The Tao of Sister Double Happiness

Earlier this year, venerated indie Label 51 Recordings liberated the self-titled 1988 debut from San Francisco proto-grunge greats Sister Double Happiness from the iron clutches of SST Records.

“When I started this label, there were two bands and albums that I absolutely wanted to put out,” says Andy Zicklin, co-founder of Label 51 Recordings. “One was a remastered Sister Double Happiness album.”

Newly remastered by Jim Hill with a bonus disc of previously unreleased demo recordings from the original sessions, this beautifully packaged release includes photos and liner notes from Roddy Bottum, Mike Watt and Pat Thomas, who played a crucial role in ensuring this reissue came to fruition.

“For Mad Dogs & San Franciscans of a certain age and era, the band Sister Double Happiness was devastatingly sublime — fronted by the soulful Gary Floyd,” Thomas writes in his essay. “Years earlier, another Southern transplant, Janis Joplin, arrived in the Bay Area and slayed many with her magic. She was so special, that it took a gay man decades later to fill her blues shoes properly here in San Francisco — that was Gary.”

Rock & Roll Globe had the honor of speaking with surviving SDH members in guitarist Ben Cohen and drummer Lynn Perko-Truell about the reissue and how it came together.

The deluxe edition of Sister Double Happiness is out now.

 

What initially led to the band’s creation, particularly following the dissolution of your old band The Dicks? 

Lynn Perko-Truell: Gary and I got tired of the hardcore scene that the SFDicks were kind of stuck in. We felt it was getting too violent with Skinheads infiltrating the scene(s) and people using that punk/hardcore scene to be delinquents. Plus we had to stay in the norms of that music genre to be accepted (big Gary, and me, a non punk-looking girl) and it ultimately felt oppressive to us. We wanted to explore more rock/blues songwriting and playing. We wanted a fresh start.

What brought you to San Francisco?

Lynn: I was living in Reno, Nevada, during my middle school and HS years. My mom and I, at 16, took a Greyhound bus to the city to see a play downtown. We stayed at the Saint Francis Hotel. I loved the bustle and the concrete and the art and the beautiful old city. At 17, I went to my first punk show in a basement in Reno. 7 Seconds was the band. The energy and the community must’ve been what I had been seeking. Eventually, I joined an all girl band, The Wrecks, as a drummer, although I had never played drums; I was a classically trained pianist. Over time, we disbanded. I was hungry for more – as soon as my best friend turned 18 after HS, we moved to SF (1982), and I got into the music scene and played with a few people at the VATS. I met Gary and we became fast friends. When he moved The Dicks to SF, from Austin, Texas, he asked me to try out for the drummer. I got the gig. SFDicks. To this day, I LOVE San Francisco, although I moved after 20 years there, that is where all my bands started.

 

Did you have any interest or allegiances in the Bay Area thrash scene back then?

Lynn: The Dicks played a lot of political events and played shows with bands like MDC, DRI, DOA. No allegiances.

 

The blues is no doubt prevalent in the SDH sound. Who were you all listening to back then that informed the sound?

Ben Cohen: We’d individually absorbed it before we ever met. Gary’s from the south, Gurden, Arkansas…it must’ve been in the air, Arkansas 1950s and he breathed it in. I’m from a college town, so I came by it via England with the British invasion but it wasn’t ‘til I heard Howlin’ Wolf that I got it down to the ground. From the first word you know he wrestled with the devil and won. That’s it. That’s the sound. 

I thought if I hit the guitar hard enough maybe I could get there too but Gary really had it, a connection to something where good and evil taunted each other. You can hear it in his voice – the purring, the cajoling, the declarations, even in his gestures which told the story as he sang. Lynn pushed it, hard, gave it force to really get it across. Mickey was there, holding together, weaving in and out of it.

So it wasn’t conscious, it just came together. If you’re not living it, you’re in danger of sliding into caricature.

Gary especially liked the 1920s blues. We used to play World of Trouble, definitely traditional but we looked to Memphis Minnie’s version. It’s one of the demos we made prior to the record. I tried to burn it down a la Jimmy Page, you decide if it worked or not.

“Get Drunk and Die” — one way of describing the blues…and when Gary sings it you believe it. 

 

AUDIO: Tampa Red “Let Me Play With Your Poodle”

How did you discover “Poodle Dog,” whose roots go back to 1942 from what I gather?

Ben: “Poodle Dog”…it’s traditional…Tampa Red may have first recorded it but clearly it had been around long before that in as many versions as there were singers of it. Gary brought it to us, not sure which version he heard. We were having fun with it, building it up slowly til it came on like a train, a great live one. Really nowhere to go with a guitar solo except the Chuck-Berry-on-crank licks. Gary had just the right touch with all the innuendos.

 

What was Gary like as a music fan?

Lynn: Gary was a huge music fan. He listened to Johnny Winter, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Nancy Sinatra, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters. He got into punk rock, seeing the Sex Pistols in SF opened a whole new door to music for him.

 

How did you get on SST’s radar? Were you all fans of the label?  

Ben: They put out the Dicks’ Kill From the Heart album so Gary knew Greg. We recorded the demo and sent a cassette of it to Greg. He basically agreed to put out a record for us and gave us a budget to make it, I think $2500. It was all very casual.

 

SST is notoriously difficult to acquire one’s masters from, based on what I’ve read and heard. What was the process like getting this first Sister album from them?

Ben: We worked it out with them.

 

VIDEO: Sister Double Happiness press kit 1991

Please tell me some of the history behind these demos that are on the second disc. How did they come about and how were they rediscovered?

Ben: The original demos we recorded at Razor’s Edge, now long gone, so we didn’t have the masters. I had a cassette and we mastered it from that.

We recorded the Jack Endino demos at Word of Mouth in Seattle, must have 1993. We were looking for a producer for our third record so we did a couple of songs with him to see how it went. We were happy with the results but Jack was not available for the project so we ended up back at Razor’s Edge to record the record that became Uncut. Great record if you can find it! Anyway, Jack graciously shared his mixes with us for the album.

 

The second SDH album, Heart and Mind, turns 35 this year. Are there any plans to revamp that album? What are some of your memories of working on this LP? Any good stories about touring with Soundgarden and Nirvana?

Ben: We weren’t prepared for the major label experience and it shows on Heart & Mind. There was a tentativeness to some of it, in contrast to the first record where we just went for it all out. It would be fun to revisit it and fashion it to a closer representation of what the band actually could do. We’ve had no contact with Warner Bros and we didn’t part on great terms, but who knows?

Lynn: Unfortunately, that record went badly. We were pressured to move along in a certain lane and tame ourselves, become more schooled in what a musician should be, which turned out to be a disaster for the songs. Heart and Mind is tepid in energy and the production is such a disappointment, altho t feel here are some solid, good songs on it. We tried to play along with the Major Label thing, but of course, we were on a lost course. Regrets for sure…but, who wants to live with regrets. 

Touring with Nirvana and Soundgarden was amazing because our onstage energies matched and we played big places and we were fans of each other. Those bands asked us if we wanted to tour with them. It was all camaraderie back then, just bands touring together, no egos. Nirvana’s tour was right when Smells Like Teen Spirit shot up. It was incredible to be there when it struck. It was A LOT. We played shows with Hole, and I could see the interest between those two. On that tour, in 1991, we played The Palace in LA with Hole, L7 and Nirvana for ROCK FOR CHOICE. It was the inaugural show for the cause. EPIC.