Interview with
Chuck Dukowski

The Duke talks about what's become of the
punk rock revolution and his new musical
project The Chuck Dukowski Sextet.

By Thom White

Chuck Dukowski (AKA Gary McDaniel) played bass for Black Flag during the key early years of the band and he was known for an aggressive "lead bass" style of playing.

In their early incarnations, Black Flag would play small house parties and get banned from clubs and venues around L.A. on account of their crazy, destructive fans. In the early 1980s, through a series of national tours, Black Flag built punk rock connections across the country and was soon organizing regular nationwide tours for themselves and other bands on their SST label.

In late 1983, Kira Roessler replaced Chuck on bass, and he moved over to the business end of SST Records, setting up tours and promoting bands on the label. During Chuck's time there, SST put out records by several bands who would later make the leap to gain "mainstream major label success," bands such as Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Hüsker Dü, and Soundgarden.

No longer working at SST, Chuck settled down for a few years in Venice, Calif., with the wife and kids, but he is now returning to the public arena with his new band, the Chuck Dukowski Sextet. He's still on bass, but with drums and horns, and his wife Lora on vocals.

Chuck took some time to answer a CITIZINE questionnaire. Queries are in bold. Chuck's written responses are in plain text.

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What is the Chuck Dukowski SEXTET and how did it come together?

The CD6 is my current group. It is the manifestation of a type of music that I had wanted to do for a long time. I wanted to do something different by using horns instead of guitar. I feel really lucky to have gotten my first choices of musicians. When I found out in late '02 that Bill Stinson, our drummer, was available, we started jamming. After we created a foundation, I called in Lynn Johnston, who is a virtuoso horn player. It's really exciting to have Lynn's horns in the place of the standard guitar. He adds such melody and harmonic twist. I've played in bands with guitars in that role all my life, and it's a joy to check a change. We all played for a couple weeks and then added Lora Norton as our singer. At that point, we were purely improvisational, which is really unusual and difficult with a vocalist. After a while, we began to do much more composed material, but we always try to keep an element of improvisation and spontaneity in our music.

What are the plans for the CD6 this year? How important a part of your life is making music these days? Do you only play bass or other instruments?

We are in the process of recording a full-length album that will be released early next year. We play around L.A. frequently and will continue to do so. We don't have any tours planned, though. It's hard to pull up our roots. Lora Norton and I have four kids, so there's a righteous lot of us. At some point we may bust a Winnebago tour with the whole crew. Maybe we can get one of the kids' bands to open!

To answer about how important music is in my life, I'll just say that making music is massively, hugely important. I'll play till I die. In the CD6, I play a five-string electric jazz bass, because it's expanded tonal range gives me more dimension and ability to interact with the horns. That range matters a lot when there's no guitar. At home, I play one of my basses or the acoustic guitar. I actually write a lot of material on my acoustic guitar.

How does the CD6 compare to other bands you've been in? What are the other projects / bands besides Black Flag that you have played on?

I think the CD6 is really a continuation of the music I did with Wurm, which was my band before Black Flag. It's more like that music than like Black Flag. The CD6 does play "My War," though, which is a song I wrote for Black Flag. The CD6 is very satisfying because I can stretch and challenge myself as a musician.

You are most well known for playing bass in Black Flag. Why do you think Black Flag continues to be so popular? What sets the band apart? Which Black Flag record is your favorite and which ones didn't turn out as well as you would have hoped?

Black Flag is popular because it was a great band. We always played with extreme intensity and quality. We had great songs. We had great singers. We backed it up with rigorous touring and hard work. We were going to make it happen, we were willing to do the work. We embodied the DIY ethos. We lived that and people can feel it, that you're not just full of shit. Damaged is probably my favorite album. Every album wasn't as good as I hoped when we finished it, but now they all seem good.

Was Penelope Spheeris's movie The Decline Of Western Civilization an accurate or skewed image of the LA punk scene? Who and what was missing from the movie?

The Decline was entertainment and Penelope Spheeris manipulated the situation to be entertaining. I was annoyed when I saw myself in the film with a stupid 40oz'er in my hand. When you know you're being filmed, it's not natural. You're playing to the camera. Everyone was being "punk." We were having fun.

In terms of the "LA Scene," did she get what was popular? What was important? Was Catholic Discipline popular? Important? That was a joke. Claude Bessy himself was immensely important to the LA scene, but as an intellectual and catalyst, as the editor of Slash magazine, and not as a musician. She should have gotten The Plugz. They were an important band.

You follow domestic events and politics, and the world abroad. How has America transformed in the last decades and what can be done to make things better? What does the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 signify to you?

I'm glad you asked about politics. Since I'm a bass player, I know everything about it. We are on the cusp of change. When I hear that American soldiers in Iraq are listening to punk rock while they kill people, I know that "punk" has lost its original meaning, or at least anything I meant. We were reacting to the bullshit that the watered-down hippie thing had become, to the exclusionist coke-filled clubs and record industry. We were disgusted with the whole Jackson Browne / James Taylor acoustic simpering. Hippie had stopped being Jerry Rubin flipping off Congress. It had lost what was threatening, what was challenging. So we did something different, something that somehow got named "punk rock."

For a time I wondered, when is the new revolution coming? Certainly punk has come to shit, but when I thought about it, I realized what a bullshit scam the revolution is. The revolution becomes a style, something that gets co-opted by pigs to get your dollar. The naming of a movement is so polluting. The freshness and purity of a creative product becomes burdened with some name and all the other stuff that rushes under that name's banner. I used to think political revolution was a good idea. Then I realized political revolution is the same as artistic revolution! They want your dollar and your blood.

Look what happens in a revolution: someone has the idea that there shouldn't be such a big divide between the rich and the poor. Probably that person isn't even the one who starts the overthrow, they're just conceptualizing. But someone power-hungry starts some shit, and the next thing all these poor people, all these human beings, who just want a decent life, are dying in a bloody revolution and they end up with Mao or Stalin or George Washington! 'Cause that revolution was a scam, too. The American Revolution didn't benefit the regular colonists. It benefited the rich colonists who wanted more wealth and power and slaves than the English were going to let them have. The book The People's History of The United States really explains this cogently.

But we need a change, a major, major change. The answer lies with every one of us. We have to be about peace. All this violence is wrong. We need to understand on a really deep level that everything we do is political. Our clothes are political. They tell everyone around us what we stand for. How we spend is political. It affects so many lives. How we feel is political. All this alienation is no accident.

Our government works hard to keep us apart, to breed hate, to pit the bottom against the middle while the tiny tippy top rapes the world. Our country has a school system that teaches mindless obedience and pits parents against their children. It doesn't have to be this way! We need to do every little thing we can to undermine the power of the government. Make fun of the government! It's a vital act of patriotism. Co-opt their power! Take the power back, bit by bit, till when the king says jump, everyone sits!

May 11, 2005.

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Reader Comments

I feel slightly offended with Chuck's slap in the face comments about US troops in Iraq in regards to the meaning of the word "punk." I can't help but feel grievances towards his stances that somehow punk lost its meaning because PEOPLE LIKE ME listen to it. Not only that, but I would be a bit put off to think that the men and women who serve in Iraq are merely killing people and not trying to help rebuild a country in a horrible situation. I also don't see how anybody's appreciation of anything takes away any of its "meaning," nor that of an entire musical movement for that matter. Still Dukowski's comments do not deter my appreciation to his contributions to the the great band, but I feel dismayed to think someone like him would make such idiotic statements about US troops. I also feel slightly amused to see the former bassist of Black Flag expressing the need for "peace" and for everybody to be about "peace." Correct me if I am wrong here, but wasn't Black Flag one of the most violent bands to come out of the LA punk scene in the late 70's?

-- Taeil Kim
Private, US Marine Corps
Torrance, California

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