Have you heard the one about the punk rockers that put out a country record?

That’s just what Atlanta garage heroes the Black Lips have done. Well, not exactly. No one’s going to confuse Sing in a World That’s Falling Apart, out this week on Fire Records, with Jason Aldean or Blake Shelton. It is, as cofounder Jared Swilley puts it, “country music filtered through us.” And it works surprisingly well.

It’s a twist in a road that started some 20 years ago, when the Lips burst into the Atlanta underground and quickly went national. High school friends Jared Swilley (bass and vocals) and Cole Alexander (guitar and vocals) formed the band while still in school, and their grinding, low-fi approach made them a sensation—a sort of crazy mashup of the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and the early Replacements. The tragic death of guitarist and third founder Ben Eberbaugh, in 2002, seemed only to throw fuel onto their furious fire, and the band became legendary for the ferocity of their stage shows.

They also became legendary for the outlandishness of those stage shows. Swilley and Alexander made a habit of making out on stage, which delighted scores of fans, confused many others and enraged more than a few. There was nudity. There was urination. There was infinite swagger. It was dirty, dangerous, glorious rock and roll.

Not exactly the band you’d expect to make a country record—even an “our kind of country” record. But they have, with a new lineup filled out by Oakley Munson (drums), Zumi Rosow (saxophone) and Jeff Clarke (guitar and vocals).

The night before heading off on a tour to support the new record, the band joined us to take a walk on the Doll’s Head Trail, one of Atlanta’s most distinctive—and creepy—attractions. Swilley brought along a trash bag filled with his late grandmother’s nutcracker collection. Most of the dolls he left at various stations along the way, adding to the ever-changing art installation that is the park. But he couldn’t resist smashing one with a baseball bat.

After sushi and beer, the band were a bit more reflective, discussing their early influences (including the book that changed Swilley’s life), what makes this new record different and what advice from a fellow Georgia garage punk legend they wish they had followed. 

PLAYBOY: Jared, you were telling me about the book that changed your life.

Jared Swilley: Yeah. One of the first things that inspired me was I had, as required reading in eighth grade, The Outsiders. To my teacher’s displeasure, it didn’t make me learn anything. But I did quit school, and immediately started a gang and tried to fight the whole football team.

Cole Alexander: You learned something alright.

Swilley: Well, I learned how to be —

Alexander: Badass.

Swilley: Yeah, I learned how to be what I wanted to be. That book just took me and dipped me in me sauce. And I loved it.

Zumi Rosow: It totally dipped you in me sauce!

Swilley: First book I ever read in one day. And I slammed it down, and I said, “That’s me.”

Alexander: It crystallized you.

Swilley: It was like, “Good job, Teach. I’m outta here.” And here we sit…. But we do have this gang mentality. We’ve always been a gang. How else do you last these 21 years, 20 years, however long it’s been?

PLAYBOY: And you tried to start a rumble?

Swilley: I wanted to rumble the football team. I was on the same hall as the quarterback, and I would slam his locker shut and say [angry voice] “Hey, what’s up?” But they were all too afraid for their grades, and they wouldn’t fight us.

Alexander: One of the big inspirations for us musically was this song “Rumble,” by Link Wray. It was an instrumental song, no lyrics. It was banned from radio stations because of its name. We weren’t tough guys—we were more meek little punk rockers—but we were excited by that culture of rumbling. 

Swilley: The first time I heard that song… man, it just…

Alexander: It’s sonic violence.

Swilley: It’s the only instrumental song to ever be banned. It makes people wanna… I don’t know, it makes your big toe jump out your boot.

PLAYBOY: Was that the inspiration for the song from the new record?

Swilley: Our new song “Rumbler” wasn’t directly inspired by “Rumble.” Indirectly, I guess it was, since I learned to play guitar from listening to Link Wray. But the direct inspiration was that there’s a GI Joe that was based on my uncle, who was kind of a badass. I wrote the song about him. He wasn’t an actual physical doll.

Oakley Munson: He was the ghost of a doll?

Swilley: No, he was a real man. He was tangible. But they loosely based the doll on him. Bobby Earl Swilley—there’s no one else with that name in North Georgia.

Munson: Knowing is half the battle.

PLAYBOY: How did you stumble upon punk music?

Swilley: I was born in 1983, and by the time I was 12 I was listening to punk rock, but I thought 1977 was a thousand years ago. I loved the Stones and the Beatles, because my dad listened to them. I discovered the Kinks. And then through skateboarding I discovered the Sex Pistols and the Germs, and I said, “Well, that’s it.” I was like, “Wow, this is crazy. They’re screaming and stuff. And they seem like they’re pissed.” 

And the funny thing about our high school was, we had a large contingent of punk rockers. Everybody had leather jackets and skateboards and switchblades and stuff. It was awesome. We got chicks.

PLAYBOY: Problematic.

[laughter]

Alexander: Hey man, we made out with some boys too. I had a teacher ask if we were gay.

Swilley: My dad, who is a pastor, got mad at me because he thought Cole and I were gay. It was because Creative Loafing, this newspaper in Atlanta, said in their music issue that Cole had sucked my dick onstage. Which didn’t really happen. I mean, we made out with each other onstage a bunch, and we peed and stuff. We were teenagers. But the funny thing is, me and Cole aren’t gay, but my dad’s a homosexual now.

Alexander: But he got pissed because of the church.

Swilley: Who cares about kissing a dude? It’s just a tongue.

Jeff Clarke: What about the penis sucking?

Swilley: That never happened.

Alexander: I think I put my head down, like, toward your head. I think it was like, I pecked it at best.

Rosow: I’ve never heard this kissing of the dick story, by the way!

Swilley: Even if he did, I wouldn’t care.

Rosow: No, it’s great.

Alexander: But I did feel bad that it caused problems at his church.

PLAYBOY: You’ve said that GG Allin was an early influence as well.

Alexander: I’m a huge GG Allin fan. But he was dead by the time we came up, so he was more of a legend. But then Todd Phillips did this documentary about him, Hated, and that’s where we really learned a lot about him.

Swilley: I’m kind of tepid on him. The thing about GG Allin is, his music’s not that great. He has one really great kind of pop punk album, but the rest is…

Alexander: Jared doesn’t like poop.

Swilley: Yeah, you couldn’t pay me to go to a GG Allin show.

Munson: His country record is really great.

Alexander: He dated one of the strippers at the Clermont Lounge, when he lived in Atlanta. He would play there a lot; you can check out the shows on Youtube. And we’re staying right now in the new renovated hotel on top of the Clermont Lounge, in the same room GG Allin lived in. But it’s much nicer. There’s no more bedbugs and no more scabies. But the toilet does still kind of clog up, and I wonder if it’s whatever he put down there.

Clarke: You could always put your hand down and find out.

Swilley: Some people have associated us with GG Allin because, in our very early years, there was pee and stuff. But that’s like, kindergarten GG Allin. Very, very light. 

Alexander: If we could pull off a show that would be GG light, I’d be very very happy. 

PLAYBOY: Oakley just brought up Allin’s country album, which is a perfect segue into talking about your new record, Sing In A World That’s Falling Apart. You’ve had some isolated songs in the past that might have hinted at this, but certainly there’s never been a whole Lips album that sounded like this.

Swilley: The thing about this ninth studio record coming out is, we’ve always had some twangy songs. As a southern band, it’s kind of in our blood. So this is our interpretation of country music. By no means is it…

Alexander: Nashville Sound.

Swilley: Hell no. I’ll go to my grave giving Nashville the middle finger.

Rosow: Dipped in me sauce!

PLAYBOY: Yeah, I’m not sure, if I played this record for someone, they’d call it a country record. The word would probably escape their mouth, but… I don’t know, I guess I see it less as “a” country record and more as “your” country record.

Swilley: Our friend Bradford from Deerhunter said we shouldn’t tell anyone it’s a country record.

Alexander: But it’s too late, you did!

Swilley: I know. But it’s country music filtered through us. For me there’s two kinds of music, country and blues, and that’s what created rock and roll. And that’s all I care about.

PLAYBOY: Oakley, I saw you smile and I know where you were going with that.

Munson: We got both kinds: Country and Western!

PLAYBOY: Exactly.

Alexander: I think in the future, we’re never going to tell anybody what we’re doing.

Swilley: As much as I disagree with Bradford sometimes, I should’ve heeded his advice.

PLAYBOY: Well, you leave on tour tomorrow morning. How do you expect the fans to react to this new turn?

Rosow: We’ve actually been playing a lot of the songs on this record the last couple of tours. And to my surprise, people have been great. It’s always interesting when you play a song that you know people haven’t heard before, and they end up singing along to it.

Alexander: It’s exciting. I always get nervous before a record, no matter what. I’ve had records I thought were terrible, and people loved them. And then sometimes you think a record’s great, and it gets a tepid response. But so far, just seeing the reactions, it’s really good.

Swilley: I mean, with this new record, we’re basically a new band. You can’t be the same band for 20 years. And I think this is the strongest lineup we’ve ever had. 

Rosow: Jeff’s a really amazing songwriter, particularly for writing country-esque songs. Oakley is really great too.

Alexander: To get new blood in the band has really helped the songwriting. To have new angles and approaches.

PLAYBOY: Have you seen their songwriting affect your own, as well?

Swilley: Oh yeah. Having new songwriters in the band has definitely made me realize I have to step up my game. 

Alexander: I’d have a song idea, not really complete, and Oakley would have another part of the song, and we’d kind of bridge the two together. There were some places that I’d get stuck, that Oakley or Jeff got me over the hump.

Swilley: With this band, it’s easy to collaborate, because we’re kind of like this one big family.