Fly Ashtray in the early days: Eric Thomas, John Beekman, James Kavoussi, Chris Thomas, Mike Anzalone. Photo by Kathleen Milea
According to founding member/guitarist Chris Thomas, Fly Ashtray originally came together in 1983 at Fordham University less as a band than something resembling a music club. Moving at a casual pace (“We were a pretty slovenly proposition, back in the ’80s,” Thomas recalls), they began rehearsing more, and a solid lineup came together over a few years. The band wasn’t expecting broad appeal or commercial success (despite having a manager in those early days), but they eventually figured they ought to start releasing some of the songs with the crazy titles, which they started recording for their own amusement.
In the early ’90s, the group caught the attention of Kramer who co-released their debut full-length Clumps Takes A Ride on Shimmy-Disc with New York label See Eye. Uncle Wiggly — which included Fly Ashtray guitarist James Kavoussi (alternating on drums with WFMU DJ Wm “Bill” Berger) and former Fly Ashtray bassist Mike Anzalone — had become a Shimmy-Disc band so it made sense for this band to jump on board.
I caught Fly Ashtray at a CMJ Music Marathon show in late 1993, a few months after they recorded Tone Sensations of The Wondermen, which Shimmy-Disc would release the following year. That night, I was blown away. The band fired on all four cylinders, spinning out all manner of brainy indie rock, and doing it with precision. It might be my selective memory taking over, but I swear that drummer Glenn Luttman, was swaying from side-to-side during songs, from behind a kit which was set with the snare and hi-hat on his right side instead of the left.
After the album came out, the group also made a rare trek away from the tri-state area, embarking on a West Coast tour in 1994 with Sun City Girls and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. “That was like the one time we felt like we were doing a bunch of shows with acts that it kind of made sense to be playing with,” Kavoussi says. “With the Thinking Fellers, it was really wonderful meeting them and hanging out with them. I think there’s definitely a similar sentiment, with off-kilter chord progressions and bizarre arrangements. And some goofy sounding vocals [and] really bizarre or almost unpleasant-sounding riffs suddenly transforming into something pretty.”
Back home it was hard to make much traction, with any of New York’s sub-scenes. “We weren’t part of that scum rock scene. We weren’t part of whatever you want to call… the angry scene,” Kavoussi says. “Unsane, Cop Shoot Cop. All those angry bands. We hung out with them. Once we opened for Unsane. That was another one where their audience was like, ‘Who the fuck are you guys?’ Sleepyhead, Kicking Giant – we played shows with them but we weren’t part of that love rock scene, as they used to call it. The only other band, interestingly enough, that felt like it was part of the same scene was Uncle Wiggly.”
Still the band continued on, albeit at their own pace. Recording more than two albums for Shimmy-Disc was not in the cards, so they bobbed around, with a few other labels taking them on. Hemiola, the UK-based imprint, released the 10-inch EP Let’s Have Some Crate a year prior to Tone Sensations. Dark Beloved Cloud released Flummoxed and Sawgrass Subligette (1997 and 1999 respectively) which jumped from trebly guitar pop to noise tracks that could clear a room.
Kavoussi, Thomas, bassist John Beekman and Thomas’ wife Sari Rubenstein (Gamma Rays) were involved with RUBULAD, initially a recording/rehearsal studio that doubled as a performance space in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, named for the corresponding letters in its phone number. (The location was acknowledged with a song title on the Flummoxed disc.) It has moved locations a few times since then and continues to serve as a performance space in Bushwick.
Near the end of the ’90s, bassist Beekman bowed out, replaced by Dave Abel. Luttman also left the band four years later, with Eric Marc Cohen filling the drum seat. Abel and Cohen had played together in the band Autobody and already knew Fly Ashtray. Autobody member Jim Abramson had also played bass on Sawgrass Subligette. For Abel, already a fan of Shimmy-Disc and albums like Clumps Takes a Ride, joining the band was a no-brainer. “It didn’t sound like anything, and it sounded somehow very New York City at the same time,” he says of the music. “Similar to the Thinking Fellers, they have a way of making small sounds seem kind of big. But it’s also… that effort… the credo of minimum effort for maximum impact.”
Abel had big shoes to fill, as Beekman’s bass parts often sounded like four different notes being played at the same time, according to his bandmates. “I did a really, really intensive study of these songs,” Abel explains, “and kind of burned them into my brain just to try to hear what the hell the bass was doing, so I could replicate it somewhat.”
Beekman, who still occasionally joins the band for a song, shrugs off any fancy technique in his recordings. “I’ve said to Dave, if it’s hard to play, that’s probably not what I was doing! I have certain rhythmic quirks that might be hard to pick up,” he explains. “My hand-eye coordination is not great. I’m never going to be a super fancy player. But I’ve always approached the bass geometrically.”
The Thomas/Kavoussi/Abel/Cohen lineup didn’t release anything in the first years of the 21st century. But by 2007, CDrs with titles like The Pantswin Folder and Reports began appearing every few years, with indications that they fine-tuned their signature indie rock with equal amounts of pop smarts and quirk. Just as soon as they lured you in with a psychedelic wall of guitars, they were just as likely to get noisy as they were to snap out of the chaos and into some power chords that tugged on your ear. On Reports they even invited prolific bedroom recording guru R. Stevie Moore to add vocals to a track called “Fucky Doodles” and lyrics to “To Sir with Ignells” (“Ignells” being a word that had crept up in numerous Fly Ashtray song titles over the years).
More recently, they have released a few album-length cassettes on Fuzzy Warbles, including 2024’s Doggerel (which can also be found on CD). But if there was one place, other than the Shimmy-Disc era, that serves as a good entry into the Fly Ashtray catalog, it would arguably be We Buy Everything You Have, which came out on vinyl in 2016 on the Old Gold label. Everything the band had attempted over the years seems to come to full bloom here. It opens with “Our Hour of Ore,” a piano-driven tune that might be spoofing ’70s sunshine pop, but it’s so infectious enough that it doesn’t matter. From there, they create a driving Kraut-rock groove (“Mulligan”), shift between those early post-punk roots and slow tempos (“Son of Trash Compactor”) and reveal how overmodulated guitars still enthrall (“Coefficient of Haze,” “Urn of Corn”). It was also one of the few albums where some tracks were done with an outside engineer, in this case former Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone. A few others from that session appeared on the digital album Grit is The New Privilege.
Having played together for so long, it might be easy to assume that Fly Ashtray has its own process for writing songs. But drummer Cohen — who describes their sound as “arena rock for small rooms” — still finds some touchstones. “It’s kind of a special way of making music, with a lot of the things I love: surf elements that are very influential in there, noise,” he says. “Maybe it goes back to [early ‘60s British producer] Joe Meek and “Telstar” – a combination of noise and surf and really crappy recording technique that’s so satisfying that it approaches the level of something that’s super produced. That can be pop music.”
Abel builds on that. “How do you play guitar in a way that’s not clichéd or annoying or something that’s been done before,” the bassist says. “Fly Ashtray has an aesthetic around the guitar: don’t be fancy, don’t show your chops unless you’re doing it to make fun of people who have chops.”
The entire Fly Ashtray song list now numbers between 250 and 300 tunes, all of which are listed on a spreadsheet for the band to peruse when making a setlist. (A separate speadsheet catalogs about 180 ridiculous song titles.) Band practices are still scheduled once a week, whether or not they have a show in the works. And the song list continues to grow.
Kavoussi laughs when he admits that band hasn’t played outside of Manhattan or Brooklyn in the 21st century. He expresses hopes of trying to book a show at WFMU’s performance space Monty Hall. “That would be a big tour for us to play a show in Jersey City,” he says. “We’d have to go over a toll bridge!” (Since our conversation, Fly Ashtray has been confirmed to appear at Dromfest ’25, a three-day event in Catskill, New York.)
In the meantime, the group is finishing recordings for the next release.
When asked to explain their longevity and continued skill at creating new music, all the current band members respond from slightly different angles. “I think one of the reasons we’ve stuck around for so long is, for the most part, we’ve always got along with each other,” says Kavoussi. “I used to joke and say that the way Fly Ashtray works is that everybody gets their chance to play dictator. Meaning that, when someone comes in with a fairly complete song, they can just say to everyone else, okay, I’d like you to try playing this. I’m fine with that because I’ll come in with a song a few weeks later [and say the same thing].”
Thomas, who has been there since the beginning, sees it in a similar way. “I think the answer is we don’t know how to stop. And there’s no reason to stop,” he says. “I think it’s just our own sort of ornery resilience to the demands of normal reality. We feel like we have to keep plowing this furrow. Because what else are we going to do on a Wednesday night? Kind of like poker night, except it’s creative.”
Abel, when asked, references Dan Cuddy’s thought mentioned at the start about Part One is this article: “I can’t not rock,” adding, “It’s not so much doing it. It’s that not doing it is deeply dissonant, cognitively, spiritually, artistically. Not happening is not an option. It’s sort of unacceptable.”
A few weeks after talking to Kavoussi, he sends me a rough mix of a song called “Flen.” It proves that several decades later, Fly Ashtray never ceases to come up with killer riffs – power chords complemented by shimmery leads, with nonsense lyrics bobbing around in the background. It also reminds me of something the guitarist said when discussing the next album, which is now almost completed. “We have a couple of working titles. We’re thinking of Most Importantly, Have Fun” he says, “with some really, really depressing imagery on the cover.”
Artwork by Eric Marc Cohen
As the story went to press, the title has been altered slightly, but the sentiment remains the same: Most of All, Have Fun. The cover art, as seen here, now veers more towards humor instead of depression. Considering the band’s history, it all sums things up pretty well.
