Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Steps podcast.
Speaker 1: My guests today are John Doe and the que Jervenka
Speaker 1: of the B and X, which just put out its
Speaker 1: final album and is on its final tour. How did
Speaker 1: the two of you meet?
Speaker 2: We met at a writing workshop in Venice, California called
Speaker 2: Beyond Baroque, and Beyond Brokes still has writing workshops. It
Speaker 2: has the largest small press library and is a great
Speaker 2: community service in Venice, California.
Speaker 1: So why did you go to the writing workshop?
Speaker 2: Because we're writers. I had a writing workshop in Baltimore.
Speaker 2: It was part of a poetry series. I went to
Speaker 2: school at Antioch College and Ecceine worked there, and I
Speaker 2: thought this would be a place that I could meet
Speaker 2: like minded people in LA. When I moved.
Speaker 3: Were both living in Venice in nineteen seventy six, and
Speaker 3: I got a job there, and so I lived upstairs
Speaker 3: from the workshop and the library. I worked in the
Speaker 3: library and stuff, and so I just I just ventured
Speaker 3: down there one night to see if I could qualify
Speaker 3: as a writer.
Speaker 1: John, let's go back to Baltimore. What was it like
Speaker 1: growing up in Baltimore?
Speaker 2: It was great as a young adult, I mean it
Speaker 2: was the same I moved there, and when was it?
Speaker 2: Early mid sixties? But as a young adult I first
Speaker 2: experienced a bohemian lifestyle in Fell's Point and was hanging
Speaker 2: around with John Waters' crew because they would just going
Speaker 2: to the same bars that I went into, and it
Speaker 2: pointed the way to realize my dreams, except not in Baltimore.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. So before you lived in Baltimore, you live.
Speaker 2: Where Wisconsin, and before that in Tennessee and before that
Speaker 2: in Illinois. Because my dad moved around.
Speaker 1: And why did your dad move around?
Speaker 2: Because he was a librarian and he wanted better jobs.
Speaker 1: He was a librarian. What did your mother do?
Speaker 2: She was school teacher? Well, she was a mom until
Speaker 2: my brother and I were in school, and then she
Speaker 2: became a school teacher and she became a school librarian.
Speaker 2: So they were smart folks.
Speaker 1: So who's older? You were? Your brother?
Speaker 2: My brother?
Speaker 1: And so what's he up to?
Speaker 2: He's a builder, he's retired.
Speaker 1: Okay, So your father was a librarian. Were you a
Speaker 1: big weader growing up?
Speaker 2: Not really, No, I wanted to be outside and do things.
Speaker 2: They would bring home a stack of books for summer reading,
Speaker 2: and they would sit on my dresser. I did read
Speaker 2: Edgar Allan Poe sometime around the sixth or seventh grade.
Speaker 1: And were you a good student? Bad student?
Speaker 2: Pretty good? It was just about the same as what
Speaker 2: I am now solid B.
Speaker 1: You went to Antioch? Did you graduate?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I quit school. I went to school for one
Speaker 2: year in DC, and then I quit for a couple
Speaker 2: of years, did construction, and then in Baltimore there was
Speaker 2: a experimental theater that was called the Theater Project, and
Speaker 2: I saw some performances there and thought they were pretty
Speaker 2: outside and interesting, and then found out that Antioch had
Speaker 2: a branch above a insurance company downtown Baltimore, and they
Speaker 2: had a writing program, and I thought I'd been writing
Speaker 2: and I wanted to be a better writer. So I
Speaker 2: went back and yeah, I graduated.
Speaker 1: And how'd you meet John Waters?
Speaker 2: He was just hanging around and he was the biggest
Speaker 2: celebrity in Baltimore at the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, Pink Flamingos came out in seventy four, so
Speaker 1: he had some movies before them, really like No Traction,
Speaker 1: But in Baltimore everybody knew who he was.
Speaker 2: Those two, those two others Mondo Trashow and Multiple Maniacs.
Speaker 2: They had plenty of traction in Baltimore. There was a
Speaker 2: there was a really heavy duty and not heavy duty.
Speaker 2: There was a small but powerful bohemian underground art scene
Speaker 2: in Baltimore. So everybody knew John Waters and New Divine
Speaker 2: and knew although he didn't really hang out much, but
Speaker 2: Edie did, and so did David Lockery and so did
Speaker 2: Mary Vivian Pierce and Mixtole and all them.
Speaker 1: And how did you decide he wanted to be a writer?
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't know. I was playing music and people
Speaker 2: wrote music along with just learning how to play.
Speaker 1: And well, well, let's go back. When did you start
Speaker 1: to play music?
Speaker 2: Oh God, are we going to go back to my childhood?
Speaker 2: And when I started working?
Speaker 1: Absolutely no, I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: I might rather talk about the President of the future.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I played music because it seemed
Speaker 2: like a cool thing. I mean, I'm at that age
Speaker 2: when people saw the animals and the Beatles on ed
Speaker 2: Sullivan and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And how'd you end up coming to California?
Speaker 2: Because I didn't like the East Coast. I was tired
Speaker 2: of the negative negativity and the weather. And I had
Speaker 2: been to New York a few times saw the Talking
Speaker 2: Heads and the Heartbreakers at Max's and CBGB's, and it
Speaker 2: seems like that whole scene was great. But it was
Speaker 2: pretty far down the road.
Speaker 1: And you came to La. Where did you stay? How
Speaker 1: much money did you bring? Hot? Would you get a job?
Speaker 1: What'd you do?
Speaker 2: I had a car, I brought some stuff, and I
Speaker 2: lived in Venice with a friend, and I got a
Speaker 2: job at Brentano's bookstore in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: Okay, Excene, where are you from?
Speaker 3: Well? I was born in Chicago, but when I was
Speaker 3: a little, tiny infant, my family moved to rural Illinois,
Speaker 3: so I grew up there.
Speaker 1: And what did your parents do for a living?
Speaker 3: My father had a very interesting life, but when I
Speaker 3: was born, he was a carpenter and my mom stayed
Speaker 3: home and lived in a very, very very small town.
Speaker 3: And so my dad would go to work and I
Speaker 3: would play in my Irish fama. I lived with us
Speaker 3: until I was in about third grade.
Speaker 1: And then when did you get influenced by music?
Speaker 3: Listening to the car radio when I was very very little.
Speaker 3: My favorite song growing up was Hello Mary Lou by
Speaker 3: Ricky Nelson on the radio. I really loved that song.
Speaker 3: But my big influence was well, of course, like John said,
Speaker 3: you know, I was born in nineteen fifty six, so
Speaker 3: I kind of missed the Halves Presley and the rockabilly stuff,
Speaker 3: but I was there for like the Beatles, and then
Speaker 3: of course the British invasion and the Doors and all
Speaker 3: that stuff. So I was pretty mind blowing.
Speaker 1: And then how did you end up coming to California?
Speaker 3: Well, I was living in Florida, and I was kind
Speaker 3: of at the end of the road as far as options,
Speaker 3: and I was living in Tallahassee and nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: which pretty dead end there for a freaky person like me.
Speaker 3: And so somebody called me out of the blue and
Speaker 3: said they were moving to California up San Francisco, and
Speaker 3: did I want to go with him and give them
Speaker 3: because they needed gas money. So I had two friends
Speaker 3: out in southern California. I called one of them and
Speaker 3: she said, sure, and you can come live with me.
Speaker 3: And then she's the one that helped me find that
Speaker 3: job at the ontt Earl where I met John. I
Speaker 3: was only in Santa Monica there when I arrived for
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks before I got that job, and
Speaker 3: That was only a couple of weeks before I met
Speaker 3: John right after that. It was really quick.
Speaker 1: How did you end up in Tallahassee.
Speaker 3: Well, I was living in Saint Pete and I had
Speaker 3: a boyfriend and a job, and I was sixteen seventeen.
Speaker 3: I was very, very happy. My parents had moved to
Speaker 3: Central Florida. My other sister was living in Saint Pete,
Speaker 3: my older sister, and then my mom got sick and
Speaker 3: I had to move home because she died suddenly. And
Speaker 3: I had to move into this small town of three
Speaker 3: into people in central Florida and raised my little sisters
Speaker 3: with my dad, which was not which was a faithless job.
Speaker 3: And I did that for about a year and a half.
Speaker 3: And then by the time then I moved back to
Speaker 3: Saint pet But then everybody moved to New York and stuff,
Speaker 3: so I just kind of went stayed with the friend
Speaker 3: of Tallahassee. You know, when you're in your teens, you've
Speaker 3: got this whole network of great people and artists like
Speaker 3: job I was talking about, and everything's great, and then
Speaker 3: everyone starts to move to different places and drift away,
Speaker 3: and then you're just left behind. So Tallahassee was not
Speaker 3: a good place for me, So I took the option
Speaker 3: and I went to I rode in the car to
Speaker 3: California with one hundred and fifty dollars. I sold my
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty five zero Cadillac FI thre hundred dollars, paid
Speaker 3: my back rent, got to California with about one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty dollars, got that job and immediately an apartment
Speaker 3: at the same place I was working, met John and
Speaker 3: started going to shows, and I was doing poetry and stuff.
Speaker 1: So what was your school experience? Were you a good student,
Speaker 1: bad student? Did you?
Speaker 3: I went to a very small town Catholic school, and
Speaker 3: I loved it because it was all there was in
Speaker 3: my town, gravel Road, you know, there was to go
Speaker 3: outside and play and go to school and go to church.
Speaker 3: That was it. But then my family would Saint Pete
Speaker 3: area when I was young, like fourteen.
Speaker 4: I loved that.
Speaker 3: But I quit high school on my sixteenth birthday. I
Speaker 3: did not like Florida schools. I hadn't learned anything since
Speaker 3: I moved down there. I didn't like the social thing.
Speaker 3: You know, it was the sixties, early seventies. I didn't
Speaker 3: need it.
Speaker 1: I just quit, and you quit and then what'd you
Speaker 1: do for money and where'd you live?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I just got a job back then, you know, you
Speaker 3: just get a job in an apartment tomorrow and nobody
Speaker 3: had any problems with police. So I like, now, yeah,
Speaker 3: a minimum waste job in an apartment, just like that,
Speaker 3: sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: And was there any dream or were you just kind
Speaker 1: of drifting taking it as it was.
Speaker 3: I had a great boyfriend, a wonderful boyfriend, and I
Speaker 3: wasn't sure what we were going to end up doing,
Speaker 3: but it was really smart and creative, and I thought
Speaker 3: we were going to get married and I was going
Speaker 3: to do some art stuff and he was going to
Speaker 3: work hard because he was that kind of great guy.
Speaker 3: But then after my mom died, I realized maybe raising
Speaker 3: kids wasn't for me, and maybe being married wasn't for me,
Speaker 3: and I just wanted to escape my life. It's really bad,
Speaker 3: and threw him over for no reason. And he's a
Speaker 3: great guy and I totally regret that, and he knows that.
Speaker 3: But I decided, you know, on a whim, to go
Speaker 3: to California. If somebody called me and said they needed
Speaker 3: guess money to Chicago, I had to go to Chicago.
Speaker 1: Where's that guy today, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I hate that question because you know, almost everybody's dad
Speaker 3: that we know he might still be around. I don't know.
Speaker 1: So you didn't look up, you know, when everybody appeared
Speaker 1: on the internet.
Speaker 3: I don't do Facebook or any that at the Internet
Speaker 3: is very is very scary to me. I just try
Speaker 3: to stay away from it as much as possible.
Speaker 1: Do you have a smartphone?
Speaker 3: I do have a smartphone, but I don't have any
Speaker 3: social media or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when you get this job, do you have
Speaker 1: any dreams of being a writer or that's just what
Speaker 1: you're doing right then?
Speaker 3: I'm a writer. But you know, see that's the thing.
Speaker 3: It was so fun back then because you know, it
Speaker 3: was after it was before AIDS, and it was the
Speaker 3: gay time where everybody's like everyone was in self discovery.
Speaker 3: Everybody in the underclasses or the weirdos were all together.
Speaker 3: So whether it was music or being gay or being straight,
Speaker 3: you know, whatever it was, we all kind of saw
Speaker 3: each other as these really cool counterculture people were all
Speaker 3: hanging out together and you know, smarter than the average
Speaker 3: bear because we knew what was real and what was it.
Speaker 3: And I was happy with that. I would have been
Speaker 3: fine just being a writer and a poet. I never
Speaker 3: had any dreams of being in a band. I love
Speaker 3: the doors growing up, but I in Illinois. I never
Speaker 3: would have thought i'd meet Raymond Zrek and get in
Speaker 3: the band and all that. It just happened. It was
Speaker 3: just an accident. And I had a song that I
Speaker 3: wrote because I just decided to write a song one
Speaker 3: day and I sang it to John. He wanted to
Speaker 3: play it with Billy and I said, no, you can't
Speaker 3: just take my song. It's all I have in this world.
Speaker 3: He said, fine, then you sing it, and I said, okay,
Speaker 3: then I will, which was kind of crazy since I'd
Speaker 3: never sung a song besides that one in my life,
Speaker 3: but I figured why not.
Speaker 1: Hey, John, you talked about going to New York seeing
Speaker 1: the Talking Heads. Were you aware of the Ramones and
Speaker 1: the hard Ridge bands at that point?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, of course I was. Just my parents lived
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn and the Talking Heads happened to play the
Speaker 2: weekend that I went up there to visit them.
Speaker 1: I see, so you came to LA. Did you plan
Speaker 1: to form a band and try to make it? Was
Speaker 1: that the plan? Oh?
Speaker 2: I suppose I had a vision.
Speaker 1: That I might.
Speaker 2: I thought I could write songs. I had been out
Speaker 2: there with a friend and he and I were kind
Speaker 2: of a songwriting team. We wrote I don't know a
Speaker 2: dozen or so songs back in Baltimore, and there was
Speaker 2: some guy who we contacted and met with, and he
Speaker 2: liked our demos and said he would he would buy
Speaker 2: them for five hundred dollars apiece. And we thought, well,
Speaker 2: if we could do that a couple of times in more,
Speaker 2: if we could do that a few times a month,
Speaker 2: then we'd we'd be okay. But I just knew I
Speaker 2: had to get out of Baltimore and didn't want to
Speaker 2: go to New York. And as soon as I walked
Speaker 2: off the plane, walked out of the airport the first
Speaker 2: time we went to LA, I just felt like it
Speaker 2: was home or it was it was a place that
Speaker 2: was exciting and intriguing. I think probably because of writers
Speaker 2: like Charles Bukowski and Jim Thompson, you know, Raymond Chandler
Speaker 2: movies and such.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about LA fifty years later?
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't lived there in forever, so it's a
Speaker 2: it's there's still a little bit of something there. It's
Speaker 2: it's very very different. I like it. I wouldn't live there.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to get around, it's hard to stay
Speaker 2: connected to people that you know because people live on
Speaker 2: different sides of town. But there's still something, there's still
Speaker 2: some magic there. I suppose. I'm happy to be living
Speaker 2: in Austin right now.
Speaker 1: So how did you decide to leave LA? And when
Speaker 1: did you leave La?
Speaker 2: Left to LA when my wife at the time and
Speaker 2: mother of my children and I had enough money to
Speaker 2: buy a house, but not enough money to buy a
Speaker 2: house in LA and we're kind of tired of it
Speaker 2: and didn't want to raise kids in LA. So we
Speaker 2: moved up into the mountains about seventy five miles north
Speaker 2: of Los Angeles so I could commute pretty easily. Raised
Speaker 2: three daughters for twenty years up there, and it was
Speaker 2: pretty idyllic mountain, very physically challenging at times, a lot
Speaker 2: of weather, snow and such, and that's exciting.
Speaker 1: And what are your three daughters up to today?
Speaker 2: They're all they all do things that they love. Ones
Speaker 2: a choreographer and dancer. They all live in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2: The other is a kind of high level producer, works
Speaker 2: on big events like outside lands and things like that,
Speaker 2: and the middle daughter is works in film. She's a
Speaker 2: set designer and a production designer, so they none of
Speaker 2: them have I'm very happy that none of them work
Speaker 2: at a soulless job in a cubicle, so I feel
Speaker 2: like that's a real success. Plus, we we love each
Speaker 2: other and we're in contact, which sometimes doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: So how'd you get from the Mountains to Austin?
Speaker 2: Oh? I moved to Bakersfield when their mom and I
Speaker 2: split up, and I moved to the Bay Area when
Speaker 2: I met my beloved wife now and lived in We
Speaker 2: lived in the Bay for about eight or nine years,
Speaker 2: and she's originally from Texas. They have a lot of
Speaker 2: friends here in Austin. I could buy a house in Austin,
Speaker 2: and I thought I might be renting for forever. I
Speaker 2: rented houses for about ten years or so, and then
Speaker 2: talked to a friend and said I could I'm a realtor.
Speaker 2: I could find a house for you to buy, and
Speaker 2: we did.
Speaker 1: So you have a whole career in Hollywood. Just being
Speaker 1: in Austin hurt or affect acting opportunities and other opportunities.
Speaker 2: Not really, I mean, I don't act unless someone offers
Speaker 2: me a job or or sends me. I do an
Speaker 2: audition now and then, but they're all they're all self tape. Nowadays,
Speaker 2: you don't actually go into auditions. And there was a
Speaker 2: point at which I don't know, twenty years ago, I
Speaker 2: just stopped auditioning. I just said you, I've got a
Speaker 2: huge catalog of film. If you want to see what
Speaker 2: I can do, just take a look at that. If
Speaker 2: it's something really serious, maybe I'll come in an audition.
Speaker 2: But no, it doesn't hurt it, especially now all the
Speaker 2: auditions are self tape. You just do it on your
Speaker 2: iPhone and send it to somebody.
Speaker 1: Why'd you move to Bakersfield And what was that like?
Speaker 2: Because it was close to where my kids lived, and
Speaker 2: Bakersfield was awesome. I mean it's apart from apart from
Speaker 2: the racism, it's great. I should have written short stories there,
Speaker 2: but I just soaked it up. I only lived there
Speaker 2: for about two or three years.
Speaker 1: And could you feel the Merle Haggard influence, you know?
Speaker 1: Is that something you definitely?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I lived in Oildale, which is where he lived.
Speaker 2: And Oildale's a kind of mixed white and Latino, really
Speaker 2: working class that still had a lot of hockey tonks
Speaker 2: there when I lived there, so it was pretty fun.
Speaker 1: Now in the time since you've lived in Austin, Boston
Speaker 1: itself has changed. One of the changes you've noticed in Austin.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel about those?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, I think every every middle sized city has changed
Speaker 2: markedly in the last five to ten years. Austin had
Speaker 2: a huge influx of people during the pandemic, mostly through tech.
Speaker 2: And I mean Austin has always had a venture capitalist startup.
Speaker 1: Element.
Speaker 2: There were friends of ours that moved here in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands from San Francisco. So there's still plenty
Speaker 2: of weird, cool stuff in Austin. But everything's changed. I
Speaker 2: mean in Nashville and Portland, in Tulsa, I mean, you
Speaker 2: name it.
Speaker 1: So excene. Where do you live now?
Speaker 3: I live in this cute little town called Orange. It's
Speaker 3: in California. It's an old fashioned, little historic town.
Speaker 1: This is in Orange County, right.
Speaker 3: Correct, Inland, not by the beach.
Speaker 1: And how did you end up there? Oh?
Speaker 3: I did end up here. That's exactly what happened. I
Speaker 3: ended up here, and that's very weird how that happened.
Speaker 3: I just was living somewhere else when I came here
Speaker 3: and I wasn't sure where to move, but Billy lives here,
Speaker 3: so that was kind of a draw. It's just a
Speaker 3: great place. I didn't even know what was here. I
Speaker 3: would have moved here a long time ago. I've been
Speaker 3: here fifteen years. It's kind of the town looking for
Speaker 3: it to kind of got a Midwestern vibe a little
Speaker 3: bit that I like it.
Speaker 1: And John, how did you meet Billy Zoom?
Speaker 2: Well, this is ancient history reported so many times. It
Speaker 2: was in a paper, a newspaper called The Recycler, and
Speaker 2: it came out every Thursday, and it was seventy five
Speaker 2: cents and you could get you could rescue a kitten,
Speaker 2: or you could buy a used refrigerator, or you could
Speaker 2: find an apartment, or you could find a lead singer.
Speaker 2: And Billy and I put ads in that paper. They
Speaker 2: were free. The ads were free, and we put ads
Speaker 2: that were similarly worded. The same week and I called
Speaker 2: him and someone answered the I guess his girlfriend maybe
Speaker 2: answered the phone and took down a message, and he
Speaker 2: called me back. But we were kind of calling each
Speaker 2: other at the same time.
Speaker 1: And what did your ad say?
Speaker 2: I have no idea, but I think I think the
Speaker 2: fact that Ecsceine and I moved to LA around the
Speaker 2: same time that DJ and Billy had been there playing,
Speaker 2: and that we all got together wasn't just by chance.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what fate is, but I think that
Speaker 2: there was a niche that needed to be filled or
Speaker 2: wanted to be filled, and we were all there and
Speaker 2: we filled it. And Billy brought rockabilly guitar playing into
Speaker 2: punk rock and exscene, and I developed a style of
Speaker 2: singing that nobody else did, and so and we had
Speaker 2: a desire to write songs that chronicled what this punk
Speaker 2: rock bohemian life was all about. And it wasn't just
Speaker 2: I hate Ronald Reagan, and there was melodic and we're
Speaker 2: very traditional. We write verses and choruses and sometimes there's
Speaker 2: a bridge and and you can sing along. But we're
Speaker 2: still old, not really ready for prime time because we're
Speaker 2: just a little that much too weird, and we don't
Speaker 2: sound like a disco song or we don't sound like
Speaker 2: the Beatles or somebody that's more accessible or palatable for
Speaker 2: like regular radio, unlike someone like the like Sonic Youth.
Speaker 2: We're not just iconoclasts and just like this is our
Speaker 2: thing and we're not going to budge. And you know,
Speaker 2: from the very beginning we wrote very accessible songs.
Speaker 1: And when you came to California you put the ad
Speaker 1: in the recycler. Was that the dream to make it
Speaker 1: as a band?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. I had a vision after seeing
Speaker 2: the Heartbreakers and the and the Talking Heads, and having
Speaker 2: seen a bunch of other local bands in Baltimore, and
Speaker 2: then seeing people playing on the stage at the Whiskey
Speaker 2: and the Star Would I had a vision that I
Speaker 2: could do that. I saw myself, and once Billy and
Speaker 2: Naccine and I were together, I saw ourselves on stage
Speaker 2: doing that, and so I knew that could happen. I
Speaker 2: knew that would happen, and it did. So everything beyond
Speaker 2: that has been just good fortune and hard work and
Speaker 2: really digging deep for creative variety and juices and always
Speaker 2: looking for something to excite ourselves and be curious about
Speaker 2: what's what's what's around the corner, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And there was a huge punk scene in the lead
Speaker 1: seventies in Los Angeles, the Mask and everything else. Did
Speaker 1: you feel part of that or did you feel to
Speaker 1: the side of that.
Speaker 2: Oh, we're right in the middle of a bit, but
Speaker 2: it was far from huge. It was about one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty or two hundred people from seventy six until
Speaker 2: maybe the middle of seventy nine, and then maybe from
Speaker 2: then to eighty three it got a lot bigger because
Speaker 2: we had a lot of support from Slash Magazine and
Speaker 2: some from the LA Times and the LA Reader and
Speaker 2: the LA Weekly and things like that. So it became
Speaker 2: a thing maybe in the in seventy nine, where everybody
Speaker 2: was writing about it and talking about it, saying, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of bands out there, and you're going to
Speaker 2: find one that really agrees, just hits that spot for you,
Speaker 2: hits that that sound, So just go find one. I
Speaker 2: don't care what it is, go find it. If it's hardcore,
Speaker 2: I mean, if it's harder, then you'll love fear, and
Speaker 2: if it's more melodic, then you'll gravitate to the go
Speaker 2: go of the alley Kats or whatever.
Speaker 1: And was your goal to get a record deal?
Speaker 2: Ex Do you want to answer that one?
Speaker 3: Because I didn't have any goals.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I think that we still had some contempt for the establishment.
Speaker 4: You think, so, I know I had contempt for everything.
Speaker 3: I was prat, but yeah, I don't know that there
Speaker 3: was very much goals because there was just too much
Speaker 3: going on in the moment. It was an excitement from
Speaker 3: the time you woke up. We worked really hard though,
Speaker 3: that's for sure. I don't know. I didn't take anything
Speaker 3: seriously till much later.
Speaker 2: I would say, I would say that, yes we did.
Speaker 2: We we submitted professionally made demos with ray men Xeric's
Speaker 2: influence and his validation to all the record companies, and
Speaker 2: they turned us down. And so Slash Records. Bob Biggs,
Speaker 2: bless his heart, just wanted to make music that he
Speaker 2: thought was cool because he's an artist. It had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with nothing to do with being part of
Speaker 2: the establishment. And yeah, we had a lot of resentment
Speaker 2: towards them because they were stuck in the past. And
Speaker 2: I mean the go gos had to be signed by irs.
Speaker 2: This is clearly like a capitalistic financial like Low Hanging Fruit.
Speaker 2: They're cute girls that write their own songs and play
Speaker 2: their own instruments and write really poppy songs. And oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know about that. That's a little too weird
Speaker 2: for me. They have dyed hair. Are you in the
Speaker 2: business of finance or business of art?
Speaker 1: So what were you surviving on?
Speaker 3: Well, we had jobs. Yeah, and also like again, it
Speaker 3: was what we had, three people living in a one
Speaker 3: bedroom duplex. I don't know, maybe it was two hundred
Speaker 3: to three hundred dollars a month. I don't know how
Speaker 3: much money we made, but it wasn't much and it
Speaker 3: didn't take much. You know, if you had a if again,
Speaker 3: if you had a minimum wage job, two people could
Speaker 3: live just fine. Yeah, we didn't have any expenses. I
Speaker 3: didn't have a car. John had a car, but I
Speaker 3: didn't have a car. None of us had insurance. We
Speaker 3: might have had a wall phone, or we might have
Speaker 3: shared a phone in the house we were living in.
Speaker 3: But there was no computers or cell phones or cameras
Speaker 3: or any I mean, we didn't even have seat belts.
Speaker 3: There was nothing to buy. There was nothing to do.
Speaker 3: You could get your tire at the at the pawn
Speaker 3: shot for fifty dollars.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Gas was cheap, beer was cheap. Life was cheap and fun.
Speaker 3: We were young. We didn't care. Everything was provided, you know,
Speaker 3: it was landed, milk and honey.
Speaker 2: We had. We had jobs up until probably nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: I was still working when Los Angeles came out, I
Speaker 3: was working for a record collector, and I've had jobs
Speaker 3: off and on up until the pandemic because I just
Speaker 3: like to work. And I've always had to like supplement
Speaker 3: my income because I'm very you know, I'm just very
Speaker 3: hard working. But yeah, jobs, jobs are just jobs, you know,
Speaker 3: And I respect people to have any kind of job,
Speaker 3: because it's hard.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're ex scene and someone encounters you working
Speaker 1: a job that is not playing music, do they say like, hey,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here?
Speaker 3: Well, they say that all the time to people when
Speaker 3: you're at the laundromat or something, right like, oh my gosh, John,
Speaker 3: I've seen what are you doing at the launder mat?
Speaker 3: It's like, well, we got these clothes that we have
Speaker 3: to wash, you know. It's just people have these people
Speaker 3: have odd ideas about when you're in a band, that
Speaker 3: you're like super super like rich and you have a
Speaker 3: private jet and stuff, and or that you're really like
Speaker 3: down and dirty and you all live in this house
Speaker 3: do drugs. But there's somewhere in the middle is just
Speaker 3: this regular person getting by and making a living. And
Speaker 3: I don't know, I never thought of myself as a
Speaker 3: rock star. I don't even I just think of myself
Speaker 3: as a person, so I find it humorous.
Speaker 1: What degree when you're out and about are you recognized?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't know. I don't pay attention. Sometimes people come
Speaker 3: up to me and say hey, scene. I go hey,
Speaker 3: they go, hey, I saw you guys play recently. It
Speaker 3: was amazing. Thank you my wife and Arabic fans, Well,
Speaker 3: that's great. What's your wife's name? But how nice to
Speaker 3: meet you. What do you guys do? Oh blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: I'm just a teacher, Just a teacher.
Speaker 4: What are you talking about.
Speaker 3: That's the hardest job in the world. I used to
Speaker 3: do that job, you know what I mean? Like, people
Speaker 3: are just people and they like what you do. And yes,
Speaker 3: people do kind of project things onto you because you're
Speaker 3: in a band, but really it's just another thing to
Speaker 3: do in life, like anything else. But I don't pay
Speaker 3: much attention to that. I'm just always been the same
Speaker 3: way since the early days, which is I assume everybody's
Speaker 3: good and they are. Ninety five percent of the people
Speaker 3: I've met in my life have just been wonderful. And
Speaker 3: I've met a lot of ex fans and a lot
Speaker 3: of people at shows, and stuff, and they're almost always
Speaker 3: just great people.
Speaker 1: Well, you keep reinforcing the point that in the old
Speaker 1: days you could get a minimum wage job and pay
Speaker 1: all your bills, which was true. Yeah, today's totally different.
Speaker 1: What do you think about today?
Speaker 3: I think I think that it's it's by degrees that
Speaker 3: people have gotten to where we are where they just
Speaker 3: kind of accept more and more and more and more
Speaker 3: of things being hard, And I think that's very unfortunate.
Speaker 3: I kind of live for the day when things get
Speaker 3: somewhat saying again or saying at all. But you know,
Speaker 3: I think also people look back at different times and
Speaker 3: they see it more idyllically and more romanticized. But it
Speaker 3: really was a little bit easier and more well, definitely
Speaker 3: there was more freedom. That's that's unbelievably true.
Speaker 2: But I think I'm sorry to interrupt, but go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, I was just going to say, like, the one
Speaker 3: thing about technology is it's exposed. It's it's it's a
Speaker 3: great way for people to be exposed to historical movements
Speaker 3: and cultures and music and writing that they never would
Speaker 3: have found out about because somebody that by seventy eights
Speaker 3: and just plays them for their friends can now put
Speaker 3: them online and play them for everybody kind of doing
Speaker 3: what you're doing. And we didn't have that. We just
Speaker 3: had to have word of mouth. You had to get
Speaker 3: in the car and go somewhere, and you had to
Speaker 3: hope you met somebody, and you didn't even have a phone.
Speaker 3: You just had to show up at somebody's house and say, hey,
Speaker 3: do you have that new record? I really want to
Speaker 3: hear it. I heard you have it, so you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, there's always a trade off. I don't know
Speaker 3: what people what it's like for young people now, but
Speaker 3: they'll be okay. I think, I hope.
Speaker 2: I think that people survive. I'm not the That's the mysterious,
Speaker 2: mysterious and wonderful part of the human experiment is that
Speaker 2: somehow people survived. Whether it's now we live in the
Speaker 2: most fortunate of circumstances because there's not a war and
Speaker 2: that we're part of you know, that that is on
Speaker 2: our land and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: So yeah, well, people had it harder at certain times.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think during World War two and euro
Speaker 3: upe to was a little harder. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, hard times make you know, week
Speaker 3: and week makes hard and all.
Speaker 1: That well, John, you know, Austin had a reputation for
Speaker 1: being very weird, but Texas is sort of the flag
Speaker 1: bearer for the right wing movement at this point in time.
Speaker 1: Companies are moving there from California, Tesla Chevron just recently.
Speaker 1: Can is that palpable living in Texas?
Speaker 2: Well? I just I mean I live in Austin, which
Speaker 2: is the blue bear and the tomato soup. If I
Speaker 2: lived in Bakersfield, if people don't live in a if
Speaker 2: you go outside of a major city fifty miles, you're
Speaker 2: going to find a very different landscape. But I think
Speaker 2: it's important for people to have respect for and talk
Speaker 2: to people with different opinions. I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 2: Tesla is a is a very thorny issue here because
Speaker 2: they've built their plant ignoring all of the EPA, all
Speaker 2: of the building standards and just pay fines for it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's jobs, but it's a you know that
Speaker 2: that guy is just flaunts everything and says, well, I'll
Speaker 2: just buy my way out of it, and people do
Speaker 2: that everywhere, which is unfortunate. They know that they're taking water,
Speaker 2: they're know that they're polluting things, and they're just willing
Speaker 2: to pay the fine because they don't give a shit,
Speaker 2: which is really unfortunate. But we'll see if Texas becomes
Speaker 2: a purple state or not. But like I said, go
Speaker 2: to Stockton, Go go out into New Jersey, go you know,
Speaker 2: anywhere seventy five miles outside of a city, and you're
Speaker 2: going to have a lot more provincial attitudes.
Speaker 1: Well, we really have today and US versus them philosophy.
Speaker 1: On both sides. We have the rural people demonizing the cities,
Speaker 1: and then you have the so called elites believing they
Speaker 1: know you know. It seems that there's a constant divergence.
Speaker 2: Well I don't want to I don't really want to
Speaker 2: get into politics. I don't think that's our job.
Speaker 1: Well, let me say, as opposed to politics, like taking
Speaker 1: one side or another, what do you think the future
Speaker 1: of America is?
Speaker 2: I I don't know. We'll find out in November.
Speaker 1: How about you exceed.
Speaker 3: I think the future has been planned out by those
Speaker 3: who engineer it for quite some time now, and it's
Speaker 3: whether or not. It's like the look of the draw,
Speaker 3: like with COVID, how it got dumbed down to this
Speaker 3: respiratory disease that suddenly didn't kill people anymore when it mutated.
Speaker 3: We just don't know what happens in the future. Little
Speaker 3: things can change the world, you know, and little tiny
Speaker 3: things that people don't even people that have all the power,
Speaker 3: like the global kind of people, they make mistakes too,
Speaker 3: and and weird things happen that throw things off base.
Speaker 3: I mean, there could be you know, there's there's definitely
Speaker 3: a magnetic change going on in the universe. You know,
Speaker 3: there's definitely like some weird ships going on that are
Speaker 3: cyclical with you know, where we are where Earth is
Speaker 3: right now, and people don't seem to be aware of that,
Speaker 3: so you know, things can happen. There could be a
Speaker 3: major volcanic eruption the cauld blot out the sun, you know,
Speaker 3: and make put us into this deep winter, and people
Speaker 3: could starve. Who knows what's going to happen. I hope
Speaker 3: it's all positive things that happened. But I do know
Speaker 3: that I'm only in charge of what I do every day,
Speaker 3: and the only thing I'm I have control over my
Speaker 3: thoughts and my actions, and I try to keep those
Speaker 3: as simple and as and as good for all as
Speaker 3: possible and live live life is like that way. Like
Speaker 3: today I'm going to do this and this is what's
Speaker 3: going to happen. I'm gonna do these things for other people.
Speaker 3: I'm going to do this for myself, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to be as positive as possible. It's very hard sometimes,
Speaker 3: but if you do that, everything else is fine.
Speaker 4: I agree, because only have control.
Speaker 3: Over I don't have control over what all these people
Speaker 3: are going to do to humanity. I hope they don't
Speaker 3: destroy it, but you know, I can't control it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But we grew up in an era where the
Speaker 1: musicians were revered as rich as anybody else in America,
Speaker 1: and what they said had meaning, whereas needless to say,
Speaker 1: mainstream musicians that is not the case today.
Speaker 3: Well you can't say what you think anymore. We had
Speaker 3: freedom of speech and critical thinking. I used to say
Speaker 3: the worst, stupidest stuff. Not that it was like, you know,
Speaker 3: bad necessarily, but it was just I was very young
Speaker 3: and opinionated. I didn't have the world of view I
Speaker 3: had now, but I knew a lot of stuff. And
Speaker 3: if I said something, or anybody else said something in
Speaker 3: a group of like punk or artists, because it was
Speaker 3: all kinds of people in the punk'sying old young European
Speaker 3: American Mexican everybody was there. You would just hear your
Speaker 3: words to get thrown right back in your face, like
Speaker 3: that's stupid. Why do you think that you could get
Speaker 3: in arguments with people and then go have a beer
Speaker 3: Because it wasn't about you know, like we understood context,
Speaker 3: and we also knew that if you can if you
Speaker 3: can throw your ideas out there and have somebody shoot
Speaker 3: them down, you've just learned something. You don't know if
Speaker 3: you're right, if you can't admit you're wrong. And I
Speaker 3: had to admit I was wrong so many times, and
Speaker 3: I also made other people say look at things the
Speaker 3: different way. But my job isn't to change people's minds.
Speaker 3: My job is just to try to figure it out.
Speaker 3: And I think I do have a really great understand
Speaker 3: ending of life in general and the systems that control
Speaker 3: things and whatnot. But have that I also realized that,
Speaker 3: you know, we were just people, just like anyone else
Speaker 3: with opinions. Just because we were in a bandit and
Speaker 3: make us smarter necessarily, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Sure that is true. Usually the people with the bands
Speaker 1: were more thinkers. They lived in an alternative lifestyle. They were
Speaker 1: not part of the mind hive of the day. Meanwhile, Exeene,
Speaker 1: you only have you have one son? Do you have
Speaker 1: any other children?
Speaker 4: They have one son, and what is he up to?
Speaker 3: He's a great guy. I love my son so much.
Speaker 3: He did a documentary on the spand skating polyeu This
Speaker 3: Oklahoma sisters started to spand million years ago and they're
Speaker 3: still kids, and he did a documentary on that. He's
Speaker 3: a big martial arts guy. And he does a lot
Speaker 3: of other creative things. He works with his dad doing
Speaker 3: a publishing company called Percival Press that does books and
Speaker 3: music and movies. He does some acting. He's a good
Speaker 3: human being. That is what he is.
Speaker 1: Okay. And what do the two of you think about
Speaker 1: our generation, which stopped the war was greedy when Reagan
Speaker 1: dropped the tax rate. Do you believe, because we're accused
Speaker 1: a lot by younger generations, we fucked up the world?
Speaker 1: Do you believe that I mentions of that.
Speaker 3: Here and there. I think that's the job of young people,
Speaker 3: isn't it. That was my job when I was young.
Speaker 3: I got to yell at everybody and point fingers and
Speaker 3: everybody and tell them how wrong they were about things,
Speaker 3: and how like all their wars and taxes and everything had,
Speaker 3: you know, ruined the world. I think there's validity in
Speaker 3: doing that, But I also think that that that's a
Speaker 3: real good tactic by the people that are in power
Speaker 3: to make us hate each other and blame each other
Speaker 3: for things that we didn't do. I think we're squarely
Speaker 3: in the middle of that, with the left right paradigm
Speaker 3: and all that other stuff. It's like, you, guys, you
Speaker 3: have to realize that everyone's going to be a victim
Speaker 3: here pretty darn soon unless we all stopped doing this.
Speaker 3: Let's try to act intelligent. But I think the dumbing
Speaker 3: down has has reached a certain level, so it might
Speaker 3: not be possible to fix it. But I don't know
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 1: What do you say to people that, hey, this reunion
Speaker 1: and previous reunion, that this is really just about cash.
Speaker 3: No, we said, we've been playing together since nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: touring constantly, so it's not any kind of reunion. But
Speaker 3: I don't know where that comes from. We did a
Speaker 3: record right for COVID and that came out. I mean,
Speaker 3: we're a band. That's what bands play. Bands play music,
Speaker 3: They go on tour and they make records. They hang out.
Speaker 3: It's very hard to hang out with people for forty five,
Speaker 3: forty eight years. I guess we like what we do.
Speaker 3: But yeah, everybody makes I think that everybody makes a
Speaker 3: living unless they're living on the streets and they're homeless,
Speaker 3: which is unfortunate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the point of X was was to have adventures,
Speaker 2: to report about it, to be artistic, to show, to
Speaker 2: encourage people to think for themselves, to because punk rock
Speaker 2: or music, you can say in general, is about freedom.
Speaker 2: And I would disagree that that musicians don't have the
Speaker 2: kind of clout that they did thirty forty years ago.
Speaker 2: I would totally disagree with it. I think I think
Speaker 2: Megan the Stallion showing up with Kamala Harris has a
Speaker 2: has a great impact on a community that may not
Speaker 2: be I don't know that they wouldn't they wouldn't be
Speaker 2: there that that people. I don't know that Pearl Jam
Speaker 2: has has a lot of impact. They can. Pearl Jam
Speaker 2: doesn't have a lot of stage show and they just
Speaker 2: play rock and roll music to stadiums.
Speaker 1: Pearl Jim's a thirty five year old man making the Stallion.
Speaker 1: You know in some videos and other thing push she
Speaker 1: testing limits having to do with sexuality, etc. And it's great,
Speaker 1: she has some power. But if you want to know,
Speaker 1: you know, it used to be in our era, if
Speaker 1: you want to know what was going on in the world,
Speaker 1: you put on a record. Do you still think that's
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 2: Sure, I think I think it's a different You're you're
Speaker 2: just talking about different people. There's not the there's not
Speaker 2: the hour glass of creativity and then the bottleneck in
Speaker 2: the middle of it where it's all the gatekeepers of
Speaker 2: publicists and magazines and things like that, and then at
Speaker 2: the top of it is the audience. It's just a
Speaker 2: it's just a straight line now goes directly from the
Speaker 2: people to the audience, so it's not as directed like
Speaker 2: there's no one person who's uh is going to be
Speaker 2: speaking for a generation. But I think that, yes, I
Speaker 2: think that people do put on records. Like Exsain was saying,
Speaker 2: you can rediscover there's nothing new, it's just when when
Speaker 2: did you hear about it?
Speaker 1: Okay? So, certainly in our network television was a vapid
Speaker 1: wasteland movie. Certainly late sixties to the end of the
Speaker 1: seventies really a driving force. But today music is competing
Speaker 1: against streaming television, which is whether we say it's a
Speaker 1: danu Mall has certainly been you know, at a heyday,
Speaker 1: it's never been previously, And we do have social media
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of creativity. So from my perspective,
Speaker 1: the power of not the power of music, the execution
Speaker 1: of music is not a dominant as it used to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the two of you represent this point.
Speaker 1: You grew up in an era where before the Army
Speaker 1: ripped off our slogan be all you can be, you
Speaker 1: could live on minimum wage, whereas today when a kid
Speaker 1: graduates from high school or college, it's a completely different
Speaker 1: environment and it's much harder. And when you're talking about
Speaker 1: middle class bohemians, I'm not even sure that's a major
Speaker 1: group at this point in time. You have the people
Speaker 1: who'll do anything for recognition and the other people are
Speaker 1: afraid of being broke going into corporate jobs.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's all true.
Speaker 2: I totally disagree later on me. There are bands there,
Speaker 2: all right, Because there are bands that are in their
Speaker 2: twenties and thirties that tour their asses off and go
Speaker 2: all around the country and go to Europe like Skating
Speaker 2: Polly our friends. They may have to have a straight
Speaker 2: job when they're not on the road. But there are
Speaker 2: other bands that make really good money that are about
Speaker 2: out art. They're not just about showing their ass on TikTok.
Speaker 2: So it's it's just like whether whether we're aware of it.
Speaker 2: I'm not, I'm not twenty five years old, but I
Speaker 2: see other bands that are that are new and they're
Speaker 2: they live simply and they they interact with each other.
Speaker 2: Sonny War is another folk artists that that I know.
Speaker 2: She I don't think she has a straight job, but
Speaker 2: she has to play her ass off, and she has
Speaker 2: to find gigs, she has to beat the bushes, and
Speaker 2: and it's just a there's more of an alternate lifestyle
Speaker 2: that goes on. It's part of the indie music world.
Speaker 2: Whether they're they're they're making money on live performance. So
Speaker 2: any records or any band camp that they're they're putting
Speaker 2: out there, that's just a promotional tool. Like in the
Speaker 2: old old days when you made records, it's a promotional Two.
Speaker 3: Maybe we're talking about the difference between a cohesive social
Speaker 3: cultural movement and people just individually learning how to fend
Speaker 3: for themselves, and maybe they're both the same thing. I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: People still go out to see music all the time, though.
Speaker 3: No, No, nobody's arguing that they don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, you know, going a little bit deeper, Yes,
Speaker 1: it used to be. Distribution was very difficult, so therefore
Speaker 1: you needed essentially a major label to get your record
Speaker 1: in the store. So most acts could not participate, whereas
Speaker 1: everybody can participate. Having said that, if you start with
Speaker 1: the Beatles, they could write songs with changes. They were
Speaker 1: good looking, they had incredible voices. You know, people will
Speaker 1: email me and go, you know, well, the music's not
Speaker 1: that good, what about the lyrics, And they say, you know,
Speaker 1: look at Bob Dylan, and they say, yeah, but he
Speaker 1: was the best lyricist of all time. I can't say that,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's great that all these artists
Speaker 1: are earning a living, but I can't say that there's
Speaker 1: a plethora of them that if the light was shined
Speaker 1: upon them, they would be much larger an impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole point of punk rock is to democratize
Speaker 2: and not to rely on major record companies. We got
Speaker 2: turned down and we were happy to be on Slash,
Speaker 2: and then we had the opportunity to record for Electra. Okay, good,
Speaker 2: that's just a way of getting our music out there.
Speaker 2: Little did we know that Electra was signing us as
Speaker 2: a window dressing to say, yeah, we're part of the
Speaker 2: new new music. But we we began the network with
Speaker 2: college radio, which became indie Music, which which begat all
Speaker 2: the indie record company, These like Twin Tone or Bloodshot
Speaker 2: or Merge or all these ones that you may not
Speaker 2: get rich rich, and you may not be speaking for
Speaker 2: an entire generation, but you're gonna. I mean, look at
Speaker 2: look at what happened in uh South central l A.
Speaker 2: With with rap music that was speaking directly to their audience,
Speaker 2: and they made a shipload of money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but now Snoop Dogg is on the Olympics.
Speaker 2: An iced tea is an actor on a very you know,
Speaker 2: long running procedural. That's not the point. The point is
Speaker 2: is that that that old model, because they fucked it
Speaker 2: up so much and put their head in the sand.
Speaker 2: When Napster came along and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 2: they got what they deserve. And I don't I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm not sad about that. I don't mourn that because
Speaker 2: that was a were they were a kind of They
Speaker 2: gave the musicians scraps and the musicians had to make
Speaker 2: so much money that mostly the record company. I don't
Speaker 2: bemoan their demise. So there's other ways of people like
Speaker 2: us working with with Fat Possum. Fat Passum is a
Speaker 2: great label and they're gonna get. They're gonna get.
Speaker 1: I agree. I agree with everything you say. My point
Speaker 1: about Snoop Dogg being at the Olympics, it's not about
Speaker 1: the issue of selling out. It's about the issue of ubiquity,
Speaker 1: and amongst the alternative acts, we're thinking different in the
Speaker 1: present era. I can't think of two who have anywhere
Speaker 1: near the level of ubiquity that X had forty years ago,
Speaker 1: or even you know the bands, the Seattle Sound of
Speaker 1: the nineties. There are more people making a living making
Speaker 1: music despite all the negativity about streaming services and payouts.
Speaker 1: But I find it it's not in a situation like
Speaker 1: it was in our heyday, where Filmo says, you got
Speaker 1: to hear this record and while it just blows your mind.
Speaker 1: I respect the fact that these people are earning a living,
Speaker 1: but I can't say that these are the records are
Speaker 1: changing my life.
Speaker 3: You probably listen to a lot more music than I do,
Speaker 3: new music, especially I still listen mostly to really old
Speaker 3: country and blue dress and stuff like that and old music.
Speaker 3: But I would just say, if that's what you're seeing
Speaker 3: and that's your experience, I would say interesting. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't pay attention too much to what's going on now.
Speaker 3: I don't know who's great, who isn't great, how great
Speaker 3: things are, and how it compares to the past or
Speaker 3: the future. Who's the best lyricist out there right now,
Speaker 3: I don't know who that is. Is there another Dyllan
Speaker 3: out there? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's much different between us and the
Speaker 2: number of people that we reached and the number of
Speaker 2: people that some band is reaching nowadays, whether it's Phoebe
Speaker 2: Bridge or or or. I meant when she began, she
Speaker 2: reached a hundred times more people. And to those people
Speaker 2: that listened to her or Elliott Smith, which she's very
Speaker 2: much like, it had this it has the same kind
Speaker 2: of impact. They're speaking to them at their age, and
Speaker 2: we just spoke to some people at the age that
Speaker 2: we were, and they were I mean, the most records
Speaker 2: that we sold for Wild Gift or Los Angeles or
Speaker 2: even under the Big Black Son was maybe fifty thousand records.
Speaker 2: But everybody told their friends about him. So maybe some
Speaker 2: you know, Elliott Smith sold one hundred and fifty thousand records,
Speaker 2: but everybody was really that he really spoke to them
Speaker 2: on a personal level. So I just think I don't
Speaker 2: have the experience. I don't have the connection with those
Speaker 2: younger bands now to be able to speak to it.
Speaker 2: But I know that it's it's very similar. It's like
Speaker 2: you're talking to me because I'm that age, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of young bands that have girls that have
Speaker 2: gone to Girls Rock Camp that are now fronting bands
Speaker 2: that have a real punk rock kind of ethos. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it may not have the same kind of media coverage
Speaker 2: or media impact, but I think there's an underground and
Speaker 2: that's to me the most important thing. That's that's why
Speaker 2: I like you were talking about how much do I
Speaker 2: get wrecked or do we get recognized? And it's like
Speaker 2: once in a while, but we are in the sweetest
Speaker 2: of sweet spots where we make a really good living,
Speaker 2: We get to do artistic things and people will say
Speaker 2: you changed my life or I don't know who you are.
Speaker 2: So that's a good place to be. That's a great
Speaker 2: place to be. And like Exceine said, if you just
Speaker 2: diffuse the the interaction like hey aren't you John Diales,
Speaker 2: like yeah, what's up? And you don't get weird about it.
Speaker 2: You don't have a bodyguard because you don't need one.
Speaker 2: That's just fine.
Speaker 1: So so, having made all these records, do you have
Speaker 1: a royalty stream, whether it be on record or publishing?
Speaker 1: Is there any or is it essentially insignificant?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: No, it's not insignificant because everybody got their records back
Speaker 3: after thirty five years, you know that, right, right? Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that was fantastic, eucepter thirty five years if not
Speaker 3: making the money from our records, we suddenly own them again.
Speaker 3: I mean we own them for the first time. And
Speaker 3: that's true for all the bands, and everybody's so happy
Speaker 3: they got their records back and they can finally make
Speaker 3: a living now. It's just wonderful.
Speaker 2: No, but even even prior to that, I mean we're
Speaker 2: with ASKAP and am I and yeah, we have publishing
Speaker 2: companies and we get quarterly checks that are they're great.
Speaker 2: And there's also a sound exchange, which deals with live
Speaker 2: performance or radio performance. And I mean musicians are still
Speaker 2: getting the scraps. Let's not let's not overlook that with Spotify,
Speaker 2: with Pandora, with all that stuff, you're getting a hundredth
Speaker 2: of a cent per play. So you can have thousands
Speaker 2: of plays and you'll get fifteen dollars and somebody's making
Speaker 2: money and they're they're they're using your content. But that's
Speaker 2: just the way it is. That's the way it's always
Speaker 2: going to be. They're trying to increase that a little bit.
Speaker 2: But I mean, even like the the heyday of like
Speaker 2: record companies they were getting they were giving the musicians
Speaker 2: ten or fifteen percent of every record sale, so they're
Speaker 2: kidding the scraps, Oh we have we have a lot
Speaker 2: of expenses, and it's like you don't have shit. They
Speaker 2: were charging musicians breakage fee on CDs, and the breakage
Speaker 2: fee was for seventy eights because a certain number on
Speaker 2: shipping would be broken, and not as many CDs broke
Speaker 2: like seventy eights, so it's like part of the deal.
Speaker 1: I talked to some musicians who've gotten their assets back,
Speaker 1: whether they be songs or records, and then they relicnsed
Speaker 1: them for the check. What have you done with the
Speaker 1: assets that you've gotten back?
Speaker 2: We have, We've we don't want to have a record company.
Speaker 2: You're having an earthquake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a little Well, there's been swarms and
Speaker 3: swarms and swarms up mostly their.
Speaker 2: Central Oh that's exciting. I'm glad nothing that happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: We license them to Fat Possible because we don't want
Speaker 2: to be in the business of being a record company.
Speaker 2: But we get a great return on that, and so
Speaker 2: we make ninety percent and they make ten percent and
Speaker 2: they're happy with that.
Speaker 3: Or something like that. I wouldn't quote that figure, John, however,
Speaker 3: I would say that they're in the business of being
Speaker 3: a record label. We're in the business of making records
Speaker 3: and it works out really good. But if we try
Speaker 3: to do their job, we would screw it up terribly,
Speaker 3: and they can't do what we do, and we don't
Speaker 3: want each other to do that. I love the fact
Speaker 3: that we have this great label that works with us.
Speaker 3: It's the first time, really. I mean, a lot of
Speaker 3: things have gotten better over the years in the music world,
Speaker 3: and that's one of them, is that there are things
Speaker 3: like that. But I don't know. I don't go into
Speaker 3: the business too much.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You also have the option to have a five year
Speaker 2: license or a seven year license. And then when that
Speaker 2: comes around again, then you say, well, yes I want
Speaker 2: to keep doing business with you, or no, I'm going
Speaker 2: to move with someplace else.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: A funny thing about money, too, though, is if you
Speaker 3: think we started in seventy six, but let's say let's
Speaker 3: take from nineteen eighty till now, and you average out
Speaker 3: like our income per a year, it would probably be
Speaker 3: about fifty thousand dollars a year. I mean, we're not
Speaker 3: rich at all. But the thing is, it's funny when
Speaker 3: you think about that. It's like, if you have a
Speaker 3: few good years, that's great, but like, what about those
Speaker 3: years when you can make twelve thousand?
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you have these assets that are generating revenue,
Speaker 1: has anyone approached you about buying them? That's a big
Speaker 1: thing now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is a big thing now. That started during
Speaker 3: COVID as far as I can remember, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people said, you know what, I'm never going to
Speaker 3: tour again. I might probably die. You know, there's never
Speaker 3: been a better chance to sell my stuff for a
Speaker 3: billion dollars. Didn't clean the queen legacy went for a
Speaker 3: billion or something. Supposedly, you know, if somebody said to us, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, blah blah blah, we want to buy all
Speaker 3: your stuff, and here's how much money we're going to
Speaker 3: give you. I think we would have to weigh that is,
Speaker 3: like how old we are and what we want to
Speaker 3: give to our kids. Like I'm fine dying the where
Speaker 3: I'm at and having my son own all my stuff.
Speaker 3: And I know he'll do the right stuff with it.
Speaker 3: He'll give it to like dog rescues and stuff. But
Speaker 3: I don't really care if we have plenty enough to
Speaker 3: eat and pay bills and have fun and travel a
Speaker 3: little bit. And who knows. I mean, you'd have to say,
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's just who it's a. It's a.
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 2: I have a hard time with with people that I
Speaker 2: respected selling their catalogs for millions and millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: I don't think that. I mean, do you really need that?
Speaker 4: Well, that seems it seems like.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not. I just have a hard time with it.
Speaker 2: And I don't think I would I would want to
Speaker 2: do that. I would rather keep it, like I've seens
Speaker 2: that would rather keep it in the family. I would rather.
Speaker 2: But somebody wives a lot of money at you. You
Speaker 2: never know what you're going to do until that.
Speaker 1: So how did this leaders record come together?
Speaker 3: As far as what songwriting.
Speaker 1: Everything, the decision to make it, how you wrote the songs,
Speaker 1: how you recorded?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, how's every record come together the same exact way?
Speaker 3: Somebody says, I wrote these songs and then pretty soon
Speaker 3: you think maybe it could be a good record, and
Speaker 3: you work really hard and then you have an outlet.
Speaker 3: We had we had Rob the producer from the last record.
Speaker 3: I think what happened was the last record came out
Speaker 3: and then COVID happened, so we never really got We
Speaker 3: didn't get to tour and do anything. So it made
Speaker 3: us go, let's make another one, and this time hopefully
Speaker 3: we'll get the tour unless there's another pandemic. So I
Speaker 3: think that if we had made the last record and
Speaker 3: COVID didn't happen, I don't know that we would have
Speaker 3: made another record. I think we just wanted to do
Speaker 3: it and see what happens. But I think that we
Speaker 3: learned we can do more stuff, and I hope we
Speaker 3: record a song here and there maybe someday. But I
Speaker 3: don't no, I don't like the finality of last record,
Speaker 3: last tour. But I think you have to sometimes come
Speaker 3: to terms with that. I don't want people to miss
Speaker 3: seeing us because we didn't tell them it's our last tour.
Speaker 3: We want people to know where we're at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much like that. Ecceene and I began talking
Speaker 2: about writing a new record, and she sent me lyrics
Speaker 2: and I worked on music and then sent it back
Speaker 2: to her and she would say, yeah, I love this
Speaker 2: and that's great and I don't know how you do that,
Speaker 2: but I'm glad you did. And then we take it
Speaker 2: to the rehearsal room and then it starts changing, and
Speaker 2: then we have to rewrite it because another one that
Speaker 2: I would work on, Excene would say, no, I don't
Speaker 2: like that story. What if we had a different story.
Speaker 2: So we wrote, rewrote, re rehearsed, touring all through from
Speaker 2: the end of twenty twenty two to twenty to now.
Speaker 2: I mean we were playing the luxury we had as
Speaker 2: we played about five four or five of these songs
Speaker 2: most of twenty twenty three. We do the live and
Speaker 2: you don't get a chance to do that when you
Speaker 2: after you've made a few records, you usually write songs,
Speaker 2: work them up, and then put them on a record,
Speaker 2: and you just have to hope that your first choice
Speaker 2: is the best choice, like Alan Ginsberg said, and we
Speaker 2: had a lot of opportunity to work through different different
Speaker 2: ways of playing them.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of bands break up over the
Speaker 1: songwriting royalties. The money tends to be in the publishing.
Speaker 1: So the two of you conventionally write the songs, the
Speaker 1: other two don't share in that income. Ever been any
Speaker 1: discussions about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually we did work on that for the last record.
Speaker 3: In this one, there is more owning, ownership and publishing stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, we've all worked it out. That's just an
Speaker 3: internal stuff. You know, everybody has their stuff to work out.
Speaker 3: Bands are hard.
Speaker 2: We we make such a so much more of our living,
Speaker 2: of our income comes from live performance than it does
Speaker 2: from I think it's when you get the gold records
Speaker 2: and you sell hundreds of thousands or millions of records.
Speaker 2: That's when people say, hey, what the hell you have
Speaker 2: a boat and I don't. I don't like you anymore.
Speaker 2: That's and that's just sad. It's sad that we're in
Speaker 2: such a greedy, capitalist society that your measure people measure
Speaker 2: their worth by the toys that you have, the stuff
Speaker 2: that you have and that's that's pathetic, I think. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's no, I'm not just. I shouldn't just. I shouldn't
Speaker 2: say that it's sad. It's it makes me sad when
Speaker 2: people get all consumed by that.
Speaker 1: So you like going on the road.
Speaker 3: I still do. But it's really really physically hard and
Speaker 3: mentally hard. And you know, van life is done not
Speaker 3: an easy life, and motels are not easy. And the
Speaker 3: suitcase dragging and unpacking, packing every day every night, and
Speaker 3: then playing. You get up at seven o'clock in the
Speaker 3: morning and you don't play till nine o'clock at night,
Speaker 3: so you're kind of worn out by the time you
Speaker 3: get there. So by the time you do soundcheck and
Speaker 3: try to eat, and then you know it's just been
Speaker 3: a long day already, ya. But then the live stuff's great.
Speaker 3: And I hope that we do it for a while longer,
Speaker 3: at least into next year a little bit. And we're
Speaker 3: just going miss that.
Speaker 2: We're going to tour a little smarter and maybe in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven, I'm knocking on wood,
Speaker 2: we'll play or next year we'll play twenty shows instead
Speaker 2: of eighty shows, and we'll give people a good reason
Speaker 2: to take a road trip to come to Atlanta where
Speaker 2: we're going to play two or three nights, or to
Speaker 2: Chicago or New York and like major cities and things
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: There's not a chance in hell we'll ever play Atlanta
Speaker 3: for three nights.
Speaker 2: But well, you don't know at any rate where there's
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of scarcity when it comes to
Speaker 2: what X has done because we tour all the time,
Speaker 2: and Eccine's right, physically it's difficult. Luckily for us, the
Speaker 2: hour and a half that we're actually creating is worth
Speaker 2: the other twenty two and a half hours. So that's
Speaker 2: why we do it, and it's what we do. It's
Speaker 2: our living. It's like, oh, I don't I don't like
Speaker 2: being a plumber anymore. I think I'm gonna quit. And
Speaker 2: it's not that it's just can you bend down and
Speaker 2: get under the sink and how are your knees? It's
Speaker 2: and not wanting to be part of an organization that's
Speaker 2: falling apart, wanting to say, okay, let's getting to the point.
Speaker 2: If you want to see this, well it's still good,
Speaker 2: come on out.
Speaker 1: And at what level do you tour? I mean there's
Speaker 1: from station wagons to private jets.
Speaker 4: How does that fans?
Speaker 2: We have two sprinters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, the equipment, the merchandise, the people,
Speaker 3: the suitcases, two two vans, and then we get you know,
Speaker 3: we get hotel motels usually, but you know, nothing fancy,
Speaker 3: just you know, because if you do fancy stuff, you
Speaker 3: don't make any money, and we can't do that. So yeah,
Speaker 3: pretty bare bones. We're very frugal and very practical when.
Speaker 1: You're on the road. Does everybody get their own hotel room?
Speaker 3: Most of us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the band does. The crew shares.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of bands have fights and break
Speaker 1: up because they've been traveling with the same people in
Speaker 1: close quarters for all those years. To what degree is
Speaker 1: their friction in acts? And to what degree did being
Speaker 1: on the road contribute to the breakup of your marriage?
Speaker 3: I think back then it was just you know, Channa
Speaker 3: and I met when I was twenty and we were together.
Speaker 3: I think we were a little young to be making
Speaker 3: a lifetime commitment. Uh, And there was so much other
Speaker 3: stuff all we wanted to do in our lives, and
Speaker 3: people kept interfering, and it was just a crazy time.
Speaker 3: And I don't think I was ready to settle down.
Speaker 3: I don't think that had as much to see with
Speaker 3: the band, though. I think Billy quick because he just
Speaker 3: got burned out on it. It was just going nowhere
Speaker 3: at that point. It's hard. It's forty five years plus
Speaker 3: forty eight years. It's a long time to be with
Speaker 3: the same people over and over. That's why we're on
Speaker 3: the only US and Los Lobos are the only bands
Speaker 3: left right it's still tour because for one thing, it's
Speaker 3: really really hard, for another thing where most people still
Speaker 3: aren't alive. I think we're very grateful because you know,
Speaker 3: what is the alternative? Would it be one of us
Speaker 3: would be dead, We'd all be dead, we would have
Speaker 3: broken up, we'd be you know, God only knows what
Speaker 3: would have happened to us. So we're really lucky. I
Speaker 3: don't look, I don't take it for granted. Even when
Speaker 3: people get out of my nerves. I just people are
Speaker 3: gonna get on your nerves no matter who they are,
Speaker 3: what you're doing, whether it's the band or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a family and family dynamics can
Speaker 2: be tricky. But but we've decided that we don't sweat
Speaker 2: the small stuff and we are gracious with each other, intolerant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to what degree do you care about legacy?
Speaker 3: Oh? I care about it, but it's not in my control.
Speaker 3: And I don't want to get into I don't want
Speaker 3: to get into like, oh I should have done this different,
Speaker 3: or I should have done that different. You know, I
Speaker 3: did what I did because I did it. That's what
Speaker 3: I did. Take it or leave it. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you If you like it, great, If not, I can't.
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I know that that we have a
Speaker 2: small spot in the in the world of music, and
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit bigger impact on the world of
Speaker 2: punk rock. But it's there. We're in all the books
Speaker 2: for a lot of them, and if we're not, then
Speaker 2: it's just somebody being having an axe to grind.
Speaker 1: So what was the difference between working with Raymond Zeric
Speaker 1: and other producers and Rob Schnow.
Speaker 3: Rob and rare kind of similar in a lot of ways,
Speaker 3: and that they're both geniuses and creative, wonderful, funny people
Speaker 3: who just want us to be the best X we
Speaker 3: can be and not really trying to change everything. But
Speaker 3: they do come up with good ideas and we go, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a great idea, we'll do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree with that. Ray was a lot
Speaker 2: more spiritual than Rob is. Rob doesn't get into that
Speaker 2: as much, but it's validating and just looking for good
Speaker 2: performances and to try to translate whatever enthusiasm and joy
Speaker 2: that's going on or whatever's happening in the studio to
Speaker 2: transfer that onto the tape.
Speaker 1: Does it ever feel like an adolescent endeavor, like you're
Speaker 1: stuck in time, that you're doing the same thing you
Speaker 1: were doing in your twenties.
Speaker 3: No, because we're not. Thank god, i'd be dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: You know, there are a lot of acts who die
Speaker 1: there here get plastic surgery. The audience goes to relive
Speaker 1: a period in their youth. What are your audiences like?
Speaker 2: They're multi generational and there's a lot of people who
Speaker 2: are twenty years old and younger, and there's people who
Speaker 2: are our age. So you don't realize how difficult it
Speaker 2: is to get this streak of gray along with the
Speaker 2: other It's very difficult to get that died in there.
Speaker 2: I'm joking. Never mind, I guess it wasn't a funny.
Speaker 5: Joke, but well you and Bonnie Raid Yes, Well I'm
Speaker 5: proud to be compared to Bonnie Rait in any way,
Speaker 5: if just through hair, they're multi.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different kinds of people, and there
Speaker 2: always were. We didn't just have a young audience at
Speaker 2: the beginning. They were younger, but there was some old
Speaker 2: people way into their forties back in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: So no plastic surgery here, not yet.
Speaker 1: Do you have any contact with the people from the
Speaker 1: La so called punk scene of the lead seventies, assuming
Speaker 1: they're still alive.
Speaker 3: I don't really because I'm not doing the online thing,
Speaker 3: but Billy certainly does state. A lot of people just
Speaker 3: stay in touch. I see people occasionally. We did this
Speaker 3: TV thing and I got to see a bunch of
Speaker 3: people at that and that was really fun. But you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of people were part of that scene for
Speaker 3: just a minute, and they were there because they were
Speaker 3: important to it and it was important to them. But
Speaker 3: they quickly moved on to other things and we kind
Speaker 3: of stuck with the band things, so you know, everybody
Speaker 3: went in different directions. A lot of people are gone. Also.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I stay in touch with Robert Lopez from the Zeros. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's different people guilty from from uh Top Jimmy and
Speaker 2: the Rhythm Pigs came a little bit later, but yeah,
Speaker 2: here and there. I mean, there's there's no club that
Speaker 2: gets together every every month.
Speaker 1: So you've had an acting career, John, Do you watch
Speaker 1: streaming television or movies or nothing?
Speaker 2: Sure, I watch all kinds of stuff. I watch good
Speaker 2: stuff and crap and all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Well, what's some of the good stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh that I'm and it's kind of this is kind
Speaker 2: of boring. But that television show Hacks was really smart
Speaker 2: and well written. I loved watching that. I'm watching this
Speaker 2: kind of goofy show called Outer Range with Josh Brolin
Speaker 2: and Lily Taylor. You know, just a variety of things.
Speaker 2: I saw the oh, the movie about the making of Fitzceraldo,
Speaker 2: Burden of something or other, I can't remember the title
Speaker 2: of it. And there was also a great indie movie
Speaker 2: called La Camaro that was really beautiful, all in Italian.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I keep up.
Speaker 1: So for those of us who were in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in the lead seventies early eighties certainly aware of X.
Speaker 1: I certainly saw X. But for people who were listening
Speaker 1: to this who are not familiar with the music, what
Speaker 1: can you tell them about X that they don't understand.
Speaker 2: All they would have to do. And this isn't a
Speaker 2: shameless plug. This just so happened to become real. All
Speaker 2: they have to do is they have to listen to
Speaker 2: the song Big Black X, and they can hear what
Speaker 2: we sound like now reflecting on a lot of the
Speaker 2: images and the experiences that we had in the late seventies.
Speaker 2: And that song came together kind of in the studio,
Speaker 2: which is very unlike us. And Excene had written a
Speaker 2: couple of pages of just prose, and I thought it
Speaker 2: was really beautiful and wanted to put it into a
Speaker 2: lyrical form, and DJ and I developed a kind of
Speaker 2: we're going to go through the changes this many times
Speaker 2: for the verse, We're going to go through the change
Speaker 2: this many times for the chorus, and then all of
Speaker 2: the music changed and all of the lyrics changed. But
Speaker 2: I think it's a great representation of what we have done.
Speaker 2: It's like Past President Future because it talks about we
Speaker 2: knew the gutter and also the future. We didn't actually
Speaker 2: know the future in nineteen seventy eight, but we had
Speaker 2: a clue as to what influence our kind of music
Speaker 2: might have on music in general, so we had we
Speaker 2: had a tiny hint and it is the present, so
Speaker 2: it's past, present and future on one three and a
Speaker 2: half minutes ish.
Speaker 1: Okay. For those of you who've been listening and listening
Speaker 1: to John Doe and Exene Cervenka from X, they have
Speaker 1: a new album, Smoking Fiction. They're on their So Cold
Speaker 1: Final tour. Check them out if you're interested. I want
Speaker 1: to thank both of you for spending the time with
Speaker 1: my audience.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for letting us do this, and hello to everybody,
Speaker 3: and thank you for listening light On.
Speaker 1: I'll see you around until next time. This is Bob
Speaker 1: left Stets