I’ve been working in music on and off for about ten years now and have had the pleasure of being able to get to know a lot of different bands. Some local, some not so local. One of my favorite groups to not only work with but to hang out with is the Mayhem String Band, a local bluegrass band consisting of Chris Steiner on guitar and vocals, Ben Johnson on bass and vocals, Jamison Hollister on fiddle and vocals, J.T. Lack on banjo and vocals and Kevin Larkin on mandolin, harmonica, and vocals. I’ve known most of them since we were freshmen at Ole Miss. I had a chance to sit down with them Parrish Baker Pub during happy hour earlier this week for a few beers and an occasional “taste” of Jagermeister. After about the third round, the following insult to an interview ensued. by Shelby Rayburn

Alright, let’s do this. How did y'all meet each other?

J.T.: We were all at a Star Trek convention (laughter)……and I was Professor Zodos….That’s probably not even a Star Trek character.

It might be, I don’t know.

Jamison: It was a Star Wars convention.

Chris: We were hanging out with what’s his name, Mr. Sulu. George Decay.

Jamison: He’s gay.

Chris: Yeah, I know. That’s how we all met, at the gay Star Trek Convention. (more laughter)

And how does one find a gay Star Trek Convention?

Capt: It’s on the Internet. That’s the key to all questions like that. (even more laughter)

Papa: Ask the Silver Fox. (uncontrollable laughter)

O.K. Seriously, now, how did all of y'all meet each other?

Chris: Well, I moved back from Vail, and he was landscaping my parent’s yard.

Ben?

Chris: Ben was. So we started working together, quickly found out that we liked music. So we started a band with J.T. in my parent’s front yard.

So how did J.T. come into all this? (To J.T.) How did you get involved with this group of rapscallions?

J.T.: Well, my mom and my dad…(laughter) I guess I met Chris through Ben kinda, ya know. I saw Ben drinking somewhere, and we started talking about it. Then he called me. So I drove over there, and we played music.

Kevin, how did you get involved in this band?

Larkin: Let’s see here, I was playing with Chris out in Colorado. He moved back down here and I had been hearing about how great Mississippi was for quite some time. So I quit my job, packed up, and drove down here.

So why did y'all choose bluegrass?

J.T.: I can only play the banjo. (laughter)

(to Ben) So what about you? I know you played in a lot of blues bands, being form The Delta.

Ben: I don’t know. We just wanted to do something different.

That, it definitely is. So how did y'all meet this jackass from Starkville?

Jamison: I had played with J.T. a couple of years before that, in different bands and stuff like that.

What bands?

Jamison: Lost High Rollers, and Band of Engineers, maybe? Was that the other one? Yeah. And then I had played with Ben, I knew Ben from High School, so they just called me up. Cause they know what a badass, I was, ya know. (yet even more laughter)

Kevin, did you always play bluegrass?

Larkin: Here and there. I played a lot of Irish music.

So, I think that you’re gonna have to explain to anyone who hasn’t seen your band play; how you came up with the name The Mayhem String Band.

Ben: I mean, that’s all there is too it baby, Mayhem.

Just Mayhem, huh? That simple?

Ben: That simple. What other word could you think of to describe us?

J.T. You could describe to him the last gig we had in Boulder a weekend ago, I think it was.

What happened?

J.T.: Well, the venue we were playing was a high flaunting wedding party thing that they rented out. It had poles falling from the ceiling and shit while we were playing.

Chris: We broke the banister up top. Everyone was dancing.

Ben: We got cut off drinking before we even started playing.

J.T.: Many boyfriends were pissed off.

Chris: Yeah! Ha, ha! It was the only wedding I’ve ever been flashed. The only wedding I’ve ever exchanged a show of titties for a song.

Which is a fair trade in my book.

Chris: Very fair.

J.T: The night was not over yet. It was for me, I passed out in the back of this dude’s car. (laughter from everyone)

Oh! I’ve already heard this story! Speaking of your tour, we’re going to get to that later on.

J.T.: Well, you asked why it called Mayhem.

Ben: These are common affairs.

J.T.: This shit happens every time.

So, let’s get to the tour. I’ve got a couple of stories that I want to get y'all to tell. Your tour basically went from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rockies. So, from the Carolinas, I heard a story about a duck and a pond?

Chris: Yeah, I killed a duck with a rock. And we made duck and sausage gumbo.

And why did you kill a duck with a rock?

Jamison: It was coming right at him! (again with the laughter) It posed an imminent threat to national security.

Chris: I was protecting the van.

Yeah. So going into the Rocky Mountains, what was the incident with Palmer’s car?

J.T.: Let Ben tell it ‘cause I was passed out in the back of it...

Ben: I’m gonna tell you ‘cause here’s how it went down.

J.T.: I woke up in the middle of a wreck occurring.

Ben: Alright, so we’re at the wedding and we pick the two most sober people to drive. Or so we thought. Were driving two cars. Jeffery Palmer and Bob Jencks. I don’t know how you spell that.

Chris: J E N C K S.

Ben: Well, anyway I’m not too good on the old stick. So I was driving Palmer’s car back and Red “egregious” Larkin was driving Mr. Jenck’s 1981..

Chris: ‘83

Jemison: ‘84

Ben: ‘84 Toyota...is it a Corolla?

Jemison: a Corolla. It’s a “Golden Bullet!”

Ben: It’s The Golden Bullet! So we’re driving along and we get back into the town. All is well. We pull into Cosmo’s Pizza (by the way is pretty good). Pull in there to get a slice. Red parks on the top of the hill, and I park on the bottom of the hill. They all go in and all of a sudden, The Golden Bullet starts coming right at me. I thought Red was still in it. The whole time he was inside and the Captain is blacked out in the back of the Golden Bullet. Well, as the Golden Bullet towers towards Mr. Palmer’s Corolla, I crank it up, throw it in drive, and shoot it off to the right. Just as the door smashes into the Corolla then smashes into the wall of the back of the parking lot. The whole time, The Captain’s asleep in the back.

Larkin: I turn around just in time two see a magic trick that Dale and Houdini would have been proud of, two cars switching spots in ten seconds flat, one of them was unmanned.

So you woke up in the middle of the wreck?

J.T.: That’s the second time that’s happened to me in my life! (laughter) I gotta stop passing out in cars.

Ben: All I could see was buffalo skin cowboy boots trying to jump out...

J.T.: I couldn’t get my hand on that parking brake. And I immediately went right back to sleep. I figured if I was going to jail...

Ben: So when Red looked out the window, Palmer’s car was in his spot, and The Golden Bullet was in his spot. That’s all he knew.

Well, I mean it’s an ‘83 Corolla. What can you get mad about?

Ben: No, he didn’t get mad at all.

J.T.: There was no damage. I mean those things are tanks, man.

Ben: Anyway, there was a police officer’s car, a fire truck and an ambulance in the parking lot.

Why?

Chris: Somebody called 911.

Ben: Somebody fell off the balcony of a restaurant up there.

Oh, so it wasn’t called for y'all. It was already there.

Ben: That’s what Bob told me. Somebody got drunk and fell off the balcony. So, surely we ought to be in some kind of trouble.

You would think so.

Ben: Nothing happens. That’s Mayhem. Only we could cause that much trouble...

And not get in trouble.

Ben: In a small parking lot, and just drive away.

J.T.: In the heart of downtown.

Chris: Yeah, right on Broadway. On the hill in Boulder.

So, where was your favorite place to play this tour?

Chris: Silverton, Colorado.

Why is that?

J.T.: We had hippies and bikers all at the same place gettin’ down.

Jemison, Chris, and Ben together: And lumberjacks!

Chris: My brother played the bagpipes.

J.T.: Oh yeah!

Chris: And the whole building was shaking ‘cause people were dancing so hard. Ben stomped a hole through the stage during the show.

Jemison: That was probably the drunkest we’ve ever played, I think.

Chris: Four sets, and by the end we could barely see.

Ben: The town has one paved road.

Yeah, Silverton’s way the hell up there.

Chris: 9,000 feet. We slept on the ground outside the night before. I woke up with frost on my pillow.

Nice. So, tell me about playing in the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

J.T.: Let’s tell you about Bob Jencks hooking up with that construction chick. (uncontrollable laughter) That’s a good story. Telluride ain’t worth a damn.

O.K. Tell me about Bob Jencks hooking up with a construction worker chick.

J.T.: To Bob Jencks, Mayhem is good luck despite the little car switcharoo.

Chris: He even shaved his facial hair to look like Kevin. He called it the Kevin Larkin. It brings him good luck.

Ben: We call it “The Duane Allman Sky Dog.” Officially, it’s renamed in Colorado.

J.T.: Right!

Chris: So I see ol’ Bob out the in the crowd, he’s with this chick. She’s pretty cute. So he runs off and I get down I start talking to her. It turns out she’s ripped, I mean muscles and everything. So I’m like ‘Damn, baby what do you do?’ She said ‘I’m a construction worker.’ I said ‘Oh, no shit! So is Bob Jencks!’ Cause they had been allover each other all night. So he walks away and I talk to him for a few more minutes and she leaves and Bob comes back and gets all pissed at me sayin’ ‘Damn, I’ve been talking to that girl all night and you talk to her for five minutes and she’s gone! So it turns out the next day he runs into her at Target.

Ben: Buying a new shirt for the wedding.

Chris: Yeah, buying a shirt for the wedding. He takes her back to his place….

Jemison: And they make sweet love.

Ben: Afternoon delight. (roars of laughter)

All because of the Mayhem String Band.

Chris: No, no, no, no. Well, maybe.

Maybe.

J.T.: Absolutely.

So, what is Mayhem on the Mountain?

Chris: Oh, man. It was a great festival. We were invited to play by this great chick, Lisa. Incredible girl, Lisa, who put the whole thing on. It was a benefit for breast cancer.

J.T.: Her last name was Ellery. In case you want to contact her for some weird reason.

I don’t know, should I?

Jemison: That was the coolest festival I ever been to/played at. Because every single band there was hanging out at the artist’s tents, or cabin or whatever. Everyone was sittin’ around pickin’ from sun up to sundown.

Chris: But it was all open, everyone could just walk everywhere. All the bands were around the artists’ tent because that’s where the kegs were. So a lot of people came over there. It ended up you didn’t want to leave there to go see the bands because there was so much good pickin’ going on right around that little cabin.

Where in West Virginia is this?

Pentress, West Virginia. Just north of Morgantown., West Virginia. About an hour south of Pittsburgh. Eight miles from the Mason-Dixon Line. South, south of the Mason-Dixon.

J.T. Well said.

Ben: It was the most moonshine I’ve ever seen in one place in my entire life.

More so than Marshall County, Mississippi????

Everyone: Oh my god!

Chris: I know I drank two full mason jars.

That’s enough to set your breath on fire.

Chris: But I mean there was all types, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, pineapple.

J.T.: A lot of it was brown. Which is weird ‘cause you always think of “white lightning.” I had never seen homemade moonshine that was brown.

Jemison: It was like whiskey.

Chris: They were very, very proud of their corn whiskey. Extremely proud. It’s rightfully so.

Y'all just got through with your first album, Rapscallions and Ne’er-do-wells. What exactly does that mean?

J.T.: It’s everything we’ve just been talking about. (uncontrollable laughter)

Fair enough, fair enough.

Jemison: Hustlin’ baby. Hustlin’.

Where did y'all record it?

Jemison: We recorded it a Tweed Studios. Andrew Ratcliffe’s place here in Oxford. He’s a hell of a dude.

Most of the songs are originals, correct?

Chris: All original except one.

Which one?

Chris: John Henry.

Who wrote that?

Chris: It’s just an old traditional song.

J.T.: That’s part of the folk process.

And are there any guests on the record?

Chris: We’ve got Gin Gin Abraham and Rosamond Posey.

From Honey Blonde and Rocket 88?

Chris: That’s right.

How was ending the tour in New Orleans?

Chris: Absolutely insane.

Larkin: Fantastic.

Chris: It was a hurtful, yet joyous experience.

Larkin: I don’t know if you heard but during the last set of the tour, the P.A. exploded at the Maple Leaf. So we had to jump off the stage and finish it off acoustic.

Jemison: On the floor. Hootin’ and hollerin.’

Where will your homecoming shows be?

Chris: We’re gonna be at Dave’s Dark Horse in Starkville on Thursday and then Proud Larry’s on Friday.

Who is the opening act y'all have coming in?

Chris: This guy named Pokey LaFarge.

Who is he and how did you meet him?

Jemison: We met him at Mayhem on the Mountain. He used to play in Hackensaw Boys, right?

Larkin: I think he does every now and then.

Chris: He an incredible ragtime blues player.

Larkin: He’s in the vein of like, Charlie Patton. He’s like a one man, insane, old-country, blues, ragtime band.

Jemison: He’s awesome.

Awesome.

Chris: It’s gonna be good.

The Mayhem String Band will be playing live at the newly remodeled Proud Larry’s on the Oxford, Mississippi Square on Friday, August 24, 2007. Members of Mayhem will also be performing at “Writers in the Round” at The Powerhouse Community Arts Center on Thursday, August 30th with members of Rocket 88.

Check out the Mayhem String Band’s music at www.myspace.com/mayhemstringband