Part Time Punks, Full Time Souls: An Interview with Vanessa Briscoe Hay

        Photo: Jason Thrasher


               Athens, Georgia is the stuff of musical legend. A rich springboard for some of the very best bands and songwriters of our time. Pylon were and still are one such band. A weird, funky, fiery art rock ensemble fronted by the strong force of Vanessa Briscoe Hay, Pylon's sound got inside of your body, torqued your muscles and your mind. Now Vanessa is back with Pylon Reenactment Society and her presence is as captivating and spirited as ever. Vocally, you can hear the arch of a bands story, you can hear the span of a life. Loss and resurrection, it's all there, encoded in these songs. "Creativity and ideas are things that just happen, and no one really knows where they come from," Vanessa says. "I wouldn’t say that they are impossible to keep alive, because to me, they exist independently from our conscious selves. If you are open to these things and make a little time for them, there they are.  If they are going to happen, they will, I really have no control over the creative process. As I get older, I see that it ebbs and flows." For now, it is flowing, and its heart, all these years later, is still intact, wildly beating, creating, and giving new voice in all of the right ways. Time marches on, and so do we, battle born, wiser, gentler and kicking still. An artist can only wait for the moment to hit, for the idea to take on skin and walk through fire to meet the sky. Pylon Reenactment Society's shine is writ large. A sky anthem of truth, clarity and utter roar.


AHC:​ Can you fill us in on the history behind the original Pylon? The band started in the late 70's, what was going on around you at the time and what was the Athens music scene like then, what was buzzing in the air and making your creative blood boil at that time?

Vanessa: The later part of the 1970’s was an exciting time to be in Athens, GA. It was a sleepy college town, but there were some exceptional people living there who were attracted to UGA’s art department and the general vibe. During my senior year, I was in an independent art class under Robert Croker. After critique, my classmates always sought each other out to share pitchers of beer wherever it was cheapest and to dance and talk. It was very inexpensive to live in Athens which created a lot of free time. Many of us had jobs at a local factory working a weekend shift that paid our living expenses. Our professors at UGA brought in artists from around the country like Elaine DeKooning. So, we knew that there was a larger world out there. Buzzing around town was an interesting group of people who dressed in thrift store clothes. Some lived here already, and some moved here for the liberal atmosphere. We all danced together like there was no tomorrow at house parties.  Vinyl was played over and over if we liked a track or a particular side of an album. Some parties lasted all night. It was humid and hot. No one had air conditioning. We might end up running through sprinklers or hanging out in kiddie wading pools and perhaps swimming. Chapter Three Records stocked the DIY and new music singles and albums that we read about in New York Rocker, Trouser Press and fanzines. The ground was fertile and prepped. The B-52s played their first show on Feb 14, 1977 and suddenly we had our own band and the scene grew and expanded. In the fall of 1978, two of my friends from art school-Randy Bewley and Michael Lachowski- decided to start a band as an art project. Through sheer luck, the guy who rented their studio space to them, lived upstairs and heard them practicing the same riffs over and over. Fellow art student and landlord Curtis Crowe happened to be a very good drummer and offered his services to them. After auditioning several guys to be the vocalist, Randy contacted me and asked me to try out on February 14,1979. The next day, they explained the premise of the band and said you’re in. The idea was that we would go to New York, play, get written up in New York Rocker and disband.  We performed for the first time in Athens just a few weeks later. Most people just stood and stared at us. The third show we did at a house in the country, the B-52’s were there and loved us. Some crazy dancing ensued. Kate Pierson and Fred Schneider took one of our home-made cassettes to Hurrah in NYC and got us booked. A few months later, we opened for the Gang of Four. Glenn O’Brien was there and wrote about us in Interview Magazine. We exceeded our goal and offers to come back to New York and elsewhere started coming in. We decided to keep doing it while we were having fun.

AHC: Is it true that Pylon's major influences, at the time, were the No Wave movement? Do you consider Pylon to be a part of that legacy? What were the bands overall major musical guiding lights?

Vanessa: We loved the No New York album, David Lynch’s Eraserhead Soundtrack, James Brown, some disco like “Flashlight “by Parliament-Funkadelic, Kraftwerk, the Ramones, Vibrators, Devo, Talking Heads, Gang of Four-we listened to this music and more. I don’t know if we had a definite guiding light, but to paraphrase our bassist, Michael Lachowski, we had the confidence from somewhere to say this is enough, this is a song. None of us, except Curtis had been in a rock band, I had been in the high school marching band and chorus but was never a soloist. We were artists who were using sound instead of other more formal materials. So, some of what we created together was pretty raw and stark. Some of music sounded like being inside of some type of big machine. 

AHC: The breakup of the band came as a collective decision to quit while you were still having fun. Looking back now, do you regret that decision, or do you still feel like that was what was best? When the art becomes a business and an endless to do list do you find it's nearly impossible to keep the creative soul of what you're aiming for alive?

Vanessa: I think later, when we were thinking about getting back together the second time, we were being told by people like R.E.M. that maybe the world will get you now., We thought that maybe we had given it up a little early and were willing reform and see what happened. It’s impossible to predict the past. I personally don’t have any regrets now and didn’t then. I was busy and had a beautiful daughter during that down time. When we reformed Pylon, we decided to behave in a more businesslike manner. Jennifer Blair came to Athens from Philadelphia to be our manager and some good things happened. We did some opening dates on stadium tours for our friends R.E.M. and the B-52’s. We also recorded an album, Chain.

Creativity and ideas are things that just happen, and no one really knows where they come from. I wouldn’t say that they are impossible to keep alive, because to me, they exist independently from our conscious selves. If you are open to these things and make a little time for them, there they are. It shouldn’t matter what your job is or what else is going on, if they are going to happen, they will, I really have no control over the creative process. As I get older, I see that it ebbs and flows. 

AHC: When did the idea come to you that it was time to reassemble and resurrect Pylon as the Pylon Reenactment Society? How does it feel to be playing and creating these incredible songs all these years later?

Vanessa: Between 2008-2012, I recorded with a rotating group of musicians in Athens called Supercluster. This was an outlet for songs I had coming into my head that were not Pylon- type material. Randy Bewley was the guitarist. We also had been playing together in Pylon since 2004. He had a heart attack and died on February 25, 2009. I was working closely with him on two projects. Pylon were in process of assembling and mastering Chomp More for a reissue by the DFA. Supercluster were about 3 songs from having the recordings done for our CD Waves. Both bands were heart broken and grief stricken at the loss of our good friend who was like a brother to us, especially Michael Lachowski. I needed to be busy, so I picked myself up and finished the Supercluster CD with the help of Deerhunter’s guitarist Bradford Cox. He had done a good cover of “Cool” and I thought he might understand what Randy would have done. Jason NeSmith was our mixing and recording engineer. I worked very closely with him during this project and we got to be friends. The whole process of recording that CD and herding the Pylon project along was very therapeutic during a very bad year. Jason then came onboard as Supercluster’s guitarist along with Bryan Poole and we did a little touring. After Supercluster stopped performing in early 2013, we kept in touch. In 2014, Jason approached me to see if I would perform a few songs for Art Rocks Athens, which was a series of events that explored the relationship between art and music in Athens, GA between 1975-85. I surprised him when I said that I wanted to do some Pylon material and asked him to put a band together. Since Pylon were a part of both the art and music scenes during that time, I felt that our music should be represented. Jason got his band Casper & the Cookies to back me up. I had already worked with bassist Kay Stanton, in Supercluster and I knew the drummer Gregory Sanders as well. He is a huge Pylon fan. We performed as Pylon Reenactment Society for 15 minutes. Everyone loved it and I let it go. In 2015, Jason asked if we would perform again for an Art Rocks event opening for Fred Schneider. Joe Rowe, the Glands drummer, was tapped to replace Gregory who was having shoulder surgery and I brought in my friend from Big Atomic, Damon Denton, on keyboards to add some textures and sounds. I didn’t want the music to be static. I wanted it to be fresh and fun. That show went over extremely well and it was a lot of fun. Dressy Bessy heard about this show and asked us to open a few dates for them and it went on from there. We performed two shows for the Pylon Live reissue by Chunklet in July of 2016.
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At the end of 2016, we went out to LA to play at Part Time Punks with some of their best female fronted bands - PANTHAR, Sex Stains and The Tissues. PTP is a monthly party at the Echoplex which is curated by Michael Stock who has a long running radio show of the same name on KXLU in LA. Josiah Mazzachi recorded us for rebroadcast on the radio show. Michelle Roche, our media relations person for print and radio, listened to it while looking for music to promote our band and said you should put this out. I took another listen and realized that it had a great live sound, the performance was spot on and the recording itself was of good quality. I had basically thrown it in a drawer because I usually don’t like live recordings that much. We released this as Part Time Punk Session on a vinyl EP with the help of Henry Owings at Chunklet.  It feels great to be a part of this music again.  It’s joyous and life affirming. I am extremely lucky that these particular musicians want to play this music with me. Kay, Jason, Joe and Damon are fun to work with and have become good friends. When I look out at a show and see people dancing and absorbing the sounds, it makes me very happy.


AHC: What is your take on music at or current moment in time? Are you optimistic about the kids these days? Do you think punk today still carries that same rebellious, resistant fighters spirit?

Vanessa: I don’t know if I have an accurate picture of what is going on everywhere in music right now. What I have seen and heard recently is intriguing. I see a need to express and create and have fun-just like I did.  

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​Photo by Judy Rose, WXNA, Nashville, TN.
L Jason NeSmith, R Vanessa Briscoe Hay


The younger ones are aware of what is happening and very opinionated. Some of the high schoolers are rebelling and trying to change things. It’s going to be their world soon and I have a lot of hope for this new generation. Some of our shows, like the one we did recently in Nashville seem evenly split between underage music lovers and people who are older. Kay noticed that half of the audience there had black X s on their hands which means they were under 21.

AHC: Any words of advice you would offer to musicians struggling and toiling in the midnight hour, hitting creative walls and banging their heads up against them?

Vanessa: Don’t bang your head against the wall. It doesn’t do any good. It’s just like when you try to remember something. Don’t try so hard. Do something else for a little while and come back to it. It will happen. That said, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t be undisciplined. I am saying, have a little patience with yourself.

AHC: what's next for the band? Any upcoming shows or projects you'd like to mention? 

Vanessa: We are going to be at the Sarasota Film Festival in Florida and at a 2-day festival in honor of GA Tech Radio stations 50th Anniversary “WREKtacular” in Atlanta in April. We have written a few new songs with hopes of writing some more. We plan to record either a single or an EP soon and do a little touring this summer. At this point, we’ve performed 36 shows and it has been a lot of fun! But, we could not have done it without help from our friends and people like Shauna McLarnon who has brought attention to us via Shameless Promotion PR and part time punks everywhere.

For more information about us and our upcoming dates: Pylon Reenactment Society



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