An Interview with Laytham Ballard: Ex-Rocker, Demon Killer?
The Night Dahlia
Paperback $18.99
The Night Dahlia
In Stock Online
Paperback $18.99
In R.S. Belcher’s The Night Dahlia, embittered demon hunter Laytham Ballard returns for another dangerous case of supernatural hi-jinx, tracking down a missing girl for a faerie mob boss. But that’s only the latest infamous tale from this infamous legend’s storied life. Below, we’ve excerpted an interview originally published in an underground zine that hints at some of the madness in Ballard’s back story.
In R.S. Belcher’s The Night Dahlia, embittered demon hunter Laytham Ballard returns for another dangerous case of supernatural hi-jinx, tracking down a missing girl for a faerie mob boss. But that’s only the latest infamous tale from this infamous legend’s storied life. Below, we’ve excerpted an interview originally published in an underground zine that hints at some of the madness in Ballard’s back story.
(Interview originally published in Wyrd zine October 2009)
Night Chords: The Laytham Ballard Interview
Five years after walking away from Leaving Season, we catch up with the man Hunter S. Thompson once called “Aleister Crowley and Jim Morrison’s crack-baby drunk on Night Train,” and he scares the living hell out of us.
by Velvet Vernon, Managing Editor
It’s 12 past midnight and Laytham Ballard is two hours late. It’s not really surprising, almost to be expected, actually. Ballard, the 40-year old former front man for the Alt band, Leaving Season, has a long-standing and well-deserved reputation for being the iconoclast’s iconoclast. Ballard has reported ties to Vegas mobsters, Eastern European crime lords, Discordian hacktivists, the fetish lifestyle, and cabals of black magic and black ops.
It seems everyone’s got a Ballard story. Here’s an example of one I heard from a sound board guy for My Chemical Romance: Supposedly while Leaving Season was doing their final tour in Europe back in 2003, Ballard ended up in the middle of a international incident involving a platoon of cold-war era Soviet ghosts and a secret still-active nuclear missile silo in the former East Germany. The technician regaling me with the story finishes it, like any good campfire story, by telling me that the CIA, the NSA and other intelligence agencies actually have a file on Ballard, but it’s all hand written because the computers keep crashing when they try to electronically surveil him or even put his name into their multibillion dollars computers.
Is it true? Is it bullshit? Hard to say and harder to verify. In fact it’s nearly impossible to find out one solid shred of information about Laytham Ballard or his past, including his birth date, his hometown, or if any of his family is still alive. Our own attempts to research Laytham Ballard’s history electronically resulted in a series of bizarre and kind of creepy computer crashes every time his name was searched. So maybe the sound board guy’s story is true.
At a little after 1, Ballard finally arrives. He looks pretty much the way he did on the cover of the last Leaving Season album, Bone Home, except drunker. He talks like a country boy from the deep south and looks like a homeless guy who keeps himself in decent shape.
Ballard continues to drink and smoke while we conduct the interview which he allows me to tape. I feel I should mention that there are… noises, sounds on the tape recording when I played it back, including disembodied voices I did not hear when we conducted the interview. I have included a few of the clearer ones in the excerpts of the transcripts that follows. And no, I was not drinking or high.
VV: Thanks for agreeing to do this.
LB: Hard to turn down a pretty lady.
VV: I’ve heard you’re a charmer. Thank you. Can I ask you …
LB: Whoa, right into it huh? (I laugh) Okay, shoot.
VV: What are you doing these days and why exactly did Leaving Season disband?
LB: I think I can answer both of those, darlin’, the same way. The rock and roll was getting in the way of the sex and drugs.
VV: Did it have anything to do with the mysterious death of your bandmate, Thomas Roth?
(unexplained voice on recording): Here! God help me! Heeeeerrrrreeee! (Sound like a pack of dogs snarling.)
LB: We, the band, we don’t talk about Tommy. Moving on.
VV: There are so many rumors about his death that still circulate in the music scene. That he OD’ed, that he was killed in part of some occult ritual you were performing?
(Unexplained sounds of snarling dogs again, unintelligible screams, then a hum, like a powerful radio transmission was stepping on the recording.)
LB: No. Fucking. Comment. (The transmission hum wipes out the animal sounds and screams and there is about 3 seconds of dead space on the tape.)
VV: Sorry. People are just really fascinated with the mystique that surrounds you. Are you really into the occult as much as the rumors say.
LB: (dry chuckle)That’s funny. Most of the folks who really know me ask if I was ever really into the music scene like they heard. To answer your question, Yes. I am the Prince of Darkness.
VV: How did you get into magic?
LB: I blame Dungeons and Dragons completely. It’s a gateway to greater evil, like weed.
VV: (laughing) Oh, really? (laugh again) Tell me, I heard this story about you being called in to help the New Jersey Police deal with a series of occult-related murders back in 2000? True.
LB: So far, yeah.
VV: There was a string of nine murders over three months, all inner city victims. Then the cops call you in and the murders stop. Can you tell me what went down?
(Unexplained noise on the tape. It sounds like a gargling moan. It goes on while we discuss the murders)
LB: Trust me darlin’, you really don’t want to know.
VV: I really do.
(unexplained voice on the tape recording. It is harsh, angry): Tell her! Tell her! Say my name! Saaaaay iiiiit! Speak it to her!
LB: The killer was called the Garbage Man. It… he scooped up all the insides of his victim, usually pre-mortem, and filled them up with trash. Left them on garbage scows in the middle of the Hudson and Sandy Hook Bays.
(unexplained voice on the tape recording): Water, water! Circle them in water! Gobble up the yummy, pink stuff! Tell her my name… it’s (unintelligible)
VV: Jesus.
LB: Hey, you asked. The killings stopped. End of story.
VV: Did you guys catch anyone? Are the cops still looking?
LB: No, they didn’t and yes, the case is officially open.
VV: Did you catch the killer?
LB: If I tell you that, I can’t go back to Jersey again. Thatanswer your question?
VV: Not exactly. Is it true you don’t have a shadow?
LB: See for yourself? (sound of chair scraping as Ballard stands) Ta-da!
VV: Oh my god! (sound of me standing and moving around) How? How is that even …
LB: Life is about trade-offs, darlin’. You get, you give. Trust me, nothing is free. Take this interview for example.
VV: You expect me to pay you for this? (my Laughter) I’m sorry, we’re a very small zine and we work on a tight budget.
LB: No, no. I agreed to do it, and I agreed to let you record it. So you got knowledge about me out of the deal.
VV: Well, I suppose. A little.
LB: There are things, like bugs, flitting about all of us, all the time. Fragments of spirits, echoes of old hate, old evil. They try to cling to us, to our thoughts to our words. They follow us home.
VV: Okay…
LB: Do yourself a favor, darlin’. Don’t listen to that tape too many times and when you got what you needed from it, burn it. Take it far away from your home and get rid of it.
(unexplained voice on the recording): Hollow her…hollow her out… (about thirty seconds of screams, howls, and angry animal noises)
(At this point in the interview I shut off the tape recorder.)
Laytham Ballard was generous with his time. We talked for about another hour about things of less morbid consequence. He mentioned his musical influences, an eclectic blend of early punk, old school country, and in-your-face rock and roll. He said he wished he could have jammed with Hank Williams Senior, and Jimi Hendrix. He told me a little about the current activities of the surviving members of Leaving Season and why he though a reunion was unlikely.
“Without Tommy,” it’s not the same band,” he said. “Not the same music. It would be a lie.”
I didn’t ask him anything more about his immersion into the occult, his legendary status in some parts of that secret world. The truth is I was afraid to ask. I began to understand why Laytham Ballard would hide his real self behind screens of myth, self-medication, misdirection, and humor. To walk in that world and survive it (as he has now convinced me it is very real) you would need your secrets, your hard-earned wisdom around you, like armor, to keep you sane and alive.
And yes, I burned the tape.
R.S. Belcher is the award-winning author of Nightwise, The Brotherhood of the Wheel, The Six-Gun Tarot, The Shotgun Arcana, and The Queen of Swords. He lives in Salem, Virginia. You can visit him online at rsbelcher.net.