Almighty do me a favor.

ONE-MAN BAND, BROKEN ROCK AND ROLL. It's one of music's primeval equations that don't suck. Take a dude and an acoustic guitar, and in the wrong hands, you've got shitty, coffeehouse man, pussy blah. But in gnarled hands, sung through a twisted throat with all limbs flappin' and rattlin' and beatin', that something is worth more than a cursory glance. It ain't some old timey livin'-in-the-past crank, either. The sweat's real. The dramatic tooth loss is too. So is stealing the electricity to power the amp. Almighty Do Me a Favor is Bradley Williams. And much in the vein of Hasil Adkins and Bob Log III, there something ain't quite right about the whole affair, which makes it all the better. Too individualistic to share and coordinate with an entire band, but not wanting to skimp on the fineries of making three or more things go strum, boom, rattle at the same time. There aren't many who can fan the flame without missing a beat. ADMF is one of the few.

Are you religious, Bradley?

Uh, sometimes. Yeah, I think so.

Why "Almighty Do Me a Favor?"

It's really not that fancy. When I moved to LA I used to write "ADMF" on letters I'd write home, which stood for Alabama Dirty Mother Fucker. One day I needed a name for the band, and I said, "ADMF." What can I make that it stands for other than Dirty Mother Fucker? So, ADMF became Almighty Do Me a Favor, a sort of derelict prayer to get me away from creepiness. That's about as far as the religious implications go, sort of a desperate prayer to get me away from bad things.

Why did you decide to follow in the large footsteps of Hasil Adkins and Bob Log III?

If I thought about those guys too much I wouldn't be doing it. I really wouldn't. They're too good. Why? Probably the same reason as most people: because they don't have anybody to play with. The people that I played with out here, we kinda got into fights. This is a little less violent. Less competition.

For somebody who's never seen you, take us through your apparatus.

Basically it's a guitar run through an amp, or not. On my right foot I got a bass drum, and on my left foot I got a high hat. A harmonica occasionally. Sitting down, playing all at once.

Didn't you used to use bottle caps for an effects pedal?

Yeah, I used to use a washboard instead of a high hat. It had a snare tambourine sort of sound. I was trying to have a high hat on my left, a snare drum in the middle, and the pedals for the high hat and the snare drum real close together so I could go back and forth real easy or come from the side and hit both of them at the same time. That was working pretty well, but it was too loud. My landlord got real upset. My neighbors got real upset. They told me if I did it again I was going to get evicted. They left a note on my door and everything, "Repeat offenses on these dates." I've thought about having tape decks playing and all kinds of weird stuff. That's one of the things about it--when you stop, if you break a string or in between songs, it's just you, like, "Duhhh...." I'd like to have something take up some of that space.

Name some of the unique places that you've played. I liked the time you played the Pioneer Market shopping center parking lot.

Yeah, the Pioneer Market was fun. We did an alleyway show after that, which was spastic. Bedpan Park is always fun--it's a triangle park with no real grass, just a bunch of sand and a fountain in the middle of it that's dedicated to Mildred P Flagardly--or something like that is her name--supposed inventor of the bedpan. Very suspicious, especially when there's glue oozing down the plaque. It's a cloverleaf fountain and it looks like three stone bedpans. Bums live there, like the Puppet Master. He likes to put on makeup and dance and twirl around sticks with pink monkeys on them.

Do you steal power for shows there?

Yeah, we steal it. It's hidden, though. Top-secret location. We've been using their power but no one's said anything. We get done before 10 o'clock at night. The neighbors usually come out and say, "Yeah, this is awesome. I'm so glad people are doing something."

Lead us up to the point where you last lost some teeth skating.

Booze and skateboards at three in the morning sometimes don't mix. It was my ex-girlfriend's birthday or something and me and my buddy figured the best way to celebrate her birthday would be to start bombing hills early in the day and drinking beer in the street. Me and Fose are doing this for a while, and we drink and it's fun, and we go to another house in Silverlake where these big-ass hills are. We started bombing it from halfway and we think, "This is cool. We can do this." I decided to get to the top of the hill and start pushing, way trashed. I started doing it, no speed wobbles or nothing. I'm like, "I am the king." Then I don't know what happened. I just went face first into the hill. I just laid there and Beefcat starts running down. "Bradley, get up. Get up," starts kicking me. "Shit, he ain't moving." Kicked me some more. I rolled over and my face Was just covered in blood big gash on my forehead, my face was all scabbed up, half my teeth in the front were cracked. I had a concussion and I was out of work for a week. Lot of fun. Then I couldn't find the fucking emergency room in the hospital. I couldn't tell where to go--and I work fight above it. I was at a service station and I had bums asking me for change with blood all over my face.

What's your favorite ditch to skate?

Out here, it's got to be Bronson Canyon. Growing up, there were some pretty good ones in Montgomery. We found one that was covered in kudzu vines, and when we started pulling the vines away there was an arrow and these old school bubble letters that just said, "Carve."