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Interview with Robert Wagner of The Little Wretches
Thanks for taking the time, Robert. How has the 2020-21 pandemic affected you on both a personal and professional level?
I live in the States, in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, and a few days after the lockdown/quarantine/whatever started in March, I was of two minds, like there was a little angel-me watching the material-me in action.
Part of me was just perturbed. What an inconvenience! How dare anyone ask me to change my precious plans! Right? A selfish response. I’m a cancer-survivor. I’ve been treated for latent tuberculosis. I’ve survived a violent, substance-abusing, rife-with-mental-illness family. And now you want me to stay home and hide because I might catch a cold? I sneer at the suggestion!
“Yes, but it’s a cold that can kill you.”
Sure, but the pathogen is not going anywhere. You can hide, but when you come out of hiding, it is going to be waiting for you. When I am eventually exposed to it, I will either catch it or I won’t. I’ll be symptomatic or I won’t. The symptoms will be severe or they won’t. The disease will kill me or it won’t.
I am not going to live in fear. But I will do my part to stop the spread of the disease. Wear a mask in public? Absolutely. Anything that puts my neighbors at ease and helps to protect them, I do it gladly.
In some ways, the protocols of the pandemic work to my advantage.
It’s not hard for me to maintain social distance. I prefer social distance. Even before the pandemic, if I was entering an aisle in a grocery store and another person was already in the aisle, I’d turn around and shop in an empty aisle. Am I a weirdo? I actively avoid people. I enjoy solitude.
The first time I ventured out to go mountain biking in the middle of nowhere, I was thrilled to have the roads to myself, the trails to myself. The new normal? I’ll take it. “Hey, you, get off of my cloud!”
Isn’t that horrible?
I work very hard to bolster my immune system and keep my body strong.
I was hiking at Seneca Rocks in West Virginia. When you arrive at the observation deck at the top of the trail, a sign warns against scrambling out on the rocks. To your left, doom awaits. To your right, doom awaits. But unspeakable beauty and the glory of God’s earth awaits for those who dare to climb out there.
The sign says, “YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY!” Exactly. Not just atop Seneca Rocks. Everywhere. At all times. You are responsible for your own safety.
Now, I’m also one of those people who also feels responsible for the safety of those around him. But I respect your right to choose. I am honored to help you, but I do not presume you want or need my help. So I am not going to tell you how to live, where to go or what to wear.
Personally, I have worked, shopped and exercised outdoors every single day throughout the so-called lockdown. Financially, I’ve been fine.
Professionally, the pandemic has leveled the proverbial playing field. I had to cancel my little tour, but so did the giants of the industry. It hurt me, but it hurt them even more. How sinister. The misfortune that befalls others moves me closer to where I want to be.
I used circumstance of the pandemic to take the time to have recordings that I’d been sitting on re-mastered and released. UNDESIRABLES & ANARCHISTS. WHEN IT SNOWS. BORN WITH A GIFT. BURNING LANTERN DROPPED IN STRAW. WHY WERE THEIR POETS SILENT?
Listen to those five albums, and tell me I’m not in the game.
Whatever the future holds, I am very well positioned. I can perform solo. I can perform with members of the band. My goal is to wake up in the morning, thinking about where I am playing tonight. My goal is that in three years, people who know a lot about great American songwriters also know about me and regard me as one of them.
Is there another musician you’ve mentored or trained? Describe what you’ve done to help them?
That’s not really my story to tell.
It’s funny that I should be asked this question today, of all days. Just this morning, I used my sleuthing and creeping skills to get in contact with the person who owned the first professional studio used by The Little Wretches. If you know our band, you’ll know who I’m talking about, but I don’t want to drop his name.
Anyhow, I wanted to thank him for having played a pivotal role in the success and growth of The Little Wretches. He replied with something like, “I don’t think anybody interacts with Robert Wagner without a permanent effect.”
I want to be able to say that I passed something along that helped somebody else.
I have had people tell me they started writing because of me. I’ve had people who played and recorded with me go on to start their own bands. I’ve started little concert-series and showcase-series and open-mics that gained a little bit of traction and were kept alive by others after I’d moved on to other things.
Really, though, I’d be flattering myself to say that I’ve mentored or trained anyone. It is possible that they saw me and thought, “If that guy can do it, so can I.”
What’s the best piece of advice another musician ever gave you?
Advice? Who takes advice from musicians?
You mean, “TURN DOWN,” right? Or, “Why do you play with so much distortion?”
I was a loner as a teenager. I never hung out with people in bands. I didn’t jam with other players. I didn’t know anybody in the music business. I had no idea how to do what I was imagining and was incapable of describing what I was imagining. I had to find it through a process of discovery.
That studio I was talking about? Let me tell you how we ended up recording there. I made appointments with all the major studios in Pittsburgh, visited them, sat in the booths with the engineers. They’d ask, “What do you want to sound like?” Then they’d play a clip, “You wanna sound like this, I can make you sound like this. You wanna sound like that, I can make you sound like that. Wanna sound like Prince? Wanna sound like Madonna? Bruce? U2?”
What I want is to SOUND LIKE ME!!!!! That’s what I want to sound like. The studio I chose for our project was the studio that got the simple concept of me sounding like me.
So the best advice I ever got was not from a musician but from a movie about a musician, TENDER MERCIES, starring Robert Duvall as a once-successful Country music star, Mac Sledge, now living in obscurity. Some local musicians discover his identity, ask for his help and his advice. He says, “Play it like you feel it.”
I mean, why do anything else? Play it like you feel it.
Why would you write lyrics only to drown them out with drums and guitars? Why would you even bother trying to be like somebody else? Just find your voice, and use it. Play within your abilities, then reach a little. Sing within your range, then reach a little.
I don’t think I really answered your question. I don’t take advice from musicians. I take advice from friends, some of whom play music.
When you’ve been on the road, how did you handle traveling and being away from your home for an extended time period while you were on tour?
Handle being away from home? What home? Where I live now, I don’t even have a kitchen. I have a little microwave oven and the kind of refrigerator college kids have in dorm rooms. I wash my dishes in the bathroom sink. All I need is a few changes of clothes, my laptop, an internet connection and my guitar.
Was it George Carlin who had a routine about home being where you keep your stuff? I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff, mostly books, records and musical gear. I need a place to keep my stuff. But I can sleep in a car. I can sleep on floor. I can sleep in a tent. And I can go without sleep.
When I travel, I manage to find a way to stick to my ordinary routines. I need to exercise every day, and most big towns have a YMCA. Most hotels have a fitness room. I’ll get to the gym, swim some laps, maybe get to a trail and go for a little jog.
And I need to practice a little every day. I’m not one of those fluent players who can think a musical thought and it comes flying out of his fingers. I’m capable of flubbing things I’ve played for twenty years. I like to run through my repertoire and rehearse my lines.
I love being on the road. Driving. Looking out the window. Pressing the search-button on the radio.
Best thing in the world is playing for people who’ve never heard you before, watching their faces when they drop whatever they were doing and focus on the song you’re playing.
Only thing I don’t like on the road is worrying about somebody stealing my guitar. Right? I want to go for a run. How can I be sure my guitar is going to be safe? Then again, Charlie Parker played concerts on borrowed plastic saxophones.
Oh, and parking. You locate and arrive at the venue, but there is no place to park. You mean I have to PAY to park? Big stars don’t suffer such indignities.
Tell me what your first music teacher was like. What lessons did you learn from them that you still use today?
I went through a couple of teachers. My best teacher was Joe Colosimo, a real working musician. Gave lessons by day. Gigged by night. A freelancer. Need a guitarist or a banjo? Call Joe.
Joe tuned his banjo like a guitar and played in a style called “full harmony.” People loved it. He’d strum the chords furiously and play the melody by adding his pinky finger.
Joe Colosimo taught me how to keep my pinky-finger free when making a chord so that I could reach and add a note. And I’ll never forget these little diagrams he made to teach me “bass walks.” A lot of rockabilly and old rock’n’roll songs are built upon these bass-lines.
I think I knew intuitively but Joe really reinforced that the rhythm and timing is the most important thing. You can’t play with people who can’t count. You can’t play with people who can’t keep time.
Main thing I learned from Joe, though, is that hard work is more important than talent. Perspiration, not inspiration. Some people are blessed with talent and do nothing with it. Hard work ensures that I will get the most out of the talent I have.
How would your previous band-mates describe you and your work ethic?
Ask Dan Wasson. I went to elementary school, played football and wrestled with Dan. He is a superior musician who plays bass in the jazz scene in Pittsburgh. Dan played electric guitar on one of The Little Wretches’ epics, WALKING AMONG THE BUILDINGS. Our sixth grade English teacher used to call him, “Dangerous Dan.” Mr. Duff always praised Dan for his lethal, cynical wit. Dan and his brother, Gerry, used to call me “Coach.”
Dan would sit in for gigs with The Little Wretches and say, “Tomorrow, I’ll be able to tell everybody I got my ass kicked by Bobby Wagner for four hours.” It’s that Ken Kesey thing. “I’m sorry if you got hurt, but I’m not sorry I kicked your ass because that’s what I do. I’m an ass-kicker.”
If I’m leading a rehearsal, we’re going to be playing solid for three hours. We are getting our reps in. We will know our starts, stops, our endings. We will not be pausing to smoke or drink or take breaks. We’re here to work.
Ellen Hildebrand played college basketball. She used to say, “You will play like you practice.” So we practiced hard. We drilled. We prepared. She’d quote Abraham Lincoln, “I will prepare, and perhaps my chance will come.”
We’ll warm up with something familiar, something to get us loosened up and confident. Then we’ll focus on works-in-progress. Get our reps in. Repeat. Repeat. Turn it into muscle-memory. We’ll finish off with a refresher of stuff we want to keep sharp. End the way we started, play something that leaves us feeling confident.
You’d have to ask them. I’ve heard people around the band say I can be a bastard and a son of a bitch. One friend tried to describe how I was “brutal” when it came to music. Brutal? Bastard? Son of a bitch? Those do not sound like flattering words, but nobody is going to say The Little Wretches didn’t put in the work.
Dave Losi and I played a private party in our hometown of Castle Shannon a few years ago. I think we played for five hours, took a break, and played three more.
Boot camp with Bobby and the Bastards.
Tell us about your most recent single release, “Ballad of Johnny Blowtorch.”
How close do you want me to zoom in? There is a story behind almost every line and every image in that song. I have a screenplay called THE BALLAD OF JOHNNY BLOWTORCH. Ninety-minutes to two hours it would be if it ever makes it to the big screen. I wish I could read the screenplay to you.
The character behind The Ballad of Johnny Blowtorch is a composite. My friend and first bandmate, John Creighton, the most talented musician I’ve ever known and possibly the most Christ-like person I’ve ever known, is the source of some of the imagery. My song BORN WITH A GIFT was a response to John’s passing and entering eternity. THE BALLAD OF JOHNNY BLOWTORCH is more a snapshot of a moment in his life.
John lived somewhat of an ascetic lifestyle, self-denial, seeking something. He had a song that said, “I will endure all of the necessary havoc for the single clear moment.” He suffered from migraine headaches and became addicted to prescription drugs. He was an organic firebrand on stage, it was like you plugged him in. He was not a showman. It was not a show. When he performed, the fire surged through him and it was riveting to see.
The opening line, “All you ever wanted was to hang on a cross,” may be misconstrued as sacrilegious. It’s about somebody who is martyring himself, putting himself through what everybody else would see as an unnecessary hell. Why are you doing that to yourself? And he says, “If I ever get lucky and score, you’ll want to be me.” If the wisdom or enlightenment I seek is on the other side of this firestorm, it will have been worth it.
Chaos. Eating garbage. Getting so skinny your clothes are falling off. The ass of your jeans is worn through. The song also alludes to a guy snuffing a cigarette out on the back of his hand. My friend, former member of The Little Wretches and ongoing collaborator, Gregg Bielski once did that while fronting his band, Shrinkwrap.
Gregg is among the few who can claim to have been a close personal friend of G. G. Allin. I never met G.G. personally, but have learned a lot about him through Gregg.
G.G. died of a drug overdose, but his plan had been to commit suicide on stage. How awful, right? Was G.G demon-possessed? I look at it as though he had a Jesus-complex, and that’s even where the name G.G. comes from. His mom named him Jesus and his brother couldn’t pronounce it and called him G.G. He was taking the sins of the world upon himself, sacrificing himself. Dude, Jesus did that for you already. Accept His salvation, why don’t you? Too prideful?
Consider Patti Smith’s poem, OATH, the basis of her song GLORIA, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.” She and artists like Prince and Madonna got some mileage out of straddling the line between the sacred and the profane. It’s an edge, all right. Very romantic till it’s cut you in half.
Is Johnny Blowtorch seeking enlightenment or merely abusing himself? Wouldn’t you like to know? But you’ll never know because you aren’t willing to take the risk or make the sacrifice.
People see him and turn away: “Here comes a face from the past. Don’t pretend you don’t see me.”
But Johnny Blowtorch gets in the last word: “If I ever get lucky and score, you’ll want to be me.”
Musically, I was listening to a lot of Gangsta Rap, which I love. And the guitar riff is kind of an early Kinks thing.
I’m glad people are responding to the song. I wish I could get THEM to tell me what THEY think it’s about.
When can we expect your next album?
Late March, early April, 2021. Funny you should ask, again, because I’ve spent all day preparing for our first rehearsal for the project. I’ve got the edition of The Little Wretches that created UNDESIRABLES & ANARCHISTS—HK Hilner on piano, Rosa Colucci on vocals and percussion, John Carson on bass, and Mike Madden on drums. Gregg Bielski is working on drum-programs and rhythm tracks. I hope to bring Steve Sciulli in for some flute and accordion. Depending on how the rehearsals go, we’ll decide which studio to use, but I believe very strongly in the material.
The title, RED BEETS AND HORSERADISH, is inspired by a concoction served as a relish or side-dish, usually on the holidays of Easter or Passover. For the Serbs, the red of the beets is symbolic of the blood of their people, and the horseradish the bitterness of their suffering. In my tradition, the symbolism involves the blood of our savior and the bitterness of His suffering. People in the Jewish tradition also enjoy the dish, but there is no blood involved—the beets are merely for flavor—but the horseradish represents the memory of bitter suffering in bondage.
We’ve got 13 songs, a couple built around spoken-word pieces placed atop musical arrangements and maybe three or four tracks that rock like the last album. People call us folk rock? Well, there will be some REAL folk on this album, serious character-portraits and vignettes, the best writing I’ve ever done from a literary standpoint, organically and explicitly built around the themes of family, self-sacrifice and resilience and implicitly unified by themes of faith and man’s personal relationship with God.
Sounds heavy, right? Not exactly the kind of thing you’re going to get from anybody else except The Little Wretches.
What accomplishments do you see yourself achieving in the next five to 10 years?
I think this is turning into a mantra: I want to wake up in the morning, thinking about where I am playing tonight. I want my name to be mentioned when the topic of formidable American songwriters comes up and The Little Wretches to be mentioned when the topic of great American rock’n’roll bands comes up.
I want to be in demand. I want to be able to go from town to town, country to country, continent to continent, knowing that a few hundred people are waiting for something they aren’t able to get from anybody else and a few hundred more tagging along to find out what the big deal is.
Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of music?
I am interested in learning. I am a great supporter of unschooling, homeschooling and free schooling, the concepts of school-choice, self-directed learning, and brain-plasticity. The Highland School in West Virginia. The Circle School in Harrisburg. The Philly Free School. John Taylor Gatto’s THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION. A. S. Neill’s SUMMERHILL. John Holt.
I am very interested in politics and history, but that’s not even fun to talk about anymore. Gotta be careful. I try to bring things back to the question, “What are you for?” Describe the world you want to live in. Tell me what you can do to get there. Does the path to your utopia involve the temporary cessation of the protections in the Bill of Rights? Ooops. Better find a new utopia.
I love the outdoors. Nature is free. Air. Water. Mountains. Streams. Trails. Wildlife. I like to ride my bicycle and explore. I also love a good urban hike. I enjoy riding my bike in the city as much as in the country, but in the city you have to worry about being hit by a car. That, I would prefer to avoid.
What is it about music that makes you feel passionate?
In the beginning was the Word, right? That is more than a religious concept. It is also part of natural history. The word makes us human. The word separates us from the animals. The word allows us to store information and pass it from mouth to mouth, brain to brain, generation to generation. The word allows humans to steward the planet and go to the stars.
So if I couldn’t be a musician, I would be a poet and was resigned at one point to having to settle for being a poet. But when I was a first-year student at the University of Pittsburgh, my writing teacher had just returned from Naropa Institute’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. At Naropa, he’d encountered a writer named Michael Brownstein and his book, STRANGE DAYS AHEAD.
My teacher knew that I liked the songs of Lou Reed, and STRANGE DAYS AHEAD concludes with an essay that mentions Lou Reed, so my teacher lent it to me.
The essay argues that poetry has no economic value and therefore cannot be corrupted. Brownstein argued that poetry is the only art capable of speaking the truth without compromise. So that made me feel pretty good about being a poet, a truth-teller, incapable of being corrupted.
But let’s be honest. As soon as Bob Dylan started writing things like A HARD RAIN and IT’S ALRIGHT MA and MISTER TAMBOURINE MAN, poetry became a cottage industry for college professors. Music says what words cannot. Put the truth of music with the truth of the Word, and you’ve really got something. And when Dylan plugged in that electric guitar, he opened the door for kids like me.
Maybe I feel passionate about music because I am in its debt. When I had nobody and nothing, I had my guitar. When I hated everybody and everything, I had my guitar. My guitar and my writing gave me a reason to be alive.
I had a dream. In the dream, a very pale woman elected to kiss me before going off to die. She wanted one last kiss, and I was honored to have been there for her. As she walked away, I asked how she knew she was going to die. She said, “All that has to happen for a person to die is for the part that fights to keep living to stop fighting.”
I like being alive. As long as I have music, I’ll have the ways and means to keep fighting.
Thanks so much Robert. We appreciate your time and wish you all the best in 2021 and beyond!
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