Mad Juana features ex-Hanoi Rocks bass legend (and current New York Doll) Sami Yaffa, along with his very talented vocalist wife Karmen Guy plus a plethora of other truly musical aficionados who sound hell bent on creating something special. Blues, intoxicating gypsy dirges, swirling chords and danceable beats collage like a post-modern cultural wet dream (complete with a motherfucker of a Mezcal hangover). This band is definitely not to be slept on even though Mad Juana’s sound will creep into your dreams with guns blazing (not to mention melodica, accordion, trumpets, congas and Danny Ray’s killer tenor saxophone lines).

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sami Yaffa and Karmen Guy about the new album, their creative and earnest influences from the forces in their lives (including domestic hijinks) and especially, on the importance of staying true to the process of growing musically.

MORGAN Y. EVANS: Okay, first things first! Mad Juana is a lot of fun to listen to. I think now that the weather is getting nicer for the summer in NYC that your band could be very dangerous for my life because you kind of instantly make me desire massive margaritas. The music is too good to not listen to though so I'll just have to face the consequences! You must have a great time playing live. I think you could easily tempt a crowd to freak out or lose all inhibitions!

SAMI YAFFA: We had a spontaneous fucking incident happen at one of our shows in
San Francisco last year and also a couple of baby reports from Spain. Margaritas might have also played a role.

MYE: How do you approach songwriting in the group and in particular, for the new record Bruja On The Corner? Is it harder with a large number of players in a band like Mad Juana versus Hanoi Rocks or The New York Dolls? Well, obviously there must be a different approach to each and also Sami and Karmen, you are married, so does that make it easier to collaborate?

KARMEN GUY: Songwriting comes with the waves, it's like surfing. Living in Ocean Beach has been very conducive for this matter as well as rich with inspiration. It is very easy; to write with Sami, almost to the point of being telepathic. I feel very fortunate in that respect, but on the flipside, we are brutally honest with each other and if we don't like something we say it. It keeps us in check.

SY: Having a large band is like having more colors to paint with, more languages to speak, more partners in bed. It's just more, more or less. Being married and writing? We can bring more shit to our arguments! More weaponry to throw at each other! More excitement, and you can create together while vacuuming or wearing an apron while cooking or fixing a leak or picking up dogshit...it's good!

MYE: Your music reminds me of the desert in some ways. It makes me want to have a pistol duel or conjures up the end of A Fistful Of Dollars when Clint Eastwood and the villain are proving which is better in a duel, a pistol or a Winchester rifle. Sergio Leone vibes! I love this band! The desert-esque qualities are there but also a sort of urban feeling as well, something I also love about bands like The Doors or X, West Coast groups. Any thoughts?

SY: I'm a huge Ennio Morricone fan, especially the soundtrack to Navajo Joe. I always liked the use of space in Spaghetti Western Soundtracks and the use of instrumentation...so, yes we are influenced by all that. One of the only autographs I have is from Eli Wallach. It says "from an old cowboy, with love Eli" It's the apple of my eye...my pride and joy!

KG: I like the sense of space. Space leads to adventure and journeys to the unknown, which I feel constantly compelled to explore. Playing it too safe puts me into a catatonic state of boredom.

MYE: Karmen, you have a beautiful voice, it feels very real, not feigned. "Domingo" is one track that really stands out. I was wondering about your singing and the demeanors in the band, I guess, what first gave you or also you, Sami, the confidence to embrace a life of music? Where do you draw from, be it external inspirations or from somewhere inside yourself to create and keep it a fresh creative and emotional process?

SY: It's a gift to be able to create and make a living out of it, so I don't question it and I respect it. I started as a 16 year old kid touring up and down the forests of Finland and last week played in Brazil and Argentina. Music is my travel-agent.

KG: Basically music is survival for me, it's my vice, my duende. Without it I would lose my sanity.

MYE: I totally relate.

KG: I don't know if it's necessarily confidence, maybe masochism is a better term. It's like a nagging, blind elf of persistence is leading you down a long path of poverty, rejection, and humiliation. But in the end, there is nothing that compares to finishing a song and no price is too high for this experience.

MYE: Blind elf of persistence! That’s amazing! "Circus Downtown", what's that song about?

SY: Some breed of people we used to know...

KG: I wrote this when I was coming out of a very dark tunnel, burning a lot of sage, chanting in tongues and meditating on the meaning of life. I somehow managed to lose my course, fell in to a wookie hole with a bunch of village idiots, woke up in a spotted forest and realized this was not the Tao Te Ching. I opened my eyes, saw who I was choosing to surround myself with, and how it ultimately was leading to the point of self-destruction. Next.

MYE: I feel like you could be inspiring to write fiction while listening to. It would make things go down a pretty brazen and interesting path (note: maybe thanks to the blind elf?), sparking the imagination. You could easily be on a Robert Rodriguez soundtrack. It's also great driving music. I always look for that in bands, whether it's Johnny Cash or Godflesh Selfless or even like, Bad Religion, or something. Great music to drive to in different moods, and speaking of driving, you recently have had a lot of stuff on your MySpace about touring on a vegetable oil powered vehicle! That's awesome, you and Willy Nelson! How did that come about?

SY: I've never owned a car and being now in San Diego you need one. We didn't want to contribute to the polluting ,greedy ways of the car and oil industry and started checking out alternatives. All it takes is a little effort and dedication. Hats off to Willie! Heard he opened up the first bio-diesel pump here in SD. "The Willie Pump"--the man is a genius! We use waste vegetable oil to power our ride. Zero emissions. Anyone can do it.

MYE: That’s awesome.

KG: Being from NYC, I've never owned a car in my life, and living on the West Coast it's a necessary evil. I detest the entire car culture of foreign oil dependence , major oil industry corporate greed, and the current US president, thus I was determined to try out an "alternative" route of transportation, the WVO route , which sounded very rebellious and revolutionary at the time. I started researching WVO conversions on diesel Mercedes, found an expert on Mercedes veggie conversions and within a month had purchased an ‘82 300TD Mercedes wagon, and we took it on our last tour. We are now looking for A Dodge Sprinter van for our cross country tour. It's carbon neutral, that's NO POLLUTION, and it's free…so up yours EXXON!

MYE: Sami, you've played bass in bands famously or guitar, but what made you primarily opt for acoustic guitar in Mad Juana? To show more of yourself? It sounds great.

SY: I'm a sucky guitar player but a good strummer. Nobody can strum our music like I can, hence me playing guitar. I wanna play bass but can't find any good strummers out there, all the guitar players wanna do is noodle.....so...if you are a strummer kinda cat, contact us.

MYE: Mad Juana is kind of dirty and sexy and mellow but also can have really lively sides, like an unexpected bite of hot pepper. The vibe is also deep. I remember reading an interview with the NYHC/Metal/Jazz/Urban Fusion band Candiria's old drummer Ken Schalk somewhere where he said the "heaviest" record he knew was by Miles Davis, way more than metal being heavy. The idea that it has feeling and a real heavy vibe or impact more than just being loud rock, which has a place too, but...I dunno, like there's this Lighting Hopkins song called "Lonesome Dog Blues" I always talk about where if you hear it in a depressed mind state, Hopkin's makes the simple guitar sound like a howling lonely dog and it GETS you! Your band has some of that true, stark, to the bone stuff going on also, I think.

SY: Thank you. I agree. I mean, I love R'n'R but there’s sooooooooo much music around that is full of magic, soul, angels and devils that I would feel like a prick listening to just one kind of music. Playing it, is a different story. Usually bands just go through the motions performing their set, not paying mind to creating a real and magical atmosphere where the air gets thick and your heart’s racing. I’m not talking about OD'ing on coke here. The moments when you succeed are the ones that stay with you.

MYE: My friend Jesse Cunningham from Long Ben said once, “You shouldn’t have your asshole puckered into only one scene.”

SY: I saw John Lee Hooker live at "On Broadway" in San Francisco in ’87 and it's a show and a feeling that will stay with my Finnish ass till I keel over.

MYE: New York City is such a mix up of musicians. There's session players who can play whatever style, to college kids bugging out to rock or electro or whatever, and the old guard holding it down. It seems like there's a real vein of experimentalism being tapped again which is also good, not just fake bands trying to copy whatever to get famous. There's also still good real city bands like She Wolves or LiveFastDie, ICU or Honor Among Thieves, honest punk and rock bands working it. But in the ‘70s or early ‘80s it seemed overall there was more fearlessness, which is hopefully gonna come back even more, like you'd have the Talking Heads having world music elements in rock. You’ve moved from New York, but I like Mad Juana's use of blended styles and also saxophone and horns. It is tastefully applied and stark, which reminds me of when the Stooges or Suicide would have a bit of sax and it would sound pretty "street" or raw contrasting the rock.

SY: NYC has always been about change, which is why it is what it is. I'm not too chuffed about what has happened to the city with all the ugly buildings sprouting up downtown and NYU gobbling up everything in sight, wanna-be art students with parents footing the bill etc. The East Village now is like fucking Cancun, some kinda spring break bar-hopping hell with the most obnoxious people you can find. But yes, there’s great musicians and artists who try and create in that quagmire, so they have my sympathies and hats off. I haven't spent much time in NYC this past year, preferring to find influences and creative explosions south of the border in Mexico and South America.

MYE: Sami, having worked in the past with Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders, what was it like for you getting involved with the surviving New York Dolls dudes and becoming a part of the recent record? The whole process must've been special but also kind of surreal, if you don't mind talking about it some?

SY: I just prayed to God and hoped they were not as chemically imbalanced as dear J&J were. It is, at times, like an acid flashback. Everything slows down. A kind of a blur happens and I realize I'm playing “Frankenstein” in Beijing, China with David, Jo and Sylvain Sylvain, so yes, it does tend to get a little surreal every now and then.

MYE: You also played in 2002 with Murphy's Law on a tour. I like how Jimmy from Murphy's Law has kind of kept that band going and has hired guns or friends sort of have fun just keeping it as like a bigger than one line up/punk family thing. Murphy's Law is like a state of mind now, haha. I opened for them a few times in different bands, one called Divest, and it was always pretty fun. How was that experience for you?

SY: I looooved playing in Murphy’s Law. One of the most fun things I'veever done. Respect to Jimmy for keeping the band going.

MYE: I've seen you most often compared to bands like Gogol Bordello or the Clash or The Velvet Underground. Of course, you covered "Venus In Furs" previously in Mad Juana, but what is your favorite Velvets period, and also how do you feel about the comparisons aesthetically?

SY: I love the 1st Velvets album the best, the comparisons are welll.....we tend to use droning a lot in Mad Juana and building sort of sonic walls and splatter beautiful melodies on top of that. I really don't know if any other comparisons make any sense....

MYE: Right, more of some textures than other aspects. Okay, what would you say is the modus operandi or unofficial motto of Mad Juana as a band?

KG: "Be part of the solution, not the pollution!!!" and I'm not just talking about gasoline!!! Have the freedom to experiment with sound, the freedom to be an individual in your thoughts, dress and actions because when we don't have this freedom we are polluted in every sense.

SY: Salut, Cheers, Skal, Kampai, Ooopa, ChinChin etc. Enjoy it while you are here!