Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Dexter Hall. I will be at Dexter.
Speaker 1: Good to have thank you, great to be here. So, Dexter,
Speaker 1: you've been vaccinated against COVID nineteen. Yes, I have two shots.
Speaker 1: And when did you get the shot? A couple of
Speaker 1: months ago now? And has it change your behavior? Uh?
Speaker 1: I mean I think we were always on the cautious side,
Speaker 1: but I think it's just such a mental relief to
Speaker 1: not be worrying about the small chance that you might die.
Speaker 1: Do you know anybody who died? Uh? People who know
Speaker 1: people you know, our guitar players. Mother in law for example,
Speaker 1: actually passed away from COVID. So it hits home. It's
Speaker 1: close enough, that's and you could, you know, you could
Speaker 1: you could kind of feel the circle tightening, you know.
Speaker 1: Before it was like, I don't know anyone who's even
Speaker 1: gotten it, and then all of us know that guy
Speaker 1: got it. That guy got it, and then pretty soon
Speaker 1: it was this person died, and it was it was
Speaker 1: feeling kind of kind of scary around the holidays and
Speaker 1: in your circle. How many people got it? Uh? I
Speaker 1: mean ten, maybe half a dozen something like that. Anybody
Speaker 1: really close to you, my my buddy's wife, I guess
Speaker 1: it would be like that close. Okay, So why do
Speaker 1: you think everybody, so not everybody, but of the country
Speaker 1: is so reluctant to get vaccinated? Right right? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean cheefs. We could go into a whole thing about that.
Speaker 1: Right here. The reason I'm asking you all this it's
Speaker 1: not only do you we interact with the public, but
Speaker 1: you're someone who actually knows the science. Yes, I have
Speaker 1: a I have a doctorate in molecular biology, which is
Speaker 1: sort of like a biotech I guess you call it.
Speaker 1: And uh, I focused on the HIV virus, So, um,
Speaker 1: I know a little bit about virology. You know. What
Speaker 1: I know is more the nuts and bolts of you know,
Speaker 1: how virus actually work, some latches on and that stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm not an epidemiologist, so I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: an expert. But I mean I think vaccine reluctance. I
Speaker 1: mean it's a it's a distrust of government, distrust of authority,
Speaker 1: and that goes back to you know, Watergate. I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how far back you want to go,
Speaker 1: but and and certainly the last administration didn't help that
Speaker 1: at all. I think it encouraged people to to not
Speaker 1: want to be part of these kinds of things because
Speaker 1: they feel like they're going to be controlled or there's
Speaker 1: a chip in the vaccine. Okay, Certainly as you get
Speaker 1: into harder rock there are more right wing fans. Is
Speaker 1: this something you experience amongst your fan base or something
Speaker 1: you might worry about. Uh, that's a great question. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course there's you know, the Ted Nugents of the
Speaker 1: world and all all that kind of stuff, But you
Speaker 1: know that our world is more of what I would
Speaker 1: call a punk rock world, and it really is different.
Speaker 1: Like the only guys with doctorates I know are in
Speaker 1: punk bands, not not the rock stuff. So we're not
Speaker 1: really exposed to the right wing stuff too much, I
Speaker 1: don't think. So why do you think the punk rockers
Speaker 1: have doctorates and the other people don't? That is a
Speaker 1: great question. We were talking about that just the other day,
Speaker 1: like what is it that Maybe it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not funk authority, it's question authority, I guess, right,
Speaker 1: you know, ask questions and and uh, there was just
Speaker 1: something you know that was I think was intellectually stimulating
Speaker 1: about the punk rock that we're listening to, and we
Speaker 1: grew up and you could all say, and for those
Speaker 1: of those who lived through the era, it was definitely
Speaker 1: a turn away from what was existing. That's why you
Speaker 1: know they did it to begin with. You know, the
Speaker 1: ramans very basic, very short songs, so it you know,
Speaker 1: this creativity is inspiration more than execution. So I agree
Speaker 1: with you. It took a lot of intelligence and risk
Speaker 1: to make punk rock. I'm not trying to say we're
Speaker 1: the smart guys necessarily, but I mean when I was
Speaker 1: growing up, you know, the rock, the you know, the
Speaker 1: the the Sunset strip scene at the time was very
Speaker 1: much top down with the girl and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And it was bands like the sex Pistols
Speaker 1: that I was way more drawn to because it was
Speaker 1: heavy and it was political and it felt more I
Speaker 1: don't know, substantive, I guess. Okay, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: new album. So there hasn't been an album for years.
Speaker 1: How do you finally decide to release a new one?
Speaker 1: I know, Uh, well, it's not just being lazy. It
Speaker 1: was actually being kind of busy and um just kind
Speaker 1: of not putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to
Speaker 1: make the record. I think that there's kind of a
Speaker 1: natural pressure once you start releasing records that like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, we have to put out something every two
Speaker 1: to three years or will be obsolete. It would be
Speaker 1: forgotten and stuff. And that's kind of a hard thing
Speaker 1: to to live with, feeling like you're under pressure to create. Um.
Speaker 1: Pressure is not usually good for creativity. And we do
Speaker 1: tour quite a bit. We're on the road almost four
Speaker 1: months of every year, so um, when we get home,
Speaker 1: it was harder to fit in the studio time. But
Speaker 1: I mean, really, I think I just wanted to feel
Speaker 1: like the songs felt good and it felt like the
Speaker 1: right record for the right time. And and that's really
Speaker 1: what finally happened just this last year, as it felt
Speaker 1: like these are the things I want to sing about,
Speaker 1: and I feel good about these songs, and it feels
Speaker 1: like the right time for this record. Now the record
Speaker 1: is got twelve songs, but it's pretty short. Thirty three minutes.
Speaker 1: Was that conscious? Well? I mean we felt like it
Speaker 1: was long enough we could have put out. We could have,
Speaker 1: you know, spent another six months or a year. I've
Speaker 1: done a couple more songs, I guess, but it felt
Speaker 1: like it was okay, I don't know. I asked Peter Patterneau.
Speaker 1: He said it was all right. No, Peter was a
Speaker 1: lawyer that we share. No. I thought it was brilliant
Speaker 1: and it was only still because it's got twelve songs,
Speaker 1: is like, you know, an album of the past. It's digestible.
Speaker 1: You know. Once we used to have vinyl records, there
Speaker 1: were two sides. There were four crucial tracks, the first
Speaker 1: and last track on each side. Once we went to
Speaker 1: c D s, it was essentially one side and it
Speaker 1: was interminable. So the fact that you had only thirty
Speaker 1: three minutes of music I thought, was, you know, really
Speaker 1: a throwback and a step against the relative trend. But
Speaker 1: some of your previous albums were not that short. So
Speaker 1: that's why I was asking whether it was conscious. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, we wanted to keep it tight, I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, short and sweet, make sure all the songs counted,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't filler, And you know that's the worst
Speaker 1: to think, like, oh, we need to come up with
Speaker 1: five more minutes so fans don't complain it's too short.
Speaker 1: Like that's not the right standpoint. A few point to
Speaker 1: come from, Okay, but the time the album was done
Speaker 1: before covid Or, wasn't it. It was. We had finished
Speaker 1: it pretty much right before, and I think we even
Speaker 1: had a single release date of last May, and we
Speaker 1: uh had the record done. We went down to South
Speaker 1: America to do some shows, and that's when the pandemic started.
Speaker 1: They were literally canceling shows around us in Brazil and
Speaker 1: then Argentina. We did manage to holl off one show
Speaker 1: in Chile before they said tours over and you better
Speaker 1: scrambled to get home because they might close the airports.
Speaker 1: So we got home just barely in time. And you know,
Speaker 1: within a couple of weeks, you could feel that it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like the right time to put out an album,
Speaker 1: so we just kind of we kind of tweaked it.
Speaker 1: Actually we didn't just put it on the shelf. We
Speaker 1: kind of went back and did some remixes. And I'm
Speaker 1: in retrospect, I'm glad we spent the time because it
Speaker 1: actually did come up a notch. That's that's a real thing,
Speaker 1: uh in in the industry, when you're doing a record
Speaker 1: and you you have to have it finished by a deadline,
Speaker 1: and there is a certain point where you do let
Speaker 1: things go and you don't always take things that last
Speaker 1: maybe ten percent that you wish you could. And this
Speaker 1: is one of those times where we actually had the
Speaker 1: chance to do that. Okay, Now, the paradigm amongst the
Speaker 1: let's call it the Spotify top fifty is really change
Speaker 1: where there's not a focus on album there's a focus
Speaker 1: on endless singles. Is that something you thought about because
Speaker 1: the old paradigm was, you know, there were years between releases. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, our old producer Dave said, look, you guys
Speaker 1: are partly a punk band and partly a pop band.
Speaker 1: He goes, and I feel like if you were just
Speaker 1: one or the other, you probably wouldn't be as successful.
Speaker 1: He goes. It's the idea that you have both. So
Speaker 1: we've always put songs on there that I felt weren't
Speaker 1: just standard punk songs, and that was important. I mean
Speaker 1: not just in an effort to be commercially successful, but
Speaker 1: I felt like it was just something creatively I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. I wanted to to not just feel like
Speaker 1: I'm doing the same thing or rehashing or I've got
Speaker 1: this one small niche and that's what we're gonna stick to.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, uh, I guess you're conscious of it.
Speaker 1: But you know, I was thinking about this the other day,
Speaker 1: not knowing where you were gonna go in terms of
Speaker 1: musical history. But you know, when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: it was all about the forty five, you know, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, those little those little pieces of plastic that.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I was old enough to start
Speaker 1: becoming aware of music, my my, my parents at this
Speaker 1: point had been accumulating ten years of forty five. There
Speaker 1: were stacks and we used to go through them, and
Speaker 1: you know, back then it was it was everything. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, Jimmy Rodgers kisses sweeter than wine and honeycomb
Speaker 1: and I was digging through trying to find Snoopy versus
Speaker 1: the Red baron and all that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: it was very much a singles kind of world back then.
Speaker 1: The album thing didn't really come along until much later. Okay,
Speaker 1: So on this new album, you do a well we
Speaker 1: can call it a cover, but it's your original song.
Speaker 1: You do another version of going Away. What inspired you
Speaker 1: to put that on the album? It started as just
Speaker 1: a live thing. We thought that with all the heaviness
Speaker 1: in our songs in our set, it would be nice
Speaker 1: to just have a breather in the middle of the show,
Speaker 1: and so let's redo a song in a much quieter way,
Speaker 1: and that seemed like the natural choice. You've gone always
Speaker 1: the song that we did uh in a heavy way
Speaker 1: on our extental the Aumbree record, and um, we thought
Speaker 1: doing it on piano would kind of add a personal
Speaker 1: nous to it. Uh, something in you know, makes the
Speaker 1: vocal more apparent. And the songs about you know, losing someone,
Speaker 1: it's about grief, so it had a message that I
Speaker 1: thought would be good to approach that way on the
Speaker 1: on the piano. So it was kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: let's what the hell, let's see what happens. When we
Speaker 1: played it live, the reaction was pretty instant. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, lighters up in the air and a lot
Speaker 1: of comments on social media saying this makes the song
Speaker 1: even more meaningful to me and where can I get
Speaker 1: a recorded version of this? So it was almost like
Speaker 1: fans demand that kind of inspired us to go and
Speaker 1: try to record it. Well, if you go online, you
Speaker 1: can see YouTube versions of you playing it with the
Speaker 1: band on the piano, but the version on the album
Speaker 1: is similar yet different in that it's produced. It has strings, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Whose decision was to add all that well we had.
Speaker 1: When we play it live, I start on the piano
Speaker 1: and it felt right to have the band kick in
Speaker 1: at the end, and that felt really good. When we
Speaker 1: got into the studio, Uh, somehow that that approach felt flat.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel like it had the emotion. And I
Speaker 1: was thinking about how can I approach this? Uh. This
Speaker 1: kind of a funny story because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: what goes onto the studio. Talking to Bob about this,
Speaker 1: like what do we do? What do we do? And
Speaker 1: I said, you know when a great song just vocal
Speaker 1: and piano is Joe Cocker, you are so beautiful? Like
Speaker 1: what is it about that song? And Bob explained to
Speaker 1: me all the things that he felt made that song work,
Speaker 1: the way the piano moves and how it gets out
Speaker 1: of the way of the vocal in certain spots, and
Speaker 1: how strings come in. And I thought, you know, that's great.
Speaker 1: Let's let's use that as our inspiration, uh for the
Speaker 1: way we want to frame this song. And we took
Speaker 1: it from there. So how long did it take you
Speaker 1: to perfect it? Uh? Yeah, a few months. I guess
Speaker 1: we work in a different way, you know, Back in
Speaker 1: the day, it was like, you're gonna book the studio
Speaker 1: for three months and you're never gonna come out until
Speaker 1: this record is done. And I felt kind of burned
Speaker 1: out doing it that way. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: a certain point where you're running out of ideas and
Speaker 1: then you're kind of just staring at each other trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to finish the song. So what
Speaker 1: we do now is we go in for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks at a time, we go through all the
Speaker 1: ideas and hash it out, and then it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's all I got for right now, and then we
Speaker 1: go home and sit on it for a month. And
Speaker 1: then by the time we get back together for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks again, I've got lots of ideas to
Speaker 1: carry it forward. It's just much more short spurts. Well,
Speaker 1: I certainly know that Bob is in Hawaii, Bob Rock
Speaker 1: the producer. Now there's always issue of studio. I see
Speaker 1: you're in a studio. Now do you cut it in
Speaker 1: your own studio or do your book a different studio?
Speaker 1: We do now this is our studio in Huntington's Beach.
Speaker 1: We used to go to l A. Of course, to
Speaker 1: do it, and this kind of started as a demo studio.
Speaker 1: As a technology improved and Bob k On coming down,
Speaker 1: we added to the equipment and the whole thing until
Speaker 1: now we're pretty self sufficient here. We can do everything,
Speaker 1: including mix, so if you decide you want to go in,
Speaker 1: it's not like you have to worry about booking the time.
Speaker 1: It's always available. It's always available. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: getting schedules together with Bob. He has other other things
Speaker 1: that he works on as a well, of course. And
Speaker 1: so what's the reaction been since the album has come
Speaker 1: out of the new version of Going Away? It feels
Speaker 1: really good. And I was not sure about that because
Speaker 1: it's it will sound like a departure compared to our
Speaker 1: other material, and you're never sure how your your audience
Speaker 1: is going to react to something that's so different. But
Speaker 1: maybe just because we've been around long enough people we
Speaker 1: can get away with it more. It's been been very
Speaker 1: very good so far. Well, it's an astounding listen. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of when Green Day and I hate to
Speaker 1: compare acts, but there I did when they went into
Speaker 1: that mode. Okay, this is a song not solely for alternative.
Speaker 1: This is a song that could be for everyone. Is
Speaker 1: the label thinking about that? Are you thinking about that?
Speaker 1: You know we have this in our pocketed sometime we're
Speaker 1: gonna try to expose it to a larger audience. I
Speaker 1: would love to. I think I've brought up to the label. Hey,
Speaker 1: can you make sure you listen to the last song
Speaker 1: on the record too. I think it's pretty good. We'll
Speaker 1: see see what I have. You only listen once, and
Speaker 1: it is the same song, is the one you recorded
Speaker 1: earlier on Nicks Nay, But it's really a different record,
Speaker 1: and it affects you. I mean, this is really a
Speaker 1: one listen all of a sudden. You know, some things
Speaker 1: are just so in the pocket, you know. I think
Speaker 1: a couple of those foreigners songs, you know, waiting for
Speaker 1: a girl like you, I want to know what love is?
Speaker 1: You want it to go waiter say? And this is
Speaker 1: something everybody yeah, well thank you? Yeah. I mean I
Speaker 1: remember a guy five years ago saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: my my buddy down the street passed away, and boy,
Speaker 1: sure would love to play that piano version at his memorial?
Speaker 1: Do you have that? And we hadn't recorded it yet,
Speaker 1: so but I thought, how interesting that in his mind,
Speaker 1: a song like this would would would feel right in
Speaker 1: that kind of heavy experience. So I know she mean
Speaker 1: about a different audience. I guess, right, Okay, but the
Speaker 1: song was based on a real situation, correct, I mean, yes, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: and no, don't don't really talk about that too much.
Speaker 1: Yes and no. I mean documentation would say that you
Speaker 1: had a girlfriend who passed away in a car accident?
Speaker 1: Is that factually Drew? No, it's not, it's not. Uh well,
Speaker 1: what the hell tell the story? I guess. I was
Speaker 1: with my wife on a Sunday and we had gone
Speaker 1: to dinner and we were going to um Baskin Robbins
Speaker 1: for our after dinner or whatever ice cream and drive home.
Speaker 1: And this is, you know, just on Honeyton Beach where
Speaker 1: we live. And so we're waiting in line and there's
Speaker 1: ten people in the store. A couple runs in. They
Speaker 1: go call the police. Someone's chasing us with a gun,
Speaker 1: and we're like, what the hell, what's going on? And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden shots rang out. So these these
Speaker 1: people in this in this car, they had been chased
Speaker 1: by gangan bank gang members in another car who were
Speaker 1: mad at him for some reason. They ran into the store.
Speaker 1: These guys decided to shoot up the store, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: they it looks like they shot high. I don't think
Speaker 1: they actually intended to kill anybody, but anyway, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, here we are and it's one of those
Speaker 1: like strip malls where it's it's a complete glass you know,
Speaker 1: front to the store, shooting it, and uh, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it's like, well, funk, I'm we're gonna die, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, in hiding, trying to you know, get
Speaker 1: behind a trash can or something, not even knowing where
Speaker 1: the bullets are coming from. And it turns out I
Speaker 1: was right in front of the gunman or whatever, but
Speaker 1: you know, and then crawling over to my wife and
Speaker 1: you know, putting my body on top of hers and
Speaker 1: just knowing like I'm gonna get shot, any secondary gonna
Speaker 1: get shot, and you know, there were several shots that
Speaker 1: rang out. The whole front was was was what you know,
Speaker 1: was shot out, and uh, luckily no one was hurt.
Speaker 1: So I think they just wanted to have fun and
Speaker 1: scare everybody, right. I don't think they're really trying to
Speaker 1: kill anybody, but I think just the the the idea
Speaker 1: that we came so close to death was a real
Speaker 1: life changing moment. And it was right when we were
Speaker 1: recording X Nay and uh I I was coming up
Speaker 1: with the the idea. I knew I wanted the song
Speaker 1: to be heavy, but I didn't know what was gonna
Speaker 1: be about yet. But it was kind of like the
Speaker 1: feeling of in a in a weird way. I know,
Speaker 1: it's not a direct connection, if you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: but it made you think about, you know, about dying
Speaker 1: and about grief and about what that would feel like
Speaker 1: and what if what if my wife had been the one? Okay,
Speaker 1: so the incident happens. How long after that do you
Speaker 1: write the song? And has it come to you in
Speaker 1: a flash or something takes a long time to work out? Oh?
Speaker 1: I wrote it in the next week. It was quick,
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. It was done in a few days.
Speaker 1: And the lyrics. How long to take you to write
Speaker 1: the lyrics? A few days? Yeah? Quick? Quick for me,
Speaker 1: Quick for you? Okay? So you were you grew up
Speaker 1: where I grew up in Garden Grove, which is in
Speaker 1: Orange County, Okay. Garden Grove is how far from the beach,
Speaker 1: about five miles Okay, So what was it like growing
Speaker 1: up in Garden Grove. I mean it was very suburban.
Speaker 1: It was I would say we grew up middle class
Speaker 1: and not like upper middle class or lower middle class,
Speaker 1: just kind of kind of right in the middle. And
Speaker 1: it was suburban in that way, with the green lawns
Speaker 1: and the picket fences and everyone kind of kind of
Speaker 1: being the same, right and and uh, I think there
Speaker 1: was something about that, because people say, well, why does
Speaker 1: so many punk rock bands come out of Orange County?
Speaker 1: It seems like this republican place where everything's nice and mellow,
Speaker 1: And I think that there was something in the homogeneity,
Speaker 1: something in the sameness, the boredom of that that inspired
Speaker 1: the rebellion that you see in in these bands. I
Speaker 1: don't know how else to explain it. Okay, would your
Speaker 1: parents do for a living? My mother was a school
Speaker 1: teacher and my father was a hospital administrator. Okay, did
Speaker 1: you go to the school where your mother was the administrator? No?
Speaker 1: Never did, never did? Okay did you go to public school?
Speaker 1: Private school? Yet? Regular, regular old public school in Garden Grove?
Speaker 1: How many how many kids in the family? Four total,
Speaker 1: an older brother and sister and a younger brother. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're in the middle, in the middle, so you
Speaker 1: traditionally in the middle, the attention is on the oldest
Speaker 1: and the youngest, and you're kind of lost in the
Speaker 1: shuffle doing your own thing. What was your experience? Uh?
Speaker 1: I think so, you know, on the third So by
Speaker 1: the time that comes around, they've given up on the
Speaker 1: communion and all that stuff, and they're like, you do
Speaker 1: have maybe a little more freedom, I think, which which
Speaker 1: I liked. So you start going to school, what's your
Speaker 1: experience there? Uh uh? You know, I did well at school.
Speaker 1: I I liked it. I don't mean to hesitate, but
Speaker 1: it always sounds weird because I remember always being as
Speaker 1: you grew up, doing well in school was not cool, right,
Speaker 1: You're you're right, you're hesitating to frame your answers so
Speaker 1: you don't say something right, like dumbing down your words
Speaker 1: or whatever. That was definitely a part of it. But
Speaker 1: um but I liked I like learning. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: go to school and you do well. Are you aware
Speaker 1: of the fact that you're on the upper end of
Speaker 1: the class and how does it affect your integration with
Speaker 1: the other people there? Um? Well, for sure, I did,
Speaker 1: I did, I did well. So uh uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you find you have to find your own group, your
Speaker 1: own click, right, and that's a an ugly process. In
Speaker 1: junior high or not, you're it's the one big group,
Speaker 1: or I mean in elementary it's one big group. Junior
Speaker 1: high is where it starts to separate and get weird
Speaker 1: and you feel like you don't have a place. And
Speaker 1: I think in high school hopefully you eventually find your group.
Speaker 1: And it was the group that I started hanging out
Speaker 1: with that we eventually formed the band from Okay, well,
Speaker 1: how did that group fit in the high school? We
Speaker 1: ran across country. You're a cross country How did that
Speaker 1: come together? I don't know. I decided I always liked
Speaker 1: distance running, uh, and so started doing it in high school.
Speaker 1: I was never good or anything, but but I liked
Speaker 1: it and did it all were years and that was
Speaker 1: kind of our click ended up being that, And it
Speaker 1: turned out that we all liked punk rock also, so
Speaker 1: we were like this, these guys that you know likes
Speaker 1: punk rock and we ran across the country, but we
Speaker 1: didn't have mohawks and leather jackets, so we kind of
Speaker 1: didn't even fit in with the punkers. We are our
Speaker 1: own little weird group and stuff. So I know it's
Speaker 1: very fashionable to say, well, we never fit in, that's
Speaker 1: why we are who we are, but it really was
Speaker 1: pretty it was true in our case. Okay, you were
Speaker 1: punk rockers. In your case, when did you start playing
Speaker 1: an instrument? Um? I think I was fourteen. My my
Speaker 1: my mother came home from school and saw me sitting
Speaker 1: on the couch too many days in a row, and
Speaker 1: she's like, you're doing something. You're gonna start playing piano,
Speaker 1: and uh so she she made me take piano for
Speaker 1: about a year. And after a year I felt like
Speaker 1: it wasn't cool being fifteen and going into high school
Speaker 1: and playing piano, which is, you know, a dumb idea now,
Speaker 1: But she let me off and I would it across
Speaker 1: country instead. But I'm really glad now, of course that
Speaker 1: she forced me to, uh to do that. There there
Speaker 1: there might not be a goneaway version, for example, if
Speaker 1: I if we hadn't done that. Okay, do you know
Speaker 1: how to read music? I mean I could, I could
Speaker 1: count down the lines and go I think that's a
Speaker 1: c but no, I guess it's the answer. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're running across country and you're punk rock fans. At
Speaker 1: what point do you say, hey, maybe we can form
Speaker 1: a band, right, uh, well yeah, punk rock fans, and
Speaker 1: we loved bands like The Dead Kennedy's and The Ramons
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. I think it was
Speaker 1: when we first heard a band from Orange County called
Speaker 1: Tis So Well that it kind of took it to
Speaker 1: the next level. It was almost like, oh, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I don't just like that. I want to
Speaker 1: be that. I want I want to start a band.
Speaker 1: So that happened when we were about seventeen, but we
Speaker 1: didn't We didn't play instruments. That's the story is that
Speaker 1: we we went to a show, couldn't get in. It
Speaker 1: was actually a social distortion show and Irvine, and then
Speaker 1: we ended up at somebody's house saying, well, shoot, maybe
Speaker 1: we should start a band, like, well, we don't play instruments,
Speaker 1: Like what the hell, let's start a band anyway, And
Speaker 1: we actually like divvied up parts that night, Well what
Speaker 1: do you want to play? I'll play bass, I'll play guitar.
Speaker 1: And that is literally how the band started. And then
Speaker 1: we went out and asked our parents to buy as guitars. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's really by school. So what was your relationship with girls?
Speaker 1: During high school and junior high Uh, awkward for sure.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think we're you know, we're typical kids.
Speaker 1: I don't think we really had girlfriends so much until maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, senior year high school, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So what is the instrument you're supposed to play? When
Speaker 1: you divvy it up, it was gonna be the guitar, guitar,
Speaker 1: and so we picked you know, drums, guitar, bass. Nobody
Speaker 1: said I'm going to be the singer. We kind of
Speaker 1: we weren't sure how to treat that. So I think
Speaker 1: we all left that alone. And I think we all
Speaker 1: sort of maybe dabbled in it here and there, and
Speaker 1: you know, over the next year. Um, it turned out
Speaker 1: it was gonna be me. Okay, so you're gonna get
Speaker 1: You go home and you say, Mom and dad, I
Speaker 1: want a guitar. It was my Christmas present. And how
Speaker 1: did you how did you decide what guitar you want?
Speaker 1: We went to the music store and asked it was.
Speaker 1: It was a Hondo. It costs ninety nine dollars and
Speaker 1: Hondos are not knowing for being great guitars. And he gave, uh,
Speaker 1: he he had me buy this amp called a bassman,
Speaker 1: uh for ninety nine dollars also or my dad bought
Speaker 1: it and uh it turns out it's really not a
Speaker 1: guitar amp. It's a bass amp. And uh, our our
Speaker 1: bass player, also got a bass for Christmas and they
Speaker 1: bought him a PV backstage, which is a really a
Speaker 1: guitar amp. So we kind of got together first practices
Speaker 1: and after a month if you realize we're playing the
Speaker 1: wrong amp, so we we switched. Okay, so you get
Speaker 1: the guitar. You don't know how to play, now learn
Speaker 1: how to play not a lick. You know, you sit
Speaker 1: you sit down and you fiddle with it. The way
Speaker 1: I really did it was I sat on my bed
Speaker 1: and I put on the LPs that I loved. It
Speaker 1: was it was bands like ts L of course and
Speaker 1: the Ramons and and stuff like that, and kind of
Speaker 1: just listened and tried to figure out what they were doing,
Speaker 1: um and and and mimic it. Okay, but if you
Speaker 1: know nothing, it's not as easy. It's not like there
Speaker 1: are pictures back then. You know, there's the key, there's
Speaker 1: the tuning, you know, there's the notes. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of ship going on. It was a bit well I mean,
Speaker 1: I had a guitar practice book and it's like, we'll
Speaker 1: try these scales, these exercises, and I hated it. That
Speaker 1: wasn't interesting to me at all, the the theory or
Speaker 1: the scales. Like I wanted to play punk rock, That's
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. So I use those books
Speaker 1: enough to figure out how to tune the guitar, and
Speaker 1: then sometimes maybe in a song you could figure out.
Speaker 1: I mean, chords were beyond me, but if there was
Speaker 1: a single string melody, I could probably figure that out.
Speaker 1: That was the first thing. And then I kind of
Speaker 1: realized it is gonna be barkhors. That was going to
Speaker 1: be important to learn, and I just couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 1: And it was actually by looking on the back of
Speaker 1: a record cover, I saw a guy in a band
Speaker 1: that I loved playing a barcord and the thing is
Speaker 1: he had his thumb pressed against the back of the neck.
Speaker 1: That's how you keep your fingers on. But I had not.
Speaker 1: I had just never figured that out. I hadn't taken lessons,
Speaker 1: and it was like, ah, so in a way, these
Speaker 1: these bands that I loved really taught me how to
Speaker 1: play guitar okay, and how so everybody got it into
Speaker 1: everybody did what they said they were gonna do. Yes,
Speaker 1: And how long after you got the instruments did you
Speaker 1: play together? Uh? I think in the next months. What
Speaker 1: became apparent is that some of us, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: all really terrible, um, but some of us were never
Speaker 1: gonna get it. Like our our drummer was he was
Speaker 1: never going to be able to figure out how to
Speaker 1: play the drums. And you know, he had fun with
Speaker 1: it for a while and then um, he actually, well
Speaker 1: we're this is the January before we graduated. So by
Speaker 1: June we've graduated, he got a girlfriend. He didn't want
Speaker 1: to be to play the drums anymore. He was having
Speaker 1: more he was having more fun with his with his
Speaker 1: girlfriend and stuff. And our guitar player didn't work out
Speaker 1: too well either. So it was that kind of thing
Speaker 1: and trying to find another guy in the neighborhood to
Speaker 1: play drums, and eventually we ended up with a lineup
Speaker 1: two years later that that stick together for for seventeen years. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the guy bought a whole drum kit and then
Speaker 1: stopped playing. He did he didn't, he didn't care, he
Speaker 1: didn't care about it. That much. Okay, and you're in
Speaker 1: the high school. Is it true that you're with a valedictorian? Yes,
Speaker 1: I was a valletorian. Okay, so that bigs a question.
Speaker 1: What'd you get on your S A T S cheez?
Speaker 1: It was? Um, it was different back back then the
Speaker 1: way it was scored. Um, the math was always easier
Speaker 1: for me. Uh but I think it was. It was
Speaker 1: a thirteen fifty. So what is that like? It was
Speaker 1: like a seven hundred and six fifty I think something
Speaker 1: like that. Okay. How did you end up deciding to
Speaker 1: go to USA? Um? I really felt tight with the
Speaker 1: guys who are hanging out with and the idea of
Speaker 1: starting over another state. I just I felt like I
Speaker 1: wanted to stay closer to home to go to school.
Speaker 1: So to me, that meant UM either USC or U
Speaker 1: C l A. UM. I thought I was interested in
Speaker 1: the Air Force Academy because I wanted to fly, but
Speaker 1: um I had I had to wark glasses or contacts,
Speaker 1: so I was going to be eliminated from the pilot category.
Speaker 1: So I I nixed that off the list and I
Speaker 1: applied to both USC and U C l A. They
Speaker 1: both admitted me and the U C U C l
Speaker 1: A letter. I'm not bagging on U. C. L A
Speaker 1: by the way, but they said, congratulations, we're in. We'll
Speaker 1: see in October. The USC letter said, congratulations, you're in.
Speaker 1: We'd love to welcome to your reception, and we want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about a scholarship and please come
Speaker 1: hang out with us. And here talk to this guy,
Speaker 1: this professor. So they were they were very much recruiting.
Speaker 1: But um, but it really made me feel much more
Speaker 1: wanted at USC. So did you get a scholarship of USA?
Speaker 1: I did. I got a couple of them that. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't know how my parents would have afforded. I
Speaker 1: don't think they could have. But um, my scholarships paid
Speaker 1: about se my tuition, so you didn't have to borrow
Speaker 1: any money. No, my parents were able to handle the other.
Speaker 1: And then did you live on campus or near campus? Yep?
Speaker 1: Lived in the dorms the first year and then on
Speaker 1: student housing the other three years. Let's go back at
Speaker 1: chapter what was your valedictorian speech? Uh? Well, in all fairness,
Speaker 1: there were they didn't have a p classes then, so
Speaker 1: there were there were three people that had all ace
Speaker 1: four point oh was as much as you could get
Speaker 1: back then, and so we all had to give a speech,
Speaker 1: and mine was just kind of like, I didn't Frankly,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel comfortable being on stage for a long speech,
Speaker 1: so I kept it short. I just kind of said, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, we've all got we all have a shot
Speaker 1: at success. Please, you know, keep that in mind and
Speaker 1: make the most of your chance. Okay, when you go
Speaker 1: to USC is the dream to be a rock star? No,
Speaker 1: I was pre mad. I thought I was interested in surgery. UM.
Speaker 1: Cardiac surgery really appealed to me. I thought at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, when you think you have something in mine
Speaker 1: that you want to do, as you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to know. Sometimes it feels natural and it stays that way,
Speaker 1: and sometimes what you learn about it, you're like, oh, actually,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I love it as much as
Speaker 1: I thought I did. So, Uh, I was interested in
Speaker 1: in medicine, and uh, you don't major in medicine, you
Speaker 1: major in biology usually, Uh, if you're gonna take that path,
Speaker 1: So that's what I was doing. But I was starting
Speaker 1: to become really into the band, and I was really
Speaker 1: excited about this. UM. You know, we had now been
Speaker 1: playing guitars for six months and maybe we were going
Speaker 1: to write a song or something. So, uh, I would
Speaker 1: come home on the weekends and that's how we did
Speaker 1: our our band practices, that we would we would jam
Speaker 1: every weekend, all weekend. Okay, So at this point it's
Speaker 1: the solid members for seventeen years. When do you play
Speaker 1: your first gig for money? Yeah? No, sorry that we
Speaker 1: had been our first guys. Yeah. I mean, if we're
Speaker 1: going back to the beginning of the band, Um, it
Speaker 1: was just a couple of years. Um, the first show
Speaker 1: that I can remember, it was a show in Santa
Speaker 1: Cruz where we opened for another punk band called White
Speaker 1: Flag and and having you know, terrible stage fright and
Speaker 1: there was only forty people there, and um, it was
Speaker 1: terrifying and it was exciting and it was exhilarating, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was everything I wanted because it was like, you're
Speaker 1: with your buddies, you're driving away somewhere for the weekend,
Speaker 1: you're drinking beer, You're it's a disadventure. It was really
Speaker 1: what it was. The money was completely not important at all.
Speaker 1: It'd be great if you get your gas covered, but
Speaker 1: I think we got forty dollars. How did you get
Speaker 1: a gig in Santa Cruz. Uh, you know, I've started
Speaker 1: looking around, really trying whatever I could find. A big
Speaker 1: resource back then where the fanzines. Fanzines like Flip Side
Speaker 1: magazine and stuff, and they would say here's a booking
Speaker 1: agent or here's a promoter, or they would talk about
Speaker 1: shows around the country and saying here's this club in
Speaker 1: Santa Cruz that's had shows, and we would call them
Speaker 1: up ourselves and say, hey, can we can we get
Speaker 1: a show and maybe send him a demo tape. Okay,
Speaker 1: And at this point you're playing in Santa Cruz all originals? Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you write those songs? That? Did any of
Speaker 1: them make the cut further down the line? I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think let me see if I can
Speaker 1: even remember all these. I felt like it's kind of
Speaker 1: this joke, but like, look, if you're gonna start a
Speaker 1: punk band, there's four songs you got it right right away.
Speaker 1: There's four bases you gotta cover. One of them is
Speaker 1: an anti police song, one of them is an anti
Speaker 1: war song. Uh, one of them is uh I'm depressed
Speaker 1: and I want to die song, and the fourth one
Speaker 1: is my girlfriend's a bitch. So those were the first
Speaker 1: four songs that we wrote. I think, okay, so you
Speaker 1: play in Santa Cruz, you have a good weekend. What's
Speaker 1: the next step after that? Uh, it was getting shows
Speaker 1: wherever we could. It was really hard in those days
Speaker 1: because there were no steady venues, especially for for punk rock, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the the sunset scene was kind of happening,
Speaker 1: but we were never going to get a show at
Speaker 1: the Whiskey and Go Go, and we couldn't draw anybody anyway.
Speaker 1: And even the anti club I thought was the punk
Speaker 1: Is Club in l A. And they didn't want to
Speaker 1: book us. They're like, yeah, we're not really booking punk bands. So,
Speaker 1: as you probably remember, these shows would pop up once
Speaker 1: in a while at a vf W hall or something.
Speaker 1: It was like maybe, if you're lucky, you could get
Speaker 1: on one gig and then the place would go, you know,
Speaker 1: because the cops would show up and there'd never be
Speaker 1: another show again. So that was something we chased around
Speaker 1: for a few years. And it was really Gilman Street
Speaker 1: opening up in Berkeley, which provided um a steady venue,
Speaker 1: a venue that stuck around, and we could go up
Speaker 1: there every you know, three times a year maybe, and
Speaker 1: so we actually sort of developed a following up there
Speaker 1: just by virtue of there being a steady place. The
Speaker 1: venue is so important, okay. And who was the business
Speaker 1: guy in the band? I mean we all did a
Speaker 1: little bit of it. I definitely had a lot to
Speaker 1: do with it, because usually the drummer is a business
Speaker 1: guy and you're not the drummer. No, no, no, our
Speaker 1: drummer was. He was. He was the youngster in the band.
Speaker 1: He was five years younger, so a little bit different dynamic. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when does the lineup formalize? Like what year? No, yeah,
Speaker 1: how far into you you start playing in January your
Speaker 1: senior year high school? At what point does the group
Speaker 1: formulate in the seventeen year run? Right? Two years? Two
Speaker 1: years later we had the four guys. That was the case.
Speaker 1: You have two years everybody serious about it, everybo or
Speaker 1: they just say, well, I'm doing this. Uh. I think
Speaker 1: we were serious, but we had no expectations. I think
Speaker 1: the idea was like, look, there's no punk band that's
Speaker 1: gonna make a million dollar there sell a million records
Speaker 1: or that. That just that it doesn't exist in the universe.
Speaker 1: So we love what we did, and I definitely was
Speaker 1: felt strongly about pursuing it and trying to to be
Speaker 1: to make the most of it and be whatever we
Speaker 1: could be. But it was it was gonna be. It
Speaker 1: was a small, a low bar, I guess, okay, and
Speaker 1: you were in college. The other members what were they doing? Uh? College? Uh?
Speaker 1: Bass player Greg full time college. Noodles was part time
Speaker 1: college and full time working. And Uh, I think Ron
Speaker 1: the drummer was going to a technical school. So students mostly, Okay,
Speaker 1: And at what point do you say we're gonna put
Speaker 1: a demo? Try to pursue this more seriously. You know.
Speaker 1: Recording was really important to me from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: So even before we had the four guys together. Uh,
Speaker 1: I would go to a studio and just work with
Speaker 1: an engineer for ten dollars an hour. I remember that.
Speaker 1: The first guy, he was in Placentia and he lived
Speaker 1: at his mom's house, and he converted his garage in
Speaker 1: a regular suburban house to a studio and that's where
Speaker 1: we cut our first songs. So if I had to
Speaker 1: play more than one instrument, I would just do it.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know how to play drums, but we
Speaker 1: did the best we could. And so we're putting songs
Speaker 1: together from the very beginning. Okay, when did you start
Speaker 1: to shop a tape? Well, when you say shop, when
Speaker 1: did you say, we have a tape and we're either
Speaker 1: going to put it out ourselves or find someone else
Speaker 1: to put it out. Yeah, it's not like you get
Speaker 1: a manager and an agent. It's not that kind of
Speaker 1: it's way down low, right, So I think that at
Speaker 1: first it was just to circulate to friends. If we
Speaker 1: got a show, we'd either give them away or you know,
Speaker 1: I found, uh, there was a twenty five pack you
Speaker 1: could get for twenty five dollars, so I would be
Speaker 1: we would dub tapes and either charge a dollar or
Speaker 1: give them out. They'd also be kind of like your
Speaker 1: audition tape if you wanted to get a show at
Speaker 1: like there was a club here in Huntington called Safari
Speaker 1: Sam's and you could send a demo tape there to
Speaker 1: try to get booked. So uh, as far as selling them, cheeze,
Speaker 1: I guess you know. We did put an ad in
Speaker 1: Flip Side magazine, okay, by our demo tape for two
Speaker 1: dollars or whatever, but it was at that at that level,
Speaker 1: just selling tapes out of the back of a magazine
Speaker 1: and what was the next big step. We decided to
Speaker 1: make our own single. Uh. And it's not that we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have loved to have a label do it for us,
Speaker 1: but it just wasn't an option. There wasn't the interest
Speaker 1: from anybody. So we decided to record our own. It
Speaker 1: was a seven inch with two songs, and we did
Speaker 1: that in and we made a thousand copies of it
Speaker 1: of it, and we were very excited. We didn't know
Speaker 1: how we're going to sell a thousand copies that was.
Speaker 1: That was like, you know, crazy number to get, but
Speaker 1: that was like the lowest quantity I think you could order.
Speaker 1: But the deal was that it was so it was
Speaker 1: all the money we had just to get impressed that
Speaker 1: the sleeve part wasn't included. Um, you had to do
Speaker 1: that separately or pay a lot for it. So we
Speaker 1: actually got these record jackets printed up, a thousand of them,
Speaker 1: and we had to glue them together ourselves. So we
Speaker 1: assembled our own singles and it was done. Then what
Speaker 1: you do with it We advertise and flip side, you know.
Speaker 1: I think we actually found that there were some small
Speaker 1: distributors at that point. I'm trying to think of their names,
Speaker 1: but you know, along the lines of a caroline or
Speaker 1: whatever that would they would actually say, I'll take fifty
Speaker 1: of them. So we're selling like little bundles of fifty
Speaker 1: to a hundred. Um. I think I don't know if
Speaker 1: we ever sold through them, but um, I think I
Speaker 1: think they lasted mostly for about three years, so the
Speaker 1: distributors didn't return them unsold. No, No, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I really cared about that, just in terms of marketplace. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what happens next A big step in the band?
Speaker 1: Or you graduated from college? Oh, my gosh, Um graduated
Speaker 1: from college, didn't get into medical school. I think by
Speaker 1: that time I was kind of I don't want to
Speaker 1: say half hearted, but not a committed to that h
Speaker 1: And Um, so I didn't get into medical school, and
Speaker 1: the idea was, well, why don't you stick around and
Speaker 1: get your masters and then do you look better on
Speaker 1: paper to try to get in medical school? And I
Speaker 1: liked that idea of it. I think, you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: I liked the idea that it gave me more time
Speaker 1: to mess around with the band and stay at home.
Speaker 1: So we did that, and about that time is when
Speaker 1: we finally got interest from a label, a record label,
Speaker 1: and we put out our first album, self titled The Offspring. Okay,
Speaker 1: and at some point in this game, you have a child.
Speaker 1: What happens there? Yes, that's right. Uh had had a daughter,
Speaker 1: and it was it was a tough, a tough situation. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, it just kind of kind of made
Speaker 1: made the best of it. I mean, um, you know
Speaker 1: it got better later on. I guess I'll just put
Speaker 1: it that way. Okay, So you have was it a
Speaker 1: girlfriend who got pregnant or someone you didn't know that well,
Speaker 1: someone I didn't know very well? Okay? And there was
Speaker 1: no issue of getting an abortion? No, no, uh no,
Speaker 1: So you must have been freaking out. I was freaking out.
Speaker 1: I was freaking out. I was twenty three. What did
Speaker 1: your parents say? They said, jeez, you know, you could
Speaker 1: really mess up your life, and like, well, this is it.
Speaker 1: I just have to deal with what what I've got
Speaker 1: going on. And uh, you know, you don't want to.
Speaker 1: You don't look at it from that side. You look
Speaker 1: at it the fact that there's you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: a child here you want to do your best for.
Speaker 1: And so what did you do and where did you
Speaker 1: get the money and how involved were you with the
Speaker 1: child's life? You honestly not very for a while for
Speaker 1: a while, and then it was it was, you know,
Speaker 1: several years later where um, I'd made the effort to
Speaker 1: get involved and that's when that's when things got better.
Speaker 1: And did you pay support? We'll always for sure. So
Speaker 1: where did you get the money to pay support? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, they based it on your income.
Speaker 1: It was still it was a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of my income, for sure. But you know, back then,
Speaker 1: you you took odd jobs, worked in the summer, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever you had to do, you know, part time work.
Speaker 1: So how did you metabolize this or was it a
Speaker 1: you know, a weight on your shoulder? It was just
Speaker 1: it was it was what it was. So no, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like that. It wasn't processed like that or a
Speaker 1: weight or anything like that. Okay, let me ask you,
Speaker 1: do you have any tattoos? I have zero tattoos. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's obviously thought behind that. What's your thought? I know
Speaker 1: we're probably, you know, one of the only bands I
Speaker 1: think actually I think no one in the Vandals has tattoos.
Speaker 1: And uh, but I know, so tattoos are so you know,
Speaker 1: ubiquitous everywhere, and especially as time went on. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, in the eighties and nineties, maybe it was
Speaker 1: a couple here and there, and then by the time
Speaker 1: you get to the Warp Tour in the two thousands,
Speaker 1: you know, an eighteen year old kid is completely sleeved.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely changed. But you know, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: I didn't like them. I think they're cool. I just
Speaker 1: I never felt strongly about any one thing that I
Speaker 1: wanted to get a tattooed on me, and I kind
Speaker 1: of thought, yeah, maybe I'll feel differently in a few years.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I also thought that, you know, I
Speaker 1: knew that like you're gonna change, you might not love
Speaker 1: at at forty what you loved at at twenty. So
Speaker 1: I just never just never appealed to me enough to
Speaker 1: go through and get one so on someone that you say,
Speaker 1: this is permanent, and therefore, you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to take a risk if it's permanent. I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: I mean, the more I thought about it, that there
Speaker 1: was enough time like, Okay, look, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be that guy with a bad billy tattoo, right, I've
Speaker 1: seen enough bad tattoos that people regret to know that
Speaker 1: that wasn't what I wanted to be. Okay, the first album,
Speaker 1: nothing really happens. Ultimately you make the album with epitaph
Speaker 1: what is going on in your day to day life
Speaker 1: between graduated from college and before things start to come
Speaker 1: together in nineties war. Yes, So I did finish the
Speaker 1: masters at at USC, and uh, you know, my undergrad
Speaker 1: was in biology, just general biology. The masters was in
Speaker 1: molecular biology, which is like genetics, and I really liked
Speaker 1: the subject a lot. I thought it was really cool,
Speaker 1: was it was. I was interested in it, like I
Speaker 1: could see myself going further with that. UM. I applied
Speaker 1: to medical school again and didn't get in again. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think if it had been USC, I probably would
Speaker 1: have gone. And I got pretty far in the process.
Speaker 1: They interviewed me. That's like the last step before they
Speaker 1: decide UM. I interviewed it a couple of other places,
Speaker 1: like I interviewed Georgetown and a couple uh medical schools
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia Hanuman and Jefferson, and uh, I think I
Speaker 1: kind of just didn't quite finish the application with those guys.
Speaker 1: I think I had a good shot, probably because I
Speaker 1: I had done well on the MCATs and stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I think again it was that kind of like
Speaker 1: kind of uh, sorry, what's the word, sabotaging yourself a
Speaker 1: little bit, maybe so that you don't go in a
Speaker 1: direction you don't want to go. I think subconsciously the
Speaker 1: band was important and I didn't want to let that go.
Speaker 1: So I want to try to figure out a situation
Speaker 1: where Okay, I'm not going to be one of those
Speaker 1: guys that drops out and just tries to make it
Speaker 1: in a band that just didn't seem realistic to me.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to stay in l A so I
Speaker 1: could find something that I like to do and still
Speaker 1: do the music. What and he thought about what that
Speaker 1: might be. Well, since I didn't get in medical school,
Speaker 1: that that the school USC said, well, look, you've already
Speaker 1: got the masters, why don't you just come back and
Speaker 1: keep on working on the doctorate. We'll we'll let you continue,
Speaker 1: which was an amazing opportunity. And I loved it because
Speaker 1: I did like the subject. But I also knew that
Speaker 1: as a graduate student you've got pretty amazing flexibility. Like
Speaker 1: if I had to go to Reno on a Thursday
Speaker 1: to play a show, I could I could do it.
Speaker 1: I could. I could get away with it and get
Speaker 1: back and put in the time over the weekend or something.
Speaker 1: So it was actually a pretty good situation being a
Speaker 1: grad student. Okay, come out and play. That becomes a
Speaker 1: phenomenon in l A. Jim garin Oh is your manager,
Speaker 1: yet he is working at A and M. And then
Speaker 1: Alcafaro goes to a program at Harvard, so the gym
Speaker 1: is literally running A and M and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden K Rock picks up the record and it becomes
Speaker 1: the biggest record on k rock. What is the experience
Speaker 1: from your side of the glass, It was incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, going from zero to a hundred for sure,
Speaker 1: and especially in our case. You know, I remember bands
Speaker 1: doing interviews saying, you know, when we were first together,
Speaker 1: we could only draw ten people until our first single
Speaker 1: came out. I mean we drowed. We drew ten people
Speaker 1: for ten years. I mean the band was ten years
Speaker 1: in when Come Out and Play came out. And I
Speaker 1: remember right when, right before the record Smash came out,
Speaker 1: we did a hometown show and we actually drew a
Speaker 1: hundred people. So that was the best we had ever done,
Speaker 1: was a hundred. After all that time, so for this
Speaker 1: song to get on the radio and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden really connect was just it just blew our minds.
Speaker 1: It was crazy. I mean I I was living in
Speaker 1: an apartment with with my girlfriend, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden there were label guys like knocking on my door.
Speaker 1: I had no idea how they tracked me down, but
Speaker 1: A and our guys were coming to my little tiny
Speaker 1: apartment and Hunton Beach saying hey, can I talk to you?
Speaker 1: And I go, well, I gotta take out the trash.
Speaker 1: My my girlfriend wants for to on the trash, and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, can I take out the trash with you?
Speaker 1: Like being being followed around, you know, so you kind
Speaker 1: of have these moments where it feels real in a
Speaker 1: way that you're not sure before, you know, like uh,
Speaker 1: like being in the newspaper was something that really legitimized
Speaker 1: it for my parents, like because they they were always supportive,
Speaker 1: but they were hoping it was kind of a phase
Speaker 1: for me, hoping I just you know, get with it
Speaker 1: and go back to medical school or something. But when
Speaker 1: they saw us in the l a times, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, for them it's like, Okay, this is real.
Speaker 1: I finally got their seal of approval. Um. I think
Speaker 1: another moment for me was being in our kitchen and
Speaker 1: because you live in a small apartment conflict plaw and complex,
Speaker 1: your kitchen win dough faces the guy next door's kitchen
Speaker 1: window whatever, right and I'm looking at him and he's
Speaker 1: on his cordless phone, and because it's we're close en together,
Speaker 1: I can actually hear him talking and he's on the phone.
Speaker 1: He goes, no, dude, I'm looking at him right now.
Speaker 1: So like, okay, this is actually this is turning into something. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the album comes out on the Epitaph and the
Speaker 1: people sniffing around and hunting the beach are from other labels. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I major labels, And what was your deal with Epitaph?
Speaker 1: We were signed I think for another record that that
Speaker 1: point became a legal legal issue. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: I was really stoked to be part of the Epitaph thing.
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like we finally found in you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking about finding Mike our social click in
Speaker 1: high school. These are our guys in a band sense.
Speaker 1: I felt like we had find found that circle on Epitaph.
Speaker 1: We had become friends with um bands like Pennywise and
Speaker 1: No Effects, Rancid of course, and you know, Bad Religion.
Speaker 1: It was a couple of years ahead of us, so
Speaker 1: we weren't as tight with them, but it felt like
Speaker 1: this real, real sense of community, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to leave it. Brett Gurwitz, the owner, was really gung
Speaker 1: ho about we're gonna make it, We're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: you know, and he didn't want to lose us to
Speaker 1: a major um because at that time, every band that
Speaker 1: got started would go to the major in the middle
Speaker 1: of the record, whether it was you know, beck On Ball,
Speaker 1: Load Records or Trent Resider, like none of them finished
Speaker 1: their successful record at the label they released the record
Speaker 1: initially on. And he really wanted to do it, and
Speaker 1: and I felt kind of excited about it. And there
Speaker 1: was again because our friends and our buddies were there.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like this real sense of camaraderie, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it, let's do it. Okay, how did you
Speaker 1: get the deal at Epitaph if you could only draw
Speaker 1: forty people? Yeah? Yeah, persistence I sent I sent Brett
Speaker 1: our first record that we released on other label, and
Speaker 1: he liked it, but he passed and then you know, Uh.
Speaker 1: We played it uh a club in Hollywood, so I
Speaker 1: can't remember what it's called. But um uh he came
Speaker 1: to the show and thought we were good but kind
Speaker 1: of passed and then it was really I. I decided
Speaker 1: to do another demo with four fresh new songs, and
Speaker 1: one of the songs was the first song on what
Speaker 1: was going to be the record. And they listened to
Speaker 1: the demo and said, you're you're, You're gonna be signed.
Speaker 1: So just on the strength of a demo and how
Speaker 1: much money do they give you when they signed you? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta give Gret Brett credit for saying,
Speaker 1: here's a contract. You have to get a lawyer if
Speaker 1: you don't have a lawyer, and if you can't pay
Speaker 1: for a lawyer, I'll actually advance you the money to
Speaker 1: get a lawyer because you have to sign something. And
Speaker 1: he marked up a couple of things and sent it back.
Speaker 1: But I think, um, the first album costs ten dollars
Speaker 1: to record. That was our budget. Okay, did Annie, how
Speaker 1: did come out and play? How did that become a hit?
Speaker 1: Did you really lies that was the song? How did
Speaker 1: k Rock end up playing it? Yeah? I felt it
Speaker 1: was hooky and I thought there was something about it
Speaker 1: that I had a gut feeling it was something that
Speaker 1: was good. Uh that epitaph took it to radio. I
Speaker 1: think they kind of started just like playing it for
Speaker 1: people saying well, what do you think? What do you think?
Speaker 1: I don't think they officially approached radio, but they approached
Speaker 1: K Rock and I got the call in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: I was at grad school saying, well, hey, they listened.
Speaker 1: They had their music meeting today. They listened to fifteen
Speaker 1: songs and they rejected them all except for yours. Yours
Speaker 1: is going in And it was like what and they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think Jed the Fish played her
Speaker 1: on the drive home that day at five o'clock. And
Speaker 1: you know, luckily for us, I guess, because it just connected.
Speaker 1: It was like there was no there couldn't be a
Speaker 1: push behind it. There wasn't we were there was a
Speaker 1: small label, there was no money, no budget, nothing like that.
Speaker 1: But luckily just it reacted right away, and you know,
Speaker 1: then it was that on that top five at nine,
Speaker 1: it was number one. It stayed there for a while. Okay,
Speaker 1: you live in with your girlfriend in the apartment in
Speaker 1: Huntington Beach. You're going to grad school. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: this album blows up. It's like, so, then what do
Speaker 1: you do? Yeah? Yeah, well Jim had started managing us before,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, so what do we do? You know,
Speaker 1: Noodles is working as literally as a custodian in elementary
Speaker 1: school and he has child support to pay, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I can't just quit, and I I didn't want to
Speaker 1: throw away my grad school and stuff. And uh, we
Speaker 1: kind of we took it easy for a minute, and then,
Speaker 1: you know, talking to Jim, it's like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to really, you're gonna have to go for
Speaker 1: this if you want to shot at it, because this
Speaker 1: is the time, you know. And I'm like, well, what
Speaker 1: if I finished grad school, like a couple of years
Speaker 1: from now, it'll be gone. You gotta go. So I
Speaker 1: I quit school, Well, I took a leave of absence.
Speaker 1: They were nice enough to give me a leave of
Speaker 1: absence and uh and when you know, started touring, the
Speaker 1: thing was it was so palpable. You could feel it
Speaker 1: changing week to week, you know, because it was k
Speaker 1: rock one week and the next week it was I
Speaker 1: would go to Vegas and then it would go to Phoenix,
Speaker 1: and then it would go to San Francisco and it
Speaker 1: was spreading that way, and then you know, a month
Speaker 1: or well maybe two months later, we got MTV, and
Speaker 1: of course MTV is like a national radio station, so
Speaker 1: at that point it was national. And our record came
Speaker 1: out in April and by June, I think we were
Speaker 1: in the top twenty, would get number twenty on the
Speaker 1: album charts, and I knew we were gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: So there was that really uncomfortable period of thinking of
Speaker 1: my fucking up my life. But luckily for us, it
Speaker 1: was pretty quick because it was clear that it was
Speaker 1: going to be successful enough okay, So you immediately go
Speaker 1: on the road playing how often with who? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a booking agent in place already, Uh, just a
Speaker 1: you know, a girl in her own place doing it.
Speaker 1: Wasn't like a firm or whatever. And the idea was
Speaker 1: just to do a a club a club tour. So
Speaker 1: we're going to the five seaters and gosh, I think
Speaker 1: we are. We're out for like six weeks, which was
Speaker 1: a long time for us. And back then you don't
Speaker 1: even you don't know what you're capable of, what you
Speaker 1: can do, and it's all very exciting, you know by
Speaker 1: the way too, so I think we're playing five in
Speaker 1: a rows, you know, doing five nights on one night off,
Speaker 1: So pretty grueling tour. But you know, it was on MTV.
Speaker 1: So by the end of that tour, I mean every
Speaker 1: show was sold out. And at that point we're very
Speaker 1: comfortable playing the three to five seater and it's still
Speaker 1: a venue that I really like because there's such a
Speaker 1: it's so easy to connect with the crowd at that
Speaker 1: at that level, you know, because you mean you can
Speaker 1: almost talk to them, right and so, uh, I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed that tour. And by the end of it, like
Speaker 1: I said, when you when you get a small a
Speaker 1: small club that's packed, there's an energy. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just it's bananas, you know, it's really really great. So
Speaker 1: that was just so much fun. And then it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, off to Europe and then back and now
Speaker 1: let's do another round of the U s and we're
Speaker 1: gonna play you know, small theaters thousand and I think
Speaker 1: we ended up doing three rounds of the US like that,
Speaker 1: where we ended up in palladium sized places three thousand,
Speaker 1: three to five thousand, and when do you personally start
Speaker 1: to see any money. Uh oh gosh. I mean it
Speaker 1: takes a while, right, It's not like here and I
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah, I mean I think it was a
Speaker 1: year before we got any real money. Um. I do
Speaker 1: remember our record came out in April and when we
Speaker 1: were in Europe, they said congratulations, guys, just sold a million,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't believe her, like holy sh it. And
Speaker 1: I think by Christmas it had sold three million. So
Speaker 1: we knew there was money in the pipeline. But I mean,
Speaker 1: we couldn't have spent it anyway. We were on the road.
Speaker 1: I think we did. We did two shows I think
Speaker 1: on that record over his span of about fourteen months.
Speaker 1: And the thing is you cover that, you cover all
Speaker 1: the whatever, the territory, and then you'd have to do
Speaker 1: it again because it was a bigger thing now and
Speaker 1: then you'd have to do it again. So it was
Speaker 1: it was a lot, but um, you know, we knew
Speaker 1: that it was the time to do it for sure,
Speaker 1: you know. And and we're also you know, talking to Jim,
Speaker 1: He's like, you should really put the work in in
Speaker 1: Europe because Europe will stay with you if you go now.
Speaker 1: And we went to Europe. I think four times on
Speaker 1: that record. Okay, so how much money did you get
Speaker 1: when you got paid and what you do with the money. Well,
Speaker 1: I bought a car. I don't know. I mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't like gazillionaires, but maybe millionaires. It was enough to
Speaker 1: buy a house, I think, you know. And like I said, right,
Speaker 1: we're it's it's a year and a half later before
Speaker 1: you're even thinking about that stuff. So you know, I
Speaker 1: had gotten married. Uh, you know, other guys got engaged
Speaker 1: and we all kind of figured out where we want
Speaker 1: to live and bought our first houses. Okay, now you
Speaker 1: have to make another record, yes, first time. You're nobody.
Speaker 1: Now you have this gigantic kit. How much pressure do
Speaker 1: you feel? You try not to look at it that way,
Speaker 1: and that's what I would always say in an interview,
Speaker 1: but I think it's natural to feel it a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: I feel like you maybe can't do your best work
Speaker 1: if you're coming for that place, because like it's like
Speaker 1: a mind funk. Right. You don't want to think about
Speaker 1: what they want, but you don't want to try too
Speaker 1: hard and not think about what they want. You're trying
Speaker 1: to just be what you were before, which was unknown.
Speaker 1: Um I did know that doing Smash Part two felt
Speaker 1: like the wrong thing to do. I thought that that
Speaker 1: doesn't feel right. We have to This is the time
Speaker 1: where we have to expand our our musical circle, so
Speaker 1: to speak. We had to try something different. So that
Speaker 1: was that was part of the thinking going into Extant
Speaker 1: on the Ombrean and UM. I think the other thing
Speaker 1: was the recognition that this is going to be a
Speaker 1: software slumb. It's gonna be perceived as a software slub,
Speaker 1: no matter if it's good or bad, it's it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be what Smash was, and trying to prepare ourselves
Speaker 1: for that, even though you know they called it soft.
Speaker 1: People call it that when a band puts out the
Speaker 1: second record after a successful one. But they're not realizing
Speaker 1: that we've put out four albums and we've been around
Speaker 1: for twelve years and we're not a new band. And
Speaker 1: how did you end up at Colombia At some when
Speaker 1: it became clear to us that we needed more than
Speaker 1: we felt Epitaph could provide. And you know, Epitaph, they
Speaker 1: they they staffed up a lot, they stuffed up a lot,
Speaker 1: and they got very good at what they did. But
Speaker 1: by the nature of who they were. They weren't going
Speaker 1: to have a presence in South America or you know,
Speaker 1: or Asia that much. Really, that was just kind of
Speaker 1: we were licensing to Sony already in Asia anyway, So
Speaker 1: we decided we wanted some something that had a bigger
Speaker 1: worldwide thing going on. And um, uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: was really Jim going out and and talking to who
Speaker 1: he felt comfortable with. And we we didn't entertain like
Speaker 1: eighteen different offers or whatever. We talked to just one
Speaker 1: or two guys. And and I really liked Columbia from
Speaker 1: the very beginning, and I liked they came across very
Speaker 1: much as we're very artist friendly. Uh you know, back
Speaker 1: in those days, I don't think people don't even care
Speaker 1: now that they The worry was that the label was
Speaker 1: going to control you and make you change your sound
Speaker 1: and all that, right, and and we never got that
Speaker 1: vibe from Colombia at all. I think we're in a
Speaker 1: we're in a fortunate position already that we were coming
Speaker 1: in off a record that had sold whatever ten million records,
Speaker 1: so we definitely were able to tell the label, don't
Speaker 1: bog us, We're just gonna do what we want to do.
Speaker 1: And they were pretty content with that because we had
Speaker 1: a track record. So you go for a long ride
Speaker 1: on Columbia. What's your experience of that. I really liked Columbia.
Speaker 1: I know it's so, you know, easy to to bag
Speaker 1: on a label or say they did something bad to
Speaker 1: you or whatever. But I always enjoyed working with them,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, we had Americana was a successful record,
Speaker 1: so we had some some some great success working with them. Um.
Speaker 1: We eventually we extended our contract by a couple of records,
Speaker 1: and we did the greatest hits record and stuff. So,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, we did seven albums on Columbia,
Speaker 1: and uh, I like to say that I think we
Speaker 1: may be one of the only bands to actually finish
Speaker 1: their record contract where we didn't. We didn't get dropped,
Speaker 1: We actually finished the contract and any thought of staying
Speaker 1: in Columbia. I think we put out the feelers and
Speaker 1: they were they seemed happy to move on at that point. Frankly, So,
Speaker 1: how did you end up with this album at Concord? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we had you know, we're free agents. We didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to work on and we were touring a lot,
Speaker 1: and like I said, recording in shorter bursts, So we
Speaker 1: kind of just took our time and didn't really look
Speaker 1: for a label for a while. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: there were some very basic conversations with some labels like
Speaker 1: Warner or Carolina or whatever. And I think um it
Speaker 1: was basically Um Concord kind of reaching out and saying, well,
Speaker 1: we'd like to talk to these guys. And when it
Speaker 1: met met with Tom Wally and the people there, and
Speaker 1: it was it was really great. Okay. And what's the
Speaker 1: experience of putting a record out today in this crazy
Speaker 1: internet era? We're back in the old days on Columbia,
Speaker 1: pre Napster, pre INSANEA. It's so different, so completely different, right,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, even you know, the Internet of two
Speaker 1: thousand is nothing like the Internet of today, and even
Speaker 1: the metrics, the measurement is different. Like, you know, we
Speaker 1: had a number one alternative album this time, and I'm
Speaker 1: calling the manager saying is that good? Because you know
Speaker 1: we I think I think we debuted number three in
Speaker 1: the UK, which is phenomenal and I'm thrilled, but I
Speaker 1: think that's less than ten thousand records sold, so it's like,
Speaker 1: is it good? You know, it's kind of more of
Speaker 1: an amalgamation of it's a combination of streaming and YouTube
Speaker 1: views and sales and whatever, you know, your social media
Speaker 1: that determines, uh, how successful record is. Well in the
Speaker 1: old days, you gear it up, gear up, hopefully MTV
Speaker 1: plays the video. No one has that kind of mind
Speaker 1: here anymore, No one has that kind of reach. Does
Speaker 1: that affect your interest, desire and perspective on new work?
Speaker 1: In a way, it's kind of liberal because you can
Speaker 1: kind of be who you are and you just kind
Speaker 1: of develop whatever audience that is, right, Like, we're never
Speaker 1: gonna get played on top forty, so you know that
Speaker 1: the whole. Like you said, the MTV, that thing is
Speaker 1: kind of out. But I think now, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's easier to express who you are. We're doing like
Speaker 1: videos on YouTube like a series, and we're calling it
Speaker 1: how to with the Offspring And on one thing, I
Speaker 1: we talk tell people how to surf, but we don't
Speaker 1: really tell them how to surf. And another one, Noodles
Speaker 1: shows us how to bird watch. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like it allows you to express your personality in a
Speaker 1: broader way than you could have if it was just
Speaker 1: single and radio thing. And that's it. So you end
Speaker 1: up selling your work. How do you come to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that you want to sell it? How do you
Speaker 1: make that deal? Well, are our our deal with with
Speaker 1: Sony Columbia's owned by Sony right of course, and um
Speaker 1: it was actually a licensing deal. We we came in
Speaker 1: with enough cloud off of the Epitaph deal that we
Speaker 1: got a licensing deal. So we knew that our records
Speaker 1: were the ownership was going to come back to us
Speaker 1: at some point and whenever that date was, it's you know,
Speaker 1: so many years after you deliver your last record, the
Speaker 1: records came back to us and we kind of had
Speaker 1: to make a decision as the best way to go.
Speaker 1: Do we want to re license it or make another
Speaker 1: deal or how do we want to do it? And
Speaker 1: just with the different options that were presented, we decided
Speaker 1: that we're comfortable just selling it and so tell us
Speaker 1: about making that deal. You know, there's there's several people
Speaker 1: out there, players out there. We ended up going with
Speaker 1: a company called Round Hill, which I um I got
Speaker 1: along with them. I liked them a lot. I feel
Speaker 1: like they're very into, you know, developing the bands, like
Speaker 1: they're they're always they're pressing us like can we do
Speaker 1: a reissue of Conspiracy of one, we do a really
Speaker 1: we've done like three or four reissues already and they're
Speaker 1: real collector sets, and so it's it's it's cool. It
Speaker 1: feels like something that is geared towards fans, which is
Speaker 1: important to us. Okay, those are the albums. How about
Speaker 1: the songs? What do you mean the songs? Do you
Speaker 1: still learn the songs? You sold those two round till two?
Speaker 1: Oh uh yeah, well a majority, a majority of the
Speaker 1: publishing was sold as well, A majority. Okay, you were
Speaker 1: the primary songwriter. That didn't mean that much. It means
Speaker 1: a lot in the Internet era. Was there ever any
Speaker 1: discussion about credits in the band as far as publishing
Speaker 1: goes and stuff, you know? I mean, when you first
Speaker 1: start off, you're you're so one for all and all
Speaker 1: for one, right, there's no money or anything anyway, and
Speaker 1: so on our first couple records, UM, the publishing was
Speaker 1: just split evenly, even though I did the writing. And
Speaker 1: then before we were before Smash, I had a talk
Speaker 1: with the guys that practices said, I feel like it
Speaker 1: would be fair for me to get the songwriting royalties
Speaker 1: because I do the songwriting, and um, they were totally
Speaker 1: okay with it. Um, you know, it's not like you
Speaker 1: get three you know, you get five times as much
Speaker 1: as they do. It's it's however the money works out.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a little a little bit extra, I guess.
Speaker 1: But but fortunately it was actually pretty pretty easy for
Speaker 1: everyone to agree on that, and also fortunately we were
Speaker 1: successful enough that there was there was no griping about
Speaker 1: it because everyone was doing well. Okay, when you say
Speaker 1: you sold part of the publishing round till does that
Speaker 1: mean you continue to own part? Well, there's there's different
Speaker 1: forms of publishing income, as you know, whether it's sync
Speaker 1: rights or radio airplay or you know, so I didn't
Speaker 1: sell every revenue stream. Okay, Uh, what did you do
Speaker 1: with the money? But I put in the bank. We're
Speaker 1: not getting put in the bank. You're an intelligent guy.
Speaker 1: You're losing money if you put money in the bank.
Speaker 1: So it's not really that simple. You have to do
Speaker 1: something with the money, right, that's right? Well, why why
Speaker 1: is invested? I hope? I hope. I did buy a plane.
Speaker 1: That was my my treat to myself. Okay, you owned
Speaker 1: the plane previously though, right, yes, Okay, Jim told me
Speaker 1: you want a jet, Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay,
Speaker 1: you wanted to go to the Air Force Academy, you
Speaker 1: didn't go. When did you get your pilot's license? And
Speaker 1: when did you buy your first plane? That was all
Speaker 1: after smash we came back. You know, I finally had
Speaker 1: enough money to take flying lessons. I would have never,
Speaker 1: um never been able to afford that before then. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, it probably cost five thousand dollars or
Speaker 1: something like that back in the day to get your license.
Speaker 1: And I did it. And you know when I talked
Speaker 1: before about how some things you think you're gonna like
Speaker 1: but you're not sure, this was one of those things
Speaker 1: that just for me just really clicked. I just I
Speaker 1: really liked it right away. It was gonna be my
Speaker 1: my golf if you know what I mean. And uh,
Speaker 1: I bought bought my first airplane shortly after I got
Speaker 1: my license, a propeller plane. Okay. And at that point,
Speaker 1: when were you instrument rated? Well almost right away. Um.
Speaker 1: I know people people out there may not know a
Speaker 1: lot about flying, but instrument rating is very important to me. Especially,
Speaker 1: it was very important people they kind of inadvertently get
Speaker 1: in the clouds and if you can't fly and just
Speaker 1: by instruments, you really get in trouble. So I knew
Speaker 1: that that was something I wanted to make a priority.
Speaker 1: So I got instrument rated within I don't know, within
Speaker 1: any year of getting my license. So walk us through
Speaker 1: your ownership history of airplanes. Uh. Well, when I got
Speaker 1: my license, I was I was renting. I got my
Speaker 1: license from a local airport here and decided I wanted
Speaker 1: to buy a plane. So I bought a plane called
Speaker 1: a Mooney and it's a four seater, single engine propeller plane,
Speaker 1: and I really I loved it and I still have
Speaker 1: it to this day. But um, I wanted to go,
Speaker 1: you know, farther and faster, so I ended up buying
Speaker 1: a King Air. And I love the king Air for
Speaker 1: it's it's uh for it's very comfy inside. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't very fast. So I ended up moving up to
Speaker 1: a citation, and uh, I've sort of traded up and
Speaker 1: down over the years. This I'm on my fourth fourth citation. Now. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have the Mooney and you have the citation.
Speaker 1: Those are the only two you have. Anything else? Uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's all I have. Okay, let's talk citations for
Speaker 1: a second. Please, I know there's the citation X when
Speaker 1: I've seen it, you know, citation X. I don't know
Speaker 1: where that's ten and they say that can fly slightly faster.
Speaker 1: Tell us the different citations and which one you won't. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've really gone on a tangent here. Huh. Yeah, Well
Speaker 1: the X is really a Roman emeral ten. That's called
Speaker 1: a citation ten. And keeping this very simple, the citations
Speaker 1: kind of go up in number A one or two
Speaker 1: or three or four or five, and the ten is
Speaker 1: the biggest one and the fastest one. It is a
Speaker 1: little bit faster than commercial airlines and it's great. Um,
Speaker 1: the one I have is more on the one level.
Speaker 1: And what I like about these is their single pilot certified,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to have two guys in the cockpit.
Speaker 1: So because I'm rated for it, I can I can
Speaker 1: take the jet up whatever and wherever I want to go,
Speaker 1: and I really love that feeling. What's the logic between
Speaker 1: the one pilot and the two pilot. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think back in the day there were pretty complicated
Speaker 1: systems to manage, and it kind of took two guys
Speaker 1: to to do it, and they've sort of managed to
Speaker 1: simplify it over the years where it really is something
Speaker 1: that one guy, one competent pilot can handle. So why
Speaker 1: if you fly on a ten do they have to
Speaker 1: at some point? You know, it's an f a thing.
Speaker 1: I think once when a plane's big enough, they just
Speaker 1: don't like the idea of something that big being flown
Speaker 1: by one guy. So I'm sure there's a number of reasons. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you have a Citation one. Now, when was that
Speaker 1: plane built? Yeah? The one what I have is called
Speaker 1: a c J one and it was built in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, two thousand four. And who did you buy
Speaker 1: it from? Uh? It was Yeah, it was sold back
Speaker 1: to Citation Cessna Excitation, and so they kind of have
Speaker 1: their own inventory and I bought it from from there.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like they're used car lot. Okay, So
Speaker 1: where is it today? I keep it here in l A.
Speaker 1: And we're in l A. And I'm not gonna go
Speaker 1: check out your plane, but I mean there's is it
Speaker 1: in Orange Counties? It in Beans where I'm based at
Speaker 1: the Long Beach Airport. Okay? How often do you take
Speaker 1: it out? About once a week? Once a week, And
Speaker 1: if you go out once a week. Where might you go? Uh?
Speaker 1: I like like have a stoo a lot or you know,
Speaker 1: you'll find somewhere to go. Believe me, I like going
Speaker 1: down to Baja Cabo. It is great. You know, Vegas
Speaker 1: is very close. That kind of thing. You will land
Speaker 1: there and hang out and then fly back, or you
Speaker 1: just fly and lookout what's going around? Sure land, have
Speaker 1: some fun? Okay? So how many people can fly on
Speaker 1: the your plane? It'll hold seven? Okay, So as you
Speaker 1: fly once a week, how often are you out there alone?
Speaker 1: How often you out there with other people? About half
Speaker 1: half the time I had my family with me and
Speaker 1: half the time I'm by myself. Okay. How much does
Speaker 1: it cost an hour to fly the play? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: really getting into the into this huh thousand bucks? An Well,
Speaker 1: if you do everything yourself, you can actually you can
Speaker 1: mitigate the cost quite a bit. So, like I deal
Speaker 1: with scheduling, the maintenance, and you know, all the stuff
Speaker 1: that you would normally hire a full time pilot to do,
Speaker 1: I I generally take care of and that helps the
Speaker 1: cost a lot. And then what kind of maintenance is required,
Speaker 1: I mean there's all the tune up stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, in a car, you go in every whatever,
Speaker 1: three thousand miles or six thousand miles in In the jet,
Speaker 1: everything's on a different schedule because the battery needs to
Speaker 1: be checked every year, and something else needs to be
Speaker 1: checked every nine months, so it's almost like every three
Speaker 1: there's something that needs to get looked at. I mean obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't pull over in the sky if
Speaker 1: you've got a problem with the plane. So the maintenance
Speaker 1: is very meticulous. Uh, and so that's why there's so
Speaker 1: much more attention on maintenance. And the maintenance has done it,
Speaker 1: you're where the uh, the plane is held in Long Beach.
Speaker 1: I mean there are mechanics around. I generally go to
Speaker 1: Lake Havasy for maintenance. You go to where for meat?
Speaker 1: And she said lake Havasu. Okay, So you have the
Speaker 1: plane and you know what needs to be done, and
Speaker 1: you fly to Lake Havasou how long is it going
Speaker 1: to take him to do the maintenance? Depends? Right, Sometimes
Speaker 1: they need it for a few days, or sometimes it's
Speaker 1: in in and out in an afternoon. And you go
Speaker 1: to those people because they're cheap. You trust them. I
Speaker 1: have a relationship with him. Yeah, Um, yeah, I actually
Speaker 1: I lived in Lake Havasoo for a few years. Ah,
Speaker 1: so is that like that's like a resort area. I've
Speaker 1: never even been there. It is, uh, well, I love it.
Speaker 1: We'll just say that to start with. But you know,
Speaker 1: very different California, right, it's very much. You know, people
Speaker 1: carry guns. You know that it's not even a concealing carry.
Speaker 1: It's just you just strap it on. And you know,
Speaker 1: they're not wearing masks and like have a c let's
Speaker 1: put it that way. But you know, I like the
Speaker 1: spirit out there too. I think that's that's cool that
Speaker 1: they're you know, very freedom oriented and I like that.
Speaker 1: And of course I I like that in California people
Speaker 1: are are are careful. And are you a big water
Speaker 1: sports guy? Yeah. My my parents always took us, our
Speaker 1: whole family to uh to like have us who for
Speaker 1: summer vacation, So we grew up water skiing and stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: so not being a pilot and being anxious generally speaking,
Speaker 1: if you you to the schedule of repair, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna have a problem or could you have a problem
Speaker 1: up there anyway? I mean it's mechanical. Mechanical things break
Speaker 1: for sure. I mean on the one hand, that's why,
Speaker 1: in general, there's two of everything on a jet. Have
Speaker 1: you ever noticed there's two engines and to yokes, to
Speaker 1: steering wheels, you know, two radios, to two of almost everything,
Speaker 1: so that you're you're hopefully you'll be okay if something breaks.
Speaker 1: But I mean it is a mental outlook that you
Speaker 1: have to have. It like, look, I might have an
Speaker 1: emergency and I need to be able to be prepared
Speaker 1: to to deal with that, to know that might happen.
Speaker 1: And that's why training is also very important. I I
Speaker 1: go to a place in Texas twice a year and
Speaker 1: train for a few days at a time, and we
Speaker 1: go over emergencies extensively. Okay, so what's the worst emergency
Speaker 1: you've had? Actual emergency? Well, fortunately in the yeah, in
Speaker 1: the real world. You know, these planes are really reliable,
Speaker 1: so uh you know. Um, Actually, I had a light
Speaker 1: come on once that said you might have a clog
Speaker 1: in your fuel system and it means you should land
Speaker 1: right away. I was over Palm Spring, so I landed
Speaker 1: and it turned out it was just a faulty light,
Speaker 1: so I didn't have a problem, but it looked like
Speaker 1: I might have a major problem if I didn't land quickly.
Speaker 1: And how about just experience fly? You ever have a
Speaker 1: bad experience? Uh well, I almost flew over the bush
Speaker 1: ranch once. I was flying in Texas, and you know,
Speaker 1: and generally you're on with air traffic controllers, but I
Speaker 1: just felt like being not talking to anybody, which which
Speaker 1: you can is perfectly legal and you can do as
Speaker 1: long as you stay with in certain parameters. You can't
Speaker 1: go too high blah blah. But one of one of
Speaker 1: the main things you have to do flying they call
Speaker 1: this VFR, is that you have to make sure you
Speaker 1: don't go into any airspace, uh you know around here'd
Speaker 1: be l A X for example or something. So I
Speaker 1: was cruising along and I actually did talk to a
Speaker 1: controller for a minute and said blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: he said, okay, yeah, I go ahead and go to
Speaker 1: wherever you're going. He goes, and don't forget about the
Speaker 1: bush ranch there, and I'm like what, I'm looking around
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, this is before we had
Speaker 1: those great screens of GPS. I'm like, only, funk, where's
Speaker 1: the where's the A tranch? And so I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: what to do, so I just took a hard left
Speaker 1: and went like fifty miles the other way to make
Speaker 1: sure I didn't accidentally go over that. You wouldn't You
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to do that and get in big trouble. Okay,
Speaker 1: Jim told me that you flew them to tell your ride.
Speaker 1: I didn't get this deep, but I have to ask you.
Speaker 1: Did you take them in to the tell your ride
Speaker 1: airport right and tell your ryde? I didn't, um because
Speaker 1: that's like one of the scariest airports. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it would be fun to fly into,
Speaker 1: but you know, if I'm flying somebody in their family,
Speaker 1: I don't need that level of excitement, So you know,
Speaker 1: I might I might bring another pilot, you know. I uh,
Speaker 1: if we ever take the plane on tour, I always
Speaker 1: bring a pilot. So that's one thing that you can
Speaker 1: do to help the situation. But what we do is
Speaker 1: we land at Montrose. It's just it's about it. It's
Speaker 1: it's like at the bottom of the mountain. It's down
Speaker 1: the hill. I've been there. But okay, I assume you
Speaker 1: took another pilot. What would that add to your situation?
Speaker 1: What kind of situation? Now you say, if I was
Speaker 1: going to go into a hairy airport, I might bring
Speaker 1: another pilot. What would be the thinking there? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: like if we're for example, if we're on tour, I'll
Speaker 1: bring on the pilot just because I don't mean I
Speaker 1: don't want to be responsible for everything in the plane
Speaker 1: and then going to do the show and then coming
Speaker 1: back to the airport and making sure that the gas
Speaker 1: gun on the plane and the credit card, you know,
Speaker 1: bill was paid and all that stuff. So it's really
Speaker 1: just offloading the responsibilities of of of being you know,
Speaker 1: being charge of the airplane. So when you go on tour,
Speaker 1: you do take your plane. Um in North America generally,
Speaker 1: not always, it depends on a couple of factors. But okay,
Speaker 1: well some uh, you know, big acts, they have a
Speaker 1: base and they'll fly out for every gig, Like they'll
Speaker 1: base in Chicago and they'll go to different gigs. How
Speaker 1: do you do it? Sure? Hubbing? I love hubbing. It's great,
Speaker 1: you know, the small pleasures you get used to. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't mind being on a bus. But you know,
Speaker 1: we've been on of us for twenty five years, like
Speaker 1: you know, it does get old after a while, and
Speaker 1: the idea of you go into the place you check in,
Speaker 1: you don't bother unpacked because you're gonna be leaving the
Speaker 1: next day. Right, So the idea of being in one place,
Speaker 1: one hotel, for five or six nights is really appealing, right,
Speaker 1: But of course it it makes the costs go way
Speaker 1: up because you're flying twice as far going back. So
Speaker 1: you have to take that any consideration whether it's worth it.
Speaker 1: So I'd say, you know, we we hubbed generally, like
Speaker 1: in New York, maybe because the East Coast stuff is
Speaker 1: all pretty convenient to get to, and other than that,
Speaker 1: we tend to hop from place to place. Okay, but
Speaker 1: that plane can't fly all your gear. No, no, just
Speaker 1: the band, just the band. Let's switch gears. You have
Speaker 1: this hot sauce, and I take all these vanity projects
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. Also talking about food, but
Speaker 1: yours is the best vanity hot sauce I've ever and
Speaker 1: I you know, I use it on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: For a long time, I was looked on the green
Speaker 1: thinking there was a little too much bite in the
Speaker 1: hotter one. But I go back and forth now, So
Speaker 1: tell us about the development of the hot sauce. Well,
Speaker 1: I gotta say, like I feel like, I must be
Speaker 1: the luckiest guy in the music business because I've gotten
Speaker 1: a positive review from you on a song and a
Speaker 1: hot sauce. I mean that happens. Uh, you know, growing
Speaker 1: up in southern California, just you know, Mexican food was
Speaker 1: always part of the deal. And I love Mexican food
Speaker 1: and I love the culture here, and hot sauce was
Speaker 1: part of it. And it was almost just like on
Speaker 1: a whim one day, looking at the bottle while I'm
Speaker 1: pouring it on a taco, like it would be funny
Speaker 1: to make a hot sauce. Like it was just like
Speaker 1: that much of a random thought, and I just thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm gonna do this because it
Speaker 1: would be real, it would be funny. That was kind
Speaker 1: of the the the only reason the impetus. And but
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to I don't know how to cook.
Speaker 1: So but I mean, well, ship, we don't know how
Speaker 1: to play guitars. That didn't stop us from starting a band,
Speaker 1: so I won't. I won't let cooking stop me from
Speaker 1: making a hot sauce. So, uh, you know, where do
Speaker 1: you go? You go to the internet. This is probably
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, so there were not really recipes for
Speaker 1: hot sauce On the internet, there's a lot of sausa recipes,
Speaker 1: but not so much for hot sauce, so that really
Speaker 1: took a lot more figuring out. Took me a couple
Speaker 1: of years to get a recipe together that I liked,
Speaker 1: and finally got this together and decided to make Christmas
Speaker 1: presents out of it. I'm gonna send it to my
Speaker 1: buddies and my accountant that kind of thing, and the
Speaker 1: feedback was really really phenomenal. They're like, this is good, like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Like, no, dude, this is you gotta put
Speaker 1: this out. This is really good. So they kind of
Speaker 1: encouraged me to try to release it. Okay, from the
Speaker 1: commercial perspective, there are three. Which one did you send
Speaker 1: to your buddies? The first one was the red that's
Speaker 1: kind of your general all purpose hot sauce, right, and
Speaker 1: then how did you decide you were going to have three? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that the main idea with with
Speaker 1: with my hot sauces. I wanted a Mexican style hot sauce,
Speaker 1: which means generally less of vinegary, and I wanted it
Speaker 1: to taste it and not just be hot. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of brands. They're they're caught up in the
Speaker 1: idea of we want to you know, burn your ass off,
Speaker 1: and they don't taste very good. So but I think
Speaker 1: a red and a green is just kind of natural, uh,
Speaker 1: two sides of the coin, right, So as I always
Speaker 1: knew I was gonna do a green, and then as
Speaker 1: as that went on, you know, you can you can
Speaker 1: see over the last decade, people's palates are changing and
Speaker 1: people are into spicy stuff way more than they were,
Speaker 1: so there was kind of this demand for an extra
Speaker 1: spicy one. That's why I did the super hot. Is
Speaker 1: this a business when you say business in in a
Speaker 1: in a yeah, in a vague sense. Uh no, I
Speaker 1: mean we we actually we pay the bills, but barely. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you can buy it on Amazon. How much availability
Speaker 1: is there outside that? Yeah, I mean, my my goal
Speaker 1: on this was to be just kind of a regular
Speaker 1: supermarket brand, not not trying to be a boutique brand,
Speaker 1: and you know, I kind of want to get it
Speaker 1: out there, so you go after the big change. You know,
Speaker 1: we got into Kroger, which is a really big one.
Speaker 1: That one was like two thousand stores nationally by itself.
Speaker 1: So Amazon is is huge for us. It's been great. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think we're probably in about four thousand stores,
Speaker 1: four or five thousand stores in the US. What do
Speaker 1: you know? What would I know about a storage You
Speaker 1: can get in, but if it doesn't sell, they pull it. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the on thing I didn't know about the
Speaker 1: hot sauce business. The grocery business. Right, it's slotting like
Speaker 1: a crazy business. It's a lot more fun to create
Speaker 1: a hot sauce and creative brand than it is to
Speaker 1: actually do the work and and sell it. How many
Speaker 1: people are working on the hot slace business. We've We've
Speaker 1: got about four people in the office. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a small company. It's you know, a real labor of love. Um.
Speaker 1: I like it because it's like I feel like it's
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a it's a calling card, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a fun thing to give to people,
Speaker 1: and people kind of get a kick out of it,
Speaker 1: you know when they see you know, it's like pizza.
Speaker 1: Everybody likes to here's a bottle of hot sauce. Okay,
Speaker 1: and marketing what is keeping people buying it? Yeah? I'm
Speaker 1: not really sure. I mean I knew that I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do traditional marketing, you know when when I
Speaker 1: I used to have a record label a long time ago,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't believe that the magazine adds really
Speaker 1: did anything, um, at least not at this level. Maybe
Speaker 1: if you're a giant company, then that constant presence is important,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to just be word of mouth. So
Speaker 1: I was trying to sell it to restaurants and and
Speaker 1: just get you know, good reviews online. And it's still
Speaker 1: kind of where it's at. It's pretty much a word
Speaker 1: of mouth kind of product. Okay, your Dexter because because
Speaker 1: that's not your given name. No, no, my real name
Speaker 1: is Brian I. I uh. Again, going back to all
Speaker 1: our influences, the punk rock influences, they always had kind
Speaker 1: of wacky names, and I like that, and I like that,
Speaker 1: you know, in the rock world, you'd be like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it would be some really cool name Ian
Speaker 1: or something like that, you know, Magnus or something, and
Speaker 1: I thought it was funny to do something that was
Speaker 1: the opposite of that, And to me, Dexter just seemed
Speaker 1: like the complete opposite of a cool name, and you
Speaker 1: just came up with it. Yourself. I just like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the Descendants. Their singer's name is Milo, which
Speaker 1: I think it's It makes it because he's the songs
Speaker 1: are so rad. I love the Descendants, and having him
Speaker 1: be named Milo, it made him even cooler. I thought, Okay, now,
Speaker 1: how about going back to finish your degree. How did
Speaker 1: you decide to do that and how did you actually
Speaker 1: squeeze it in? Yeah, the USC was a leave of absence,
Speaker 1: so technically I didn't I wasn't gone from USC. But
Speaker 1: I think it's only supposed to Its supposed to expire
Speaker 1: after a few years, and you know, we're really busy
Speaker 1: for a long time. And I think it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, she's fifteen years almost twenty years later that
Speaker 1: I started thinking about it, going, gosh, that's always been
Speaker 1: it's gonna be on my bucket list, but cheez is
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot to do. But it didn't seem
Speaker 1: so imperative, like we have to get a record out
Speaker 1: this year the way it did, you know, ten years before.
Speaker 1: So I went back and visited with a couple of
Speaker 1: my old professors and it was great, and they kind
Speaker 1: of told me that the door would probably be open
Speaker 1: still and that they would kind of they would sign
Speaker 1: off on it and let me come back if I
Speaker 1: wanted to finish. They encouraged me to do it, and
Speaker 1: I decided to do it because I knew that that
Speaker 1: door would not be open too many more years, right,
Speaker 1: they would retire or go away or you know, it
Speaker 1: just be too long. So I decided to to go back,
Speaker 1: thinking that I could probably finish this in a couple
Speaker 1: of years. I had done quite a bit of work
Speaker 1: by the time the band took off. Um, I had
Speaker 1: taken all the exams and the course work and they
Speaker 1: call um your candidate, and they call that all but dissertation.
Speaker 1: So I had done everything with a dissertation and not
Speaker 1: the dissertation is a small piece. It's a big chunk
Speaker 1: of work. But um, I thought, well, I can go
Speaker 1: back and just kind of maybe knock this out in
Speaker 1: a year or two. And uh, you know, there I was.
Speaker 1: It was five years. Actually five years. How much time
Speaker 1: I'm dedicated to it. Well, that's the thing too. It
Speaker 1: was a part time endeavor for sure. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a couple of days a week because all the
Speaker 1: time I really could spend on it. Wow, I mean,
Speaker 1: did you ever think why the hell am I doing that?
Speaker 1: I definitely did halfway through. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: tough because there was you know, technology moves fast. There
Speaker 1: was definitely I had to come up to speed on
Speaker 1: what had happened in biotech in the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: So that took a while. And then when I say
Speaker 1: all about dissertation, I didn't know what my dissertation was
Speaker 1: gonna be. So there was that searching process of finding
Speaker 1: something that I wanted to do, something that you know,
Speaker 1: the thing about your dissertation it has to be publishable.
Speaker 1: Research means meaning it has to be something no one's
Speaker 1: done before. And finding something like oh, ship, somebody did that.
Speaker 1: You know that That takes a while. That's a process.
Speaker 1: So it was definitely there was there was some yeah,
Speaker 1: some some soul searching, wondering if I was really doing
Speaker 1: the right thing by going back to finish this, because
Speaker 1: the end wasn't in sight for a while. Okay, you
Speaker 1: published it did have any impact, you know, usually don't,
Speaker 1: but you just built it up so big. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: in order to find this niche, you gotta really dig deep.
Speaker 1: You get into the stuff that's so esoteric that you know,
Speaker 1: not many people are even in that zone. So, um,
Speaker 1: my thesis was was published in the USC library. Um.
Speaker 1: The idea is to go back and tease them out
Speaker 1: a little bit more and make actual research papers. So
Speaker 1: it hasn't been published like in uh in that in
Speaker 1: that sense, but it's been cited, you know, thirty two
Speaker 1: times something like that. So now you're done with it
Speaker 1: or you're keeping your hand in biotech. Well, I'm keeping
Speaker 1: up with the reading and uh my, my my goal
Speaker 1: is once we finish all this record promo, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to write a paper or two this summer, okay,
Speaker 1: and in the next thirty or forty years. Are you
Speaker 1: a musician, are you someone living a life of leisure,
Speaker 1: Are you a scientist? Or you have no fucking clue?
Speaker 1: What is it? Yeah? I mean, look, first and foremost,
Speaker 1: I love the band. It's it's obviously what I've I've
Speaker 1: steered my life tours, you know, consciously and unconsciously. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'd ever give that up for sure,
Speaker 1: but I just you know, there's so much interesting stuff
Speaker 1: out there that's and so I like obviously dabbling in
Speaker 1: different stuff, whether it's aviation or hot sauce, you know,
Speaker 1: really different kinds of things. So I hope to always
Speaker 1: be busy doing something. I don't see myself retiring. Like,
Speaker 1: let's let's you're off cycle, you're not making a record,
Speaker 1: you're not on the road. What does a typical Dexter
Speaker 1: day look like? Yeah, uh, you know, flying, going to
Speaker 1: the beach. We we live pretty close to the beach here,
Speaker 1: which is great. Um. I have little ones now, so that,
Speaker 1: as any parent knows, takes up a good chunk of
Speaker 1: your day. And it's so much fun. Gosh, just that
Speaker 1: age of having the little ones. They're just what age
Speaker 1: are the five and two? Oh yeah, yeah, and just
Speaker 1: it's just so great just watching them run around and
Speaker 1: chase each other and laugh at the silliest things and
Speaker 1: just sit. Really, it puts life into it, you know,
Speaker 1: as you know, a whole a different perspective. Well, actually
Speaker 1: I don't know because I don't have kids, but I
Speaker 1: hear about it. But how did you decide, at this
Speaker 1: late date you would take that plunge? Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: always I wasn't sure. I wasn't decidedly that I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to have kids. I just didn't want to have kids.
Speaker 1: Then so you know, I think years later, I'm a
Speaker 1: little older, I'm a little more settled, I'm in a
Speaker 1: new marriage, and it just kind of felt it felt
Speaker 1: right to do it. And I'm really now. I mean, jeez,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad I did. Okay, Dexter, this has been great.
Speaker 1: Thanks for illuminating all these issues. Hopefully people will hear
Speaker 1: your record, you know, the album et cetera. Just one thing.
Speaker 1: You know, where does the sense of humor come from
Speaker 1: in the records? Because this is rare in the music world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if it's insecurity. I think
Speaker 1: when when bands try to come across too serious, it
Speaker 1: kind of turns me off in a way. But I
Speaker 1: think just yeah, just having something you can kind of
Speaker 1: have a laugh at him. Music supposed to make you
Speaker 1: feel good at the end of the day, whether it's
Speaker 1: it can be therapeutic. Doesn't have to be a happy song.
Speaker 1: It can be a depressing song. But if it's something
Speaker 1: that's cathartic, they'll make you feel good. That's one way,
Speaker 1: and humor is another way. Okay, And for those people
Speaker 1: who are not big into offspring play, the latest version
Speaker 1: of going Away, you're really going to be blown away
Speaker 1: and hopefully more people hear it. Thanks so much, Dexter,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. It's great speaking with you today.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Until next time, This is Bob left Sex