Boss Hog couple talk parenthood
With their son in college, duo’s back on the road
Jon Spencer and Cristina Martinez have been a couple for more than 30 years and have played together in skeevy, roiling New York bluespunk forerunner Boss Hog for much of that time, off and on.
Mostly off: The duo’s new album, “Brood X,” is its first full-length one since 2000. Martinez, one of art rock’s most charismatic and transgressive frontwomen (she regularly posed naked for the band’s album covers), put Boss Hog on hiatus to rear the couple’s son, Charlie.
Spencer regularly played and toured with his primary band, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, while Martinez worked in New York City (she’s high on the masthead at Bon Appetit). Boss Hog reunited in the late ’00s for a handful of shows that would slowly lead to “Brood X” and a tour.
Spencer and Martinez got on the phone to talk marriage, parenthood (Charlie has his own electronic project, no face) and rock ’n’ roll.
The following is an edited transcript of that cheerier-than-it-reads conversation.
Q: Cristina, do your co-workers know about your rock ’n’ roll life?
Martinez: I get teased for being, you know, famous. We’re not like the highest-profile band. We’re kind of a cool, cachet band. But everyone who works here is a lot younger than I am too. I don’t know what the hell they listen to.
Q: The whole time you’re gone, are you building things up in your mind: “We’re going to come back, and it’ll be so great”?
Martinez: I wasn’t plotting a big comeback or counting the days or anything. It’s not as premeditated as that. We don’t think that far ahead.
Spencer: I think this comeback has been percolating for many years. Boss Hog has been performing very sporadically since 2008 and getting together at least once a month for the past four or five years and writing songs. It’s been a long, slow kind of building process.
Q: Cristina, had you missed being a part of the conversation, or were you just happy with what you were doing?
Martinez: A little of both. I was happy to hang out with our son and watch him grow, but there would of course be moments when Jon would get to go on the road and go to these fabulous places and play those fun shows. Of course there were moments when I missed that a lot and was very envious, but I kept in mind that I was going to try to do that again as soon as it was logistically possible. That kind of kept me going. But absolutely, I was resentful.
Spencer: Can I just make the point that it’s not like I was absent for our son’s formative years and his whole entire childhood?
Martinez: No, not at all, and I don’t think anyone was suggesting that. I was definitely the anchor.
Q: Jon, were you wishing you could stay home at times, or feeling guilty that you’re not?
Spencer: Oh, for sure. Sometimes guilty and sometimes envious.
Martinez: The grass is always greener.
Q: What does your son know about your back story?
Spencer: I’m sure he knows quite a bit. When he was a baby, he toured the world with Boss Hog, and more recently, he’s come to work as a crew member on a Blues Explosion tour. I think he knows what his folks are up to.