The band’s latest offering is Time Has Come, a punchy collection of a dozen or so songs that stands a good chance of expanding the list of favorites for the band’s devotees. The Woggles are led by Manfred Jones, aka “the Mighty Manfred,” famous not only for helming the band through its 35-year history but also as the host of a long-running radio show on Little Steven’s Underground Garage on the SiriusXM’s satellite radio service.
Jones spoke with Garagerocktopia by telephone from Atlanta, where the band was getting set to play a couple of sets later that evening. He sounded every bit as jovial as he comes across on his radio show, despite the fact that we caught up to him just as he was sitting down to eat.
Estimates vary on the exact lifespan of the average rock and roll band, but the consensus seems to be somewhere between three to five years. The Woggles, whose current members hail in locales from Los Angeles to London to Alabama, have been at it for over 35 years, and to hear Jones talk about it, there’s still a whole lot of hooks to make and a lot of songs left to play.
“Because our hearts keep beating and I keep breathing,” he said with a laugh, when asked how he keeps coming up with so many catchy songs this many years in. “If you have a passion for making music then you keep making music. There may be only so many chords, but it’s all shared experience. You hum a melody, it’s there.”
“Everything in art is an expression, and our expression is to write songs, to perform, to communicate the songs to an audience, to feel that energy from an audience, to have that experience together. “
When asked if he ever thought that, back in the late ‘80s when The Woggles began, that the group would still be putting out albums so many years later, he cited an interview from a late-60s-early 70s rock doc that he said summed up his own feelings about being in a long-lasting rock and roll band.
“That’s an interesting thought,” Jones elaborated. “I recently saw a clip from a Rolling Stones documentary from the late ‘60s and they asked Mick Jagger if he could picture doing this when he was 60, and the answer, without blinking an eye was ‘of course.”
“With me, the answer is I’ll do it as long as I can do it, until circumstances are aligned so that I can’t. Somehow, I’ve been able to weasel my way, slither my way, salamander my way for what seems like a long time now. It seems like a long time but yet it’s not a long time. You blink three times and the next thing you know, your kid is graduating from college – which in my case, she really is. I feel blessed that I’ve been able to keep going. I don’t know how this has occurred, but somehow I’m still here. And we even have another damn record out!”
Also a part of the band this time out are The Schizophonics’ Pat Beers and Peter Greenberg of Lyres and Barrence Whitfield and the Savages. This has helped to make for a powerful new album, with cause aplenty for salivation from devotees of garage rock, power pop and mod fans. Sadly, some of the collaboration is prompted due to tragedy, in this case the passing of longtime Woggles guitarist Jeff Walls in 2019.
The album opens with the tribute song, “Flesh Hammer,” which was the nickname of Walls, a prominent alumnus of the Athens, Georgia music scene, one that has produced several all-time great power pop/jangle pop bands. Walls previously played guitar for the band Guadacanal Diary, amongst others.
In utilizing the services of Day, who recently re-formed The Prisoners, and Pringle, Jones said he wanted to honor Walls while at the same time lessen the pressure of having a new guitarist try to fill Walls’ shoes.
“Jeff Walls was a phenomenal player, a great producer, a good songwriter,” said Jones. “I didn’t want anyone to get drilled down with ‘well, this isn’t Jeff.’ So I went back to a two-guitar thing, and Shane was there also because he do the R&B thing and can play sax.”
“When Jeff passed away, the idea was to use different contributions from all of our guitar player friends. The pandemic kind of got in the way of that, but when that was over, we did a couple of songs with Pat Beers.”
Bringing Day on board was not only an easy choice but one that was likely destined to happen anyway, as Jones and Day have long known each other and have long admired each others’ work.
“Graham, after the Prisoners, continued on with a bunch of
different bands – Thee Mighty Caesars, The
Solarflares, and we shared a booking agent,” recounted Jones. “The agent booked a couple of shows that we
played together, and from that point forward we were mutual fans of each other,
and in fact, he had us play his wedding.
Even at that time, he said if there was ever an opportunity or we ever
needed somebody
else to play guitar, he wanted to do it.”
The other prong in the two-guitar attack on Time Has Come is Shane Pringle, also a respected veteran rocker.
“Shane is from Atlanta and we’ve known each other for a long time and he’s played on a lot of different bands in Atlanta,” Jones explained. “He played in Tiger Tiger, who have several records out. A tune Shane had written (“The World Keeps Bringing Me Down”) was the only Coolest Song In The World that that Tiger Tiger had the Underground Garage. So he was in that family of musicians in Atlanta that we were aware of with an interest in our music.”
The influence of all these artists is very clear on Time Has Come, but the project -- released on Wicked Cool Records -- still sounds very much like a Woggles album, particularly with the kinds of riffs that Jones and company have generated all along. Despite the presence of so many notables, nobody should mistake this offering for any kind of supergroup everybody-does-their-own-thing kind of project.
“These guys are all fans of the band,” said Jones, “so they know
the road and the realm that we inhabit, so they wanted to make sure that this
was a Woggles album.
That Woggles history goes all the way back to 1987. Jones recalled
the band’s initial gig at an Athens house party which could have been seen as inauspicious
at the time but sounds like fun hearing Jones tell about it.
“The first show we did was four songs, five songs,” recollected Jones. “I
can’t quite think of all of them, but one song we definitely did was (The 13th Floor Elevators’) “You’re
Gonna Miss Me” and I think we did (Arthur Lee and Love’s) “Little Red Book.”
And I think maybe we also did Standells “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White” …
and maybe a Bo Diddley thing.”
“A roommate I was living with at the time made me a soapbox
because, he said, ‘you’re always standing on a (bleeping) soap box, so he gave
me one to literally stand on. During the
last song I fell off right into the drum kit, but that was OK because both
guitar players broke strings at the same time. It was quite the finale, legendary
to the eight people that were there, no doubt.”
Some years later, The Woggles went on to establish themselves as a favorite of garage rock fans the world over. This rendered Jones a natural selection to be a show host for Little Steven’s Underground Garage. The radio station expanded Little Steven Van Zant’s two-hour syndicated show, which continues to feature new artists alongside classic bands and music, into a 24-7 radio channel was Sirius Satellite Radio’s first original, branded content .
Jones to this day continues to host his three-hour show at 9 a.m. PST on the satellite radio service. Despite being in an established band, Jones doesn’t deny that being part of the radio station has also broadened his own musical tastes.
“I can honestly say there are things that Steven put in the playbook that I was not familiar with,” admitted Jones. “For example, “I was driving down the road and I heard this track from Johnny Thunder, ‘I’m Alive’, that Tommy James wrote. The Shondells version is OK but the Johnny Thunder version is beyond the red, so awesome, that I almost drove off the road when I heard it. And I’m just saying to myself, ‘wow, I’ve never heard this song before.’”
“But it’s also a two-way street. Some years ago, I found Chubby Checker’s song “Karate Monkey” and I thought ‘this would be a great song to do.’ (which The Woggles eventually did). He got upset that he didn’t know that Chubby Checker did it, and he was not only upset that he didn’t know, but that it was such an awesome song that Chubby Checker did that he didn’t know about. Sometimes the student teaches the master.”
Don't Forget to listen to Garagerocktopia Radio, alternating with Blue Mood, Tuesday nights on KUCR Radio, 88.3 FM Riverside, California, where you can hear artists like The Woggles, plus many others who have appeared on our hallowed pages and whose music has inspired us. Can't tune in live? No problem! head over to Mixcloud and catch the show there.
We have some other features already in the works here at Garagerocktopia. Artists have been sending us some very cool stuff. As always, we don’t make any guarantees in stone but we’re happy to say we’ve gotten a lot of very promising music sent to us, and we’re always happy to spread the word about about bands that are playing the way-out kinds of music we profile here. Send us a line and we’ll talk.
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I knew asking you about posting another was a good idea, even if it took the whole school year didn’t it kreutz?
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