Moaning Lisas newest release Extra Cheese featuring 7 songs produced by Stacy Heydon (#1 Billboard Hit Producer and former David Bowie/Iggy Pop Guitar Player). Big Al Staggs, singer/songwriter and front man, joins new guitarist Lance Bailey along with original drummer Anvil Auguston and longtime bass player Rick Kuhns for rock n roll songs. It’s fun freaking music with stories of used meat, extinguished relationships, and living out of a car.
In this interview spotlight, I chat it up with Big Al Staggs about the latest release, challenges, motivations, music consumption preferences and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from? When did you start? and . What style of music do you create?
Hello We (Moaning Lisas) are from Norfolk Virginia Area on the East Coast near the beach. We started this band in 1996.
What style? well in order to tell ya what we are you got to hear the history. Let’s sum it up as Comedy Alt Country Psycobilly Rock n Roll Band.
This new release is putting us more towards a Green Day meets Classic Rock combo . I (Big Al Staggs) and my brother Lee Staggs along with Anvil Ron Augustin started the band with a couple of guitar players. We had our first release EP ” Buy this for Five Bucks” with our Producer Stacy Heydon in 1996. We lost Lee when he passed away in 2003 but we kept the band going with a couple of bass players to help us out.
Fast forward to 2017. We had great support from Gene Temple and Richie Bohr our old guitar players along with bass player Jim Cahoon, The boys went in the studio in Virgina with engineer Skip Derupa I flew out to California for my vocals and released an EP called 100% ABV. Our new guitar player came in right after we released in 2017. Mr. Lance Bailey was such a fresh breath of air for the band as a song writer and very skilled guitar player.
Our old bass player returned to helped us out Rick Khuns and we released this new release Extra Cheese. 4 songs Lance and I wrote together with one from Rick plus our buddy Hickry Hawkins helped us out on the writing adding the song Widest Trailer in the Lot.. Gene Temple returned for the studio work on this one and my dad Fred Staggs playing upright bass and banjo work from Jim Andersen from Flatland Bluegrass band.
This is a solid EP of a few different genres to round out some of the great talent and experience on this release.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
I was a band geek in high school, I played the drums loved the working of 140 band kids playing together. When I went off to college I had a room mate, Slicky Bob who was jammin with his guitar one day and I threw in some lyrics so together we went up to a hard core punk club called the Corner and plays our song ” I married a Douch Bag” The rest is history.
We started Left Wing Fascists. Next thing I know I am on tour with the Ramones and working in the studio with a top Billboard #1 hit producer Stacy Heydon. We released on Rhino Records 30 years later here I am still doing some reunion shows with LWF and of course still working with Stacy. Stacy has produced all of my releases and currently we are working together on my first solo album as Big Al Staggs
How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?
the last release was mostly written by Paul Kamanski a very talented song writer that wrote songs for the Beat Farmers and himself. I have always been a fan we connected and got to be friends it was very cool to fly out to California work on the release with Stacy then take the train down to San Diego and spend some time with Paul and Caren Kamanski working on back vocals and writing songs together.
The last release was a bit more country Plus Richie Bohr and Jim Cahoon left the band right after the release came out. That hurt a little to lose those guys but they found their love working with a female vocalist in a band called Runnin Shine. You would think that would cause me to just give up.
Anvil my drummer and rock told me “Don’t worry Big Al you have many guys that want to share the stage with you. This is not your 15 minutes of fame. So Lance Bailey was leaving his cover band. Anvil spotted this on Craigslist his add to find new players. Man did that pay out. Lance use to play parties with use when Lee was alive so I knew his skills. I was more surprised when we just started writing songs. The song writing left the country style and went to a classic rock meets alternative rock.
This formula is working. We have doubled the amount of radio stations that are spinning us. Our spotify plays went from a few hundred to over 130,000 spins in just a few short months. So getting a little away from the country style worked for us. Don’t get me wrong Widest Trailer in the lot we have a country rock and bluegrass version on this release.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
Been at this since 1987 things have changed for sure.
With the change of technology we record differently it’s easy for us to use people from all over the country as long as you have a good producer to take care of the tracks. I feel that we are putting out a recording that I can listen to and no regrets just like the ones we release back in the early 90’s working with Stacy. That is really the key to this.
Now so many bands out there we just do our thing. Using cdbaby as our distro company it makes life so much eaiser deliver it to so many markets all over the world. Having a degree in marking helps you keep focused on your target market.
What was the last song you listened to?
I work for a small label and we just released the video for Sundown a cover song performed by Brian Good from the famous Good Brothers. Funny thing about that song is written by Gordan Lightfoot and he wrote it about Brian Good . I have written a few songs about people but never has one of those folks covered my tune. lol
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
I love vinyl but listen to mp3’s most of the time.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
Spotify is the big one paying us so have to go with those guys and as we should over 130,000 spins and 30,000 fans that is something we could not have done with out the help of Cdbaby and getting us to Spotify.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
Spotify seems to have everyone it seems.
Anything else before we sign off?
Of course thank you for the time today and also thanks to everyone that is giving us some spins downloads and of cours love!
Big Al Staggs
