The Underneath | Texas Fog Society | Interview | Paul Pennington
Paul Pennington, a Dallas native, is a musician and record collector, having been involved in underground projects such as The Underneath, Texas Fog Society, and the Phonograph Blues.
His journey into record collecting began in the late 1970s, fueled by a fervent passion for psychedelic sounds that propelled him on a lifelong journey of discovery. Along the way, he created covers for numerous Rockadelic and other underground gems.
Raised on a musical diet of Bob Seger and Ted Nugent in Detroit, Pennington’s early exposure to rock ‘n’ roll laid the foundation for his lifelong devotion to music. As a collector, his quest for rare and obscure records led him through the depths of psychedelic exploration, from local punk bands to forgotten funk tracks, amassing a treasure trove of sonic gems that he eagerly shared with fellow enthusiasts.
In addition to his role as a collector, Pennington left his mark as a creator, crafting his own recordings and collaborating with local acts. His projects, including The Underneath, showcased his eclectic taste and his willingness to experiment with different sounds and styles.
“My mother told me that my first word was ‘record’.”
Where and when did you grow up? Was music a big part of your family life?
Paul Pennington: I was born in 1967 right here in Dallas, Texas. From 1970 to 1979, we were in the Detroit area. My dad moved us there because of his work for the Ford Motor Company. Since 1979, I have been back here in the Dallas area, generally speaking.
As a child in the seventies in the Detroit area, it was like WWWW or WRIF. One or the other. I was hearing plenty of Bob Seger and Ted Nugent, but as for hearing Iggy and the Stooges, for me, that was to come later.
In the home in which I was raised, I was the youngest of four brothers. The older ones were 9, 14, and 16 when I was born. By that point, they had already been Beatles and Rolling Stones fans and also had records by The Animals, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, and so forth. So, that was all in the house and current and getting played in my face when I was really little. And I liked it. My mother told me my first word was “record,” so that is part of my story. The more rocking, the better, as it turns out.
What was it about music that made you start collecting records?
When I was nine or ten years old, starting in 1975 or so, I would go along with one of my brothers when he would hit all the pawn shops in town. This started a long tradition with him and me. So, we would go to all these pawn shops, and we would pick records from a box or from a rack on a wall or some variation on that. To my recollection, they normally would be fifty cents or a dollar. A dollar was the normal amount through much of my youth, I’ll say that. By the time I was thirteen years old, I had well over a thousand classic rock albums and closely related variants thereof. I loved songs and music and discovering connecting veins among them.
Do you recall what are some of the first singles or LPs you got that fascinated you enough to get some more?
I do indeed. Well, at first it was the Beatles and Stones and that sort of thing. Later it was Loop and Sonic Youth.
I remember when it was first brought to my attention that there were garage rock records in Texas in the sixties and into the seventies, and also in all the towns, cities, and states of the nation. That put me on a hunt for psych and garage rock which took me many places and round and back. The ‘Easter Everywhere’ album by 13th Floor Elevators sure got my attention when I finally heard it years after the fact. So that became a matter of learning about rare records, whereas before most music I knew about was basically pretty famous acts.
Is there a certain record that truly inspired you to become a collector?
I always have come at it as a music fan and sort of a record collector by accident. It comes from having bought all these records!
But back to when I was a younger kid. There was a record my brother had at the time. It is a TMOQ and it is an album called ‘Mudslide’ by the band Led Zeppelin. So, there I was in 1977 or so, going through his records, and there is this purple record cover with a stamp on it, and inside is this lime green slab with a rather generic label on it… and on that record was a song called ‘We’re Gonna Groove,’ which was not on any album back then. So, like, that got my attention! Soon after, I also learned that not all bootlegs are created equal.
What are some of the most interesting records in your collection?
Other than that ‘Mudslide?’ Hmmm. There are a few cool ones here. I have a lot of local band records, particularly punk, alternative, and other rock and roll forms. I like finding records that would appear to have slipped through whatever cracks. Not necessarily valuable, but cool songs and performances. Lately, I like hearing fuzz guitar on funk tracks. That or post-punk music with distorted synth. Those things inspire me to want to make psychedelic rock tracks sneaking tricks off those. I like to find weird stuff hopefully hiding in plain sight.
How did you first get involved with Rich Haupt of Rockadelic Records?
It took me a while to meet Rich. I first heard about Rockadelic Records because they were putting out these great 45s by local bands. Probably in the spring or summer of 1988, I got the Lithium X-Mas and The Other Side single and EP, and both of those pretty much blew me away. I knew about The Burnin’ Rain as well and had one of their albums around then or not long after.
It was about 1992, and I was running around with Kyle Thomas. He was a drummer in Shallow Reign, had been in The Daylights, and would go on to other cool bands as well. Anyways, we were going around town one day, and I was playing him this tape of whatever songs I had been doing, mostly on my 4-track recorder. So, we see this little sale and we go up, and he knew all these people. I bought a pile of soul 45s from a guy that turned out to be Mike Pemberton of Burnin’ Rain. Also, Dave Robinson, who me and Kyle and some others eventually had a group called the No-Counts. We have a great phantom album, ha. So, Kyle told them about my tape, and we handed it over and I wrote my phone number on it.
That led to many, many things. But initially, I started talking to Mike, and then Mark Migliore got in touch with me. I started my relationship with Rockadelic really by talking to Mark. However, he told me pretty quickly that it was Rich who liked my tape. I met Rich not too long after that.
Actually, the time that I physically met Rich, I was at a Burnin’ Rain practice, watching them play. He turned up, we all were introduced, and he left probably after a couple of more songs.
I got to know Rich a lot better over records. He and Mark, and also Mike, and later on Hans Bier as well, were all great about teaching me about rare records, psych, rockabilly, all that stuff. Rich was also tremendous with some swaps and finds and plenty of mind-melting discoveries.
You transferred the tape for Shiver. Where did you locate it originally? Tell us about the process.
The thing about Shiver is that Rich knows Don Peck and I know Don as well. At the time they started to talk about doing a Shiver record, I was living on the same street as Don. So, when Don was locating his tapes, I was able to help see what was what.
My recollection is that there were two batches of Shiver music, and that the music used for the record was slightly later than the other recordings and had an altered lineup. Again, this is my recollection, but I remember Don saying that they would rehearse, and that he would run the PA from his drum stool. He had a method of making sure the levels were good. I’ve just listened to the record, and I think he did a great job of getting that balance.
For my part, I would run the tape and capture it to DAT. Minimal EQ, no compression or anything else. It was always a hope to get full versions of songs from a tape. With rehearsal tapes, you get interrupted takes and all kinds of surprises.
Rich would go over tapes transferred off the DAT, and then he would tell me the songs he wanted on a master, and in what order. I would make a master tape, and that would go to the pressing plant.
Tell us about the project, Crank/Thump Theater. These titles came from Cavern Sound Studios in Kansas City…
I remember Mark telling me when they started to get a line on those tapes. He told me a history of Cavern, all of which was new information to me at that time.
The first batch of tapes he got was mixed. It was several reels. There were country and western recordings and also some good original rock music. Two of those rock recordings were Crank and Thump Theater. Those were both single 7” reels, and they only had material for half an hour each.
I believe that Mark and Rich were on the fence about whether to consider it for an album, with one band per side. Personally, I thought it was great; I was very into the idea of doing it. I had no information about either band, none whatsoever.
I have to say that in the case of each of these bands, and particularly in the case of Shiver and in the case of SEOMPI, playing this tape which has not been heard by anybody for years is a pretty exciting feeling.
What about SEOMPI? How did that come about?
With SEOMPI, it was relatively overwhelming. There were several reels of that. As was typical at the time, I remember Rich talking about this band and the recordings for a while before the tapes actually came around. Rich had gotten in touch with whoever his contact with the band was, and I’m sure they were having talks all the while that drawers and closets were searched, tapes located, shipped, etc.
In my case, when Rich turned up with the tapes, it was a great victory, a great opportunity, and also, you wonder… what is on these tapes. SEOMPI is one which was sourced from several reels, 7” reels I think. What I want to express is that it’s hard to perceive what’s really happening at first. It’s hard to tell what the material is, where the good takes are, and such. I was really focused on making sure the tapes played properly and that I got a good clear signal to DAT. If I could do that, I was happy.
With SEOMPI, when I got back to Rich, I am pretty sure he had three Maxell XLII-90 tapes to review. Then he would get back to me to figure out just what tracks to pull to send off for mastering or the pressing, however that went down.
After making the album sequence, that one began to make a lot more sense for me, and now I look at it as a classic recording and release.
You also designed covers?
I did do a few. The first Rockadelic release that I had any involvement in was for my own recording project, The Underneath. That particular project, for the cover and also picking the songs and order, and also picking the band name and album title, for those things I was working directly with Mark Migliore. That was an incredible experience for me, and it led to a variety of cool opportunities that seem to continue intermittently until this very day.
A few years later, I did the cover for the Shiver album project. I did that working directly with Don Peck, and Rich Haupt was basically art-directing that cover project. I tried to do what they wanted, and it was super fun.
Not too long after that, I did the Joshua album cover, which was also a lot of fun. Cool usage of found art reconditioned. I enjoyed turning the eyeball red; I distinctly recall that point.
“I was calling my stuff Psychlones at that time”
What about Iota, Wailing Wall, and The Underneath? Can you share some further info about working on those albums?
With Iota and Wailing Wall, my involvement was limited to designing the covers, both of which I love, and I was delighted to do this. I worked directly with Rich on these; we were pitching ideas back and forth quite a bit to do it. It was really cool, I thought, to do those because they were printed up properly, and they look just amazing to me.
The Underneath was my own personal project, and I could really go on about that.
I’d been doing recordings for a few years before I got that one particular tape to the Rockadelic guys. I was calling my stuff Psychlones at that time. To me, that was the band name. When we started working on The Underneath ‘Sun Of ’67’ album for Rockadelic, Mark found that there was a similarly named band, and he wanted to see about changing the band name. He and I went back and forth, and basically, I came up with the name with his help and prodding.
Later, I did an album with The Underneath for Lost Records, and a third album through Psychlone Sounds/Nasoni. There were also two albums that would have been the fourth and fifth Underneath records potentially, but they never got assembled or out other than a CD-R I made about 13 copies of.
Side projects in that time include Texas Fog Society and the Phonograph Blues project that I did with Scott Duncan. I am very proud of both of those. I helped Mark Ridlen produce his Spoth EP, which was made using a series of voice messages he’d gotten some time earlier. I helped Mike Pemberton sequence the Sound Spectrum album by the Burnin’ Rain. I also helped him sequence the Mark’s Dream compilation album. Additionally, he and I made up the CD version of the Burnin’ Rain ‘Ritual Medicine Show’ album, which has one of my very favorite recordings ever. That one is the 4-track version of a song called ‘Evil Eye.’ For whatever reason, that song turned out perfectly, and there are some unique features to it. Firstly, it’s the only recording with me and Dan Connell on it; him singing, I’m playing scuzzy rhythm guitar and a bit of lead guitar on that, too. Love it. Did a recording of a 45 by a band called Mood Swings here, cool garage rock on that, and they did ’99th Floor.’
More recently, I have been working on other music in the same or similar vein or at least similar mentality as to what I was doing in The Underneath, getting a more propulsive, post-punk mentality about it, if anything. Strictly a recording concern at this point.
Is there an album that has profoundly affected you more than others?
I could drop a number of answers here, but to keep it appropriate to what’s of interest here, I will mention a record I heard when I was a very little kid, and it influenced so much of my musical thinking ever since. That album is ‘Vincebus Eruptum’ by Blue Cheer.
At this point in time, I actually prefer their second album to the first. But as for lasting effect, that one is a biggie. I have my older brothers to thank for that. I first remember hearing it and other things that I considered heavy at the time having a particularly big impact on me, early on. All that fuzz, though, and screaming, wow.
Unlikeliest places you’ve found records? Memorable dollar-bin finds?
Dollar bins and unlikely places to find records are some of the best things that have ever happened. Where to even begin, I don’t know. Most of the cool ones really seem to just jump up out of nowhere. Since we are talking about Rockadelic and record collecting, I want to say that from the time I met those guys, that Mark and Rich and also Mike Pemberton from Burnin’ Rain, they all were very generous to me about records, and they all mentored me about finding and recognizing rare records, how to spot probable rare stuff, and how to weather the disappointment of finding bad country 45s when you are digging for garage, psych, and rockabilly. The lessons were never-ending and it went on for years and years.
To answer your question, one day a couple of decades later I was in Detroit, surrounded by crates. A friend was there, and I was showing her what these oddball sixties labels look like. She was like, hey, there’s a lot of records like that in these crates? Which there was. As in, my jaw was on the floor. I said to her, hmmmm. This is gonna take a while. Now, in this case, it was not psych and garage I was finding, but all this weird soul and funk and like Bob Seger Cameo label records and all this. My whole entire course got shifted in that moment, as it turned out. And in getting back to psychedelic music, some of the coolest psych moments I know are fuzz bombs on funk records…
Do you own anything else which is widely unheard by others?
I made a number of recordings of local acts over a period of years, so there is all of that. Also, my own personal recordings, of which there are hundreds of hours of this and that.
I also love Texas live recordings by Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, Sonic Youth, etc., etc., etc.…
And on it goes.
Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?
Oh, absolutely. This comes from a random discovery. There is a band named Mother Of Fire which I became obsessed with not so long ago. The front-person is a lady named Naomi, and she has blown my mind. Kind of a shamanic singer and violist, she also had a great band called County Z. She sings like Kim Gordon meets Yoko maybe and plays like John Cale thrashing away over the drone. Perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love it.
Thank you for taking your time. Last word is yours.
Thank you for having me; this has been a delight. I’m hoping that the world can work its way to peace so that we can do what we can to keep music psychedelic.
Klemen Breznikar
