Before delving into Call Me Animal: A Tribute to the MC5, the latest album by Joecephus and The George Jonestown Massacre, I must disclose that I played piano on one track. But that’s not saying much, considering that half of this city’s musicians contributed to the album in one way or another. Indeed, that makes it not just a George Jonestown Massacre album, but a community statement, our Bluff City shout-out to Detroit rockers, the MC5, heroes to all who love riff rock, from punks to metalheads and beyond.
Such tribute albums come naturally to Joey Killingsworth, aka Joecephus, and they all tend to honor riff-heavy ancestors like Black Oak Arkansas and Nazareth (the band’s rocked-up Johnny Cash tribute notwithstanding). Call Me Animal may be the ultimate expression of those tribute albums, all of which pledge their profits to charitable causes and feature a sprawling cast of celebrity cameos. This time, the charitable cause was easy to choose: The U.S. chapter of Jail Guitar Doors, a nonprofit founded by Billy Bragg to provide instruments to the incarcerated, was opened by original MC5 member Wayne Kramer, who also appears on the album.
“With all these records so far, we’ve managed to have at least one person from the original lineup,” Killingsworth says with a hint of pride. “Even on our Johnny Cash EP, we did all four songs with W.S. ‘Fluke’ Holland, who played drums on all that stuff back in the day.” For Call Me Animal, Kramer contributes to one of the group’s deeper cuts, “Human Being Lawnmower.” As Killingsworth puts it, “Wayne does the solo on that and just annihilates it.” Yet holding his own alongside Kramer’s guitar onslaught is Jello Biafra, whose manic vocals electrify the old MC5 song as if it was “Holiday in Cambodia.”
That’s just one star turn among many in this collection. Exploding right out of the gate, album opener “Ramblin’ Rose” features not only The Runaways’ Cherie Currie, but also bassist Mike Watt and guitarist J Mascis. There are also cameos like Lydia Lunch on “I Want You Right Now,” J.G. Thirlwell and Norman Westberg on “Call Me Animal,” and a version of “Kick Out the Jams” with Danko Jones and Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil. As it happened, meeting Thayil inspired Killingsworth to do the album in the first place.
“In 2018,” explains Killingsworth, “we opened for MC50,” an ad hoc group featuring both Kramer and Thayil that toured to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the album Kick Out the Jams. “I wore a Birthday Party shirt that night and Kim walked by — and he was all about the Birthday Party [Nick Cave’s early band].” Killingsworth pitched the idea of an MC5 tribute to Thayil, and “he was the first one on board.”
Backing up all this star power is the formidable rock engine of Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre, or JGJM. “It’s a collective at this point,” Killingsworth says of the band. “Dik LeDoux is my partner — he does almost all the recording and plays drums and bass. And Rudy Forster plays bass or guitar on the majority of it.” But many ensembles contributed, including Killingsworth’s other band, 1000 Lights, which also features Memphis Flyer film editor Chris McCoy. Some bands were ad hoc. “One song was made with me and Rudy with two of the Dirty Streets,” Killingsworth notes. “Some tracks were made with Weird Asteroid.”
Other contributing Memphis musos include Robert Allen Parker, Gerald Stephens, Hope Clayburn, and others. Steve Selvidge contributes lead guitar to a searing version of “Thunder Express” sung by Jimbo Mathus, delivered with an offhand swagger that makes it an album highlight.
Arguably the most luminary cameo comes from Alice Cooper, a onetime Motor City denizen himself, who told Uncut, “The MC5 were just pure Detroit.” Appropriately for one who knows that city’s pavement well, Cooper sings “Shakin’ Street.”
“It took a year to make that happen,” says Killingsworth of the Alice Cooper collaboration. “And he sent, like, 42 tracks — total bits and pieces and parts of his vocals. Dik LeDoux had to piece them together because there was just so much stuff.” Now, all such studio concerns behind them, Joecephus and the band are preparing for an 18-show tour that will include dates opening for Thor (another collaborator on the album) and an appearance at L.A.’s Whisky a Go Go with Cherie Currie.