Album premiere: Stream HeCTA’s ‘The Diet,’ featuring Lambchop members ... and comedian Buddy Hackett

The pitch is pretty simple, if somewhat Dada-esque. Mix an old recording of Borscht Belt comedian and actor Buddy Hackett with new electronic dance music -- and see what comes of it. That, in essence, is the curious premise behind “The Diet,” the new album by Nashville threesome HeCTA. The Times is premiering the work in its entirety below, before its Merge Records release on Sept. 18.

A project by members of the long-running country outfit Lambchop, HeCTA features the band’s founder, Kurt Wagner, collaborating with fellow Lambchop contributors Ryan Norris (who also makes music as Coupler) and Scott Martin (Hobbledeions). HeCTA sounds virtually nothing like Lambchop, though both feature Wagner’s oft-droll baritone.

The three worked in the studio to make “The Diet” based on a desire to explore a different set of musical ideas. In notes accompanying the release, Wagner cited one particular book, British writer Tim Lawrence’s “Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture 1970–1979,” as particularly inspiring in pushing him further afield.

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“In reading it, I saw parallels between the dance culture of that era and the indie-rock/punk/experimental music culture,” he wrote. “It unlocked in my mind a genre of music long dormant in memory yet an influence so prevailing in a variety of current musical genres. Woe be it unto the man whose tastes are frozen forever, for given time, space, and understanding, such things become reborn and reimagined as we search for a creative kernel of truth.”

That kernel, "The Diet," is embedded below. It's followed by a Q&A with Wagner in which he discusses the inspiration behind it; for context, pay particular attention to the song, “The Concept,” which samples a stand-up routine by the late comedian Hackett.

Los Angeles Times: Advance press materials describing the track "The Concept" reads: "This song (and the entire project) was inspired by a Buddy Hackett standup routine.” How so?

Kurt Wagner: I had become obsessed with this particular routine that Buddy Hackett did, and I’m quite not sure why. As goofy as it sounded, it did seem like a place to start. The idea of conceptually combining comedy and dance in some way seemed to me to be a fun thing.

Normally dance music celebrates a certain form of exuberance, this joy at being alive on the dance floor. “The Diet” doesn’t seem to be as much about that.

[Laughs.] I wasn’t sure where this was going to take us a concept but the fellow Lambchop guys that became HeCTA, we were all interested in electronic music in one form or another. This was an opportunity for us to get together and see what we could each bring to the idea of making songs with this type of structure. Not even structure — just the sounds.

I sort of work conceptually. I may have an idea, but I don't know where it will take me exactly. I thought that it would be an interesting idea to try to take the things that are strong that Ryan does as an electronic composer and that Scott does as an electronic performer -- which is what they pretty much do outside of their work with Lambchop. And take what I do, which is work with ideas, words and song and put that as sort of a structure.

One of the things that I've noticed about a lot of dance music in general is that there really wasn't a lot of humor going on there. Is there a way to do that with a sense of dignity? And not be too cheap about it, either?

I've got one Chicago house record that samples Rocky and Bullwinkle, but that’s about it.

Oh wow!

It’s by Boris Badenough and it really does rip it up on the dance floor.

Oh I bet. There you go. In Buddy Hackett's case, there's a routine where he's talking about diet pills and losing weight. I thought, ‘Well, pills and dance music.’ Diet pills in particular are a reference to whatever stimulants are going down on the floor these days. I thought there might be a connection there of some kind. And, of course there's the sound of his voice, which is pretty unique, almost like Tony Soprano’s.

I’m assuming you had to get permission from Buddy Hackett estate?

Absolutely. I discovered quite a bit about the nature of sampling in that world, and it was a bit of an adventure. The whole routine came from a really obscure website that I use to mine for old 78 records. It's a fabulous resource. I found out it was originally on Coral Records. Now it's part of [Universal Music Group]. Eventually I found out who to talk to and I humbled myself before them trying to at least get some sort of permission to pursue this legitimately [laughs]. I had to provide a certain amount of remuneration up front, and hope that this thing doesn't take off.

What do you mean? You'll owe them more money if “The Diet” is a hit?

Absolutely. So I'm really discouraging anybody from actually supporting this.

Duly noted. The statement that you released with news of this album suggested that you think people might not like this. You said, in part, “like any good diet, it will be reviled then ultimately loved by all who give it a chance to work its way into their lives.” That sounds a little defensive.

Well, you're right. It is. I think as a group we wanted to do it because we love the kind of music that we love and it was a way to learn. And to kind of expand who I am as an artist — and that was mission accomplished, I think. I benefited from the experiment, and that's the main thing that we wanted to do. And hopefully it wouldn't be too shocking for people who were familiar with the kinds of things that I do make.

In a Venn diagram of Lambchop fans and electronic dance music fans, how big of an intersection is there?

I'm about to find out, I guess [laughs]. I've been encouraged. I think in the end it was the notion of taking a song in a different place and me learning how to adapt the things that I do to another form of music. And I think because of that, it's not as way out as one might think.

You’ve worked with electronic dance music in the past.

Yeah, and as far as the use of electronic sounds, that goes back quite a ways, starting with “Is a Woman” I don't know how many years ago. And the idea of collaborating with Ryan and Scott reaches into Lambchop because they are also Hands Off Cuba. So there is a precedent there.

It isn't totally out of the blue. That said, I think the experience of working as HeCTA has certainly informed what I'm doing with Lambchop currently. We just finished a new Lambchop record, which benefits from a lot of the technical things that I learned from making that HeCTA record.

I was wondering about forthcoming Lambchop music.

Yeah, the whole thing with HeCTA was it was certainly a chance to go to school, so to speak, in between what we were making with Lambchop. It just turned out that it took three years to finally come out and it's sort of colliding with the completion of the new Lambchop record, which I'm super excited about. It's not like HeCTA and it's not like a Lambchop either — but it's certainly been influenced by the experience.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit

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