The Watch - Greg Dulli and the Afghan Whigs Are Back (Ep. 147)

Episode Date: May 4, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald sit down with Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli to discuss his band's new album, ‘In Spades,’ and the story of how he first met Chris and Andy more than 15 years ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We got a chance to sit down with one of our favorite musicians, Greg Dooley, who you would probably know best from the Afghan Wigs, a long-running American rock band. Afghan Wigs made their splash, I guess, in the mid-90s with some seminal albums like Gentlemen and Black Love. They were originally signed on subpop, you know, loosely drawn into the sort of all rock explosion that was happening in the 90s where they made the transition from, you know, nominally indie rock into a major label, rock and roll around, you know, 95, 96, 97. And they put out these incredible albums that were equal parts influenced by like Curtis Mayfield, Husker Do, you know, The Jackson Five.

And it was a really amazing time for them. Like they were just making these concept albums about shattered lives and Andy and were enamored with them back then and continue to be through Dooley's work the end of the original version of the Afghan Wigs. He made an album, they made an album called 1965, which you should definitely check out if you haven't heard it. And then Greg wound up doing a different project called The Twilight Singers for a lot of the beginning of the 21st century, and they made several albums, many of which are excellent, Powder Burns, Blackberry Bell. And then a couple years ago, something surprising happened. The Afghan Wigs got back together. John Curley and Greg Duley reunited.

John Curley is the bass player and they made an album a great reunion record called Due to the Beast and they're back again now with a new album called In Spades which is out tomorrow on subpop. It's a continuation of

a lot of the things people love about African Wigs but it's a really different record. It sounds different. To me it sounds like as equally influenced by blonde by Frank Ocean as it is by ZNRK by Husker Doo or there's no place like America's Day by Curtis Mayfield.

that is a very open-eared record. It sounds like today. It features some of Greg's most impressive vocal work. He's sort of a Los Angeles legend. He came in to talk to us for the entire episode. We talked about the trajectory of his career from the 90s to before Afghan Wigs when he was just a guy growing up in Cincinnati

and moving out to Los Angeles through to today and what it's like to be in such a long-running band and kind of have music be this profession instead of just your passion. So here's our interview with Greg Dooley. You can catch us on Monday and we'll be catching up with a lot of the TV that we've missed over the past week or so.

I would expect us to talk about leftovers, obviously, but also Ham A Tale and maybe even American Gods. If I can talk Andy into it, I'm sure he'll be down to watch that. One note you might want to check out earlier this week, we had a great episode with Tim Simons from Veep, and he came by and talked about working on VEP obviously in the time of Trump.

He also talked about his appreciation for leftovers, and we talked a little bit of golf, a little bit about golf and Matthew McConaughey together, if that makes sense. So check that episode out. Thanks for listening, as always. Here's our interview with Greg Dooley. I need sports to have to clear the room.

Stand up and walk now. All right, we'll just get started. All right, we are, this is a special one for me and Andy. I'm very excited. We are joined by, I think, collectively, one of our favorite musicians. I know he's one of my favorite songwriters of all the time. Why are you throwing me under the tourbust? Well, I know you. You also have like a lot of, you know, like the go-betweens are pretty high up there for you.

Uh-huh. You know. Yes, but they're not here today. Uh, Greg Dewey from Afghan wigs is joining us today on the watch. Greg, man. Thank you so much for coming through. My pleasure. Thanks for wearing the Ronnie Van Zant t-shirt. He definitely, definitely dresses for the day.

This is tonight's the night, man. That's the shirt that Ronnie Van Zant wore on the cover of Street Survivors. He knows. This is for you. We used to make these at, I used to work at a record store in New York City, and we made, like, slightly a little bit of money by, like, basically just screening record covers and just printing them onto T-shirts. One of the many supplemental incomes.

That sounds more profitable than selling records. At Mondo Kim's, yeah. When I was 20, I worked in a photo lab in Cincinnati, and we had our supplemental income was driver's licenses and we did pretty well

I can imagine they were really good this was before water marks and holographics and things like that what was the duly touch like what did you bring to it?

Yeah did you put a lot of people from Hawaii or anything you know what I was I was the typer I did you know

I did a lot of the I did a lot of the typing, but it was, it was, we did great jobs and just kind of like, you know, just sort of alter the, all you have to do is really alter one number if you're doing it. For the record, the watch does not condone this, but, but we fully support it. Sure. It's called making a living. Seriously. It's also like if they ever remake the Great Escape, you can be the forger.

Oh, yeah. I can, I can forge. Greg, you may. And forage. I was going to say, you might not remember. this. Chris didn't remember this either. Before we get into it, we want to talk about the new Afghan Wigs record. We want to talk about a lot of your career because we're such big fans. But we realized, well, I remembered Kristen that this is not the first time the two of us have jointly interviewed you. 17 years ago, as young cub reporters for Grit magazine, or

not really, but it was for spin. But it felt like Grit because we were very young then. We interviewed you on the Twilight Singer's Tour bus. I think it was the first Twilight Singers tour. at the Bowery Ballroom, and here was our first mistake. We had a great time. But our first mistake was we didn't ask the interviewing schedule, because you know what it's like. Journalists come on the bus, they come off the bus, they talk to you about the record.

We, you know, usually you follow, oh, that's the guy from Time Out New York or that's someone from Rolling Stone. We followed a guy from High Times. Yeah. Oh, nice. I realize now it was a pretty popular interviewer, right? Because he comes bearing gifts.

High Times is the opposite of Playboy, where it's like you read Playboy for the articles. I think you do interviews at High Times to do interviews with High Times. That was great. And I think maybe that tour was sponsored by ZigZag. It actually was. I'm pretty sure that it was. I think it was because we did a ZigZag tour.

And High Times was around a lot, not to mention just kind of like a general feeling around the situation. The times were high. That was interesting too because we were both, Chris and I were big Wigs fans, we were also big fans of the Twilight Singers, and now things have become full circle again, but not to dwell too much in the past. But I was curious at that time, what was that era like for you? Because you had been in a certain band for a while.

You had been in a certain century for a while. All of a sudden, everything was a little bit different. What was the beginning of the 21st century like for you as a music maker? I mean, if you saw me in 2001, That was one version, but if that was the first Twilight Singers album, hated that tour. And that one actually, I didn't tour again for two years after that because I was so, I was just not a happy person. But Scott Ford, who ended up becoming the bass player of the Twilight Singers, I was just cranking songs and just kind of making them. But by that time, me and my friends had bought the shortstop.

I was working at the shortstop. Bar and Echo Park. Yeah. And, you know, all of a sudden I had like 20 songs. And Scott was like, man, we need to put out an album. And I was like, nah. Putting out an album means I have to go on tour. And I have no desire to do that ever again.

And he's like, come on. Scott Ford is actually probably like more responsible for me. like making albums again, touring again, sitting here right now than probably any person. Do you think you just would have been a bartender? I think I was like, I really kind of liked the, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for that time in my life, and who knows.

But at that moment, I was really happy, like having a job to go to and not having to go on tour. Yeah. not having to, like, I've made songs because I wanted to. It was actually, like, more of a therapeutic thing. Yeah. It's interesting to you say that because we were just talking that, for us, the last 15 years of your career has seemed so wildly prolific. Yeah. And adventurous and exciting.

And it's interesting that if we date it to around that time, you were resistant to it. I was actually just not, I had no interest in touring. I liked, I still liked making songs. but after that tour, I probably didn't, like, write a song or anything for a year. Was it, what was it about that tour in particular? I don't know. I think it was like the, you know. Those two guys that interviewed you after high time.

It was a terrible question. It was a weird throw-together band of people that it just, we went out for the wrong reasons. And it was not a, that group of individuals did not gel. And I don't know. I was just kind of over it. I think I had just been kind of in the grind for too long. I mean, I've been, you know, touring for 15 years by that point anyway. So, you know, you're catching me on the next 15, which has been much more enjoyable.

I'm kind of curious about that because you, Afghan Wigs Reunite. There's a bunch of 20-year anniversaries of records. And then you guys do do The Beast. I'm not sure of the chronology exactly right there. I mean, I know you just did a tour for Black Love. But now you're on the second Afghan Whig's 2.0 sort of album. And do you ever feel like it's like it becomes industrialized again when you kind of like settle into like, okay, album tour, album tour? How do you keep it fresh for yourself now that you're doing the second lap around with this band?

I did a solo tour last year. And that has been a great way for me to reboot. Yeah. And I realized a couple years ago, I was like, wow, I've kind of parked the Twilight Singers for a little while and been doing the Wigs thing. I'm like, I didn't want to drift too far away from that Twilight Singer's material. I love those songs. They're the most current songs to me other than these last two Wigs record. So going out and doing that, and if, you know, I would look at the set list and I'm like, man, I'm only doing like one Wig song within this show.

you know, I'm sort of like, but then I previewed a couple songs that are on this new album during that tour. So that was a cool thing too. But that keeps it, that keeps it fresh for me. Doing the gutter twins a few years ago with Mark was a great thing. And then a year later, we did an acoustic tour, just me, him and Dave Rosser. So there's various ways for me to keep it interesting. And I think also, like, I've been resistant of, like, doing those 125 date tours where it just sort of becomes, like, blinding for me.

Like, you know, it was cool when I was a kid. And I like, I like about 75. That's sort of like my sweet spot now. You know what I mean? That still sounds like a lot. It's plenty of shows. But it's not like those, that next 50 will kill you. Yeah.

You know what I mean? So. Coming back, bringing the after. Ken Wigs back, though. I mean, you left us in the first iteration of the band in 1965 which came out 98, and that's a record that we both love. I feel like Chris almost got his friend fired, his friend at Columbia fired for like stealing the advanced

cassette so we could... We also, the other story that we often tell in this podcast is it almost cost Chris his relationship with a girlfriend. On a girlfriend's birthday, I was like, happy birthday, and then like me and a bunch of friends went into another room. A bunch of news. A bunch of news. To listen to the advanced cassette. That was a dark. Why didn't you invite her?

Because we were twain. Rock music matters. That's for us. That's great. And she had made acorn squash and everything. It was very like faux grown up. Are you still friends? No, no.

We're friends. Not friends. It's been talked about. But that you put the wigs to bed with that record. One of the things that's been so exciting about due to the Beast and now in Spades is that it's clearly, it's you. It's, it's curly. it's the Afghan wigs. Right.

But it's a very different band with a very different ambitions sonically in terms of your songwriting. How would you define that? What made these Wigs records again? Because, Frank, you know, in Spades, you're doing things with your voice,

you're doing things musically that you've never done before. I just feel like I've, it's my 15th record with all of the bands that I've been in. And I feel like, I feel at the height

of my powers now. You know what I mean? Like I feel like I kind of know what I'm doing and I'm just dangerous enough to get away with it. So it feels good to try things. Like I did 20, 22 songs for this record and paired it down until I got, you know, I always like to, I consider these songs

when I put them on a record like a family. And it's, if, if, family can interact in a in a groovy way. So this time I just started, like Birdland, for instance, the first song. I've never done a song like that before. Had no plans to do a song like that. And furthermore, freestyled the vocal. Never wrote the words down.

Are you serious? In the studio? Into the mic, first time. Yeah. Not the first time, but the second time I did. Whoa. Yeah. And I've done that five times in my life in 30 years.

And it's always like you're not even writing the song. You're just, you're the channel. Those are the other times those have made it on to the record? Yeah, the other times were tonight on congregation. Now You Know on gentlemen. I remember reading an interview once that you don't actually remember recording $40 on Powder Burns. Is that accurate? Is that one?

Would you characterize that as well? I'm pretty sure I wrote some of those words down. But that one was pretty freestyle, too. I mean, I listen. I actually listened to it last year before I, because I did it in the show last year. And that song in particular, like, really blows my mind. It's really kind of like I thought I was Mark Boland or something. You know what I mean?

There's a moment in that song where you and everything in the song goes to 11, where the song suddenly like it leaves the bounds of Earth's gravity and it causes the listeners to feel that they've done the same thing. Yeah. And it's exciting to hear that that had the same effect on you because it does transcend. Well, you know, I mean, that's, that song was brought to you by cocaine. Well, it sounds like it in the best possible way. Sponsor of some of your most beloved music.

What I'm curious about within Spades in particular, and Andy kind of touched on this a little bit, is we saw you play the Benefit Show a couple of months ago downtown. At the TerraGram. Yeah, and we saw you play Toy Automatic and Oriole, and I was like, fuck, yes, this sounds like Greg's the listener, like, late Husker Do I'm, like, really into this. And then the record comes out, and, like, those, even those songs are, like,

there's, like, tons of strings. You're doing all this different stuff with your voice. I love, I always love it when there's, like, just, like, the live version of a song and the studio version of a song have completely different personalities. But, you know, was the actual writing or production of this album any different than, say, Do the Beast or even Late Period Twilight Singer stuff? The thing about late period Twilight Singers and Due to the Beast is not a lot of those songs were done live.

A lot of Due to the Beast, I played a lot of the instruments. Like I played drums on almost half. Really? I play bass on a few. This record was done live with the band. Like other than The Spell and Birdland, the other eight songs were cut live with the touring band. And then obviously overdub and sung.

But I hadn't done that since Black Love. Wow. It'd been 20 years. since I played with the band. And while I wrote the songs, the parts that are played by the other guys are their parts. I can't take no credit for that. I gave very little direction in terms of,

I really kind of let them do their own thing. Is that how Black Love was done in the studio? Yeah, I was a little more hands-on with Black Love. Like I was, you know, looking back, I was probably, you know, feeling the pressure of the predecessor. You know what I mean? But I feel no pressure these days. You know, I'm just sort of like, I mean, I sort of like walk into the situation thinking like, dude, you're good, just go be good. Yeah, right.

You mentioned being at the peak of your powers, which I would agree with. But part of that is knowing what you're good at and what you want to push past. and what you want to return to. And I'm wondering how much... And it's interesting because we saw you guys play Black Love and it sounded great, which meant you had to revisit that record, at least, you know, to relearn it and re-familiarize yourself with it. Listening to the new record, hearing your voice do things I didn't know it could do,

hearing the band do things I didn't know it could do, and then, like, you get to light as a feather, and there's a little bit of that Black Love swag. There's a little... It's a little... It's a little... And it's like a little treat. And a little bit of Scorpions, too.

which I'm not mad at. So you got to adjust the dial, right? You can give that to us when we deserve it. Well, I mean, I'm me, and I did all those other songs. So, like, I talked to some guy from Italy today, and he made some mention of like, I'm light as a feather. It sort of reminds, and I'm like, dude, it's me. Yeah.

It's not like I wasn't like. He probably did it in a cooler Italian accent. He definitely had a cool accent. It was a sexier question. But I was, I was like, dude, I was not body snatched. If I happen to light onto something that reminds you that of something I did, then it's still in there. I'll tell you, like, light is a feather in particular. I had nothing going to the studio that day.

Where did you record the record? We recorded it in New Orleans. And we did it a month after the last show for the Due to the Beast tour. We played a Barcelona and we went. went out to dinner and like, let's, we're playing really well, let's go in quickly. So we went in like three weeks later, I think. And we were in there for eight days, and five of the songs on In Spades were done in those eight days. Wow.

And one of them was light as a feather. And the day that we went in, I had nothing, but I was driving my car to the studio. And jive talking by BGs came on the radio. And I was like, wow, really like that. And then I came in, and John Skibbick and I, who we share a love of heavy metal and hard rock. And we began talking about our favorite Scorpion songs. That's what that's in the studio. And unconsciously, that was the, that's how that song was built.

I mean, one of my favorite songs by Scorpions is No One Like You. Okay. And if there is, if you listen, Light as a Feather to me is a combination of jive talking and no one like you by Scorpions. I hope you don't mind going back a little bit in the vaults for some questions because. I'll go all the way back. Because something particular that I've been curious about for a while, the 90s as Chris and I lived through it as music fans, was, we talk about this on the show actually a bunch that one of the biggest divides that I found when I got to college.

I got to college in 95. And I had friends who came to my room and they saw, maybe had an Afghan Whigs record, they saw that I had a guided by voices record or a pavement record. And then they got to the Biggie and Wu-Tang records and were like, you're kidding. Right. The divide between like the indie rock fandom

and fans of black music was huge. Right. You were in a band in that decade that was sometimes lumped. in with grunge bands. You'd started on sub-pop. But the Afghan wigs never shied away from love of African-American music, never shied away from love of writing about sex, funk, saying you like the Bee Gees and the Scorpions. Sure. What was that actually like in the moment? Because you were lumped in with this stuff, but you were speaking a different language.

We came, I mean, first of all, and I've, whenever the grunge thing comes up, keep in mind that Grunge was an invention by an English journalist, probably Everett True. Everett true, yeah. Or one of his... He was swinging on the flippity flop. Yeah, exactly. Well, many people were. The, that word to me is like, I just always shrugged my shoulders.

And if someone wanted to call, it's just, it's lazy journalism, you know, in my opinion. I have and have always played. rock and roll. And rock and roll is a deep and wide river. So, you know, to, you know, to sub-categorize it, that's the job of people that write about music, not me as a writer of music. But you had to, I mean, you were aware of this too at the time. Like saying I love rock and roll or I'm into rock and 90s felt like combative. There was this turn towards whether it was, forget the word grunge,

but whether it's sort of the indie rock puritanism that I think existed in a lot of the 90s. Yeah, but you guys were hardly ever a part of that. No, but I'm just saying like to exist in that moment and to have to cast the net as wide as you did and as proudly as you did. True. Flew in the face

of what a lot of other bands were doing at that time. You know, I mean, I was also a very like vocal and out sports fan. which was not cool with a lot of people, you know, like, you know, to get called a jock, I'm like, well, you know, I did play sports in school. And to be honest with you, like playing sports like taught me how to interact with people and get the best out of them, get the best out of myself, you know, like exhibit leadership qualities, all of the stuff that, you know, that, you know, that, you know, that, you know, that, you know, that, you. you can and should get out of group activity. In terms of that kind of music, like, man, I grew up listening to black music.

My mom was a teenager when I was born. Like, I inherited her record collection. What's the first record? Do you remember her playing? I'm going to guess Martha and the Vandellas or Marvin Gates. Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, any of that stuff. And then, like, you know, by getting her records, I became sort of omnivorous after that because we lived in a kind of lower middle class, tracked housing neighborhood,

and a lot of other young parents and kids my age. So, you know, older kids would be like, hey, do you know Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin? I'm like, no, what's that? You know what I mean? Like I got my education that way. And then, you know, inevitably there was like the, hey, do you want to listen to, you know, Emerson, Lake and Palmer? And I did not. Was there a Husker did kid?

Was there a punk kid? Well, the punk, like, I got into punk rock in college. Okay. That's, I saw Husker Do on, I heard Husker Doe when I worked at Tower. I probably heard, what would it have been? 84 Ruben's an arcade. It would have been Zen Arcade. And then when I moved back to town, I saw them on the New Day Rising tour.

That was the first time I saw Husker Doe. And that changed my life. Like it was, it was, I'd never seen three people make that much noise. And I, in particular, like, I love the whole band, but like watching Grant Hart play drums and sing like that blew my mind. I started out as a drummer. And I was also a singer, but I couldn't chew gum and, you know. The drummer singer is like one of the ultimate power. That would that dude in particular?

Yeah. Like that that dude was a fucking machine and such a just on it like really soulful deep singer And he's the pop guy too It was so wild to like watch Like he'd be drumming but he would be singing green eyes or whatever

You know like green eyes and Keep hanging on in particular Those two songs are like my favorite songs on that record And uh uh and divide and conquer which is also a great song but I was blown away by that band. And I met Grant a couple years later probably when we were touring up in it.

Yeah. Not even a couple years later, like five or six years later. He came. We played University of Minnesota, like the Student Union, with Mud Honey and Bullet LaVolta. Wow. And he came to the show. And I was just, I was kind of, you know, really in awe of Grant Hart.

Because I saw that, they did some of my favorite shows that I ever saw. And they also did one of the shows that at the, it was the end. And it was perfectly clear that they did not, they were not friends anymore. And it made me really sad. Yeah. I had a deep, deep, you know, attachment to. Lusker do. They're, you know, a life-changing moment for me. One of the greatest bands in the history of rock and roll. There are a lot of stories when you speak to people in bands about how,

especially as singers, when they say, you know, when I finally got up in front of the microphone, like all the people who have known me my whole life couldn't believe that I had done that. Like, all of a sudden, that's who I was. I could be wrong. I feel like people didn't say that about you. Because you said you were a drummer. I'm curious when you made the move and then how quickly the swagger was there. I made the move. I was singing and bands by the time I was 14. So, and no one was surprised.

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record collection, seeing who's could do, made me think that one of my favorite things over the last couple of years to listen to has been your spot-up. Spotify playlists. Oh, thank you. Because they're so eclectic, but they also betray such, like, just a curiosity and a passion for new music.

Like stuff where it's like, you're not, like, some people would just be like, I'm done. Sometimes we're like, we're done. You know what I mean? And like, you just might be like, I like these 10 Mugo songs, but I can't listen to 400 of them or whatever. And, and, you know, your stuff is just like,

it's such like a wide variety of stuff. And I was sort of a two-part question. Do you find yourself ever exhausted by it? And I also wanted to know if you could talk a little bit about the way that you're listening habits functionally have actually changed because of like listening to streaming music players and stuff like that because I would imagine you have a massive record collection. But now...

I did. Once upon a time, I had 3,000 records. Yeah. You know, and I have 40 now. Really? Yeah. and, you know, a quarter of those are Richard Pryor records. But I'll tell you that my life, my musical life kind of changed when I discovered Tune In radio,

which is like Tune In and Shazam are probably like the two most used applications that I, that I use other than like, you know, sports websites or something like that. But tune in radio, for those who don't know, it's like you can basically like tune into any radio station in the world, including Antarctica, which I did over and over until I realized it was the same playlist. Because no one's been there to change it? I can tell you, like, if I put it on right now, I'd be able to hum to you the first song that you were about to hear before you heard it.

Wow. It's really funny. But there's a couple of great songs that, like, Shazam doesn't work on the Antarctica playlist. It rarely. And, you know, like, it's some deep stuff. A lot of John Prine to, you know. Whatever gets you through me. Yeah, sure.

But my kind of go-to stations these days are there's this French radio station called FIP, FIP, probably the most Shazammed station of my life. dub lab here at LA W-EVL in Memphis which goes off the air at midnight Memphis time Do they end with like the national anthem Or do they don't?

But you know I kind of wish they would play like America the Beautiful by Ray Charles That's the way TV used to do And then There's a station in Montreal called CKUT that I listen to a lot too So those are kind of my Those are the ones I

meander through. Bondi Beach Radio in Australia and Berlin Community Radio are also two great ones. It's kind of exciting to hear you say this because one of the things that has always been the most joyful part of your music and certainly live is

the way every song that you produce, whether it's solo, Twilight Singers, Afghan Whigs, especially perform live, feels part of the larger dialogue and conversation with music as a whole. You have such fluency with other artists that you love and you have such ability to weave them in and out. I mean, it's always, I mean, we are every interview you do,

including that Italian bastard, I'm sure, brought this up. But, you know, you interpolate songs, well-known songs, pop songs, into the songs that you're playing live, often in surprising and often beautiful ways. My favorite recent one was over my dead body going into when we two parted. Oh, it's really good. Yeah, thank you. But that makes everything feel alive in the way that music is supposed to.

The way you feel that charge you used to get from hearing something on the radio and you didn't know what it was and you had to reach and find a cassette and jam it and tape it and couldn't chazam it. It's inspiring to hear you draw a line, basically, between the way music used to make you feel and still makes you feel. I like that it still seems sort of like, oh, what the fuck is he doing?

Yeah. I like that I can still have that effect on even like longtime listeners of my group. When we got back together in 2012, I knew that we were going to play the five main albums, and that's what we were there for. But in order for me to have a root in the now, I wasn't going to try to write new songs, but every night we played See and Don't See by Queenie Lions and Love Cry. by Frank Ocean.

And then I began to interpolate, like, I forget which Channel Orange song into Love Crimes also. There were a bunch of people who obviously didn't know Queenie Lions. I get it, although she was like a mainstay of my DJ career. But that first Frank Ocean, like the nostalgia ultra record, like I loved the whole thing. And when it got to the murder, murder, murder part of that song, I was like, I can do this one. Yeah.

And that's what happens. Like, it's really like, I don't like, it just kind of washes over me. And I'm like, oh, I can do that, you know. And it's very natural. It has to be natural. If I'm, like, challenged in any way or I have to try too hard, you know. But there has to be an element, too, of, like, like, See, you fuckers, I told you.

Like, these songs are still alive. Like, these aren't, you're not a museum at. Yeah. Like, you, sure. There were things that maybe, I mean, I remember, I remember getting Black Love when it came out and being totally floored, but totally challenged by it. Right. It took me, some songs, it took me days. Some songs, it took me years.

Yeah. Some songs, I feel like I heard for the first time when we saw you bring them back a couple months ago. Right. It's, it's, it's not a race. You know what I mean? And I feel like often music can feel that way. I can tell you this, like, from my own material. After the Gentleman Tour of 93-94, I didn't play the song, Gentleman again until 2012.

Seriously? Didn't play Gentleman on the Black Love Tour, didn't play Gentleman on the 65 tour. I was just over it. Yeah. And I remember when we got back together, like, John was like, are you going to do a gentleman? And I'm like, I'll try it. You know, he's like, people are going to want to hear it. I'm like, I get that, you know, not a carnival act.

I'll give it a go. You'll dance if you need to. I'll give it to go and see if it feels okay on me. And I loved it. You know, like once I had that 20-year break from gentlemen, I was like, oh, hey, man, how's it going? You guys have, like, the best, I mean, I don't know what it's like to be in the band, but it does seem like you guys have this incredibly touched career trajectory. in the sense that you got fans of people who are fans of congregation and gentlemen.

You got people who are fans of Black Love in 1965. You have people who might just be Twilight Singers fans. You got people who are like, you know what you mean? Like you refresh the source material enough that you must not necessarily feel that handcuffed to any two or three Afghan Wig songs on a nightly basis. You guys don't have surrender. You can play Faded every night, but like that must be fun to play Fated. It's fun to play Fated, but like I can tell you that we have so many, like, kind of epic closers that this time I was like, and I'm not trying to like bum anybody out because certainly I love Faded too.

But Faded is not a default closer. Like, you know, I was when we were making up the list over the phone, me and Curly, John was like, let's play Omerta on this. And I was like, yeah, yeah, let's do. So there's that. I mean, into the floor has a very, you know, epic ending quality too. So it's like where to find. We have a wealth of powerful closers. And like you said, not being tied to any kind of like hit.

And by the way, like even whenever I've gone to see the Rolling Stones and I'm like, I almost want to go back and go, you're the rolling fucking stones. You do not have to play that song. Yeah. Let me make you a set list, Rolling Stones, that will blow everybody away and probably blow yourselves away. You know, you have so many great songs. That's what I like. And I'll tell you something else from, like, halfway through the Black Love Tour, stop playing a honky's ladder.

never played it again, didn't play it on the reunion tour. But when we played it at the Black Love Show, I was like, oh, honky's ladder. You know what I mean? Yeah, I was kind of like, so, you know, little break. Distance can be helpful in relationships. Yeah, absolutely. It seems like for some lucky artists, there's like a Nick Cave Zone where you can enter into a later period of your, like, artistic life where you understand the mechanics of what

it takes to make a record and put out of it and keep people engaged in your art but it it happens almost not seamlessly obviously there's probably a lot behind the scenes that we don't know about but it's almost reliable and do you feel like you have actually have entered into almost a professionalism with this i know you've been a professional doing this for a long time but does it does this like life cycle or like this artistic cycle makes sense to you now it does now well number one we we collectively had the intuition to continue the momentum of the tour into the studio. If we took six months off or see you in a year or something like that, things have a way of kind of, you know.

Oh, I had a kid. Oh, I'm working on this other thing. Yeah. That we got right back on it. That was part of that kind of, I have the knowledge to like, let's keep the ship moving. And if it's going to move, let's keep moving. And I still was able to take a break in the middle of making the record and go out and tour on my own. Also previewing those new songs and then immediately going back and finishing the record.

It was a nice break for me to get back in. But as I said at the beginning of our conversation, I feel like I know what I'm doing now and I know how to do it. And there is, you know, I know Nick Cave, like, he has an office. Yeah. He goes into his office and works. And I don't do it that way, but once I get a song or two songs or I feel like I'm on the trail of a piece of material that I can expand on, I attack it and chase it down. I have to, we definitely have to, you've given us a lot of your time, so we should like. you go in a minute, but I have to ask, you know, I said right before you started recording,

I've been here about eight months now. Your history in Los Angeles stretches back a bit longer. Yes. What has kept you in the city? Because I have to say, just as a fan of your music, records that you have made up the city to me in ways I didn't know possible. Like it made me hear things in the city, made me see a different side of it. I still think about the cover of Powder Burns every time I see that view of downtown. Sure. Every time I drive past Fountain in Fairbanks, I'm like, what happened here?

What's going on here? I still get a thrill every time I see Bonnie Bray as a street name, and that's not even the most glamorous street. And there's the Blackberry Bell cover is Mahal and Drive. Yeah, it is, because you seem to have managed to do the neat trick of loving the legend and the mythology and feeding into it of the city. But you also live here, and you seem to like it okay. I love living here. I'll tell you why I love, I always had a great deal of wonderlust. and had trouble kind of, you know, had commitment issues with cities.

Once I got my apartment in New Orleans and got a house here, that totally calmed me down. Now I have the wife and the mistress. You know what I mean? And everybody's cool with it. How much time do you spend in New Orleans for, like, in a year? Depends. Probably like a quarter of the year. Yeah.

You know? Like, not in a row, but I go down to New Orleans five or six times a year. Is that, like, for professional reasons or you just go to, like, spiritually, like, hit reset? Just to get some beads, man. Yeah, right. If you've never been to Mardi Gras, you have to go. Like, it's the happiest place on Earth that day. No better way to spend a Tuesday.

I can't imagine. You know what I mean? It's wonderful. But Los Angeles, to me, obviously, I love the weather. I love the culture. I love the architecture. I love the landscape. I love the ability.

First of all, the state of California is, I mean, come on. I know. I'm very grateful to be here. Those of us who know, I'm not trying to tell everybody to come out here. Come visit, but please, you know, stay off the highway. But the ability to. to get to the desert, to get to the ocean, to drive up to Yosemite or Big Sur,

or mammoth, or like, it's just, the gifts are, I mean, it's my favorite place. I like the analogy of it to relationships, like romantic relationships, though, because they're definitely cities where it's hard to grow old with them, you know, and sort of the financial, what's going on in New York that's affected a lot of people's decision. But I know people who you live your 20s in New York.

And then you're like, I can't imagine being here and not doing those things and living that life. Every street you go on is when you used to go out at night. You used to go to those bars. Getting an apartment on Normandy Beach or something for some people. Now you don't do. So, yeah, I'll retire here. This is where the bodies are buried. I lived in New York for a year.

Yeah. That was enough. You know what? It was because I, once you walk out your door in New York, you are in it. You're in it whether you want to be in it or not. If I walk out my door here, I'm like, I can kind of poke around. Like, where I live is, I mean, if you, it's basically like a little, like, country oasis in the middle of the city.

So I love trees. I love grass. Not a lot of that. That's also, that's like saying I like sports. Rockstar's saying I like sports, trees, and grass. That's, you're flunking rock and roll 101, but you're living life. Sports, trees, or ass, nobody rides for free. Do you, are you still a big sports fan?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Have you, have you fully committed to the Dodgers from the Reds, or are you still a Reds fan? I still, I still love the Reds are my family. Okay. Dodgers are my dear friends. That's good. Yeah.

Because you've created like a very big support system for Dodgers fans. But I, yes, I love baseball. Yeah. I love baseball. I love basketball. You know, basketball lately has been very painful for me. Yeah. But, yeah.

I mean, watching the long, slow death of the Clippers has been. And just... Did you used to, like, did you ever used to go down to Staples or wherever they used to play, like, before they were good? Sure. Oh, yeah. Sports arena. Like, you could go to, like, for five bucks. Oh, yeah.

For five bucks and watch... Watch them get beat by 40 points. Darius and Quincy, yeah. Darius smiles. I watched him many times. You know, that didn't work out. Elton Brand was a little bit of hope. Yeah.

And then when Baron Davis showed up and Elton Brand was like, yeah, I'm going to Philly. And that was a little bit of hope for us too. Yeah. And that was like, I'm like, okay. But then, you know, then they got Blake and he immediately hurt his leg. Yeah, multiple times. Yeah. It's funny how you look back on teams like Elton, the Elton Brand Barron Davis Clippers,

and you remember that being like this point of hope? I feel this way about like the Evan Turner, the best of the Evan Turner drew Holiday Sixers, where I'm like, what was I thinking? Like when you look at it historically, it's like LeBron just wins every year. Steph Curry or Tim Duncan, and you look back and you're like, oh, yeah, Elton Brand and Barron could have taken a run at that. Are you a six-er fan? I have. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're both in Philly. Okay. So when I was a kid, the Royals had moved out of Cincinnati by the time I became, like, conscious of the NBA. And I didn't have an NBA team. And I, you know, if I did, it wasn't going to be the Pacers.

No offense. But Dr. J. is the one guy that in my mind. if I ever met him, I would probably, like, maybe be a little freaked out. Really? Yeah, of everybody, like, of anybody. Like, Keith Richards, I'd be like, hey, man. Dr. Jay, I'd kind of... You'd give a set list to him.

You'd be like, get it together. Yeah, exactly. We'd have a starting point. But, like, Dr. Jay, to me, is, like, he was kind of, like, my first hero. And so that team with Caldwell Jones, George McGuinness, Moses Malone, Doug Collins. Yeah. Like, that...

That was a team for you. championship team Yeah. Was I loved them. And then I loved when Barclay showed up and Andrew Tony

and all that gang like I, you know, big, you're giving us a gift here. Yeah, we were probably of Iverson

as much as, I mean, Barclan is like. And Alan Iverson like love him. Hate the Lakers. I always have. Yeah.

Went down and watched Iverson get a game. Game one. Yeah, yeah. That step over games. Sometimes I think that that game was the happiest moment of my life.

Like, maybe it never got better than that moment when he stepped over to him. I still think, in a weird way, the game two loss, when he clapped the staples, like, basically like bring it. That was my favorite. Love Alan Arverson, and I hope Simmons can come back healthy and turn around. I hope so, too. There's a lot of question works. We're going to let you go on this. I'm going to put you on the spot, but I'm just curious.

for people who've listened to this or have listened to our show who maybe aren't the fans that we are of you and your music, I put together a playlist a couple years ago of my favorite songs of years. Very subjective.

If you told people right now, this is not like you're not doing this for Rolling Stone, this is right now in 2017, you're telling people to listen to one song that represents you at this moment. What song you told you to listen to? Yeah.

How come? It's probably the most pure performance that I've ever. given in my life. And it's, it barely gets to three minutes long. It's no fucking around. It's kind of me distilled, me now distilled into two minutes and 50 seconds. And it's a perfect segue because it's on the new Afghan Wigs album, in Spades, which when we post this will be available tomorrow, yeah. Fantastic. Greg Dilley, thank you so much for time. Thank you guys. Hey guys, just want to say thanks to Sonos again for sponsoring the watchday. You know, they have this

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