Burnt Hills: ‘My Home, My Jam, My Concept’ | Jackson Wingate Interview
Jackson Wingate has been making music in and around Albany since the mid-1980s. He played in Hunger Artists and Hunters of Gracchus before becoming co-owner of ERL Records, a record shop and label that opened in 1988.
The Sun City Girls stopped by in November 1992 and ended up playing an in-store show the following day. After ERL closed in 1994, Jackson opened Flipped Out, where he recorded his 1996 solo LP ‘Ziamaluch’ in the bathroom using a $2 Fisher-Price boombox.
In October 2003, Jackson started inviting friends over every Monday night to improvise in the basement of the home he shares with his wife Lana. Those sessions became Burnt Hills, a band that spent years playing together at ridiculous volume. Their home, known as Helderberg House, also hosted fifty shows between 2006 and 2017, with Jack Rose, Michael Chapman, Bill Nace, Sightings, Jooklo Duo and many others coming through. We talked to Jackson about his early bands, the record shops, the Monday night sessions, and some of the memorable nights at Helderberg House.
“We kept doing it because it is ridiculously fun and massively healing for everyone.”
Before the bands and record shops, what were you like as a kid? Was music already a big part of your life?
I can play back walking to kindergarten in Glenwood Landing, NY, and walking to Gribbin Elementary School in Glen Cove, NY. All the schoolwork for my entire life was a breeze to my head, but I’ve always had extreme difficulty dealing with people and socialization. My mom went to New England Conservatory and Peabody Conservatory. She shredded piano, organ and clarinet. When I started fifth grade, she told me I had to play an instrument. I decided upon the cello. She bought me my cello in the summer of 1976, and I am still playing it! Lana and I played a Bone and Joint Center set at our dear friend’s joint, Delaware Supply in Albany, on December 5, 2025, and my 90-year-old childhood cello teacher made the gig! I was blown away. It was an amazing full-circle moment. I played cello through junior high and high school. I did not listen to any popular or freak music whatsoever. I was immersed in my cello. In the summer of 1984, I lived on Quail Street in Albany. I walked over to Deja Vu on Central Avenue and bought a royal blue porcelain bong. This began my lifelong love of cannabis, soon to be followed by my lifelong love of LSD. I can play back walking over to Music Miser on Ontario Street, a few blocks from my apartment, and renting out a vinyl copy of Black Flag’s ‘Damaged’, the Unicorn pressing. It ripped my head off. I loved it!
How did you and Dave end up opening ERL? I also came across your photograph of the Sun City Girls at the shop in 1992. How did they end up playing there?
I was driving my mom’s boyfriend’s Delta 88 Oldsmobile. I left SUNY Albany orchestra practice and stopped at Dave Belemjian’s parents’ house in Loudonville. Dave had come to our party on Quail Street with Craig Thier and Andy Reichert, and they brought cannabis, so I rang his parents’ doorbell to ask him if he could hook me up. He came out with Craig’s older brother Adam. They were absolutely baked but did not smoke me out or hook me up. We talked about music, and that’s how my first band, Hunger Artists, started. I played guitar, Dave bought a bass, he knew a guy who played drums, and we found a vocalist/poet who had a radio show at Siena College.
We were absolutely horrible, but it was joyous to be in a band at that age. Our first show was October 10, 1985, at Duck Soup in Rensselaer. We then gigged February 15, 1986, at Puttin’ on the Ritz, April 17, 1986, at Siena College (I released this on my tape label Ramshackle Party Brothers; we had a new drummer, Marc Switko, who was totally into my idea of freeform jamming without ever stopping or discussing the music), November 21, 1986, at the Halfmoon Cafe, January 11, 1987, at 288 Lark, February 8, 1987, at 288 Lark, March 15, 1987, at 288 Lark, March 21, 1987, at the Palais Royale, and March 27, 1987, at the Halfmoon Cafe. We had released a tape, and I mailed it to Jerry Teel from the Honeymoon Killers. He called our band apartment in Cohoes. Our rent was $310, so it was $77.50 each per month. Jerry said we reminded him of the Birthday Party and said they’d love to come up to play a gig with us. So that was March 27, 1987. ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ by the Butthole Surfers had just come out, and I gripped it at World’s Records for $7.35 and taped it for Jerry and the girls (Lisa, Sally and Christina) for their ride back to New York City. This was our final show. Dave said he wasn’t into the band anymore, so we split up, but got back together later in 1987 to jam with our third drummer, Mark Laviolette, without our vocalist. We booked a session at Hyland Studios and released a tape, Hunters of Gracchus, ‘Balmoral’. Two guitars and drums. I sent it to Lowlife, and it was reviewed in Lowlife #13. The guy mentioned the Grateful Dead in the review. Dave was a salesman. He sold furniture at Mooradian’s. He sold women’s shoes at Macy’s. He said he was going to open a record store. We came up with the name ERL just because we were baked and it sounded like the way some people would say “oil.” I would bus to his parents’ second home in Troy, and we’d pore over catalogs to stock the ERL store opening. I silkscreened ERL T-shirts for the grand opening.
ERL opened in September 1988. In August 1988, we went to the ConDemek apartment in Troy, NY, with our guitars, my cello and my mom’s clarinet and recorded the ERL ‘Creepin’ Mujetderreh’ 7″. It was brutally hot. We were both wearing black T-shirts. The test pressings from Ville Platte were dated October 31, 1988. I soon began working at the store, then bought in to become co-owner. Life was grand! Business was great for a few years, but we began to drift apart. He wanted to stock cheap cut-outs, and I wanted to grip new stock from Forced Exposure, Ecstatic Yod, Corwood, Majora, Ventricle, RRR, Siltbreeze, etc. I typed out a paper ERL catalog of all our new stock and mailed that all over. We released 7-inch singles and LPs on our ERL label. We did our ERL LP in 1993, but things had gotten contentious between us, and ERL closed in August 1994. The Sun City Girls rolled up to 418 Madison Avenue on the night Bill Clinton was elected. Lana and I rented the top-floor apartment above ERL. It was a warm November night. We could hear them cackling as they parked across the street. They had no show in town but wanted to stop by and check out ERL because the Thinking Fellers had played at Godfrey’s in Albany the year before and had said good things. Alan sat on our couch with my long metal pipe in his hand and our cat Froghoagy on his lap, doing the Uncle Jim voice. Charlie reminded me of my mom’s boyfriend Rick. He was kind and self-effacing about his guitar prowess. I asked them if they’d like to play in-store the next day at noon. They were up for it! I called everyone I could think of, and their November 4, 1992, in-store was amazing. ERL was packed with people digging their set. What ERL did for me at that age was instill the idea of the record store as a social community hub of like-minded freak activity and life choices. I was in my mid to late 20s during the ERL days.
You opened Flipped Out soon after ERL closed, and in 1996 you recorded your ‘Ziamaluch’ LP. How did you make that record, and how were you approaching the guitar by then?
I opened Flipped Out the month after ERL closed. Flipped Out had a gorgeous tiled, high-ceilinged bathroom. I had gripped my Telecaster in 1985 for $325. During my Ten Broeck Street weekly LSD period, that was my woodshedding era. I would eat LSD weekly and rip down ounces of cannabis and hashish and play that guitar for hours and hours every day. So in 1996, I had a crappy garage-sale amp and a crappy used fuzz pedal, and I had gripped a used children’s Fisher-Price boombox for $2 at a garage sale. One night after Flipped Out closed, I got fully baked and recorded the ‘Ziamaluch’ LP in the bathroom. I had packed a bowl before I hit “record” on the boombox, and about halfway through the one-sided LP, you can hear me cough as I ripped that bowl. I have always looked at my guitar playing as being just like my rattling, rambling, frantic, frenetic, freaky conversational voice. I play very blurry and blown out and hyper-fast, with no regard to anything else but letting this insanity out of my head through my fingers onto the fretboard for my own enjoyment. I never expect anyone to dig my sounds.
Do you remember the first Burnt Hills jam in October 2003? How long had you been wanting to get people together to play in your basement?
Oh yes, I remember everything! That first Burnt Hills night in October 2003 was a culmination of a lifelong desire to own a home with a basement and host a loud improv freak jam. When Lana and I would drive one hour to our friend Hal March’s amazing record store, Toonerville Trolley, in our 20s, I would feel like Dustin Hoffman in ‘Rain Man’, looking out the car window watching it all blur by, but I’d be thinking, “Some day we are going to own a home to jam in.” My home, my jam, my concept, my name. Burnt Hills is a town about 30 minutes north of Albany. It just seemed like a perfect name for a stoner jam band. I detest the word “collective.” Somehow we got saddled with that horrible word a long time ago. Burnt Hills has never been a collective. Burnt Hills is a band. A band of friends that get together for their own enjoyment to play at ridiculous volume and be healed by nature of our music.
Why Mondays, and what kept everybody coming back week after week? Did playing together that regularly change the way the band worked?
Monday seemed to be the night where most people would be free to jam. I am wildly obsessive about everything that I give a fuck about, so it immediately became a “we are going to jam every Monday from 8 to 9 pm” thing. You are right on! Yes, jamming every Monday for one hour per week quickly developed our musical language of improvisation. Right from the beginning, I perseverated constantly to everyone to shut the fuck up. Do not ever discuss the music. Just let it rip. Find your own space within the chaos and hammer your thoughts via your instrument into the cosmic mix of blurry, blasted sound. Burnt Hills has shredded away for a third of my life. We kept doing it because it is ridiculously fun and massively healing for everyone.
With so many guitars, several drummers and all the other instruments going at once, how did you manage to hear one another? Could you tell when everybody was really locked in?
Burnt Hills quickly developed into at least one drummer, one bassist and many, many guitars, along with electronics, xylophone, etc. I think as long as we had that pulsating beat from the drums, we’d all be free to shred away like fuck on top. Friends have brought decibel readers to the basement. We play at “jet airplane” volume. I saw an audiologist to get molded earplugs for myself. Everyone else would bring earplugs. If you were in the basement without earplugs, your ears would ring for days. So yes, even with the massive volume, we all hear each other and play off of each other.
What was the basement actually like? Where did everybody set up, and do you think the room itself had a lot to do with how Burnt Hills sounded?
Our home is 1,118 square feet. It is small but perfect for Lana and me. Our property gently slopes uphill from the sidewalk, which gives our basement a fortified bunker vibe. The basement walls are stacked cinderblocks. Our home was built in 1955. Our driveway slopes upward slightly, leading into our garage. The door to the basement is on the right. The stairs going up are immediately to the left as you enter the basement. The furnace and hot water heater are in the center. Our washer and dryer are to the left as the room opens up going to the back of the house. I gripped a silver Tama drum kit that I set up on the washer/dryer side, so it was natural to stack up our long wall of amps on the back right side of the basement. We put a red light bulb into one fixture and hung up Xmas lights from the ceiling over the jam area. There is space to the side of my drum kit for another drum kit, and when Marc Weinstein from MX-80 jammed with us, we crammed three drum kits in that section. It has been louder than fuck since the very first jam. Yes, the sound of Burnt Hills is way impacted by the basement we have shredded in.
Where did names like Ziamaluch and Sick Llana come from, and what was with the ‘blutar’, ‘gertar’ and ‘bootar’ credits on the records? Was there a lot of joking around in the band?
When I was a child, I gave my half-siblings nicknames like “Poyler,” “Boogler,” “Lucifer,” etc. I don’t like the spotlight, so using my own name was out of the question. As long as I can remember, Lana’s mom would talk about her mother’s best friend named “Ziamaluch,” so I poached that for my recording name. I wouldn’t say that humor is important for Burnt Hills, but there are many hysterically funny mothershuckers in our band.
You must have recorded an enormous amount of music during those Monday nights. Who usually handled the recordings, and what happened to all those tapes and files?
We’ve never recorded anywhere else except for the Helderberg House basement or a rare out-of-the-basement live show. As long as at least one band member was recording a Monday night jam, we were good to go. Sometimes up to three band members would record it, then would email it around to the band via WeTransfer, etc. I don’t really do digital music, so Lana would download the jam and we’d burn it onto CDR. We have hundreds upon hundreds of Burnt Hills jams on CDR in our CD racks in our living room.
You and Lana hosted fifty shows at Helderberg House between 2006 and 2017. How did that first one come about? And once word got around, did people start getting in touch asking to play?
This all started because of our dear friend Angela Sawyer. Her group with Mary Staubitz, White People, were heading out on tour with Scarcity of Tanks, and Angela had asked a young woman from Albany to set up a gig for them. Well, the woman never set up the show, so Angela reached out to me at the last minute. Lana said, “Hey, we already jam in the basement. We could host a show.” So we did it on June 19, 2006. As it turned out, Scarcity of Tanks had car problems and could not make it here, so it was White People and Burnt Hills. It was a blast! Burnt Hills played with Vampire Belt on July 9, 2006, at the Albany Public Library. I had known Corsano for a long time since he worked at the Yod store, but we did not know Nace. It was a fun gig, and we told folks to come over to our house to hang out afterwards. We got some pizzas, and Vampire Belt crashed out here. I took them to the Four Corners Luncheonette the next day before they split. Then Nace hit me up to see if he and Chris Cooper could play in our basement, so we did that show on November 10, 2006. Nace told Sightings about our scene, so the next show was February 9, 2007, with Sightings, Demons, Nace and Burnt Hills. By then the word was out and the floodgates opened! The remaining 47 shows were a combination of friends asking to play, then coming back again and again because they had a good time here. I did also reach out to offer gigs to people I wanted to bring to our basement. The Helderberg House party basement show vibe was amazing. The energy and the vibes from all the bands that passed through, and all the folks that came to these parties, fueled us to keep doing these again and again and again. Not once did a cop darken our doorstep. Not once was something broken or stolen. Not one fight ever went down. Not one of our four cats ever got outside. It was always extremely surreal to see this massive crush of people in the space we live in. The energy was ridiculously positive. Our home and basement and deck and backyard would be jammed with people absolutely hyped on seeing this fantastic music in the basement. My obsessiveness had this locked down pat. Lana and I would prepare a fuckton of food. I would order two 24-cut pizzas to be delivered at 6 pm. I would buy cases and cases of beer and bags of ice. I would make sure I was stocked up with cannabis. I would buy a bottle to give to the touring band or artist upon their arrival. I took my kindergarten handprint bucket and made a sign, “Donations for touring bands,” and put that on the food table in our kitchen next to a giant bowl filled with earplugs for anyone who needed them. 100% of the donation money would be given to the touring bands. People would show up with amazing homemade dishes or takeout that they gripped on their way over. Like Nace said, “Man, it’s like Thanksgiving every time I am here.” My obsessiveness dictated that the party starts at 5 pm. Come on over! The party has begun! We’d have all of our food out, the beers would be on ice, the bong would be packed, the pizzas would arrive by 6 pm, Burnt Hills would kick off the music around 7 pm, then the touring bands or artists would play after us. We tried to keep things moving and wrap things up with the volume as early as possible. The houses on each side of our home are ten feet away. Our neighbors are wonderful. They always got a kick out of our freak home and all the freaks that came to play here.
“Burnt Hills will exist forever. I could text everyone right now and summon up a Monday night jam, and everyone would show up.”
Out of all those house shows, which nights do you remember most clearly? I’m sure you have quite a few stories.
On April 14, 1997, Pelt played in-store at Flipped Out. It was fantastic to meet Jack Rose, Mike Gangloff, Patrick Best and Amy Shea. They crashed at our apartment, then continued on to Danbury, CT, for their next show.
On May 3, 2003, I drove to Brattleboro, VT, to attend the Brattleboro Free Folk Festival put on by Ron Schneiderman and Matt Valentine.
There were afternoon sets at the Hooker-Dunham Theater and Gallery, then evening sets at Ron’s Surefire Warehouse. The afternoon sets were over, and as I was leaving the gallery, I heard my name. It was Jack! I told him that I was headed to McNeill’s, so Jack and Laurie and I sat at the bar at McNeill’s for an hour. It was so great to catch up with Jack and to meet Laurie.
On October 8, 2008, Jack hit me up for a Helderberg House gig. He was headed out on tour with Michael Chapman. Everyone was so hyped for this party. Our dear friend Chris Allick from California made this gig. He worshipped Michael Chapman. Chris attended many, many gigs here. When Jack and Michael pulled up our driveway and parked, I handed Jack his bottle of Maker’s Mark. He said the first order of business was to get them to a liquor store so that Michael could grip his wine for the night. I gave Michael $20, and Lana drove them up to the wine shop in our Helderberg neighborhood. Michael bought two bottles of red wine that he did not touch until after his set was over. He was a consummate raconteur. His set was absolutely amazing. Jack blew us all away with his set also. I had asked Wovoka to play also. It was an extremely memorable night. Michael had finished his first bottle of wine. Lana had cleaned out his wine glass. We suddenly hear, “WHERE IS MY FOOKIN GLASS?” Lana gave him his glass. He finished bottle #2 and then weepily told Lana that one of his biggest regrets of his life was that his parents had never seen him perform live. It was a very heavy, cathartic moment. The shows that levitated our home the most were the six times the Jooklos played here. We love Virginia and David so much. All praise and love and respect to Aaron from Peaking Lights for bringing the Jooklos to us on May 5, 2008. I can see Virginia the morning after one show. She is in her pajamas in our kitchen. She is telling me that she had a dream about the cover art for Burnt Hills’ ‘The Moon of the Sky’ that they asked to release on their label Troglosound. “Jackson, I can see your cover. It is filled with psychedelic fish.”
On April 15, 2010, I had invited Nace and Paul Flaherty to play this gig to introduce them both to the Jooklos. Of course, the four of them had an incendiary jam on top of their respective sets. Every single time the Jooklos played here was absolutely screaming bananas, beautifully insane. Their shows brought everyone out. Our home would be jammed with heads digging their sound. The day after this gig, I took them to Bros Tacos. It was April, a bit chilly and overcast, but we all ate outside. As everyone ate their tacos, Paul asked Virginia if she ever read any reviews or criticisms of their music. Her response was “FUCK EM.” He asked again, “Do you think you might glean some insight from a bad review?” Again, her response was “FUCK EM.” The moral of this story is do not fuck with Virginia Genta! They were 23 when they first played in our basement. Now they are 42. Such amazing jammers, such adorably sweet people. Spirits and ghosts float through our home and basement all the time, but the strongest spirit that visits us often is our dearly departed friend Nathaniel “Natty” Brennan. Every Burnt Hillian adored Natty. His smile, his enthusiasm, his energy, his vibe. Natty played in the basement and attended many, many shows here. I had heard that his clarinet had broken playing a gig, so I brought him into our office and gave him my mother’s clarinet. We love you, Natty. We miss you so much.
Burnt Hills hardly ever played outside the basement, although you did a few shows at places like The Elevens and The Low Beat. How did those gigs come about? Were you ever as happy playing out as you were playing at home?
Burnt Hills creepy-crawled out of the basement 14 times. We played at the Albany Public Library, the Fuze Box in Albany, Valentine’s in Albany, five times at The Low Beat in Albany, Hampshire College, Bard College, The Elevens in Northampton, MA, twice in Brattleboro, VT, because our dear friend Ron Schneiderman invited us, and Weirdo Records in Cambridge, MA, for Angela Sawyer’s store opening party. I love jamming. I love making physical media. I really don’t care about performing live. I prefer to be home.
Why do you think my band has come to me for 23 years? Why do you think we hosted 50 shows in our home? I prefer to be home, but I realized that most everyone else in the band had a desire to play out in public, so we did it a few times, and I am very glad we did.
September 19, 2014. It was the day before my 50th birthday. I was sitting in my booth with friends at The Low Beat having lunch. Our dear friend Howard Glassman owned The Low Beat and had a kitchen in the back. Howard rolled up and asked me if Burnt Hills would christen his new club and play a show.
I told him we had three conditions:
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We need to be able to play as loud as we play in the basement.
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We are playing first.
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Someone is going to have to lug my amp to the gig for me. My spine is shot.
Howard said we were good to go on all fronts. My obsessiveness dictated that we would do this on the first Friday in December each year, so we did this for five years. We invited Headroom to play. We invited Sunburned Hand of the Man to play. We invited our local friends to play. It was always a joyous time.
How did people like Rambutan, POG, Wovoka, Parashi and the others end up in Burnt Hills? Did you already know most of them before they joined?
Sick Llana and I have been together for 41 years. There is nothing like growing old with your best friend. I invited her in. POG was married to my friend Stephen, who did Paraquat Earth Band and Mac Arthur Parker with me. It was POG’s turn to jam. I invited her in. Wovoka came into ERL and Flipped Out. We were in Rue Morgue Jug Band together. I invited him in. He brought his cousin Panda, who is a sick guitar shredder. I invited him in. Philthy Rex came into ERL and Flipped Out. He had self-released a sick LP. I invited him in. Fossils from the Sun came to a Helderberg House party. I looked up as I was shredding away during our Burnt Hills set and handed him my guitar. I invited him in. Rambutan was in the crowd at the Vampire Belt/Burnt Hills show at the Albany Public Library. I invited him in. Case came to a Helderberg House show. I can see him at my front door holding a six-pack of Pork Slap Pale Ale, a bag of tortilla chips and hummus. He told me he had gripped ‘To Your Head’ from Eclipse Records, and after he and his wife Anna had moved to Albany, he could not mentally reconcile this freak band Burnt Hills being from Albany. I invited him in. Parashi moved up near Albany from New York City and came to a Helderberg House show. I invited him in. 1983 is a noise magician who lives in our Helderberg neighborhood. I invited him in. It has been a wonderful blessing to blast off with all of these amazing people. Every Burnt Hillian is a top-shelf jammer, and everyone has solo or duo or other bands that they do. I would consider all of us friends that happen to be in a band together.
The house shows stopped in 2017, but Burnt Hills carried on. What happened after that, and what are you and Lana doing musically these days? When you think back on all those years at Helderberg House, what do you hope survives?
Burnt Hills played every Monday from 2003 up until the COVID lockdown in 2020. Once the COVID lockdown was over, we transitioned to jamming once a month on the first Monday of each month. I have inoperable advanced degenerative spondylolisthesis. I live with chronic pain. I have to use a walker to get around. Over time it became extremely difficult to get downstairs to the basement. That is why our house-party basement shows stopped. I sent Lana to Parkway Music to grip me a 30-foot-long George L guitar cable that I would drop through a hole in the floor of our bedroom. Lana would plug it into my rig in the basement, and I would sit on our bed shredding away while everyone else was in the basement blasting off. I did this for about a year but then wanted to be back in the mix and to see everyone face to face as we jammed, and I did that for a while. I cannot stand up to play guitar anymore. I hate sitting down to play guitar. I have freaky long arms and big hands. I have played guitar since age 20. I have played cello since age 10, so right now I am hyperfocused on playing my cello with Lana in our band Bone and Joint Center. We play in our small pink and blue tiled bathroom that we call the Helderberg Hideout. She sets up her xylophone in the tub. I set up my cello outside of the tub, and there is just enough space for a third wheel to join us for an improvisation session. I release tapes on my label Ramshackle Party Brothers. Parashi is going to release a Burnt Hills CDR, ‘Skull Flowers’, on his Skell label. It is our basement jam from December 4, 2024. Burnt Hills will exist forever. I could text everyone right now and summon up a Monday night jam, and everyone would show up. It is always so euphoric and healing for everyone. Freedom, joy, transcendence, euphoria, love, kindness, compassion. That’s what I hope survives. Thank you sooooooooooooooo much for your interest in our band and your wonderful questions!
Klemen Breznikar
Headline credit: Burnt Hills
Ramshackle Party Brothers Bandcamp
