Tara Key has had a long and storied run as a musician. Beginning with early Louisville, KY bands No Fun and then the Babylon Dance Band and on to her years in NYC (where she still lives) in Antietam and her solo work. Anyone who has seen her knows she is an absolute whiz on guitar and is constantly pushing boundaries in her music. Read this fascinating interview with the woman herself.
Were you born and raised in Louisville?
Yes I was, and Tim was as well.
I was born in the working-class West End. Almost every trip home I seek out the site of my house and the one piece of original curb remaining.
My block had a ragtag crew of pee wees to young teens, girls and boys. I seemed to ease into being the ringleader, by virtue of tomboy athleticism and a lot of ideas about what we should do. I developed a penchant for bossing boys around. Baseball. Army. Revell models. Matchbox cars and slot tracks. Backyard Mercury and Gemini Missions. All the while eschewing Barbie.
Around 1966 word came of a belt road to be built circling the city. There were two paths considered − one of which would take our house − and that is the one the Commissioner of Highways, Henry Ward, chose in the eleventh hour. It was designed to dump vehicles at the exact site of my former living room via the River Park Drive exit ramp. In fast motion, my folks were given about 5,000 dollars for our house and told to leave in a little less than a year. We ended up moving “uptown” to the more moneyed East End as most of the rest of the families gravitated to the southwest, rural/suburban edge of town that more closely resembled the makeup of our old neighborhood, now knifed in half. It became thoroughly blighted and continued to decline through the years.
My first act of rebellion, at the age of 9, was to write “Henry Ward Go Home” with red paint on the front of our white house as we left. EMINENT DOMAIN, 1: KEY, 0.
Being ejected from Valhalla set up my creative dynamic early on -- if nothing else, there’s a lot of grist for the mill when you are struggling; making pearls; discomfited. Overnight I became Other rather than Alpha and in the face of Junior High sororities, rich kid Episcopal teen groups, girly boutique clothing and afterschool tea parties, I set about becoming an oddball on the inside, quiet on the outside; able to pass some base level muster as a “good girl”, while I was never rushed, never pledged, suffered through Sunday night group bowling, wore clothes my Mom made and knocked the milk over into everyone’s saucers. Having a body cast, then a Milwaukee brace for Scoliosis from age 15-18 didn’t help me socially, but it led to a years- long retreat to my bedroom with my first electric guitar.
I love Louisville. Every spring, I have the urge to race to the banks of the Ohio River. My ears stand up on dog whistle alert whenever I hear the word Louisville. I will always be my own Chamber of Commerce, never missing an opportunity to drop the name of a famous compatriot into a conversation. (For example: Do you know who Chilton Price is? Look her up—songwriter AND library worker, like me.)
Were there any bands at the time of you starting bands that influenced you?
In the beginning, I listened to one hit wonder radio, the Raiders and the Monkees. I wasn’t in love with the boys in the band—I wanted to BE them. I gave myself a Mark Lindsay ponytail, stole my mother’s dress jackets and sang into a bedpost.
When I was about 13, I made a family tree poster (derived from Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia ) of bands. I drew lines between people leaving one band and joining another. I was always fascinated with the format of bands and collectives. But I never thought I would be able to put my own lines on the chart.
I progressed through the Classics, once removed in a different decade, but I did my Stones Who Kinks Beatles homework. With my first part-time paycheck I walked into W.T. Grant’s and bought the Pink Floyd catalog to date (up through Dark Side).
I won the David Bowie lookalike contest in the Year of the Diamond Dogs when I lived in NYC for the summer of 1974. I went back home, begrudgingly, fell into a prolonged Downer sulk and found a fulcrum, anesthetized, in the low end of Neil Young’s catalog of Les Paul rumbles. I pushed to the front of the stage for the Stones in Louisville in 1975 close enough to feel Keith’s sweat flung from his brow to mine as he wheeled around into a solo just after swigging a shot of Jack. Seminal. Next came Patti and then, the other common touchstones: Clash, Wire, Television, Ramones, Blondie, Stooges, VU --- AKA the art school playlist.
Patti gave me the spiritual, Neil the kinetic, Keith the Seven-league boots, Mick Ronson the keening wail and I woke up to the potential of guitars making emotional statements. Punk Rock gave me the energy and permission to use the tools.
Was the Babylon Dance Band your first band?
My first band was No Fun, also the first punk band in Louisville. Born at the Louisville School of Art in 1978, where we were all students or teachers.
By the middle of the summer, the Babylon Dance Band, the Endtables, the Blinders, The I-Holes were all active and our freaky little life raft was filling up. That’s the thing about small scenes− if you niche out, you flounder. We were in it together; all of the freaks in one room whether the offsetting factor was being gay, straight but curious, punk, disenfranchised redneck, shy brainiac, aimless, adventurous, bored, bent − just not the Midwest cookie cutter denizen of 1978. Sometimes, by comparison, music these days feels so much more exclusive than inclusive. Or, at least, like it’s splintered into fiefdoms of taste.
My band mates in No Fun eventually wanted to move to New York and be a band that was less interested in hacksaw Bubblegum and more into merging art, action and confrontation: read Circle X, who they became. I wanted to go back to NY, but I knew the equation was not right. Tim and Chip and Marc of the BDB had been coming to all of the No Fun gigs and I already felt a strong pull towards the lanky white boy, with the huge afro, on bass. Enter Tim Harris, in a black t-shirt I still own.
Did that band morph into Antietam? If so how?
The short version of the Dance Band? Well, it’s virtually impossible to sum up the thing that most changed your life in a few sentences.
That it morphed is apt only in that Tim and I fell in love with each other in the Dance Band, and fell in love with making music in the Dance Band and it became impossible to imagine ever not making music, having learned a language that decoded the inexplicable. That’s heady stuff. So when the band faltered we were ready to go to NY and see what would happen. It was not a decision made lightly.
The BDB was uncomfortable with the reality that the best and brightest usually left town to succeed. It was a point of pride that we played any and all neighborhoods and situations---a stripper bar, a bar deep in the West End where guns were checked at the door, a kegger party of privilege in the East End where Chip got punched in the mouth, a teenage pregnancy school, a women’s prison, a biker bar, an 8th grade Catholic school dance: playing our music was often a socio-political engagement, with us agitating for unity. I miss the innocence and heft of that to this day.
We were polite, button-down punkers and evangelists for Rock and Roll as Everyman can play it.
We were the first band in the scene to play outside Louisville: first Lexington, then Nashville, finally Chicago and New York, after having landed on the cover of the Village Voice (1981) in Tom Carson’s article about suburban punk. Others, like the Embarrassment and Get Smart and, eventually, REM, the Neats, the Circle Jerks and the Bad Brains, found Louisville.
But it was early in the days of indie-touring. I used to always imagine, as if I was in a grand Western epic, bands in other cities sending up smoke signals, like us, to see if anyone noticed. Eventually our scene imploded as we all tired of its insularity. Tim and I took the encouragement we had gotten on trips to play at the Peppermint Lounge, Danceteria and, most important, Maxwell’s to step out and come to Hoboken.
Why did you pick the name Antietam?
We had our first gig (at CBGB’s), we needed a name and Tim, Wolf, Mike and I sat around scheming. No more or less than that.
Of course, we postdated our check—it was the bloodiest day in American History (up to 9/11), we sounded like four confused battalions running amuck on a battlefield (in the early days)...etc.
There are other Antietams now. I guess the folks in Richmond, VA or Colorado who share our name don’t honor our legacy. Or don’t have very good searching skills. I always want to tell them to get out while they can! They are headed for a lifetime of having their name spelled wrong 91% of the time and misspoken by the 70% of the population that does not seem to be steeped in US History.
At what point did Antietam move to NYC (or was it Hoboken?)? Why the move to the big city?
Antietam never existed in Louisville. Wolf and Mike, our two other original members, were fellow expatriates. After we left in late 1983, on Super Bowl Sunday, 1984 the two of them participated in the literal destruction of the house that used to be the place we all rehearsed in and/or lived in. The landlord came looking for them and they decided to flee to Vermont.
Tim and I were sitting in Hoboken unsure of our next step. We invested in a Scully 4-track machine with some local luminaries and made demos as a duo in a holding pattern. We got in touch with Wolf and Mike and they decided to move to Hoboken and make music with us. With no expectations of what we would sound like we made up something I think everyone would agree sounded like nothing else.
To start, Wolf and Tim both played bass. Mike had never been a drummer in a band—always a guitar player. I had never sang as many songs in a set as I was singing now. So from the get go it was a grand experiment.
How soon after did you sign with Homestead?
We opened for Husker Du at Maxwell’s on 12/29/84 and Gerard Cosloy saw us that night and signed us. Wolf and Mike came to Hoboken on Derby Day, 1984 (5/5/84), so only about 7 months in...
What were you hoping to accomplish with Antietam (if anything)?
Go all-in (done), make something unique (done), explore collision and drive the train as close to coming off the rails as possible (done and then some...) run the band as a democracy and be joyous in the mission’s commission (done until it came undone).
With the possible transmogrification of the third commandment to steady the train and make it a bullet none of this has really ever changed.
Why did Wolf Knapp leave? He had the coolest name in rock back then!
Clearly Wolf would be the best person to ask, so I will quote him here (from our website):
“...walking on stage in Philly at that old bank building (were we opening for a hardcore band? Ruins?) and just owning it. Singing "Pocket Full of Change' and the guitar fury ensuing the little bass break, that was the best.
Of course that was my last gig. At least I went out on a roll. I could see how that wouldn't make much sense to the principals. I'd guess that the same joie de vivre, the life of the mind that enabled the fairly crazy stuff I badged us with -- what was it? Confidence I guess, matched only by Tara's, the imagined stakes involved pushed me to strike out and self-validate the hard way.”
Was Antietam active in the 90’s? I think I remember a record on Triple X.
Antietam Mach 1 had been an experiment in collage and contrast, of cramming eight different breeds of rabbit into one hat and pulling out an intriguing mutant hare. We were missing the linear, missing pop, missing the velocity rush of a short, sweet rocker, yeah, probably Dance Band over Jagged Band. So we eventually settled on being a trio.
We made a record, Burgoo, in 1989 (produced by Georgia and Ira from YLT) on Triple X with Charles Schultz, another Louisvillian. After Charles left the band, Josh Madell heard we needed a drummer and moved back home from San Francisco in 1991 to change our lives.
With Josh on board we made two more records for Triple X; Everywhere Outside and Antietam Comes Alive! We re-signed with Homestead under a new regime and made Rope-A-Dope in 1994 with James Murphy , pre-LCD, recording half and Lyle Hysen producing and Fred Brockman recording the other half. I made two “solo” records for Homestead in 1993 and 1995. We released a single in 1996 and did a few compilation tracks at the end of the decade. And the Dance Band recorded a LP for Matador (better late than never) in 1994.
So we were very productive during that time. But no label we were on catapulted us beyond a certain level and, in the days when Majors and Major Indies were snapping up some of our peers, we were not snapped. The sympathetic regime at Homestead was bludgeoned out of existence and the perception of our inactivity was born, although that take is just plain wrong.
After 1995 we did not have a label, so we had no resources beyond what all of us made at our day jobs, which we would have gladly sacrificed for touring if there had been label support and opportunity. To this point in time, we had always had a perceived gun at our heads and an eye on the clock whenever we were in the studio. We decided to educate ourselves and learn to record. In 2004 Victory Park was released. But at NO time was Antietam over, broken up or not a band.
Tell us about some of your other work , since Antietam has only 8 records in nearly 20 years I know you’ve done other stuff with other folks (Rick Rizzo).
That’s nine, counting Tenth Life.
I did two solo records, Bourbon County and Ear and Echo.
BC was born when Steven Joerg of Homestead and I came up with the idea for me to make a record with my friends—a kind of band camp populated with our musical family. E&E recorded the type of EST session that you can get away with while you are still young and indulgent. It was true and bare and raw.
On both records I was interested in playing the hell out of my beautiful Gibson acoustic. That didn’t fit neatly into Antietam. And both of those projects were seismic for me because I had always done my thing with blinders on. I discovered how to jam nice with others and not treat my musical life like loyalty to an Army battalion, afraid for anyone to leave the foxhole.
I toured Europe as the second guitarist in Eleventh Dream Day in 1997. For the first time since No Fun I was playing without Tim by my side, I was touring places Antietam had never played, not playing my tunes and man, did it make me grow up on guitar. I don’t know if those guys know how huge that was for me. I wasn’t sure I could do them justice and acquitting myself ratcheted up my confidence. Those nights of tangling our leads and riding the bus together cemented the long friendship Rizzo and I already had into telepathy. And that led to Dark Edson Tiger in 2000 and to Double Star this year.
With 2008’s triple album Opus Mixtum it seems that the band has had a renaissance of sorts . What do you attribute that to?
This band has always operated the same. We get together in our clubhouse one to three times a week depending on era and obligations. We chit chat. Throw darts. We jam. We have some beers. We tape. When we have enough raw data, we shape songs. That is the way it has always been.
These perceived ups and downs—I don’t feel it the same way. Everyone may tune in our channel whenever a record comes out, since touring is difficult for most bands without some kind of subsidy these days. But the station is on 24/7!
I think the key to our longevity has been to be a family, to be elastic about expectations but to never say never and at this point, the brass ring is as welcome as ever but conniving to grab it, maybe not so much.....
I will probably go to my grave as a Realist with Arena Dreams. But the dialectic of Advent VS Absence of game-changing success has no effect on this fact: when I pick up a guitar it makes me feel whole.
…or had the spark never left?
I just think we are getting better and better at living AND playing. I can’t separate the two very successfully. Maybe we are lucky to not have the albatross of having to play our old hits around our neck.
I don’t plan for there ever to be another holding pattern. Give me vectors or give me death!
Tell us about the new record, Tenth Life. I know it sounds more song oriented than previous record.
That’s funny—I do see that logic, but perhaps it’s in the part’s definition by the whole this time. With Opus Mixtum in some sense we were hoping to unite fans of my solo records, fans of my records with Rizzo and fans of our straight ahead rock and to show we were at least a three-trick pony. And I felt there was a lot of song crafting there, but the mosaic of styles could have obscured that as a hallmark. I actually brought in several songs I wrote at home by myself on OM, and none fit that bill on Tenth Life.
When we play and write, our impulses seem to go back and forth on a continuum of jam to terse. And I guess this time we were all conveniently set on “terse.”
What’s it about? At a certain age a lot is thrown at you than could be demoralizing if you let it. Bodies breaking, loss, reckoning and settling up, frustration with moving slow in the fast lane. It does no good to deny it, but it does no good to guard the cache expecting some kind of reward for keeping it real. So I guess the record is a friendly tap on my shoulder and yours to suck it up and not waste time wallowing. To live lively, celebrate all the more for knowing the downsides and to keep reframing. And I present a few of those parable pitfalls through the record and hopefully make transcendence the point with the energy of the music.
What do you tell people who have called you a guitar goddess (like me)?
My ego has a big enough boiler to shamelessly accept all combustible matter.
What are your top 10 desert island discs?
Order not important (this morning—not set in stone)
New Order – Get Ready
David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
Patti Smith – Horses
Funkadelic – Funkadelic
Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Neil Young - Live Rust
Dusty Springfield – Dusty In Memphis
Paul Revere and the Raiders – Spirit of ’67
Iggy & the Stooges (original Bowie mix) - Raw Power
My own Yo La Tengo mix
Any final thoughts? Closing comments? Words of wisdom?
Just to check out our website (which I labored over every inch of) : I think it is a both a thorough history of us and a good snapshot of what it was and is like to rock Indie for 25+ years. www.antietamband.com
