Scott H. Biram suffers from the human condition
"I'm not a one-man band. I'm just a guy with too many amplifiers."
Brian Jackson
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With only a vintage Gibson and an amplified stompbox, Austin’s “Dirty Old One Man Band” Scott H. Biram stitches together a furious Frankenstein’s monster of punk, blues, country, and hard rock that’s earned him a rabid following among those who like their music two-fisted and wild. But Biram’s barbaric yawps are just the beginning of his tough-guy image: Every great artist’s story needs some tragedy, and Biram’s 2003 head-on collision with an 18-wheeler—and subsequent return to the Continental Club stage a mere month later, I.V. dangling from his arm—is already the stuff of legend. More recently, Biram had yet another accident during a European tour, breaking his leg at a gas station in France. Besides leaving him with one more rod in his leg and minor psychological scarring (“I hate curbs now,” Biram laughs. “Some people are afraid of clowns; I’m afraid of curbs.”), it also meant delaying a tour for the new, long-awaited Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever. Biram spoke with Decider while hitting his first round of make-up dates—which includes a Saturday, June 20, stop at Red Eyed Fly—and talked about why he’s not a one-man band and why he doesn’t like being called an “outlaw,” and then he threatened to kick our ass. Seriously.
Decider: How did you deal with the forced downtime after your accident?
Scott H. Biram: It sucked, man. I was having some anxiety attacks just from sitting around the house all the time with my leg up, and I had to deal with Vicodin withdrawal. I hate any time things get postponed. I just couldn’t wait to get back out on the road.
D: Now that you have another rod in your leg, do you feel like you’re more machine than man?
SHB: [Laughs.] I’m still mostly man, but I’ve definitely got a lot of metal in me. Hopefully—knock on wood—I’ve reached my quota of broken bones and metal rods and plates.
D: It seems like that would be one of the disadvantages to being a solo act—that if you’re not 100-percent, the show is off. What are some of the other disadvantages?
SHB: You don’t get to share your experience with other band members. Like, if you play a good show, you can’t turn to some other guy and be like, “Remember when I played that one part?” But on tour I got my sound guy and my merch guy, and both of them are pretty good about making eye contact with me during the show, and we can bullshit about it later on. But really, there’s not that many disadvantages. There’s actually a lot of advantages—like you don’t have to split the money. But one disadvantage is I always have to give it my all. I can’t just let somebody do their little solo or whatever, or let the drummer have his “Moby Dick.” [Laughs.]
D: Do you feel as though there’s a perception of the “one-man band” that you have to overcome?
SHB: Not so much anymore. If you’re talking to someone who stays in the mainstream, they automatically get this picture of a bass drum on your back and cymbals on your elbows. But there’s enough going on with one-man bands these days that people have a better idea. And I always say I’m not a one-man band. I’m just a guy with too many amplifiers.
D: The “hard-drinkin’ outlaw” thing has become something of a caricature lately. Do you have to fight that to be taken seriously?
SHB: You know that Waylon Jennings song, “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit Has Done Got Out Of Hand”? I think it has. I think it’s stupid. [Laughs.] I’m not an outlaw, unless you’re talking about smoking pot. That’s about the most illegal thing I do. I’m just trying to make a living playing music. And show business is show business. I try to stay me up there onstage, but there is something about being in front of people that makes me talk different. Check out the old bluegrass bands like Flatt And Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, or The Stanley Brothers. They all had these little acts and things they say between songs to get everybody chuckling. I’m almost as much of a comedian as I am a musician—not that my music is a joke, but I’m just a funny guy in general.
D: You said on your website that you came off a pretty serious whiskey bender late last year.
SHB: Yeah, man. I mean, I’m still drinking. I’ve got that song on my new record, “Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue,” and I don’t think that’s ever gonna change. But I’m not getting as wild as I was. It just got to be where every night was a drunken, maniacal experience, and I felt pretty ashamed of myself. I just needed a change. I was also on a lot of medication—anti-depressants, anti-anxiety—and I got off that too, so that threw me for a loop. I couldn’t find where the ground was. But I’m back together, man. When I’m on tour, I’m on tour. We’ve got our crazy nights and our regular nights, and when I’m at home, I’m in my house watching Lost. [Laughs.]
D: What else has changed for you between Graveyard Shift and Something’s Wrong?
SHB: Graveyard Shift, I was practically married and recording the whole thing with my girl in the house and making her listen to it every day, and still grinding out songs from the previous girlfriend before that. [Laughs.] The new one, a lot of it is me getting it off my chest about being drunk and crazy there for a while, and stepping out of the “married life” into single life again. And as with all my records, there’s this dissonance within my heart and my insides. I just feel stuck between happiness and depression all the time. It’s a yin-yang thing that can’t center itself. I call it “suffering from the human condition.” [Laughs.] My sound guy’s rolling his eyes here.
D: How much of what you sing about is actually you, and how much is just a character?
SHB: It’s all me, man. But don’t get me wrong: If I’m talking about murder or something, that doesn’t mean that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m just putting ideas out there for people to take however they want to take it. Like, I’m spiritual within myself, but I can’t stand organized religion. So I’m praising God sometimes, but at the same time I’m damning the church.
D: There’s a lot of lonesomeness in your songs. Is that something you deal with a lot?
SHB: Yeah, even when I’m not alone. [Laughs.] I got shitloads of friends on the Internet and fans and everything, but I don’t have a lot of friends to hang out with. I don’t have any brothers and sisters. I gotta do it myself. It gets lonely.
D: Some of that must come from you always touring. Do you foresee a day when you’ll get tired of that and settle down?
SHB: I’m tired right now! [Laughs.] I get burned out, but I’ve got a better job than a lot of people. It pays the bills, and I’m able to get shit off my chest… Hey, speaking of which, I was surprised to hear that you were from The Onion because I read this review in The Onion in Denver and then on Decider saying I was a “one-trick pony,” and that I “played blues for people who couldn’t give a shit about the blues.”
D: Yeah, I think one of Denver's writers sort of had a chip on his shoulder.
SB: Well, he might have a chip on his shoulder, but if he ever meets me he’ll have a foot in his ass!
