Ill Eagle are two teenage punkers from the eastern Kentucky/western Virginia Appalachian nexus. Dave Mullins plays guitar, Patrick Scarod plays drums, and they both sing, churning out blistering hardcore with screeched vocals and tight start-stop sonic energy. What Ill Eagle does that turns the punk genre on its head is they sneak intelligent political dialogue into their set.

I caught their act at Insomniacathon 2001, an 82-hour poetry, music and film festival at the BRYCC House, a youth-run anarchist community center in Louisville, Kentucky last February.

I was in the lobby when I heard this strident, energized hardcore noise. Then something startling happened. The music stopped and there were tentative, then argumentative voices going back and forth on the microphone as if some kind of dispute was unfolding.

When I got up to the front, there was a heated discussion on police brutality taking place. A couple people felt like it was wrong to make sweeping judgements of cops as individuals, that they have a stressful job and usually they do the best they can although sometimes they overstep their bounds.

Jamie Miller, director of the BRYCC House, wanted to know how many people had been the victims of a crime. "Have you ever noticed," he asked, "what happens when you report a crime? They don't do anything!"

Ill Eagle have a particularly Appalachian approach to life with a strong emphasis on conversation. Mullins' dad is a coal miner. They also have a strong global perspective. When I met them, Scarod was devouring a book about the International Monetary Fund and a book by the CrimethInc. Collective, Days of War, Nights of Love.

Later, after they loaded their van, I got to sit down with them in the alley under a warm, Louisville sky and ask them why they do what they do.

Jordan Green: Where did the idea of facilitating discussions between songs come from?

Dave Mullins: When we started playing, a lot of people that don't even like hardcore told me, "If more hardcore shows were like this one, I'd probably like hardcore a lot more." There's probably been a million times that I've been at a show and I've heard a band say something and either felt like I was being preached to or I would want to say something in retort and bands don't really give you that option. And if you did say something it would be more of a spectacle of interrupting rather than a conversation.

Green: Do you see the alienation of mass media as a major problem?

Mullins: I don't like television very much at all. If your life was made into an hour-and-a-half movie, would you want 45 minutes of it to be of you just sitting on the couch watching television? The first verse of a song we do, "Thank You Maury," is about people who have shitty lives and come home from work and watch talk shows. This person thinks, 'My kid is an out-of-control teen,' and the reason why shows like that do really well is that it makes people feel better about their own lives. It's just really a false way of dealing with problems.

Green: How do you think hard-core punk can be an effective way of bringing people together?

Mullins: A lot of people don't like hardcore and a lot of people might not have understood the music at all, but at the same time through conversation we can attract more people to the point where music is more of a backdrop. If we were just two people in the punk rock community and we didn't play instruments, it would be really hard to be put on a bill with other bands. "Here's two guys that want to talk to you guys." We pretty much write our songs around topics that we think are important, that are socially and politically relevant, so that way people will talk about it. The music gets our foot in the door. In punk rock there's not enough conversation and not enough dialogue.

Green: Eastern Kentucky has more of a union tradition than the rest of the state because of coal mining, so I wondered if you have anything to say about that organizing tradition and the necessity of talking stuff out.

Scarod: I think it's dying because the coal's just about all gone. From my point of view, I don't see the unions being strong.

Mullins: When you look at the years after World War II, something happened in the coal mines. There was such a union and the coal miners were so together that just about every coal mine in the United States shut down and [the companies] had to give in to their demands.

As far as unions in the coal industry in eastern Kentucky, it's getting few and far between. You figure you can go through history and look at every incident and figure out how to break a strike. Just like there was a gas strike where I live and it didn't do anything. [The company] let them picket for about a month and then they just shut them down and told them to leave.

Green: Organizing is on the upswing, but a lot of them are outlaw unions. If you read about Mexico, the official union is in the government and the corporations' pocket. The workers are getting more militant because their economic situation is more desperate and so they're willing to take risks.

Mullins: We've talked about how protests are different in other countries. A lot of other people in other countries have been through this for a very long time and people are starting to get fed up with it. You see people at protests now that you would have never seen two years ago. Americans are starting to get less submissive. Look at Washington, DC with the stolen votes and how people reacted to that.

Green: What do you think is the most destructive thing going on in your community?

Mullins: You can look at the structures of capitalism and why Wal-Mart works, what people earn, what the minimum wage is, and how people get by. People say, "Well, look at Wal-Mart. It started as a five-and-dime store in Arkansas and look at it now. That shows you that capitalism works." That shows you that there'll never be another mom and pop store that makes it like that. You have trouble fighting big companies like that because minimum wage is so low that people can't afford to support their local store. As much as you like to support your local store, they can't sell it as cheap as Wal-Mart. If you're a single mom and you're trying to make your money stretch, you have to go there and that makes capitalism a lot harder to fight.

Green: You have a limited amount of time after you get done with your two jobs and you don't have time to drive all over the county. But then Wal-Mart takes business out of local communities and changes everything about people's social interactions.

Mullins: People say, "It's just like stopping at the store that your grandpa's friend owns. He smiles at you and he knows your name." They're smiling because they're paid to smile. It's not like a mom and pop store where they know your name because they know your family and they've seen you raised there since you were a little kid.

Green: So, being from the mountains, what's your take on globalization?

Mullins: Globalization's terrible. You can look at capitalism abroad. It's not a new concept -- the exploitation of poor people. Take the coal industry, for example, in eastern Kentucky and western Virginia. My dad is a coal miner and his dad was a coal miner. The mines came in and they promised people good jobs and so they were ready to drop out of school. My father's full-time right now and he's got bills to pay and a family. If he wanted to stop, it would be really hard for him to go back to school or to start another job. For so long people in the mountains have only known that. When coal mines close down, people have a really hard time finding jobs and relocating into other fields. That alone can show you how companies exploit people. If they can go over to Africa and they don't have minimum wage laws and they can pay them jackshit to work 80 hours a week, that's really wrong.

I'm sure that on paper it looks really nice. But when you factor in people's lust for money, that's when capitalism really starts to lose its luster.

Green: Are there plants in your area that have closed down because they moved offshore?

Scarod: Yeah, actually there's a bunch of garment factories where I live. I think about 7,000 people got laid off in my district. And that happened when NAFTA was enacted. Almost all the counties where I live in western Virginia have very high unemployment rates. Our people are just barely making it. So they're pretty much jobless.

Green: My mom is an adult education teacher and she has a lot of students who are in their 20s and 30s who got laid off from factory jobs. She can't really train them or get them ready for a better job because there just aren't better jobs out there.

So how'd you guys get into punk and hardcore?

Scarod: When I was in fourth or fifth grade I was really into skateboarding and Thrasher magazine. It had these ads for Dead Kennedys shirts. I bought this Dead Kennedys album and I thought, 'This is cool.' Then I got in touch with these people in Johnson City, Tennessee, about 90 miles away. I contacted them through the internet.

Mullins: I guess the first punk rock thing I ever owned was Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols. My grandma and I were flea market shopping. When you're 12 years old and you see anything that has "sex" on it you're like, "Oh my God!" I asked her if she'd buy it for me and she said yes. I listened to it and I thought it was pretty good. The skateboarding community is also how I got introduced to punk rock.

For most kids who get into punk rock, politics comes along later. I guess I was just really political to begin with because I liked history. There are a lot of bands that just play and don't care. But I think a lot of the kids [in punk rock] are more politically aware and do things about it more than most kids their age. We've met a lot of kids that are pretty young that are doing great things. That's a lot different than most kids who only worry about who they're dating or their car.

Green: How important is punk rock to you as a community?

Mullins: I would rather not look at punk rock as a subculture because when it's a subculture it's more like living within the system, but thinking differently. Whereas I would rather think of it as more of a counterculture movement.

Scarod: I don't think we should isolate ourselves. We should integrate our ideas into society.

Links to ideas and resources:

BRYCC House

CrimethInc.

Jordan Green, a writer based in New York City, is a member of the editorial collective of La Lutta Dispatch. His website is www.summersault.com/~jordan.

© Copyright 2001 Jordan Green