Interview: Charlie Overbey

Photo by Kevin Schaffer

It’s rare for musicians to have led such colorful and varied lives, but for Charlie Overbey, it all comes down to just doing what he loves. Whether playing party rock in Sunset Strip glam rock bands in the early ‘90s, fronting a Southern California cowpunk band a few years later, or stripping away the glitz, glamor and aggression and following in the footsteps of Cash, Haggard, Jennings and Nelson as a storytelling troubadour in a cowboy hat and boots, the rock and roll pirate lifestyle might not be for everyone but it fits Overbey to a T.

Though this was a lengthy conversation, it merely scratches the surface on Overbey’s storied musical career which has led to the release of his second full-length album, In Good Company, a timeless jaunt through the annals of Country Music with some soul thrown in. The album features a number of recognizable guest stars, most of whom Overbey got to know through either his many years on the road or through his side hustle of making hats.

A lot of former punk rockers turn into country guys the older they get. What was your path from going from punk rock to country music?

CHARLIE: I think it’s a natural progression. My brand of punk rock with Custom Made Scare was Cowpunk. They used to say it was Hank Williams meets Motorhead. I love all the earlier punk bands, like The Adolescents, but it was kind of crazy because my mom was English, and my old man was this Arkansas hick. So, either Johnny Cash or Glen Campbell were on somewhere in the house or Benny Hill was on TV.

I don’t imagine anybody under the age of 40 has any idea who Benny Hill is.

CHARLIE: Probably not. I guess they don’t have Benny Hill repeats anymore. I don’t know where it would air, BBC maybe? It was all about boobs and jokes. I thought it was phenomenal.

You started out your music career with the Big Bang Babies, a late ’80s/early ’90s Sunset Strip glam band.

CHARLIE: That’s a topic for a whole other interview (laughs). It never comes up strangely. I don’t talk about it a lot, so I guess it’s not really a well-known thing that I had an early ’90s Sunset Strip life.

How did you get into that stuff if you’re growing up listening to punk rock music and Glen Campbell and watching Benny Hill?

CHARLIE: When I was 13 or 14 and punk rock was rampant and had just become a thing for me – I heard the TSOL EP for the first time and I was just like, “Oh my God.” That, and the early Cramps – I was like, “Okay, this is it.” I shaved my head and I had gotten kicked out of junior high and went to a new junior high school and I was one of two or three kids that were kind of getting into punk rock. Long story short, there weren’t any kids playing punk rock and there was a band at my junior high that needed a drummer. I ended up playing drums for them. They were rock kids. They were into Iron Maiden and all that kind of stuff. I ended up playing rock and roll and started to let that shaved head grow out and then before I knew it I was 18 and it was 1986. The “85’s Alive” thing was happening and I decided I was going to move to Hollywood. That’s just what was happening.

At 18, the only thing that I was interested in was girls and drinking beer. That whole thing was just so happening up there and there were so many chicks involved. It was a different era, very much a different time, and I fell right into it. Then I formed this crazy band, and we all had long hair and zoot suits. It was called the Hollywood Hoods. I heard Big Bang Babies were looking for a singer. I joined that band, and the band blew up. I’ll just say that I remember we had Japanese management, and we were getting ready to go to Japan and it was very exciting. Our single was the Japanese soccer league’s theme song, and we were going to be huge in Japan. And then I caught whiff of Nirvana, and I was like, “This is so rad” and I knew that it was over, that was going to be the end of that whole thing. I was excited that that whole thing [glam metal] was going to be done and that there was real raw music that was going to come back. I called the Japanese management company and I said, “Hey, I’m going to leave the band.” They were like, “What? You can’t leave the band.”

The next day, I cut my hair off and I dyed it jet black and had the Sid Vicious hair going and reinvented myself. I’ve always kind of done that. I don’t know if it’s a Sagittarius thing but I’ve always kind of rolled, because I get bored. I’m an addictive personality, especially when I was younger. I was always looking for something new and exciting like when we found punk rock after the boring old rock and roll. So, I started this crazy punk rock band, and it was super fun and it was awesome. And then Custom Made Scare needed a singer, and they were kicking more ass than my band was, so I joined them.

The evolution of music is awesome. It’s always a roller coaster. I had moved to Germany and was living in Berlin in 2002. Europe is always sort of behind what is happening. And I remember, here it was rockabilly and cowpunk and over there it was just weird. Right now, Americana and country has been happening here for years. I think it’s probably at its highest point right now with all of the things like CMT. I tried to watch that on TV last night. I wanted to be into it, but I was just like, “This is so cliche, so Nashville.” I can dig it but as far as that country goes, I just can’t buy it. A lot of those people are not writing those songs. Without mentioning any names, I know a few guys that are old rock guys that were writing glam rock songs and the big hook ballads and now those guys are writing Nashville country pop hits. And a lot of them are making a lot of money.

On my first listen to In Good Company, I thought this could be the soundtrack to a scene cut from Smokey and the Bandit where Burt Reynolds pulls over for the night, wanders into the roadside bar, and there’s a band playing some ’70s country rock on stage.

CHARLIE: I love that bar. That’s my favorite bar.

I didn’t listen to country music growing up, especially not as a teenager who loved ’80s glam rock, but your album makes me think that it would have fit back in the ’70s and ’80s and I have a lot of catching up to do.

CHARLIE: It’s hard with music today because everybody wants you, as far as marketing and management and record labels, which I really have none of, they all want to pigeonhole you into some specific genre. “Where do I put this record in my stack of rock and country?”

This record was supposed to come out in 2020. I had a two-year plan. I released the EP in ’16, the full-length album, Broken Arrow, in ’18 and was doing all these big festivals and things, was really rolling, and then that thing happened where we were all washing our groceries and stuff, which had its silver linings too, as far as humanity. I think we’ve somehow managed to forget that. A lot of people are like, “Okay, great, let’s leave that behind us and move on and get right back to where we were,” which is impossible.

This record was supposed to be my 2020 record and then that whole thing happened. And then we decided to leave Los Angeles and get this crazy ranch in New Mexico because you can’t buy anything in California anymore. I was born and raised there. I loved California as a kid. I even sort of like to go back once in a while because I love tacos, and they have a lot of great taco trucks.

New Mexico is kind of slow. It’s a slower way of life here so it was easy to sink into the New Mexico vibe and focus on figuring out how to run this ranch and how to make my other side business run, which is making hats and just get everything kind of in motion.

Then, all of a sudden, I was like, “Oh, man, it’s almost 2023 and I haven’t released my 2020 record.” So I decided, “I’m going to make a record. I don’t know what the record is going to be but I know I want to do this song and this song and this song. I’m going to dig back into my archives. I’m not going to make a country record. I’m not going to make a rock record. I’m not going to make a genre record. I just want to make a great record with great songs, at least what I think are great songs, and hope that people dig it too.”

I went back into my archives, and I picked some songs. There are some really old tunes. There’s a tune on there that I wrote in 1996, living in Hollywood; there’s a couple tunes I wrote in 2002, living in Germany. It’s kind of a scattered time warped record where I wasn’t focused necessarily on being country or being Americana or being a rock and roll guy. It’s a mix of stuff, which they say is the kiss of death if you’re trying to have any sort of success. But, let’s face it, at 56 years old, I’ve done a lot. I’ve toured all over the world. I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. I know I’m not going to be the next Lainey Wilson. And frankly, I don’t really want to be. I’m pretty cool with being the old punk rock guy that got to have my hand in the Sunset Strip and got to tour playing cow punk and make records with Joe and Bill at Side One/Dummy and now is this New Mexican pirate rancher that gets to go out and make records and go on tour. It’s phenomenal. I’ve been so blessed and I’m so grateful to even be alive sitting here talking to you right now.

It’s really astonishing for me because I used to be kind of crazy when I was young. I was walking through a supermarket – about a year ago I went back to LA for a few days, a random supermarket – and I turned the corner and there’s a guy standing there and he looks me dead in the face and he goes, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” I say, “What’s up?” and he goes, “I can’t believe you’re alive.” And it just hit me so powerfully where I was like, “Wow, I have no clue who this guy is.” It was apparent that we weren’t friends or even in any way connected to each other, but he had known me from whatever band I was in back in the day and just the look on his face was like he had seen a ghost. It hit me so hard where I was like, “Wow, this guy really thought that I should be dead by now. I’m lucky to be here.”

When you look back, were those days of being out of control fun or were they a struggle to get through?

CHARLIE: I think that I have almost zero regrets about any of that. I had a lot of fun. I remember some really good times. I remember some times that weren’t so fun. Divine architecture takes us to where we’re supposed to be and it’s always in motion. If we don’t screw it up, which is really easy to do if we get into our own thinking, it’s easy to walk off the path that you’re supposed to be on, which I think I’ve walked off many times. But it’s brought me back to where exactly I’m supposed to be now. And I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing, I wouldn’t be who I am, and I wouldn’t have all of the crazy experiences to share with my 18-year-old daughter who was on the same path as me but, thank God, she’s not crazy and she doesn’t have any interest in partying. She’s very smart and she’s very talented. She grew up around all of it. She got her first chocolate chip cookie from Alice Cooper. There’s a legendary photo of her from when she’s like a year-and-a-half old where she’s on Lemmy’s shoulders. She grew up around the Foo Fighters. She’s not starstruck. She doesn’t have any of that kind of thing.

So, I think to answer your question, I had a lot of fun, and it is a roller coaster. At the same time, I’m lucky to be here and hopefully be able to share some of my experience with some kids that think that it is all about David Lee Roth, or whoever that new guy is now. Back when we were kids, it was all about, “I want to be David Lee Roth. I’m gonna drink Jack Daniels all day long. I’m gonna chase as many girls as I can.” The kids these days are lucky because they’ve had a lot of us ahead of them to show them that this isn’t necessarily so good. For some of them, maybe their favorite bands, the dudes are already dead. They have a huge head start on things we didn’t have. Maybe we were paving the way.

I had a lot of fun, and I don’t really regret any of it.

You bring up a great point. One of my favorite singer/songwriters from the early ’90s was Jani Lane of Warrant. He wasn’t able to overcome his demons and ultimately paid the price.

CHARLIE: Jani got to have his fun. As far as music goes, almost overstayed his welcome. Musically, not as far as life goes, he had a lot of life left ahead of him but Warrant had run their course. I think that was part of Jani’s demons – he loved it so much. He was so great. He was such a great singer/songwriter. He did have so much heart and talent and that whole thing was just washed away, and he was like, “What am I going to do?”

I think he could have been one of those songwriters you were talking about earlier, someone who goes to Nashville and writes songs for other people.

CHARLIE: It doesn’t take massive success to be happy as an artist. I think Jani just had some big demons and for a lot of the addictive personalities and egos, it’s a hard thing to manage and to walk with, especially as you get older and you realize, “Oh man, my career might be over. People don’t want to hear ‘Cherry Pie’ anymore.” But he was such a great songwriter. He could easily have been in Nashville, writing songs for Lainey Wilson and writing songs for whoever, all of these big artists.

It all goes back to this – a great song is a great song, and it doesn’t matter what kind of label you put on it, it doesn’t matter what year it is, it doesn’t matter what’s trending, a great song is a great song and it’s always going to be a great song. I don’t remember who it was, it was either Bill Aucoin, who managed Big Bang Babies, or Kim Fowley, who also worked with Big Bang Babies, one of them said to me one time, “There’s three main ingredients to a great song – the song, the song and the song. Forget about all the other stuff and focus on the song.”

This was another Kim Fowley-ism: hit songwriters don’t cop, they steal. Amateurs cop. I’ve never been that smart. I never really go in and listen to other songs and go, “I really love this song. I’m going to change the structure from F-G-D to G-D-F, and then write some kind of a hook over that.” I’ve always just written what’s here, which could be the secret of my non-success. Like I said earlier, I don’t have any delusions of grandeur and I’m just doing what I love to do at this point.

Because you’re putting this out on your own and not beholden to a label, you could really have put this album whenever you wanted. There wasn’t anybody knocking at your door and saying, “The deadline is next week. You have to finish this up.”

CHARLIE: I’ve got no label. I don’t have any real management. I don’t have anybody going, “Dude, you’re totally late. Come on. What are you doing?” But it’s not like I have 10 million fans that are banging on my door either. There are some enthusiasts, which I’m super appreciative of. But yeah, I’m kind of on my own and I can kind of do what I want to do and release what I want and hope that other people appreciate it. It’s not easy. It’s a lot of work. When you get down to the bare bones of releasing an actual record, and trying to do videos, and lyric videos, and work with a publicist and all this stuff, it’s a lot. And there’s so much talent out there.

The other day, someone was asking me, “You’ve done really well, how do you do it?” First of all, I haven’t really done that well. I’m a great swimmer but there’s no secret to, at least I don’t know what the secret is, to having any kind of real success with it. And I told him, “I’m kind of the wrong guy to ask.” I think you have to do it because you love it. And you can’t have any delusions of grandeur that you’re going to be some big star in this day and age unless you’re like 15 and you have a great TikTok handle, right? I don’t know how to do any of that.

And then you want to get back on the road and go out and start doing shows again. I’m finally diving into touring with the full band. Last summer or whatever, I did a whole run with my buddy Duane Betts, and we did the East Coast. He’s such a genuine, big hearted, awesome guy. Duane decided he was going to do an acoustic run. It was just him and Johnny Stachela and Berry Oakley. He was like, “You want to come out and play some acoustic?” And I was, “Of course, I would love to.” I hadn’t done any real touring since the pandemic. I’ve done the Outlaw Country cruises and a few small shows here and there. So, we did the East Coast, the Midwest, the South, and the West Coast, and it was really awesome to get out and do those. It was just me in a rental car, driving around, following those guys. But now, I’m going to be back out again with the full band, and starting to do touring, doing some Blackberry Smoke dates, and I’ve got a great run in October.

I’ve got record release things in July and August down in the south. It’s really hard when you decide to go back out and tour again because that stuff’s not cheap, there’s not a lot of money to be made. You revert back to thinking like I’m 25 again, at 56, and you have to get a group of guys that can get into that same mindset and want to do it because they love it. I’ve been very lucky; I know a lot of really solid music dudes that do it because they love it.

The first show I saw as venues started opening back up after the pandemic shutdown was Faster Pussycat who I know you have a connection to.

CHARLIE: Taime and Chad from Faster Pussycat are on the record. Most of my band is in Los Angeles. I couldn’t just fly everybody in and get everyone to commit to a solid week of coming in making a record. I was just like, “I’m going to play my own drums. I’m going to record my guitars and my vocals, and then I’m going to see if I can get some of my buddies to track on it and do a ‘special guests’ record.”

The record’s called In Good Company, right? So I started listening to the tracks and I was like, “Who would be best on this song? This song would be great for Duane Betts.” And then, “Who would be great for this?” Charlie Starr (Blackberry Smoke) and Nils Lofgren. It was mind blowing to make a call to Nils Lofgren, who, for those of you that don’t know, had a band way back called Grin, and then he was in Crazy Horse with Neil Young. And he’s been in the E-Street Band with Bruce Springsteen for I don’t know how many years, but forever. Aside from the fact that he’s just an incredible human being, to be able to say that I put out a record with Nils Lofgren on it, that’s pretty incredible for an old punker. Nils is on a song called “The Innocence.” In the old days people used to say that my band sounded like the West Coast E-Street Band and I always thought, “That’s weird, but i’ll take it. That’s cool.” So, this one tune I’m listening to and I was like, “I think this is a really good story.” It’s about latchkey kids and I was like, “Who would be great on this?” It wasn’t an intentional thing, sometimes I just write stories and they come out in these songs, but I was like, “This song probably could have been on Born to Run.” I was like, “Nils Lofgren on this would be amazing. It’s a total pipe dream but I’m going to throw it out there.” I hit him up and said, “Hey Nils, I’ve got this track, I’ve been doing this new record, and it’s got a whole bunch of my buddies on it. I think I’ve got a track that would be great for you.” He’s like, “Send it over.” Even that was like, “Whoa!” I sent it over and he loved it. He called me and said, “Charlie, I love this. I want to do it.” He played guitar and sang. He’s got those Nils Lofgre backup vocals on it that are undeniable and unmistakable.

To have Marcus King and Charlie Starr and Duane Betts and Chris Masterson … there are so many people on this record. Jimmy Vivino. Jimmy goes way back in New York, he’s a phenomenal singer, songwriter, musician. He was the musical director for Conan O’Brien on Conan for like 20 plus years. He played with Levon Helm. He had a band called The Black Italians way back. He knows everybody and he’s such a talent.

When I released that “Ode to John Prine” single for Save Our Stages in 2020, Jimmy was really kind of at the helm of making all that happen. I wrote this song the night John Prine died and I sent it to Jimmy and I said, “Jimmy, I think I wrote a pretty good song last night and maybe we should try to record it somehow for Save our Stages. He was like, “Send it over,” so I sent it to him. He hit me back and he’s like, “Charlie, this is a really good song, man. We should track this. I’ll put together a rhythm section and you think about maybe who you want to sing on it with you and let’s make it happen.”

He goes, “I’ll give you a call soon.” I’m thinking he’s gonna call me three or four days later. He literally calls me back in an hour and goes, “I got Steve Ferrone from Tom Petty’s band, he’s gonna play drums. I got Darryl Jones from The Rolling Stones, he’s gonna play bass. I talked to Benmont Tench, but he’s getting ready to have knee surgery so he’s not sure he’s gonna be able to do it.” I couldn’t fathom that. I couldn’t swallow that. An old Orange County punker, it’s like, “You’re going to be a record with the dudes from The Stones and Tom Petty.” He was like, “Who are you going to get to sing on it with you?” I was like, “I haven’t really even thought about it.” I ended up getting my friend LP who is this incredible force of nature and her voice is just insane, out of this world. She’s my homie, I love her so much. Since Benmont Tench couldn’t do it, I got a hold of Rami Jaffee from the Foo Fighters and Rami did it. My daughter Katie, who at the time was 15 or something, played violin on it.

So, Jimmy Vivino’s on this record on a song called “Let Me Love You.” It’s not out of my wheelhouse, but out of anything that I would probably ever really release. I just write and write and write and write and write and a lot of it just kind of sits. It’s like, “This isn’t really my thing. Maybe someday someone else could do this song.” But this song is kind of an old soul song. Somebody said to me that it sounds like Sam and Dave which was just amazing. I was like, “Jimmy Vivino is perfect for this because this is Jimmy’s wheelhouse.” When you hear that song, all the magic that you hear, all the backup vocals, the organ, the Beatles guitars, it’s all Jimmy Vivino. He’s the magic behind that whole track, aside from writing it and playing drums and hacking my way through the vocal.

So none of the guests sat in the studio with you?

CHARLIE: No, we sent files out. I never really realized you could do that until the pandemic, when everyone was stuck at home with nothing to do, and you could just send files. And if people had that home studio or a way to home record, they could just track them and send them back, like all the bass on the record, before I picked any guitar players, I was like, okay, I need some bass on this record. I reached out to my buddy Corey McCormick, who is in Promise of the Real with Lukas Nelson. And I said, “I’m doing this record, would you play some bass on it? Right now it’s just drums and acoustic and a vocal.” He was like, “Yeah, send me over some files.” So Kenny, my engineer, sent Corey all the files, the whole record. Literally the next day, Corey sent them back and had basically just tracked the whole record. I was like, “Dude, you’re a monster.” And he’s like, “Well, these are great songs.”

And then every other song is just all different guitar players like Stuart Mathis. It’s a smorgasbord of great guitar players.

Technology really is amazing. When I started interviewing artists in 1991, I never imagined that I’d be able to use my computer to not only hear the artists I was talking to but to see them as well. I imagine that there were those who, during the pandemic, didn’t adapt to the ever-changing world of technology and some who may have decided to quit what they were doing rather than to learn new skills.

CHARLIE: I was watching a movie, I don’t even know what it was, a couple nights ago and somebody was talking about quitting and just doing something else and throwing in the towel. And this old lady said to him, I think it was actually a baseball movie, as she was dying, “Regret sits in your bones forever and it just eats away from the bones out.” If you don’t follow your passion, or what you love to do, even if it’s just 15 minutes out of the day, if you don’t do it, it’s going to eat away at you, and you’re not going to be as happy as you could possibly be. It don’t matter what you’re doing. If you love playing tennis, and you don’t go out and play tennis on the weekend, or if you like to try to pretend that you write songs, and you just decide, “I’m not going to write songs anymore,” if you throw in the towel, I don’t think it’s a good call.

While you’re not going to have any huge radio hits, I think songs like “Punk Rock Spy,” “Champagne, Cocaine, Cadillacs and Cash” and “Life of Rock and Roll” are what they call “focus” tracks in the biz. Those are the ones that I bet people gravitate to. Those are great songs but the one I really love is “Dear Captain.” It’s got a little different vibe than the others.

CHARLIE: It’s the most important song to me on the record. That’s one of the songs that I wrote in Berlin in 2002. It was a heavy time for me. Those times bring out the best songs, I think.

I had done a crappy demo of that song and one of my best friends somehow had gotten that cassette or CD out of my van and loved it. And was like, “Dude, you have to record the song. The song is great. This is a beautiful song that’s really from somewhere deep that will touch people. And you need to record the song or release the song. It can’t just be a CD at my house.” He was one of my very, very best friends and he died last year. I was kind of like, “I need to release this song for Johnny and for myself.”

I don’t know if you knew who Jeremy Tepper was, he started Outlaw Country Radio and was behind all the cruises and just a huge personality. He’s been around for a very long time in music and had his hands in a lot of stuff. Jeremy died recently, unexpectedly, within months of his best friend, Mojo Nixon. I was on the Outlaw Country Cruise with those guys when Mojo passed. Jeremy was kind of the captain of Outlaw Country. And the reason that “Champagne, Cocaine, Cadillacs and Cash” and “Life of Rock and Roll” are in heavy rotation right now and have been for months on Sirius Outlaw Radio was because of Jeremy Tepper. And so now that song, for me, takes on a whole other buddy. My drummer, Charlie Nicienski, said to me, “That’s my favorite song on the record because it reminds me of my dad.” It’s a deep tune.

Where do you live in New Mexico?

CHARLIE: We are a half hour south of Santa Fe, a small town called Cerrillos. It’s where they filmed Young Guns in the ’80s. It’s a cool little town. It’s a very old outlaw mining town. And there’s no police here, it’s all self-governed. If you get out of line, the people take care of you on their own, which is kind of neat. It’s old school. We’re totally off grid. We don’t have any electrical or city water or anything like that. We’re totally on well water and solar and it’s pretty awesome but at times it has its trials and tribulations. It’s not what you would think. Most people when they hear that they think, “Oh, man, you got some shack out on a mountain with an outhouse.” It’s not like that. It’s way more than just a solar panel and a car battery but there are people here that do live like that too, which is cool and ballsy. It’s very much a different animal living out here off the grid than it is being in the big city.

You’ve got a day job as a musician and a day job as hat maker. Do the worlds cross? Do people who know you from your hat making know you’re a musician and vice versa?

CHARLIE: Oh yeah, totally. I’m 56 and have been making music since I was 14. I was opening for Poison and Stryper when I was 15 years old. And then the cow punk thing, and I was making my hats in Custom Made Scare. I’ve been doing it a long time, I just never did it on a level of making money with it. I have met a lot of people through Lone Hawk. Most of the people on my record, I know because of Lone Hawk.

There’s no money in music, folks. You’ve got to have a job, you’ve got to have two careers, you have to have a side hustle. So that really has been an epic monumental thing, as far as still being able to do what I do, to have the freedom of making hats for cool people. During the pandemic, we couldn’t tour, couldn’t really do anything, we made the best out of it. And we brought in Sheryl Crow and Chris Robinson (The Black Crowes), and the guys from Blackberry Smoke, people from different bands that wore Lone Hawk, and we had them sign them. Even David Lee Roth signed hats. Then we did an online auction live on Instagram in our living room and raised over $100,000 for Navajo Nation. That was part of the silver lining of the pandemic. We lost a lot of people, and there’s a lot of deniers that don’t really want to look at all that, but the facts are the facts, and Navajo Nation got hit very hard. We were able to find a silver lining there. And it was really soul fulfilling to be able to help people like that, and get out of ourselves and be of service to other people.

My better half has Honeywood Vintage, which was really the beginning. There wouldn’t have been Lone Hawk without Honeywood Vintage. She kind of pushed me. She was like, “You’ve got to do something. What can you do?” I was like, “I can make hats.” We still have a store in Highland Park in Los Angeles. We’ve had that store for 11 years now and we have a store here in Madrid, the little town near where we live.

If somebody asks me what I love, what my passion is, I’ll say it’s music. That’s what I love doing. I like making music. But, when I told someone I make music, they asked, “What do you REALLY do?” and I go, “Make hats.”