Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Basis Extraordinary Les claypool Less. A
Speaker 1: couple of things we were talking trying to get the
Speaker 1: technical stuff under control. You talked about early morning and
Speaker 1: it's just about noon. Are you a late night guy?
Speaker 2: I am not a late night guy. It was more
Speaker 2: just a reference to dealing with technical issues as the
Speaker 2: first part of the day and being a lowly based player.
Speaker 1: Okay. Then another thing, and this is well known, you
Speaker 1: were referred to as colonel. What's the derivation of that?
Speaker 2: That came about with some of my guys when I
Speaker 2: started the Frog Brigade years ago that you know, I
Speaker 2: was the kernel of of of the brigade, and I
Speaker 2: like to joke that it's more K E R N
Speaker 2: A l as, more like as a bit of corn
Speaker 2: as opposed to some form of military authority figure.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the Frog Brigade is going on the road.
Speaker 1: You have multiple bands associations. Why the Frog Brigade? Why now?
Speaker 2: My manager told me to do it. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's been a while since we've done the
Speaker 2: Frog Brigade. There seems to be a hunger for for
Speaker 2: some for some brigade, I've we're re releasing uh those
Speaker 2: old pron song h recordings, So uh, it just seemed
Speaker 2: like the right time. I had a big year with
Speaker 2: Primus last year, probably the most daunting uh Primus undertaking
Speaker 2: in the history of primis by doing that entire record,
Speaker 2: which again another another another test of the firing of
Speaker 2: the synapse. So it's it's it's it's just time, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's time to shift gears a little bit.
Speaker 1: Okay, everybody knows your name, but not everybody is familiar
Speaker 1: with the ins and outs of your career. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit more about the frog we gave.
Speaker 2: Well so many years ago, well right around the turn
Speaker 2: of the century, we were having some issues in the
Speaker 2: Primus world and we weren't necessarily seeing eye to eye
Speaker 2: on things, and I think we had some burnout and
Speaker 2: there was some there was a little bit of fade
Speaker 2: going on, and we went on a hiatus, which was
Speaker 2: just another way of saying, we're breaking up and we
Speaker 2: might get back together at some point. And I I
Speaker 2: I did this gig in New Orleans which ended up
Speaker 2: being the being Oyster Head, and it sort of launched
Speaker 2: me into this. It made it made my presence known
Speaker 2: in the jam world. So I got a call from
Speaker 2: an old friend of mine, Michael Bailey, who books the
Speaker 2: film More, and he was booking this festival in Calaveras
Speaker 2: County called the Mountain Air Festival and it's you know,
Speaker 2: famous calaver'se jumping frog, you know, famous from Mark Twain story.
Speaker 1: And wait, wait, I don't think everybody knows that. So
Speaker 1: if you remember, go a little bit deeper about the
Speaker 1: jumping frog in Mark Twain.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the famous jumping frog of Calaveras County. So
Speaker 2: I have a history with Calaverrese County because I used
Speaker 2: to play in this band, this old R and B
Speaker 2: band when I was about nineteen years old. With we
Speaker 2: would play these basically Hell's Angels events all over northern California,
Speaker 2: and one of them was the Frog Jumps in Calaveras
Speaker 2: County and Calver's County has had these frog Jumps for
Speaker 2: decades and the bikers used to go to this thing,
Speaker 2: but they would get harassed, so they started their own,
Speaker 2: which was like a week prior and I used to
Speaker 2: go play thing. So anyway, Michael Bailey and BGP at
Speaker 2: the time had this Mountain.
Speaker 1: Air Bill Graham Presents, Yes.
Speaker 2: Had this Mountain Air Festival. And so because of the
Speaker 2: Oysterhead thing that I had put together in New Orleans,
Speaker 2: Michael Bailey said, hey, can you put something together for us?
Speaker 2: So I got Tim Alexander on drums, and I had
Speaker 2: Jack Irons, one of my favorite drummers on drums as well,
Speaker 2: two drummers, then my buddy Merv on guitar and Garrick
Speaker 2: on sacks, and we were going to call it the
Speaker 2: thunder Brigade. And Michael was like, you know, we're bringing
Speaker 2: up the primus guy into the jam world. Something called
Speaker 2: the thunder Brigade might be a little heavy handed. So
Speaker 2: I said, well, let's call it the Frog Brigade because
Speaker 2: it's the Frog jumps and that's how Frog Brigade was born.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Michael Bailey said, to do the gig. Tell
Speaker 1: us about the gig and what the music was like.
Speaker 2: Well, basically, like Oysterhead, there was a it was a
Speaker 2: lot of just straight up improvisations. So my idea was
Speaker 2: to get some of my favorite guys together, Tim and
Speaker 2: Tim Alexander and I hadn't played together in a while
Speaker 2: because he had left Primus and this was sort of
Speaker 2: this was sort of his introduction back into the Primus world.
Speaker 2: And then Jack Irons was a buddy of mine, he
Speaker 2: was a neighbor. And Merv is just a guitar player
Speaker 2: who I've just have always adored. And then Scarek is Scarek.
Speaker 2: He's a champion, He's known in that world very well.
Speaker 2: And we got together, picked a few songs and then
Speaker 2: just sort of jammed it out and it that and
Speaker 2: the Oysterhead thing really opened my eyes to the notion
Speaker 2: that hey, people want to see you do all those
Speaker 2: things that other people have been telling you not to
Speaker 2: do all these years, which is wiggle your fingers and
Speaker 2: take chances and dance on the edge. They want to
Speaker 2: see you fall and potentially fall gracefully. And I just
Speaker 2: found that fascinating and it's since become a bit big
Speaker 2: part of my philosophy on how to approach music, which
Speaker 2: is just throw past at the walls and see what sticks.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, let's go back to you saying all
Speaker 1: the stuff you're not supposed to do in falling. You
Speaker 1: go a little deeper on that.
Speaker 2: Well, Uh, I've always been one of those guys that
Speaker 2: could waggle my fingers pretty good. And I've definitely been
Speaker 2: in many situations over the years where they're like, you know,
Speaker 2: that's nice, less, but can you waggle your fingers maybe
Speaker 2: half as much as you're waggling your fingers? And you know,
Speaker 2: and when the when the when the job calls for
Speaker 2: it or the gig calls for it, I have no
Speaker 2: problem doing that. That's what I do. You know, when
Speaker 2: I play with Tom Waits, I don't waggle my fingers
Speaker 2: nearly as much as I do in Primus, but something
Speaker 2: like primus.
Speaker 1: Wait, well, let's be very specific, because not everybody is
Speaker 1: as knowledgeable certainly as you. When you say waggle your fingers,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a style of play or being more
Speaker 1: visually dynamic.
Speaker 2: Ah, wiggle of the fingers. In my world, well, in
Speaker 2: my personal mind, it is just another way of saying
Speaker 2: playing technically.
Speaker 1: Okay, So as opposed to if you're not playing technically,
Speaker 1: you're doing what.
Speaker 2: Well, as opposed to holding down the route or playing
Speaker 2: a little more minimalistic. So okay, does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Well, I think there's a lot more questions, but let's
Speaker 1: hold those questions to continue the narrative how you ended
Speaker 1: up changing to be in the quote unquote GM band world.
Speaker 2: It wasn't so much a change. It was more of
Speaker 2: there was a there was a side of me that
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, Hey, wait a minute, here's some
Speaker 2: people that are enjoying music. For the musicians, there was
Speaker 2: no hey, I got to wear a red baseball cap
Speaker 2: backwards because that's the style now, or there was no
Speaker 2: thought of being on radio or MTV or any of this.
Speaker 2: It was people wanting to see musicians young and old,
Speaker 2: just do what they could do to the extent of
Speaker 2: the of their ability and take chances musically in front
Speaker 2: of a large crowd. That's what I got out of it.
Speaker 2: When we did the Oysterhead thing was it was insane.
Speaker 2: It was like, we're going to go up and we've
Speaker 2: jammed together three times, and we're going to go play
Speaker 2: these songs that we just wrote and we're going to
Speaker 2: just jam. It was like being in high school and
Speaker 2: setting up in the garage and but yet in front
Speaker 2: of thousands of people.
Speaker 3: And in.
Speaker 2: The Primus world, you know, we were known for doing
Speaker 2: some improv, but it was we were within the parameters
Speaker 2: of our song structure, whereas doing the Oysterhead thing and
Speaker 2: then subsequently getting into Frog Brigade world structure wasn't such
Speaker 2: a big deal. You know, the parameters were much looser,
Speaker 2: or they were interpreted as being much looser. So it's
Speaker 2: just more free form expression with your instrument.
Speaker 1: Okay, because I know what Oysterhead is, but not everybody
Speaker 1: does tell us about the formation and the members of
Speaker 1: oyster Head.
Speaker 2: Well, Ryan abound that right right around that time. Excuse me.
Speaker 2: The fellows at Superfly who used to put on these
Speaker 2: these these events down at the Jazz Festival.
Speaker 1: This is an emotion company.
Speaker 2: Yes, down in New Orleans would do these things called
Speaker 2: super jams. And my manager was he managed Galactic at
Speaker 2: the time, so he was he was in that world,
Speaker 2: and he said, Hey, they want you to put together
Speaker 2: something for a SuperJAM. I'm like, what the hell is
Speaker 2: a super jam. Well, you get a hold of some
Speaker 2: you get some musicians together, and you just go and
Speaker 2: jam in front of a bunch of people. I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, well, I'm going to call my buddy Trey
Speaker 2: Anastasia because he's in a band that's kind of known
Speaker 2: for jamming. And so I called up Trey I said, hey,
Speaker 2: they want us, they want me to do this event.
Speaker 2: Are you interested in coming and doing this thing? And
Speaker 2: he said, you know, I've always wanted to do a
Speaker 2: project with you and Stuart Copeland. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: I know Stuart, and I think he kind of I
Speaker 2: learned years later that he kind of tossed that out
Speaker 2: at me as like a, well, I don't really want
Speaker 2: to do this, but hey, if you can get you know,
Speaker 2: Stuart Coput involved. It was, it was it was kind
Speaker 2: of a way of gracefully bowing out of this little
Speaker 2: did he know that I actually knew Stuart. So then
Speaker 2: I called Stuart. Stuart's like I've been waiting for this
Speaker 2: phone call for twenty five years. He was so excited
Speaker 2: and ready to do it. And the three of us
Speaker 2: got together and jammed a little bit, and then we
Speaker 2: did this show. It was purely by the seat of
Speaker 2: our pants, and it was it was very foreign for
Speaker 2: Stuart because you know, the police was a was a
Speaker 2: pretty scripted unit, and you know, he would always talk
Speaker 2: about his pop sensibilities. And then there's Trey who's just
Speaker 2: used to going going for it in front of huge
Speaker 2: groups of people. And then there was me kind of
Speaker 2: dancing in the middle, and it was just a very
Speaker 2: liberating thing. And and and that's what opened my eyes
Speaker 2: and probably other people's eyes to me in that world.
Speaker 1: How did you know, Trey?
Speaker 2: I had played with Fish many years ago. I had
Speaker 2: a band called Sausage, which was some of the original
Speaker 2: members of Primus, and we opened for Fish at Laguna
Speaker 2: Seca Days in California. And I always knew a Fish
Speaker 2: as this, you know, there was this band kind of
Speaker 2: came up around us, and there was we had some
Speaker 2: mutual friends, and there was a couple songs of theirs
Speaker 2: that we used to listen to every now and again.
Speaker 2: But I to be honest with you, I didn't realize
Speaker 2: how big they were. And so we did this. You know,
Speaker 2: I just call them up, I just call them Trey, going, hey,
Speaker 2: you want to do this thing? And little did I
Speaker 2: know the show was going to sell out in five
Speaker 2: seconds and it was all, you know, fish heads, because
Speaker 2: I had no clue how big they were.
Speaker 1: So and how did you know, Stewart, Well.
Speaker 2: We did a rec he Primus did in the late
Speaker 2: eighties called anti Pop and it was after the Brown Album,
Speaker 2: and the Brown Album was our sort of our experimental
Speaker 2: record where we bought all this whole vintage gear and
Speaker 2: just made this record that Tom Waits and once told
Speaker 2: me it sounds like it needs a good wash, you know,
Speaker 2: because it's a very dirty dark It's the Brown album,
Speaker 2: it's the Brown sound. And the record company wasn't real
Speaker 2: thrilled with that record nor with its performance. So when
Speaker 2: we came to do our next record, there was a
Speaker 2: lot of talk of, hey, you know, you guys have
Speaker 2: always done your own thing and done and gone your
Speaker 2: own way, but maybe it's time to work with a producer.
Speaker 2: And we had dabbled around with some producers on a
Speaker 2: few little projects prior to that and just never found
Speaker 2: anything that clicked with us. So the notion came up, well,
Speaker 2: let's work with a bunch of artists. We respect musicians
Speaker 2: and whatnot as producers to produce individual songs. So one
Speaker 2: of the first calls we made was to Stuart, because I,
Speaker 2: you know, I've always you know, to me, the Rumblefish
Speaker 2: soundtrack is one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded.
Speaker 2: I absolutely adore that, and I love his sensibility, and
Speaker 2: so here comes Stuart. He was happy as a clam
Speaker 2: to come up and sit in my bean bag chair
Speaker 2: and point at us and tell us what to do
Speaker 2: and throw some of his pop sensibilities at us. So
Speaker 2: that's how it and we just hit it off. He's
Speaker 2: a great guy. He's one of my best friends now,
Speaker 2: so I'll Kevin for a long time.
Speaker 1: You start off by saying your manager told you to
Speaker 1: do the Frog Brigade. Now you talk about the labels
Speaker 1: saying telling you what to do. Your image is of
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't listen to anybody and does whatever he wants.
Speaker 1: So who are you relative to that?
Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't like he told me to do the
Speaker 2: oysterhead thing or told me to do. He brought in
Speaker 2: the options to do this and I said, wow, that
Speaker 2: sounds interesting. It's a new thing. And the record company
Speaker 2: thing was, you know, well we can't. There's no producer
Speaker 2: that we really clicked with. We tried to get Brian Eno,
Speaker 2: but he wouldn't even talk to us, which I think
Speaker 2: would have been spectacular. But it was just kind of
Speaker 2: our way of doing it, our way, if that makes
Speaker 2: any sense.
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of questions. Where are you right? The second?
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about literally the street address, but what
Speaker 1: where are you relative to California.
Speaker 2: I'm in the Sonoma coastal Wine Country, Okay, and I'm
Speaker 2: sitting at my kitchen table, and that is that's Penelope
Speaker 2: behind me right there's she's a figurehead from a ship.
Speaker 1: Okay. You know, in the Internet era, you could be anywhere.
Speaker 1: But and you grew up exactly where I grew up.
Speaker 2: In the East Bay of San Francisco Bay Area, so Panol, Richmond,
Speaker 2: else BRANDI well, it's it's it's it's a it's a
Speaker 2: little north of Berkeley.
Speaker 1: And would your parents do for a living?
Speaker 2: I come from a long line of auto mechanics. My
Speaker 2: father was auto mechanic. My uncles were all mechanics. My
Speaker 2: stepfather was a mechanic. My grandfather was a mechanic. But
Speaker 2: I did have one grandfather that was a fireman, and
Speaker 2: he actually has been immortalized, if you want to call
Speaker 2: it that in this song. Jerry was a race car driver,
Speaker 2: as Captain Pierce the Fireman.
Speaker 1: Okay. Lots of auto mechanics, so they're all those auto mechanics.
Speaker 1: Are you an auto mechanic at least on any amateur level? Uh?
Speaker 2: My father to this day gets upset with me when
Speaker 2: I work on my own vehicles because he's worried I'm
Speaker 2: going to smash up my hands, which is which is valid.
Speaker 2: But I tend to do it anyway because I'd rather
Speaker 2: do it than wait for somebody to come and do it.
Speaker 2: But I work on a lot of it, but not
Speaker 2: all of it. The guys like to make fun of
Speaker 2: me because I spend a lot of my time on
Speaker 2: tour working on my own tour bus. But I enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Okay, tour bus is a whole another you know, league
Speaker 1: with diesel engines. How do you know to work on
Speaker 1: a tour bus?
Speaker 2: You know, it's all, it's all, it's all, it's all relative.
Speaker 2: You know, you got to service the generator, you got
Speaker 2: I have a buddy that builds tour bus, big fancy
Speaker 2: tour coaches for for entertainers. And he said, there's two
Speaker 2: types of tour buses that that break down, old tour
Speaker 2: buses and new tour buses. They all break down, they
Speaker 2: all have issues. There's always something going on, and so
Speaker 2: there tends to be a lot for me to do,
Speaker 2: but keeps me busy.
Speaker 1: Okay, most people rent their tour buses. Do you renter,
Speaker 1: do you own a tour bus?
Speaker 2: I am not a very bright individual. So I actually
Speaker 2: have two tour buses now and we talk of us
Speaker 2: selling one of them, but my wife refused uses to
Speaker 2: let me sell. Her name is Lafonda. She was our
Speaker 2: first bus because she has fond memories of Lafonda's. So
Speaker 2: we're now using it at our tasting room for high
Speaker 2: end fancy tastings.
Speaker 1: Okay, where are the buses right now?
Speaker 2: One of them is that packet room station in sebastopall
Speaker 2: our wine tasting facility.
Speaker 1: And where's the other one.
Speaker 2: It's at our where we keep our gear in our
Speaker 2: our rehearsal space.
Speaker 1: So if you have a tour bus, is it like
Speaker 1: you know some mechanical items, they work best if they're
Speaker 1: used all the time where someone is not on tour
Speaker 1: all the time. So like on the tour bus there,
Speaker 1: the more you drive it, the fewer problems you have.
Speaker 1: Or if you started up after six months, you know
Speaker 1: you got new problems. What's it like?
Speaker 2: Well, so a tour bus is like a it's like
Speaker 2: a yacht. There's so many things on it. There's kitchens
Speaker 2: and bathrooms and pneumatic doors and so there's lots of
Speaker 2: things to go wrong. It is true with any mechanical item.
Speaker 2: The more you use it, the less apt it is
Speaker 2: to be unreliable. So I do have to exercise these
Speaker 2: things as often as I can, and I probably don't
Speaker 2: as much as I should.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me more about the wine tasting operation.
Speaker 2: Well, we moved up to the Snowma coastal wine country.
Speaker 2: It's been like twenty eight years ago now, and I
Speaker 2: used to be a fellow that smoked quite a lot
Speaker 2: of the marijuana bush. And where we live, there's it's
Speaker 2: like living in Hollywood. If you live in Hollywood and
Speaker 2: you have a barbecue, who comes to your barbecue? There
Speaker 2: are grips, there's you know, lighting people, There's people within
Speaker 2: the industry tend to show up your barbecues. Well, here
Speaker 2: you have a barbecue, it's a lot of Cooper's, a
Speaker 2: lot of vineyard managers, people in the wine industry. So
Speaker 2: while this wonderful wine Pino noir you say noir, was
Speaker 2: floating around, and at the time, I was trying to
Speaker 2: not smoke so much of the marijuana bush because I
Speaker 2: felt like it was adversely affecting my memory, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to remember what my children were like when they
Speaker 2: were little and I needed a new vice, so I
Speaker 2: started drinking all this local pino, and then a couple
Speaker 2: friends of mine one day said, hey, we should make
Speaker 2: our own pino. It'll be cheaper than buying it, which
Speaker 2: was the stupidest thing I've ever said in my entire life,
Speaker 2: because it's a very costly endeavor. But it's become a
Speaker 2: wonderful thing for us on a social level because my
Speaker 2: wife runs it. We have it's just it's kind of
Speaker 2: like our clubhouse. We just go and hang out and
Speaker 2: drink this wine. We have a twenty foot fiberglass wianer
Speaker 2: that we serve these gourmet hot dogs out of, and
Speaker 2: the people that work for us are all amazing friends.
Speaker 2: So we just kind of fell into it.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's not only expensive. He usually takes a bit
Speaker 1: of time to get right. So how long you been
Speaker 1: doing it for.
Speaker 2: We've been doing it since two thousand and seven. But
Speaker 2: we're very, very fortunate because at one point, actually there's
Speaker 2: twenty ten, we were on the hunt for a new
Speaker 2: wine maker, and we're little guys, We're like a thousand cases.
Speaker 2: But I was surprised all these winemakers came out of
Speaker 2: the woodworks to make our wine. And I would ask them, so,
Speaker 2: who do you admire, who do you respect as a
Speaker 2: contemporary pino maker, And they always say, oh, Ross Cobb, Rosscobb, Rosscob,
Speaker 2: Ross Cobb's pretty fun to get a phone call from
Speaker 2: Ross Cobb. He's like, hey, lets I met you with
Speaker 2: John Cordy and the Vinyl guys, and I grew up
Speaker 2: with sections and we had similar friends. And he's a
Speaker 2: bass player, so boom got We got Ross Cobb as
Speaker 2: our winemaker. And he's been our winemaker for twelve years now.
Speaker 2: And he's a very good friend. And he's a pretty
Speaker 2: good bass player.
Speaker 1: Okay, but he's winemaker exclusives to you or he all
Speaker 1: works on multiple vineyards.
Speaker 2: He does his own label, Cobb, and he does I
Speaker 2: think he does a couple other labels as well, but
Speaker 2: he's mainly us and him.
Speaker 1: What does it take to make a good wine?
Speaker 2: A good winemaker helps, but the main thing is sourcing
Speaker 2: good fruit. And where we live just happens to be
Speaker 2: the mecca of California peanuta. So we get a lot
Speaker 2: of good fruit and Ross knows what to do with it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. I always say that, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean a band with Stuart Copeland, which is an
Speaker 2: unbelievable thing to me when I really think about it,
Speaker 2: even though he's a good buddy and it seems natural now.
Speaker 2: But it's a similar thing with Ross making our wine.
Speaker 2: He's like the Stuart Copeland of winemakers. He's just that
Speaker 2: guy that has he has an approach and a thumb prints.
Speaker 2: I find making wine is very similar to make records.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of variables within those elements that make
Speaker 2: that create that thumb print if you're looking to create
Speaker 2: a thumbprint.
Speaker 1: Okay, so is this a public operation? Can people drive
Speaker 1: their sample et cetera? Oh yeah, so people listening it
Speaker 1: might be in the area, give us a couple of
Speaker 1: names or whatever how they can find your place.
Speaker 2: It's just purple packeter is the name of the wine
Speaker 2: and the name of the tasting room's packet m station
Speaker 2: and look for the giant fiberglass wain.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, is this operation
Speaker 1: in the red or in the black?
Speaker 2: It's let's just say it's kind of what's what's the
Speaker 2: combination of red and black? I would say pink, but
Speaker 2: that's more white and black. It's kind of it just
Speaker 2: floats itself.
Speaker 1: Basically.
Speaker 2: You know, there's an old saying if you want to
Speaker 2: make if you want to make a million dollars in
Speaker 2: the wine industry, start with five million and whittle it down,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's a lifestyle thing for us.
Speaker 1: And how many people work there?
Speaker 2: What do we have? We have six or seven folks
Speaker 2: working for us.
Speaker 1: Okay, and you mentioned your wife. She doesn't want to
Speaker 1: get rid of the other tour bus. How'd you meet
Speaker 1: your wife?
Speaker 2: I've known we've been together over thirty years. I met
Speaker 2: her in Berkeley. Her sisters were going to school in Berkeley,
Speaker 2: and she eventually went to Cal Berkeley and I lived
Speaker 2: in Berkeley. I hung out around caw But we've just
Speaker 2: been together for many, many years and Wet I met
Speaker 2: her through her sisters. It's been a long time.
Speaker 1: And how many kids do you have?
Speaker 2: I have two kids that are now in their mid twenties.
Speaker 1: And what are they up to?
Speaker 2: My son graduated from el KAT with a degree in
Speaker 2: game design, but now he's a fledgling filmmaker. In fact,
Speaker 2: he's working on the I'm a documentary right now. And
Speaker 2: my daughter has a sort of a vintage boutique hips hip.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say hipster, but hip clothes clothing store in
Speaker 2: Pedaluma called Buck Lucky. That's actually doing she's having a
Speaker 2: good time.
Speaker 1: With So they're both kind of still on the payroll.
Speaker 2: They're on there. Well, Lina's not Lina's, she's she's her
Speaker 2: business is clicking right along, so she's doing her own thing.
Speaker 2: Cage he's he's done a few things on his own.
Speaker 2: He he just did him and Jimmy Hayward animated that
Speaker 2: that infamous Jim Carrey cartoon that he posted to leave
Speaker 2: what did he leave? Twitter with it or Instagram? I
Speaker 2: can remember. But my son was the animator on that.
Speaker 2: And he's got a few things of his own goings,
Speaker 2: and he's doing the Primus documentary.
Speaker 1: So, your father's a mechanic, comes from a long line
Speaker 1: in mechanic. Your mother homemaker? Does she work outside the home?
Speaker 2: My mother left the planet several years ago, but she
Speaker 2: worked as for many years as a she ran a
Speaker 2: pediatrician's office, so she was like the front desk lady
Speaker 2: or whatever you call it.
Speaker 1: So how many kids in the family.
Speaker 2: In my family? Yes, I have two children.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about no? No, no, When you're growing
Speaker 1: up brothers and sisters.
Speaker 2: I have a stepbrother and stepsister and a half brother
Speaker 2: and half sister.
Speaker 1: And how many grew up in the house with you?
Speaker 2: Well, when I was living with my mom, I was
Speaker 2: myself and my little brother and little sister, and they
Speaker 2: were quite a bit younger than me. And then when
Speaker 2: I moved to my father's when I became high school age,
Speaker 2: I was living with my stepbrother and step sister that
Speaker 2: were closer to my age.
Speaker 1: Do you have any brothers or sisters who share the
Speaker 1: same father and mother as.
Speaker 2: You, different father's, same mother.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what's it like growing up shuttling between these
Speaker 1: two places and really being the only person in your
Speaker 1: own little league there?
Speaker 2: Well, I, you know, I was a child of the seventies,
Speaker 2: and I think it was fairly common. You know, most
Speaker 2: of my friends were shuffling off every other weekend to
Speaker 2: see the the parent they weren't living full time with,
Speaker 2: so it seemed pretty pretty commonplace. You know, there were
Speaker 2: pros and cons. The pro is, you got two Christmases.
Speaker 2: You know, that was pretty that was pretty sweet. The
Speaker 2: con was, you know, I had to divide my time.
Speaker 2: But it worked out for me. I went and moved
Speaker 2: in with my father when I was thirteen, which was
Speaker 2: a which was a great thing for me because that's
Speaker 2: where I got exposed to a more musical community and
Speaker 2: just got to kind of go reinvent myself. And where
Speaker 2: I had been living. My cousin, who I spent every
Speaker 2: day with until I was thirteen years old, he ended
Speaker 2: up spending the majority of his life in prison, So
Speaker 2: it was good that I moved on from that world.
Speaker 1: What was he what were his crimes?
Speaker 2: Well, addiction is a big thing in my family, whether
Speaker 2: it's alcohol or meth amphetamine. So he went down the
Speaker 2: crank trail, as we would have said, and just it
Speaker 2: consumed him and he spent a lot of time behind bars.
Speaker 1: So you're growing up, what kind of kid are you? Popular? Outcast,
Speaker 1: good student, bad student?
Speaker 2: I think I was somewhere in the middle. I think
Speaker 2: moving to my father was a chance for me to
Speaker 2: kind of reinvent myself and show up and be you know,
Speaker 2: move from group to group until I found who I
Speaker 2: was comfortable with. I did. I was the I was
Speaker 2: the kid in my family that was would have been
Speaker 2: the first one to go to college or the first
Speaker 2: male to go to college because I had good grades
Speaker 2: and whatnot. But I I had to work because I
Speaker 2: had no money. I had to work, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to play music. I couldn't work and play music and
Speaker 2: go to college. I just wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 2: pull it off. So I tried it for a semester.
Speaker 2: It didn't work out, and then I opted to work
Speaker 2: and play music. And that's and here I am now
Speaker 2: talking to you.
Speaker 1: You got a wild sense of humor. Where does that
Speaker 1: come from?
Speaker 2: I'm going to say my grandfather, who has who actually
Speaker 2: has a Wamola Wiener named after him, Papa Simoni at
Speaker 2: our at our, at our hot dog joint. Our family
Speaker 2: tend to tended to deal with heavy issues with humor.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was always deflected with humor. That's just always the
Speaker 2: way we did things. So he was a very humorous.
Speaker 1: Fellow, Okay, and you pick up the bass? When and why?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: When I had mister Kelly's algebra class in ninth grade
Speaker 2: and there was a fellow who sat behind me who
Speaker 2: wore these big, thick pop bottled glasses, had this long hair,
Speaker 2: and he'd wore these these white T shirts, this kind
Speaker 2: of a little Filipino guy, and he would sit back
Speaker 2: there and look at guitar magazines and roll up dimebags.
Speaker 2: And I remember him showing he would show me these magazines, Hey, Clay,
Speaker 2: pooh man, look at that's that's the one I'm getting
Speaker 2: right there. And he'd show me pictures of the stratocaster,
Speaker 2: and I remember the ad specifically a stratocaster, those guy
Speaker 2: holding it going it's a country machine, and somebody overs
Speaker 2: going it's a rock machine, and somebody else going it's
Speaker 2: a blues machine. He's like, that's the gold guitar I'm getting.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm getting. And that guy happened to be
Speaker 2: Kirk Hammitt and he he he wanted me to sing
Speaker 2: for his band because I would always come in singing
Speaker 2: like Aerosmith songs and you know, a Zeppelin and whatnot.
Speaker 2: And he was like, kay poo, I want you to
Speaker 2: I want you to sing from a band. Man wants
Speaker 2: you to sing from a band. And he gave me
Speaker 2: some tapes. He turned me on too, Hendrix. He gave
Speaker 2: me some He wanted me to sing cream Sunshine of
Speaker 2: your Love. That was gonna be my audition song. And
Speaker 2: I took the tapes and I listened to him, but
Speaker 2: I was too scared. I couldn't I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: I was like, dude, I can't do it. I can't
Speaker 2: do it. But it gave me the itch to do something.
Speaker 2: And I met this other guy that needed that. You know,
Speaker 2: bass players weren't big demand because everybody wanted to be
Speaker 2: Eddie van Halen. Nobody wanted to play bass. They always
Speaker 2: stuck the bass. The guy who couldn't play couldn't play
Speaker 2: guitar as well as the other guy, you know, so
Speaker 2: he needed a bass player. I knew this guy that
Speaker 2: was selling a bass for I think fifteen bucks or something.
Speaker 2: I was thirty bucks. I had fifteen bucks, and I
Speaker 2: went to my dad. I said, Dad, Jim Ledbetter's got
Speaker 2: this bass. He wants to sell us thirty dollars. I
Speaker 2: got fifteen. Can you loan me in fifteene? Is this
Speaker 2: something you really want to do? And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's really what I want to do. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: let's do this, right, We're gonna go see Al. So
Speaker 2: we went to Al's Music Local local music store in town,
Speaker 2: and we bought a Fender. It was a Memphis p
Speaker 2: bass copy of a Fender Precision one hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 2: My dad loaned me the rest of the money, and
Speaker 2: I worked all summer pulling weeds and schlepping.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing we know about a bass guitar is
Speaker 1: you need an app. So what about an app?
Speaker 2: Well, I was screwed there. I didn't get my own
Speaker 2: app until I was like well into my twenties. I
Speaker 2: actually would the guitar player in this band that I
Speaker 2: ended up joining in high school. He had this little
Speaker 2: Gibson guitar amp and I would play through this little
Speaker 2: Gibson guitar. And the funny thing is I used to
Speaker 2: schlep that damn amp back and forth from my house
Speaker 2: because my house was like maybe half a mile from school,
Speaker 2: and I would carry that damn thing. And I only
Speaker 2: weighed like ninety pounds. I'm carrying this damn thing. I
Speaker 2: had a twelve inch speaker. And now those amps are
Speaker 2: worth a fortune. They're actually worth quite a bit of money.
Speaker 2: I look them up. And but that's what I would
Speaker 2: play through. And you couldn't hear me at all. You
Speaker 2: could barely hear me. I was, you know, it was
Speaker 2: like most bass players in rock bands. I was just
Speaker 2: part of the landscape more than anything.
Speaker 1: But rumor was in my day that if you played
Speaker 1: a bass who regular guitar amp, you're going to blow
Speaker 1: it up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I blew up some amps, but these were
Speaker 3: tiny and this is tiny amp, you know, so it
Speaker 3: didn't get loud enough to do much of anything.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, see you come on with a p
Speaker 1: bass copy, you got it? How do you learn how
Speaker 1: to play it.
Speaker 2: Well? Because I didn't have an amp, I would sit there,
Speaker 2: much to the chagrin of my stepbrother and stepsister as
Speaker 2: they're watching their cartoons. I would sit on the edge
Speaker 2: of the couch and just play along. And a lot
Speaker 2: of times I would put on like rush records and
Speaker 2: stuff and just play along. I couldn't hear what I
Speaker 2: was doing, so I had no idea if I was
Speaker 2: in the right key or anything. But I could rhythmically
Speaker 2: follow along. And that's kind of how I started, was
Speaker 2: interpreting these songs without hearing the notation, but just rhythmically
Speaker 2: following along.
Speaker 1: And then how did you ultimately learn the right notes
Speaker 1: in the right key? I never did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we just did this, Like I said,
Speaker 2: we just did this rush album. And part of the
Speaker 2: impetus of us doing the rush album is. It was
Speaker 2: always something that the three of us connected. When we
Speaker 2: first got together, me and Lure and Herb. We saw
Speaker 2: this guy with this giant drum kit, was like, well
Speaker 2: he must know some rush. We'd play little bits and
Speaker 2: pieces of Rush rifts that we knew from, but we
Speaker 2: never knew full songs, you know, just bits and pieces.
Speaker 2: So with Farewell the Kings, we had to learn the
Speaker 2: entire thing. So I was never one of those guys
Speaker 2: that would sit and learn other people's songs, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of it came from I just didn't
Speaker 2: have the equipment to do so.
Speaker 1: So when you're talking to Kirk, you said, you know
Speaker 1: you taught You said, well, you're running around singing Aerosmith songs,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So prior to this turning point, what was
Speaker 1: your exposure to music and what were you in too?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know how you were growing up, but
Speaker 2: there was always the kid in the neighborhood who's house
Speaker 2: she hung out at because they had the best stereo,
Speaker 2: they had a pool table, maybe they had a dough
Speaker 2: boy swimming pool, you know. And Jeff Webster was that guy.
Speaker 2: And so Jeff Webster and his older brother Tom, they
Speaker 2: each had their own stereo, plus their parents had a
Speaker 2: badass stereo. Plus they had a pool table, plus they
Speaker 2: had babie guns. Plus they had a dough boy swimming pool.
Speaker 2: And it was that's where we would hang out all
Speaker 2: the time. And I, you know, I had I really
Speaker 2: had no money. I had like a couple of records,
Speaker 2: but these guys had tons of records, so they were
Speaker 2: always playing music. And I was exposed to all this music,
Speaker 2: especially when there's an older brother involved. I remember being
Speaker 2: in I think we were shooting pool one day and
Speaker 2: I hear this darn no no, it's coming blaring out
Speaker 2: of his bedroom. I'm like, what the hell is that.
Speaker 2: It was the greatest sound I'd ever heard in my life.
Speaker 2: And Jeff goes, oh, that's led Zeppelin. I like, wow,
Speaker 2: that guy's amazing. And it was heartbreaker and it was
Speaker 2: it just it just it just stuck to me. It
Speaker 2: was it was the greatest thing I'd ever heard in
Speaker 2: my entire life. So I went and got led Zeppelin too,
Speaker 2: and I put it on my crappy, little little plastic
Speaker 2: turntable with a couple of speakers, and and that was
Speaker 2: that was part of the intro. But the thing. And
Speaker 2: and like I said, I don't I don't know your
Speaker 2: demographic or your age or where you know, where you
Speaker 2: grew up. But a big thing that that for us
Speaker 2: back in the day was those damn record clubs. You know,
Speaker 2: you could join the RCAA Record Club. There was Columbia
Speaker 2: Record Club where you could get X amount of records
Speaker 2: for a dollar, or there was RCAA Record Club where
Speaker 2: you could get not quite as many records, but it
Speaker 2: was only a penny. So I went for the penny
Speaker 2: one because you know, they had no money. And I
Speaker 2: got you know, banned Gypsy's, and I got all the
Speaker 2: world's of stage, and I got Montrose jump on it,
Speaker 2: and I got I remember getting these records gone. This
Speaker 2: is the greatest thing in the world. But that's how
Speaker 2: we got turned on besides friends, but how we accumulated
Speaker 2: our record collection was through these clubs. And then of
Speaker 2: course they'd send you a record every month and you
Speaker 2: had to get it back to them by a certain
Speaker 2: dat or they charge you for it.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing is the scam was they charged
Speaker 1: you full retail price, So if the album was four
Speaker 1: dollars in a discount store, it was six ninety eight
Speaker 1: to the person in the club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but when you're thirteen, you just don't think that way.
Speaker 2: You're thinking. You know, it's like it's like buying the
Speaker 2: six foot Frankenstein in the back of the comic book
Speaker 2: for a dollar. You think you're going to get this,
Speaker 2: and it's a poster, you know, it's like a black
Speaker 2: and white poster. You don't think of that. My dad
Speaker 2: was always if it seems too good to be true,
Speaker 2: then it is too good to be true. Yeah, right, Dad,
Speaker 2: you don't know what you're talking about. I'm getting six
Speaker 2: records for a penny, you know.
Speaker 1: Just to you know, dot an I back there, A
Speaker 1: doll Boy was a high level above ground pool, probably
Speaker 1: the best brand. But did you also listen to the radio?
Speaker 2: I mean, my mom always had the AM radio going
Speaker 2: when we were kids. You know, I remember her scooting
Speaker 2: across the floor doing her whatever type of Roba sizing
Speaker 2: or whatever you called it back then, with her beehive
Speaker 2: hair to like Diana Ross and whatnot. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I remember when FM radio became a big deal
Speaker 2: for us. You know, you'd listen, you'd hear some song.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing, you know, waiting to hear what like
Speaker 2: what the next sound was going to be? And I
Speaker 2: remember one day hearing this song and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, that's the greatest song I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: And they didn't say who it was. So I kept
Speaker 2: listening and this was the Camel. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you know Camel, Yeah, k me l Sian Francisco.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm waiting to hear this song again. What the
Speaker 2: hell song was it? What the hell signed? And it
Speaker 2: took months and finally I hear it again and was
Speaker 2: a Man on the Silver Mountain by Rainbow. I was
Speaker 2: just like, oh my god, and it and next thing
Speaker 2: you know, I went out, I went down the Rainbow Trail.
Speaker 1: Okay, so just to be clear, you're born in sixty three.
Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin two came out the fall of sixty nine.
Speaker 1: How many years behind that were you into it? And
Speaker 1: when did you kind of think in time such as
Speaker 1: you were listening to the stuff that was out right then?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I got into Zeppelin it would have
Speaker 2: been in the mid to late seventies. That's when I
Speaker 2: sort of became aware of such things. Prior to that,
Speaker 2: it was Beatles and I used to buy forty fives
Speaker 2: that was the big thing is is if I got
Speaker 2: an A on my report card, I'd get a dollar,
Speaker 2: and so I would take that dollar and go buy
Speaker 2: a forty five. So needless to say, I didn't have
Speaker 2: a lot of forty fives because I didn't get a
Speaker 2: lot of a's on my report cards. But I remember
Speaker 2: one of the first ones I bought was you know,
Speaker 2: Stevie Wonder Superstition, and then Amos Moses by Jerry Reid
Speaker 2: and uh and then when we got into albums, that
Speaker 2: was like a whole that was a whole new ballgame.
Speaker 2: But I think the first album I ever bought was
Speaker 2: Why I says Loos Chacones. I can't remember the Cheach
Speaker 2: and Chong record. You know, we were we had a
Speaker 2: big Cheat and Chong phase, which I which once my
Speaker 2: father heard it, he took it away from me.
Speaker 1: What was the routine on that particular album?
Speaker 2: Uh, well, there was quite a few. That was the
Speaker 2: one where they would go to the you know there
Speaker 2: they go to the drive in. You know, they go
Speaker 2: to the drive in and sneak the guy in in
Speaker 2: the trunk and they can't get him out and he's
Speaker 2: pissing on the trunk and.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you get the bass, how long after that
Speaker 1: are you playing with the band?
Speaker 2: Immediately? I was immediately in a band because I had
Speaker 2: befriended the local guitar player who was like he was
Speaker 2: like the guy, he was the hot shot guy, and
Speaker 2: he's he had this He had started this band called
Speaker 2: Blind Illusion and they needed a bass player. And I
Speaker 2: was immediately in the band. And I didn't know how
Speaker 2: to play anything because it was all original material. I
Speaker 2: couldn't play anybody else's music but his. I only knew
Speaker 2: how to play his song. So that's how I learned,
Speaker 2: was learning to play him showing me how to play
Speaker 2: his songs. It wasn't until I started branching off on
Speaker 2: my own and listening to you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of funk back then that I started getting
Speaker 2: in to being a little more aggressive with how I
Speaker 2: attacked my instrument.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, I can understand the regular guitar, I
Speaker 1: cannot understand the bass. And just you know, there are
Speaker 1: many different levels what notes to play, whether you're you know,
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney playing melody on the bass, other people Bill
Speaker 1: Wyman just holding down the bass. What's the trick or
Speaker 1: is it something you're either born with or not.
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's a trick to it, but
Speaker 2: I do. It is funny seeing people that I have
Speaker 2: a friend that's a great guitar player, but when he
Speaker 2: gets on the bass, it's just a mess. I'm like,
Speaker 2: what the hell is going on here? So but to me,
Speaker 2: it's just it's four strings versus six string. I mean,
Speaker 2: I have six string basses too, So to me, the
Speaker 2: bass itself is, for me, is kind of transcended what
Speaker 2: it is theoretically supposed to be. It's it just happens
Speaker 2: to be the crayon that I picked out of the box.
Speaker 2: I'm still painting the same pictures I probably would have
Speaker 2: painted with what ever instrument. But but so back then, though,
Speaker 2: it was, you know, I was just learning and getting
Speaker 2: my way around, and I'm holding down the route you're
Speaker 2: playing the root of the chord, you know. But once
Speaker 2: I started seeing guys like Lewis Johnson and Larry Graham
Speaker 2: and Stanley Clark tear into that thing, that it just
Speaker 2: changed my whole perspective on how to approach the instrument.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, how do you figure what notes to
Speaker 1: play on a fretless bass?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's the same principle. It's just you're
Speaker 2: you're you're, you have a you're able to loosely interpretate
Speaker 2: interpret the note, you know. I mean, you could still
Speaker 2: get warbliness out of a fretted instrument by using vibrato
Speaker 2: and whatnot. But with the fretless you can slide in
Speaker 2: and out of the note, and and it's it's a
Speaker 2: little more uh, liquid sounding, I would say, but it's
Speaker 2: the same thing. You kind of. I got to know
Speaker 2: where you're going.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you form this band, you're probably playing in
Speaker 1: somebody's living room or garage. Do you play any gigs live?
Speaker 2: Our first gig, well, the very first gig I played,
Speaker 2: and it's actually in the high school yearbook for that year,
Speaker 2: and Kirk still remembers being in the audience was in
Speaker 2: the cafeteria of DeAnza High School. And I was so
Speaker 2: petrified that I stood sideways. I couldn't face the crowd.
Speaker 2: I stood sideways the entire time with my bell bottom
Speaker 2: chord zone and my platform shoes, and you know, and
Speaker 2: there we were.
Speaker 1: Kirk wanted you to sing. So in this new band,
Speaker 1: were you singing at all?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I still barely sing, I just I didn't finish puberty
Speaker 2: until I was like twenty nine, so my voice was
Speaker 2: cracking all over the place I would have been awful.
Speaker 2: Was like, I just didn't have I.
Speaker 4: Didn't Okay, I got to go back to that joke,
Speaker 4: you didn't finish puberty until you were twenty nine.
Speaker 1: What are you actually saying there?
Speaker 2: It took me forever I grow in a mustache. It
Speaker 2: took me forever to be able to grow a mustache.
Speaker 2: My dad always had a mustache. I want a mustache.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm you know, I'm joking a bit, but
Speaker 2: I was well into my twenties before I was able
Speaker 2: to grow a mustache.
Speaker 1: What about your history with girls back then?
Speaker 2: I had some girls, Okay, So on that level, purity worked, yes, yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So by time I went I.
Speaker 2: Went from I went from like I went from like
Speaker 2: five foot tall in ninth grade over the summer to
Speaker 2: six foot one. So I was like, went from little
Speaker 2: skinny guy to tall, skinny guy within a matter of months.
Speaker 1: And how did that change your life?
Speaker 2: I'm sure changed my life in many many ways. But
Speaker 2: I was definitely one of those late bloomer guys that
Speaker 2: was you know, I remember my my first you know,
Speaker 2: going into the locker room at June and Junior high
Speaker 2: and I'm, you know, there's a little less sitting down
Speaker 2: and I look over and I can't remember the guy's name,
Speaker 2: but he's he went through puberty, and he had this
Speaker 2: big giant bush with this big dogger hanging out, and
Speaker 2: I'm bald as an acorn sitting there, going, what the
Speaker 2: hell is going on here? And I you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's it's uh, it's intimidating when you're the only
Speaker 2: guy and and and by the time you get to
Speaker 2: ninth grade, you're counting your pubes, just waiting to when
Speaker 2: you can catch up with everybody else. So so the
Speaker 2: height was just just a portion of of of of
Speaker 2: building my self esteem.
Speaker 1: Okay, your name is Leslie short Less. I know a
Speaker 1: number of people from my father's generation with the name
Speaker 1: less Leslie, but it's not common amongst people your age.
Speaker 1: Was that an issue growing up? People give you a
Speaker 1: shit for your name, happy with your name?
Speaker 2: Well, so I have mentioned Papa Simoni as the guy
Speaker 2: with the humor and who we've named the a Wiener
Speaker 2: after at the tasting room. He left the planet several
Speaker 2: years ago. But my parents were very young. My mom
Speaker 2: was seventeen when I was born. My dad was nineteen
Speaker 2: and her mom was sixteen or seventeen when she was born,
Speaker 2: so my grandparents were very young. My grandfather was thirty
Speaker 2: four years old when I showed up, and needless to say,
Speaker 2: he was pretty pissed off that his sixteen year old
Speaker 2: daughter had got knocked up by this guy with grease
Speaker 2: back hair and a cigarette pack rolled up in his
Speaker 2: in his T shirt sleeve, you know, so to gain
Speaker 2: favor with and that's why we called him Papa. You
Speaker 2: want to be called grandpa. So to gain favor with Papa,
Speaker 2: they named him. They named me after him. He was
Speaker 2: Leslie Edward Simoni. I'm Leslie Edward Claypool. As a kid,
Speaker 2: the name Leslie, it's a girl's name, that's a girl.
Speaker 2: I heard it all the time, but it was like whatever,
Speaker 2: it could have been worse. And my father's name is Lynn,
Speaker 2: and so he kind of grew up a similar thing
Speaker 2: had he had a girl's name, as kids would say.
Speaker 2: But I have no issue with it now. I was
Speaker 2: one of those guys because I wasn't big. I just
Speaker 2: tried to be funny. You know, there's that old Richard
Speaker 2: Pryor joke about when he went to prison, he made
Speaker 2: the guys laugh so they wouldn't get the boutet.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I made guys laugh so I wouldn't get beat up.
Speaker 2: You know. It was like, hey, there's Less. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: a funny guy, you know. So it kept the It
Speaker 2: kept most of the bullies a big but there's always
Speaker 2: some bully that just wants to be a dick.
Speaker 1: And then were you always Less? Who were you ever? Leslie?
Speaker 2: I was Leslie when I was little, but then I
Speaker 2: became became less. There was a lot of nicknames slung
Speaker 2: around too. We always had nicknames all of our buddies.
Speaker 1: Right, And was your name less or did you have
Speaker 1: another nickname?
Speaker 2: I've had many nicknames over the years, so but less
Speaker 2: has been what people call me.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a very interesting thing because people don't have
Speaker 1: nicknames anymore. I mean, I'm really a bit older. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit older. You All the baseball players
Speaker 1: had nicknames, no, and there was no such thing as David.
Speaker 1: David was always Dave and all this other stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm raw, I was never Robert. I was always Bob.
Speaker 1: But whatever. So by time you graduate from high school,
Speaker 1: what's the status of your musical career.
Speaker 2: I was really into a lot of funk and what
Speaker 2: was called fusion at the time, like Stanley Clark, Clark Project,
Speaker 2: Ronnie Laws, Dixie Dregs, things like that.
Speaker 1: He as far out as Weather Report and Maha vishn
Speaker 1: Orchestra or not.
Speaker 2: A little bit. Not as much. I tended to like
Speaker 2: the things. It had to be funky or I just
Speaker 2: wasn't that into it, you know. And I never really
Speaker 2: went deep into the jocko world because I was a
Speaker 2: Stanley Clark guy. You know, I wanted to see that,
Speaker 2: you know, I wanted Larry Graham. You Larry Graham just
Speaker 2: blew my mind. But as I was graduating in high school,
Speaker 2: that was when I you know, I was a huge
Speaker 2: rushead throughout all of it. That was they were my guys,
Speaker 2: you know, until.
Speaker 1: I Okay, wait, wait, a couple of questions here. Why
Speaker 1: is funk centered in the Bay Area. You talk about
Speaker 1: Graham Central Station, et cetera. It's a hot bet of funk.
Speaker 1: Do you have any ideas there?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there's also I mean, there's Minneapolis funk,
Speaker 2: there's Cincinnati funk, you know, talking to Bootsy a while
Speaker 2: back and I was like, hey, Bootsy, so who's who's
Speaker 2: who is the funkiest of all time? And he was like,
Speaker 2: Ohio Players, Man, Ohio Players, they were the funkiest by far.
Speaker 2: And so it just sort of depends on what kind
Speaker 2: of funk it's. It's it's regional, you know, like you
Speaker 2: listen to Minneapolis funk, it's got a different feel to
Speaker 2: it than like New Orleans funk. So but yes, Larry
Speaker 2: Graham and Slicestone coming out of the Bay Area, that
Speaker 2: was pretty sweet.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what's the status of funk today in the
Speaker 1: world of music?
Speaker 2: Shit, I don't know. I'm an old guy. What the
Speaker 2: hell do I know. I'd have no idea, to be
Speaker 2: honest with you, I really don't.
Speaker 1: Well, it certainly isn't dominant, but everything, you know, the
Speaker 1: whole landscape has changed. But going back to okay, how
Speaker 1: did you get into Rush?
Speaker 2: And that was my first concert. So I remember my
Speaker 2: buddy Jeff Webster, who was the guy who had all
Speaker 2: the records and he had the fancy stereo in the
Speaker 2: dough Boy swimming pool. We picked out things to listen
Speaker 2: to by the cover, you look at the cover. Oh,
Speaker 2: we got to listen to this. This has got to
Speaker 2: be amazing. And so one day I picked up the
Speaker 2: cover and there's this guy sitting there in a chair
Speaker 2: with all this rubble behind him, and it was rushed
Speaker 2: for all the kings we put it on. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god. So I got turned on to rush.
Speaker 2: And then when I became a when I was talking
Speaker 2: about picking up the base, it was Geddy was the guy.
Speaker 2: And we got tickets to well, a bunch of friends
Speaker 2: of mine got tickets to go see the Hemispheres show
Speaker 2: at the Cow Palace. And I didn't have a ticket,
Speaker 2: but I had some money, and I hopped in the
Speaker 2: car with these guys and Dan Maloney, he was the
Speaker 2: older brother of these two twins Joe and Mike Maloney
Speaker 2: that I knew, and he was like the guy would
Speaker 2: buy his beer. He was old enough to get his beer.
Speaker 2: And on he drove drove us all to the Cow
Speaker 2: Palace to see Hemispheres, and we bought some. He bought
Speaker 2: some low Umbrow on the way there, but he would
Speaker 2: buy it from Nick's Delicatessen, which never kept the beer
Speaker 2: quite cold enough because open top. So it was kind
Speaker 2: of warm low umbrowse So I drank three low umbrows
Speaker 2: and my you know, ninety pound body, and you know,
Speaker 2: got there and threw up in the parking lot and
Speaker 2: bought a scout ticket even though the show wasn't sold out,
Speaker 2: and just watched this show that completely totally blew my
Speaker 2: mind and changed my life. It was Pat Travers opening
Speaker 2: for Rush on the Hemispheres tour, so I got to
Speaker 2: see Mars on Base, which was amazing, got to see
Speaker 2: Tommy Aldridge do this incredible solo and do you know,
Speaker 2: play with his bare hands, and then Rush just and
Speaker 2: watching the signus that rossa Nante going through the black
Speaker 2: hole on my my little fourteen year old mind was
Speaker 2: just percolating. So that was my intro into Rush.
Speaker 1: Well, I think Rush started on Mercury then went to Atlantic.
Speaker 1: If you go to a Rush show I saw the
Speaker 1: second and last tour, there are very few women in
Speaker 1: the audience. I mean, if you meet these guys. Of
Speaker 1: course one's dead now, very nice guys from Canada explain
Speaker 1: magic and why it's such a male thing.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's a lot like it's a
Speaker 2: lot like being a treky, you know, It's like it's
Speaker 2: one of those. It's kind of a guilty pleasure, very devout,
Speaker 2: devoted group of individuals, somewhat obsessive. You know, they weren't
Speaker 2: writing songs about partying and chicks and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: They were writing about you know, black holes and and
Speaker 2: ships named Rossinante and battling evil forces and dungeons and
Speaker 2: dragons and all this cool mythological stuff that was that
Speaker 2: was enticing for guys that maybe the Red sci Fi
Speaker 2: or were trekys. But and then the musicality was just insane.
Speaker 2: It would blow my mind when people go, ah, I
Speaker 2: don't like Rush. I was like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: You know, some people were rubbed a little bit the
Speaker 2: wrong way by Getty's voice, But you know it's like
Speaker 2: John Lydon. You know, John Lydon's one of my favorite
Speaker 2: singers of all time. You know, some people don't like
Speaker 2: the sound of John's voice, but there's a character to
Speaker 2: it that's unbelievable. Fits the tone, fits the aesthetic of
Speaker 2: what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel is a Rush fanatic that
Speaker 1: they've hung it up? Do you think they should get
Speaker 1: another drummer go on the road.
Speaker 2: Well, we just played with them recently. You know, I
Speaker 2: keep pretty good contact with Geddy. I really don't know.
Speaker 2: That's kind of their thing. It's that's a tough one,
Speaker 2: you know. That's that's a that's a kinship and a
Speaker 2: and being in a band. It's it's it's like a
Speaker 2: it's a it's a marriage. It's there's all the same emotions.
Speaker 2: There's all the same drama and pleasure, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's you know, besides rolling around under the sheets. But
Speaker 2: the it's a it's a very it's it's a very
Speaker 2: tight bond. And so it's not for me to say
Speaker 2: what they should do, to be honest with you, but uh,
Speaker 2: it would be an it would be an interesting thing
Speaker 2: to see for sure. And I have seen him. I
Speaker 2: mean they played with us, so I've seen him play
Speaker 2: without without Neil. But I mean it's like The Police
Speaker 2: without Stuart Copeland. It just doesn't seem to it just
Speaker 2: it would be, it would be.
Speaker 1: The difference is is that Steing goes on the road,
Speaker 1: whereas life sinning Getty appear to be retired.
Speaker 2: I know Alex has a he has a new project
Speaker 2: that he's doing with some friends. I've heard it, and
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's cool. I think, like anything, you
Speaker 2: you you move through your life, and you you reflect
Speaker 2: what's interesting to you at that particular time. And if
Speaker 2: they become nostalgic about it or or or what have you,
Speaker 2: they'll go and do it, I would think. But I'm
Speaker 2: not sure if right now they're they're they're they're fields.
Speaker 1: Okay, just staying with that nostalgic point. Even you too
Speaker 1: is playing complete albums. Now, you're a guy who's constantly evolving.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about nostalgia?
Speaker 2: I mean, I love nostalgia, but there's also a part
Speaker 2: of me that that's I have a little bit of
Speaker 2: I love nostalgia as a as a fan, you know,
Speaker 2: I love it. It's it's it's it's an amazing, wonderful thing.
Speaker 2: As a musician, a creative person, I like to keep
Speaker 2: moving forward. It's hard for me, Like we're trying to
Speaker 2: do all these live records, these Primus live records. It's
Speaker 2: hard for me to listen to them because I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll listen to them, and I it's fun,
Speaker 2: but I'd rather hear some new stuff. I'd rather keep
Speaker 2: moving forward. But as a fan, and I know I
Speaker 2: speak for a lot of fans, people come to your
Speaker 2: shows they want to see, they want to they want
Speaker 2: to see, they want to see those songs that made
Speaker 2: them feel like they did when they were in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight and they were hanging out, you know, wakeboarding
Speaker 2: on some lake or whatever, whatever, whatever, They can associate
Speaker 2: it with good times, bad times, whatever it is. Music
Speaker 2: is the It's like a smell. It brings you back
Speaker 2: to a certain time in your life and hopefully those
Speaker 2: are good times. And so I think, as a fan,
Speaker 2: you want to see that, but I do. I also
Speaker 2: like the Miles Davis theory, which was he just wanted
Speaker 2: to keep going forward. He'd never want to play anything.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to go back and play that stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, to what degree do you personally feel a
Speaker 1: responsibility to your audience.
Speaker 2: Well, when I'm in primus mode, I feel that responsibility
Speaker 2: and we go out and we play. We play a
Speaker 2: smattering of we don't have hits, but there's those ones
Speaker 2: that people recognize. But I also know that people really
Speaker 2: dig it when we dig deep into something that we
Speaker 2: played twice back in ninety six or whatever. You know,
Speaker 2: people like that. That's part of the deep fandom and
Speaker 2: I think that's what that's what we cater to because
Speaker 2: that's part of ourselves. But I've always said since the
Speaker 2: get go, as a selfish person, I like to go
Speaker 2: out and play what I want to play because I
Speaker 2: feel like if I'm enjoying what I'm doing, that will translate,
Speaker 2: whereas if I'm going I won't name any names, but
Speaker 2: I've met some musicians that have had some big ass
Speaker 2: hit and it's not necessarily it's kind of like a
Speaker 2: Poppy Ballady thing and they go, oh my god, we
Speaker 2: got to play that damn song again. I wish we
Speaker 2: could just be like you guys and just go play
Speaker 2: all this crazy shit, you know. So I'm kind of
Speaker 2: glad we're not tethered by something like that because we've
Speaker 2: never really had that big hit, you know. But I
Speaker 2: also like counterbalancing that by going out and doing like
Speaker 2: my Bastard Jazz project, where we just show up and
Speaker 2: just start jamming and it's unbelievable. It's so much fun,
Speaker 2: so I get to scratch that itch.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that you have a large enough dedicated
Speaker 1: fan base that they'll follow you or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to do, or you ever do something and say, well,
Speaker 1: shit me people, people aren't going to be interested in
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 2: I just don't think that way. When I did think
Speaker 2: that way, I got in trouble. And I say that
Speaker 2: back going back to like the Antipop era, you know,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, we had done this record, the
Speaker 2: Brown Album, which we were so proud of, and we
Speaker 2: had taken all these chances, and it was super low
Speaker 2: fi and old school, and it just didn't resonate as well.
Speaker 2: But then again, it resonated better with other people.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Tom Waits once told me that's his favorite Primus record.
Speaker 2: That means the.
Speaker 1: World to me.
Speaker 2: But then going in to do Antipop and here in
Speaker 2: the you guys might want to work with a producer.
Speaker 2: Hey maybe you should work with this guy. Hey maybe
Speaker 2: I'll bring somebody in to do this, and be second
Speaker 2: guessing and starting the second guest and starting to think, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we used to get the radio, we used to get MTV,
Speaker 2: how do we get that again? And for many years
Speaker 2: I couldn't even listen to Antipop because I remember that
Speaker 2: time is just not a very pleasant time. There was
Speaker 2: a lot of second guessing. It was when we started
Speaker 2: not really getting along so well. It just kind of sucked.
Speaker 2: But now as time goes by and you know, the
Speaker 2: edges of rode off of things and you can remember
Speaker 2: the good times, as we do with everything in our lives,
Speaker 2: I can listen to it and go, wow, that's actually
Speaker 2: kind of cool. I Sonically, I think it's a great
Speaker 2: sounding record. But when we came back to it, like
Speaker 2: when we just did the consparanoia thing with Primus, it
Speaker 2: was we did when we're not thinking about MTV or
Speaker 2: which we have in a long time, or radio or
Speaker 2: any of that stuff. I think we made better stuff
Speaker 2: in the early days. We never thought we were going
Speaker 2: to I remember having a meeting with our attorney after
Speaker 2: our it was either our first or second record, and
Speaker 2: we got offered a publishing deal and it was a
Speaker 2: considerable amount of money, and he was like, you know,
Speaker 2: the only way this publishing deal is going to be
Speaker 2: bad for you is if you sell over one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand records. Do you honestly believe you're going to sell
Speaker 2: over one hundred thousand records? And we're like, yeah, one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand records. That's a shitload of records. We never
Speaker 2: thought we were gonna get on radio or MTV or
Speaker 2: any of that stuff and we sold way more than
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand records.
Speaker 1: So okay, since you keep mentioning him, how do you
Speaker 1: meet Tom Waite?
Speaker 2: Well, I was a big Tom Waits fan way back
Speaker 2: in the day. A friend of mine's mom. She always
Speaker 2: had this really cool she was a very good friend.
Speaker 2: She had amazing taste. She was one turned me onto
Speaker 2: the Residence and all that Snake Finger, all that Ralph
Speaker 2: record stuff. But she played me some Tom Waits one day.
Speaker 2: I was like, holy shit, this is amazing. And then
Speaker 2: my buddy Joe Gore played me Rain Dogs when it
Speaker 2: came out, and I was like, holy shit, this is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: So I was a big Tom Waits fan. I was
Speaker 2: turning on Lure and everybody onto Tom Waits at first.
Speaker 2: I remember playing. I was like, you gotta hear Tom Waits,
Speaker 2: and Lure thought, I said John Waite, which was like
Speaker 2: the singer for Candy or something, and he's like, what
Speaker 2: the hell are you talking about. But when we went
Speaker 2: to do our first record with Interscope, we had this
Speaker 2: song Tommy the Cat, which we deliberately did not put
Speaker 2: on the Frizzle Fry record because we wanted it to
Speaker 2: be on whatever our major label release was going to be.
Speaker 2: Because Frizzle Fry we recorded ourselves. We're originally going to
Speaker 2: put it on ourselves. But so I was talking to
Speaker 2: Tom Wally, who is our champion at Innerscope, and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd love to just get somebody else to
Speaker 2: be the voice of Tommy the Cat, you know, some
Speaker 2: interesting character, someone like Tom Waits. He's like, well, why
Speaker 2: don't we get Tom Waits. I said, what the hell,
Speaker 2: what do you mean that you can do that. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll get a hold of him mis management.
Speaker 2: So I wrote him this letter.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know.
Speaker 2: So we were recording at Fantasy Records and Lure was
Speaker 2: I had left me and Lern had an apartment in Berkeley,
Speaker 2: and I'd gone home for something to left Lurr to
Speaker 2: do his guitar solos. I get home and I click
Speaker 2: on the the answering machines.
Speaker 1: Hey less, says Tom.
Speaker 2: Tom Waite's yeah, yeah, I've been listening to this song. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that would be a wonderful thing, because I had said
Speaker 2: it would be a wonderful thing if you did this.
Speaker 2: And I called Laura. I'm like, oh my god, Laura,
Speaker 2: you got to hear this. I put the phone over there,
Speaker 2: and Tom came down and he did the voice of
Speaker 2: Tommy the Cat, and he brought his son, Casey, who
Speaker 2: was four years old at the time. And I've known
Speaker 2: Casey ever since. But we just kind of kept in touch,
Speaker 2: and I moved up to the country kind of near
Speaker 2: where he lived, and we just have always kept in touch.
Speaker 2: And I played on a bunch of his records, and
Speaker 2: I've turned him on to some musicians, and I know
Speaker 2: his family. He's him and Kathleen. They're great, They're amazing people,
Speaker 2: great people, good friends.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about Trey, you talk about Tom Waite,
Speaker 1: you talk about Stuart Copeland. Is that your personality to
Speaker 1: really make friends with everybody, know everybody? Or are you
Speaker 1: more of a homebody or you in contact with people
Speaker 1: all the time?
Speaker 2: Those are the only three people I know?
Speaker 1: Oh really?
Speaker 2: Now? Ah, I don't know. I've been very fortunate that,
Speaker 2: you know, I've I've always said this is that I've
Speaker 2: got to meet and befriend a lot of my heroes,
Speaker 2: and pretty much all of them have been really unbelievable. There's,
Speaker 2: you know, been a couple of instances with some film
Speaker 2: stars it's been a little weird, and there's been you know,
Speaker 2: but for the most part, everybody's been spectacular and unbelievable
Speaker 2: and and they've become my friends and oftentimes collaborators. So
Speaker 2: to me, that's the greatest thing about anything I've done,
Speaker 2: besides being a father. I'm very proud of my children,
Speaker 2: my family. But when I think about that stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: like I said, you know, it's like I'm in a
Speaker 2: band with Stuart Copeland, which that's to me, that's like
Speaker 2: John Bonham, Stuart Copland, those are those are the guys.
Speaker 2: But he's also one of my closest friends. He's like,
Speaker 2: he's we just chitchat about bullshit.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That's an amazing thing to me.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, what do I know if you're a
Speaker 1: regular musician as opposed to someone with a name. People
Speaker 1: are networking all the time for work. So the nature
Speaker 1: of those people, as I say, a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are not front people. They are certainly from people
Speaker 1: who do a lot less networking back then and now.
Speaker 1: And it's one thing to meet famous people, and I've
Speaker 1: met a zillion, it's another thing to keep up the relationship.
Speaker 1: There are certain people I've met. Every time we connect,
Speaker 1: you know, we have a great time. But my identity,
Speaker 1: my personality is I'm not going to reach out to them.
Speaker 1: Someone has to keep it. He keep hitting the ball
Speaker 1: back over the net to keep it Owen. That sounds
Speaker 1: like that's part of your personality.
Speaker 2: Well, I like that analogy. I like the way you
Speaker 2: phrased that. I mean, look, first of all, I'm the
Speaker 2: worst guy when it comes to famous people or people
Speaker 2: that I respect. Like if I if you know, I
Speaker 2: had an opportunity one time. I had a film in
Speaker 2: this film festival in London, and and there was this
Speaker 2: Beatles film, the Beatles Documentary in there too, and George
Speaker 2: Martin was there, and I had an opport toay, hey,
Speaker 2: you want to meet George. I was like, I cannot
Speaker 2: meet George Martin. I don't want to meet I can't
Speaker 2: meet George Martin because if it wouldn't have been perfect,
Speaker 2: if he would have been in a bad mood, which
Speaker 2: we all get in bad moods, and we're not always
Speaker 2: as gracious as maybe we should be, it would have
Speaker 2: it would have tainted something to me that is one
Speaker 2: of the most influential, glorious things of any creativity. I've
Speaker 2: that I've absorbed into my into my consciousness. So I
Speaker 2: just wanted to admire on the far. I didn't want
Speaker 2: to meet Santa Claus. I wanted to you know, I
Speaker 2: met his on he was a great guy and met
Speaker 2: a couple of people who worked for him. But I
Speaker 2: couldn't meet George. And I'm totally fine with that. I've
Speaker 2: never been that guy that when there's There was one
Speaker 2: time I was doing this conference in it was a CMJ,
Speaker 2: I had a CMJ thing and and Lemmy had just
Speaker 2: spoke before me, and he was like in this in
Speaker 2: this in the dressing room, and they were like, oh,
Speaker 2: go on and meet let me go in, and I
Speaker 2: was I was like, what am I going to say
Speaker 2: to Lemmy? I'm not that guy that goes up hoody dude,
Speaker 2: how's going? I really like your stuff. I've never been
Speaker 2: good at that. If I meet somebody on a you know,
Speaker 2: and it's meant to be, you know, we're getting a
Speaker 2: sandwich at the table or what, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 2: not good at going up and being that guy.
Speaker 1: Never have been, and I don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay, So so my relationships are based on just like, hey,
Speaker 2: we all like any other friends you meet that you
Speaker 2: happen to hit it off with.
Speaker 1: Okay, two things. I not to having pictures taken. I
Speaker 1: don't need a wall of fame. Two I've learned I
Speaker 1: won't talk to anybody unless they know who I am.
Speaker 1: That's not something meaning my status. It's just otherwise it's unfulfilling.
Speaker 1: They're just shaking your hand in another person out there,
Speaker 1: you're testifying. But I am not good at keeping the
Speaker 1: relationship going. So my question is are you the person
Speaker 1: hey and me? Well, give me your phone number, your
Speaker 1: email address, let's keep it going, and then you email
Speaker 1: them what's up now.
Speaker 2: I'm terrible at that. In fact, my wife is way
Speaker 2: better at that type of thing. My social life would
Speaker 2: be awful if it wasn't for her. You know, I
Speaker 2: have my few fishing buddies, and that's kind of kind
Speaker 2: of what I do. But it's funny because I have
Speaker 2: friends that whenever they show up in a town, that
Speaker 2: get their book out and they go, oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: call such and such and such a I never do
Speaker 2: any of that. I show up in town. I'm there
Speaker 2: to do my job.
Speaker 1: I do my job.
Speaker 2: If I see somebody that I know that happened to
Speaker 2: come to the show. That's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: But I don't.
Speaker 2: I very very rarely seek them out. But my life
Speaker 2: will because she's good at that stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you meet Tom Waits, you meet Stuart Coplan.
Speaker 1: How does it turn into a friendship.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, like I said, it's because we bonded
Speaker 2: over things besides, hey, how you doing. You're Tom Waits.
Speaker 2: You know, we bonded over other things. It's like like
Speaker 2: any other friendship. I mean, how often do you meet
Speaker 2: somebody at the at the hardware store, at some friends
Speaker 2: party and you keep up with them? It's sometimes you do,
Speaker 2: sometimes you don't. It depends on if you click in
Speaker 2: other ways.
Speaker 1: Well, I find as you get older, it's like I
Speaker 1: was listening to a podcast and was it Rob Reiner saying,
Speaker 1: you know you can't show up at anybody's house anymore.
Speaker 1: You show up somebody's house, it's going to blow their mind.
Speaker 1: You know, you a criminal whatever. And it's harder to
Speaker 1: make new friends, not as hard in this business maybe
Speaker 1: for other people. But you mentioned phishing off handedly. Are
Speaker 1: you like a big fisher person?
Speaker 2: Well, like I said, my are all mechanics. We didn't
Speaker 2: go to On weekends. When I go visit my dad,
Speaker 2: we were either working on some crappy rental property that
Speaker 2: my grandmother owned, or we were out fishing. That's what
Speaker 2: we did. We didn't go to baseball games. We didn't
Speaker 2: go to football games. He wasn't a sports guy. We
Speaker 2: would go fishing with my uncles and even my grandfather.
Speaker 2: I'd go fishing with my So it's just one of
Speaker 2: those things that I grew up with and I very much.
Speaker 2: I enjoy it. To me, when I go fishing, I'm
Speaker 2: not thinking about anything else. It's like people that go golfing.
Speaker 2: They're just in the game and that's it. So that's
Speaker 2: been my thing since since I was a little guy.
Speaker 1: How often do you go fishing? Do you go to
Speaker 1: Alaska in Chile to go fishing or you just guy,
Speaker 1: you know, doing it occasionally in the same area.
Speaker 2: Well, I keep a boat out in Badega Bay. So,
Speaker 2: but they canceled salmon season this year because the counts
Speaker 2: were low, so it's not going to be as much
Speaker 2: fishing this year. But the blue fin came in last year,
Speaker 2: which was an amazing thing. I didn't get one, but
Speaker 2: I went out and chased him around. I have a pond.
Speaker 2: If I point that way, about two hundred yards that way.
Speaker 2: We have a pretty good sized pond that there's some
Speaker 2: bass in it. If I'm inclined, I can sneak down there.
Speaker 2: I used to take the kids down there all the time,
Speaker 2: pop some bass and look at them and toss them
Speaker 2: back in the water. It's just to me, it's very relaxing.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about the pond. How much property do
Speaker 1: you have.
Speaker 2: We've got about thirty seven acres here.
Speaker 1: How close is your closest a neighbor.
Speaker 2: A couple hundred yards?
Speaker 1: Oh okay. So you graduate from high school, you say
Speaker 1: you want to do music? What's the next step? And
Speaker 1: you say you have a day job? What's going on there?
Speaker 1: You say you're a fan of funk? Confusion at that time?
Speaker 1: What's the next step?
Speaker 2: Well, my father always said he was very supportive. Actually,
Speaker 2: I mean, he's got me my first base. And I
Speaker 2: didn't even find out till years later that he got
Speaker 2: shipped from his family like what the.
Speaker 1: Hell are you doing?
Speaker 2: He's going to become a drug addict, the blah blah,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, they couldn't understand, and but he
Speaker 2: always used to tell me, hey, this music thing's great.
Speaker 2: He knew that it was keeping me out of trouble.
Speaker 2: You know, he watched my cousin go. You know, my
Speaker 2: cousin went and ended up eventually in jail. And if
Speaker 2: you don't keep and I still believe this to this day,
Speaker 2: is anytime a kid shows an interest in anything that
Speaker 2: gives them some form of focus, it keeps them. They're
Speaker 2: less appt to get in trouble. And he knew it
Speaker 2: was going to keep me, keep me from going and
Speaker 2: doing just you know, mundane stupid shit. So he always
Speaker 2: told me, He's like, hey, this music thing's great, but
Speaker 2: learn a trade. Learn a trade, Learn a trade so
Speaker 2: they have something to fall back on. I have a
Speaker 2: shitload of trades. I used to bust tires, I used
Speaker 2: to mix auto paints. I was a shipping receiving guy.
Speaker 2: I was a bench tech at an audio company, and
Speaker 2: eventually I was a carpenter, which I really enjoyed, actually
Speaker 2: so until we started printing our own T shirts. And
Speaker 2: that's was my last job. But so I had the
Speaker 2: fortune and misfortune of getting my heart completely destroyed. When
Speaker 2: I graduated high school. I had a girlfriend. I was
Speaker 2: going to marry her, and she was like the hot
Speaker 2: girl of the school, and she just destroyed me. I
Speaker 2: was a total wreck and I ended up meeting this guy.
Speaker 1: A little bit slower. How did she destroy you just.
Speaker 2: By like dumping me, well, not really dumping me, but
Speaker 2: she opted to not be with me anymore.
Speaker 1: And okay, wait, wait, usually there's a choice. She's not
Speaker 1: with less, there's somebody else, or she's moving away, or
Speaker 1: she's going to college she envisions a better future.
Speaker 2: No, no, let's not. I gotta get too deep. But
Speaker 2: let's just say everybody wanted to be with this girl,
Speaker 2: so she had a lot of options.
Speaker 1: But anyway, okay, the obvious, the obvious question is where
Speaker 1: is she today?
Speaker 2: I have no idea, but but she looked like Marie Osmond.
Speaker 2: Let's just put it that way.
Speaker 1: You you right, You're enough for me? But okay, no,
Speaker 1: definitely not.
Speaker 2: She was a cross between Marie Osmond and Pat Benattar.
Speaker 1: She had that look.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there you go. But anyway, I got my
Speaker 2: heart broke, so I wanted to get the hell out
Speaker 2: of my little town of else Branty. My friend Kathy Quavis,
Speaker 2: who had turned me on to the residence and Tom
Speaker 2: Waits and all this stuff. Her son was this punk
Speaker 2: rock dude and he was always going to shows in Berkeley.
Speaker 2: I said, hey, man, if you get the tickets, I'll
Speaker 2: drive because I had my sixty eight Cougar. So next
Speaker 2: thing you know, I'm hanging out with him in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Wait, sixty eight cougar is kind of a cool car.
Speaker 1: And you end up with a sixty eight Cougar.
Speaker 2: That was my first car. That was my that was
Speaker 2: it was a beautiful car. Well, I told you, we're
Speaker 2: all out on mechanics, so I bought this sixty eighth.
Speaker 2: My dad bought the sixty eight Cougar for me like
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred bucks and we fixed it up. So anyway,
Speaker 2: so we would spend all this time going to Berkeley
Speaker 2: and San Francisco to go to all these shows. And
Speaker 2: I eventually moved to Berkeley and to basically get away
Speaker 2: from the the you know, the heartache of this this breakup.
Speaker 2: And it changed my life for the better because a
Speaker 2: there's the level of progressive people in else Brownie versus Berkeley.
Speaker 2: It's quite a bit different. So I was meeting these people,
Speaker 2: these artists, and these different these people from different cultures
Speaker 2: and go into shows every single night, going to comedy shows,
Speaker 2: hanging out of the Berkeley Square and really got just
Speaker 2: turned onto a lot of amazing, amazing stuff in a
Speaker 2: very short period of time. So that's when I started
Speaker 2: getting into more you know, abstract music, I guess you'd
Speaker 2: call it, getting into like early Peter Gabriel and Public
Speaker 2: Image Limited and the old Ralph record stuff and Fred
Speaker 2: Frith and some of the material stuff and just things
Speaker 2: that were my friends. And Elsea Brady would say, what's
Speaker 2: this weird ass shit you're listening to? So that was
Speaker 2: kind of for me. That was that was a big
Speaker 2: blossoming for me as an as a human and as
Speaker 2: an artist.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're listening to all that stuff. What about your
Speaker 1: playing the bass in your professional career?
Speaker 2: Well, at the time, I was playing in this in
Speaker 2: this R and B band called the Tommy Crank Band,
Speaker 2: which these guys were all way older than me, and
Speaker 2: we play literally play the biker bars all you Antioch
Speaker 2: and Sam Pablo and I'd play three to five nights
Speaker 2: a week, four sets a night, playing Old Booker T
Speaker 2: and the MG's and Sam and Dave and James Brown
Speaker 2: and the meters a lot of stuff that I didn't
Speaker 2: even realize what it was until years later. But these
Speaker 2: guys were all older than me and it it was
Speaker 2: a wonderful experience. That was that was part of my paycheck.
Speaker 2: I would do that at night and then have my
Speaker 2: day gig and that. At the time, I was trying
Speaker 2: to get a band going, and I eventually in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four started this band called Primate and it and
Speaker 2: we made a demo and it Actually.
Speaker 1: Before you get there, you're playing in the R and
Speaker 1: B band at night. What is the dream? Because you
Speaker 1: have to have a dream sustain you, otherwise lace too hard.
Speaker 2: Well, my dream was to be a professional musician, but
Speaker 2: play my own stuff.
Speaker 1: So I okay, so you were writing your own stuff,
Speaker 1: you knew what kind of music you wanted to make.
Speaker 2: Then I had been playing. Look I was back then
Speaker 2: there was BAM magazine, Bay Area Music Magazine. Of course
Speaker 2: I'd look in the back of BAM you know who
Speaker 2: needs a bass player? And I auditioned for everybody there was.
Speaker 2: I auditioned for everybody that needed a bass player, and
Speaker 2: there was just nothing I found exciting. And there was
Speaker 2: a band called the Hoovers that I remember talking to them.
Speaker 2: They were a ska band and they were pretty cool,
Speaker 2: but they didn't want me. But other than that, there
Speaker 2: was nothing that I found exciting. So I decided, I'm
Speaker 2: going to start my own thing, and I want to
Speaker 2: combine all these weird elements. And I just made some
Speaker 2: tapes in my apartment and then this guitar player called me.
Speaker 2: He said, hey, hear. I knew him high school. He's like,
Speaker 2: I here, You're looking for a guitar player. And I
Speaker 2: just thought, yeah, there's no way. This guy he was,
Speaker 2: you know, he's he's he's from Panol and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a birdy guy now, and he's more conservative and
Speaker 2: he plays like Tony Iomi and and you know, I
Speaker 2: want someone who's like Adrian Blue or or Robert Fripp.
Speaker 2: And he came and played for me, played with me,
Speaker 2: and he's he's a freak. He's still a freak to
Speaker 2: this day. He has we call it Todd time. He
Speaker 2: has the craziest sense of time and melody. And that
Speaker 2: became the early Primate. It was Primate, and we made
Speaker 2: a recording and we got we're getting airplay on a
Speaker 2: local radio station called the Quake. And then I find.
Speaker 2: I get this phone call one day on my answering machine. Again,
Speaker 2: hey Les or whoever to whom it may concern, or
Speaker 2: whatever it was. I my name is such and such.
Speaker 2: I represent a band called the Primates, and you must
Speaker 2: cease and desist because we own that name. So we
Speaker 2: had to change our name, and subsequently we changed it
Speaker 2: to Primus. Years later, this is like maybe three or
Speaker 2: four years ago, I meet this guy and he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember me, but I'm such
Speaker 2: and Such. I was in a band called the Primates.
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, your attorney called me and said
Speaker 2: cease and desist. And he's like, yeah, that was me.
Speaker 2: I was just bullshit and.
Speaker 1: I was like, so, so you make this independent record.
Speaker 2: Continue the narrative, Well, we had made a bunch of
Speaker 2: we made demo tapes for years before, you know, nothing
Speaker 2: was happening. We were playing. Nobody knew what to do
Speaker 2: with us. Michael Bailey, who booked the the Berkeley Square,
Speaker 2: was really the first guy that kind of went, wow,
Speaker 2: you guys have something going. I'm going to just book you.
Speaker 2: And he would book us with you know, we played
Speaker 2: with the Swans, we played with the Papo, Pies, but
Speaker 2: we never really fit in with anybody, you know, And
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, along came, you know, Fishbone
Speaker 2: and the Chili Peppers and Faith No More and bands
Speaker 2: like that, and all of a sudden there was bands
Speaker 2: that we could play with, we could open for, and
Speaker 2: and then the whole scene kind of started in the
Speaker 2: Bay Area with Limbo Maniacs and Csycopunk Pus and and
Speaker 2: Fungo Mungo, these these bands that we kind of had
Speaker 2: a scene in Mister Bungle, of course, and it just
Speaker 2: kind of it kind of blossomed from there.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you're still working your day job, you're playing
Speaker 1: some live gigs, you're making tapes in the uh bedroom.
Speaker 1: What do you expect to happen? And how active are
Speaker 1: you trying to make that happen? Well?
Speaker 2: I was very active as far as you know. We'd
Speaker 2: rehearse three or four days a week, and we'd go
Speaker 2: do our gigs, and you know, one day you'd play
Speaker 2: for ten people, next day you play for twenty people,
Speaker 2: and hopefully the next day it's forty people. But then
Speaker 2: there's you get a little lull period and then you know,
Speaker 2: we're slowly building this thing. But back then, it wasn't
Speaker 2: like now where you could record an album on your laptop,
Speaker 2: you know. I made that little demo of in the
Speaker 2: early days on a FASTEC But after that we would
Speaker 2: go into studios. So basically, me and Todd would save
Speaker 2: up every year, we'd save up one thousand dollars and
Speaker 2: we'd book because you could get a real studio for
Speaker 2: one thousand dollars a day. So we would book a
Speaker 2: studio for one day, twenty four hours, and we would
Speaker 2: start and we'd spend the entire twenty four hours. We'd
Speaker 2: record like three or four songs and record and mix
Speaker 2: it all in that twenty four hour period, which I'm
Speaker 2: sure just killed the engineers, you know, They'm sure they
Speaker 2: hated it. But we would do that once a year,
Speaker 2: so it took you know, it took a handful of
Speaker 2: years before any of these demo tapes caught on because
Speaker 2: back then there was a there was a whole trading
Speaker 2: of the demo tapes, and it was kind of big
Speaker 2: in the metal world. But I wasn't. We weren't really
Speaker 2: in the metal world at that point. We were we
Speaker 2: were we were in our own zone. But eventually we
Speaker 2: made a demo tape that got that caught on and
Speaker 2: people were buying it, and it was the Sausage Demo,
Speaker 2: which is actually to this day is pretty coveted on
Speaker 2: the internet if you can find it. And then eventually
Speaker 2: we recorded the suck On this record by borrowing some
Speaker 2: money from my father. He loaned us three thousand dollars
Speaker 2: so we could print up a thousand records.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're how old and how many years since the
Speaker 1: thing begins?
Speaker 2: So suck On this came out and I can't for
Speaker 2: it's eighty eight or eighty nine. And I had started
Speaker 2: the band in eighty four. Todd had left the band
Speaker 2: because he had a couple kids and we had our
Speaker 2: drummer was in a different band, so he was we're
Speaker 2: not focused. So I knew Larry Laan from playing with
Speaker 2: this other band, and I said, hey, just come join
Speaker 2: the band, because he was my buddy more than anything.
Speaker 2: And and then we auditioned this guy, Tim Alexander, who
Speaker 2: you know. He became the guy and we made that record.
Speaker 2: They hadn't been in the band, they hadn't been in
Speaker 2: the band more than a couple of months, and we
Speaker 2: made that record, and Primus was actually pretty popular we
Speaker 2: were selling out local clubs. So I was scared to
Speaker 2: death because all of a sudden, both my guys were
Speaker 2: gone and I was starting with two new guys. And
Speaker 2: I was just very fortunate that because, as you know,
Speaker 2: chemistry is you can't beat chemistry, and you lose it,
Speaker 2: you replace an artist, and oftentimes it throws that chemistry
Speaker 2: out of whack more often than not. But I got
Speaker 2: very lucky that the three of us had a really
Speaker 2: good chemistry and it caught on in a way, you know.
Speaker 2: But Primus has always been a slow burn. There's people go, oh,
Speaker 2: when did you become famous? It's like, well, may even
Speaker 2: fame yet, you know, We've always been that under the
Speaker 2: radar guys. You know, I've had friends that have these
Speaker 2: big peaks, but they also have the deep valleys. We've
Speaker 2: just kind of always gone, you know.
Speaker 1: So okay, so you put out the independent album and then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we recorded it live at the Berkeley Square and
Speaker 2: we printed up a thousand copies with three thousand dollars
Speaker 2: of my dad's money, and we just drove around in
Speaker 2: my car Mageea taking him to record stores and oh,
Speaker 2: these people took five All these guys took Dan oh
Speaker 2: my god, Ah, and we were selling these things and
Speaker 2: our manager had the foresight to send them around to
Speaker 2: all the college radio stations around the country and it
Speaker 2: just caught on. So we made enough money from that
Speaker 2: record to record our second record, which was Frizzle Fry.
Speaker 2: We recorded that ourselves, and at that time we were
Speaker 2: Gavin label sniffing around us. Rough Trade had gotten involved
Speaker 2: with the first record and released some of it, and
Speaker 2: then on the second record, Caroline took took it over
Speaker 2: and we did that one record deal with Caroline and
Speaker 2: they did a fantastic job. Janet Billy over there was
Speaker 2: amazing Keith. I can't remember Keith's last name, but those
Speaker 2: were the early days when we're out there in the
Speaker 2: motor home driving around the country and just you know,
Speaker 2: it's an amazing, amazing, wonderful time. That time of where
Speaker 2: you're climbing the hill is such a wonderful, wonderful feeling,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And then how does that turn into a deal with
Speaker 1: inners Go.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny because we were being courted by a
Speaker 2: few different labels and I had had bad experience with
Speaker 2: labels and producers in the early days. Just watching what
Speaker 2: had happened with friends, and I remember I think it
Speaker 2: was someone from PolyGram had gotten a hold of us
Speaker 2: early on, years before even our first record, and oh,
Speaker 2: I've been hearing a lot about you guys, and blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. No you ever think of you ever think
Speaker 2: of like changing your hairstyles? Do you ever think of
Speaker 2: maybe getting a lead singer? You know, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And it was like, well, no, that's not what we
Speaker 2: want to do. So I was always a little leary,
Speaker 2: and so we were being courted by a couple different labels.
Speaker 2: I don't remember who, but we did a show at
Speaker 2: The Stone in San Francisco and this guy came backstage afterwards,
Speaker 2: and he had gone there to see the opening band,
Speaker 2: who were also friends of ours, not even knowing anything
Speaker 2: about us, but saw how the crowd, because our crowds
Speaker 2: would go nuts, saw how the crowd reacted. He came
Speaker 2: backstage he said, Hey, my name's Tom Wally. I'm with
Speaker 2: this new label called Innerscope, and I want to sign
Speaker 2: you guys right now. And my manager's like, well, you
Speaker 2: know we talking. Was super nice guy and a very
Speaker 2: charming guy, and my manager was like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we really should look at this other deal because it's
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. And I was like, I like
Speaker 2: this guy. This guy wants to say. He had no
Speaker 2: idea that we'd already sold eighty thousand of our own records.
Speaker 2: He just saw something he liked and saw how it
Speaker 2: was resonating with these people, and he wanted it. And
Speaker 2: at the time, the only release that Interscope had was
Speaker 2: a fellow by the name of Girardi with Rico Suave.
Speaker 2: So my manager's going, what the hell, how are we
Speaker 2: going to sign with this label? Oh my god, they
Speaker 2: have no track record. Blah blahlah blah. We should stign
Speaker 2: with these other guys. I have a better And I
Speaker 2: was like, no, I like Tom Wally.
Speaker 1: He gets it. And it was.
Speaker 2: It was one of the best career moves we ever
Speaker 2: made because Tom was always he always let us do
Speaker 2: whatever we wanted for one thing, which was unheard of
Speaker 2: back then, and he was just supportive and he's just
Speaker 2: a great guy. He's a good human, you know. So
Speaker 2: it worked out for us.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you get a manager and how long
Speaker 1: did that particular manager last?
Speaker 2: Well, Dave Leftwitz was our first real manage. We had
Speaker 2: a couple guys like friends, my friends that were trying
Speaker 2: in the early days. But Dave he worked for David
Speaker 2: Rubinson in some capacity and had an office in his space,
Speaker 2: and he was working with some of There was a
Speaker 2: big scene in the Bay Area called the world beat
Speaker 2: scene with the Looters in Big City and Mapenze, and
Speaker 2: I actually rooted for a lot of the bands, and
Speaker 2: he was a part of that scene. And he just
Speaker 2: kind of started taking over stuff for.
Speaker 1: Us, and he just wait, wait, wait, wait, are you
Speaker 1: roadying at the same time you're playing with primates, which
Speaker 1: turns into primus.
Speaker 2: I'm at times yeah back then sure, the uh. But anyway,
Speaker 2: Dave was a big part of that scene. And he
Speaker 2: just started taking over of doing some bookings for us
Speaker 2: and this and that and the next thing. And he
Speaker 2: had a he's always had a great sense of of
Speaker 2: of marketing. He kept up. He watched all the trades
Speaker 2: and all the you know, I didn't watch that ship.
Speaker 2: And he was very instrumental in getting US scene in
Speaker 2: places where it was kind of cool to be seen.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. And then how long did he last?
Speaker 2: He was with us for a long time. He was
Speaker 2: with us until basically until the mid two thousands.
Speaker 1: I think, Okay, so you're within scopeters go very quickly
Speaker 1: turns into a machine. Uh how did that work for
Speaker 1: you or were you at arm's length? What were your
Speaker 1: interactions like with Jimmy?
Speaker 2: It took a long time for Interscope to become a machine.
Speaker 2: Interscope was like a clubhouse in the early days. We
Speaker 2: knew everybody there. They were all our friends. They'd come
Speaker 2: on the road with us. It was amazing. Didn't know
Speaker 2: Jimmy very well. In fact, I always I thought, I
Speaker 2: always thought Jimmy was amazing, because the thing about Jimmy
Speaker 2: is he didn't he didn't bullshit you. He I remember
Speaker 2: him coming into a meeting with us one time and
Speaker 2: he sat there and he's like, look, I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you right now. I don't get Primus. I don't
Speaker 2: understand Primis. I don't know where one song starts and
Speaker 2: another one ends. He's like, but you know, Tom Wally
Speaker 2: gets you, and I get Tom Wally.
Speaker 1: And that was it.
Speaker 2: To be honest with you, I really wish I would
Speaker 2: have spent more time like getting to know Jimmy because
Speaker 2: he he he was a very interesting cat. But it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was we weren't one of his bands, but he
Speaker 2: did chime in. He chimed in some cool stuff. It
Speaker 2: was his idea for that look of the one own
Speaker 2: as Big Brown Beaver video. He uh, he saw that
Speaker 2: Dura cell commercial. I don't know if you remember that
Speaker 2: dur cell commercial. He's like, that's Primus. That Primis has
Speaker 2: got to do something like that. So he said, and
Speaker 2: I was directing the videos back then. He said, you
Speaker 2: got to do something like that. And I was thought, well,
Speaker 2: how can we do this without just ripping off the
Speaker 2: dura cell thing. So we came up with these toy
Speaker 2: cowboys and did the one on his Big Brown Beaver video.
Speaker 2: But in Interscope, Interscope was we would have never accomplished,
Speaker 2: but we accomplished. If it wasn't for Interscope, they were
Speaker 2: spectacular to us.
Speaker 1: Okay, prior to Interscope signing you and graduating from high school,
Speaker 1: you ever think of giving up?
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't know about giving up. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: a musician because you're compelled to play your instrument. You're
Speaker 2: a musician, whether you're making five bucks or five hundred
Speaker 2: bucks a night. You know, it's just that's what you do.
Speaker 2: But there was a time when my dad and everybody
Speaker 2: were kind of like, okay, you know, I was in
Speaker 2: my I guess I was twenty three or twenty four. Hey,
Speaker 2: this said, what's good? When are you going to go
Speaker 2: to school? This music thing? What you know? And I went,
Speaker 2: I said all right, and I went to went back
Speaker 2: to school, and I to one semester of culinary school
Speaker 2: because I thought that's creative, that would be fun. And
Speaker 2: once I got in there, I realized, well, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: A when you leave culinary school, you start as just
Speaker 2: a schlepper. You're making minimum wage. I was already making
Speaker 2: like thirty bucks an hour as a carpenter, and the
Speaker 2: hours totally conflict with any musician. You're either a dinner
Speaker 2: you're work in the dinner shift, or you're the breakfast shift.
Speaker 2: Neither one of those is going to work for me.
Speaker 3: So I was.
Speaker 2: I realized early on it wasn't going to that wasn't
Speaker 2: going to be a good ath.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you ended up having pretty quickly big success
Speaker 1: on interscope, So what do you think. I don't know.
Speaker 2: See, the thing is, I've never thought of primus as
Speaker 2: we never had big leaps, you know, those things that
Speaker 2: happened that were interesting that came quickly, like getting on MTV.
Speaker 2: I remember when we got one hundred and twenty minutes
Speaker 2: or whatever. I remember even Kirk Hamic going, what the hell,
Speaker 2: how'd you get on MTV? We're not even on MTV,
Speaker 2: you know. So those were interesting things, but it's still
Speaker 2: primus is a is an acquired taste. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not something for everyone. So it's always been this kind
Speaker 2: of cultish thing to an extent. Even when we had
Speaker 2: little our toes dabbled slightly into the mainstream, it didn't
Speaker 2: last long.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was always about this this this, this cultish fan
Speaker 2: base and somewhat obsessive fan base that's kept. That's that's
Speaker 2: made it so I could send my kids to college.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, so that publishing deal, which if you
Speaker 1: sold Nexus of one hundred thousand was better for the
Speaker 1: publishing company at this late date. Do you own those songs?
Speaker 2: Is that we've never sold our publishing I mean the
Speaker 2: recordings are you know, those are interscripts, which is now universal, right, okay,
Speaker 2: But a lot of my stuff is my stuff, like
Speaker 2: pron Song and all that stuff. I were about to
Speaker 2: release all the pron song like Frog Brigade and the
Speaker 2: Claypool stuff. We're about to re release it because it's
Speaker 2: it all belongs to me.
Speaker 1: How did it end within her scoop?
Speaker 2: Uh? And we just kind of amicley just sort of
Speaker 2: went our separate ways, you know. I remember Steve Berman
Speaker 2: got winned in the early two thousands that we were
Speaker 2: getting back together with HERB and he said, Jimmy wants
Speaker 2: to talk to you. So Jimmy had me up into
Speaker 2: the up into his office and he said, look, he said,
Speaker 2: we want to do this. We want to do a
Speaker 2: project with you. We want to make it, make it right,
Speaker 2: make it work. We feel like we owe it to Primus.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of bands that came to Interscope because
Speaker 2: of Primus. I've talked to quite a few bands that
Speaker 2: have said, yeah, we signed with Interscope because you guys
Speaker 2: were on Interscope, because we were known that we got
Speaker 2: to do what we wanted to do. They they left
Speaker 2: us alone. As long as it was working, they left
Speaker 2: us alone. So that's when we did the animals should
Speaker 2: not try and act like people. It was like a
Speaker 2: DVD EP thing with Interscope, and you know, it worked
Speaker 2: out well. But you know, it's saying at that point
Speaker 2: they're such a big thing, that we're this odd band.
Speaker 2: I just don't think it did what any normal Primis
Speaker 2: thing would do. It wasn't going to become a you know,
Speaker 2: going Steffani hit or anything, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It just it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was never in the cards. But I've never had
Speaker 2: any issues with with Interscope. It's always been They've always
Speaker 2: been okay.
Speaker 1: There's always a parting of the ways the contract is
Speaker 1: up or something, and usually the label says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it was nice, but we don't want to make any
Speaker 1: more records.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember, to be honest with I don't
Speaker 2: even remember that because I was making my own records
Speaker 2: on pron Song, and to me, that was much more.
Speaker 2: I liked that because I owned them, you know, and
Speaker 2: I was just licensing them through different distributors. So it
Speaker 2: was it was just it was just better for me.
Speaker 2: And then when Primus came back and we did that
Speaker 2: one thing with Interscope, it wasn't part of a big deal.
Speaker 2: But I am a big fan of owning. We've owned
Speaker 2: our own stuff now since the early two thousands, you know,
Speaker 2: we released stuff through but it's all licensing, and I
Speaker 2: think that's that's the way to go. That's a wonderful thing,
Speaker 2: especially now that records are you know, it used to
Speaker 2: be that was the cupcake. You know, you make a record,
Speaker 2: that's where you made your money, and you go and
Speaker 2: do a tour. That was the icing on the cake,
Speaker 2: and then t shirts was the sprinkles. Well, now the
Speaker 2: cupcake is the touring and merch is a big part
Speaker 2: of that cupcake. And albums are like they're like business
Speaker 2: cards now, you know, they're how many people, especially kids,
Speaker 2: do you know, that buy records? They might be paying
Speaker 2: for Spotify, but they're not buying. They might buy some albums,
Speaker 2: but even albums, it's just a small, small, small, small
Speaker 2: fraction of what it used to be when you'd release
Speaker 2: recorded material on a certain format.
Speaker 1: Okay, at this late date, do you get any recording royalty,
Speaker 1: strom inter scill Yeah, Okay, so you're not upside down,
Speaker 1: you're not in the red because usually record companies they
Speaker 1: cross collaterize all the records, even though you had one
Speaker 1: successful when you had a stiff and then they don't
Speaker 1: pay you. Well.
Speaker 2: But that's another thing about Primus is we always I
Speaker 2: watched friends of mine go and make their first record,
Speaker 2: and they signed with some big deal somewhere, and they
Speaker 2: make their first record, and they spend three hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars making this record, and they pay the producer all
Speaker 2: this money and they sell like maybe eighty thousand copies. Well,
Speaker 2: because we didn't spend a shitload of money, eighty thousand
Speaker 2: copies is profit. That's that's a that's that's a that's
Speaker 2: a profitable venture. When you spend three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: on a record plus and you only sell eighty thousand copies,
Speaker 2: people get in the room and start talking about, well
Speaker 2: this is you know. The business heads get together and go,
Speaker 2: this is not This that they make doesn't make good
Speaker 2: business sense. And away they go, and then they owe
Speaker 2: the record company all that money. All this time I
Speaker 2: was I was always very careful about spending record company money,
Speaker 2: because when all is said and done, it's your money.
Speaker 2: That's your money you're spending. So we were always very frugal.
Speaker 2: And when it came time to making videos, we would
Speaker 2: come up with these all these concepts for videos and
Speaker 2: I'd say, okay, we want to do this video. Here's
Speaker 2: the budget. It's going to cost X amount of dollars.
Speaker 2: And they would say, okay, that's a great idea for
Speaker 2: a video, but your primus, we're going to give you.
Speaker 1: Half of X.
Speaker 2: And I would say, okay, I'm going to take that
Speaker 2: half of X and make the best version of that
Speaker 2: I can. And I keep telling my son this. As
Speaker 2: a filmmaker, I'm like, look look at how many popsicle
Speaker 2: sticks you have on the table and try and make
Speaker 2: the Golden gate bridge out of it. You know, don't
Speaker 2: you know, use the resources that are available to you
Speaker 2: to make the best thing you possibly can. I think
Speaker 2: it makes you. I think it's it makes you more
Speaker 2: You have to be more resourceful on a creative level,
Speaker 2: and oftentimes I think it makes a better product because
Speaker 2: you have to kind of manipulate things.
Speaker 1: So, Okay, you talked about the money putting your kids
Speaker 1: through college, So how's it been financially for you?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not complaining, but you know, if I'd
Speaker 2: got the Metallica gig, I would have I would have
Speaker 2: a bigger house.
Speaker 1: They like, well, let's say you stopped working right now,
Speaker 1: you got enough money to get to the end.
Speaker 2: Ah. I tell my kids this all the time. I'm like, look,
Speaker 2: when I go, there's going to be no money, but
Speaker 2: you're going to have a hell of a yard sale
Speaker 2: because because I'm not real, I like to spend. When
Speaker 2: I was a kid, one of my heroes was Evil
Speaker 2: and Evil and uh, I remember him saying one time,
Speaker 2: and this was back in the day, he said, you know,
Speaker 2: I've made two million dollars in my career. And I
Speaker 2: might be paraphrasing. He may have said a different number, body,
Speaker 2: but you'll get the gist. You're like, I've made two
Speaker 2: million dollars in my career and I've spent four And
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, and so.
Speaker 1: Prended on.
Speaker 2: I got two tour buses. I mean, I don't buy
Speaker 2: stupid shit. I mean we have you know, we have
Speaker 2: our tasting room, we have our you know, we have
Speaker 2: our house here. We just but you know, I'm in primus.
Speaker 2: It's like I said, it's it's we make, we make
Speaker 2: a comfortable living. But it's these records that we don't
Speaker 2: fly around in jets. Let me put it to you
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: These records that you make and you license, are they
Speaker 1: break even propositions or red or black?
Speaker 2: No, they make they make money, but it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's not like the money that we all used to make.
Speaker 2: And I think I can I'm speaking for everybody on
Speaker 2: that right. Remember when selling a million records, it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: these guys sold twelve million. Now you sell one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand records, that's a big deal.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, you talk about the videos. You know,
Speaker 1: you're a bass player, you're a member of the band.
Speaker 1: Do you just say, well, let me give a shot
Speaker 1: at that. You say, wow, I've always wanted to do
Speaker 1: this same thing with writing a book.
Speaker 2: Now I say this quite often too, is my heroes.
Speaker 2: People expect me to who are your heroes? They expect
Speaker 2: me to say, and I do say, guys like Geddy
Speaker 2: Lee and whatnot. But my superheroes are guys like you know,
Speaker 2: Frank Capra and Leah Kazan and Stanley Kubrick and the
Speaker 2: Cohen brothers and Terry Gilliam. These are people. These are
Speaker 2: the guys that really have shaped me as far as
Speaker 2: a creative person. So when it when the notion of
Speaker 2: making videos came along, I was I was ready to go.
Speaker 2: I was diving in. And even the same with my novel.
Speaker 2: It's I wrote the novel because I had written it
Speaker 2: as a screenplay, and we tried to make it into
Speaker 2: a film over and over and over again, and I
Speaker 2: finally just got to the point where, you know, the
Speaker 2: thing about filmmaking is it's much more of a collaborative process,
Speaker 2: especially when people start throwing money in there, They're going
Speaker 2: to have an opinion and you got to change stuff
Speaker 2: around and more compromising going on. So we had had
Speaker 2: so many people come on and off of this project
Speaker 2: that I was changing things continuously, and I finally I
Speaker 2: was like, look, screw this, I'm going to write this
Speaker 2: script into novel form, because then at least the story
Speaker 2: that I originally wanted to tell exists somewhere before it
Speaker 2: gets convoluted by a bunch of opinions of people with money.
Speaker 2: Not that those are bad opinions, but it does change
Speaker 2: the original narrative, I think. So I wrote the novel,
Speaker 2: so that's how I fell into that.
Speaker 1: So if you wrote a novel, do you read novels?
Speaker 2: Occasionally? I go through periods of reading a lot and
Speaker 2: then periods of reading nothing. I tend to read a
Speaker 2: lot of books about where to either place the microphone
Speaker 2: or how the Jake break System works on a eight
Speaker 2: V ninety two Detroit Diesel or now that I just recently,
Speaker 2: literally within the last month, finally got my pilot's license.
Speaker 2: I'm reading a lot about aviation.
Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned you know all these film directors, So
Speaker 1: film directors and narrative those are your heroes more than
Speaker 1: musicians in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: I definitely watch more film than I listened to music.
Speaker 1: So right now, are you watching contemporary film?
Speaker 2: Watched The Wail the other night. I thought it was spectacular.
Speaker 2: I was really blown away by that film about But
Speaker 2: I tend to you know, I tend to be the
Speaker 2: guy that has TCM on all the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, how about watching streaming television?
Speaker 2: Some of it I find some of it just takes
Speaker 2: over my life too much, so I avoid it until
Speaker 2: it's highly, highly highly recommended to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's your favorite movie?
Speaker 2: Doctor Strangelove?
Speaker 1: And if you had to mention two movies that people
Speaker 1: are unaware of that they should see.
Speaker 2: Well, if they haven't seen Doctor Strange Love, they said
Speaker 2: to see Doctor Strange Love and Facing the Crowd.
Speaker 1: Okay, so at this late date, you've got this whole
Speaker 1: career to people like me, you were in your own sphere.
Speaker 1: There's less Claypool. There's nobody quite like you now, and
Speaker 1: you're doing a lot of collaborative stuff to what the
Speaker 1: greed is your you know, inbox ding or your phone
Speaker 1: ring with people saying hey, less I want you to
Speaker 1: come work on my thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, it happens fairly regularly, and I have a
Speaker 2: hard time. I have a pretty full dance card.
Speaker 1: Or you know.
Speaker 2: I use the metaphor of pots on the stove. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of pots on my stove. It just depends
Speaker 2: on which when I pulled to the front burner. I mean, currently,
Speaker 2: I'm in the middle of two records, one me and
Speaker 2: Me and Sean Lennon are working on another Delirium record
Speaker 2: right now, and then Billy Strings and I started a
Speaker 2: record a couple months back. A few months back. Actually, so.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you meet Sean Lennon and ended up
Speaker 1: making a record with him?
Speaker 2: Well, Sean Shawn's band, Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger,
Speaker 2: opened for Primus on a tour, and funny thing was
Speaker 2: him and my son really hit it off right off
Speaker 2: the back because they're both like these kind of poin
Speaker 2: Dexter science nerds, and they were just like yammering away
Speaker 2: about the cosmos and physics. But but we all kind
Speaker 2: of hit it off. And Charlotte his his his, his,
Speaker 2: his partner, we all we just all hit it off.
Speaker 2: So one day him and I just kind of started jamming.
Speaker 2: I always keep my doughbro bass around. We just started
Speaker 2: jamming on acoustic guitars and we ended up in the
Speaker 2: back of the bus just just jamming, and there was
Speaker 2: some really interesting things coming out, and so I just said, hey,
Speaker 2: why don't you come on out to Rancho. Let's let's
Speaker 2: let's record some stuff. It seems like we got it
Speaker 2: was it was just this, there was some interest, There
Speaker 2: was instant chemistry, and he wasn't playing things that I
Speaker 2: that I was expecting he was. He's pretty angular and
Speaker 2: has an interesting approach to to his instrument And we
Speaker 2: got together and recorded our first album, which became the Delirium.
Speaker 2: Uh Claypool lenin Delirium Monolithophobos and what about Billy Strings, Well,
Speaker 2: so Billy is an interesting It's interesting because we as Delirium,
Speaker 2: me and Sean, we were playing a festival up in
Speaker 2: I think it was up in Tahoe, a few years back,
Speaker 2: and my wife comes to me and says, hey, look
Speaker 2: at this set list. And it was the set list,
Speaker 2: and the first song of the setlist started with L.
Speaker 2: The second song of the setlist started with E, third
Speaker 2: song started with S, fourth song started with CE. It
Speaker 2: spelled out my name in the first letters of each song,
Speaker 2: and I was like, who the hell is this? It
Speaker 2: was Billy Strings, So I had met Billy and his band.
Speaker 2: I didn't really remember it at the time, but then
Speaker 2: he's kept kind of sending me stuff on my Instagram,
Speaker 2: commenting mainly on fishing pictures because he's a big fisherman,
Speaker 2: and we just kind of hit it off and we went,
Speaker 2: we went, we went fishing, and we started just kind
Speaker 2: of jamming together, and we thought, let's record some stuff
Speaker 2: and see what happens. So we've been making a record
Speaker 2: and the notion is that it's all songs about fishing.
Speaker 1: Okay. Is it kind of a unique project, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's on quite an ascension, or is it like, well,
Speaker 1: this would be the next step to reach more people,
Speaker 1: or is it like, well, this sounds interesting.
Speaker 2: This is just a couple guys that like to fish
Speaker 2: getting together and twanging away you know, we were just
Speaker 2: it's very, very actual and it I have a thing
Speaker 2: called the Duo de Twang, which is myself and an
Speaker 2: old buddy of mine from high school, where we basically
Speaker 2: do these kind of twang versions of Primus songs and
Speaker 2: some of my songs and other people's songs. And I
Speaker 2: call it my vacation band because we sit on stage
Speaker 2: and I stomp on this box for a drummer, kind
Speaker 2: of like stomping Tom Connors, because I'm a big stomping
Speaker 2: Tom Connor fan, and we just drink and tell jokes
Speaker 2: and play these songs in bars.
Speaker 1: It was fun.
Speaker 2: So I just thought, oh, this would be an extension
Speaker 2: of that with Billy. There's not a lot of there's
Speaker 2: not a lot of preconceived notion to it, except for, hey,
Speaker 2: let's write songs about fishing because we're both into fishing.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked about the cupcake and how big a
Speaker 1: part of the cupcake is now touring. Do you like
Speaker 1: going on the road.
Speaker 2: I do, but it's like anything else. If you're on
Speaker 2: the road for a long time, you're dying to get home.
Speaker 2: But my wife said years ago, because she was like
Speaker 2: super mom, she was class mom. For like eight years
Speaker 2: in a row or something. Her whole world was the kids,
Speaker 2: and she said, hey, when the kids move out, I'm
Speaker 2: just letting you know right now, I'm coming on the
Speaker 2: road with you. And I said, okay, And that's when
Speaker 2: we bought our first tour bus, and I drive the
Speaker 2: tour bus. I have a driver for after shows, but
Speaker 2: on days off, we take the tour bus and we
Speaker 2: go stay in campgrounds and whatnot, and so it's it's
Speaker 2: really fun for us. We're like this couple that cruises
Speaker 2: around and we go do shows and then on days
Speaker 2: off we go stay in campgrounds and I have all
Speaker 2: my fishing gear with me and a bicycle, and we
Speaker 2: were just it's fun for us to cruise around the
Speaker 2: country together, well around the world now because she goes
Speaker 2: everywhere with me.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how many days a year do you attend
Speaker 1: to play? I know we had COVID, but generally, I.
Speaker 2: Mean I'm doing I'm doing about three months solid. This,
Speaker 2: I'm doing two months, and then I've then a couple
Speaker 2: months off and then a month, so about three months
Speaker 2: this year, summer and fall.
Speaker 1: So where have you been in the bus that the
Speaker 1: average person hasn't been and you say, wow, you got
Speaker 1: to go there.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if it's any different than
Speaker 2: where a lot of other musicians go. But that was
Speaker 2: one thing that I missed. Is in the early days
Speaker 2: when we had the motor home, which we called the
Speaker 2: Odor Home, we would drive it. We'd drive from here
Speaker 2: to there and go to the gig. And then next
Speaker 2: day you're driving across country, and I saw the country.
Speaker 2: And then I spent decades doing my show, getting in
Speaker 2: the back of the bus, watching a movie, drinking or
Speaker 2: smoking or whatever the hell, falling asleep, waking up at
Speaker 2: five in the morning, shambling out, getting into my hotel,
Speaker 2: sleeping and getting up and going, Hey, anybody know where
Speaker 2: the Starbucks is? Oh, anybody want to get lunch? Oo?
Speaker 2: And then you get back, get in a car and
Speaker 2: go to the gig, do the show, get back in
Speaker 2: the bus. You don't see anything. You see the inside
Speaker 2: of the bus, and you see a hotel room, and
Speaker 2: you see lots of coffee shops, Starbucks. So now that
Speaker 2: we have our own bus and I'm driving it a lot,
Speaker 2: I'm seeing the country. We're both seeing amazing things in
Speaker 2: the country. This last tour last year, my driver got
Speaker 2: COVID and I had to do all the driving all
Speaker 2: through Canada and it was spectacular. It was unbelievable. It
Speaker 2: was a little stressful because I we'd do the show
Speaker 2: and I'd have to hop in the bus and drive
Speaker 2: as far as I could, and then we'd pull over
Speaker 2: and sleep and then get up and drive the rest
Speaker 2: of the way to the gig. But like driving from
Speaker 2: I think it was well driving through the Canadian Rockies
Speaker 2: into Vancouver that just this one day, we saw like
Speaker 2: six caribou, We saw a bear, we saw a couple moose.
Speaker 2: My wife saw beaver hanging out on this big old
Speaker 2: damn it was. It was spectacular. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: How hard is it to drive a bus? It's not hard.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I have my Class B license now, so I'm able
Speaker 2: to drive this thing. But it's not terribly hard. It's
Speaker 2: like to anything else.
Speaker 1: Just get used to it. And then what's up with
Speaker 1: the whole pilot's license thing? And do you plan to
Speaker 1: get a plane?
Speaker 2: I would say, just to go back to the bus.
Speaker 2: Parking the bus is the hardest. I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: driving gets easy.
Speaker 1: Parking, Okay, that begs the question, have you ever hit
Speaker 1: anything with the bus parking or something.
Speaker 2: No, I'm gonna knock on some wood.
Speaker 3: I've not.
Speaker 2: Actually I shouldn't say that. I'm sure my wife is listening.
Speaker 2: So the first, our very first trip out, we are coming,
Speaker 2: I think we're coming into just outside of Utah. We're coming.
Speaker 2: We just come over this area where just beautiful views,
Speaker 2: and I see this, this this rest up. At the
Speaker 2: last second, I was like, I was swinging in there,
Speaker 2: and I swung in and I didn't realize how tight
Speaker 2: it was, and I'm backing up. And also this tree
Speaker 2: branch comes right through the side window and it literally
Speaker 2: hits me in the back of the head. So that
Speaker 2: was my first and so far only crunch in the bus.
Speaker 1: What does Primus mean in the rest of the world
Speaker 1: outside of the States.
Speaker 2: It depends on where you go. You know, there's certain
Speaker 2: places where we're more popular than others we tend to
Speaker 2: We don't go to Europe that much, never really have,
Speaker 2: so we're not as popular in Europe as we are here,
Speaker 2: but in certain places we're a little more than We've
Speaker 2: always done pretty well in Australia, we do pretty well
Speaker 2: in South America, but we're the biggest in the States.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the old days, pre internet, if you're on
Speaker 1: a major label, which you were, you're on MTV, everybody
Speaker 1: knows your name, whereas today you could be number one
Speaker 1: on Spotify. Most people have never even heard your music.
Speaker 1: So does that frustrate you? Do you want to have
Speaker 1: more people exposed to what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it frustrates me as much as
Speaker 2: it frustrates my daughter. I don't really pay attention, you know.
Speaker 2: It's like, if I can go doom some shows and
Speaker 2: people show up, and I can, you know, make my
Speaker 2: living and do my stuff, that's wonderful. If more people
Speaker 2: show up, that's wonderful. But I don't pay attention to
Speaker 2: how many Spotify plays we have or any of that stuff.
Speaker 2: But my daughter did tell me when she was in
Speaker 2: high school. She's like, you need to get on social
Speaker 2: media because y'all your fans are getting old and they're
Speaker 2: gonna die, and then I'm not going to have any legacy.
Speaker 2: There's going to be nobody you need to get, you know.
Speaker 2: I'm like, wow, easy, easy. So I have an Instagram
Speaker 2: account now, but I don't want the hell to do
Speaker 2: with it. I post fishing pictures on it once in
Speaker 2: a while. That's that's really all I do.
Speaker 1: Okay, and you talk about making these records. You have
Speaker 1: a studio in the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been recording our records here Ran Show Relaxed
Speaker 2: so since nineteen ninety four, so we've done a lot
Speaker 2: of records here.
Speaker 1: What have you got in the studio?
Speaker 2: I have an old vintage JPI console twenty four eighty eight.
Speaker 2: I have a two inch sixteen track tape machine, but
Speaker 2: I just don't use it anymore. I have an ATR
Speaker 2: machine half inch, just don't use it anymore.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The digital stuff is just it's so much more convenient.
Speaker 2: And I ab'd with friends and nobody could really tell
Speaker 2: the difference. So it was like, all right, but you know,
Speaker 2: obviously pro tools.
Speaker 1: So are you a gear head with a whole, you know,
Speaker 1: closet full of microphones or you basically have the basics
Speaker 1: of people bring in what they want. No.
Speaker 2: I got a bunch of old stuff, vintage stuff, and
Speaker 2: some newer contemporary stuff. That's I go through periods of
Speaker 2: gearheading and not. I I do love my API. That
Speaker 2: thing is spectacular. It's the best sounding console I've ever
Speaker 2: even heard, so I geek out on that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But I go through periods of geeking and then going
Speaker 2: off and geeking on something else.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, since you're so good with cars whatever.
Speaker 1: Every studio needs a tech. Do you do your own
Speaker 1: tech or do you call somebody.
Speaker 2: I have a fellow by the name of Krieg who
Speaker 2: is amazing. But I do as much as I can
Speaker 2: because I did used to be a fledgling bench tech.
Speaker 2: So I do as much as I can. But he's
Speaker 2: the guy that keeps keeps, keeps the keeps the clock ticking.
Speaker 1: And then do you play the bass every day or
Speaker 1: how often?
Speaker 2: Uh? Then again it's I go through periods where I'm
Speaker 2: playing a lot, Like right now, I'm playing a lot
Speaker 2: because I just got a new I got a new
Speaker 2: six string, and I'm fiddling around with some new amps.
Speaker 2: But then there's other times when I won't play for weeks.
Speaker 1: And certainly a p bass is a standard what what's
Speaker 1: your standard amp?
Speaker 2: Standard AMP? I don't even know if I have a
Speaker 2: standard AMP. I avoided for decades going to the giant
Speaker 2: SVT head that weighs seven thousand pounds and you know,
Speaker 2: the hernia heead and now I have three of them.
Speaker 2: I finally scam succumbed, circame succumbed, but because I found
Speaker 2: that I had endorsements with different companies and whatnot, even
Speaker 2: with Ampeg for a long time. And I go to
Speaker 2: Chile or somewhere and they put one of these vintage
Speaker 2: SVT heads up for me to rent, and it always
Speaker 2: sounded amazing, and I thought, Jesus Christ, I got it,
Speaker 2: just find and so I finally broke down. I bought one,
Speaker 2: and then I bought another one, and then I bought it.
Speaker 2: And they all sound different, and I have to redo
Speaker 2: the tubes every now and again, and it's just but
Speaker 2: they're amazing. You get one that sounds good and it's
Speaker 2: truly incredible sounding.
Speaker 1: Okay, And you talk about watching TCM being a big
Speaker 1: movie addict, to what degree do you pay attention to
Speaker 1: the news.
Speaker 2: I mean, I read my news every day. I have
Speaker 2: my feeds, so I mean actually often multiple times a day.
Speaker 2: So I feel like I'm fairly in tune. But I'm
Speaker 2: a big fan of people that excel at what they do,
Speaker 2: and I'm a big fan of consulting professionals. So when
Speaker 2: I have an issue with like say a medical issue,
Speaker 2: or of even friends that have medical issues. I have
Speaker 2: a friend of mine that graduated from Columbia Med. He's
Speaker 2: been a pediatric doc for decades now in Oakland, and
Speaker 2: I call him after I talk to my doc. If
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily agree with what he's saying, I talk
Speaker 2: to him. If I don't get the information from him,
Speaker 2: I talk to a buddy of mine who's a brain
Speaker 2: surgeon in Manhattan, and that's where I get my information.
Speaker 2: I don't go onto blogs and decide that the vaccination
Speaker 2: is not good for me because some guy in some
Speaker 2: cabin somewhere said it adversely affect his ear, lobes or whatever.
Speaker 2: I tend to rely on professionals, So it's the same
Speaker 2: a lot of times with with elements of the news
Speaker 2: that I may be intrigued by or concerned with. I
Speaker 2: have friends that like our manager. He's a huge sports guy.
Speaker 2: He knows everything about every every draft pick, every team.
Speaker 2: That's his thing, it's not my thing. I have a
Speaker 2: friend who's like that with politics, any little angle and dangle.
Speaker 2: He knows all what's happening, and so I like going
Speaker 2: to lunch with him once in a while and hearing
Speaker 2: his perspective. Stuart Coplan's very good at that too, And
Speaker 2: Stuart he likes to be a contrarian, so he likes
Speaker 2: to take opposing viewpoints just to get the thing steamed up.
Speaker 2: So when all of a sudden done, I play the bass,
Speaker 2: and that's what you know if you want to know
Speaker 2: about the bass. I'm a pretty good resource to to
Speaker 2: talk to you about. I don't know everything, but I
Speaker 2: know enough to kind of move you along, and I
Speaker 2: tend to be that way with how I filter information.
Speaker 1: Does that makes are you optimistic or pessimistic about the
Speaker 1: direction of the country.
Speaker 2: I think as I'm getting older, I tend to be
Speaker 2: more of a curmudgeon, but I try not to be.
Speaker 2: And I'm very fortunate that my wife is one of
Speaker 2: the most positive humans, if not the most positive human
Speaker 2: I've ever met in my entire life, so it helps
Speaker 2: keep me balance. But I remember back in the days
Speaker 2: of the eighties and living in Berkeley, and we were
Speaker 2: all anti apartheid and I'm not buying shell gas and
Speaker 2: this and that and the next thing. But it was
Speaker 2: all very superficial. We were just kind of we're bouncing,
Speaker 2: We're paraphrasing things that other people that were more knowledgeable
Speaker 2: than us, that were cool in our scene, were saying,
Speaker 2: now that I'm older, I'm a little more aware. It's
Speaker 2: it tends to and I see it with a lot
Speaker 2: of my friends too. It tends to make you a
Speaker 2: little more pessimistic.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I answered your question.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, I think that's good enough. So moving forward,
Speaker 1: you're doing this frog tour, your manager suggested it. What's
Speaker 1: coming down the pike? Do you just wake up every
Speaker 1: day with a new idea or do you have like
Speaker 1: a three year plan? What might we expect from last Claypool.
Speaker 2: Well, I just spent the last i'd say three or
Speaker 2: four months intensely studying, studying harder than I've ever studied
Speaker 2: in my entire existence on the planet to get my
Speaker 2: pilot's license. So I'm kind of coming out of that
Speaker 2: because I just got my license a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: and now I'm I can actually start living my life again.
Speaker 2: So gearing up for the Sprog Brigade Tour. We're doing
Speaker 2: a benefit in a couple of weeks at Primus with
Speaker 2: a couple buddies from Tool and Queens of the Stone,
Speaker 2: A and A comic buddy of ours for a friend
Speaker 2: of ours who's who was battling cancer. But gearing up
Speaker 2: for this Sprogagate thing. I'm learning a bunch of songs.
Speaker 2: I got to relearn all that Pink Floyd animal stuff
Speaker 2: because we're going to do that in its entirety.
Speaker 1: Saw.
Speaker 2: I'm gearing up for that and gearing up for the
Speaker 2: summer run, and then eventually I'm going to get back
Speaker 2: in the studio with Sean and finish up this Delirium record,
Speaker 2: and eventually get with Billy and finish the thing with
Speaker 2: Billy strings.
Speaker 1: What's this whole pilot's thing about.
Speaker 2: So in the early nineties, I was living in Berkeley
Speaker 2: and my uncle who's retired now retired auto mechanic, he
Speaker 2: had his own plane. He had a bonanza and he
Speaker 2: took us up and I was like, yeah, this was
Speaker 2: this really cool, and I started taking lessons from his buddy,
Speaker 2: and then we moved up to the country and I
Speaker 2: just never finished. So all these years have gone by,
Speaker 2: the kids have moved out, and I thought, well, shit,
Speaker 2: I should finish this thing. So I dove in head first,
Speaker 2: and really really just because I knew I had to
Speaker 2: do it. Between projects because it takes so much of
Speaker 2: my mental capacity that I knew I couldn't I couldn't
Speaker 2: be working on creative output and all this input data
Speaker 2: input at the same time. It just wouldn't have worked.
Speaker 2: So I just put everything on hold and I got
Speaker 2: my license. It took me from the beginning of December
Speaker 2: till a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: You got your license. You're going to get a plane.
Speaker 2: I have a plane with a friend.
Speaker 1: What kind of plane.
Speaker 2: It's a Sirus SR twenty.
Speaker 4: Okay, so it comes with a parachute theoretically, so the parachute,
Speaker 4: thank god, assuming you know a lot of people don't
Speaker 4: pull it because it tends up really damaging the plane.
Speaker 4: What about instrument rating.
Speaker 2: I'm guess I'm gonna go for that next.
Speaker 1: Okay. You're a very fourth right humorous person. But you
Speaker 1: talk about being into movies, et cetera. Are you always
Speaker 1: this kind of upbeat or do you go into dark areas?
Speaker 1: Do you get depressed? I mean, am I just seeing
Speaker 1: one side of less? Or is this who you are?
Speaker 1: Twenty four to seven? Oh?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I It's funny because, like I said,
Speaker 2: my wife is literally she's the most positive person I've
Speaker 2: ever met. She wakes up in the morning, she gives
Speaker 2: you a big smile. You know, I wake up in
Speaker 2: the morning. Sometimes I have a big smile. Sometimes I'm
Speaker 2: like eh, And our son is very much like her.
Speaker 2: He wakes up whistling. But our daughter's more like me.
Speaker 2: You know, peaks and valleys, so get you get less
Speaker 2: on a peak, and I'm a happy clam, but you
Speaker 2: get me on a valley, not such a happy clam.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because I don't usually do sugar and
Speaker 2: I don't usually do desserts. Because my buddy Slavic, who's Polish, says,
Speaker 2: goddamn it, level don't know, no, no, goddamn desert man,
Speaker 2: You're going to turn into an asshole in twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: Because for twenty minutes I'm like w happy guy on sugar,
Speaker 2: and then twenty minutes later I'm like, I want to
Speaker 2: get out of here.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So I have my peaks and valleys.
Speaker 1: Well how low do the valleys get?
Speaker 2: They can get pretty low. But you know that's why
Speaker 2: I'm happy. I have my wife here. She's always lets
Speaker 2: me know when I'm feeling down or you know, things
Speaker 2: are looking less than cheery. She lets me know that
Speaker 2: I've got it pretty good, and I do. I have
Speaker 2: it spectacularly good.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're living your life now, Any dreams beyond this,
Speaker 1: anything you want to accomplish, talking about your daughter, talked
Speaker 1: about legacy, said that's not important, or you just say
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna merrily go along and that's my life.
Speaker 2: Well, it's become very important to me recently to try
Speaker 2: and do the South of the Pumphouse film for a
Speaker 2: few different reasons. One, I think it's very relevant right now.
Speaker 2: It's super very intense UH social commentary, a lot of racism,
Speaker 2: a lot of misogynistic elements, and there's it's a pretty
Speaker 2: it's a it's a hotbed for sure. But also my
Speaker 2: buddy Mark Corer, who I was, who I was. He's
Speaker 2: a director who I was going to do this project
Speaker 2: with many years ago. He he was one of the
Speaker 2: hot shot video directors in his day, and he he
Speaker 2: his first daughter was born with UH with an affliction,
Speaker 2: and since then he's he's that's what he that's been
Speaker 2: his life is taking care of her. And because of
Speaker 2: that he kind of fell out of you know, he
Speaker 2: was with Spike Jones and all those guys. He was
Speaker 2: one of those guys, and he should have been gone
Speaker 2: on to be a great filmmaker, and he just had
Speaker 2: He just kind of fell out of it to take
Speaker 2: care of his family. And he's at a point now
Speaker 2: where where he can he can do this thing. So
Speaker 2: it's really important to me that we try and get
Speaker 2: this project going again, so that so that, hey, I
Speaker 2: can fulfill one of my dreams. But b because I
Speaker 2: think the world needs to see what Mark Core can do,
Speaker 2: because he's really one of the most talented people I know.
Speaker 1: Well less not only are you unique in your playing,
Speaker 1: you're unique in your identity, your sense of humor. You're
Speaker 1: obviously very intelligent. It's been great talking to you. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for taking the time for me
Speaker 1: and my audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you're a very kind man and it was
Speaker 2: a great conversation. I always enjoy a good conversation.
Speaker 1: Okay, till next time. This is Bob left six