Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: The magic of Dave Grohl isn't just that he's one
Speaker 2: of rock music's great rack and tours, or that he's
Speaker 2: one of the greatest drummers in frontman of the last
Speaker 2: thirty plus years. It lies instead in the sheer number
Speaker 2: of lives he's gotten to live within rock and roll.
Speaker 2: I mean, just think about his trajectory. Girl starts out
Speaker 2: as a drummer of one of DC's great, if not
Speaker 2: underrated hardcore band's scream mingling with Ian Mackay and all
Speaker 2: the other amazing discord artists from that time. Then he
Speaker 2: joins Nirvana, where he more than makes his mark as
Speaker 2: a drummer for one of the most consequential bands since
Speaker 2: the Beatles, not only changing music forever, but also becoming
Speaker 2: an indelible part of the story of Seattle's music scene
Speaker 2: that forget about grunge and subpop for a second, goes
Speaker 2: all the way back to Jimmy Hendricks and Quincy Jones.
Speaker 2: And then if that one enough, Girl launches one of
Speaker 2: the most successful acts of the post Nirvana Boom Foo Fighters,
Speaker 2: which he does literally single handedly, and Prince or Stevie
Speaker 2: Wonder like fashion write and recording every song on the
Speaker 2: debut himself, except for some guitar work by Greg Dooley
Speaker 2: from the Great Afghan Whigs. And then when it's time
Speaker 2: to fill out the band, he gets to pulling guys
Speaker 2: like Nate Mendel from Sunny Day Real Estate and Pat
Speaker 2: Smear from the Germs in Nirvana, and all the other
Speaker 2: really talented and interesting guys that have joined the group
Speaker 2: over the years. It's almost an embarrassment of riches, but
Speaker 2: then God Dave Girl realizes it and relishes the opportunity
Speaker 2: to tell stories from his remarkable career. We're sitting down
Speaker 2: with Grol at the Foo Fighter Studio to talk about
Speaker 2: their twelfth album, Your Favorite Toy. We talked about all
Speaker 2: of it, including how their new album came together, but
Speaker 2: we started with the story that I've always wanted to
Speaker 2: ask him about. It's from a song from his first
Speaker 2: solo project, he called Late, from an album called Pocketwatch
Speaker 2: that to this day has only ever seen a cassette release.
Speaker 2: This is Broken Record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's my
Speaker 2: interview with Dave Grohl. Head over to YouTube dot com
Speaker 2: slash Broken Record Podcast if you want to see the video.
Speaker 1: Walking through here. It's like a Hall.
Speaker 2: Of You and Barry Manilow amazing. You know, there's so
Speaker 2: many little gems. As you walk through. One of the things,
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, I'll start with it just because
Speaker 2: so I don't forget it is the pocket Watch album.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, story of Skeeter Thompson actual true story.
Speaker 1: That is a true story.
Speaker 3: That was when I first started recording stuff on my
Speaker 3: own in a studio. My friend Barrett Jones, that was
Speaker 3: actually the first person I ever recorded with when I
Speaker 3: was fourteen years old. He had like a four track
Speaker 3: studio in the laundry room of his parents' house, and
Speaker 3: through friends of friends, we wound up recording our first demo,
Speaker 3: this punk band I was in called Freak Baby, and
Speaker 3: we we recorded four songs in his laundry room, like
Speaker 3: the drums were in his bedroom and the vocals were
Speaker 3: in the bathroom and whatever. Over time we became really
Speaker 3: close friends, and he upgraded to an eight track and
Speaker 3: still had a studio in his house.
Speaker 1: But it was around then that.
Speaker 3: I realized like, oh, if there's eight tracks, I could
Speaker 3: lay down a drum track and then put a bass
Speaker 3: over it, and then put some guitars over it, and
Speaker 3: then put a vocal on it, and it'll sound like
Speaker 3: a band even though it's just one person. And I
Speaker 3: kind of understood multi tracking from when I was really little.
Speaker 3: I had two cassette decks and I would record a
Speaker 3: drum thing on this one cassette on a boom box,
Speaker 3: and then I'd take and the drums were pots and pans,
Speaker 3: and then I would put that in this stereo and
Speaker 3: hit record on this one. Hit play on the drum thing,
Speaker 3: play guitar along with it, and then I'd have this
Speaker 3: cassette that would have drums and guitar on it, and
Speaker 3: I'd take the cassette and put it in that and
Speaker 3: just sort of like bounce.
Speaker 1: That way back, yeah, beatlestyle, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I understood like the concept of multi tracking, but
Speaker 3: then I thought like, oh wow, this is like an
Speaker 3: eight track studio. And my friend Barrett I would always
Speaker 3: say like, hey, do you have any tape left at
Speaker 3: the end of that reel, Like, yeah, probably have like
Speaker 3: a couple of minutes, and I would go in really
Speaker 3: quickly so it's to not waste his time. I usually
Speaker 3: had everything worked out in my head and I would
Speaker 3: just blast a drum track really quick, put two guitars
Speaker 3: on it, a bass on it, and then bring it
Speaker 3: home and listen to it. And that's when I realized, like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I could, like I couldn't write songs
Speaker 3: and record them and make it sound like a band,
Speaker 3: even though I didn't necessarily like the way I sang.
Speaker 3: I didn't think I was a great guitar player, but
Speaker 3: it was this fun experiment.
Speaker 1: So I was.
Speaker 2: Recording songwriter at the point, did you write songs for
Speaker 2: like and you spare time for fun?
Speaker 3: I mean I was writing songs about my dog when
Speaker 3: I was eleven years old, and you know, I had
Speaker 3: journals and stuff, and I was, you know, a complicated
Speaker 3: teenager of writing all of this shit that I considered
Speaker 3: poetry but it was just not And so I was
Speaker 3: just starting to kind of explore this new way of
Speaker 3: expressing myself for just like a new to me. It
Speaker 3: was almost like a puzzle, like a game, just seeing
Speaker 3: how far I could take it. Like I only had
Speaker 3: eight tracks to deal with, so I couldn't, you know,
Speaker 3: I couldn't do this, but anyway, so like a song
Speaker 3: like that was just something recorded for fun. And that
Speaker 3: pocket Watch cassette was the first time I released music
Speaker 3: on my own, but it was a cassette only release.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many they made.
Speaker 1: Only ever come out on cassette.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a friend of ours. So this is
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. In the early nineties. Everybody had
Speaker 3: a record label, right yea, and the DC scene was
Speaker 3: was amazing because it was it was very independent and
Speaker 3: the ambition was really pure. It was to create good music,
Speaker 3: to create art to be shared, but also to sort
Speaker 3: of like foster this community and scene. It wasn't a
Speaker 3: huge scene, but it was a really like a strong
Speaker 3: and connected scene of friends and really creative people. So
Speaker 3: a girl named Jenny Toomy, she was the one with
Speaker 3: the Simple Machines.
Speaker 1: Label. That one was Simple Machines. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But at the same time I was in Nirvana. I'm like,
Speaker 3: why would I want to complicate my musical experience by
Speaker 3: putting out something like the story of Skeeter Thompson, the
Speaker 3: bass player of Scream, which is just an instrumental with
Speaker 3: a spoken word over it, and it's a true story,
Speaker 3: but it's ridiculous. While I'm in this other band with
Speaker 3: one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and I
Speaker 3: get to just bang away at the drums behind this
Speaker 3: amazing songwriter and it's pure and it's beautiful, and it
Speaker 3: was powerful and it sounded good. I saw all of
Speaker 3: the things that I do now. They were like my
Speaker 3: little side project thing that if I needed to blow
Speaker 3: off steam, I would just record things on my own,
Speaker 3: but never never wanted to.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's the famous drummer joke. Was the last thing the
Speaker 3: drummer said before he got kicked out of the band. Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: I have a song that I think we should play
Speaker 3: like That's I knew that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I lived that because you do. Did it happen?
Speaker 1: Scream ever?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Were you ever trying to? Like?
Speaker 3: Scream was very collaborative in that the guys in the band,
Speaker 3: they were older than me. They're you know, eight ten
Speaker 3: years older than me, but they've grown up with each other.
Speaker 3: They were best friends through high school and stuff. So
Speaker 3: Franz the guitarist was a great guitar player, is a
Speaker 3: great guitar player, and a great songwriter. Pete was and
Speaker 3: it is a great singer and a great lyricist songwriter.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: At the time when Screamed, before I joined the band,
Speaker 3: they were one band in Washington, DC that was far
Speaker 3: more kind of musical and rock and roll than a
Speaker 3: lot of the other bands in town. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 3: one of the things I loved about them. Like I
Speaker 3: loved the Bad Brains, I loved you know, the Dead
Speaker 3: Kennedy's and Minor Threat and all of the early hardcore bras.
Speaker 3: But I loved Foght Yeah, you know, like I loved Zeppelin.
Speaker 3: I was a rock and roll kid from the suburbs.
Speaker 3: Scream were sort of that band that put all those
Speaker 3: things together. But when we would collaborate, we really did
Speaker 3: have that thing when a specific group of people get
Speaker 3: together and play, it makes a specific sound. And so
Speaker 3: that connection, not only musically but as people as friends
Speaker 3: was really strong.
Speaker 2: Those are great records, and your drumming on those are
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like in your book you tell a
Speaker 2: great story about Skeeter basically changing to the drum set
Speaker 2: and they wanted to play a groove over and over
Speaker 2: like can or something, you know, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically, I mean before I joined Scream, I was
Speaker 3: like a wild horse. I was just reckless, and of
Speaker 3: course I wanted to have tempo, I wanted to have feel,
Speaker 3: but I was like a hyperactive child, you know, and
Speaker 3: you give me a drum set and something's gonna break
Speaker 3: and it's gonna maybe be faster than it should and
Speaker 3: I'm probably going to fill up those empty spaces with
Speaker 3: things that only I love.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So basically, Skeeter sat me down and when I first
Speaker 3: joined the band and he said, we're gonna smoke a
Speaker 3: joint and we're gonna play this one riff for half
Speaker 3: an hour and you're not.
Speaker 1: Going to do a drum fill.
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, okay, great, and we sat down
Speaker 3: and I don't remember what it was. It was a
Speaker 3: simple groove and almost like an itch that I needed
Speaker 3: to scratch. Within thirty seconds, I blasted some drum fill
Speaker 3: and he looked at me and kind of winked, like, no,
Speaker 3: you can't do that. You gotta stay on it, and
Speaker 3: he broke me like a horse and it really worked.
Speaker 3: It was it was my one valuable drum lesson was
Speaker 3: from a bass player.
Speaker 1: Well of course, right, I mean fucking of course now,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, back then, I was like, wait, what just happened?
Speaker 1: That's so funny, man.
Speaker 2: And but you know, like you listen to the records,
Speaker 2: You're like, oh yeah, like you can hear that, like
Speaker 2: you're an unchained maniac in some way. You were at
Speaker 2: one point because the power is there, like you know,
Speaker 2: it's like the fucking powers there.
Speaker 1: But then there is like a restraint and a groove
Speaker 1: on those records.
Speaker 3: Have you ever been to You probably haven't. The The
Speaker 3: engineer producer that made most of the DC records is
Speaker 3: a man named Donzie and Tara so Donzie. He was
Speaker 3: like the first person to record the Bad Brains. He
Speaker 3: was the first person to record all of the discord stuff,
Speaker 3: all of that stuff. It was in a room about
Speaker 3: a fifth the size of this room, this tiny room.
Speaker 3: You know, they're recording analog to tape. I don't know
Speaker 3: what machine he had, but it was not only like
Speaker 3: spatial restriction, the basement of a house in Arlington residential neighborhood.
Speaker 3: And when you listen to like some of those for
Speaker 3: Gazi recordings where you've got that incredible band tracking live
Speaker 3: in a space the size of like a bath towel,
Speaker 3: and you listen to it and it sounds so huge.
Speaker 3: And one of the reasons why it sounds so huge
Speaker 3: is because it's the combination and energy of those people
Speaker 3: in that moment, so sonically, like the sonic element has
Speaker 3: a lot to do with it, but beyond that, it's
Speaker 3: the energy of what's happening between those people in that moment,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of how we would record. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean it's the same thing like when we recorded
Speaker 3: the one picture we took from the studio.
Speaker 1: There's only one picture.
Speaker 3: I swear to god, there's maybe three pictures, Like one
Speaker 3: of them is the three of us in the control room.
Speaker 3: That was the drum setup for recording. Nevermind. The reason
Speaker 3: why it worked is because when we recorded live, you know,
Speaker 3: those songs, we just we'd count in it and we'd do it.
Speaker 3: We'd do a couple of takes, and then we didn't
Speaker 3: have a lot of time, so we had to move
Speaker 3: on to the we're only there for twelve days or
Speaker 3: whatever it was anyway, so that's a really important part
Speaker 3: of the process that lends to the the energy of
Speaker 3: a song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that picture brings joy to my heart
Speaker 2: because I look like that's simple, like Mike set up
Speaker 2: for you know, it's just that's fucking perfect.
Speaker 1: Well, it was also that room, and it was also
Speaker 1: this board and so.
Speaker 2: Which is a long way from the boom box dubbing exactly.
Speaker 3: If I had this when I was eleven, O fucking Beethoven,
Speaker 3: we'd be a lot further along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hard to imagine, just to put a pin on it, though,
Speaker 2: Hold on real quick, Okay.
Speaker 1: Is this puss? It's link, It's kind of it's like
Speaker 1: a vulgar story. It's great, it's hilarious.
Speaker 3: So we were in Amsterdam. That's exactly how the song begins.
Speaker 3: Whatever screen would tour Europe. I think I was like
Speaker 3: eighteen years old the first time I went. Amsterdam is
Speaker 3: our home base, not only for obvious reasons, but because
Speaker 3: we had a good friend there, a guy named Toss,
Speaker 3: had an apartment, and so we would go there to
Speaker 3: prepare for a tour. We'd go there and we'd start
Speaker 3: rounding up equipment because there's no way we could fly
Speaker 3: our back line equipment too.
Speaker 1: We had no money.
Speaker 3: We'd fly standby on this airline called Martinair. It was amazing.
Speaker 3: You could fly out of BWI for ninety nine dollars
Speaker 3: out of BWI and you could reserve a stand by ticket,
Speaker 3: which is weird because usually if you fly stand by,
Speaker 3: you sit and wait and cross your fingers. Martinair it
Speaker 3: was a Dutch airline Martinair. They would tell you whether
Speaker 3: you're on the flight or not, like two days before
Speaker 3: the flight, so you basically reserve a seats for ninety
Speaker 3: nine bucks. So we would all work our jobs at home.
Speaker 3: I worked on a furniture warehouse. Pete worked at the
Speaker 3: Washington Post delivering papers, and we get ninety nine bucks
Speaker 3: and we'd get our tickets and get over to Amsterdam
Speaker 3: but have nothing, and we would sleep on Toss's floor.
Speaker 3: We'd sort of try to pick up odd jobs to
Speaker 3: make a little bit of money. And how did you
Speaker 3: know Toss scream New Toss? I think I think from
Speaker 3: the first time day before I joined the band. They
Speaker 3: toured Europe in maybe like nineteen eighty three or eighty
Speaker 3: five or something, but so yeah, they just met Toss scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that was.
Speaker 3: Sort of like that networking community those days. People helped
Speaker 3: each other out. There's always a Florida crash on and
Speaker 3: if he didn't have a guitar, there was always one
Speaker 3: that someone would end.
Speaker 1: So Skeeter.
Speaker 3: One day, as I was sitting on the couch listening
Speaker 3: to Tossa's amazing record collection, Skeeter walks up to me
Speaker 3: with his dick in his hand, and I think he
Speaker 3: was afraid that he had maybe contracted a nasty problem.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Skeeter. I don't want to call Skeeter out.
Speaker 3: And he said, does that look like pusty? And I said, nah,
Speaker 3: I think it's lint. And so it's so perfectly delivered
Speaker 3: on this song. Well, here's the thing, it's I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm never short for words, first of all, I never
Speaker 3: have been. And I didn't know what to sing over
Speaker 3: this crazy like metal instrumental thing that I had done.
Speaker 3: So I decided just to tell a story. That was
Speaker 3: the story.
Speaker 1: But long.
Speaker 2: Hey, if you're long winded, you figured out to be
Speaker 2: really concise and economical.
Speaker 1: It's all about the timing. All the timing perfect. It
Speaker 1: was perfect. And then I saw the.
Speaker 2: Classic Cheech and Chong it's Dave, Oh my god, maybe
Speaker 2: that must be I remember listening to Cheech and Chong
Speaker 2: records when I was in.
Speaker 1: Like sixth grade. It's weird, life.
Speaker 3: Kind of changed around like ten or eleven years old,
Speaker 3: where you know, I had Beatles records, and I had
Speaker 3: Kiss records, and I had Rush records, and pre punk rock,
Speaker 3: I was listening to Cheech and Chong records which are amazing,
Speaker 3: and Days Not Here, that comic that's upstairs, and all
Speaker 3: those bits on those records are so funny. And then
Speaker 3: I went to a movie theater with my friend Larry Hinkle,
Speaker 3: He's my best friend. We went one night to a
Speaker 3: midnight movie and we saw a C d c's Let
Speaker 3: There Be Rock Tour Moving, which is an ACDC performance
Speaker 3: in I think Paris from maybe seventy nine. It was
Speaker 3: just before bon Scott, the original singer, passed away, and
Speaker 3: their performance was so.
Speaker 1: Moving.
Speaker 3: It was so it was the first time I'd seen
Speaker 3: and it was in a movie theater with a concert
Speaker 3: pa in the theaters, Me and Larry and like three
Speaker 3: other people in the backs who were smoking weed and
Speaker 3: watching this ACDC performance. It was like their life depended
Speaker 3: on it. Angus Young is running, sweating, getting oxygen because
Speaker 3: he's going so hard that the drummer Phil Rudd, he's
Speaker 3: just breaking through snares and putting new snares up. And
Speaker 3: it was like it was the first time I felt
Speaker 3: in my body that I wanted to explode. As much
Speaker 3: as I loved the complexity and the beauty and the
Speaker 3: melody of like the Beatles and things like that this
Speaker 3: just made me want to fucking tear the movie theater down,
Speaker 3: and that sort of like set this spark in me.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't long after that that I discovered punk
Speaker 3: rock music and I was like, I'm home. Okay, great,
Speaker 3: I found the thing that unlocks the thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: got the key now, so what am I gonna do.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how closely related those things are, because you know,
Speaker 2: after a certain point, by the time I got into
Speaker 2: punk rock, it was like verbot and to like, you know,
Speaker 2: like God forbid you listen to like a Ted Nugent
Speaker 2: record or something you know, but then you and then
Speaker 2: you like watching an interview with like Henry Rollins, He's like.
Speaker 3: He fucking loves Ted Nugent, Like, oh, he and Ian Mackay,
Speaker 3: I've had long debates. Actually it's funny. Ian Ian's old
Speaker 3: friend and he was you know, he's honestly one of
Speaker 3: my heroes in life. He's such an incredible person, incredible man.
Speaker 3: His truth and integrity and purity and creativity and the
Speaker 3: way he lives is like he's a righteous dude. He's
Speaker 3: amazing to this day, incredible to this day. So we've
Speaker 3: had long conversations about Ted Nugent. I'm like, are you
Speaker 3: really Ian? He's like yeah, man, like I guess he
Speaker 3: and had we went to go see him. Play's like,
Speaker 3: here's this guy. He jumps out on stage with his guitar.
Speaker 3: It's loud as shit, he's wearing a loincloth and he's
Speaker 3: screaming his fucking brains on his hairs out to here.
Speaker 1: He goes, yeah, Ted Nugent.
Speaker 3: And so last year, for Ian's birthday, I got him
Speaker 3: a cameo from Ted Nugent No louking way, yeah, and
Speaker 3: it blew Ian's mind. I don't even think Ian knew
Speaker 3: what cameo was. And of course, like you have to
Speaker 3: sort of prompt the cameo say it's my friend Ian's birthday.
Speaker 3: He's a struggling musician and an avid bow hunter or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like I, oh, yeah, I went there. He was just like,
Speaker 1: how did you do that? How does this? I'm like, en,
Speaker 1: It's like he's like an app you just played it.
Speaker 1: He's like blue is mine. He was super into it.
Speaker 1: Gee was not apparently. I would like to imagine at
Speaker 1: some point Ted Nugent realized that was really for.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what's funny actually recently. I could say
Speaker 3: this now because Ian acknowledged it the other day. You
Speaker 3: know about the Albini Fugazi that came out recently. It's phenomenal.
Speaker 3: It's testament to how Steve Albini could take something to
Speaker 3: an entire, entirely different place. Like I'd never heard Fugazi
Speaker 3: sound like that. That record is a masterpiece and it's
Speaker 3: so incredibly powerful, and you know, everybody had heard it
Speaker 3: was rumored that they made a record with Albini. But anyway,
Speaker 3: so when it came out on band camp, it was like,
Speaker 3: you know, nine ninety nine ten bucks or whatever, and
Speaker 3: you could donate money to a charity that was Albini's
Speaker 3: like favorite charity. So I buy the record and then
Speaker 3: I donate a bunch of money to the charity. But
Speaker 3: then you can also write a message to the band,
Speaker 3: and I said, thank you for finally releasing these Albini sessions.
Speaker 3: Currently listening to your album from my monster truck as
Speaker 3: I shoot flaming arrows at targets, love Ted Nugent, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, he's going to see this. It took it
Speaker 3: took about three weeks, and I just got the text
Speaker 3: the other day He's like, hey, nuge, thanks for the donation.
Speaker 3: I just texted back, I said, God bless America. But
Speaker 3: but right, so, no, the I mean both of these
Speaker 3: things can be true. These two things can coexist. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I think one of the complications in a
Speaker 3: lot of that punk rock list of ethos, ethics, whatever,
Speaker 3: it was like can't do this, can't do that, can't
Speaker 3: do this one of the things. Of course, like there
Speaker 3: were there were elements of that music where I was
Speaker 3: really inspired emotionally, personally, politically, all of those things, especially
Speaker 3: at that time in the eighties, Like I mean, we're here,
Speaker 3: we are again, but still like.
Speaker 1: It seems quaint almost r so, like the world needs
Speaker 1: punk rock now more than ever. I think it's coming back.
Speaker 1: I'm telling the guitar is coming back. I hope, so
Speaker 1: fucking world needs guitars.
Speaker 3: But there was also the musicale When I learned how
Speaker 3: to play the drums, it was literally sitting on a
Speaker 3: floor in front of a couch, playing on pillows. But
Speaker 3: I could hear like Earl from the Bad Brains, I
Speaker 3: could hear the difference between him and John Bonham and
Speaker 3: Jeff Nelson from Minor Threat and Stuart Copeland, and so
Speaker 3: there was something about the musicality in all of their
Speaker 3: individual feel that I was like that to me was
Speaker 3: the challenge, like just go up there and like screamshit,
Speaker 3: Like go up there and like push it, to push
Speaker 3: as far as you can. And even in writing a song,
Speaker 3: don't just stop there, like keep going. Sometimes it should
Speaker 3: stop there. But like a lot of the musicality I
Speaker 3: think came from those early rock and roll records, classic rock.
Speaker 3: Then the energy and the intention of punk rock. You
Speaker 3: put those two things together and you have a Pigazzi record.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, We'll be back with
Speaker 2: more from Dave Girl.
Speaker 1: It's a good time to bring up.
Speaker 2: You guys are gonna go out on the road, and
Speaker 2: you guys have some incredible openers, I mean to the
Speaker 2: point to your point of like the world needs punk rock,
Speaker 2: Like you guys have some great openers, and I feel
Speaker 2: like mannequin pussy de Spits. I don't know if I'm
Speaker 2: saying that right, but de Spits. I don't speak you
Speaker 2: German or whatever, but.
Speaker 1: There we go. Whatever you can figure it out. It's
Speaker 1: just a little band called Queens stone Age or Queens
Speaker 1: of the Stone Age. There we go.
Speaker 2: I know, I feel like it does feel like you know,
Speaker 2: when I was thinking back about your career, it's like
Speaker 2: it's so it's like incredible, Like you're in DC and
Speaker 2: there's that saying it's Ian Mackay and you got bands
Speaker 2: like Scream, and then you come out to LA and
Speaker 2: there's like, you know, the whole LA thing, and then
Speaker 2: you up to see out and there's down of course,
Speaker 2: and then you get out of there and you're starting
Speaker 2: the food fighters and say, oh, Nate from fucking something
Speaker 2: you did really say and then at some point and say,
Speaker 2: oh no use for a name like Litis grab Chris.
Speaker 2: And it's like there used to just be such a
Speaker 2: a like a wherever every town had this incredible network
Speaker 2: of musicians, and it felt like that was like splintered
Speaker 2: for a long time. But it feels I'm hoping that
Speaker 2: slowly is coming back. I mean, that's one of the
Speaker 2: things that's sort of amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you kind of caught the last tree out
Speaker 1: of nom of helicopters. Nomen has sense like you kind
Speaker 1: of were.
Speaker 2: Like you got to have that and work from that,
Speaker 2: and it just sort of went away.
Speaker 3: Which is well, it's a trip because I think there
Speaker 3: was like sort of necessity in connectivity, you know, those
Speaker 3: punk rock scenes. First of all, the thing that I
Speaker 3: really loved about it back then that there was like
Speaker 3: there was this regional element to music. It's like if
Speaker 3: you if a band was coming from Minneapolis, you're like, Oh,
Speaker 3: they've got that Minneapolis thing, Decroitz and or Husker Do
Speaker 3: or whatever stuff like that, or southern California the SST
Speaker 3: record stuff. You're like, oh, it's an SST record. All right,
Speaker 3: here we go, like what's this gonna be. It's gonna
Speaker 3: be weird, it's gonna be heavy, it's gonna be loud.
Speaker 3: And then over time, as things became more inter connected,
Speaker 3: it's not that that that regional aspect or element of
Speaker 3: the music disappeared. Things just sort of, you know, spread
Speaker 3: faster and quicker. But the community. I still feel like
Speaker 3: there is community in music. And it's funny because I
Speaker 3: do feel like there's community in underground music as much
Speaker 3: as I feel like there's community in like bigger, skip
Speaker 3: broader scale like pop and things like that. Because I
Speaker 3: feel like musicians should stick together. Right If you put
Speaker 3: two musicians in a room in front of a board
Speaker 3: and we're talking about albums and stuff or just music,
Speaker 3: you're gonna find common ground. You know, I probably have
Speaker 3: an easier time speaking with a musician than I would
Speaker 3: like a lawyer or a football player or something like that.
Speaker 3: So I do think that there is there is this
Speaker 3: this common ground community in most musicians. Now with the
Speaker 3: interconnectivity of everything, it's just just it's a different world.
Speaker 3: But I do think, and you know, I watch someone
Speaker 3: like my daughter Violet or my daughter Harper. They're both musical,
Speaker 3: and they both reside in this really awesome place with
Speaker 3: their friends, and a lot of them are tons of musicians.
Speaker 3: Like there's drummers and there's guitar players, and this guy
Speaker 3: has a studio and this band's playing a show. Actually,
Speaker 3: oh my god. Recently I went and saw Max's band.
Speaker 3: Max's sixteen, seventeen years old. He and my daughter Harper
Speaker 3: are like this. And his band was playing at this
Speaker 3: place that is a skate shop that sort of packs
Speaker 3: up and pushes everything to this side so that they
Speaker 3: can have punk rock shows at night. There's no door charge,
Speaker 3: but you can donate if you want. And so I
Speaker 3: went to go see Max's band. They're all probably around
Speaker 3: seventeen eighteen years old. It's a three piece. I didn't
Speaker 3: know what to expect. Max is a great drummer.
Speaker 1: I walk in.
Speaker 3: There's maybe thirty or forty people there, and all the
Speaker 3: kids from the bands are watching everybody else's band, which
Speaker 3: to me, that's like, that's that's that's the thing. They
Speaker 3: start setting up and this singer guitar player guy I
Speaker 3: don't remember his name, he unsip this duffel bag and
Speaker 3: he pulls out this line of pedals that looks like
Speaker 3: almost like like Christmas lights. He's it was like nineteen pedals.
Speaker 3: He pulls out and.
Speaker 1: They're all kind it's all tangled up, and he's like.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh my god, here we go. And they
Speaker 3: get a thing set up and then he just goes
Speaker 3: crazy sound of cue. I think he's playing like a
Speaker 3: Jaguar or something like that. And wow, and now all
Speaker 3: of a sudden it's like Hendricks at Woodstock. I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, what is happening right now? And then
Speaker 3: he just goes playing, and all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 3: like it's giving like Dinosaur Junior melodies chords.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, this is great. The other
Speaker 1: two aren't even in the club.
Speaker 3: Yet then he's playing the song the two and I'm
Speaker 3: standing by the front door. The two of them walk
Speaker 3: into the front door into the place. Through the front door,
Speaker 3: they get on their instruments and they just start going
Speaker 3: for like five minutes. I'm just like, now it's like Swans. Now,
Speaker 3: I'm just like, oh my god, this is insane. So
Speaker 3: eventually it's total chaos and it's beautiful. And the guitar
Speaker 3: player and he gets his guitar. There's maybe forty people
Speaker 3: there in a really small room. He gets his guitar
Speaker 3: and he's pulling it through the crowd on the well.
Speaker 3: First he's handing his guitar to everybody, everybody's playing it.
Speaker 3: He's pulling it through the crowd by like the guitar
Speaker 3: on the floor is just running. So now the audience
Speaker 3: is split in two. And there's this like like the
Speaker 3: Red Sea. There's this aisle where he's just running back
Speaker 3: and forth dragging his guitar around. It's the most insane, beautiful,
Speaker 3: chaotic feedback. It's like he's making music. It's just chaos,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, oh my god. Now it's the Nation
Speaker 3: of Ulysses. Now I'm just like, oh my God, this
Speaker 3: is I'm am.
Speaker 1: I eighteen again.
Speaker 3: This is insane, back and forth, back and forth, and
Speaker 3: those guys are and then all of a sudden, I'm
Speaker 3: looking around, like where the fuck did that guy go?
Speaker 3: And the front door opens up and he comes running
Speaker 3: through that he'd run around the block as the guitars
Speaker 3: on the ground going, and then the show ends in
Speaker 3: the most climactic I was so inspired, but I was
Speaker 3: also reassured because I'm like, great, it still exists. So
Speaker 3: there's moments where you think like maybe it's gone. Maybe
Speaker 3: that thing that you feel at that age, independence, you know, identity.
Speaker 3: Here in this place, you're not a little kid anymore.
Speaker 3: You get to decide who you want to be. If
Speaker 3: you're lucky, and you've got this community of people that
Speaker 3: are like living, they're like, let's do this with each
Speaker 3: other and for each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh it was so great. Does that something like
Speaker 1: that too? Does it? Does it still? Do you leave there?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Fuck it? I want to go to this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just pick up my guitar.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I can't wait to go home
Speaker 3: and write some songs. Wow, you know, yeah, absolutely totally inspiring.
Speaker 1: That's kind of I mean not necessarily that.
Speaker 2: I don't know if something like that inspired this record,
Speaker 2: but the new record Foo Fighter's Records.
Speaker 1: Understand, did come from you just writing a bunch of songs.
Speaker 3: It's weird because so we've made a bunch of records,
Speaker 3: and we've moved in different directions like almost on each record,
Speaker 3: because this is the first record, it's like there's Weenie
Speaker 3: Beanie and that's my version of a ministry song, you know.
Speaker 3: And then there's like big Me and that's my version
Speaker 3: of a you know, candy commercial or a Silly Kinks
Speaker 3: song or something. And then a song like I'll Stick
Speaker 3: Around or this is a call, like that's more sort
Speaker 3: of like that's that's my screen. That's it's like the
Speaker 3: scream part of my heart right that's there. And then
Speaker 3: the second record there's like really beautiful Moment February Stars
Speaker 3: very sort of like big sort of emotional anthemic kind
Speaker 3: of vibes. And then the third record it's like there's
Speaker 3: elements like ain't it the Life? It's almost like a
Speaker 3: fucking Eagles song or so, I don't know, it's weird
Speaker 3: because that's what I'm saying, like you push, you know,
Speaker 3: and you want to see how where you can go
Speaker 3: with what you've got, right. So then over time you
Speaker 3: have this like really wide playing field dynamic where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: is this like a sleepy acoustic thing? The fuck we've
Speaker 3: done that? Is this like some noisy ass, like screaming
Speaker 3: ass punk rock song.
Speaker 1: We've done that? Man?
Speaker 3: Is this like you know some orchestral weird you know,
Speaker 3: Zeppelin presence wanna be thing? We kind of did that,
Speaker 3: you know. And so you wind up in a place
Speaker 3: where you can't over analyze or overthink things because it
Speaker 3: will overcomplicate stuff. You just go with what you feel
Speaker 3: at the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
Speaker 3: And so as we were making these songs, I had
Speaker 3: this bank of demos that I'd made. It was like
Speaker 3: forty or fifty things, just instrumentals, because still I'll walk upstairs,
Speaker 3: put down a drum track, put some guitars on it.
Speaker 3: Just like another story about Skeeter Thompson. I have an instrumental,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, what am I going to do with this?
Speaker 3: And so I have this bank of like fifty of them.
Speaker 3: It's almost looking in the pantry and you have sixty
Speaker 3: different ingredients. Pick ten of those ingredients and see what
Speaker 3: you can cook up that's key's mallah and some don't
Speaker 3: work with each other.
Speaker 1: So what you do? And so that's basically what happens.
Speaker 1: So how do you filter it?
Speaker 2: Do you pick like your first couple of favorites and
Speaker 2: start to see what kind of works with those, or
Speaker 2: like you just pick a like twenty and start to whittle.
Speaker 3: Well, what happened was I was lying there in bed
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night just listening to these
Speaker 3: down and I was like, Okay, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: That verge is good. Oh, I like the pattern on.
Speaker 3: That blah blah blah, and I'm just going down random sequence.
Speaker 3: That's kind of cool. I like that blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: And then randomly there were ten songs in a row
Speaker 3: that were just like boom boom boom boom boom.
Speaker 1: Just sequenced already like that.
Speaker 3: Basically yeah, And I was like, oh, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: why would I want to throw stay away to the
Speaker 3: heaven and in the middle of rock for light, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? Like, it's like then that you can't.
Speaker 3: And I literally text everybody at five o'clock in the
Speaker 3: morning and I was like, Okay, I think this is
Speaker 3: what we should do. And let's start tomorrow at ten
Speaker 3: o'clock in the morning, Jesus, and we just blasted it out.
Speaker 3: Elan was done in what a week? He was done
Speaker 3: in about seven days.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: He would do three songs a day and just blast
Speaker 3: through it. But it was recorded in my house and again,
Speaker 3: limited space, like we couldn't fit the whole band in
Speaker 3: the room, even just sitting down or standing up. It
Speaker 3: was like this room is too small. It's small.
Speaker 1: Going back to the discord, so it was like studio.
Speaker 3: Okay, Alan, you come in and then Nate are you
Speaker 3: available at one? And so literally like tracking in order
Speaker 3: to have enough space for each person took play.
Speaker 1: It's amazing and it was just blasting through it. But
Speaker 1: that was the thing.
Speaker 3: It was just sort of this gut feeling of energy
Speaker 3: like right now, that's how we feel, like, let's go
Speaker 3: blast shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know.
Speaker 3: We were out there doing all these smaller gigs in
Speaker 3: clubs and theaters, surprise gigs for fun mostly really just
Speaker 3: to sort of like, you know, bring Elan in closer
Speaker 3: and get tighter in those small shows.
Speaker 1: It's like you get tight quick. And in those small shows.
Speaker 3: We really celebrated like all of these older songs we
Speaker 3: hadn't played in a long time. Blah blah blah. But
Speaker 3: it was like, God, damn, that feels good. I'm fifty
Speaker 3: seven years old and it still feels good to scream
Speaker 3: bloody fucking murder over some squeal and ass feedback and
Speaker 3: hard hitting drums.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and you can still fucking do it like relentlessly.
Speaker 2: It seems like because you don't stop, nothing's breaking.
Speaker 3: The other day and the guy's like, okay, do you exercise,
Speaker 3: I'm like no, okay, he takes all my stuff. He's like, well,
Speaker 3: you're you're pretty good shape. I'm like, yeah, I run
Speaker 3: around screaming my fucking ass off for three hours, you know,
Speaker 3: four days a week or whatever. It's my that's my
Speaker 3: favorite exercise. Imagine going on a jog for three hours
Speaker 3: and singing Glory, Glory, Hallelujah the whole time, and you
Speaker 3: come back with some fucking washboard asks.
Speaker 1: I just start doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But so when I look at a lot of our
Speaker 3: favorite musicians who have had these long, storied careers talking
Speaker 3: you know, McCartney and Joe Walsh and and Mick Jagger
Speaker 3: and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They don't slow down, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they almost ramp up. Yeah, And you're like, how could
Speaker 3: that possibly be? And I don't think that it's a
Speaker 3: ticking clock. I think it's the heart grows and the
Speaker 3: gratitude and the appreciation as time goes on really grows
Speaker 3: where you're like, I can't believe I'm still fucking doing this.
Speaker 3: I don't know what else I would do, but like
Speaker 3: I'm just really I feel really grateful that like we're
Speaker 3: here because it couldn't worry just like talking about shit,
Speaker 3: this is the fucking best.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I go get into fucking passport in forty five minutes
Speaker 3: so that I can go and do this somewhere really
Speaker 3: far away. Yeah, for the next year and a half
Speaker 3: of my life, and thank God, Like it's great because.
Speaker 2: It could go the other way. It could be I've
Speaker 2: done it. It could be jaded, or could go that
Speaker 2: direction a thousand It just doesn't know.
Speaker 3: And I've always thought the core intension, which you sort
Speaker 3: of find when you first start playing music, it's like
Speaker 3: I just want to play music, Like you can't imagine
Speaker 3: it becoming the thing that you do for the rest
Speaker 3: of your life. Just an itch and it's like in
Speaker 3: your heart and that thing doesn't that doesn't go away.
Speaker 3: I mean there was a time once, you know, when
Speaker 3: Ravana ended, where I'm like, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 3: want to do music anymore, Like that hurts, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: what am I talking about? Like that's that's the thing
Speaker 3: that I always saved my life, Like yeah, I'm I
Speaker 3: have to do it.
Speaker 2: Was there any part of you considering something like was
Speaker 2: there anything you were Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, you know, I I I didn't know
Speaker 3: what it was. But time went by where I was
Speaker 3: just like, God, what do I do? Like I can't
Speaker 3: if I sit behind the drums, it makes me sad.
Speaker 3: If I listen to music, it makes me sad. Then
Speaker 3: I wrote songs. Yeah, And like when I was a
Speaker 3: kid with those stupid journals, I wrote my way through it.
Speaker 3: And so I think that's what happens. You know, that
Speaker 3: part of it is you sort of write your way
Speaker 3: through life. While at the same time it's like the
Speaker 3: only other thing that I love as much as music
Speaker 3: as an activity is like cooking. I really love cooking,
Speaker 3: and I love cooking for people because it's a similar
Speaker 3: interaction in that I'm going to prepare something for you,
Speaker 3: and I really want it to be so good that
Speaker 3: you enjoy it and you come back for seconds. In
Speaker 3: your recipe is your song, and the cook itself is
Speaker 3: the process, and the serving is the concert, and the
Speaker 3: second plate is the on court. Like, it's a very
Speaker 3: similar reward when you do that for a large group
Speaker 3: of people, for friends, when you do that for people
Speaker 3: that don't have food, When you like to be able
Speaker 3: to have a a simple, human, loving, empathetic, caring interaction
Speaker 3: with someone else through a plate of food or a song,
Speaker 3: that is the best thing as the world. That being said,
Speaker 3: I would rather fucking rock the house than run the
Speaker 3: kitchen for fucking sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Cooking for five hundred people much less fun than playing
Speaker 2: for five hundred people five hundred man's easy.
Speaker 1: Well, because you brought that up. There's a saw.
Speaker 2: I saw a clip one time of christ Novoselag. Yeah,
Speaker 2: saying I don't I don't know women who asked was
Speaker 2: just like something popped up. It was like, you know,
Speaker 2: people ask me like, am I like sometimes jealous that
Speaker 2: Dave like has all.
Speaker 1: This success now with like and it's just a it'sch no,
Speaker 1: like this now fuck it just like put in the want.
Speaker 2: You look at Dave, he's just he's putting in the
Speaker 2: fucking work, like he's just doing.
Speaker 1: You're like, so, how could I be.
Speaker 2: Talking about I'm proud or something, And it's just like
Speaker 2: from Afar, I mean, he has a more internal view
Speaker 2: of that, But from Afar it's always seemed like that
Speaker 2: way too, Like you almost like you brought a McCartney,
Speaker 2: like leaving the Beatles, what do I do, like just
Speaker 2: put a band together wings go, let's go, let's go
Speaker 2: hit the fucking let's go play colleges across Europe, like yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go figure it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, the Nirvana experience was was
Speaker 3: I don't even know what the word is for it.
Speaker 3: It was just something else in all the best and
Speaker 3: worst ways. And when you go through something like that
Speaker 3: with like a small group of people, you're forever connected
Speaker 3: by that. You know, we're we're a big We're just
Speaker 3: we're a big family, all of the the people that
Speaker 3: were there, and and we all do love each other.
Speaker 3: Right When Nirvana ended, like I kind of knew what
Speaker 3: well at first it was. It was hard for me
Speaker 3: to get through it, and then I realized that music
Speaker 3: is the thing that's going to get me through it.
Speaker 3: Have you ever met Christmas much.
Speaker 2: One time when I was fifteen on a record store,
Speaker 2: as in a record store, and I didn't know he
Speaker 2: was I'm six six.
Speaker 1: He was fucking taller than.
Speaker 3: We did SNL one time with Charles Barkley, And yes,
Speaker 3: he was taller Charles Barkley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, insane, insane.
Speaker 3: Chris is has such a gigantic heart and such an amazing, brilliant,
Speaker 3: amazing mind. And Chris sees the world through an entirely
Speaker 3: different lens than anyone you've ever met in the most
Speaker 3: beautiful way. He's an artist and he's a writer, and
Speaker 3: he's still he's still that He's he's the same the
Speaker 3: first day I ever met him. He has not changed.
Speaker 3: And uh so the experience that we had together in Nirvana,
Speaker 3: like will will be connected by that forever then, just
Speaker 3: as we all continue to move forward in life and
Speaker 3: live life. It's like we're still beautiful, loving friends. And
Speaker 3: whenever I see him, like it's it's a trip. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's like hugging a tree. You know, he's really big,
Speaker 3: but when you give that hug, it's like that's real ship.
Speaker 1: You know, like the kind that you really feel. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an incredible that you still get to play
Speaker 2: with like Pat too, you know, now, Nate was how
Speaker 2: many years of that'spen?
Speaker 1: You know, it's like Pat seems like I've never got
Speaker 1: to meet Pat.
Speaker 2: But again, going back to people, you get to pull
Speaker 2: from these things, like you get Pat from the germs,
Speaker 2: like what the fuck? You know?
Speaker 1: The funniest thing. So we went back to I agree,
Speaker 1: it's a dream. That's a dream.
Speaker 3: It's a dream, but the fuck like the decline of
Speaker 3: Webstern civilization. That live record soundtrack was, uh, like the
Speaker 3: first punk rock record I ever bought.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And to think that in the germs are on that record,
Speaker 3: and so to think that I get to spend the
Speaker 3: rest of my life with the guy that inspired me
Speaker 3: to do this thing, it's amazing. Yeah, And you think
Speaker 3: that all the time, but you do have moments sometimes
Speaker 3: where you're like, like, zoins.
Speaker 1: This is this is It's amazing.
Speaker 3: It doesn't always work that way, you know, No it doesn't.
Speaker 3: And I don't know what I do without him. He's
Speaker 3: just like last time we played in DC, we played
Speaker 3: at the club the Black Cat in d C. Small
Speaker 3: place holds maybe like five six on other people. And
Speaker 3: in true DC fashion, we get there and we're set
Speaker 3: up upstairs and I start seeing like all of my
Speaker 3: old heroes.
Speaker 1: Brendan from Fugazi shows up.
Speaker 3: I'm okay, Joe from Fugazzi, shays hey Man, Alec mackay
Speaker 3: Ian's younger brother who was in Faith and Ignition, and
Speaker 3: all these amazing bands Faith. To be honest, it was
Speaker 3: a band called Faith. They were kind of my favorite
Speaker 3: DC band. So I look at Alec and I'm like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, like this is I'm starstruck.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'd hate for him to know this, but I just
Speaker 3: am yeah. And we're sitting there talking. We were talking
Speaker 3: about I think Brendan's daughter had a band with Alex daughter,
Speaker 3: and we're just talking about the local music scene, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, he puts on a staff security
Speaker 3: shirt and I'm like, were you were you doing security?
Speaker 3: And he goes, yay, I'm gonna be up. I'm going
Speaker 3: to be up like front of the stage by the barrier,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, really, I think he mostly only wanted
Speaker 3: to do it so he could stand in front of
Speaker 3: Pat Smear, who was his Heroes. Pat was in the Germs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that must have felt the world away at
Speaker 2: that point too, by the way, like you know DC
Speaker 2: to LA early eighties, Yeah with that or set latest
Speaker 2: seventies early.
Speaker 3: Who do you think Pat's favorite band is? Favorite artist
Speaker 3: of all time? Number one? Can you get a decade
Speaker 3: that folk like nineties eighties, nineties group?
Speaker 1: He's just not going to get it. I'm not okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just number one and Roses.
Speaker 3: So you would think it would be like maybe some
Speaker 3: rock and roll, maybe like some glitter from the seventies, baby,
Speaker 3: some punk rock, maybe some Prague. He's well versed in,
Speaker 3: Yes and Genesis. Oh yeah, he'll be all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Like number one Mariah Carey. I love Mariah Carey.
Speaker 1: He loves Mariah Carey. Yeah, I talk to Pat. I
Speaker 1: love Mariah care.
Speaker 3: You guys could have a big, long podcast thing about it.
Speaker 3: I'm sure he worked well, you know, I love Mariah
Speaker 3: just saying I.
Speaker 1: Tried to go to the music cach things.
Speaker 3: So you think, like, you know, Pat saw the sex
Speaker 3: Pistols at Winterland or wherever it was, and you know,
Speaker 3: like Pat is o G and so you think, like
Speaker 3: you look at his history and his past and all
Speaker 3: those things.
Speaker 1: Mariah number one? Does he say due? Why? Why does
Speaker 1: he love Mariah? I will? I mean but telling you
Speaker 1: to be continued on the trip. Yes, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: a deep dive with Patom Mariah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's my favorite, one of my favorites. She's unbelievab
Speaker 2: one of my favorites, one of my favorite singers.
Speaker 1: Just ridiculous. It's like Ian mcconnas. Wait, how's that well
Speaker 1: even more bizarre? Right? No, well maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2: Ian mackay would ted nugent just because the politics is
Speaker 2: pretty pretty fast, pretty funny.
Speaker 1: We're coming right back with more.
Speaker 2: Dave Girl, you talked about like writing your way through things.
Speaker 2: I've also read I know kind of earlier on you
Speaker 2: mentioned like lyrics would really just be a last minute.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they sometimes still are.
Speaker 2: Ye, I was gonna say that all that's so, that's
Speaker 2: not always true, but if sometimes true and have that
Speaker 2: shakeout on this one. Do you actually just sit and
Speaker 2: write still like journal like teenager, like you when you
Speaker 2: were a teenager or early adult or is it yes.
Speaker 3: And no not like I used to. Sometimes if I
Speaker 3: have an idea or a crazy dream, I'll write that down.
Speaker 3: It's still the part of the process that I like
Speaker 3: the least second, guessing self editing, unsure if it's clear,
Speaker 3: unsure if it's vague. And both my parents were writers,
Speaker 3: so I still have this like PTSD of living under
Speaker 3: the giant red pen that's just gonna go no, no,
Speaker 3: no no. So I remember what we were making a
Speaker 3: record in my house in Virginia. This is I think
Speaker 3: the third record, Nothing Left to Lose, in small basement
Speaker 3: studio and everyone's downstairs waiting for me. The track is recorded,
Speaker 3: but I have to sing, and I'm like upstairs in
Speaker 3: my bedroom, blank page, just like, come on, Dave, like anything,
Speaker 3: you know, just writer's block. And I'm like, just gotta
Speaker 3: be something. And I come down into the kitchen and
Speaker 3: I think Nate was there, and he says, uh, He says,
Speaker 3: are you are you done? Are you ready? I'm like, no, man,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of stuck. I'm not I'm not there yet.
Speaker 3: And he says to me, dude, not every song has
Speaker 3: to be imagined by John Lennon, you know that, right,
Speaker 3: So he kind of gave me this pass and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right. Pressure's off, like weight is lifted. Wow, great.
Speaker 3: I can just I can write something and it could
Speaker 3: mean nothing to me, could mean everything to you, or
Speaker 3: something that means everything to me could mean nothing to you.
Speaker 3: So then it sort of loosens the reins in that
Speaker 3: that I don't want to spend a month writing a bridge.
Speaker 3: I really want it to happen and to have that immediacy.
Speaker 3: So there are times where I'm like, shit, hold on,
Speaker 3: give you ten minutes.
Speaker 1: And I go.
Speaker 3: And I go in and do it and it sounds
Speaker 3: good and it works. I'm like great, and you already
Speaker 3: have the melody. Yeah, like I've got the pattern of
Speaker 3: the melody and whatever. And it's not until months later,
Speaker 3: as the song's mixed and finished that I listen and
Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, like I know what I was saying
Speaker 3: when I wasn't trying to say anything at all, Like
Speaker 3: it's almost you know, it's it's the it's the subliminal.
Speaker 3: It's not like this part of the cortext. It's like
Speaker 3: back here and sometimes it's just happening.
Speaker 1: So I like that.
Speaker 3: I like the you know, the restriction of I like
Speaker 3: the pressure of my guys sitting on the couch, like
Speaker 3: can I get down here before traffic you know that
Speaker 3: kind of thing, and I'm just like, great, all right,
Speaker 3: let's go, because otherwise I might manipulate something into something else.
Speaker 2: Even less or being it's more appear in that way,
Speaker 2: maybe because it's coming from an a subconscious level under
Speaker 2: I'm not really a lyric person.
Speaker 1: I try not. I sometimes it's years before I even.
Speaker 2: Understand know what a course, even a course is actually saying,
Speaker 2: or like the words of a course.
Speaker 1: It's gotten me in trouble doing this because some do't
Speaker 1: you know what that songs about? It? No, I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't even know the words, to be honest with you.
Speaker 2: But I don't often ask about lyrics. But Child Actor
Speaker 2: with something, I was like, well, what the that's interesting?
Speaker 2: And actors has come up like stacked Actors.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was always a fascinating song to me for many reasons.
Speaker 2: But also there's like it seems like that's been a.
Speaker 3: You know, the child actor thing with inspired by someone.
Speaker 3: All I wanted was for that person to like, hey, man,
Speaker 3: like you can be you with me right, like you
Speaker 3: don't have to you don't have to put on the
Speaker 3: thing like you just blacks like to be you, you know,
Speaker 3: and feeling like sometimes you meet someone and there's almost
Speaker 3: this someone who's trying to be the person that you
Speaker 3: want instead of the person that they want to be, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it has to do with sort of like that
Speaker 3: that validation. You know, that you're searching for some sort
Speaker 3: of acknowledgment or validation from others when really like you can't.
Speaker 3: You have to have it here first. So that's it's
Speaker 3: like turn the cameras off, right, like, it's not out there,
Speaker 3: it's actually in here. That one I wrote really quickly. Actually,
Speaker 3: that one happened pretty fast. I mean it's a simple song.
Speaker 3: It's not crazy or anything like that. But the intention
Speaker 3: and the idea and the concept and the feeling was
Speaker 3: real in that song. At some point in life, you
Speaker 3: have to be able to sit and be like okay,
Speaker 3: you know, and you work really hard to get there,
Speaker 3: but you have to be able to turn all of
Speaker 3: that shit off. And so that was basically it. And I,
Speaker 3: you know, I was really excited. We were, and then
Speaker 3: we recorded it and I'm like, it's just going, don
Speaker 3: the cameras off. I say it a hundred times doing that,
Speaker 3: and I'm screaming my fucking balls off doing that cameras off.
Speaker 3: And I'm really looking forward to doing it live because
Speaker 3: in that one moment, I hope that everyone puts their
Speaker 3: fucking phone on it, actually watches, get listens to the music. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's my interpretation. Someone else might feel differently, and that's
Speaker 3: just the way it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after that great build up moment goes into my
Speaker 2: which I think because I listen. It's so hard when
Speaker 2: I'm doing The album's not out yet, so I don't
Speaker 2: I've only I've only been able to listen to it
Speaker 2: a handful of time, so it's hard. Like I fell
Speaker 2: in love with the first three songs and art time
Speaker 2: getting passed the first three. A few days ago, I
Speaker 2: finally discovered the last song on the record. Was just
Speaker 2: like yeah, like now I'm just playing that song over
Speaker 2: and over.
Speaker 1: I always want to call it friend of a friend.
Speaker 1: It's not friend asking asking for a friend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing song, amazing they asking for a friend thing.
Speaker 3: That's funny because that happened before we really started making
Speaker 3: this record. That that song is like, I mean six
Speaker 3: seven months ago. It was just as Elne joined the band.
Speaker 3: We had jammed a little bit, but I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, what, come to the house. Let's record something.
Speaker 3: He's a incredible studio drummer. The guy can He's got
Speaker 3: like a photographic musical memory. You play him a riff,
Speaker 3: you play him a song one time and he goes
Speaker 3: in and the first take is perfect. You're like great.
Speaker 3: But to be able to vibe and create with him, right,
Speaker 3: I wanted to see what it felt like. You know,
Speaker 3: it's almost like like we were on a date. Let's
Speaker 3: see if we vibe, Let's see what happens. You know,
Speaker 3: his times impeccable, and and his his his taste and
Speaker 3: his composition, and he's he's like a fully formed musician.
Speaker 3: He's amazing and a phenomenal drummer. It's insane.
Speaker 1: So it was wild.
Speaker 3: It was like, not only are we going to like
Speaker 3: go out and rip up stages from here to Sydney, Australia,
Speaker 3: but we're gonna do this together. And so we you know,
Speaker 3: we started vibing like that, and so that song like,
Speaker 3: I mean to me, that's that's bordering on like our
Speaker 3: magnus Opus side of like big, long, structured, heavy, like
Speaker 3: empemic kind of things. I almost didn't know if that
Speaker 3: should go on the record because we'd recorded it and
Speaker 3: released it and then I'm like, I don't know if
Speaker 3: this fits with the other like short simple blasts of
Speaker 3: something like spit Shine or something like child Actor or
Speaker 3: something like of all people like does this thing fit in?
Speaker 3: Can you tag something that I'm not going to compare
Speaker 3: it to anything because I'll get in trouble because but
Speaker 3: to me, like it's one of my favorite albums of
Speaker 3: all time is aunt Justice for All by Metallica, And
Speaker 3: it does not sound like Injustice for All, but that's
Speaker 3: about to me, it's like I listened to that arrangement.
Speaker 3: Then I don't know how Metallica writes songs. I don't
Speaker 3: know how they arrange her shit. But but to me,
Speaker 3: I was like, Okay, we've got different time signatures, we've
Speaker 3: got like different sections, we've got sort of overlapping melodies.
Speaker 1: We've got this bridge. It's double time. I'm screaming.
Speaker 3: It's a guitar solo. It's much different than the other
Speaker 3: songs on the record.
Speaker 1: Different than like way different than Window or you know,
Speaker 1: it's like.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and Window is the funniest thing, you know,
Speaker 3: Window that song. This is a great example of not
Speaker 3: overthinking shit. My daughter Harper plays the bass. She plays
Speaker 3: all the instruments, but like she really loves playing the bass.
Speaker 3: Her heroes Kim Gordon, Kim Deal. I wanted to record
Speaker 3: something with Harper, and I came up with this riff,
Speaker 3: this d bass just like really almost like a weird
Speaker 3: t Rex vibe. This is that kind of vibe, right,
Speaker 3: I'm like, hey, that's I wrote this thing that let's
Speaker 3: record together. And we did and I had that riff,
Speaker 3: and I was like, she loves the Breeders, two favorite
Speaker 3: bands probably Breeders and Ween. She's the biggest Wien fan
Speaker 3: in the world. So to me, it's like that there's
Speaker 3: there's those moments that sort of have these sort of
Speaker 3: Breeders elements.
Speaker 1: Now I saw your face, they're in the window.
Speaker 3: So I just did it like it's this fun exercise Harper,
Speaker 3: and then I came back to it and I'm like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll just I'll write something. And I always had this idea,
Speaker 3: like if you've been in a hotel where like the
Speaker 3: window washer, all of a sudden you hear something and
Speaker 3: you look outside the window and there's a guy there,
Speaker 3: you know, like washing the windows.
Speaker 1: What a weird gig? Terrified, I couldn't there's not money
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 3: But what this This guy's he's looking in it at
Speaker 3: everyone's most intimate moments.
Speaker 1: He just is yeah, you fucking know it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes people never notice him, but he's offering this service.
Speaker 1: You know. That guy is there to bring in the light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wants you to see.
Speaker 3: Everything clearly through a wonderful, nice clean window.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Most people never consider that.
Speaker 3: That was that thought kicking around. Actually, you know what's crazy.
Speaker 3: The drummer of the Faith, my favorite DC band, his
Speaker 3: name is Igor Hanson, I think, became a window washer
Speaker 3: and he wrote a book about it. I digress.
Speaker 1: Maybe that that must be where that came bring it
Speaker 1: all together. I don't know, because where else is that.
Speaker 2: That's a I don't fucking know, odd thing to be
Speaker 2: kicking around your head to just come out in a
Speaker 2: burst of beating a right site.
Speaker 3: So then we record it and I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: kind of cool and funny. And then also we started
Speaker 3: playing it for people and everyone's like, I love this song,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, you do. It's hard for me to like,
Speaker 3: I remember when we recorded best of You right here, Wow,
Speaker 3: And we recorded and I'm like eh, And then our
Speaker 3: manager John Silva we're playing the record. He goes, he goes,
Speaker 3: what what about that song where you say best of
Speaker 3: you one hundred times? And I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: is that any good? He's like I like it, And
Speaker 3: I was like, I didn't think it was that special.
Speaker 1: You played that back and you didn't.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, I know, like we completed the task,
Speaker 3: we got it to a place where we're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's cool, but I didn't really think anybody else would
Speaker 3: feel it. Wow, whatever. So that was like the Window song,
Speaker 3: and then everyone's like.
Speaker 1: Yay Window, Like really it's cool. It's a cool song.
Speaker 3: And then people are finding meaning like that. There's a
Speaker 3: line that says, please to finally meet you swinging from
Speaker 3: the ceiling, watch you hang around until someone lets you down.
Speaker 3: And everyone's like, that's so that's so heartbreaking watch someone
Speaker 3: hang around until someone lets them down.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I was just talking about the fucking
Speaker 1: thing that the thing is standing on. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one day it'll hit you what that you know,
Speaker 2: you know one thing that actually it's funny to do
Speaker 2: interviews and talk about music or the music that you
Speaker 2: just made.
Speaker 3: It's really sometimes that's the first time you think like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what I is that what I did.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I did, Like it's out like
Speaker 2: you can't even yeah, yeah, yeah, you guys also almost
Speaker 2: worked with David Briggs, right, Neil's long.
Speaker 1: Time Yeah, we met with them. Did you ever meet
Speaker 1: with him? Yeah, he's like a rough character or what
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: We went to Benny Hannah or something like that and
Speaker 3: talked about records.
Speaker 1: He was really cool.
Speaker 3: I mean, around that time, Neil had made the Ragged
Speaker 3: Glory record and I think that was Briggs who did
Speaker 3: that one. But right, so we knew like Briggs was
Speaker 3: very familiar with the idea of recording like a raw
Speaker 3: fucking band live to capture those moments, and that's kind
Speaker 3: of what we wanted to do. Briggs was really cool.
Speaker 3: I met with a couple of different people. Well ultimately
Speaker 3: it was like, but you got the right one.
Speaker 2: We got but but you know, fascinating to think for
Speaker 2: when it was Briggs.
Speaker 1: Now or even just could have gone a whole other direction.
Speaker 2: Thousand questions, thousand things we can talk about, but I
Speaker 2: want to let you go. Man, this has been amazing
Speaker 2: to sit with you here in your place. I'm glad
Speaker 2: you am Yeah, man, where led Zepplin two hangs above
Speaker 2: the the liveary.
Speaker 1: Make your way all the way down the hallways. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go to I didn't want to kick
Speaker 1: it down, but I want like halfway down.
Speaker 3: There's some like you wind up in like Tenacious D territory,
Speaker 3: like around that corner, and then there's some funny ship
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 1: This is I'm glad you came. Thank you man, really
Speaker 1: appreciate you. Have to come back. I will listen, come back,
Speaker 1: do that Pat's interview. If you guys can episode, I'll
Speaker 1: do it. I'll do that ship next week. Cabby's on
Speaker 1: it all right, love it, thank you, thank you, appreciate you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 2: An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist
Speaker 2: featuring our favorite songs from Dave Girls School here. Sure
Speaker 2: to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast
Speaker 2: to see all our video and records, and be sure
Speaker 2: to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot.
Speaker 2: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
Speaker 2: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
Speaker 2: is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 2: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.