Jon Spencer is on the line with the Straight when a small but audible commotion erupts in his tour van, somewhere on the road between San Diego and Anaheim, California. "One second, please," he says, turning away from the phone. "That's where they make them!" he barks, slowly and precisely. "That's the factory! Yeah! That's where they make the LEGO!" Returning to the conversation, Spencer apologizes. "We're passing LEGOLAND," he explains, "and the PowerSolo are Danish, so they're big LEGO fans. It's a very exciting thing for us here."

Spencer is on the road yet again with Heavy Trash, the side project that went from bullshitting sessions with his friend, guitarist Matt Verta-Ray, and a casually assembled eponymous debut in 2005, to a globe-spanning megaventure with multiple guest players for this year's Going Way Out With Heavy Trash. Hailing from Aarhus, Denmark, PowerSolo is the three-piece that's accompanying Heavy Trash on this particular jaunt, lending support as an opening act, then backing Spencer and Verta-Ray to reportedly vicious effect for the big show. Says the vocalist-guitarist about his latest discovery, "I don't know what it is they're putting in the water in that little Danish town, but they can sure play rockabilly."

It would be a stretch to say the influential Spencer is a traditionalist, especially when you examine the ratio of blues (not much) to wiggy, postmodern trash 'n' groove (lots) embodied over 17 years with his main act, Blues Explosion. But the New York–based musician has clearly elected to place one foot in the fertile mulch of early, southern Americana. Heavy Trash lets Spencer draw from old rockabilly greats more recognizably than ever before. The project's 2005 debut was awash in slapback echo and the kind of cornpone sentiment (mixed with lascivious excitement) that tumbles intuitively from the man. Going Way Out is the superior record though, being altogether more vivid, lurid, expansive, and—to use one of Spencer's favourite words—weird than the first. All too appropriately, the cover of the album (by comic-book artist Tony Millionaire) depicts Spencer and Verta-Ray as boxcar-hopping hobos with flying saucers bearing down from overhead.

"I think it does paint the picture of what someone might find inside the record," Spencer remarks. "I like to call it rockabilly, but it's not pure rockabilly. Nor is it this modern, heavy metal, scary rockabilly. It might be confusing for some people." Confusing, sure, but gloriously so. "Pure Gold" starts things off with Verta-Ray's guitar rumbling against the thump of upright bass, the click of sticks on a snare rim, and Spencer announcing "Heavy Trash album number two" with a mangled Charlie Feathers accent. Spencer howls about a "king-sized drag" over the '60s pop of "Outside Chance". "Double Line" goes from Bo Diddley jungle toms to a middle section that, through funky drumming and organ, evokes pre-Disneyfied Times Square after midnight. "That Ain't Right" apes Johnny Cash, and "Crazy Pritty Baby" sounds suspiciously like "Summertime Blues" by Eddie Cochrane. About Cochrane, Spencer says: "I think over the years I've appreciated his music more. It's more sweet. I think initially I was drawn to the tougher, meaner stuff. And the weirder stuff."

It doesn't get much weirder than the Going Way Out closer "You Can't Win". Taking their inspiration and title from the 1926 autobiography of itinerant petty crook Jack Black, the men of Heavy Trash go for strip-club grind and analog-tape manipulation, allowing Spencer to deliver a hilarious but spooky sermon on post 9/11 America. "Bizarre rituals to power the powerful," he cries at one point, sounding like a fairground Swami mesmerizing the patrons of Jack Ruby's Carousel Club circa 1962. Spencer acknowledges the song's political tenor, but adds: "At the same time it's addressing the frustrations of playing rockabilly, and rock 'n' roll, and being treated with a lack of respect in my country. It's very different to go over and play Europe. There's a history of this in music and the arts. I don't think that this country takes care of what it's got, and this country invented rock 'n' roll. And rock 'n' roll really did change the world."

Spencer thinks America has forgotten what rock 'n' roll is. "It's all tied up with the blues and racial issues, and it's a big hairy thing in the United States," he explains with a heavy sigh. "For me it's a very frustrating thing." That might explain why he finds himself driving through California with three LEGO-loving Danes, or why Going Way Out saw Heavy Trash backed by even more Danes (two members of the Tremolo Beer Gut, one from PowerSolo), four Canadians (the Sadies), and a mere two New Yorkers (studio pros Simon Chardiet and Phil Hernandez). It's worth remembering that Spencer has always had a feel for the obscure, the profane, and the underbelly of American life, back to his days with trash aestheticians Pussy Galore. If mainstream America was interested in rockabilly, Spencer and Verta-Ray would probably be mining something else. "Rockabilly is this thing that happened very early on," Spencer says, "and then it just sorta got left. And I think, for me, it's because of that: this strange little eddy, this little patch in the river that goes off and spins around. It holds a real fascination. I just find it romantic."

Not to mention weird.

Georgia Straight, November 2007