of festivals,
the big one in Spain and thenear Barcelona. We're doing stuff, and
hopefully we shall be doing the USagain, I think in the summer and
or the fall, and hopefully both. Yeah, we travel quite a bit.

(14:01):
We actually all live in Switzerland,two Englishmen, a Frenchman and an
Italian switz girl. But we livein Zurich, which is kind of ideal
to tour because you're really the rightslap bang in the middle of the continent,
and so it's very convenient to getto different places, right, Yeah,
So I'm curious what's it been likefor you all to get back to

(14:22):
playing live after COVID. It wasweird, and we did one or two
gigs sort of like we did oneor two social distancing gigs, which were
bizarre. I remember the first timewe did one. We did one in
Geneva and they booked us in aclub which is usually about a three four

(14:43):
hundred cap club, and they letin fifty people and everyone was a lot
of the seat and I think theywere giving a little coffee table for the
drink, but they had to remainseated, and all the seats were like
six feet apart or something. Isaw people like bopping in the seats and
really wanting to get up but actuallynot being able to. And of course

(15:07):
everyone was, you know, wearingmasks and stuff, so that was kind
of bizarre. But somehow the sheerenjoyment and relief of getting back on to
stay And remember standing on the balconywhile watching the support act and just sort
of the fact that there was somuch noise coming from the stage was like,
oh wow, this is so goodfor your soul. It was like

(15:28):
there's humans out there just making noisein front of an audience. It's beautiful.
Yeah, I would say it wasrelief. How was that like?
It was relief? Yeah, wewere all really hurting for a long time.
I know that my first live showafter COVID was there were over one
thousand people at this festival, andI was terrified. Not because of the

(15:48):
number of people, but it wassupposed to be a COVID protocol gig and
there was nothing keeping people away fromthe stage, you know, and I
mean knowing now, what I didn'tknow then the fact that there are all
these people out there, none ofthem wearing masks. I was just,
oh my god. But it atthe same time, I was overjoyed because

(16:10):
it had been a couple of yearswith no live music anywhere, so a
lot of people got creative. Imean I saw that during lockdown. You
saw some musicians were like there werethese people who then like, Okay,
every week we were going to doan online show. And a good friend
of mine, this amazing singer songwritercalled Becky Lynn Blanca, she had this

(16:30):
thing called the Sad Girls Club.Every single day for more than a year,
she went online for a full hourand played a full hour on her
ukulelean sang. So there was lotsof that going on, and then there
was the other people a bit likeme who became a bit depressed. And
because of that, I didn't feelat all like, you know, like

(16:51):
doing some sort of online show oranything. I just sort of moped around
grumpily. But then that actually thengot us back into again, which was
good. That was actually a Manuelawho kind of got us back onto track
because I was kind of, idon't know, suffering from writer's block and
just generally a bit depressed and fedup. And she writes differently from me.

(17:15):
She writes all the time, whereasI only write under pressure. I
only write if I've got you know, recordings coming up as something. And
so she just said, listen,I've got these songs that I've been writing.
I think we should just try themout, even if we don't have
a gig scheduled, even if wedon't have any recordings scheduled, let's just
meet once a week and like normalbands. Because this is the thing we

(17:37):
never really did. We were theleast rehearsed band out there. We would
only really sort of rehearse very specificallygoal oriented, you know, be it
four recordings or for tours and otherwisewe wouldn't see each other. And then
she decided, oh, let's justdo the thing, you know what other
people do, like, let's justmeet once a week and just try out
stuff. So yeah, that kindof got the ball rolling again and we

(18:03):
got into writing songs and that eventuallyled to this album here. Now,
earlier I mentioned that in the videofor Sometimes Late at Night, you're all
playing vintage instruments. Now you mentionedyou're playing an electric bass, not a
stand up, but that's not abrand new bass. I was trying to
figure out, is that an oldHagstrum sixties sixty seven gretch? I think

(18:30):
it's the sixty seventy one. Ithink it's a six seven to one,
whereas the Peter Talk Monkeys one isthe one with the two pickups. That's
the seven three. Yes, mineusa seven to one. Okay. I
don't play bass guitar all that often, but what I do do is in
recording. I produced this album andmy approach is always to give every individual

(18:55):
song what it needs, and ifthe song demands a bass guitar, a
bass guitar, and if it's song, de band's an upright bassy is not
pright bass, and that one soundedlike a bass guitar, so I used
the bass guitar on that. Andthen the video I'm playing that one that
I actually didn't use in the recording. I used it in recording, but
not for that song. Okay,and we'll be right back after this.

(19:34):
Well, it's interesting. There areso many really talented and I want to
say, almost to the point ofvirtuostic players out there who don't understand the
art of playing for the song anddon't understand the art of playing in a
band. So it strikes me thatbands that sound good as you do Santas

(20:07):
have that ability to know what's rightfor the song. So yeah, if
I'm recording something, you can seethe guitars behind me here, Yes,
amazing inlays, I can see thatis my custom built solo caster. Oh
wow. I guess the point beforeI got into this was that if I'm
going to record a song it requiresa stratocaster or tone, well, you've

(20:30):
got to use a strat you know, you can't play that part on a
nylon string guitar. For example.Yeah, I know, Duncan, he's
got a sixty three strats or somethingkicking around, but I don't think we
used it during recordings. The thingis that I think it's sort of this

(20:52):
sounds a bit silly because I'm notvery virtual as a bass player, or
I mean a less alone guitar player. I can just strum a bit and
stuff. But I kind of sometimesthink it helped not to be a massive
the twoes or on your instrument ifyour job is to be the musical director
of a band like I am,because that way you don't sort of you

(21:17):
can't focus that much on one thing. You always get reminded of what the
larger picture is, and you sortof need that to make a song sound
good. And therefore, just becauseyou can do something cool on your whatever
instrument it is, doesn't mean thatthat would actually help the song. I
mean, typically, as a bandleader, you're forever telling the drama to play

(21:40):
less. You're forever telling the leadguitar player to play less. And I'm
not telling the bass player to playless because basically I don't know anything but
twos. I can't really show offthat much on my bass, so I
would just say, you know,my bass is fairly solid. There.
It's all in the art of playingfor the song and writing and producer for

(22:00):
the song. Right, you wantto have something that people can get behind
and hum and sing, you know. Like my favorite guitar solo of all
time is George Harrison solo in something. Yeah. No, it's not anything
that Steve Howe did from you orJeff Beck. I mean, I appreciate
those guys as a musician, youknow, and I appreciate the talent and

(22:22):
the virtuosity, but I want tobe able to hum and sing something,
you know, and get behind it. So we're not all of the same
mind as far as that goes throughour There are probably a few people who
still buy jazz records, you know, but you need birtuos and musicians.
It's just a question of how youwork with them. Dunk and now guitar

(22:47):
player, I mean, he's supervirtuos. But what I love doing and
I think he really enjoys that twoin the studios basically going in and he
usually yes, there are some songswhere he says, Okay, I've figured
out something that really fits in here. This is what I'm going to do,
and we'll say that's perfect. Butthere are also some songs where he
just says, I don't know,hit me, you tell me, watch

(23:08):
me, do you know, andjust sort of like playing for the song.
And I just know that he's thatgood that I can just sort of
direct him without being a guitar playermyself. I can direct him and let
him shine, but also let thesong as such be lifted up, not
be dominated by a certain instrument,but be enhanced by it absolutely. And

(23:32):
you know, I wouldn't consider myselfto be the world's flashiest guitarist, for
example, And I tend to gointo the studio of same mind. You
know, I want to play forthe song and keep it simple. Every
now and then, you needed tohave a producer to kind of light a
fire under you. I've gone inand recorded a song that I didn't plan
on having any lead guitar on,and the producer says, you know you're

(23:53):
an amazing guitar player, right,Well, why don't you play like one?
Oh? Oh okay, oh yeah. You know you need some to
direct you and to push you forwardsometimes. So I feel like writing a
good song and crafting a good albumis like building a house. You start
with a foundation, right, andthen you add everything else on top of
that, and it takes an architectto put it all together, and it

(24:15):
takes a solid carpenter, and thecraftsmen all work together under the direction of
the architect. I would absolutely agree. That's probably why I enjoy the production
part of an album, maybe evenmore than my actual playing on it,
because I just like the idea ofbeing in charge of a sort of soundscape

(24:37):
and a sort of more general vision. That said, I like having a
producer. I like the freedom ofdoing a take and then just turning around
to produce and say, was thatgood? You decide, sir, that's
your job now, and you know, just tell me if you would need
another take or not. That's alsovery nice too, because we had we
did a bunch of albums where wehad producers, and then we did a
bunch of albums where I produced him. You know, both can be enjoying.

(25:02):
A change is good. Absolutely Yeah. So the new album is out
back in time. It's available whereveryou can get your good music from the
single sometimes late at night is outthere. You can find it on YouTube
listen. Thanks so much for takingthe time out of your day to do
this with me, and until nexttime, cheers, Bye. Bye.

(25:22):
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(25:45):
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