Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio on iHeart Radio. My name is Jordan runt Hog,
Speaker 1: but enough about me. In addition to being one of
Speaker 1: the most innovative guitarists of his generation, my guest today
Speaker 1: has earned a place as one of rock's loudest social consciousness.
Speaker 1: Beginning with Rage Against the Machine and later on with
Speaker 1: Audio Slave, Prophets of Rage and his solo project A
Speaker 1: Night Watchman, his politically charged anthems have changed people's heads,
Speaker 1: often while the head bang. Like many of us, he
Speaker 1: struggled with the isolation of lockdown, so he turned to
Speaker 1: his music. It's the force he's used for decades to
Speaker 1: help bring a positive change to the world. This time around,
Speaker 1: it helped bring a positive change to himself. After crafting
Speaker 1: guitar parts in his home studio, he sent them off
Speaker 1: to an astonishing assortment of friends and collaborators. The first
Speaker 1: fruits of the project released the mid October as The
Speaker 1: Atlas Underground Fire, and now he's back with another record
Speaker 1: from his self described Saw Conspiracy. Earlier this week, he
Speaker 1: announced The Atlas Underground Flood, a sister record featuring the
Speaker 1: likes of Ben Harper ex Ambassadors and Jim James due
Speaker 1: out December three. We talked about is creatively productive, quarantine,
Speaker 1: is legendary guitar playing, and what it's been like teaching
Speaker 1: his son to shred. He's a proud papa. Indeed, I'm
Speaker 1: so happy to welcome Mr Tomrollo. I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: our conversation. But you are extremely busy, as everybody knows,
Speaker 1: so I I am extremely grateful for your time. I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to you shortly after the release of your latest
Speaker 1: sonic conspiracy, The Atlas Underground Fire, and by the time
Speaker 1: this comes out, listeners will be very well aware that
Speaker 1: there is a sister album on the way, The Atlas
Speaker 1: Underground Flood. I wanted to start by asking about the
Speaker 1: relationship between those two albums. Is Flood a continuation of
Speaker 1: Fire or is it an altogether different perspective? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: these are record These are my Plague albums, their records
Speaker 1: that were both made, you know, during the height of lockdown,
Speaker 1: and uh, there's they are sister records in a way.
Speaker 1: It's sort of my stab at take the clashes London calling,
Speaker 1: making a making a record of sort of a double
Speaker 1: album that is united in purpose. Uh, united in intent,
Speaker 1: united in sort of authenticity and ferocity, but is sonically
Speaker 1: very very diverse, with no olds part. Absolutely. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think that's so unique
Speaker 1: about these two albums is that I feel like for
Speaker 1: every other album you've made, it seems to come from
Speaker 1: place of wanting to help people other people, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like for these pairs of albums it was almost
Speaker 1: really the inverse. It was sort of designed. It came
Speaker 1: out of a need of wanting to help yourself and
Speaker 1: to help you remain being a musician at a time
Speaker 1: when that was looking harder and harder to do. Absolutely, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, I recorded those albums here in my studio.
Speaker 1: I have a studio here, but I don't know how
Speaker 1: to run it. Um there's normally an engineer who sits here,
Speaker 1: but during lockdown, there was no engineer coming uh. And
Speaker 1: inspiration came from a very surprising place. I read an
Speaker 1: interview where UM Kanye West was bragging about recording the
Speaker 1: vocals to a couple of his albums onto the UH
Speaker 1: voice memo of his phone. So I just started recording
Speaker 1: guitar into my my my phone on a folding chair
Speaker 1: in front of my amp. Over there just playing some
Speaker 1: guitar riffs and then sending those riffs to producers, engineers
Speaker 1: and artists around the world, and that became the building
Speaker 1: blocks for these records. But first and foremost, it was
Speaker 1: a way to sort of assert that, in this crazy
Speaker 1: time of kind of fear and anxiety, that I could
Speaker 1: still be a musician of the guitars on this record.
Speaker 1: On these two records were recorded into the voice memo
Speaker 1: of my phone, which is something I hadn't anticipated and
Speaker 1: may lead to me throwing out all those expensive microphones.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is crazy. Has that new approach changed
Speaker 1: your approach to composing in the long hall? I mean,
Speaker 1: did it open any doors for you creatively? I imagine
Speaker 1: that sort of not having all of the accruterments of
Speaker 1: you know, the studio, maybe my can play a little freer.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it was, it was. I mean
Speaker 1: it was. When I set out recording those guitar rists,
Speaker 1: it really was not with the intent I'm going to
Speaker 1: make a double album. It was like I need to
Speaker 1: try to survive Thursday, you know, you know, and and
Speaker 1: this is one way it's too like I love this,
Speaker 1: I love playing guitar, but there's no way to connect. Now,
Speaker 1: there was a way to connect, you know, on these records,
Speaker 1: I mean from they span from you know, bring Me
Speaker 1: the Horizon in Brazil, two Idols in the UK to
Speaker 1: Sam Abdulhadi and Palestine to Bruce Bringsteen in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: Refused in Sweden. I was just kind of like these
Speaker 1: rock and roll pen pals, you know, there's kind of
Speaker 1: global connectiveness during a time where there was no human connection.
Speaker 1: I mean, giving Kanye is indirect involvement on the album,
Speaker 1: I'm almost surprised that he didn't make a guest appearance. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't I didn't think to reach
Speaker 1: out for Evnick. Can you talk to me more about
Speaker 1: the collaborative process. Was it a case of finishing a
Speaker 1: sketch or riff and thinking, oh my god, I think
Speaker 1: I know exactly who that would be for. Or did
Speaker 1: you reach out to art a bunch of artists that
Speaker 1: you wanted to work with and kind of say here's
Speaker 1: ten things. Yeah, it was each of those ways was
Speaker 1: implemented in some ways that it was the where every
Speaker 1: day felt like it was kind of exactly the same.
Speaker 1: There was almost this roulette wheel adventure to these songs.
Speaker 1: You know, I come up here on Tuesday, I'd record
Speaker 1: four riffs. I'd send them to I don't know, pick Um,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, Jim James, my morning Jack, Like, which
Speaker 1: are you feeling any of these? Number three? Okay, great,
Speaker 1: let's have that be a starting point. Another time it
Speaker 1: might be like a track that is kind of more
Speaker 1: put together, bring me the horizon is responding to these risks.
Speaker 1: Other times, whether it was phantogram or some Abdulhati, they
Speaker 1: might send me something as a as a starting point.
Speaker 1: There were really no rules to it, and the the
Speaker 1: unexpectedness of that daily sort of creative process was really
Speaker 1: like an elixir of health and hope during that kind
Speaker 1: of crazy time. That was what I was gonna say.
Speaker 1: It must have been so exciting for you to send
Speaker 1: these out into the world, and really a lot always
Speaker 1: have no idea what they might send back. I mean,
Speaker 1: were there any what were some of the biggest surprises
Speaker 1: for you? Well, I'll say, I mean there's there's there
Speaker 1: were there were quite a few big surprises. But um,
Speaker 1: like some Albdo Hottie for example, she's a young Palestinian DJ,
Speaker 1: just fantastic young artist, and you know, I sent her
Speaker 1: some of my usual kind of Black Sabbath led Zeppelin
Speaker 1: riffs that the normal, the normal stuff, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I like these, but I don't know what to do
Speaker 1: with these. I was like, thank you for your candor.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Why don't you start the process. So
Speaker 1: she sent me this kind of like eight minute long
Speaker 1: kind of Arabic trance track that was entirely out of
Speaker 1: sort of my wheelhouse and experience. But I was like fantastic,
Speaker 1: Like I put on my headphones, put on my kind
Speaker 1: of like coal trane ears and just let go and
Speaker 1: just jammed over it. A few times, sent those those
Speaker 1: sort of wild tracks back to her to apply her
Speaker 1: production genius. So that was like that was the process.
Speaker 1: Like every day it was some new eddie, some new streams,
Speaker 1: some new routes, some new bridge, some new way to create,
Speaker 1: and eventually I amassed this body of material. Now it's
Speaker 1: two records, because in this day and age, putting out
Speaker 1: a double album doesn't make sense. But there there always
Speaker 1: was the intent that Fire and Flood would would be
Speaker 1: would be sisters, and they that they would be together.
Speaker 1: Um and you know, I I look at this project
Speaker 1: is it's is both a solo album and very much
Speaker 1: a collaborative effort. Um is a solo album, and that
Speaker 1: there is a kind of purity of overall vision and curation,
Speaker 1: and and my guitar is the common voice and all
Speaker 1: these songs, but none of these songs I couldn't I
Speaker 1: couldn't have made any of them on my own. They're
Speaker 1: all a product of the individual chemistry of the great
Speaker 1: and diverse artists I had the honor of working that
Speaker 1: sounds are so diverse, And as you said, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you think about making a you know, in quotes,
Speaker 1: a quarantine album, and it seems like this really isolating,
Speaker 1: claustrophobic thing. But this is truly a global record, and
Speaker 1: you think of all these artists that are not only
Speaker 1: located in different places, but are bringing their own experiences
Speaker 1: into it. I mean, I'm hard pressed to name an
Speaker 1: album where one of the vocals is for coorded by
Speaker 1: somebody who's basically scaling everest, you know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean this is as was the case with Mike
Speaker 1: Poshner during that Yeah, I mean, that's that's crazy to me.
Speaker 1: How they you know, their experiences are now sort of
Speaker 1: part of the DNA of this record, I mean, and
Speaker 1: DJ Sama to me, wasn't she recording in the midst
Speaker 1: of the Israeli Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, she would sort
Speaker 1: of during the mixing of the song, she disappeared for
Speaker 1: a couple of days. I'm like, are you okay? And
Speaker 1: fortunately she was. But yeah, you know, and then there's
Speaker 1: you know, Springsteen in New Jersey Sinking Highway to Hell
Speaker 1: all will I'm completely alone, you know, every day here
Speaker 1: in the studio, like you know, doing but whatever, the
Speaker 1: normal sort of plumbing. And you've mentioned, of course the
Speaker 1: unifying feature of these records, of course, your electric guitar.
Speaker 1: You've been very vocal in uh, I mean, throughout your career,
Speaker 1: but in recent interviews, especially about how you feel the
Speaker 1: electric guitar is. I'm gonna make sure I'm getting the
Speaker 1: quote exactly right. The greatest instrument that humankind has ever devised.
Speaker 1: And you will get no argument for me whatsoever. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask Askew, why what is it about
Speaker 1: the electric guitar that makes it such an effective tool? Friend?
Speaker 1: Conduit paint? But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1: Co conspirator, um, yeah, I I mean, there's one I'm
Speaker 1: maybe somewhat prejudiced on this on this topic, but but
Speaker 1: there's no instruments, you know, before or after the creation
Speaker 1: of electric guitar that has both the the the can
Speaker 1: have the subtle nuance that the electric guitar has as
Speaker 1: well as the stadium destroying rock power. There's nothing else
Speaker 1: there's because it's also and there are certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: there are crowds that go wild to E d M
Speaker 1: music and this, this, that and the other, and hip hop,
Speaker 1: which is all fantastic, and I go wild too, don't
Speaker 1: get don't get me wrong, but there's something about the
Speaker 1: visceral hands on you know, man made or human made
Speaker 1: quality of like touching those strings and feeling the force
Speaker 1: of that or being able to be sort of introspective
Speaker 1: with a nuance. And but the second part of the
Speaker 1: thesis is not that the just that the electric guitar
Speaker 1: is the greatest instrument on the planet, that it's an
Speaker 1: instrument the future and not just a past, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of guitar players that are traditionalists, and you know,
Speaker 1: all the good guitar playing has been done, so we
Speaker 1: just play something that's just like that, and that's what
Speaker 1: those are the those are the goal posts. I do
Speaker 1: not subscribe to that. I believe these records are in
Speaker 1: the first Atlas Underground record in two thousand eighteen, and
Speaker 1: these two records are an assertion the electric guitar has
Speaker 1: a bright future. But I think that that future is
Speaker 1: found in sometimes unconventional ways. I never want to let
Speaker 1: go of the big riffs, of the crazy guitar solos,
Speaker 1: of the expressiveness of the instrument, but I want to
Speaker 1: find a context for those riffs, for those solos, and
Speaker 1: for that that expressiveness in unexpected places to push the
Speaker 1: guitar into the future. That's why there is punk rock
Speaker 1: on this record. That's why there is there is uh
Speaker 1: A d M bass drops on this record. That's why
Speaker 1: there's heavy metal on this record. That's why that's there's
Speaker 1: folk songs on this Who to ask? There was a
Speaker 1: quote you gave recently, and I'm paraphrasing, but something where
Speaker 1: you said, for the first ten years of my musical
Speaker 1: career was practicing scales. In the second ten years, I
Speaker 1: was practicing animal sounds on guitar. Uh what point, I mean,
Speaker 1: at what point did the guitar become not strictly an
Speaker 1: instrument to be mastered, but something to be used to
Speaker 1: express yourself in ways that you know are unconventional and
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily traditional. Yeah, when we pick up an instrument, Uh,
Speaker 1: there are two categories in which people may find themselves.
Speaker 1: There are musicians and there are artists. Um. And for
Speaker 1: the first tenure, first first ten years of playing guitar,
Speaker 1: I had worked very, very hard at and put in
Speaker 1: my ten twenty hours to become a technically skilled musician.
Speaker 1: I couldn't write songs that I like. I mean, I
Speaker 1: could shred my ass off like Steve I or Baby
Speaker 1: van Halen. I couldn't write songs that I liked, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have my own voice on the instrument. It
Speaker 1: was around the beginnings of Rage against the Machine where
Speaker 1: I began self identifying as the DJ and the band right.
Speaker 1: I started to look at the instrument in an entirely
Speaker 1: different way, recognizing and realizing the electric guitar is a
Speaker 1: relatively new instrument on the planet. It's just a piece
Speaker 1: of wood with six wires and a few electronics that
Speaker 1: could be manipulated in a wide variety of of ways.
Speaker 1: And I remember the me being inured as a young
Speaker 1: guitar magazine reader and all my favorite guitars. Almost like
Speaker 1: to a to a person would say, well, it's all
Speaker 1: been done on the guitar, and I was like, how
Speaker 1: do we know? Are we sure? Have we? I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a short time. Is there a study? Is
Speaker 1: there a study that proved so? I? And but then
Speaker 1: once I got outside of that box and did start
Speaker 1: practicing animal noises and R two D two noises and
Speaker 1: helicopter noises, and you know, my inspirations went well beyond
Speaker 1: Chuck Barry, Betty Van Halen and Metallica. UM. It really
Speaker 1: like the blinders came off and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: I was I felt like, well, this is who I
Speaker 1: am on the instrument. And that's when I took the
Speaker 1: tentative first steps from becoming a musician into becoming an artist.
Speaker 1: And the thing that really boggles my mind is that
Speaker 1: you were came to guitar relatively late in life as
Speaker 1: far as you since go, I think, like late teens.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the only people I can think
Speaker 1: of it picked up guitar that late was Robert Johnson,
Speaker 1: and he he had the devil to help, that's correct,
Speaker 1: which I imagine you did not. I mean, how did
Speaker 1: how did you first find your way to the guitar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, given my Catholic upbringing, that was not an option.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're at He's the only guit Robert Johnson
Speaker 1: started playing at eighteen, and he's the only other guitar
Speaker 1: player I've ever heard of and began making the big
Speaker 1: game sort of notable as the guitars began making records
Speaker 1: that late. Um. I had a guitar when I was
Speaker 1: thirteen years old. I took two lessons that were so
Speaker 1: off putting. It sat in a closet for the next
Speaker 1: four years, UM, gathering dust. And for me it was
Speaker 1: punk rock music. I I admired the big rock stars
Speaker 1: of the day, the led Zeppelins is that now, But
Speaker 1: it really felt like it was unattainable. And you had
Speaker 1: to have a ten thousand dollar Les Paul and a
Speaker 1: wall of marshals and a and a castle on a
Speaker 1: Scottish lock and some sort of gorgeous cheek bones and
Speaker 1: hair and groupies and like to even they like get
Speaker 1: a ticket into the party, you know exactly I had,
Speaker 1: you know, I had a dance basement in Illinois. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so when I heard that, you know, the sex
Speaker 1: Pistols in the clash. Those were records. It felt like
Speaker 1: they were made in damp basements wherever those people were.
Speaker 1: They were singing about topics that were neither you know, dungeons,
Speaker 1: nor dragons nor groupies, and I could relate personally, relate to,
Speaker 1: like the real life stories they were telling about, you know,
Speaker 1: injustice and struggle and what how it sucks to be
Speaker 1: seventeen whatever, whatever it was sort of entailed in those
Speaker 1: songs felt like relatable, and more importantly, it felt like
Speaker 1: you could play those songs this afternoon. No, you could
Speaker 1: write a song like that this afternoon. And so the
Speaker 1: day I began, the day I began as a guitarist
Speaker 1: was within twenty four hours of getting the Sex Pistols cassette.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to play a chord on the instrument.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to play a note on the instrument.
Speaker 1: I went into the drama club of my school and
Speaker 1: announced the punk band was forming. I'm the guitar player.
Speaker 1: If you want to be in the band, raise your hand,
Speaker 1: no experience required. That makes me wonder if the Sex
Speaker 1: Pistols started roughly the same way too. Yeah, yeah, yeahs possible.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, you uh, spent some of the time
Speaker 1: in the last year, and I have teaching your your son,
Speaker 1: your I think ten year old son how to play guitar. Uh.
Speaker 1: Has that changed your relationship to the guitar in anyway
Speaker 1: as now as a as a teacher to to a
Speaker 1: student in front of you, Yeah, very much. So. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I reflect in beginning to teach him,
Speaker 1: which was during lockdown. Um, I reflected on those two
Speaker 1: awful guitar lessons I had convinced me to not play
Speaker 1: for four years. So I did not repeat that pattern,
Speaker 1: and I made the experience one which was all about
Speaker 1: fun and immediate success and you know, like run before
Speaker 1: you walk and let's have a good time. But yes,
Speaker 1: it has changed my guitar playing considerly because now I'm
Speaker 1: kind of the second best guitar soloist in the family,
Speaker 1: and so I spent most of my time as a
Speaker 1: rhythm guitarist, you know, strumming the chords for Pink Floyd
Speaker 1: songs or whatever, while he just shreds his little butt off.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love and seeing his collaborations and your
Speaker 1: collaborations with Nandy Bush Well, I mean, for anyone who
Speaker 1: has the misfortune of having not seen her. She's this
Speaker 1: incredible I think she's eleven years old, this musician from
Speaker 1: England who will just melt your face on any instrument
Speaker 1: that you want. I mean, that has to make you
Speaker 1: feel good. I mean, the saga continues in a absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1: I had become kind of Instagram friends, but she does
Speaker 1: these amazing covers of songs, including some audio slave and
Speaker 1: Rage against Machine songs. So I sent her one of
Speaker 1: my signature Ender Soul Power guitars, so we sort of
Speaker 1: became friendly, and then she reached out. It was like,
Speaker 1: do you want to, you know, write a song? He
Speaker 1: is that I would love to write a song with you,
Speaker 1: But I got a nine year old kid over here
Speaker 1: who's kind of ahead of me right now. Maybe you
Speaker 1: guys write a song together. And they did. They wrote
Speaker 1: a great song called The Children Will Rise Up. We
Speaker 1: got Jack Black in the video and it really you know,
Speaker 1: it says when the song was recorded, they were nine
Speaker 1: and ten years old. They're the ones they wrote it,
Speaker 1: they played, they play the inst I produced it. But
Speaker 1: it just it's pretty awesome, you know. And then I
Speaker 1: cannot I'm not gonna lie that when my kids solo
Speaker 1: comes up, in that one. You know, it's like it's
Speaker 1: just sixteen bars of just pure like fatherly pride. As
Speaker 1: he's sure, I mean, he's he's he's either got it
Speaker 1: or you don't. That has got to be the best
Speaker 1: feeling in the world that I mean, congratulate, you've done good.
Speaker 1: You've done good. It is, it's awesome. I'm speaking of
Speaker 1: of you know, a different note, but speaking of young
Speaker 1: women with guitars. You you've been working to get a
Speaker 1: group of young young musicians out of Taliban occupied Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I was wondering what the latest was with them, and
Speaker 1: for there's any ways that that we can continue to
Speaker 1: to try to help. Yeah, the good news is that
Speaker 1: they are safe in regular contact with people who are
Speaker 1: in contact with them, and um, but they you know,
Speaker 1: I have been Uh. This is a great musician, Lannie Cordova.
Speaker 1: He was in like a metal band in the eighties
Speaker 1: and you know, he kind of got the religion of
Speaker 1: love and he moved moved to Afghanistan to help street children,
Speaker 1: people who have who had would endure trauma, especially on
Speaker 1: girls would endure trauma and because of the war and
Speaker 1: had lost their parents or for and whatnot. And he
Speaker 1: made a school for them and they had a lot
Speaker 1: of the The creative part of the school was they
Speaker 1: all learned to play guitar and they would sing songs
Speaker 1: and we did some collaborations and videos together. Was wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful girls, you know. And then after the Taliban takeover,
Speaker 1: they were you know, on a they were marked for death,
Speaker 1: you know, because they know we're playing Western music and
Speaker 1: had an American teacher and whatnot. And so they've been
Speaker 1: in hiding since then, and we've been working very very
Speaker 1: very diligently trying to get them um first to Pakistan
Speaker 1: and then you know, and then somewhere else. But but
Speaker 1: they're okay, they're okay, and uh, I hear from them periodically,
Speaker 1: and we're still doing all every means, both above and
Speaker 1: above board and blowboard to try to, you know, get
Speaker 1: them to safety. This was wonderfully here. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, this is probably the last eighteen months. I
Speaker 1: would imagine the first time in quite a while that
Speaker 1: you weren't literally on the front lines of marches. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking specifically of the protest for the murder of George Floyd. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've heard numerous clips and I've also heard anecdotally from
Speaker 1: friends that your music was being sung and chanted at
Speaker 1: these protests. What is it? I wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: What is it about music that makes it such an
Speaker 1: effective method to transmit emotion and enact change. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's certainly a lot of evidence to support
Speaker 1: that thesis. You know, there's never been a successful social
Speaker 1: movement in this country without a soundtrack, really, you know,
Speaker 1: and with and um, you know, from the Union struggles
Speaker 1: to the civil rights movement to the anti war movements,
Speaker 1: from Vietnam to Iraq um that music. Music is a
Speaker 1: unique art form, and the music and pre dates you know,
Speaker 1: written language and so like, there's something about a tribal
Speaker 1: gathering with rhythm and rhyme that feels like the truth
Speaker 1: in a like something that's like deeply hardwired into our
Speaker 1: reptilian DNA that really can feel like the truth. And
Speaker 1: and that's why I think that music can steal the
Speaker 1: spine of those who are standing up to injustice. Again,
Speaker 1: put wind in the sales of movements that you feel
Speaker 1: that connected us in that same connection that I felt
Speaker 1: with a band like the Clock. I was growing up
Speaker 1: in a small town in Illinois where not a lot
Speaker 1: of people shared my point of view, you know, but
Speaker 1: there were four musicians six thousand miles away that did
Speaker 1: and it made me one feel not alone too, made
Speaker 1: me feel like these ideas that I had were not
Speaker 1: were they were global ideas, you know, they were global ideas,
Speaker 1: and that there's friends and comrades here and abroad that
Speaker 1: perhaps together we can have our hands on the steering
Speaker 1: wheel of history. And so for me, it was very
Speaker 1: frustrat like I was. I got my year old mom here,
Speaker 1: my nine year old mother in law here, so I
Speaker 1: was really like lockdown and didn't get to participate on
Speaker 1: the front lines of you know, the Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: and the George Floyd protests over the summer. I did
Speaker 1: contribute music to those and was happy to see music
Speaker 1: from some of my other bands played, you know during
Speaker 1: those as Um, your music was really among the first
Speaker 1: that I was aware of as a as a tween
Speaker 1: or young teen that was political music that didn't sound
Speaker 1: like you know, the Weavers or Woody Guthrie or or
Speaker 1: or Bob Dylan, and I um, it was actually was
Speaker 1: a teacher was my ninth grade English teacher turned me
Speaker 1: on to to to your music. She played it in
Speaker 1: class and taught us the poetry of of of what
Speaker 1: you were saying. And you know, I'll remember her and
Speaker 1: be grateful to her for the rest of my life
Speaker 1: for you know what what she what she taught us
Speaker 1: all as thirteen fourteen year old kids, I was wondering,
Speaker 1: who were some people in your life? Imagine your mother
Speaker 1: being one of them who steered you towards the good stuff.
Speaker 1: This music, you know that really has the power to
Speaker 1: to to enlighten. Yeah, well I was sad my my mom.
Speaker 1: There was music in my family, like my grandfather was
Speaker 1: a talented pianist, my great uncle played in Chicago symp
Speaker 1: the Orchestra. But I was as an only kid with
Speaker 1: a mom who was like a full time you know,
Speaker 1: with a full time job, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: She wasn't bringing home record, you know, it might have
Speaker 1: been a Temptations record or a classical record around the house.
Speaker 1: But that journey was one that I sort of had
Speaker 1: to find on my own. So you know, first for
Speaker 1: me that it was heavy metal, that was like what
Speaker 1: I responded to. First. I love comic books and that
Speaker 1: led me to kiss, and then kiss led me to
Speaker 1: this one and that one. Um, but it was. It
Speaker 1: was the message that was contained first in punk rock
Speaker 1: music and then hip hop music that made me realize
Speaker 1: that there's a that there's a a cross road. Like I,
Speaker 1: I didn't choose to be a guitar player. That chose me,
Speaker 1: and so I was kind of like stuck with this vocation.
Speaker 1: But I also had this set of ideas that I
Speaker 1: couldn't abandoned in my life's work, and so I would
Speaker 1: look to artists that had successfully merged those two the
Speaker 1: clash public enemy, um, you know. I later on sort
Speaker 1: of discovered some of the act the folk acts that
Speaker 1: you're talking about, you know, Wood he got three and uh,
Speaker 1: phil Oaks and the Weavers and whatnot. But it really
Speaker 1: was to me like the overarching lesson I think is bigger,
Speaker 1: and that is to not leave behind who you are
Speaker 1: in what you do, not just music, whether you're an interviewer,
Speaker 1: a carpenter, a student, or whatever. To not leave behind
Speaker 1: your convictions in your vocation. And I made one record
Speaker 1: I've made twenty This is the twenty one and twenty
Speaker 1: second records of my career, Fire and Fire and Flood.
Speaker 1: The first record I made was I was sort of
Speaker 1: a junior partner in a band called lock Up Before
Speaker 1: Rage Against Machine and and we kind of did everything
Speaker 1: that the record company asked us to do, and the
Speaker 1: producers suggested this, it felt like sort of counterintuitive. We
Speaker 1: got dropped from the label. You know, I was twenty
Speaker 1: seven years old. I had missed my grab at the
Speaker 1: Brass ring, but I still was a musician. I couldn't
Speaker 1: help that. That wasn't going to change. So I made
Speaker 1: a solemn vow, and that was to never again to
Speaker 1: play a note of music that I didn't believe it.
Speaker 1: And over the course of the next twenty one albums,
Speaker 1: I've held true to that, whether they're folk albums or
Speaker 1: Atlas Underground albums or Audio Slave album or whatever. Um
Speaker 1: and that's been the guiding north star, which it remains
Speaker 1: today on Fire and Flood. Do you have advice for
Speaker 1: people who, you know, maybe haven't found their voice yet
Speaker 1: and are still sort of looking for what exactly that
Speaker 1: is that they have to say or how to say it? Sure? Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that the the it's a very
Speaker 1: simple marker of success in this day and age. You know,
Speaker 1: unless you're some TikTok star, you know, that's that's a
Speaker 1: different case you have to ask somebody else about that,
Speaker 1: that's not going to But if you're a musician, I
Speaker 1: think the only measure of success these days is to
Speaker 1: play music that you love and believe it. And if
Speaker 1: you're in your basement with a couple of friends, or
Speaker 1: if you're at a stadium in Argentina, if you don't
Speaker 1: have that, you don't have anything. So like my my
Speaker 1: suggestion would be if people art need to find that
Speaker 1: what is just like right, what's true? Don't try to
Speaker 1: write like I used to try to, like write songs
Speaker 1: like that sounded like songs on the radio, or write
Speaker 1: lyrics like some of my favorite lyricists wrote rhyther than
Speaker 1: writing things that I thought you know, like right what
Speaker 1: you think, right about your situation, right about what you know,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't meant and don't here's things you don't
Speaker 1: have to be good like My entire solo career was launched.
Speaker 1: But there was a there's a place called Covenant House
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. It's a teen homeless shelter in Hollywood, and
Speaker 1: I was doing some work with them, and it was
Speaker 1: like a Thanksgiving advantage and this kid got up there,
Speaker 1: his teenager got up there and he you know, he
Speaker 1: his story was a hard one, and he got up
Speaker 1: there with you know, a guitar that was out of
Speaker 1: tune and a voice that was shaky, and it felt
Speaker 1: like he was playing like everybody's soul in the room
Speaker 1: was at stake. And I'm like, that's it, Like that's
Speaker 1: the whole thing right there. That's it. Like if you've
Speaker 1: got one moment in your life where you do that,
Speaker 1: like you've lived better than most you know, I mean
Speaker 1: being being seen, being heard and connecting. I mean I can.
Speaker 1: I'm hard pressed to think of something that's more worthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: has the last eighteen months, with all of its hardships
Speaker 1: and you know, and that's putting it mildly, has it
Speaker 1: taught you something new about yourself that you didn't know before? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: it's had one that that sort of revealed of vulnerability
Speaker 1: that I did not know was there. Like I like,
Speaker 1: I've been you know since I was seventeen years old,
Speaker 1: have worked with a manic motor on music and this
Speaker 1: that big projects but whatever, and it read me made
Speaker 1: me really realized that like that there's you know, I
Speaker 1: was sort of it was really tough, Like the first
Speaker 1: that first year was really really challenging in ways that
Speaker 1: like I'm always the fixer, and I'm the type a guy,
Speaker 1: and I'm the here's the plan, and this is what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do, and all of a sudden, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if Thursday is gonna be okay this week?
Speaker 1: You know. Um, but I did. I did find that
Speaker 1: the music was a, if not an entirely redemptive outlet,
Speaker 1: it certainly was a lifeline and it was something to
Speaker 1: hold onto that provided a you know, like like a
Speaker 1: sense of self that that reminded me of, you know,
Speaker 1: at the core of who I am, regardless of the
Speaker 1: particular circumstances of the day, and without getting too personally,
Speaker 1: everybody's good and I know your mom just had a
Speaker 1: birthday recently. Everybody's good, healthy, feeling good. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my mom is. I were doing this in my studio
Speaker 1: is in my mom's basement. So once again I'm playing
Speaker 1: guitar in my mom's basement like I did when I
Speaker 1: was seventeen years old. And she still has like critical
Speaker 1: comments about what she hears through the roof from told
Speaker 1: me just to She's like, I'm not sure about that
Speaker 1: second song today, Tom, And like thanks, thank you for
Speaker 1: your input. There were Yeah, well now that we're you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully coming out of this whatever you have, you wanted
Speaker 1: to define this. Um, yes, you have plans to do
Speaker 1: a an Atlas Underground tour when the Pandemics had a
Speaker 1: subsize after the sort of rescheduled rage dates and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's no there's no plan on the books
Speaker 1: right now. I mean I was I was very heartened
Speaker 1: by one of the first Alace Underground record had twenty
Speaker 1: collaborators on it, and I was able to craft a
Speaker 1: tour of Sean Evans, who is the artistic director for
Speaker 1: Roger Waters. He did the Wall tour and the US
Speaker 1: and Them tour. We put it. We didn't have the
Speaker 1: same budget. We put a tour together that you know
Speaker 1: that you didn't miss the fact that they weren't all
Speaker 1: there was like sort of part illegal rave, part like art,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of underground art ex Barbara Cruger art exhibition,
Speaker 1: part heavy metal mash mosh pit. And so there is
Speaker 1: a wave a way to really tour this creatively. But
Speaker 1: right now I'm looking forward to getting this music out.
Speaker 1: It's a really important like there there's you know, during
Speaker 1: an inhumane time. Music can really restore a sense of humanity.
Speaker 1: And but part of that, part of that process isn't
Speaker 1: just It isn't writing just writing music. It isn't making music.
Speaker 1: It's putting it out and connecting, you know, and knowing
Speaker 1: that someone's here. And again, it can be three people
Speaker 1: in a basement, or it can be you know, a
Speaker 1: billion streams of a kpo. It's like connection that that
Speaker 1: that solidifies the experience, as you know. And so making
Speaker 1: this music has been great, but it's not complete until
Speaker 1: it's out in the world and it's available for you
Speaker 1: to listen to or download illegally or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to do. It's full circle for you. It started with
Speaker 1: you connecting with you know, Bruce or whoever, and then
Speaker 1: now it's other people connecting to it from you. I Uh,
Speaker 1: before we go, I have to ask, it's been you know,
Speaker 1: a month and a half and you release the Atlas
Speaker 1: Underground fire, the Atlas Underground flood. Is there an Atlas
Speaker 1: Underground earthquake or an Atlas Underground hurricane or any other
Speaker 1: element there? But I said, let's hope we don't go
Speaker 1: back into lockdown. So I just like I do, look
Speaker 1: forward to really, you know, and it has been certainly
Speaker 1: the longest since I've been on stage, and that you
Speaker 1: know that the live rocking field, whether it's a folk
Speaker 1: concert or whether it's a big, bombastic Marshall Stack concert,
Speaker 1: like that feeling of connection and sort of the the
Speaker 1: unpredictability of the live experience. That's what I'm hoping two
Speaker 1: is all about. Right on a second beat, sir, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your music and your time today.
Speaker 1: It's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for
Speaker 1: your thoughtful questioning, and thanks to everybody out there cheers.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of
Speaker 1: Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows, check out the
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Speaker 1: to your favorite podcast.