GUADALCANAL DIARY

The Big Wheel Rolls (again...)
by Jason Slatton

Walking In The Shadow Of The Big Man. Jamboree. 2X4. Flip-Flop -- over the course of eight years and four albums, Guadalcanal Diary (Murray Attaway: guitar, vocals; Jeff Walls: guitars; Rhett Crowe: bass & John Poe: drums, vocals) deftly danced alongside R.E.M. as one of Georgia's finest exports to the outside world. The only similarity, however, was the fact that both prominently featured guitars, and each band had four members. Whether or not Guadalcanal Diary got lost in the shuffle in the wake of R.E.M.'s success is arguable and ultimately unimportant.

There were several criteria that made this band important: (1) the steady, agile, crafty rhythm section of Poe and Crowe, (2) guitarist Jeff Walls's ability to shift from reverb-drenched manic-guitar-twang to a line straight out of an old Buzzcocks album to literally everything in between, and (3) vocalist/guitarist Murray Attaway's penchant for touching on everything from weird Civil War mythology to serial killers to Michael Rockefeller to fervent religious faith to a surreal place where it's "always Saturday" in his lyrics (although the whole band would often write and arrange songs by committee). Nobody before or after ever sounded like Guadalcanal.

The group disbanded after 1989's Flip Flop (produced, like their first and third albums, by Don Dixon), Poe going on to join Love Tractor for a short while, Walls to Hillbilly Frankenstein, Crowe to a house full of young 'uns and Attaway to a solo deal with Geffen Records. In the wake of Attaway's second solo effort (as of yet label-less), the band decided to get back together for two shows, one here in Athens, one in Atlanta. Murray recently sat in the Flagpole office, to, well, face the music.

FP: Was recording your new solo album the impetus for you to get back together with the band, or were there other extenuating circumstances?

Murray Attaway: Yeah, it was my idea. There was a point last April when that happened; Don Dixon was producing my album, and we'd already recorded a lot of material for the record. In fact, it's kind of funny seeing that DB's poster on the wall behind you because [Peter] Holsapple and [Will] Rigby both played on it. So we had done all these sessions with them, and we still had money and still had time, so we kind of decided to do some more. I asked John Poe to come play drums, and we did some stuff as a three-piece -- me on guitar, him on drums and Dixon on bass.