Photo by Daniel Corrigan

(Yummy. More on that below.)

After the Cows stopped in 2000, Selberg relocated to New York and formed the Heroine Sheiks. He returned to Minneapolis last year and formed a new version of the Sheiks, which includes Paul Sanders, guitarist for similarly incendiary Amphetamine Reptile blasters Hammerhead, who had been out of action since Hammerhead split up more than a decade ago. The Heroine Sheiks play Saturday (tomorrow) night at the 7^th St. Entry, including an all-ages show at 5 p.m. Reveille spoke with Selberg as he geared up for his return to the scene of his many crimes.

Reveille: How is it coming back to Minneapolis after nine years?

Selberg: It was a little weird at first, because, you known Manhattan and Queens and it’s all just so huge. When we were flying over to land in the airport, I saw downtown Minneapolis, and my girlfriend said, “Is that Minneapolis?!” And I was like, “No, that’s gotta be, like, Edina. Oh, wait it is Minneapolis!”

Reveille: Who’s your girlfriend and how did you meet?

Selberg: Her name’s Stephanie. She was waitressing at a show we played at the Knitting Factory. I normally never hit on staff, but a little voice in my head said, “See that girl over there? Ask her out.” We’ve been together five years.

Reveille: What’s the best and worst things about New York?

Selberg: It’s New York. It’s huge, multicultural, and it goes all night. The downside is its really expensive, and there’s 10,000 bands fighting tooth-and-nail for publicity and gigs. It’s very politicized. It’s like L.A.; they’re media centers, so bands migrate there from all over the country.

Reveille: Has it been good to be back in Minneapolis?

Selberg: I’m the kind of person that I am where I am. I moved here to be around my family. I’ve gotten used to it. It’s smaller, but there’s a lot of good bands here. I like the Deaths, Sarah Johnson, the Blind Shakes, there’s a whole bunch of ‘em.

Reveille: What’s the biggest difference between the Heroine Sheiks and the Cows?

Selberg: The Heroine Sheiks started out because I got a casio keyboard player from my mother. There was no way for me to actually write songs and play it in the Cows, so I started playing on that toward the end of the Cows, but it would have been weird to have keyboard (on Cows’ material). So the initial songs for the Heroine Sheiks were written on casio.

Reveille: The Cows never officially broke up, right?

Selberg: Yeah. That was really a matter of we didn’t want to be in the position of having a farewell show and then change our minds and keep coming back and coming back. It would have introduced an element of nostalgia into our shows, like “Oh, this is it, Minneapolis, goodbye” (cackles). I’ve never cared about such things.

Photo by Daniel Corrigan

Selberg: No, I’m not going to tell you.

Reveille: You’ve said you’re difficult to work with. Do you think that’s true?

Selberg: That’s what I’ve been told. I mean, I’m not (The Fall’s) Mark E. Smith, berating everyone publicly and fucking with their equipment. It’s not like that. I demand a certain level of performance at all times. I’ve got a pretty strong work ethic that wears people down sometimes. To me, every practice should be like we’re playing Madison Square Garden.

Reveille: Tell me how you put this incarnation of the Heroine Sheiks together.

Selberg: I decided to put a band together in the summer of 2006. And I decided to do it real slow, and that it was going to take as long as it was going to take. If it took six months, that’s fine, if it took two years, that’s fine. I wanted people playing-wise and temperament-wise who are up to the job. The Cows are a pretty big thing to follow, and the Heroine Sheiks have three really good albums out, and so it had to be at least up to that level.

I think people assumed when I moved here that I would probably get something together. At first, when I got here, it was kind of strange. I’d go out to see a show and it’d be like a gunslinger movie or something. I’d see someone through the crowd looking at me. We’d kind of nod at each other and eventually they’d come up to me and say, “You putting a band together? I want to be in it.” That happened to me every time I went out.

Reveille: Talk about who you ended up with and how it’s been playing with them.

Selberg: They’re all real good players, but there’s a lot of really good players here. So it was more of a temperament (match). I really first wanted to nail down a guitar player. I ran into Paul Sanders, and he said he hadn’t picked up a guitar in ten years; he didn’t want to play music anymore, but we got to talking and he decided to give it a go. Then the bass player is Jesse Kwakanat (STNNNG, Death and Texas, Mondo Film), and keyboards Sarah Huska (Ouija Radio) and drums is John Harvey Broms (Belles of Skin City, King Can, Mondo Film).

Reveille: One of things I’ve always appreciated about you is that you don’t really belong to any genres or camps. Do you feel like that’s true, or am I making that up?

Selberg: No. With the Cows and now the Heroine Sheiks, we do what we do. When you’re starting out, you could give a shit. The bands that change things are the bands that make their own world. They’re not joiners. I like music that really moves me emotionally over the top. That’s what we write. If it fits into a genre it does, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. You like to imagine, like, if I was going out to see the Heroine Sheiks and not in the Heroine Sheiks, “That’s a show I’ll remember in my life." Like, “I was at that show. Were you there?” That’s the kind of show we try to do every time.

Reveille: That’s what you’re legendary for. I mean, I went to see that film “Lars and the Real Gal,” which is about a guy who falls in love with a mail-order blow-up doll, and I thought of you and the night you wore the skin of the sex toy girl. In fact, every time I see one of those dolls with the open mouth I think “Shannon!”

Selberg: I had to ask some weird questions to find the right one: “Now, your blow up dolls… How tall are they? How wide are they?” It was a female behind the counter, and she was trying to figure out why I was asking all these questions. I finally said, “I want to wear it.” But they didn’t ask me why I wanted to wear it.

Reveille: What can we expect Saturday night?

Selberg: The best show you’ll see this year. I haven’t played in a year and a half, and Paul Sanders hasn’t played in ten years, and believe me he hasn’t lost a step. Some people mellow with age, and some people go like, “Wow. I haven’t been arrested or anything this year, and I’ve still got a few friends. Maybe I’ll try a little more of this.”