THE RETRO-SHACKLED, DOPE-CLOUDED MYTHOLOGY OF PSYCH DOOM

When I was in Europe early this year with my band Grey Daturas we played this psych-doom festival in the Netherlands called Roadburn. When we got there everyone was talking about this one film that was premiering. And I mean everyone. It was a full-length feature documenting the history of the American heavy psych/hard rock underground and it featured all my favorite bands: OM, Sleep, High on Fire, Blue Cheer, Pentagram, and Sunn O)). It even featured some of my favorite graphic artists. Basically it was the film I'd always wanted to see, telling a story that was long overdue. Ladies and gentleman, may I introduce Mr. John Srebalus, director of

Such Hawks, Such Hounds

.

Vice:

You're based in LA, if I'm not mistaken. Have you always lived there or did you relocate from some exotic land far, far away?

John Srebalus:

I suppose West Virginia captures the imagination in a coal-miner-strike-meets-

Deliverance

kinda way, but my Morgantown is a fairly typical college town whose claims to fame include not one but two

Three's Company

cast members (Don Knotts and Joyce DeWitt) and the Joni Mitchell song "Morning Morgantown." We actually had a first-rate rock club in the 1980s called the Underground Railroad, where, as a high school kid, I got to see Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and lots of other nationally touring hardcore bands.

Prior to making Such Hawks, Such Hounds, did you study film or were you involved in any other film projects?

None of the above. I was doing what I'll loosely call music journalism, so I'd gotten pretty good at interviewing musicians, and that was the primary skill I brought to the project. My partner Jessica Hundley had made some music videos and a short doco called

Viva Morrissey!

The rest we just figured out or hired out. You live in LA long enough and chances are you're within one or two degrees of separation from folks who have the various technical skills you need.

That is very convenient. In your own words, what is Such Hawks, Such Hounds?

It's a reduced-nostalgia genre study. All the kicks of the store brand, but none of the Hall of Fame fanboys.

Very precise of you. What drove you to make the film? Was this a story you felt needed to be told?

Yeah, definitely. First of all, the fan base for underground heavy rock is huge, rabid, and global. It's an interesting scene in that it's not pegged to a geographic area or brief time span. Then there's the music itself. Top-notch creatively and in terms of musicianship, much of it would be major label-released and platinum-selling in another era. We also suspected the retro-shackled, dope-clouded mythology would give way to a more complex picture, and I believe we were right.

How did you find the money to make such an amazing film? I heard something about people donating money towards its completion.

Yeah, it was completely self-financed with the exception of a few thousand in completion funds, which we collected from our wonderfully supportive MySpace community. Early on I got a class-action settlement related to a car accident I was in as a kid. It came out of nowhere and got me thinking about what to do with found money. Beyond that, without a lot of major up-front costs, we mostly did pay-as-you-go while working day jobs. Back end costs were a different story with hiring an editor, sound mixer and motion graphics person, and paying advances on music licenses.

Did you know most of the bands personally before you started?

I'd interviewed Dead Meadow and Comets on Fire for other things, but I wouldn't say I knew any of them. I was a fan but not an insider.

There are obviously so many bands that weren't featured in the film, how did you go about choosing the bands that were to be included?

There are a few we tried to get, including Eyehategod, Fu Manchu, Melvins, and Neurosis but couldn't for one reason or another. The bands that did participate were chosen for a variety of reasons: personal taste, creative influence, uniqueness, and fan favorites. And we tried to present a variety of styles within what we're calling underground hard rock, a term meant to be more inclusive than stoner rock but mostly leaving straight-up metal to its own world.

So where do you go from here? Are you looking to make a second volume in the Such Hawks extended story?

I've pretty much ruined myself financially and got caught in an underemployed situation in the middle of a recession, so I'm mostly focused on keeping my household in the black. Filmmaking on my level tends to accomplish the opposite of that, so I'm gonna focus on earning a paycheck in the area of public interest law. In a couple years I'll start another project, which may involve music or may not. In any case it'll tackle new subject matter altogether, as that's where my curiosity wants to take me.

Viva

and

Such Hawks Such Hounds

are out now through

Siren Visual

.