PUBLISHED IN THE KW RECORD Friday, August 9, 1997
BY NICK KREWEN
For The Record
"I don't know what we did to anger the Bus Karma Gods," sighs J.R. RICHARDS, singer and songwriter for Santa Barbara rock band DISHWALLA.
On the phone seconds after the band arrives in London, Ontario to commence their Canadian club tour, Richards reveals that Dishwalla has endured over two weeks of crippling mechanical problems with their rented tour coach.
"Our bus has been constantly overheating, so we haven't been able to drive it very fast," admits Richards, whose band appears tonight at The Volcano in Kitchener with DAYTONA ($6 in advance, $8 at the door).
"Plus it had some sort of malfunction that required us to replace the fan belts every 50 miles. We were late for everything, and ended up missing interviews and other things we planned."
Richards hopes Dishwalla's bus problems are behind them now that the band picked up a replacement coach Wednesday en route from Sioux Falls, North Dakota. The vehicular nightmare has been the lone pumpkin in the emerging Cinderella success story of Dishwalla, formed three years ago and named after TV pirates who hook up illegal cable from satellite dishes.
Although it's taken a year almost to the day -- and a lot of touring on the part of the five-piece band -- radio is finally paying attention to Dishwalla's sadly neglected debut A&M album Pet Your Friends, driving their song "Counting Blue Cars" to the top of numerous charts.
Memorable for its provocative refrain "Tell me all your thoughts on God...I'd really like to meet her," the 27-year-old Richards says he's spoken to a lot of people who mistakenly believe he's defining the Lord's gender.
"There have been a lot of people trying to set me straight," says Richards of "Counting Blue Cars."
"I wrote the song as a suggestion that we should always be questioning everything we're taught. I'm not drawing any conclusions."
Whether it's outlining the problems of miscommunication in the rocker "Charlie Brown's Parents" or commenting on society's tendency to age their young before their prime on "Pretty Babies," Richards says he purposefully remains hazy about his song subjects.
It's a page he's taken from R.E.M.'s notebook.
"I don't like being too literal," admits Richards. "The problem with a lot of bands is that they give everything away about themselves at the beginning, so there's no mystery, and no one is really interested in pursuing or learning about them anymore.
"That's one of the things I discovered from R.E.M. You can be vague, mysterious and symbolic, and a lot of people will tune in because you don't explain yourself."
Richards says he and bandmates SCOT ALEXANDER (bass), RODNEY BROWNING (guitars), GEORGE PENDERGAST (drums) and JIM WOOD (keyboards) only recently noticed how the popularity of "Counting Blue Cars" has increased their live audience.
"We played Tempe, Arizona about three weeks ago," recalls Richards. "Last time we played there, it was to 40 or 50 people. This time, we sold out a 900-seat venue with another 100-200 lined up outside."
Another sure sign of success is when three boisterous female fans -- in Richard's words -- "barnstormed our bus."
"Here were these three beautiful women, and they were screaming, `I can't believe it! I can't believe it! We love you guys!'
'We were feeling pretty good until one girl said, `You GOO GOO DOLLS are the best.' We kicked them off the bus."
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THANKS: PHILIP BAST
DISCOGRAPHY
1995 -- Pet Your Friends -- A&M
1998 -- And you think you know what life's about
©1997 Nick Krewen, Octopus Media Ink