Metro Pulse/Music/Nashville Pussy

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What:
Nashville Pussy with Betty Blowtorch

When:
Friday, Nov. 23 at 10 p.m.

Where:
Blue Cats

Cost:
$10/$12.

The Grammy-nominated, fire-breathing metal band with the hot-to-handle name lives up to expectations

by Matthew T. Everett

Ruyter Suys, the fireplug lead guitarist for Nashville Pussy, is celebrating her birthday at home in Atlanta. It's early in the afternoon; so far she's gotten some temporary tattoos and candy in the mail. Her husband, Blaine Cartwright, who plays rhythm guitar and sings in the band, is out shopping for a gift right now. Suys knows exactly what she wants, though she doubts he'll be able to find it.

"A life-size sex doll that looks like Andy Pettitte," she says. "Not a blow-up doll, though. I want one that's solid." Suys developed a debilitating crush on the New York Yankees pitcher during this season's World Series, even though her favorite team is the hometown Braves. It's so bad that she'll settle for naked pictures of him if she can't get the doll.

Since forming in 1996, Nashville Pussy has built their image on these kinds of cartoonish, over-the-top sexual shenanigans, along with a well-publicized penchant for heavy drug use and a chugging, lacerating mix of Southern rock, '80s metal and punk. There's the name, of course, an obvious affront to the humorless pop music establishment and general standards of decency. There are also the song titles, like "Blowjob From a Rattlesnake," "She's Got the Drugs," and "Piece of Ass." And then there are the ways the band chooses to display itself: On the cover of their first record, Let Them Eat Pussy, Suys and former bass player Corey Parks posed with two male models in a simulation of the title. The back cover of the next album, High as Hell, shows Suys and Parks in their underwear on a king-size bed, shotgunning a joint, in a photo dripping with overtones of male-fantasy lesbianism. Before the 6-foot-plus Parks departed in September of last year, the two often played out the same fantasy scenario on stage, kissing and grinding to the cheers of their mostly male audiences.

If the sexual showmanship and exuberant drug use are a joke, though, no one's told the band. Suys, Cartwright, new bassist Tracy Almazan and drummer Jeremy Thompson are entirely serious about their music and the lifestyle that goes along with it. Suys seems to take for granted that any legitimate rock 'n' roll band follows the same regimen of excess. Their own frequent tours with Motörhead have served as an apprenticeship in rock debauchery.

"It always surprises everybody, given how many drugs we used to take, but the drug use in this band really rose to a professional level when we were with Lemmy," Suys says.

The Nashville Pussy mythology has been a curse and a blessing. "It evens itself out," Suys says. "The name has helped us become popular with the miscreants and bad boys out there, but all sorts of people hate us because of the name. Some people think that the fact we call ourselves Nashville Pussy is offensive. It equals out whatever popularity we might get because of the name."

The Grammy awards show in 1999 highlights the double edge of a name like Nashville Pussy. The band was nominated in the Best Metal Performance category for the song "Fried Chicken and Coffee," from Let Them Eat Pussy. The nomination itself was a small victory for an underground metal band; they scored an even greater coup when the presenter said their name aloud on prime-time television. But she also added a bit of advice Suys didn't particularly care for: "This chick says Nashville Pussy kind of under her breath, and then she says, 'They've got to do something about that name.' Her name's Deborah Cox. That's worse than ours," Suys says.

Nashville Pussy didn't win a Grammy. And Suys says she didn't even have a good time at the ceremony. "The only people there from our category were us and the new lead singer from Judas Priest," she says. "There was nobody there. Jimmy Page was there, though, and so was Jimmy Carter. But Andy Griffith wasn't there. He was nominated, but didn't show up. I could have been hanging out with Andy Griffith and Jimmy Page. That would have been my dream date. We could have been talking about fishing and snorting cocaine."

They've just finished recording their third album, tentatively titled Keep On Fuckin', though they may change that for the U.S. release. "We'll probably call it Keep On Fuckin' in Europe, where they don't give a damn," Suys says. "We'll call it Say Something Nasty here, where they do give a damn."

Suys says the addition of Almazan last fall has "elevated the band's ability to play beyond any expectations. People can really dance to our music now." The only drawback is that Almazan doesn't breathe fire as Parks did, and doesn't plan on learning how. "We had an awful lot of problems when we used to do that," Suys says. "It worked really good in little clubs, but in an arena it's not that exciting. But people get a little freaked out about it in small clubs."