WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1475 - Les Claypool / Marc Ribot

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Les Claypool is the first guest who flew himself to his WTF interview. Whether he’s studying aviation, perfecting fly fishing or starting another band, the Primus founder and bass virtuoso is always doing new things to stave off boredom. Les and Marc talk about his origins, Tom Waits, Adrian Belew, South Park, Sean Ono Lennon, and the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade. Les also mentions that one of his favorite guitar players is the genre-hopping Marc Ribot. So the two Marcs sit down in the garage to talk about classical guitar, being at Woodstock, jazz influences, and Tom Waits again. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening how's it going uh you know if you got a kid in the car you know what's up got a dm from a mother who's uh has a child on the spectrum who uh apparently started uh walking around school saying what the fuckers what the fuck nicks what the fucksters how is a kid not gonna get excited about what the fuckers come on i'm excited about it but anyway if you've got uh in the car, it's your choice. I'm not saying this is all going to be filthy, but I think, I guess sometimes you don't know what's coming. Right?

Right, what the fuckers? What the fuckniks? How about that, kiddo? How about what the fuckniks? What is happening? How is it going out there? I, you know, I'm actually pretty good today. I'm recording this the day after my birthday party. I had a birthday party. I've not had a birthday party in a long time, and it was a very special evening. Maybe I can try to explain that to you. I don't know. All right, we'll get into that in a second. Let's do this. Let's do this. Two guests on the show today. Les Claypool. I don't know if you know Les Claypool, but he's best known as the founder of the band Primus, but he's also been in many other bands like Sausage, Oysterhead, and Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, which is actually going back on tour this month. Yeah, and he's done a lot of stuff with the Sean Lennon. He's done a

lot of stuff with a lot of people. And actually, Les Claypool and I share a birthday week. Les also turned 60 this week. During the talk with Les, Mark Rebo came up a few times. He's a guitarist that's played with Tom Waits, John Zorn, Elvis Costello, and a lot of other guys and gals. And I've been a fan of his because he's kind of a unique and kind of edgy guitar player in a very authentic to him way. He has a new album out with his solo project, Ceramic Dog, and we kind of put these together. It kind of made sense. So there you go. Doubleheader. Their music is out on the margin in a way. You know, you got to go find it, man. You got to go find it. You might know Primus, but do you know the other 90 projects that Les has been been involved. You might know Mark, but do you know all the stuff? Anyway, that's happening. Also, I'm in Bellingham, Washington at the Mount Baker Theater for one show on Saturday, October 14th as part of the Bellingham Exit Festival.

If you're a Seattleite, I'm not going to be up in Seattle and some of the major cities till next year. So take a drive, come up to Bellingham. It's not that big a deal. Portland, Oregon. Good news. Just added a show.

Uh, the five shows that I had were sold out months ago. I added a second show on the Sunday, October 22nd. I believe it's a nine 30 show. So that's happening. Uh, Boston. I'm at the TD garden for comics Comics Come Home on Saturday, November 4th.

I'm at the Chemo Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico for one show on November 11th. Hometown show, I think there's about 60 tickets left for that. Denver, Colorado, I'll be at the Comedy Works South for four shows, November 17th and 18th. You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for tickets. Maybe this week I'll get up, get the, there's going to be a lot of local small theater dates here at the Elysian and at Dynasty. So that's all happening. I have my buddy Sam Lipside in town for three nights, which was great. You know, I talked to Sam a lot and we, you know, we don't get that kind of time. I rarely get that time.

Even if I go to New York, you know, we get a day and we hammer it out. But now we kind of had a nice leisurely few days to hang out because he came out for my party. Brendan McDonald came out for my party. My buddy David Kleinfeld, who I've known since Hebrew school, came out for the party, flew in. There were some people that flew in, which was very nice. You know, I guess I just take birthdays for granted generally. And I don't know that I prioritize them or think to even celebrate in any real way. But for some reason, 60 had some gravity, and it's definitely shifting my perception of myself and the world,

not in a bad way. So the birthday party, I was trying to count how many people were there who were actually guests on the show. And it was up there. It was like from 10 to 15, 10 to 12. But I didn't really know how to do the party because, I don't know, I've been to parties before. You know, we all have many little pockets of life. And, you know, I thought, well, either I do a comedian party

or I do a party of people that have made an impact on my life, have known me a long time, people I want to know better. It was just the idea was basically that I would invite a group of people that didn't cause me stress or annoy me. Some of them were comics, were invited, but many of them were on the road. But there were representatives from my childhood who knew me way back. There were representatives of people that knew me, you know, since, you know, the 90s. There are people that have known me since, you know, over this, the arc of my life, different friends come in. And then there was a bunch of new friends who, who, who I've met recently. And it was just a, it was an interesting combination

of people. There were several movie directors. There were several, um, uh, novelists. There were a couple of comedic performers, actors, and then there was my old buddy John Daniel from the music business, my buddy Dan from Gimme Gimme Records, my buddy Alan, who I've known since he was like 10, who recently reentered my life, my buddy Dave from Hebrew school, and me and Dave both worked at Alan's dad's men's store when we were in high school. Obviously, Kit, and she got the cake. What an amazing vegan cake. We did the whole thing at Buena de Planta on Sunset and Silver Lake, and it was spectacular. I went to a party there. I went to Alice and Bree's 40th there,

and I just became... It's a vegetarian Mexican place, and it was great. And the staff was great, and they handled everything beautifully. But the interesting thing was is that all these people I feel very emotionally connected to. I invited a few other people that were out working and a couple people couldn't come. But it was such a kind of an amazing night because the interface of all these people, you know, the interactions, you know, writers, directors, you know, comics, you know, actor. It was I just wanted everyone to get along and you can get kind of exhausting to do a party, but it was just a highlight. It was a, it was an amazing night. I had, I got some cool presents kit, found an old promotion for me in a newspaper in San Francisco and frame that up. It was very moving and it, and it really worked out. And it really worked out.

Lovely party. Very touched. It's so funny. You know, I was panicking the day before. I'm like, what if people don't come? And I was just nervous. What am I going to do with all the food? What if there's food left over?

That's all I got. Got hung up on the food. That was probably too much food. It all worked out. I entered 60 in a very nice way with people that I, I, I respect and have deep feelings for and who, uh, who feel the same about me. And I don't always realize that. So I'm thrilled. I feel okay. And, uh, it was, it was a great party. Um, all right. Well, look, All right. Well, look, Les Claypool is going back out on tour with his band, the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade. They kick off again on October 11th in Oakland, and they'll be going across the country throughout the month.

You can go to lesclaypool.com for tour dates and tickets. You know, I know Les Claypool's the guy and I wanted to know where that came from. So this is me talking to Les Claypool, the base virtuoso. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, How a cannabis company competes with big corporations. How a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category. And what the term dignified consumption actually means.

I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance

and fill out a quote. Zensurance, mind your business. This is a nice knife. Yeah, I think it's a, I don't know, the story behind the knife is a woman was subletting an apartment I had in New York and her boyfriend collected knives and, you know, her and I had a falling out and the knife was left. Yes. So I have the knife, the hammer, the broken hammer. The gripper? Oh, the gripper was just in a package of some sort. This is a, someone made this. It's of my dead cat.

Someone made the glass ball. Someone made this thing with the cat for me. It used, like, the clutter used to match the old garage. Now it just seems very specific and demands, you know, like, answers. But before, in the old garage, everything was cluttered, so it just was part of the fabric of the place. So when you say the old garage, where you used to do your podcast? Yeah, in Highland Park, yeah.

The original garage was a thing. It was an old, weird, beat-up place. I miss it, but I like it here. Yeah. So I'll give you the journey of the morning because it got pretty exciting revolving around, you know, you. It's very hard to sort of cram Claypool. What do you mean cram Claypool?

I mean, like, you know, like I got to get up to speed on Claypool. I kind of like that cram Claypool. Yeah. Yeah. I should have named my kid Cram. That would have been amazing. It's my name spelled backwards. It is.

Whoa, look at this. That's some synchronicity going here. Cram. That would have been amazing. It's my name spelled backwards. It is. Whoa, look at this. Some synchronicity going here. Cram. More synchronicity. So I'm trying to, because I know you. I know some of this stuff. You can't know all the stuff. No one can know all of the stuff. I know hardly any. And so I'm spinning out because I'm like,

how do I put this guy into context? He's a guy who's got his own zone. So you defy context because you're your guy. You're Les Claypool. So that's the thing. It's its own rabbit hole. So I'm like, where do I go with this? It's kind of like Zappa. It kind of seems like, where is

it rooted? And then all of a sudden I have this fucking mind blast and I'm like, so fucking residents, right? So I start listening to the residents, which I haven't done in years this morning. And then I get to Snakefinger and then I get to Polka and then I get to

Bavaria for some reason and Bohemia and then I get to the Illuminati. So what's going on, man? Man, you took the long way around the barn. Holy moly. But so that was sort of the journey of the day is that i'm looking at adam weishaupt on my phone and i'm thinking like it all comes full circle man

conspiranoia it's all in there dude yeah this sums it up right here i shot liberty valence i'm the man that shot liberty valence you're the. But wait, where did you come from? I'm an East Bay kid, meaning Northeast Bay of San Francisco zone. And you grew up the whole life there? Yeah. Born in Richmond, raised in Pinole, El Sobrante. El Sobrante, but if you live there, you say El Sobrante or El Sob. Yeah, sure.

Lived in Berkeley during my wild years. It's weird. There used to be a comedy gig in Richmond. I used to live in San Francisco for a year. No, there was a Walnut Creek Punchline, but there was a one-nighter, I think, in Richmond that was not great. Really? I used to play a lot of Hell's Angels bars around, you know. Around that area?

Yeah, well, Richmond, Antioch, San Pablo. Yeah, I want to feel like there were, where was. Around that area? Yeah, well, Richmond, Antioch, San Pablo. Yeah, I want to feel like there, where was the Sunshine Saloon? It was like. Sunshine Saloon, man, there's some bells ringing. Right, it's somewhere in the East Bay. That sounds like one of my old

biker bars. It must, it would have been. Yeah. So, do you have siblings? I have a half-brother and half-sister and a step-brother and step-sister. And I'm quite a bit older than my brother. I'm nine years older than my brother, 11 years older than my sister.

I'm a year older than my step-brother and three years older than my step-sister. So you're the oldest guy? I am the plow. Yeah. You set the example. I'm the one that they went, holy shit. Actually, I was a pretty mellow kid. Yeah.

But my dad did call the cops on me once because they found a tiny bit of weed in my bedroom. Oh, so your dad was that guy? That's how I'm going to teach the kid a lesson? It worked. My dad, so my parents were married very young. Well, they had me. My mom was 17 when I was born. Really?

My dad was 19. My dad used to like to brag that when he was 19, he was a transmission mechanic. He had a mortgage on a house, a payment on a car, and a payment on a washer and dryer, and a baby son. Yeah. So, but because of that, he was, I mean, he was like, my dad was like a cross between the Fonz and Dennis Weaver, you know. Right, because you're like my age. So you're what, born in 63? You're three days older than me, if you want to talk about doing some research, because

I looked you up. Wow. Two days. Really? 27th? Yeah. 29th. No kidding.

Yeah. So we're both, are you a Libra? I'm Libra. Yeah, me too. It's weird, right? I don't know what it means. It doesn't mean anything, but some people present it to you as if it does, and when they say things that make sense, you're like, oh shit.

Well, it always pissed me off as a kid because it was boring. It's like my, my cousin was like the crab or, you know, it's like, oh, I want to be one of those things. I want to be a ram. I got to be this, this scale. You're the scales. Yeah. It's like, what does that even mean? Exactly. Well, that's exactly the question of Libras. All right. So, but that's 63 and your dad's like 20 in 63, 19? He was 19. Man. So you had this experience of like, you know, for most of your life, the early life, your dad was just a kid.

Yeah, well, like I said, he was a retired auto mechanic, transmission mechanic. He was very – we've always been close. We're still close. I mean, as long as we don't talk politics. Yeah. He lives in Idaho now, but, you I mean, as long as we don't talk politics. Yeah. He lives in Idaho now. Idaho. So you really can't talk politics.

Yeah. He always had the mustache. He had the pompadour. He wore the cowboy boots. He was always very, very, he was like the cool guy. Yeah, yeah. But to him, weed was, I may as well, it may as well have been heroin. Really?

Because that wasn't a thing for his generation at that stage. Because he had to go from being a 19-year-old to a dad to grow up. Right. So he came from that sort of conservative baby boom thing? Yeah, I always joke with Sean, you know, Shiner, Sean Lennon, that my dad probably wanted to beat up his dad. Really, your dad wasn't even impressed by the Beatles, huh? Oh, he said, oh, they can't sing for shit.

But my dad was not musical. But he's always been a great guy, very supportive guy. But a car guy all along? Oh, yeah. Like he had cool cars? We had some cars. I mean, I have a lot of cars now that are all in various stages of disrepair. Can you fix them?

I can, to an extent, but my dad yells at me when I do because he's, you're going to screw up your hands, God damn it, what the hell are you doing? I'm like, well, if you didn't live in Idaho, you come help me with these damn things. But do you live up in Northern California? I do. Really?

So that's beautiful up there. It didn't burn down? Not yet. We're in the coastal wine country, sort of in between Sebastopol the coastal wine country. Oh. Sort of in between Sebastopol and Bodega Bay. Oh, yeah. I lived in San Francisco briefly, and I never quite understood the city.

But I used to drive up north. I used to like to go through Bolinas and Point Reyes. Yeah, beautiful. Oh, it's the best. Well, I keep my boat out in Bodega Bay. Yeah. So that's where I do all my fishing. So you've got a boat and you do fishing. Yes. And you've got a plane now where I do all my fishing. So you got a boat and you do fishing. Yes.

And you got a plane now. I do. And you fly it. I flew it down here today. How long does that take? Like two and a half hours. Now, you must be, you know, some people, like I feel like I'm busy, but I think a lot of times it's just me thinking.

But you seem to be doing things. You know, I get bored easy. And when I get bored, if I'm not doing something, I get a little depressed. I'm a peaks and valleys guy. But I remember Neil Young years ago told me, cause he has all these cars and he has his own bus and he says, well, I got the traveling Jones. And that's kind of me. I love, you know, I got a couple old tour buses, a boat, lots of old cars. But they're all, besides the plane, are all in various stages of, you know, I'm lucky if they'll start at this point. So you have all these things and it seems like you just put bands together, bring groups of people together and go, let's play for a while and then just go play shows.

Yes. That's what you do. That's another element of boredom. I think they call it, you know, they have a technical term for it now, ADHD or whatever it is. But, you know, I always say, you know, I've been with my wife for over 30 years now, you know, and so I say, you know, but I'm musically very promiscuous.

I'm a musical whore, basically. But it's weird, though, because it seems to me that listening to all the stuff you play with outside of doing studio sessions with other guys or other musicians, that when you're playing your stuff or you're part of the core, you can always tell it's you back there. So you may be promiscuous. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's great. Well, there you go. It's like you're a singular thing, which is kind of mind-blowing.

And I imagine you have sort of like these fans that are totally in the rabbit hole and know everything that you have to sort of deal with occasionally. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a podcast that I should know the name of it that's the Primus something or other that these guys run and we had we were doing this vip thing on this last tour where on the frog brigade tour you get to come and hang out with me and chit chat yeah and we did this little game show and he came and did yeah it was like a trivia show uh-huh and he knew more about me than me you know and so really it was a couple things he didn't have right but for the most part and it's very endearing. Yeah. Well, in terms of things you were involved with. Yeah.

Or you played this song. You've only played this song three times and you played it in 98 and it was raining and there was lettuce wraps on the rider. It's crazy, some of the stuff that he knew. I'm like, holy shit. But is it impressive or do you find it uncomfortable? No, I think it's because I was that guy when I was a kid. I was always that guy that was looking for the thing that nobody knew about or that not too many people were into. From what age do you remember being that guy? As early as I can remember.

Yeah? When you started playing music? I mean, even before that. We're the same age. So when everybody was listening to Kiss, I'm listening to Zeppelin. When everybody started listening to Zeppelin,

I was listening to Rush and then I started finding, you know, like old Peter Gabriel and The Residence and Snakefinger and Public Image Limited and all these things.

Yeah, but I had, the reason I found it was because of a guy who worked at a record store. Like, I had this guy, the same guy,

he was a guitarist in New Mexico who did like, he had a band that played once a year called Jungle Red. And it was just him and this other guy, a guitar and a noisemaker. And I remember their final performance, they were wearing surgical scrubs and breaking fiesta wear with hammers. I like it. Yeah. But he turned me on to The Residents, Fred Frith, Brian Eno, John Hassel, you know, that whole world of music. And then there was another guy at the same record store that turned me on to all the

old R&B. So I had these two worlds going that I couldn't really wrap my brain around, but I knew something else was out there. Yeah. But you must have caught the crashing wave of the hippie thing in the Bay Area. Do you remember that? I mean, I didn't really. No?

You know, I know all the dead guys, and a lot of it's through their crew because they're sound companies. Yeah, yeah. And I know the guys that helped build this wall of sound and stuff. You know, Don Pearson, who's no longer on the planet. Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant audio guy. Yeah.

But I was never, you know, I've been to a couple dead shows when Jerry was still around. Sure. And I went to the Fairly Well, but they didn't Fairly Well. They kept on going. And my buddy Jayski plays with him, actually. He was the original Frog Brigade, as was Jeff Comenti, who plays Keys. But I just never went down that rabbit hole. Yeah.

Which ones did you go down well i was i was a lunatic for rush when i was a teenager really that was my whole world it was oh yeah oh my god my first concert was uh rush hemispheres at the cow palace uh drank three warm low umbrows and threw up in the parking lot bought a bootleg ticket for twice as much even though it wasn't sold out i just didn't know any better right bought a bootleg t-shirt yeah which years later i wore it would barely fit me i wore it when we opened for rush and i'm like hey alex check this out he's like it's a bootleg oh really oh yeah so it's not real merch they were my you know there was nobody better than getty lee when i was a getty lee chris quire yeah john paul Jones. But then I discovered Larry Graham, Louis Johnson, Dexter Redding, you know, guys like Bootsy.

It's like that just changed my world. Because Rush, it was weird. I had this beef with Rush for a long time. I worked for a caterer in Albuquerque, New Mexico when I was in high school. I was 15 years old. And I was not a huge Rush fan, but I knew them because you couldn't avoid Rush. But the caterer catered the concert. And Alex Weasom was rehearsing on a classical guitar, and he found his dressing room to

be warm. And my boss, who was the food guy, it wasn't his job. Alex Weasom wanted a fan because it was too hot for him to practice. And my boss made me drive like a half hour up to his house to pick up a floor fan for Alex Leifson. And I told this story. And then Geddy Lee made it right on Instagram. Oh, really? Yeah.

Well, you know, the funny thing is, first of all, our first gig with Rush was in Albuquerque, but it was in 91 or 92 or whatever. Where was it? At the Pit or Tingley? I don't know. It was some big old thing that, you know. Your first gig with Rush or in? First gig when we toured with Rush because we toured with them a few times back in the day. But Alex is literally one of the sweetest, funniest guys you'll ever meet.

Yeah, yeah. He is hilarious yeah you get a couple booze drinks in him and he can get a little they call him i probably shouldn't say this but they have a name for him yeah and uh uh but a nice guy and he he can get a little surly but it's still in in good fun but he's he is a hilarious incredibly sweet human being but at the beginning so you're you're you're playing bass and when do you have the first band? Like, who were you playing with?

You grew up in the same, where did you grow up? Albuquerque. You grew up in Albuquerque? I did. Oh, look at that. Well,

back then, nobody wanted to play the bass. Everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen. So I bought a bass, I was instantly in a band. Yeah. You know?

And the funny thing is, it all connects because I told you about how my dad, my stepmom found this little bit of weed in a band. Yeah. You know? And the funny thing is, it all connects because I told you about how my dad, my stepmom found this little bit of weed in my bedroom. Right.

Called the cops on me to scare me, which it did, and it worked. But a guy in my algebra class sold me that weed, and I used to go into Mr. Kelly's algebra class.

Yeah. I'd go in there and there's this guy with, you know, big thick pop bottle glasses and long hair and dirty white t-shirts. Yeah. And he'd sit there and he'd roll up dime bags. And he'd look at these guitar magazines. Hey, Claypool, man, this is the guitar I'm getting. He'd show me his picture of

the Strat. I still remember the ad, you know? And he would give me these tapes because he wanted me to sing for his band. Because I was always singing some Aerosmith or some shit. And I was too, and he turned around to Hendrix and stuff. Yeah, yeah. And that person, and he's the guy that sold me the weed that my dad found. Right. Kirk Hammett. Come on.

Yeah. So, but it was Kirk that got me into the whole notion of, hey, there's a band scene. And so, I was too scared to sing because I still can barely sing. And so, I met somebody else who needed a bass player. So I talked my dad into loaning me the money to buy this little crappy bass. And he was like, well, if we're going to do this, it's something you really want to do, huh? We had no money. We had an auto mechanic.

And I had $15. Yeah. And so he loaned me. And he said, well, if we're going to do this, let's do it right. Let's go talk to Al. He had a buddy that owned this music store. Yeah. We went down and bought this Memphisphis p-base copy 150 bucks

my cold weeds all summer to pay for it yeah and and that was and that was the beginning that was the beginning so that must have been like kirk must have been almost in metallica already no that was exodus that he had just started exodus in fact i was in jazz band with tom hunolt no not hunting and um he uh he was the original drummer for Exodus, and they were starting Exodus. Right. Kind of like an ACDC sounding band. That's a good sound.

Yeah. I like it. And so Exodus was one of the local bands. And, like, was Hammett a pretty inspired player when he was a kid? I mean, he played a lot. He wasn't the best guy in town. Right.

You know? But he was a good player, and he was the a lot. He wasn't the best guy in town. Right. But he was a good player and he was the nicest guy in town. And he always had a vibe. Every time you saw Kirk on stage, he always had this vibe. And you're like, man, he's got a vibe. Yeah, guitar guy.

And he's another. He's just a super sweet guy. I know, he's got Peter Green's guitar now. He does? Yeah. Greeny. He's got that Les Paul, that 59 Les Paul that Peter Green used on all those original Fleetwood Mac records as some sort of magic instrument.

He's got a lot of those types of things from what I hear. As he should. But were you all still in town? Like, so what was the band you were in playing? I was in a band called Blind Illusion. Nice. Business cards? Oh, I don't know. It was kind of a progressive metal thing, you know. And I went in and out of that band for a few years, you know. Yeah. Progressive metal.

Yes. Like, who was that modeled after? Well, in the early days, it was very Rush. Yeah. But then once metal actually started becoming metal. Yeah. Like, you know, Primus was going in the mid-80s, and I didn't really, there was a whole different scene in the Bay Area called the World Beat Scene. Right. And I used to work for a

bunch of those bands. I was roadieing for, and Jayski, who's playing with the dead now, he played in Primus at one point. You know, I used to work for those bands. Like which bands? He was in the Freaky Executives, which was basically, they were like the time. They were like the San Francisco version of the time. So that's R&B, really, right? Well, it was Minneapolis funk. Right, okay. So super aggressive. They were badass.

But then there was these other bands like Zulu Spear, The Looters. There was a band called The Looters. They should have been the next U2. They were amazing. Yeah. They had a vibe. Yeah. Very, very political.

They were the only band from the U. the US that was allowed to play Nicaragua that was back when the Sandinistas were doing all their shit and they went down and did that it was this whole big deal but the whole scene

fell apart they hooked up with I don't want to say who it was but this manager guy who just kind of started pushing them down the wrong

you know it was this cool scene and then a guy came in who was a big time guy and just started changing things and it ruined the whole thing. Huh. So, but that was your, that was the root of it was always kind of proggy. Yes. Proggy.

And then for me, then I've discovered the, you know, I went to Isley Brothers and Larry Graham at the Oakland Coliseum. And Funkadelic and that stuff. All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But like, but Zappa doesn't factor in? Zappa factors into Larry Lalonde's world very heavily. Yeah.

Guitarist for Primus. Yeah. And so his favorite guitarists in the world, he'll tell you, it was Frank Zappa, Jerry Garcia, and Eddie Van Halen. Interesting. And then I turned him on to Mark Rabot. Mark Rabot. And he's one of my all-time favorite guitar players.

In fact, my favorite guitar solo, and I'm not big on favorites, but my favorite guitar solo in the world, and I just played it for Billy Strings recently, is the guitar solo on the song Chewing Gum on the Elvis Costello Spike record. Okay. It's Kirk Joseph on sousaphone, no bass. And it's Mark Rabot playing guitar. And it's a short little solo, and it's one of the greatest bits of guitar solo

I've ever heard in my life. I've got to listen to it. I mean, you know, most people would say I'm nuts, but it's amazing. Yeah. What is it about? Because, like, there is, like, he seems to, he's another guy that seems to chart his own world somehow.

Yeah. And it's uniquely his, and it doesn't really align with, like, a lot of mainstream guitar playing, which is great. Well, he's like the Fred Friths and the Snake Fingers and the Blues. Right. He's like that. He just looks at the guitar differently than most other people on the planet. Yeah, I talked to Baloo. That guy's great. Yeah. Have you talked to him? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I talked to Baloo. That guy's great.

Yeah. Have you talked to him? Oh, yeah. You know him? Oh, yeah. What a nice guy. He's one of the, he's actually literally one of the, I keep saying this, but he's one of the nicest people I've ever met in the music industry.

We just toured. With Harrison and him? Yeah, Frog Brigade did this last summer, and they were on a good portion of it. How was that? How were they? Great? They were amazing. He's like, you know, like he'd been there sort of in the back of my head and around my whole life as this guitar player that was like from outer space.

And then you meet him and he's just this like good natured southern guy. No, he's still from outer space. The first time he sat in with us, he was like, I'm going to come sit in. I was like, OK. And it was a I don't remember if it was one of my solo bands. Yeah. And I said, you know, we usually kind of, you know, wear stuff on stage. He shows up with a footie onesie, wearing footie onesies.

Yeah. That had, I think, dinosaurs on them. And he had taken this Viking helmet and pulled one of the horns off and turned it forward. So it just had one big horn out the front. And there he came bounding out on stage. And I was like, this guy is, no wonder this guy is one of my heroes. Well, what about Buckethead? You never even see his head.

I've seen his head. Is it okay? It's fine. But he's another kind of wizard, right? He's a wizard. Yeah. You play with him a lot?

Oh, yeah. He's an old friend. He's a dear old friend. Is he a Bay Area guy? He's from down here. Uh- wizard. Yeah. You play with him a lot? Oh, yeah. A few times. He's an old friend. He's a dear old friend. Is he a Bay Area guy? He's from down here. Uh-huh. Yeah. It feels like you're hiding something.

Well, I mean, no, he's just this little short Filipino guy that, you know. Has a thing. Has a thing. But he's one of those guys, I'll see him a bunch, and then I don't see him for seven years. And I see him a bunch. I feel like that see him for seven years and I see him a bunch I feel like that's everybody with that guy yeah

he's like a jackalope yeah but so when Primus kind of happens that's interesting about the guitar player

Lalonde because so he took because there is something about some of the orchestration and some of that stuff that's kind of Zappa-y well it comes from him

do you all read music? Oh, hell no. I mean, I used to in high school, but... So you couldn't, like, if someone put music in front of you, you couldn't do it?

I could do it. It would take a long-ass time. I couldn't sight-read it. Were you around... Unless it was quarter-note stuff. Right. Were you around as a proficient player

when Frank was still alive? You know, I'm still waiting to become a proficient player. No, I'm just saying, were you on his radar? I have no idea. You know, he was buddies with my friend Mike Borden, who's the drummer for Faith No More. Yeah. And Mike was good friends with Moon. Yeah.

And, you know, I've met Dweezil and Ahmet. Yeah, yeah. And, in fact, Dweezil's thing opened for one of my New Year's shows. Yeah, he's... Zappa plays Zappa.

He's a very intense guy, Dweezil. And very, sort of like, you know, on top of his dad shit. You know, like, he can play that stuff. Well, it's funny

because we did, I think it was Conan O'Brien years ago. and he was there with Ahmet. Right. Doing their comedy act. Ahmet was on fire. I mean, Dweezil always seems pretty just focused and straight. Right.

He's a pretty straight guy. Yeah. Whereas Ahmet was just like, wah! He was like the Tasmanian devil or something. Yeah, yeah. And they did this thing where they totally made fun of Kenny Rogers while Kenny Rogers was on the show. It was amazing, but it was like cringeworthy amazing. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you felt like, ugh, poor Kenny. But then you're kind of like, but this is pretty badass. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. Well, it just seems like he would have been one of the people that he would have asked to play with him.

God knows he played with a thousand people. I think by the time anybody knew who the hell I was, it was already kind of, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sick. So with Primus, did you anticipate? Obviously you didn't. I mean, because that, what was it, Pork Soda? That record went gold really quickly.

First of all, we never thought we'd have any of this. I remember when we got on MTV, Kirk Hammett was like, how the hell did you guys get on MTV? We haven't even got on yet because we were on 120 Minutes. And I remember years ago having a meeting with our then attorney and it was, I think it was before we put out Frizzle Fry. And somebody had offered us a publishing deal and it was like, and he said, you know, for you to lose out on this publishing deal, you'd have to sell more than 100,000 records. Do you honestly believe you're going to sell more than 100,000 records? And we're like, holy shit, that's a lot of records.

And we didn't take the deal, thank God, because we've sold millions of records. But we're what you call a catalog band, if you get into the old technical terminology. Which means? Which means we trickle out it doesn't it doesn't we don't we don't like like pork soda sold a million records but it took three years to do so right you know so so catalog band it's like my friend john daniel said to me i said like years ago when i was like much younger i said he's in the music business he runs a crush management i said does zappa make money he's like if you have a bin at the record store with your name on it,

and there's like 50 records in there, you're making a little money. Well, you used to. Right. Now they're like business cards. Sure, but I mean, but that's what a catalog is, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That you're going, you just keep putting out things. But it's not like the old days.

I know. I mean, not even close. Putting out things. But it's not like the old days. I know. I mean, not even close. I remember, I remember, you know, I always say that, you know, the cupcake was the record sales. Yeah.

And then the frosting was going on tour. Right. And the sprinkles were t-shirts. Right. It's completely flipped around. Right. It's now. T-shirts first?

Stand in front of the mic with a bass in your hand, t-shirts, sell them damn t-shirts. Yeah. And then albums are almost like business cards. You just make them to generate buzz. I mean, there's some money to it, but it's not like it was. Not even close. How do you hook up with Billy Strings? I'm kind of on a Billy Strings run right now.

I can't stop watching the guy. Oh, my God. So Billy, a handful of years ago, Delirium, the band I have with Shiner, Sean Lennon. Yeah, Sean Lennon, yeah. I talked to him. He's a good egg.

Great guy. We were playing this festival up in the Sierras, and my wife comes to me, and she says, hey, look at this set list. And I'm looking at the set list. The first song on the set list started with L. Second song started with E. Third song started with S.

Fourth song started with C. It spelled out my name. And I was like, that's a little creepy. And I was like, who the hell is it? Oh, it's Billy Strings Band. And so I met the guys that night. And I don't barely remember meeting him. And then I kept hearing he was a big fan.

And my daughter, she's going to hate I tell this story. She forced me to get an Instagram account. She's like, you're getting old. Your fans are getting old. They're all going to die off. And there'll be no legacy for me. And you need to get Instagram so you get some young fans. I'm like, okay.

So I get this Instagram. Because to me, social media was going on Craigslist looking for Chrysler parts. So I get this Instagram account. And what the hell do I do with this thing? I don't know. So I start posting fishing pictures. So, of course, Billy's So I start posting fishing pictures. So, of course, Billy's commenting on all my fishing pictures.

So next thing you know, we start chit-chatting. Well, come on out to the house and let's jam. And we did, and we started working on a record, and we've become really good friends. But every time we go to record, we usually end up just going fishing. Yeah. Is it a bluegrass record? It's some sort of grass record. I'm not sure. It's a combination.

It's just whatever you can imagine that the mesh of these two worlds would be. But it is twangy. I call it a twang record. So, when did you do the South Park theme? Oh, that was... That would have been... Was it after Primus broke up the first time? No, no. It was in the mid-90s. It was? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that band was still functioning?

Yes, we had a different drummer. It was when we got our new drummer. It was after Tim Alexander left the band, and we had this guy, Brain. And we just got this call one day from these college kids. They had just made this little video that was all over the internet, The Spirit of Christmas. Brian Boy Etaino? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they wanted a theme song. And so we didn't think it was going to get on television, let alone take over the world. But you did it. That's pretty nice. Well, we thought it was cool. Yeah. And so we did it, and it took over the world.

Did you get compensated? We got a few bucks out of it. Yeah. I imagine that. I assume, since it's on a million times a month, even if you make a nickel, you do okay. But it's really not like that because it's a... It's a cable. I'm not complaining.

It's a cable. It's not like my boy Danny Elfman gets that Simpsons check every time Fox... Yeah, because that's network. Wow. Right. What about Danny Elfman? He's a guy, do you like him? Oh, yeah.

I haven't talked to him in many years, but we were buddies there for a while. Because it seemed like he came into like, the list I went through when I was kind of thinking about you was, for some reason, the Church of the Subgenius, Zappa, Beefheart, Baloo, Pink Floyd, Ween, Waits, and Danny Elfman. That's a good list. But Elfman does it. You have to put Evil Knievel on there. Oh, Evil Knievel. I had the poster. You must have had the poster.

We were the same age. Well, I remember the disappointment and the strangeness of the Snake Canyon thing. So let's talk about this. Okay. What was the big disappointment for you? Well, it, it, the whole thing I remember seeing, I don't even remember what year that was, but I knew like there was no way a motorcycle was going to get over that thing. And I knew whatever the hell that thing was that he had built to get over it, you know, it didn't look like it,

it didn't look like it was going to make it over. And I just, the whole thing seemed like a poorly thought out undertaking. And it looked like it was designed to fail. And then when you just see that parachute with that rocket ship, right? Am I thinking of it right? Well, I think you thought of it way different than I did. I thought it was the greatest thing that was ever going to happen in the world. And it was on Wide Wild World of Sports or something. And they had to, unless you bought the pay-per-view or whatever it was the greatest thing that was ever going to happen in the world. And it was on Wide Wild World of Sports or something. And unless you bought the pay-per-view or whatever it was,

closed-circuit TV back then, we had to wait two weeks to see it. And, in fact, my dad lives near Twin Falls. And I was driving over the bridge one day a handful of years ago. I'm like, what the hell? And the mound is still there that they had built that for. I used to draw those little ramps on my notebooks and shit. And my big disappointment in that was, from what I remember, and this could be clouded childhood memory thing, but it seems pretty, is when they pulled him out of the water, he had urinated himself. And that just bummed me out.

How could you tell he urinated himself? Did they say it? It was, it was, somebody said it. Oh. It was a thing. I mean,

maybe I'm wrong all these years, but that's been sticking with me this whole time. Like, ah, evil. Yeah, but the, but the guy had broken every bone in his body.

I'm sure he was barely working as a body, but like, I get it. Yeah. It was a little embarrassing. You don't want your, you know. I've never seen Geddy Lee wet himself, you know, and I hung out with that guy in some pretty heavy-duty situations.

Give it time. We're all getting older. That's very true. But did the South Park song give you some freedom to continue the life you wanted to live? No, no, it's not even close to that. No? Like I said, because it was cable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was a nice little thing that pops in once in a while. But now, I mean, I'm assuming that's why all these guys are on strike right now is because all that residual stuff's gone. Yeah, yeah.

Now everything's streaming, so you don't see anything from that. So what is the... But look, I'm not complaining. A, first of all, they've become wonderful, wonderful friends of ours. Matt is literally one of my favorite people. Yeah.

We just did that thing with him and Trey. It's been a wonderful association. It's a wonderful thing. Yeah. Two guys that have been able to open that many doors, push that many parameters, and become that huge. Yeah. The world needs guys like that. Yeah.

And I'm proud to say they're my buddies. Yeah. No, they're, and yeah, apparently the show is still pretty good when it nails it. It's, you know, how do you maintain relevance for that long? It's crazy. It's one of those things that, like, I think it's a rites of passage for kids. You know what I mean? Oh, one of the most awkward moments in my life was watching the first one of the...

So here's if you got time. Yeah, I got time. So years ago, when my son was about 14, he's 27 now, we did a gig in Brooklyn. And Matt and Trey were there, and we're hanging out backstage. And somehow they're talking about... Cage starts talking about Family Guy. And they look at him and go oh so so what do you think of south park and he's like oh well i'm not allowed to watch south park and it

was like their heads were on the same servo they just both went and looked right at me like what the fuck dude and i'm all hey it's getting a little warm in here you know yeah so went home and cage got to watch his first episode of south park with me yeah i. And I'm sitting there with my 14-year-old son. And it just happened to be that episode where one of the guy's dads, I can't remember which one, would sneak off to the steam baths. Yeah, the gay bar one. To get screwed in the ass by another character. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm watching this with my 14-year-old son going, you know, I'm going, fuck, I'm Matt Stone, I'll get you someday. But, so. You got through it? Made it through. Did the kid get some laughs? Yeah, he got some laughs and he, you know, it's just, that's part of the thing. We all have to, our kids are supposed to do something that shocks the previous generation.

But you're kind of a goofball. You're just not a dirty goofball. I can get dirty. Yeah. a goofball you're just not a dirty goofball i can get dirty yeah so how do i like these different configurations of people that you name as bands is there like do you do you feel like they're all fundamentally different music or do you feel like it's just an extension of what you do i think it's like it's like you having guys on the show and gals it's sure every conversation is different right you know and there's a there's an element there's a there's a there's a thread

that goes through that's consistent because you're who you are right but you know music is a conversation right and the the more varied and the more diverse the background or different from from from you that that that the converse other conversationalist is, the more varied that conversation is. It's so weird to listen to, like, the Claypool Lennon delirium because, like, you know, Sean sounds like his dad. And, you know, and I talked to him about this,

and this sort of, it seems like the way you guys play together, you know, chord structure-wise and in terms of the production, there's definitely, you know, other than his voice, more than just that a Beatles element to it. Do you feel that? I definitely do.

But I'm also, I'm not so much anymore, but I was very surprised how much of his mom is in this stuff. Oh, yeah. Well, that's good. You know? Yeah. Because she's the one, I mean, she's the one that turned John into what he became that. Yeah. She's like a sort of boss artist. Yeah. She's a real risk taker. And you can see that in in Shiner as well.

Yeah. Yeah. But there have been moments. There was one time because he doesn't really like to play the Beatles stuff so much because. And this is another thing I learned is, you know, most people, and I was guilty of it as well, look at someone like Sean, and now Harry Waters is in my band. Who's that? Roger's kid? Roger's son.

No kidding. Oh, yeah. And you think, oh, all the doors open for these guys. It's the polar opposite. It's a weight. They get more scrutiny than any of us that started with a clean slate. And I saw that when we went and saw Paul's son play at a little club one place. And it was the people that came to hear Paul McCartney.

And they got this guy who was cool, but he was more grungy. And I could just see him like, oh, the apple didn't fall close to that tree. And I'm sure Shiner gets that too. It's just if you're Mozart's son, what the hell are you going to do? That's a big shadow. And Harry is Beethoven's son. Yeah. I talked to – who said it?

It was Duncan Jones, Bowie's kid, said that it's kind of a small club. Because when I was talking to Shiner, literally his phone rang, and it was Paul McCartney's kid said that it's kind of a small club because when I was talking to Sean literally his phone rang and it was Paul McCartney's kid well the wonderful thing about Shiner and we've become he's like my brother he literally him and my kids they you know they him and my my daughter bicker with each other like they're siblings right he's very close to my family and um so we were having a talk one day and somehow it came up about, you know, because he's met my dad and we're talking about my dad and how close I was and what a good dad he was. And I was like, and I said to him, I said, so for you, then who was like your

father? And he kind of thinks about it for a second and does the big shiner big eyes and he goes you know it would probably be like you know either david bowie or andy warhol and i was like who the fuck says that you know what i mean it's like his reality yeah growing up is so different than the rest of our reality yet he is one of the one of the most humble down-to-earth approachable people in in any form of celebrity that I've ever met. And how do you work with him? Do you guys co-write it all? Oh, yeah.

And you just jam and figure it out? Well, usually, the whole thing started because his band opened for Ghost of a Serpentine Tiger opened for Primus. And one day I was twanging away on this Dobro bass that I have, and he had an acoustic guitar,

and we kind of went in the back of the bus, and interesting things were happening. Like it wasn't just average shit. Yeah. That's why I think the Yoko thing, because there's this angular stuff was coming out of it. I was like, whoa. And so I said, let's get together sometime,

come out to Rancho. I got my place, Rancho Relaxo. Yeah. And let's see what happens. Yeah. And he came up, and we started together sometime, come out to Rancho. I got my place, Rancho Relaxo. Yeah. And let's see what happens. Yeah. And he came up, and we started working on the first Delirium record. And he brought in a few songs, and I brought in a few songs, and then we worked on a couple songs together.

And that's kind of our formula is he'll show up with three or four things, and I'll have three or four things, and we just start building on it, and then bouncing lyrical ideas off each other. So it's totally collaborative. Yeah. Is that the way it is with most of the bands? It depends on the band. I mean, a lot of the Primus stuff over the years,

it either came from me or it came from a jam. But later years, Leroy Lalonde has been bringing in a lot more stuff, which I think is amazing because it makes me play differently. It's like when I'm playing to support someone else's vision, it's much different. I'm more like a Tony Levin. It's much when I'm playing to support someone else's vision, it's much different.

I'm more like a Tony Levin. It's much more. Whereas if it's coming from me, I'm up front. Yeah, and I'm also feeling all the little bits and pieces and the grace notes in between, whereas if I'm supporting, I don't need to worry about that stuff. It's weird because the bass is, I think, historically a support instrument. Oh, yeah. That's the way it was. Well, I think, historically a support instrument. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's the way it was. Well, until guys like Larry Graham came along. And Stanley Clark. Yeah, and turned it on its ear. And you're like, holy shit, look at that. Or Geddy and Chris Squire, you know. Right. And Flea.

Flea, for sure. And I always forget his name. Leroy Gorman from Bow Wow Wow. I was always a big fan. Really? Oh, yeah. The guy's amazing. Really?

Yeah. I just was listening to I Want Candy, their cover of that. Yeah, listen to the bass. It's insane. It's crazy. Yeah. But, I mean, just kind of thinking about, because you did, what, three Waits records? Mm-hmm.

I think maybe more, actually, than that. And how does that happen? Well, so so years ago, we had the song Tommy the Cat. And we had released, our first record was a live record. We'd put it out ourselves. Money my dad loaned us.

And then with that money, we recorded Frizzle Fry, our first real record. And we held off from putting the song Tommy the Cat on it because it was our popular song. And we wanted to wait until we had a major label.

Yeah, right. So we saved it for the Interscope release, and I remember talking to Tom Wally, who's probably the reason I'm still here. He's from Interscope? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And he, I said, you know,

I want to do something special with Tommy the Cat, like maybe get someone like Tom Waits to be the voice of Tommy the Cat. And he's like, well, why don't we get Tom Waits? I was like, what do you mean? You can do that? What do you mean? What are you talking about?

So we sent him this. I wrote this note and sent it to him. And we were recording. And I came home. Laura and I were roommates. I hit the, it was back when we had phone machines. Yeah, sure. Hit the phone machine.

Hey, Les, this is Tom. Tom Waits. I got your note. This would be a wonderful thing. Let's do this thing. And I'm like, ah! I immediately called learn. So he came in and was the voice of Tommy the Cat.

And I ended up moving up. We live in a similar area. And he needed musicians, so we just became friends. And I've known his kids since they were little, and they're all older. And they're neighbors? I mean, neighbors where I live is if you're within eight miles of each other. Well, yeah, but that's close and he records at his place too right

he has a few different he bounces around he has his little spot now yes but there's a possibility where he could be like come over and play a thing sometimes I mean it's been a little while since I've gotten that call but yeah but we get together and do our things

and he's a friend. Him and Kathleen are good friends of ours. Yeah, and you're both band leaders, so how does it work in the studio with him? I just sit there and just go, oh, my God, this is amazing. It's Tom Waits. Sure.

Does he generally lay tracks down with all the music live? It's different all the time. Sure. He probably doesn't want me talking different all the time. Oh, really? Sure. He probably doesn't want me talking about it too much. About his process? He likes to do his thing, you know. I know.

I'd love to talk to him, but he doesn't do this. No, he's Tom Waits. He's Tom Waits. Yeah, yeah. He's the Sasquatch of music. Yeah. Okay, so the Frog Brigade? It seems like it's lasted in forms as long as Primus in a way, right?

It's been around a long time. It's been around a long time. But, you know, Frog Brigade is sort of an ambiguous thing. Okay. It's more of an idea? Well, it's basically my solo stuff. my solo stuff, but it implies that we're going to do

some of the early stuff, which was some of the, like the Floyd cover, which we do animals in its entirety. Yeah. And so. You do animals

in its entirety. Correct. I knew that. And you've done 2112 too, right? No, we did Farewell to Kings. Okay. So, like,

Animals is like my favorite Floyd record. Oh, really? Yeah, totally. Like, there's something about the guitar on, I think, Pigs on the Wing. I agree. That's, like, unbelievable. And I will listen to it all the way through every time I listen to it.

You have to. That's the rules. Yeah. I taught my kids that. Well, my son would listen. My daughter didn't care. Yeah. But there's certain records you have to listen to.

They're like movies. Yeah. You don't watch Dr. Strangelove in bits and pieces. Right. You have to watch it all the way through. Yeah. And I do it fairly regularly with animals, a few times a year anyways. Yeah.

Is it just your relationship with that record that makes you want to play it? Did you play it? How much did you tweak it? Well, how much did we? Did you clay pool it? Yeah. How much did we intentionally tweak it? Yeah.

Well, basically what happened is Primus broke up in the end of the 90s. We didn't say we broke up. We said we went on hiatus. But that was because we were too chicken shit to pull the plug. But we came very close to not playing together yeah because we weren't getting along it was just a it just was a mess yeah so there i am i was scared i was like what the hell am i gonna do now you know and i had done this thing where it became oyster head i had done this jam thing for the because my manager worked with galactic and he was into that world and they

asked me to do a jam thing in new orleans well, that became Oysterhead with Trey Anastasio and Stuart Copeland. And all of a sudden I was getting asked by these different festivals to put together a project for their festival. And I did this one. That's interesting to have like a deadline. To have to, like, you know, they want something. You're like, I got to do something new. Well, it's a jam thing.

They basically want you to come and jam. Call some of your buddies and get a good jam going. Oh, it's a jam. Okay. And so I to come and jam. Hey, call some of your buddies and get a good jam going. Oh, it's a jam. Okay. And so I did one for Mountaineer, and it was Tim Alexander, the original Primus drummer, Jack Irons, who everybody knew from the Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam and Eleven, and then my buddy Merv on guitar and then Skarek on sax. And I was going to call it the Thunder Brigade, but Michael Bailey was like,

ah, you know, you're the Primus guy. The hippies are already going to be scared. You can't it the Thunder Brigade, but Michael Bailey was like, ah, you know, you're the Primus guy. The hippies are already going to be scared. You can't call it Thunder Brigade. And I was like, all right, Frog Brigade because it's Calaveras County, the famous jumping frog in Calaveras County. Yeah. Well, so then when Primus broke up. You don't want to scare the hippies. Yeah, I don't want to scare the hippies.

So when Primus broke up, I was scared. I had two little kids. I had a big-ass mortgage. And all of a sudden, this thing I've been building since 1984 was gone yeah and so i said fuck this if i sit around i'm just gonna jump off the golden gate bridge so i got all my favorite musicians together stuck them in this old airstream motor home that i had and we drove up and down the coast playing bars well i got a keyboardist it was jeff comenti and i said if i ever have a keyboardist i want to play pigs because it's my favorite floyd song so we learned pigs and. And I thought, well, shit,

let's learn the whole record. Then we don't have to pay an opening band. And we just do two sets. And that's how it all started. And then we recorded it years ago and it won a jammy. And now we're doing it. It's available on record, your animals? Yeah, it's live frogs set one. Oh, okay. All right. But I think we're going to release another version, because I think it's better now, to be honest with you. Your animals? The animals with this band.

Why? Well, first of all, this band is really spectacular. Who's in this one? It's Sean Lennon on guitar. This is Frog Brigade. This is Frog Brigade, right. This is the current touring. Harry Waters on keys.

That's Roger' kid. Correct. Is he mad at his dad? I don't know if I should go there. All right. Because I know Rogers is mad at his. Mike Dillon, I've been working with him for years. He plays crazy vibes in Marimba and Tabla and amazing junkyard percussion who's that guy is

he just a guy you met through i've played with him for years he was in uh i met him through garage at law when they opened for oyster head but yeah he plays with everybody he used to have a band called billy goat back in the day that was pretty popular okay um and then paul obaldi on drums who i've been playing with for years and he used to to play with Cake, and he had a band, Deadweight. And we were supposed to have Skarek, my insane sax player buddy, but he screwed up his back and couldn't do the tour. So I'm like, holy shit,

because he's my super solo monster. Yeah, you need that one. And so Sean and Harry had to really step up on this thing, and I was a little nervous because I'd only heard Harry play parts, never really jammed with him. And Shiner, you know, he's always going,

oh, you know, I'm not as good as Buckethead or whatever he says. He's Mr. Humble, Humble Mumble. And they both really have stepped up on this shit. Yeah.

It's a really amazing band. Huh. Incredible band. One of the best bands I've ever had. And you're doing the whole album again. Correct.

Well, only through this next tour. Okay. We're doing an evening. We just did a two-month tour with an opening band. We had Fishbone

on a part of it. We had Remain in Light on a lot of it. Neil Francis, Witch. Neil Francis, he does that New Orleans rock thing.

I like that guy. He has a whammy bar on his... Yeah, he's an interesting guy. On his clavinet, which is really cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this next time we're going out, we've realized we want to do a much longer set,

so we're just doing an evening with, so you're going to get a shitload of frog music. So not just animals. Animals and then a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. And when you did... Now, have you heard from Roger about your animals? No.

I don't know if I want to hear from Roger about my animals. Nor Gilmore or anybody? No. Yeah. I like Gilmore, the way he plays the guitar. No, look, those guys are heroes of mine, of course. Yeah. Are you a metal guy?

M-E-D-D-O-E? Oh, yeah, of course. Right? Because that sounds like the one, right? I mean, in a way. It's not animals, but I mean, in terms of I could see that being inspiring somehow. That bass is heavy in that. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that whole album is unbelievable. I mean, it's hard to pick a bad Floyd. Were you a Barrett Floyd guy, too? Yeah. I mean, not as much as my youth. What you grew up with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, of course.

I mean, I even liked Momentary Lapse of Reason, which I get shit for from some people. There's like two big songs on there, isn't there? It's a great record. I mean, Tony Levin's on it. And yeah, what's your relationship with Crimson? Well, obviously Adrian's a buddy. Right.

Well, me and Sean play some early crimson in Delirium. We do Court of the Crimson King. Oh, okay. Because he was always an early crimson. I turned him on to 80s crimson. He turned me on to early crimson because I didn't really listen to much early crimson. You just listened to blue crimson? Yes.

Okay. That was my shit. Yeah. Now, you fly fish, right? I do. Do you tie flies? I used to. You don't do it anymore?

It's easier just to buy them, but I have all my fly tying stuff. I just haven't done it in a long time. You make the little woolly worms. I made all kinds of shit. When we were touring in the early days, we had this motor home, and we'd do shows, and me and Lur were always wide awake after shows, so we would drive while everybody else slept, and we had a beatbox between us with headphones. We were usually listening to

Floyd, and he'd be driving, and I would hang a mag light from the visor and clamp my fly clamp to the glove box lid and tie flies all night. Usually stoned out of my mind. I did it at camp. You've got to be careful,

because you can snap the fly and it's just a shred of garbage. Like if you whip it too hard, it'll pop the fly apart. Have you noticed that? Well, yeah. You're better at that. It sounds like some, you know, a little practice there, buddy. Yeah. Well, I was a kid.

Oh, yeah. No, actually, in fact, this last tour, that was one of the saving graces is after about six weeks, it was getting, you know, it was a great band, but it was like, shit, I want to be home. But we had three days off in Montana. And I have a couple of really good buddies who, my buddy who used to have a TV show, he took me, called Fly Fishing the World. Yeah. And he has a fish camp there near Butte, I think. It's a big whole river. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We spent three days fishing. Shiner came too. Do you like it? It was amazing. Oh, yeah, he enjoys it. In a river or a lake? It was a river. Oh, that seems hard.

Did you catch any? Oh, yeah, tons. We were drifting. Oh, yeah. In fact, whenever I go through Missoula, that's the Blackfoot, whereas River runs through it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's it. Norman McLean, all that stuff. That's the fly fishing paradise. It's pretty sweet. Yeah. All right, so you're just touring, that's what's going on, and you're recording with Billy? There's a half-finished project with Billy, but like I said, we always end up fishing.

Yeah. And then we're almost done with this delirium record. Actually, we just need to kind of get together. What's this? The fourth one or it'll be the third through real one. We did a couple of covers. Yeah.

But, um, yeah. So we, we got to finish that up. And what was that thing you did, uh, in support of,

uh, Ukraine with, uh, Google Bordello guy? Well, so when all that was first going down, um, I would go back and forth with Eugene because a couple good friends of ours are from Poland.

And so there was this worry about, oh, Poland's next and what's going on, blah, blah, blah. And they're good buddies with Eugene as well, Eugene Hutz from Gogol. So we're going texting back and forth and I was kind of drunk and he was kind of drunk. I'm like, we need to get, you know, because we were all blown away by Zielinski.

Just the fortitude of this guy. I don't need a ride he was kind of drunk. I'm like, we need to get, you know, because we were all blown away by Zelensky. Just the fortitude of this guy. Yeah. I don't need a ride. I need some weapons. Yeah. It's like, give me liberty or give me death. That's a pretty good quote.

You know, it's like, so I was joking. I was like, yeah, we should do a song. You know, this guy's got some big balls. You know, he's got iron balls. Yeah. And so he's like, yeah, let's do it. So we wrote this song, The Man with the Iron Balls. And Shiner's on it. And Billy's actually on it as well. Yeah. And so he's like, yeah, let's do it. Yeah. So we wrote this song, The Man with the Iron Balls, and Shiner's on it. And Billy's actually on it as well. Yeah.

And we just did it. And the conspiranoid thing, was that like a reaction to the current political situation? I mean, it's a reaction too. I mean, I don't know how it is with your friends or relatives. You know, there's just people that I – it's gotten better now, but especially during and immediately after COVID, it was very, very difficult to talk to some of my friends and relatives and whatnot. You had friends who went Q? I don't know if they went Q, but they went, you know, they went P. I mean, they went a little pre-cue.

Yeah. Just a lot of just all this conspiracy shit that's not necessarily based in any, you know, it always amazes me because, you know, look, I play the bass. I can do a lot of other things. My dad said, hey, this bass thing is great, but learn a trade. And I know a lot of trades. I mixed auto paints. I was a carpenter.

I did all kinds of shit, bench tech. But you know what? I play the lot of trades. I mixed auto paints. I was a carpenter. I did all kinds of shit, bench tech. But you know what? I play the bass. Yeah. If you want to know anything about the bass, Mark, you give me a call

and I probably can help you out. Yeah. You know, when, when I, when all this COVID shit was going down, when I,

you know, I first, I talked to my doctor. Don't always agree with him. Yeah. But then I called my buddy who graduated from Columbia Med and has been a,

been a pediatric doc in Oakland for the past 30 years. Yeah. And I called a buddy of mine who's a brain surgeon in Manhattan, and another buddy of mine whose dad is literally a Nobel Prize winning research doc at Duke University. Okay. To find out what was going on.

To find out what I should do for me and my family. They've devoted their lives to doing what they do. I devoted my life to playing the bass. That's who I'm going to rely on. Right. Not my buddy, surfer buddy, who read some shit on the internet. I'm just, you know, I love him.

He's a great guy. But I'm going to listen to these other people. Yeah. And they may not be right, but they're more apt to be right. Right. Or correct, I should say. So, and I told my father this i'm like dad

you're a transmission mechanic for 40 some odd years you're the guy i'm going to talk to you're a professional what you dedicated your life to what you do yeah you're going to know more about this than just about anybody i'm going to trust your opinion i'm not going to just you're not going to say like which how do you feel about the vaccine well Well, but that's, you get my point. I do. Correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do get your point. And that was what conspiranoia was. Yes, it was some of the things I was hearing. And so I wrote it, and it was actually much harsher when I first wrote it.

And my son, who's become a really great sounding board for me, was like, you know, Dad, people are tired of this shit. Nobody wants to hear this shit. And so I made it a little more lighthearted. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh, about Bill Gates putting microchips in all the chicken pot pies and things like that. Right. Yeah. So.

And that, was that the first time Primus had been together for a while? Uh, no, we've been, actually been.

Around? Yeah, we're, like this year, we took the year off. Yeah. So I can go do, you know,

you gotta let it breathe once in a while. Yeah, yeah. Because A, I don't want to be tired of it. If I'm tired of it, the audience is gonna know I'm tired of it

and they're gonna go, what's this bullshit? And it's just, how many of the original guys? It's all three of us. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, original is subjective because Herb was like

our eighth drummer, but he's the one everybody knows from the first record. Okay. Now, do you fly back? I do. We're gonna go get some lunch

and then I hop in the bird and away we go. All three of you? No, no, no. Those guys just picked me up from the airport or Brad picked me up from the airport. And how long of a flight? It's about two and a half hours, but we might do some. So I flew down with my CFI because I got my pilot's license, but now I'm working on my IFR. I don't know if you know what that is. Instrument flight reference, which means I can fly into clouds. That's what I'm working on. ThatR. I don't know if you know what that is. Instrument Flight Reference, which means I can fly into clouds. That's what I'm working on. That's what I, I don't have that. So you're practicing.

Yes. So I brought my CFI down so I can do instrument flight, which basically they put these goggles on me. I can't see outside the plane and I have to fly at all with just using. Oh, your instructor. That's a certified flight instructor.

Is that what that stands for? Yes. So he's hanging out at the airport? He's at the airport. We're going to get lunch and then we're going to fly back and land at a few airports on the way back so I can practice all this stuff. Did you practice on the way down? We wanted to get down here. It's pretty, right?

It must be beautiful. Not when you've got the foggles on. All I can see is inside the dam. Right, but like— It's literally like this. But do you fly along the coast? It didn't matter. I couldn't see it.

Oh, I thought you said you didn't do it on the way down. No, I didn't do any—we didn't do. I couldn't see it. Oh, I thought you said you didn't do it on the way down. No, I didn't do any, we didn't do any stops. Oh, okay. We just did from Santa Rosa to Burbank, so I was doing it, but on the way back, we're going to hit a few stops to get some more practice. I'm glad I offered you this amazing

opportunity. Yeah, man. Killing a couple birds with a stone here. Well, have a good tour, the rest of the tour. Thank you much. There you go. Les Claypool, right? Again, as I mentioned before, you can get tickets for the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade tour at lesclaypool.com. And, okay, look, Mark Rebo I've been a fan of for years.

Okay. So yeah. So like two weeks after I talked with Les, it just worked out. He was just off the road. He has a new album out called Connection that he released with his solo project, Ceramic Dog.

And this is me talking to Mark Rebo. So you're back with Gibsons? Not 100%. But for the stuff with Ceramic Dog, I've like returned, swum upstream to whence I was spawned. Yeah? Yeah. Why on that record? What makes it change me out of the entire spectrum of Mark Rebo sounds? Well, you know, I mean, it's not, actually, I went back after that record, to be honest,

because, just because, but when I tried to tour with it, I realized nothing else would do. I've been, you know, like, kind of resisting a certain straight-ahead metal sound for years. But then I thought, why? It's so much fun. But it seems like that record, it's kind of interesting because, you know, you've done so much stuff over so long a time, so much different stuff. But it seems like this record, not knowing a lot of the solo records, it seems like there's a piece on there that represents everything that you do fairly clearly. Because I read the book and I can see where you're coming from, but it seems like every song on that record is distinct and honors some part of where you come from. Yeah, it kind of wound up that way, I think.

Yeah? Yeah. Like, you're a little older than me, but, you know, I get the sort of Jewish, Eastern European, Lower East Side trip. You know, my grandparents spoke Yiddish, and it's like, it's a very specific thing, and I think one of the things that's beautiful beautiful about the book and also about the worlds you came from and musically is that you uh you respect a sort of mystical reality of the lower east side yeah i mean it's it's more than a it's more than a uh an address it's a kind of a yeah has a kind of place in the mythology right yeah like but it's

like it's not just music. Like it goes back, right? Because you do in the book, you talk about, you know, the Yiddish theaters and all this stuff. And I became very aware of that. But I don't know the specific history of it. But I felt like I belonged there. Yeah. I mean, I didn't know the specific history of it either until, you know, when I moved back.

And the funny thing is, like a lot of people, I said I moved back even though I'd never lived there. My grandparents had lived there. Sure. But it felt like, okay, I'm moving back. Yeah, yeah. And where'd you come from originally? I'm from New Jersey. I was born in Newark.

I was born in Jersey City. Oh, all right. Yeah, yeah. Homeboy. Sure. But you lived there. You grew up there. No, I, well, my parents moved out of Newark when I was pretty young.

Yeah. Lived in Orange, wound up in South Orange. Yeah. But you're Jersey. Jersey. Yeah, exactly. Do you love Jersey? Well, love would be a very strong and incorrect word. I mean, you know, as we say, I'm from Jersey and I intend to stay that way.

Yeah, right. But you don't live there. No, I don't live there. And I don't know, like, again, it was a place, for my parents, it was a place to, you know, they liked some idea of getting out of New York. They were from Brooklyn in the Lower East Side. Sure. Either you go to the island or you go to Jersey. Right, right. But it wasn't a place in itself. It wasn't, it was a place where you could have a bigger house and

they imagined clean air and they imagined getting away from crime and stuff. Didn't happen? Well, let's just say that the kids in my high school had better drugs than anybody else, anybody that I talked to in New York. And there was also like good produce in New Jersey. That's what I remember. Tomatoes. Yeah, tomatoes.

Yeah. That's what they say, the garden steak. Right, the beefsteak tomato, the big one. Yeah. Yeah. That must be in a different part

of New Jersey, though, than we were from because, I don't know. No farms where you were? Not too many, and I don't know if I would eat what they grew

if there was. Oh, I don't have any idea of the orange. My grandparents lived in Pompton was. Oh, I don't have any idea of the orange. My grandparents lived in Pompton Lakes. Oh, yeah, that's true. That's a little more country. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. So when do you like, see, the journey of the guitar playing,

you know, I talked to Les Claypool recently. Oh. And he said his favorite guitar solo of all time is one of yours. It's on Spike. It's on Chewing Gum. Oh, yeah. Like, out of all of them, that's what locked in with that guy. Crazy.

You start playing guitar regular, right? Like, normal guitar. Yeah, I started, I mean, when I was 10. Yeah. I didn't have much going on stylistically. Yeah. Although, who knows? Yeah.

So when did you start playing with people? Probably when I was 12. You know, I mean, I think, you know, I learned to play. I talk about it in the book, but like my teacher was a classical guitarist. Sure. And a very particular kind a classical guitarist. Sure. And a very particular kind of classical guitarist. Franz Casseus was still known as the father of Haitian classical guitar. Yeah. He's the guy, like I had to go get turned on to him. That happened for me. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, everybody should be turned on. But it's so interesting how that came about. I mean, how'd you hook up with that guy of all guys? Well, he was a friend of my parents and my aunt and uncle in the city yeah yeah it's like it's like a kind of a classic new york yeah story because well it's a long story my my father was a doctor and he interned at harlem hospital what kind of doc he uh he general no no kidney doctor oh Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was like, you know, when I was a kid, like there was always these, he was doing research. Yeah. He did research on what later became dialysis machines. Oh, wow.

When I was a kid, we always had to know that stuff in the refrigerator, it may look like orange juice, but don't drink it. Be very careful. It may look like orange juice, but don't drink it. Be very careful. Anyways, so he had a friend at Harlem Hospital who was a doctor, but who was also a jazz pianist. And so anyways, they wound up at a party. They met Franz. Franz was looking for a place to stay.

And my aunt and uncle connected him with an apartment and became lifelong friends, kind of one of these New York displaced families. Yeah, but his story is very interesting because he was sort of in exile, right? Yeah, not officially in exile, but, you know, like, I don't know, James Baldwin talks about this, about having had to go to Paris in order to write about America. Yeah. And so with Franz, it was kind of the same thing. He knew he wanted to write, to create Haitian classical guitar music, which didn't exist before then. But he kind of had to get out of his scene to do it. To do it. He also, he was like the son of like a mid-level civil servant.

And he was in law school in Port-au-Prince. And let's just say his family weren't too happy about the fact that he dropped out of law school in order to play guitar. So for, I think, a lot of reasons, he wanted to get out of Haiti. Also, he wanted to come to the states to meet fat swaller right did he no in fact it turns out he died fat swaller died the year he arrived but um you know he always wore nice hats anyways but it's so fortuitous and some like like how that all works out because who's who gets that opportunity to learn that kind of guitar? A kid from New Jersey, 12 years old. Exactly.

And it's a completely different approach to timing and to rhythm. And he's embarking on some creative journey that's ambitious. I mean, there was this one guy who was in Haiti in the 30s who taught that whole generation to play classical music. Well, what made it different? What infused it with some sort of Caribbean sensibility? Well, he did. Yeah.

Because what happened, I mean, it seems super obvious now. Yeah. But this was the time of, you know, the late 20s and 30s were the time of, I may be mispronouncing, but the negritude movement in the arts, which started to, you know, in which both in the Caribbean and Africa, artists, young artists were starting to say, let's stop imitating the European scene and let's start looking to our own folk musics and our own culture for inspiration. So Franz did, like for Haiti, let's say Villa Lobos had done with Brazilian music or Bela Bartok with Hungarian.

You know, he started to look at Haitian folk sources, you know, to inspire him. And when you were a kid, how much of this is relayed to you? Or is this something you had to backload? Well, I mean, I didn't know any of the, I didn't know the intellectual history of it, okay? But like when I was a kid, when I was six years old, like, you know, of the, I didn't know the intellectual history of it. Okay. But, but like when I was a kid, when I was six years old, like I, you know, in, in retrospect, um, Franz must've been bored because he, he always brought the guitar to like family dinners and would be sitting there playing

while other people were arguing about politics or something. And I would be standing there listening to him. Like I was just amazed by the whole thing. Yeah. So I just, I don't know, I guess I just absorbed it somehow. So you learned how to play on a classical. Yeah. Yeah.

But I didn't ask to do lessons with Franz because I wanted to learn. I wasn't interested in classical at all. Yeah. At the same time, I was listening to radio.

Sure. I wanted to be Keith Richards. I still want to be Keith Richards. Who doesn't? I've got three Telecasters. And then I've got an Oswald Jr. over there with five strings. There you go. But so what is the transition?

So how long do you spend with him? Well, I studied with him, went into New York, take lessons every week for about three years. But by the first year and a half, I was already, you know, I got some cheap electric guitar and was playing in a garage band. In Jersey? Yeah, in Jersey.

That's where they have garages. Sure, yeah. It's fertile territory. The beginning of the garage band movement. It's one of the necessary ingredients. So you're doing the classical thing and you're learning, but then you're just doing the hits.

Yeah, yeah. So I had, you know, my friends, my band Love Gun. Yeah, yeah. So I had, you know, my friends, my band Love Gun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Was that 1970-something? No, no, it was a little before that, like 60. Maybe original, maybe we changed the name to Love Gun later,

but, you know, you have to be like a 15-year-old New Jersey kid in a garage to call your band Love Girl. Of course. What were you playing? Oh, well, I remember actually the first tunes that we learned were Booker T and the MGs' Green Onions. Sure. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you have an organ player? Yes, we did. Oh, wow. Yeah, Saul Schwartz. Saul Schwartz. What's he up to? I don't know. I think he became a brain did. Oh, wow. Yeah, Saul Schwartz. Saul Schwartz. What's he up to? I don't know. I think he became a brain surgeon.

But he's not playing, I don't think he's playing much organ. So I guess what's interesting, given where you've gone with the guitar, is that you start off, like traditionally, other than taking lessons from France, that somehow is in your brain. But then you're playing R&B hits, and you're getting that experience and just doing the road.

So at what point does it start to shift for you in terms of expanding how you approach the instrument? Right. Well, I'll answer that question. But first, lest I give the impression that I had some kind of taste at the age of 15, the third song we learned was In a God of DeVita. Well, that takes up a lot of time.

But to be honest with you, I still like that. Sure, that fills out the set. You can kind of go all the way with that. Yeah. Half hour if you want. Oh, even longer, you know, even longer. Yeah, that's not bad. So let's see.

So you're playing with an R&B band and you talk about playing with horns. Right. Which was kind of mind-blowing. Yeah, yeah. That was a life-changing experience. Why, you think? Well, I don't know

because I'd heard these things on the radio. Sure. But in the little bands i was working with you know like we we just we couldn't afford to have extra members playing horns you know right and also like well to to be honest with you like those particular that particular band i didn't work with them much i just substituted with that band in maine uh yeah yeah but it was an r&B band in Maine. I'd been working with other white hippies, playing whatever we could play. I mean, we tried to play Stevie Wonder tunes or something, but these guys, I think they were from Georgia.

Yeah. And I don't know what they were doing in Maine. By touring? Yeah, well, trying to live. So you sat in there? Yeah, well, I mean, I was called to substitute. I guess their regular guitarists couldn't make it. And so, I don't know, it's such a simple thing, really. It's just that I'd never worked with a horn section. And it was that whole call and response thing you know like like i felt okay this is what it's about right like the the the sort of dialogue of music yeah

i think it's not you know i mean it's communication between the players but it's also a kind of a theater i think you know i i noticed something um that like blues-based playing, usually the rhythm section is chugging along, playing something repetitive. And usually it sounds a little bit like a train because that was during the period that blues-based music was developing. That was what symbolized modernity. But in the music, it's kind of like that's fate. That's the inexorable thing that's coming towards you. That train just keeps chugging towards you. Yeah.

Da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, yeah. And then the soloist is kind of arguing with it. Yeah, yeah. Or the soloist is trying to convince it to stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, you know, so there's using every possible strategy, threatening, damn, you know, like, or pleading or seducing or begging.

And then at a certain point, the soloist realizes that they're screwed, that the train is not going to stop no matter what they do. And then at that moment, there's the, the scream. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. The bill, the, the final thing, the final, well, then it, you know, then there's a little bit of whimpering and then the solo ends.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, sure. I mean, that's almost like a, you know, Hendrix kind of mastered that in a way. Absolutely. And that scream could go mastered that in a way. Absolutely. And that scream could go on for a long time.

Yeah. Go to outer space with it. Mm-hmm. Like when you were a kid, though, who were your players? Well, I saw, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I was at Woodstock. Yeah. You know, me and Saul, the organist. Saul Schwartz? Yeah, who I mentioned.

We were like 15 or something. Anyone up there? Yeah, and there's a lot of embarrassing aspects to this story because one of them is that we paid. We actually paid, and then we showed up on the bus with these tickets. A couple of good Jewish boys with their tickets. Exactly.

You know, like, and you know, the, the, the, the section of Love Gun and with our tickets and there was no place to give them. And of course we took the brown acid immediately upon arrival. Oh really? And yeah. And you know, it was like, it was kind of a big disaster. So like we lost one of our sleeping bags and it was like, really? So you don't, no recollection of the music?

Yeah. I remember a lot of the music. But by the third morning, when we woke up and it was wet, and the place smelled terrible because the sanitation wasn't really great. Right. And it was muddy, and there was bikers on amphetamines throwing themselves into chain link fences and pissing all over everything oh my god so anyways we left yeah

and like as we were walking away you know we said okay we love jimmy hendrix but um but but like if i want to if i want to hear jimmy hendrix at woodstock i'll just you know like get a bucket of mud stick my head in it and put some put some Jimi Hendrix on the record player. And in the way, in the distance, we could hear. Really? Yeah. As you're walking out. So, I don't know.

I'm very sad about it. I didn't know. We didn't know it would happen, of course. You know. Do you remember, did you see Canned Heat? Yeah. Man. They were great.

It's crazy, dude. I mean, I watched, I was watching some of the woodstock recently just did performances and i like can't eat but they were like a hell of a live band man yeah they were that guy could do it so when do you sort of end up you know as a musician you know in that world in new york Well, as a biological human being, I wound up in New York in 1978. You know, I just got on the bus and came back. Yeah. And at the time, I just knew I wanted to work.

Yeah. I wanted to play guitar. And that was after you'd just been touring with rock bands and R&B bands? Yeah, we had our local bands that, I mean. In Jersey? No, no, no, this is up in Maine. Oh, you stayed up there a long time.

Yeah, I stayed up there for three years. Yeah. What was great about it was like, you know, we could work. Yeah. We worked pretty constantly. Right. Just touring around. It was not great work, you know,

like it was like holiday inns, whatever we could get. I mean, we'd play parties out on some island. I remember waking up in a vegetable patch. Oh, yeah, sure. But you weren't pushing the envelope. No, no. I mean, if we'd been smart enough, we would have been a top 40 band if we'd been smart enough to know what the top 40 was. Yeah.

You know, we just played whatever we thought people wanted to hear over their shrimp boats, you know. But it was great. On the other hand, we played it for four sets a night. Yeah. And so. You got your flight miles in. Yeah. So for playing five hours a night.

Yeah. Develop. Yeah, those muscles. That's how you develop, you know. So when you get to New York in 78, you've got no real, you know, like no way that had already been happening, right? Yeah, yeah. A lot of things were already happening. And I kind of didn't get them, to be honest with you, when I first arrived.

Like who did you first hear? It took me a few years. Oh, who did I first hear? Yeah, when you got to New York. Well, when I first got to New York, what I was interested in, I went to CBGB's, and I was checking things out, and I heard Richard Hell. Yeah.

You know, I heard Richard Hell and the Voidoys. I heard James Chance. Yeah. When I was in Maine, we had the idea that, like that jazz was the music of freedom. There was some dyed-in-the-wool, very good jazz players up there. Sure, yeah. And I took lessons with one of them. I took about 10 lessons from one.

A guitar guy? Yeah, Tony Bafa. Yeah. What'd he show you? Well, he managed to condense about three years of Berklee School of Music into those 10 lessons. Yeah. I guess I must have been pretty ready to learn. Yeah, yeah.

And so he showed me kind of the standard approach to bebop, which is something that I never really... Anyways, I got whatever I know of what it's about, I got from those 10 lessons. Yeah. And I was never particularly good at straight-ahead jazz playing. Yeah. But, you know, I tried. I practiced. And in our imaginations, like, for those of us who had to play the top 40 stuff,

jazz seemed like totally this other world of freedom. Yeah. And then when I hit New Yorkork and i started to to try to to try to make that scene yeah uh a different picture presented itself because um well okay it meant you go to these jam sessions you have to know the standards yeah you have to know you know so you're with the real jazz bows yeah well, well, the aspiring jazz bows. And there would be a couple of real jazz bows. And most were bows. Was it like at the loft?

I hadn't yet, wasn't immediately aware of the loft. This was places like, it was a club called Barber's where they would run jam sessions. I wasn't particularly hip, in other words. I wasn't listening to the contemporary stuff. I was listening to what aspiring jazz musicians hustle. But eventually, in the middle of that, I started to listen to go and hear these gigs, The Lizards, Arto Lindsay. James Chance seems to be up.

He barked up that tree, right? Yeah, absolutely. Blasting away. Yeah, absolutely. Blasting away. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I started, you know, and I started to realize, man, the, I realized a couple of things. One is that the world of jazz at the time, mainstream jazz was very regimented rather than being the, you know, it was like, rather than being the music of freedom, uh, it was, it was super regimented in terms of what you had to learn, what you had to play.

Right. And when do you start integrating yourself into the world of improvisation? That started for me, I guess, mid, late 80s. Well, you know, actually, the way I would put it is more that it's a lot of both free improvisation. When you talk about Derek Bailey, we're talking about free improvisational music, which is different than free jazz. Right.

But with both of them, they're music that involves process. Yeah. They're music that involves process. In other words, it's not just this thing on this record is this aesthetically beautiful thing that's there for your admiration that's perfected. No. What you get in those improvised music is you get a process. You get to hear artists working towards something. You get to hear, and the reward for listening to that process of labor is that you get to witness the creation of something. It's not something that some composer worked out perfectly beforehand or some effect that has been done a thousand times before. You get to witness the creation of something new. been done a thousand times before you get to witness the creation of something new yeah so even if you don't get candy every 30 seconds yeah yeah yeah um it's a special kind of experience

at what point did you really submerse yourself into caribbean music world music because it seems that you know in in the story of you, that something fundamental shifted in your understanding of rhythm. Well, yeah. I mean, I don't know if I could say that there was a particular moment. I mean, first of all, you know, somehow Franz's aesthetic got in my got in my brain yeah um even though I wouldn't have even though I wasn't really aware of it yeah sure you know in everything that Franz did um if if he was playing in four four somewhere there would be a little engine of three four going against it and vice versa there was always some kind of implied counter rhythm going on.

And that's pretty key for, you know, for, um, Afro logical music. Yeah. Um, but, and in another sense, also when I was living in New York, like from the time I was living there, like, um, salsa and, and Son and Kumbi are part of the mix. Yeah, sure. Either there, you hear them whether you want to or not, at least in the neighborhoods that

I was living in. Yeah, yeah. So it was really, it was around. It was in your neighbor's, you know, your neighbor's radio, you know, on the street. Sure. At block parties. Yeah. So it was there.

Yeah. And also, it was part of the CBGB's mix, too. Yeah. Like, I was, okay, I was playing rock, you know, but some of the early CBGB's bands were also influenced by other Lower East Side music. Mink DeVille. Okay. Yeah, Mick DeVille. Okay. Yeah, Willie DeVille.

Interestingly enough, the only CBGB's band original that was actually from the neighborhood of Lower East Side. So they were super influenced by Joe Baton and this Boogaloo thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Which was like a kind of, you know,

attempt to, like, in between R&B and salsa. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So there was a lot of that that was at the roots of rock and roll, too. Yeah. Yeah. But it seems like even though you speak about rocking the house, that there's a good part of your career where you were just, you know, an astronaut and, you know and going as far out there as you could go with the right bands.

Yeah, but that rocked the house. I'm telling you. I mean, I remember with Henry Grimes, with that band Spiritual Unity, with Henry and the late Roy Campbell Jr. in it, and Chad Taylor. I mean, we had people in Austria in some like completely uptight mountain town in Austria shouting hallelujah. Yeah.

Like. So you got there. Yeah. Yeah. We got to the place. So it feels to me that like you have a sound sound that there is a way that you play that is uniquely yours which is ultimately part of what you're gunning for yeah well you know like i really um in a way that's an after effect you know like't know, people, I'm just trying to make whatever song I'm playing on at the moment sound good.

Yeah. And good meaning, or I'm trying to make it into something I like. So, like, if I'm working with a singer, like, I listen to what the words are. Yeah. And what the words are supposed to mean. And I try to think of, okay, who are they? And where are they? And what decade are they in?

Are they in a bar or are they standing in the middle of, are they standing in the Grand Canyon? And who would be the band that's playing in that particular bar? Who would be the band or what sounds what what sounds are you am i supposed to be that are happening in the grand canyon right you know so i try to make it make sense like that and to whatever extent i play the same thing twice which admittedly i've i do a lot yeah but it's kind of a failure to be honest with you i'm i don't like this idea that you know like people go out like a little capital is building their brand yeah like you know the style is something they own yeah people

try to sound good and rock the house and then if if if that i mean if i have a style it's mostly due to my limitations well yeah but that's great in a way. But I mean, it seems like part of your sensibility is kind of, you know, a legacy of coming from sort of a radical Jewish, you know, post-hippie place, a beatnik place. And it feels like, you know, when you got to New York, there was still a few of them around. Yeah, you might say. Because you worked with Ginsburg, right? Yeah, well, you know, when you just said that, I thought was thinking that Hal Wilner would be one person who kind of tied together a number of generations of radical New York art scenes. Yeah, he seems to be like he's some sort of archivist with a context. Yeah, and the context was like the Three Stooges mostly.

Yeah. You know, he was like way into, yeah, he was in love with pop culture of the 50s and 60s. But also like. Lenny Bruce. Yeah, yeah. And you worked with him a lot? I worked with Hal a fair amount. He's much missed. Well, yeah, he was such an interesting guy. What made him so interesting musically?

Well, he just had a... What he liked to do was cross-pollinate different generations in slightly different scenes. Yeah. You know, so on that record that you mentioned with the work with Allen Ginsberg, you know, he got a bunch of post-punk people,

you know, jazz people of different generations and different scenes and put them in the same room and said, do something. Yeah, yeah. And we did. Yeah. You know, that record, I think it was reissued as something else, but the original title was The Lion for Real is one that I'm very proud of having played on. So what about all those years with Zorn?

one that I'm very proud of having played on. So what about all those years with Zorn? Like, strictly speaking, as a player, I always feel like I play better on other people's records, you know, just because I'm not so worried about, you know, there's a million things I have to, other things I have to deal with on my own records. So I think without question,

so I worked with John for, with Zorn for, for several decades, really. And, you know, we're still friends and work together occasionally. Yeah. And I learned a lot from him. His music is very challenging. You know, it's a, it's a real stretch. I think I went blind from trying to read his charts that he writes with. dredge i think i went blind from trying to read his charts that he writes with i don't know if it's like one of those brushes with us with one hair or something oh wow yeah yeah but and yeah

very very challenging stuff so i i learned a lot and i also think without question and he's very protean you know i mean i've said this before but like if i get a i don't do many film scores but if i get one like i'll get it and i'll like worry about it every day for two months before i record it yeah write stuff out and like you know really go crazy when john gets a film score he wakes up a little earlier that day and the day of the recording session, and writes it while he's watching TV and listening to another record. Wow. Yeah, yeah. He has composer chops.

It's very rare, let's just say. And, yeah, he puts out his protean. I don't know. It's a lot of work just to listen to, to keep up with listening to what he puts out. But, I mean, again, there was a few records there that I would just listen to, and I was just kind of, my mind was blown. He definitely kind of rocks the house with you guys. Oh, yeah. He always also manages to find great players.

Yeah. And it seems to me that you worked with Weights and helped sort of define his shift in sound. Do you think that's true? Well. Was that Rain Dogs? Were you on Rain Dogs? Yeah, I was on Rain Dogs, Frank's Wild Years. Those are the ones, really.

Like, you know, like, it seems like the end of the old Waits was probably Heart Attack and Vine. And then he shifted into something else. Swordfish Trombones, which I wasn't on, was like I think his first one where he really started to get into experimenting with a lot of different sounds. Yeah, it seemed like your guitar fit perfect into that. Well, I didn't play on Swordfish Trombones. No, but on Rain Dogs. But on Rain Dogs, yeah.

I really liked what he was doing at the time, so I was glad to get called. How does he work as a band leader? Well, first of all, he's, as a producer, as a band leader, he's great to work with. Because he kind of sets a vibe or a mood. Maybe on guitar, maybe he'll play a little percussion. But he'll get the mood going, the basic rhythm going.

Yeah. And then he leaves it to us to come up with our parts. Right. And he's kind of like an editor. If it's not working for him, he'll let you know and you try something else. Yeah.

But he was always very respectful of musicians and gave us a lot of space to develop what we were doing. And, yeah, and also the way he works in the studio, most people, like, they know somebody like Waits as the artist, the person they see in the theater right or they hear on the record yeah but but musicians know know tom and and other artists who who in the studio who take a role in their own production we know him as a producer yeah so he was he was the one who was

like deciding on the sound yeah and he's a very fearless producer yeah he's not the kind of producer who like knows what every microphone is yeah and knows you know every compressor setting sure all that but he's the kind who says i want it to sound like this and he just doesn't stop until he gets a sound he likes yeah so you know i mean uh you were talking about less clay pool yeah we've all dug ethnomusic recordings and field recordings right right but waits didn't just dig him he said he took the obvious step but nobody else did it he says i want the band to set up on my driveway i wasn't there but that was now you know he once said one of the greatest things i've ever heard when they had someone asked him what

his favorite music was and he said an am radio across the street well you know that's that is that's a kind of a deep comment because it's something that that think I have in common with Waits is that some people are dealing with the history of music, but I'm more dealing with the memory of it. That's interesting. Yeah. I remember playing on a record, another record that's really cool is Buddy Miller made a record

called Majestic Silver Strings. And, you know, a bunch of people were on it, like Frizzell played on it, a bunch of other great musicians. And we made it down in Nashville, where Buddy Miller lives. And of course, Buddy himself is a fantastic guitarist. And I was listening to Buddy's tracks and Bill Frizzell's tracks,

and they sounded exactly like if someone had gone into the master recordings of a late 1950s classic Nashville session and got the guitar sounds. And I listened to mine, and it sounded like this crinkly, horrible thing, degraded thing. And I realized they're recording the history of this kind of music. I'm recording how I heard it on the radio of my mother's Chevrolet when I was four years old and got left in the car. Yeah, that's the sound. Yeah. Yeah.

So you're out on tour now? Yeah, I have been touring. Yeah. So you're out on tour now? Yeah, I have been touring. I was in the neighborhood, which is to say I was in Minneapolis last night. Oh, yeah. And so I just dropped in to speak with you.

Well, thank you for doing that. My pleasure. Who are you touring with? What is it, the trio? I did a couple of things there. I played with the Jazz Bins. It's a great town for arts, man. Minneapolis, the best.

Absolutely. And former home of the Purple Potentate himself. Yes, that's for sure. Right. So I also played with John Madesky. We did a duo. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That's great. Well, I hope it was worth it flying over. Well, so far. Yeah. I think we got your daughter sitting out in the heat. It was good talking to you, man. Yeah, likewise. There you go. Double header. Again, as I said before, you can get the Ceramic Dog album, Connection, wherever you get music, and Big Music Day. Hang out for a minute, folks.

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