X finds more fun in the new world

X finds more fun in the new world
Exene Cervenka, right, and Billy Zoom of the band X perform at a day party during the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas on Friday, March 14 , 2008.
Jack Plunkett / AP Photo

By -- Greg Burk

April 10, 2008

X'S most famous song is about leaving Los Angeles. But fortunately for Angelenos, the original four punk chunkers keep returning every year or two since guitarist Billy Zoom rejoined a decade ago.

The Xers seem to be in four different places these days -- except now, roughly a third of the way through their "13-31" tour. (The 31 represents the years the band has been around. And the 13? They used to claim to be unlucky in love. Lucky in music, though.)

FOR THE RECORD:
X: In Thursday's The Guide, a photo accompanying an article about the band X was credited to Slash Records. The photo was taken by Frank Gargani. —

"This tour is a blast," singer Exene Cervenka says by phone as X rolls though Utah. She's running into a lot of old friends, and she hasn't yet been away too long from her husband, Jason Edge, guitarist for her other band, the Original Sinners. A fourth solo album is due next year, and in May she opens a show of her collages and notebooks at New York's DCKT Gallery.

Cervenka got back to her Midwestern roots a couple of years back, moving to the Missouri countryside -- fertile ground for the collages: "I have a series that's mostly photographs that I've found, and they have a very Midwestern, Victorian air about them. I do a lot of art and music. In my barn."

Bassist John Doe, the man with the groaning baritone, settles behind the van's wheel; it seems that with his solo project going strong, he hardly gets off the road: "I've taken to saying that I drive for a living, I just play music at night."

Doe says X will pull out a surprise or two for the L.A. shows. He's been working with Wilco on his next thing but isn't bothered when people keep asking if X will make a new studio album; he and Cervenka (his ex-wife) co-wrote a song on his last solo record. "Exene and I have been talking about it for a while. I'm open."

On March 30, X hit Seattle, home of the Experience Music Project museum -- which has displayed the silver jacket Zoom used to wear. Has he seen it there?

"I have, and I was kind of annoyed, actually, because they took all the buttons off, and they put the collar down," Zoom says. "It doesn't look like me anymore."

Zoom is producing the band Cat Fur and has designed a signature guitar for Gretsch based on his unique 30-year standby. "They took it to Kaiser Medical Center and X-rayed it, and they drew up prints from the X-rays," he says. "It came out so good, that's what I'm playing now."

As for DJ Bonebrake, about a dozen rock, jazz, Latin and classical units will be missing his drums and vibraphone while he's on the road. Sometimes, he says, he has four gigs in a weekend. Is there any kind of music he'd like to add? "Maybe play a classical marimba concerto. I've never done it with an orchestra."

"You gotta get me back to the base," X sang back when. And the base is L.A. That lyric was about a crazy guy on a bus. The X folk are on a bus, but they're less crazy now. They're having fun, which requires enjoying the moment and forgetting the bad times.

"That's why we're still doing it," Doe says. "Because we have short memories."

X
WHERE: Music Box @ Fonda, 6126 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

WHEN: 9 p.m. today and Friday

PRICE: $25 (today's show sold out)

INFO:www.goldenvoice.com