Mojo Nixon 1957-2024

One of the last true believers of the power, glory, and fun of rock’n’roll has left the building.

Photo by J. Cris Yarborough

First published on February 10, 2024.

The punch was as sudden as it was unexpected, landing with fierce and impressive accuracy. Its target was just to my left, close enough to where I felt the wind from Mojo Nixon’s fist.

It was a sweaty and packed night in the middle of the 1990s at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, NC. Mojo was touring behind his then-new release, the Eric “Roscoe” Ambel-produced Whereabouts Unknown. Before the laying of hands, the guy near me had been heckling the headliner over “Mr. Correct.” Sounding like a manic Highway 61 Revisited outtake, it was another of Mojo’s many rants against censorship and groupthink that sounds just as fitting now as it did then, if not more so. Before launching into it, Mojo unleashed a verbal assault upon Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House at the time and one of the architects of the “Contract With (On?) America”. The guy beside me took umbrage and started yelling, “What’s wrong with Newt? I love Newt! Go Newt!” He shouted “Go Newt” continuously between the next few songs whenever there seemed to be a quiet moment. Fueled by the pure adrenaline of rock’n’roll, Mojo unleashed a fist of fury upon him, then kept on with the show. It was one of the most punk rock moments I’ve ever witnessed first-hand. Only Mojo wasn’t punk rock, except when he was.

Mojo Nixon occupied that rare space that existed between Elvis Presley and the Beat Farmers, Howlin’ Wolf and Bruce Springsteen, Arthur Conley and Roy Acuff, James Brown and David Johansen, Doc Watson and Iggy Pop, the Carter Family and Patti Smith. It was an irresistible gumbo of rockabilly, soul, gospel, country, blues, and punk.

Along with his trusty washboard-wielding, bicycle-bell-beating sidekick Skid Roper, Mojo released four LPs (and one EP) of righteous rock’n’roll. My first exposure was in 1986 through the radio show, “Night Wave” on NC State’s college station, WKNC. The song was “Where the Hell’s My Money” and I was gobsmacked into the great-googly-mooglies. It was the sound, mystery, and attitude of rockabilly but with a punk/new wave awareness that fit in with acts like the Butthole Surfers, the Dead Milkmen (who would soon immortalize Mojo with their single, “Punk Rock Girl”), and others they were airing that night.

Although some writers have focused on his humorous songs this week, it wasn’t just novelty music to me. I could tell right away this guy, who I’d soon find out was Mojo Nixon, was a Southern boy like me who knew all about the fire and brimstone delivery of Baptist preachers in small country churches on stifling hot Sunday mornings. During their time together, Skid used a broom handle for a kick drum and his washboard as a snare while Mojo screamed, howled, and raged against everything from MTV and Morrissey to shopping malls while championing mushrooms, Cheez-Whiz, and Wendell Scott.

It was a celebration of NASCAR, monster trucks, classic movies, Foghorn Leghorn, pre-Beatles rock’n’roll (Chuck Berry, Elvis, Jerry Lee), southern soul, John Lee Hooker, and Tom Jones that made me an instant fan. And I later realized why we shared many of the same cultural memories. Mojo Nixon was born Neill Kirby McMillan Jr. on August 2nd, 1957, in Chapel Hill, NC, less than a dozen miles from my birthplace (Durham). He was raised in Danville, VA, a little over an hour northwest of where I grew up, in Oxford, NC. It was a region of go-kart tracks and racetracks, both dirt and paved. There was the South Boston Speedway and the Roxboro Dragway. Rural farmland surrounded small to medium-sized towns as working-class families were brought up to be civic-minded and church-going.

Mojo took what he learned from Pittsylvania County on to London after college on a punk rock pilgrimage. He eventually returned to the States and settled in San Diego, where he teamed up with percussionist Skid Roper. Combining the blues and rockabilly of his youth with the roots-based West Coast psychobilly/cowpunk movement, he and Skid recorded their self-titled debut album for Enigma Records in 1985. Listening in my room in Oxford, North Carolina at the time, my 16-year-old self identified with his references and shout-outs. I also realized that although he was 13 years older, Mojo confirmed that my taste in music, etc wasn’t weird, at least by his standards, which was all the validation I needed.

Yes, Mojo was hysterical, but he could also be downright poignant. Take a song like “High School Football Friday Night.” It deftly describes those fall evenings and what they were like, not only for us outcasts in football-obsessed small southern towns but anyone anywhere who spent game time smoking and drinking out in the parking lot … while listening to it on the radio, of course.

Mojo never got enough credit for his songwriting. Here, he even reaches back for a little of that civic pride from his youth. And no matter what anyone says, I’ll put “The world seems right when the wrong kid goes the right way for 90 yards” up against lines by Townes Van Zandt, or at least Todd Snider, any day.

Yes, “Elvis is Everywhere” is what most people remember, but Mojo was so much more. There’s also “Positively Bodie’s Parking Lot” from that same album (Bo-Day-Shus!!!) that celebrates a legendary dive bar in all its glory, warts included. Those of us who spent years in similar night spots (as part of a band, as a DJ, a bouncer, as a patron - or all the above) can, and do, relate.

For my money, it’s the line toward the end: “‘Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy’ blastin’ out of the jukebox.” Growing up close to the North Carolina/Virginia line Mojo understood not only southern soul and R&B but its coastal sub-genre, Carolina Beach music. And he took that knowledge and appreciation out to San Diego, LA, and eventually on to MTV, sometimes working it into his manic psychobilly rave-ups. What’s 1990’s “Rabies Baby” but a nod to the old days of shaggin’ on the boulevard? (The Carolina, not the British, definition.)

Speaking of MTV…

With their second LP, Frenzy (the one with “Where the Hell’s My Money?”), Mojo got noticed by the culture-shifting cable channel because of “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin,” a crude ode to their most famous VJ, Martha Quinn. When the duo performed it in concert, Mojo would don a hollowed-out TV set. He and Skid revisited the routine at their 2012 reunion show in San Diego, CA.

“Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin” is classic Mojo. It’s ridiculous, but it also railed against the corporatization of rock’n’roll. In true Mojo fashion, however, he was soon showing up in promos for the network (some aired, some didn’t), even appearing as an occasional guest VJ.

Corporate rock was just one of his targets. On Frenzy alone, Mojo raged against financial institutions (“I Hate Banks”), war (“Gonna Put My Face on a Nuclear Bomb”), sleazy club owners (“Where the Hell’s My Money?”), kids (“Im Living With a 3-foot Antichrist”), and - as always - authority figures (“Ain’t Got No Boss”). Initially sold separately, Frenzy was later coupled on CD with the EP Get Out of My Way! On its best track, Mojo turned his ire toward mass consumerism … and Tipper Gore.

Underneath the schtick was a true believer - a lover of all things rock’n’roll, a champion of the underdog and the DIY esthetic. It was fitting that the legendary Dixie Fried Jim Dickinson produced the duo’s third outing, the perfectly titled, Root Hog or Die, in 1989. Yes, that’s the one that kicks off with the outrageous “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child,” his lampooning of celebrity culture that sounds just as relevant now in the age of TikTok.

Root Hog or Die also included his inevitable “Elvis is Everywhere” follow-up, “(615) 239-KING” that dialed into the recorded phone line craze at the time. (Yes, I called it back then, and, of course, heard a recording of Mojo spouting his evangelic love for the boy from Tupelo).

Among the songs about vibrator dependency. funky fellatio freak-outs, and doo-wop urges to legalize pot, was the aforementioned “High School Football Friday Night” and his more-or-less straightforward take on Woody Guthrie’s anti-fascist anthem, “This Land Is Your Land,” complete with the verse they wouldn’t let us sing in school.

In the middle of the song, Mojo lays out his vision of the future, inviting everyone to visit the amusement park of his mind, “Mojo World.” He then lists everything that makes Mojo Nixon a happy man, and doggone it, if you’ve got any soul, they make you happy, too. When he hits the final refrain, you can’t help but sing along, whether or not you’re standing naked in the blazing sunlight of liberty.

Root Hog or Die was the last album with Skid. Mojo decided it was time to go it alone while simultaneously beefing up his sound. The result was Otis! Recorded in Memphis and partnering once again with Dickinson, Mojo enlisted his fellow rock’n’roll ne’er do wells John Doe of X, Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers, Dash Rip Rock’s Bill Davis, and Eric “Roscoe” Ambel. The buzz for the album came from “Don Henley Must Die,” which pretty much says it all right in the title. And yes, Henley did duet with Mojo on the song at Austin’s Hole in the Wall a few years later, if only to try to prove to the world - and maybe himself - that he didn’t have as big a stick up his ass as many people thought.

Unfortunately, Mojo’s longtime label, Enigma, folded soon after, leaving him to flail around for a few years before re-emerging with the on-the-nose-titled, Whereabouts Unknown. With Ambel behind the board, Mojo and his cohorts laid down his overall best-sounding album with some of his strongest material. No reverb, just in-your-face bar band sweat and songs about freedom, football, drinkin’, liberty, hillbilly incest, and more freedom. Oh, and covers of both Elvis and Morrissey, only one delivered reverently (no need to guess which).

In 1997, Mojo released Gadzooks!! The Homemade Bootleg that surprisingly stands as one of the best odds’n’sods comps of the nineties. Its most talk-about song was left off Whereabouts Unknown (possibly for fear of legal retaliation), a sort-of sequel to “Don Henley Must Die” that took aim at one of Henley’s old buddies (and president/namesake of Henley’s label at the time).

He’d close out the millennium with 1999’s Sock Ray Blue! It had a few good moments, like the fun rager that he licensed to a video game, “Redneck Rampage.” (Whiskey Rebellion followed a decade later and sadly now stands as his final album.)

Gadzooks also boasted an outtake from his and Skid’s debut (that was originally included on the cassette version, which I proudly still have). Back in 1986, believe it or not, “Death Row Blues” helped open this 16-year-old’s ears and mind to the Velvet Underground.

When I first heard Mojo and Skid’s debut, opening with “Jesus At McDonald’s” and closing with “Death Row Blues” was genius. We’re talking Zappa-esque continuity. By the end of the cassette, he was back down by the powerlines. Only this time, he wasn’t talking to Jesus about couches and blues records, he was in the backseat with his best girl only to be interrupted by the DJ announcing an execution at San Quentin. It then switches to the first person as the prisoner is ready to die. Is the narrator in the back seat or in the chair? Is he in a VW down by the powerlines only in his mind? Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska filtered through Tom Jones’s version of “Green Grass of Home” recorded by Sam Phillips. That may be Mojo in a nutshell.

There’s so much more to tell, but elsewhere you can read about his successful third act as a DJ on Sirius/XM’s Outlaw Country and his work with Jello Biafra and his Christmas albums and his bit parts in big-time Hollywood films (OK, not really). This is just a personal appreciation for someone who brought me a lot more joy than I realized until I heard he passed away - on a damn boat - during the Outlaw Country Cruise this week. I guess Elvis needs boats after all.

When I was 17, my dad took me - I think I took my dad, really - to the Rialto in Raleigh to see Mojo and Skid for the first time. The first thing Mojo said when he walked out was, “WHAT’S ALL THIS SITTIN’ DOWN SHIT? THIS AIN’T NO BON JOVI BULLSHIT! GET YO ASS UP!” The crowd proceeded to storm the small stage and he rocked us mightily from there on out. It’s still one of the best shows I’ve ever been to.

Dad didn’t know what to make of Mojo at first, but watching a guy who watched James Brown and the Famous Flames at the Durham Civic Center in 1964 react to Mojo opener, “We Gotta Have More Soul!” is one of the great pleasures of my life. It also made Dad a lifelong Mojo devotee.

Maybe Mojo and JB are up there now giving dad one helluva show, proving once and for all that you can’t kill the spirit of rock’n’roll.

The concert poster dad pulled off the wall at the Durham Civic Center the night he saw JB in 1964. He was the only white guy in the crowd.

BONUS CUT: Here’s a show recorded around the time my dad and I first saw Mojo and Skid. Great googly-moogly…

Click here for Michael Corcoran’s in-depth report aboard the OCC.