Vaden Todd Lewis: The Culture Brats Interview

On Friday, September 11th, you'll find the Toadies at their eighth annual Dia De Los Toadies music festival in Fort Worth, Texas. On the 18th, the band will be release Heretics, their new album of reconstructed Toadies classics and more. Last week, we spoke with singer Vaden Todd Lewis on his fiftieth birthday about Heretics, the new songs on the album, the "Heart Of Glass" cover, Dia De Los Toadies, beer, and The Blues Brothers.

Happy birthday, man!
Thanks!

You have anything exciting planned for later today or tonight?
We had a big day yesterday and then tomorrow we have a big party over at a club around the corner.

Cool. I love Heretics and I love what you guys did with some of your classic songs. What made you decide to go back, deconstruct, and recreate these songs?
Well, it started with our festival, which is called Dia De Los Toadies. This year is the eighth one and starts a week from today, the 11th and 12th. Two stages, all day long, fun in the sun, it's a blast. In the third year of Dia De Los Toadies, we decided to bump it up to two nights, and the first night would be Friday and we'd keep it kind of scaled down and play acoustic, sort of semi-unplugged. So we did that, and the next year we added some keyboards. The next year we added a mandolin. We just morphed into these weird alternate versions of these songs. After last year's Dia De Los Toadies, we decided that it would be great to do this where it's a totally controlled environment, where we could run wild with it. We only have so many hands. We have extra players come up for pedal steel and vocals and guitar and whatever else, but we can only do so much live. We thought, "What if we went in the studio with our good friend Rob Schnapf, who did Rubberneck and Hell Below and Feeler, and have him just go to town?" We went into the studio with the basic idea that we'd do these songs that we'd worked on the arrangements. We got in the studio and cranked out two brand-new songs as well as a few songs that have never made it onto a recording and a cover song. It was a blast, man. It was a great time and I'm looking forward to seeing how people receive it.



It's like listening to killer new songs that you already know the words to.
Yeah! What struck me while deconstructing and putting them back together with this different instrumentation, they just have a different feel, a totally different vibe. I'm really happy with it.

Were there any songs that you redid that didn't make the cut?
We have a couple that are bonus tracks. We have one, "I Come From The Water," it's going to be on the vinyl release. But on the CD or download, it's going to be a bonus track. That one, it just didn't fit in. We wanted to limit it to x number of songs. We didn't want it to be too long on the regular release. It didn't fit, and we always need bonus tracks for whatever. We did a version of "The Appeal" with our good friend Will Johnson from Centro-matic singing. It's chilling, that guy's so good. But we decided in the end that the album should have my voice on it since I'm the singer, so that's a bonus track too. So if you buy the LP, you get a four-sided LP with all the stuff on it.


Tell us about "Queen Of Scars," one of the two new tracks.
Of course, the two new ones are my favorites. The newest songs are always my favorite ones. "Queen Of Scars," we wrote that in the studio. At that point, Doni had gone home for a little bit. It was just me and Rez and Clark in the studio in LA. I can't even remember what we were tracking, but it was one of the songs we had arranged and worked out. We were using all this vintage gear and it breaks all the time because it's old. The keyboards broke. Meanwhile, Rez and I are still in our isolation booths with our headphones on and our mics are still hot. We can still hear each other. I just started dicking around and wrote this little turnaround on the acoustic and Rez was playing along and accenting just the way he does. By the end of the next night, we had a full arrangement and we recorded it and sent it off to Doni to get tracked.

Does it have anything to do with "Jigsaw Girl?"
Yeah, it does. I didn't have any words at that point. I had the arrangement and I knew how I wanted the words to go, but you fill in the blanks with what you want to say. So I went home. This recording session was done in spurts. It was like a week or two here, and then a week there, just did it when we could get away. So I flew out to do vocals on that one and a couple of others for the very last session. And yeah, I had always wondered what might have happened to the main characters in "Jigsaw Girl." You wouldn't know it by listening to them, but a lot of them have recurring characters that pop up here and there throughout these different albums. I'd always wondered what if this guy used his magic on this girl and did his spell or voodoo. That's what "Queen Of Scars" is about. It's like a sequel.

Let's talk about Blondie's "Heart Of Glass." You didn't change any of the words, but it feels like you're listening to a totally different song.
Yeah, I've got a backstory on that. I've got a little girl who's now twelve. She's in band, singing, into music, all this stuff. Having a girl that sings--I've always liked that Blondie song--my ear is more attuned to females singers because I think of her singing. Anyway, I heard that song for about the 1,000,001st time but it was the first time I really listened to the words. If you pull the words out of that song, they're really sad. So I took it home and sat with my daughter and worked on the arrangement. We just kind of messed around with it a little bit, slowed it down, and figured it out on guitar. I sent it off to the guys and they loved it.



You mentioned that the eighth Dia De Los Toadies is next weekend. How did that festival come about?
We broke up in '01 and got back together periodically for radio festivals. Those are fun to do, but it's just a bunch of bands that are on the radio, which more often than not, are not my favorite bands. Nothing against them, it's just not what I would pick to have us headline for or open under. When we got back together in '07 and we were working in pre-production for No Deliverance, we started spitballing the idea, "What if we stopped doing those all the time? What if we cut back on those and create our own demand and do our own music festival where we get to promote it ourselves and we get to pick the bands and pick everything, the food trucks, the beer, everything?" It just took off from there.

Within a couple weeks, we had a couple ideas for the site for the first one. The very first one was out at Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas. The next one was in central Texas, out near Granbury. It was out in the country, way out in the middle of nowhere. Then we went down to New Braunfels for a few years. Now we're on our third year in Fort Worth.

You guys are doing a short tour of Texas dance halls in October before mounting a US tour in November. Why Texas dance halls?
We just thought it would be fun. I've always wanted to go to these places and hang out. We've always wanted to play these places but we couldn't because we're a rock band. We're too big, it'll get too raucous and too crazy. But this current incarnation is more chill and more laid back. So we're going to go do it, film some of it, and record some of it. It's going to be a lot of fun.

But you're not going to be performing behind chicken wire like in The Blues Brothers?
We should set that up! That would be awesome.


You guys have your own beer. How did that come about?
It started about two-and-a-half years ago when we were working on the re-release of Rubberneck. Last year was the 20th anniversary of that album's release. We were thinking, "What can we do to blow this up and make this cool and weird?" A little backstory on me: I'm all about everything Fort Worth. I love this town, I love the people in it and the creativity here. Such cool businesses and such a unique perspective on what life is like here. So we started looking around. We knew some other bands that had beers, like one-offs, done and we thought, "That would be great if we could do one to commemorate the record." There's a brewery here in Fort Worth called Martin House and they said, "Around the time the 20th anniversary of Rubberneck happens, it'll be our first anniversary as being open as a brewery, so why don't we get together and make a beer?" So last year around May, Rubberneck Red came out and that sold like crazy. It sold all over Texas. It was a limited run so it's gone now, but my understanding is they're bringing it back for Dia De Los Toadies next weekend in kegs. I think you'll be able to get it there. But that went so well, they came back to us and said, "You want to work some more with us? What do you want to do?" We came up with a different slant on a kind of beer. There are very few bock beers that you can find. There's Shiner Bock and a few others. They're good, but they're not our beer. They put together this kickass beer [Bockslider] and it's out now. It's really good.

I've got one more question for you. I know you already have Dia De Los Toadies, but we ask everyone this question. You're in charge of a music festival and you can get any five artists, dead or alive, to appear on the bill with you. Who do you choose?
That would be AC/DC with Bon Scott and Phil Rudd. Queen. You gotta get your Zeppelin in there. This is one you're going to have to Google: Brainiac. The fifth one? Probably Mousetrap. Those two are bands that were on Grass Records way back in the day with us. They just kicked a lot of ass.

What song do you all perform together as the final jam?
That's tough, man. I think it would be fun to do "Feel Like Makin' Love." That's one of my guilty pleasure rock songs.

More Toadies: Official | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

Kim Shattuck: The Culture Brats Interview

Last week, Omnivore Recordings released a remastered edition of The Muffs' debut album, which also contains ten bonus tracks. We caught up with Muffs singer Kim Shattuck to discuss the debut album, the excellent new Omnivore reissue, The Pandoras, the Pixies, the five songs that define The Muffs, and "Kids In America."

What made you decide to do a resissue of your debut album now?
Actually, we just got asked. It's not like it's a significant anniversary or anything. When Omnivore presented it to us, it sounded really cool. And they're tied into Warner Brothers, so it wasn't like just anybody was doing it.

In the liner notes, Ronnie Barnett mentioned that there may have been too many cooks in the studio during the recording...
Oh my God, that's even an understatement. Everyone seemed to have a say. Everyone. Seriously, even people walking by when we were picking mixes. It was super horrible. It was not a good way to operate a band. Everyone should get a say, but not everyone should get a say at the same time. The person deciding should probably be the producer and not everybody. It was very frustrating. It pretty much formed the way I ran the band the rest of the time.

So how much of that album was your vision, given that everyone had an input?
The songs were songs that I had been writing since 1988. The ones before '88 sucked. There was nothing good coming out of me until about '88. I got better and better at songwriting in my own opinion. I was like, "Ok, I can see this being a song. I can see a band playing this song."

The songs were the vision I had, but the collection of songs weren't necessarily the collection that I wanted it to be. That was more Warner Bros. having to do their A&R job. Some of the demos that I presented to them were rejected. When I listen to them again, I'm thinking, "Hmm, these are actually pretty good. I wonder why these got rejected."



He also said that you and he used to dismiss the album. Have you come to embrace it?
Now that it's remastered, yes! The mastering job was so terrible. In the past, I always blamed the mix. Bad mastering can make a good mix terrible. I knew I liked a lot of the songs, but I didn't like the recording of it. Now that I hear the remastered thing, I've changed my mind completely. I love it.

Let's talk about the previously unreleased demos. Were they recorded around the same time as the original album?
They were recorded pre-band. A lot of my demos were recorded around 1989 or 1990. That was pre-band.

I really like songs like "Do You Want Her" and "I Don't Expect It." What kept those from showing up on future albums?
I had forgotten about them completely. I did the demos and I put them away. They were rejected for some reason, I'm not even sure why. They kind of went on the back burner. Eventually, I got rid of my 4-track or it broke or something. I really had no way of listening to them. Part of the process of this Omnivore record was to go through the demos. They wanted to know if I had stuff and I thought, "You know, I do have stuff but I can't listen to it." So I went on eBay and I bought a new TASCAM and I listened to them like that. It was hard because it kept breaking down. I had to hit it like Fonzie to make it come back on.

The answering machine messages at the end of the album... Who's Dave?
Who's Dave? Dave was one of the co-producers of the album and also our co-A&R guy. We had two A&R guys, Rob Cavallo and Dave Katznelson. We decided to have both of them produce, even though Dave had never ever produced before and Rob had only produced one thing. I had never produced.

Does he know those messages are on the album?
He does. We reconnected with him. He's a super nice guy. This answering machine message came after the record was recorded and released. I was really mad at him and I didn't want to talk to him so he drunkenly called me up one night and tried to get me on the phone. He thinks it's funny. He has a really good sense of humor and he was like, "Yeah, put it out. It's funny."

I read on Facebook where you're working with Melanie Vammen again. What are you working on?
The Pandoras. We put The Pandoras back together with me obviously singing. We're not trying to do new songs, we're trying to do the old songs the way we remember them and the way we like them. Melanie and I hadn't worked together in forever, so we're excited to work together again. We've done some shows and we're about to go to Europe and do a big European tour, so that's what we're doing Pandoras-wise.

The Muffs recently did a string of dates in Spain. How did that go?
That was really fun! It was the most sweatiest time. Every club was super hot, super packed, super excited and fun.



Before the end, what was it like performing with the Pixies?
Before the very end? Actually, it was fun playing with the Pixies. It was really fun. Their crowds, the people that go see Pixies shows, are really into it. It was fun performing for those people. The behind the scenes stuff was a little bit awkward. Sometimes it was fun, but sometimes it was awkward. I feel like it was a good experience overall.

I've got one more question for you: what five songs do you feel define The Muffs?
I always pick my favorites, I don't know... I'm going to say "Sad Tomorrow," "From Your Girl," "Honeymoon," "Lucky Guy," and unfortunately or fortunately, "Kids In America," not even a song I wrote.

Were you involved in anything regarding the twentieth anniversary of the Clueless soundtrack?
We were asked to play on the VH1 morning show with Nick Lehee... Is that his name? Lahee? I don't know how you pronounce it.

The guy who was married to Jessica Simpson?
Yeah! It was his show. We played "Kids In America" on his show. We had to learn the song because we had never ever played it. We learned it and now we play it live sometimes. It was funny. We had never really considered playing it live. It was always a thorn in our side but we ended up doing it.

Why did you feel it was a thorn in your side?
The lyrics are really stupid. It's very embarrassing to sing them. I just had an attitude about it because I didn't write it. We play other cover sometimes... I don't know. It was just kind of weird and awkward for us to play it but once we started playing it, we realized people really enjoy seeing us play that song and the fact that we didn't really play it was kind of rebellious for no reason.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to talk with me today and I hope this reissue leads to further reissues down the road, too.
There are more coming down the pipe!

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Vanessa Carlton: The Culture Brats Interview

Vanessa Carlton will be releasing Blue Pool, a four-song EP, on July 24th, which will be followed by the full-length album Liberman in October on Dine Alone Records. We recently spoke with her about her new singles, what fans can expect from the new album, her grandfather, and motherhood.

You've released two songs, "Blue Pool" and "Young Heart," in the past three months. Tell us what "Blue Pool" means to you.
"Blue Pool" is a really dreamy song. The verses are these vignettes that are set in reality that have happened to me and the chorus of that song is kind of based on The Secret Garden. It's a very decidedly feminist chorus, but that doesn't mean it's about a man or a woman. It's correlating the secret door that she finds to the garden to the secret door to a woman's mind. The song, sonically, it's a waltz. I love to write waltzes, which is very much inspired by my past as a ballet dancer, but I wanted it to not feel traditional at all. I wanted it to go psychedelic.

Many are calling this a new direction for you. Do you agree with that?
Yeah. I've been honing this type of sound for years now but kind of under the radar. People are rediscovering me with this project, that's really cool because I feel like me and Steve Osborne have spent time working together. This is our second album together and we've really arrived at this recipe that we really love.

What led you to name your upcoming album after your grandfather?
It didn't occur to me until after the record was done and people were asking me why did I name it after him. He was a painter. He was a church designer and a shopkeeper and also a painter. When he passed away, my grandmother gave me this enormous oil painting of his that was hanging on my wall in New York where I wrote most of the album. It has these really unusual colors in it, bright turquoise and hot pinks. It's not the traditional colors that one would paint. It's an image of three nude women and he makes really unusual choices. It just occurred to me that what I wanted to create sonically with the album was how I felt when I looked at this painting.

In addition to the painting, Liberman, that was a name that was changed. I was raised thinking my Grandma and Grandpa Lee were Grandma and Grandpa Lee and my mother's maiden name was Lee. It wasn't until I was in my twenties that my mom told me that's not their real name, it was actually Liberman and my grandfather changed it when he opened his business because he felt it would be better if it didn't have a Jewish last name. Coincidentally, Ralph Lifshitz was this tie designer that really liked my Grandpa and his store and wanted to sell his ties at my grandfather's store. Ralph Lifshitz went on to change his name to Ralph Lauren.

I just felt like I wanted to go back to what was true.



What else can we expect from Liberman?
I think we're doing a nice roll out, preparing people or giving them a cool hors d'oeuvre of what the meal of the album is, a taste of what the journey of the album is. It's not a long record but it's very otherworldly. When I put it on, I am totally in that space of the album. I really hope that people find it as some sort of escape or it enhances the moment that they're in. I really look at it as absolutely a great thing to put your headphones on and take a walk with it. If you live in a city, it's a great walking album. I love those albums. You listen to those types of albums forever. They're not at all about the time that they were released. There's nothing timely about it.

Do you have any special guests appearing on the album?
Yes, my husband John McCauley, he's a really great writer and musician and great at a lot of different stuff. He has his own band called Deer Tick which is a totally great band. I was able to steal him and get him to play some guitar on a couple of the tracks. When you have the chance to work with John, you take the chance to work with John. He's like that level of musician. It was really amazing to me to have Steve Osborne collaborating and playing everything. I recorded seven tracks in England with Steve and three tracks in Tennessee with Adam Landry. Adam created a bunch of stuff on the tracks he produced as well.



Congratulations on the birth of your daughter. How much has that changed your music and writing or has that not even been an issue yet?
I don't know. I haven't really written much since she was born. I was working a lot on the artwork for this album. I was writing some instrumental pieces when I was pregnant. I think having a family is really cool. I feel very balanced. I wonder how that will affect my future work. I have some ideas about what I'd like to do for my next project already. This project, I finished most of it before I got pregnant, so I've been sitting on it for like a year. We'll see but I do know a lot of organic changes definitely happened.

I saw on Facebook where you took her to a Wilco show. Are you planning on having her hit the road with you as well?
Totally. We are a traveling family. We are a circus caravan. I also travel with my dog Victor. We're a motley crew. Sid and Victor are hilarious together. We have our own unique style of touring, let's put it that way.

We have one question we ask everybody. You're in charge of a music festival and you get to pick any five acts, living or dead, to appear on the bill with you. Who do you choose?
I would choose Deer Tick. I would choose Neil Young, Linda Perhacs, Kurt Vile, and Steve Nicks.

What song do you all perform together as the final jam?
I don't know. Maybe we could all play "Rockin' In The Free World." That sounds kind of epic.

More Vanessa Carlton: Official | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

Neal X: The Culture Brats Interview

Sigue Sigue Sputnik guitarist Neal X has a new band, The Montecristos, his successful attempt at bringing "some life and excitement and adventure back into my life and the lives of the people I know and love." Neal had just gotten off the road with Marc Almond and was nice enough to talk with us about Born To Rock 'n' Roll, the new band, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, and more!

How are you doing today?
Really great, thank you. It's Election Day here. My kids got a day off school because their school is a polling booth. So I've taken my daughter and three of her ten-year-old friends out to the movies and we went to see the new Avengers movie, which is plotless but it's kind of fun. It's really dumb, but it's fun.

You just got off the road with Marc Almond. How did that go?
I've been working with Marc over twenty years now, touring with him, and this was the best and most fun tour and I think we did really good business. It was strange. These days, I don't know what it's like in the States, but in the UK people buy tickets at the last minute. I guess they wait and see if something else may be on or we're of a generation where people don't like to commit to things too far ahead because the audience is aging with us. All the shows were really full, better than expected business. Everyone made money. Promoter was very happy. Band was happy. Audience was unbelievably happy. It's good all around.

Let's talk about The Montecristos. What brought you all together?
I had a real need for it. I've kind of been sitting on the idea for ages. I really wanted to do a rock 'n' roll band and be in a rock 'n' roll band. I felt a bit like time might be out. I'm the last of a dying breed almost. My contemporaries have either lost it, lost the spark, dying, or stopped trying to shock or be inventive or do anything new. And I figured it's about time. The next generation hasn't got anything coming. There's no great rock 'n' roll bands. The Stones are still out there, okay. There don't seem to be any great young ones coming through. There's no New York Dolls. There's no Iggy. There's no Sigue Sigue Sputnik even. There's no Clash. There's no Pistols.



Were you friends with the members of the band or did you find them?
I found them. It was more like I had a dream and I found people to fit that dream. I met Gemma, the trumpeter, playing with a guy called Roy Wood. I don't know if you're aware of him in the States. He was in a band called The Move in the '60s. He then had a band called Electric Light Orchestra with Jeff Lynne. He left to form a band called Wizzard. If he was American, he'd be celebrated like Phil Spector. He's a really inventive English guy, but he talks a bit funny and looks a bit weird so he's kind of ridiculed a bit here. But he's really great and I found Gemma, the trumpeter, playing with him. She had it all from the back of the hall. She had the charisma. She played great. And I thought, "Yeah, yeah, if I get this together, I'm going to be calling her." So I tracked her down. It's kind of easy these days with the Internet.

Sophie, the sax player, came with her. They were a ready-made unit. Emma, the bass player—I really wanted to work with girls. Women rule my world. I'm married, I don't know if you are. Look at the happy marriages, women make all the big decisions. I love and respect women. I wanted a girl bass player, didn't want a thuggy dumb guy. I wanted someone with charisma who could really play and I found Emma after much research on the Internet on a video on YouTube which has got 200,000 views or something now, doing a slap bass solo. And she's only twenty minutes up the road. The dummer, Hugh, he's actually a doctor of Latin percussion. He's a phenomenal percussionist, plays piano brilliantly, really superb multi-instrumentalist. Marc Almond found him actually. Antony, Antony and the Johnsons, ran a Meltdown festival in England at the Royal Festival Hall. Marc found Hugh and said, "I found a percussionist," which alarmed us because normally it's not his thing, but Hugh was just phenomenal.

What can people expect from your debut album, Born To Rock 'n' Roll?
Hopefully, it's just a slice of energy and it's a statement of intent of where we aim to go. It isn't a be-all end-all of it. I referenced a couple tracks from the past. We do a Gene Vincent song. We do a song by the Young Rascals, which was a big hit in the States but unknown in Britain. One of my friends, an American mum from my kid's school, her mum's uncle wrote "Good Lovin'." I recorded a version of that with Stiv Bators for Stiv's album in 1990 and unfortunately he died during the recording. He got hit by a car in Paris and died. I just felt it was time to show the world what we were trying to do with that. I just wanted to bring some life and excitement and adventure back into my life and the lives of the people I know and love that love the same sort of music.

During the recent run with Marc Almond, what were the fans' reactions to the new songs?
We cherry-picked just a few shows that we played the opening, basically the shows where we had a day off afterwards. Marc's shows are long and fully energetic, it's full-on hour and forty-five minutes. I've got to pace myself. But we got a really, really favorable reaction. In fact, I was just talking to a friend today who saw it and she said, "It was amazing that they responded the same way as they did to Marc's songs." People really seemed to love it. Dancing, super enthusiastic and attentive. Sometimes being the opening act, people are there to chat and order drinks, but I felt we really got a lot of attention.



What led you to update a few Sigue Sigue Sputnik classics for the new album?
I felt we were much maligned by the media in the UK, I don't know whether it was the same in the States. When we first came out, we were treated as a breath of fresh air and the saviors of rock 'n' roll. It very quickly turned. The press turned on us and just seemed kind of trite and comedic. And I thought, although maybe we weren't really as good as we thought we were, we sure weren't as bad as the media made us out to be. I wanted to reclaim some of those songs and reimagine them for the 21st century and show they were really great songs and we did have something.

You guys were unlike anything that came before you. You had such had a unique style and sound, how did you go about creating that?
I felt the big thing was to go back to basics. In starting anything, I think it's really good to understand the history of where you're coming from. With Sputnik, it was very much a conscious decision not to be influenced by what was going on around us by our contemporaries. Everyone was sort of eating off the same table there. So we went right back to the '50s, the roots of the '50s and rock 'n' roll, and studied the purity of that. We imagined, "What would it be like if Elvis from the future crash landed on the planet and found this world of super high-tech equipment, but only had a stack of Roots Of The Cramps or Elvis records or Eddie Cochran records? Would it sound like Soft Cell or The Thompson Twins or Depeche Mode or whatever or would it sound much more rock 'n' roll-y?" That was the vision, to make it absolutely kind of contrived to be that very, very simple rock 'n' roll. That's why we had the fifth generation of rock 'n' roll concerts. The '50s and Elvis was the first generation, Beatles second generation, Velvet Underground third generation, punk rock fourth generation, and we were the fifth generation.


I feel like you guys, like you alluded to earlier, you never got a fair shake. You were known for the commercials or the hair and people weren't paying enough attention to the music.
It depends on how you're perceived. I can't tell how we're perceived. I think musically, we did have great strong points. It is difficult listening to some of those early records now, I have to admit. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to rework them. I do feel the songs are strong enough that David Bowie covered "Love Missile F1-11." I didn't feel that was a footnote in history when Bowie covered us. I felt that was a warm glow of a kindred spirit that really "got" us. I met David's original drummer from the Spiders Of Mars last week on tour. Woody Woodmansey, he came backstage. From his reaction, he wasn't thinking, "Oh, that's just some stupid hair band back in the day." He was very gracious and very kind. I feel maybe it's a media attention thing that people have short attention spans. I feel that we did have a bit more going on than we were given credit for.

You're in charge of a music festival and you can get any five acts, dead or alive, to appear on the bill with you. Who do you choose?
It's got to be Elvis. T. Rex because I never saw them. The Velvet Underground. David Bowie definitely. And Suicide, who I'm going to see in a month-and-a-half's time in London. They're playing the Barbican in London and it's so great that they're back out there and still playing. I'm so thrilled for them. The last time I saw them was possibly 1987 at CBGB. I was one of seven in the audience. Now it's a sell-out show in front of a thousand people or something in London. How great is that?

Hopefully the same will happen for you with The Montecristos.
You know, it feels good. It really does feel like there's something going on. There's a buzz and everyone's positive about it and you gotta have that feeling that everything you touch just works for you. I really feel that at the moment. Sometimes you grab out for it, reach out for it, and it's just a little bit out of reach. Now it seems fate's dealing us a lucky hand.

More Montecristos: Official | Facebook | Twitter

Ted Allen: The Culture Brats Interview

On April 30th, you have the chance to make a huge difference with your mouth. Dining Out For Life, a yearly fundraiser benefiting people with HIV and AIDS, will once again receive proceeds from restaurants in sixty US cities. Earlier this month, we spoke with Dining Out For Life spokesman Ted Allen about the event, what drew him to it and keeps him there, Chopped, fast food, and lots more!

Tell us about Dining Out For Life.
Dining Out For Life is a unique fundraiser, or at least it was. I think other people have borrowed the model. Dining Out For Life across the country in sixty different cities, 3,000+ restaurants, raises in a single day four million bucks, perhaps a little north of that, to fight HIV and AIDS right in your own community. All of the money raised in each city stays in that city, helping your neighbors, helping people with HIV and AIDS, helping prevent other people from being infected. I like to think of it as a simple thing with very little overhead. I also like it because it's good for the area restaurants who seem to always be the first place we turn when we're trying to raise money for a good cause. Chefs and restauranteurs are wonderful people, I love being around them, I work with them all the time. Generosity and community involvement is in their DNA, it's just part of what chefs and restauranteurs do. I just think it's a win for everybody.

You've been involved with Dining Out For Life for seven years now. What first attracted you to the event and keeps you coming back?
Its simplicity, the fact that it's so effective. I always say the real heroes in this fight and in similar fights are the volunteers and the activists and the researchers and the people who devote their whole careers to fighting this plague. Not everybody can do that. Other people have chosen to become Marines and police offers and school teachers and postal carriers. But everybody needs to eat and as long as you can afford to go to a restaurant, this is a way for you to participate in a really meaningful fundraiser without having to devote your entire life to it. The numbers speak for themselves. If you can raise more than four million dollars in a single day in a simple way like this, why wouldn't you?

Let's talk about your Food Network shows. Which is your favorite to do?
I'm thrilled to be able to do any of them. You know Chopped is clearly the mothership for me. We do somewhere around fifty episodes a year. We just finished, I want to say, Episode 325. It's great. That's a lot. Even though we've been doing it for years, it just doesn't get boring. It's different every time. Different people, different ingredients, different approaches. The food's not always great, but when it is, it's just such an achievement for these chefs. It's hard. Chopped is really hard.

I also really love All-Star Academy, the newer show that we're doing. I watched it last night, the episode from this past Sunday with Robert Irvine. So much talent, so much expertise from our mentors and the home cooks did a great job. I meet a lot of people who feel like they have a Food Network show in them. They're not all correct, of course. I think that's one of the things about the network that's just so appealing to so many people. It is a very fun place to work.

Which is the most stressful show to do?
Most of the time, shooting Chopped is not stressful for me at all. But the times when it does get stressful--for example, we just finished another teen tournament, a five-part tournament with teenagers ranging from fourteen to eighteen. Teenagers are not as coordinated as trained, professional chefs. Many of them are quite small, especially the fourteen year olds. It's hard for them to handle knives. It makes me nervous about people cutting themselves. That's stressful.

We've been doing a lot of themed episodes the last couple years because viewers really love them and we bring in people from the military, the people who serve lunch to your children at school, firefighters. Those can require more work for me because I have to memorize a lot more and explain to the audience what we're doing. But the real stress and the real stars of these shows every time are the competitors. They're the ones who are under stress. My stress is really minuscule by comparison.

What would viewers be surprised to learn about Chopped?
A lot of people are surprised to learn that we can only shoot one episode a day. It's a twelve-hour day to make one episode, longer really for some people. The winner and second-place person, they're still sitting there in the chair being interviewed I go home. I think people would be surprised at how complicated it is to do a cooking show. We have three rounds in every episode of Chopped. The kitchen has to be cleaned after every one, cleaned and completely reset. That alone takes time. I think people would be surprised at how hard it really is. I think we all sit there and yell at the television when we watch a show like Chopped or All-Star Academy or when we watch a basketball game with Duke. It's one thing to sit there and say, "Why would you cook the egg that way? That's obviously wrong." It's quite another thing to have to do it yourself and most of our competitors say that. "I knew this was hard. I didn't know how hard." It's really hard.

Your Best. Ever. barbecue episode... how come you didn't step foot in any North Carolina restaurants?
Well, I have to say first of all, I don't pick the restaurants that go into Best. Ever. and I also have to say that I've been cooking Elizabeth Karmel's North Carolina Pulled Pork recipe for at least ten years and I love it and that's the kind of barbecue I eat more often than any other kind. So hats off to North Carolina! I'm just the host of that show. I just come in and throw to the segments in different states. Those choices are made either by producers or the individuals themselves. Here's the thing: I got in trouble recently for criticizing a particular fast food hamburger that I won't name now. I realized when people were complaining that we all have our regional preferences and our particular favorites of everything. I came up with what I feel is the perfect response to that, "The great thing about America is that we all get to pick our own favorite hamburger." Our own favorite barbecue. So no insult intended, certainly.

Are there any plans for a restaurant?
Absolutely not! No way. No! The restaurant business is extraordinarily difficult. We often ask chefs, "Why did you become a chef?" One chef had a really good answer which was, "It's the only thing that I know how to do." I love to cook, I do it all the time. But I'm not a trained chef and I've never worked the line in a serious restaurant. I would just as soon enjoy cooking as a pleasure as opposed to banging it out every night. You just have to be like eighteen hours a day. It's difficult. It's difficult to make money. If you make a 10% profit margin, you're hitting it out of the park. I would rather create something like a book or a TV show and get paid to do that and then it's finished. It's out there. You can copy it. You can rerun it. When you're selling pizza, you're only as good as your last pizza. I have nothing but respect for people who can do it. It's a tough business.

We've got a few questions from our readers. I don't even know if you can answer the first one based on what you said earlier, but do you ever do fast food?
Sure. I mean, I don't like American fast food very much when you talk about the chains. It's just not very good food. It's not. It's frozen, ground up, corporate, the cheapest possible product that's designed to make lots of money for big corporations. That doesn't mean that I'm a food snob at all. I love hamburgers. Love 'em. I make them all the time. I love a great french fry. I have a local restaurant in my neighborhood, a few blocks away, that makes a gorgeous hamburger. They buy really high-quality meat. They grind it themselves so it's got a beautiful texture. They season it with salt. They put it on a good bun. They serve it with good condiments. I love that! I only eat fast food when I have no other choice. The bad thing is there are still a lot of places in the United States where that's the only choice. On the highway, in most airports. And a lot of people eat fast food because it's been made so cheap that it's all they can afford. That's something I'd love to see change.

What's your go-to comfort food?
I have lots of them. I love to make pulled pork. And when I make it, I do it over charcoal, slow and low for as many hours as possible. Six, eight. Go-to comfort food? I love all of it! I love meat loaf. I didn't used to, but I have a really great recipe for it now. Pizza, fried chicken, mashed potatoes. I like green beans the way my grandma cooked them, with a ham hock and a piece of onion until they're really soft and pale. It's not the way that fancy chefs cook them.

Do you think you could do as good of a job as some of the competitors with those wacky Chopped baskets?
I don't think I can do a better job than many of them, I'll tell you that. I'm not a professional chef. One of the skills you need as a pro is speed. Ironically, I'm a very slow cook. I tend to have music playing. I tend to have a glass of wine in my hand. I'm cooking for fun. I've had parties where I've had professionals like Marc Murphy and Amanda Freitag push me out of my own kitchen because I was frustrating them so much with my lackadaisical approach. When you go to Marc Murphy's house, which I often do, and he's cooking dinner, he only has one speed which is Fast. It's just the way he operates. He gets everything prepped, he goes out and throws the baseball with his son, he comes back, he bangs out dinner for twenty-five people without even thinking about it and it's delicious. That comes from a lot of practice. People ask all the time when am I going to compete on Chopped. My answer is generally, "How's never? Is never good for you?"

Final question: where's the best cupcake you've ever had?
You know what? I don't really care very much about cupcakes. I can tell you one really good one. The creator of Chopped, her partner, I don't think she owns it anymore, she started a cupcake business in New York City called Butter Lane. I loved her cupcakes because they're normal sized. They're the size we make at home, not the crazy giant ones. They're made with organic ingredients and French buttercream and they're really, really delicious and real. Everything in them is honest and real. But I'm not a big sweets person. Honestly, I'd rather eat cheese.

The Damnwells' Alex Dezen: The Culture Brats Interview

Last week, The Damnwells released The Damnwells, their kickass fifth album and first featuring the band's original lineup since 2006. Back in February, we had a chance to speak with singer Alex Dezen about the new album, reality television, the record industry, and more.

Your upcoming album is your first featuring the band's original lineup since 2006. What made you all decide to get back together and record an album now?
We had been talking about it for a while and I think that it was always just a matter of time before we got back into the studio again. Timing was also really important. Steve had two kids, Ted just had his first child, Dave had just moved into a new house upstate with his wife. So we were just waiting for the right time. The Damnwells have historically waited a long time between records sadly. It had been a couple years since we made a record so it just seemed like now or never.

Was the recording of the album awkward in any way since it had been so long?
No, not at all. It was like a homecoming. We all got to hang out again. I think when you've been in the business for a number of years you either start to really truly hate each other or really become like a brotherhood. We were always very much like brothers. It felt right. It felt really nice to be hanging out with them again and running over the same jokes again and reviving some old pictures to embarrass each other.



What's your favorite track off The Damnwells?
I try not to listen to it too much because I know I'm going to have to be listening to it forever. But in the process of making it, I think "Wreck You" was such a fun song to record because it was the first time that Dave and I really got to do the Angus and Malcolm rhythm guitar part together which we hadn't done in years. That was really fun to do. I love things that are minimal like that where you just don't need much, just a couple chords and a simple beat. That's one song I love to play for people. Their reaction's usually like, "Whoa. This is different."

The unhappy kid on the album's cover, is he any relation to any of you?
He's a very good friend of mine's son. We couldn't subject our own children to something so horrible.

Let's talk about "Kill Me." I assume you're not a fan of reality TV?
It's not that I'm a fan or not a fan, it's just that--sure, if I'm sitting in a hotel room and The Housewives Of Orange County Atlanta came on and there was going to be a fistfight on television, I would definitely watch it. It's like culturally rubbernecking. You can't look away it's so completely ridiculous. I'm not a fan of bullshit. Mostly I just think, as the song reflects, it's like, "Really? Just kill me. What is this this? Why are you concerned about Kim Kardashian's outfit?"

So there wasn't a particular show or event that prompted you to write that?
No. I remember being in a hotel room, being really hungover, and being by myself. I think we had just played a show somewhere. Just flipping around in bed, in a comatose hungover state, and I just had this melody. "Kill me. Kill me now." Originally, I thought it might be cool to make it a ballad but when we went into the studio, our producer was like, "Nah. We have to turn this around." I think I probably came across some show or something but I can't really remember if it was a particular incident. But I do remember being in that hotel, being hungover, and seeing some reality show for a second and contemplated either jumping out the window or writing a song about it.


You've had a record deal, given an album away for free, and done PledgeMusic several times. Does it sometimes feel like it's difficult getting your music to your fans?
It used to feel like it was difficult getting my music to fans, but now it's the opposite because of Pledge and things like that. When The Damnwells were on Epic, just trying to get the record out, it was like, "OK. Let's put it out this date. No, not this date. Let's put it out this date. Okay, that date but let's put it out through this other label. Let's rerecord this song. Let's not put it out yet." Mostly it's a nightmare because record labels, for the most part, have absolutely no understanding whatsoever of what to do with a band. They know what to do with a sixteen-year-old kid. They know how to make a pop star but they don't know what to do with a bunch of independently minded somewhat cognizant adults who play their own instruments. So now that we deliver our music through Pledge or give it away for free, there's no middle man. It's super easy. We've worked with several indie labels and the way it works for us is we make the record, we go knock on a few doors, and we're like, "Here's the record. Does anyone want to put it out?" So far we've been really lucky that a couple of these really cool indie labels that put the blinders on and say, "Ok. Ok. Go for it. We'll put it out."

You've written songs for lots of other artists. Has there ever been one that you wish you would've kept for yourself?
I think if there ever was, I just did. "Lost," the first single, we were writing it as an exercise. Steve said we could pitch it to someone. Maybe there was a country artist that could take it and make it more country. But t was never the intention that that song would be for me. As soon as I played it for my manager, he was like, "This is amazing. This has to be on The Damnwells' record."

Final question: You're in charge of a music festival. You can get any five artists, living or dead, to perform on the bill with you. Which five do you choose and what song do you all perform as the final jam?
Definitely Van Halen. Not Van Hagar, gotta be the original four. And I want it to be in 1984, right around the Diver Down era just because it would be so amazing to see. My mother got to see Janis Joplin when she was in her prime and said it was a life-changing experience, so definitely her. Another concert my mother was at was the Simon & Garfunkel Central Park concert in like '84. I would love that version to come play the festival. We've toured a bunch with Cheap Trick over the past ten years and they're just so good so I would love to have them play. They're like the quintessential American rock 'n' roll band. And then probably... I'd have to put Tom Petty on the bill.

What song do you all perform as the final jam?
We'd have to do something like "All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison. It would be amazing to see Alex Van Halen playing drums on that song.

More Damnwells: Official | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

The Darkness's Dan Hawkins: The Culture Brats Interview

On June 1st, 2015, The Darkness will release their fourth studio album, Last Of Our Kind. Last month, they released the album's killer first single, "Barbarian." We had a chance to talk with guitarist Dan Hawkins about the single, album, his new guitar pedal, new drummer, and more.

Let's talk "Barbarian." It's an awesome track, an awesome video. But what made you write about the Viking invasion of East Anglia?
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, it's my brother really. On this album, the riffs came first and then we turned the riffs into songs. It was clearly reminding him of a battle of some sort. We got onto a discussion about Vikings and their appearance in East Anglia back in the day and I think he did a bit more research into it, found the story and was inspired by it and picked it up from there. We got as far lyrically as the bridge before the chorus and we ran out of words so we just put a big scream. Hey, presto! There you go.



It's the first track off of Last Of Our Kind. What can you tell us about the new album?
I'd say it's our heaviest album to date, probably most riff-based album. We have a new drummer who's kind of changed the sound slightly. We took a year out to write this album. We didn't do any gigs and just concentrated on doing something that was an album we were really proud of rather than one that was just made in a certain amount of time and a fit schedule. We went to a remote island off the coast of Ireland and didn't come out until we had an album that was something we were proud of.

You worked as a producer on Hot Cakes, but you are the sole producer on the new album. Was there any added pressure with that title?
Yeah, I guess so. I solely engineered it and produced it and mixed it which is the big thing for me this time. I was so sick of producing the band or other bands and handing it over to someone to do the mix. I read somewhere that Steve Albini said, "You can't call yourself a producer if you have to hand it over to someone to make it sound good in the end." I thought, "Yeah, that's a fucking good point." So I wanted to mix it and be proud of the mixes and I knew it would help my production, which it really has.

It's challenging. It's challenging because you kind of have to not be in the band right up to the point to where you're playing on it and then you have to switch to being in the band. That's the difficult bit, actually playing on it when you're producing it because sometimes your quality control goes out the window.

You mentioned this earlier, but Last Of Our Kind is the first album you recorded with new drummer Emily Dolan Davies. How did you find her and what does she bring to the band?
For whatever reason, we had various problems with our previous drummer. I've had Emily Dolan Davies on the radar for a couple of years, actually. We were thinking about when we move on, if we got another well-known male drummer to replace the last one, swap one middle-aged man out for another, that's not very exciting and that chips away at The Darkness. If we got a young male drummer, it's like we're trying to reduce our age and whatnot. We just someone different and exciting, someone who excited us. Why don't we just have a look and see if there's any female drummers out there? To my knowledge, I couldn't name a female drummer in a male hard rock band. I did have a look on the internet, did a bit of scouring about and there she was. I thought it was a perfect match straightaway. She's done a few bits and bobs, sessiony bits and bobs, but nothing that she would be known for and I just felt that she was at exactly the right moment to join a big rock band. We hit it off straightaway and she's just totally awesome. Our shows over the last week with her have been going really well and people are just blown away by her. Happy days.


You guys did a PledgeMusic campaign for the album and one of the perks was a guitar pedal created by you. What was that like?
Awesome. It's been my dream since a really young age. Any guitarist will tell you they become like Star Wars figures to some people. You rely on them and you end up collecting them and to actually have your own one is just awesome. I'm working with these guys who are hand building these things. I'm tweaking, changing the levels each night, different modes as we go along this tour to try and get it perfect. I'll send it back to them with my options and then start producing them. I just thought it'd be a really cool thing to do.

"Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)" is one of my favorite contemporary Christmas songs. What made you guys write a Christmas song?
I think I woke up one day and realized, "Fuck, I haven't got a pension. Better write a Christmas song." It had been a particularly hard touring year and my liver was about to burst so I thought, "Fuck it, I'm not going to being around forever. Best to write a Christmas song."

Fair enough.
The truth of the matter is I was in a bar having played on a big TV show in the UK. Things were going really well. We'd had a hit with "I Believe." I was just chatting to the head of the level and he was asking me, "What do you want to do next? I suppose, coming into Christmas, we'll release "Love Is Only A Feeling" as a ballad for Christmas." I said, "It's a shame to release a ballad just before Christmas without it being an actual Christmas song. That was the last year before the stupid X Factor fucking came and ruined that for the UK. The race for Number 1 was a brilliant thing that just captured the nation's imagination every single year. Unfortunately, that went out the window when The X Factor started releasing their winner's single before Christmas because it was guaranteed Number 1 and so people stopped making Christmas songs basically. When we released ours, it wasn't like that. It was still a big race to Number 1 and I just thought, "Well, fuck it. Let's just do it for laughs." We had half a Christmas song that we pissed around with for God knows why a few years before. I kind of lied and told the head of the label, "We've got a Christmas song and it could be a Number 1." He's like, "Great, let's do that then." So we had to scramble it together, try and finish writing it which we finished in the back of the tour bus supporting Metallica in Dublin. The rest is history.



Cool. I've got one final question for you. You're in charge of a music festival and you can pick any five artists, dead or alive, to perform on the bill with you. Who do you choose?
We're playing as well, are we?

Yes.
Well, we're on first so we can actually watch the other bands and get drunk and not have to worry about playing. We'll be on first. I'd have Led Zeppelin on early. They'd be on next, the mid-afternoon slot. Not because I don't think they're worthy of headlining but just because I want to take in everything that Jimmy Page is doing. I'd have them and then AC/DC to get things back on track, drinking-wise. I'd have Neil Young on. He'd go on after AC/DC to clear the air. We'll bring The Beatles on for a bit of a singsong and then we'll finish with Queen.

What song do you all perform together for the final jam?
Have you ever seen the footage from the Moscow Peace Festival? It's a total disgrace. All the metal bands of the day, just completely off their heads, doing a big jam at the end. I think it was "Rock And Roll" by Led Zeppelin. It's utterly atrocious. So what would we do? Blimey. It would be quite funny to count everyone in and everyone plays whatever song they want and the result is a horrifying noise. We've done that before. It used to be our sound check thing. I would count everyone in, "1! 2! 3! 4!" And then each individual member of the band would play a different song from the set, but no one plays the same one and no one knows what the other one's going to do. It's a soundman's worst nightmare.

More Darkness: Official | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

Katrina Leskanich: The Culture Brats Interview

Katrina Leskanich, former lead singer of Katrina & The Waves, is getting ready to start a solo US tour (dates below). First, she spoke with us about "Walking On Sunshine," the tour, her photography book, Hanoi Rocks, and more.

Let's talk about "Walking On Sunshine." It's thirty years old and you still hear it on the radio today. Did you think it would have such staying power?
No, we didn't. When we were first running the song in the early '80s, Kimberley Rew, our guitar player who wrote it, presented it to the group and we though it was pretty lightweight. It wasn't really where we were at, at the time. So it was really curious that he came up with it except I know that he really liked The Supremes and he liked that beat, that "You Can't Hurry Love" beat. It was in the dead of winter, early '80s, February and he rode his bike twenty-seven miles to get to our little homemade studio. Vince the bass player's first thought about it was it was a little irritating. All I could say about it was having lived with it a couple of days, it just kept going through my head, so we thought that was quite hopeful. At the time we were doing a lot of shows on military bases, US Air Force bases and Royal Air Force bases around the UK. We would play the song and we eventually took it out of our set because it was just a dance floor emptier. People didn't really know how to dance to it. We took it out of the set, but we did have a couple of attempts at recording it. When we finally got signed with Capitol Records, they signed up a hotshot new-kid-on-the-block producer named Scott Litt. Scott was kind of a cool guy. He hadn't done a whole lot up to that point. "Walking On Sunshine" was his first hit. After that, he went on to work with R.E.M., Nirvana, Indigo Girls, and a few other very uber-cool bands. Scott had the idea to start the song with the drum introduction, which was really inspired. We went to The Power Station in New York City, which was a studio that was known for a fantastic drum sound. That's where and when we got the track. That was in '84. We had just been signed by Capitol and by '85 we released it and the rest is history.

It's such an iconic song and it's been featured in plenty of television shows and movies like High Fidelity and American Psycho. What's your favorite place where it's popped up?
American Psycho. That's pretty cool where Christian Bale is post-murder and he's walking down the corridor and he's got the old headphones on and he's listening to "Walking On Sunshine." When I first saw that movie, I didn't really get it. As I got older and wiser and figured it out, I saw how ironic the moment was. I didn't really get it before.

I suppose it was quite cool, if not a little bit cheesy, when John Travolta is the babysitter and he's dancing with the babies to "Walking On Sunshine." That was nice. Dolly Parton covered the song. She did a very interesting version and changed some of the lyrics. Instead of "don't it feel good," she sang, "and it's time to feel good." I don't know where she looked up her lyrics, but they're not quite right. But she's Dolly Parton and obviously we all love her and she can whatever the hell she pleases.


Tell us about your latest album, Blisland.
Blissland is the first album I've recorded in ten years. Last year, I was invited onto a tour called Retro Futura with The Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, Midge Ure, and they all had new material. I thought, "I don't want to join this tour--and it will be the first time I've toured America in twenty years--without some new material." So I didn't know if I would be able to do it, where it would come from, what it would be about, blah blah blah. Picked up the guitar and pretty much had a go and bashed it out. I didn't have a long time to work on it, which is probably a good thing.

The name Blisland is the name of a village in Cornwall, which is in the southwest of England. It's a place I like to go because it's very beautiful, a very spiritual place. Blisland, the little village, is one of the first that you get to when you're entering Cornwall. The little village probably has around 127 people in it, but they also have a lovely little pub with some fabulous ales. It was all just a very good feelgood experience so I thought, "If I ever record another album, I'm gonna call it Blisland."

You're getting ready for a solo US tour. What can fans expect from the shows?
I'm using three badass New Yorkers who have worked with Blondie, Joan Jett And The Blackhearts, John Cale, list goes on. These guys are cool. They've been around awhile. I played with them on Retro Futura and we just clicked. I'm paring it down to just four pieces: drum, bass, guitar, and I'll handle the rhythm guitar. I'm doing a lot of Katrina And The Waves material, some material from Blisland, and I'm doing a few cool covers, stuff that I like. Sometimes it feels like we're living in an ugly world, but it's only because we're constantly bombarded with bad news. News is everywhere. We can be attacked by news and it's all bad. I just think it'd be nice to try and turn it around and look for some joy. So I thought it's a good time to wish "Walking On Sunshine" a happy birthday and remember what it's like to just go out and have some fun.

What inspired you to create Peggy Lee Loves London?
Peggy Lee Loves London is a photographic book of all my favorite places in London. I've lived here since 1976 and the tour books don't know about places that someone who's lived here awhile knows about. I'm talking about pubs, clubs, bars, coffee shops, bakeries, parks, all the places I love to go. Peggy Lee is my little toy poodle and she gets in every shot. So if I take a picture in one of my favorite pubs, she's in there. Wrote a little bit about it, little captions, done. Little book. Joyful. Joyful and informative.

One thing I just discovered today was that Hanoi Rocks' "Don't Follow Me." How did that come about and what was it like?
In the early '80s, we were doing the rounds and we played in a club called The Moonlight. One of the guys from the music business we were working with was looking after them. He said, "Come on, you've got to meet these guys." They were so sweet. They were lovely and they said, "Can you come in and sing backup on our record tomorrow?" We'd had this huge night out and we'd all stumbled into the studio the next day. I think I sang on two tracks. We just did it in one take and it was just a really nice experience because they were really sweet. It just happened like that and probably happened as the result of quite a few pints of beer.



Final question: you're in charge of a music festival and you can get any five artists, living or dead, to perform on the bill with you. Who do you choose?
I would choose Mama Cass Elliot. I would choose Karen Carpenter. I would choose Nina Simone. I'm choosing all women, aren't I? Deborah Harry's always invited. I'd probably have The Shangri-Las.

What song do you all perform together for the final jam?
That would be "Top Of The World" by The Carpenters.

North American Tour Dates
March 17 Glen Cove, NY - Page One
March 18 Somerville, MA - Johnny D's
March 19 New York, NY - Iridium
March 20 New York, NY - Iridium
March 21 Londonderry, NH - Tupelo Music Hall
March 22 Hamden, CT - Outer Space Ballroom
March 23 Lancaster, PA - Tellus 360
March 25 Stanhope, NJ - Salt Gastro Pub
March 26 Rochester, NY - The Lovin' Cup
March 27 Buffalo, NY - The Forum
March 28 Hamilton, ON - This Ain't Hollywood
March 29 Toronto, ON - Hugh's Room
April 1 Dayton, OH - Canal Public House
April 2 Chicago, IL - Reggie's Rock Club
April 3 Milwaukee, WI - Shank Hall
April 4 St. Paul, MN - Amsterdam Bar + Hall

More Katrina Leskanich: Official | Facebook | Twitter

Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal: The Culture Brats Interview

Guitar god Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal is releasing his tenth solo album, Little Brother Is Watching, on February 24th. Last week, we had a chance to speak with him about the new album, collaborating with Scott Weiland and Run-D.M.C.'s Darryl McDaniels, Guns N' Roses, and his dream music festival. Here is an edited version of our conversion (I had to cut out all the fanboy stuff where I talked about seeing him play live):

I saw on Facebook where you were giving your new CD your first listen a few hours ago. How did it sound?
It sounds just like it's supposed to (laughs). Which is funny, because I remember years ago I did one CD and they actually put the wrong music on the CD. They put one of my other albums on it. I started sending these out and people started writing saying, "Um, dude. Something isn't right." And then I had a friend that I produced his CD and it went to the manufacturer. Halfway through the CD, it switched to this other band's stuff, all this Latin music. I think it's gotten better in the digital age, but human error, things happen, so it's always good to check. I had an hour ride home so it was perfect. I pretty much finished listening to the whole CD as I pulled up to my door.

I've been listening to it today too and I've got to tell you it sounds really awesome.
Oh great. Thank you.

You stated that Little Brother Is Watching is about life in the digital age. What led you to tackle that topic?
Just looking out the window and turning on the computer. This is our life that we live in, you know? It's the next phase. The government would watch the powers that be, whoever it was—and I'm not this big government conspiracy dude or anything like that, but it's a reality that they have the eyes and the ears—but the thing that was not anticipated years ago when people were predicting the future was that we would have the technology as well where we can watch each other and watch those who are policing us. It's pretty interesting living in a time where everything you do can and will be posted on YouTube for the world to see and judge and enjoy. This is how we live now, part of normal life.

This is your tenth solo album. How do you feel it stacks up to the rest?
I like it! I feel like this one is a lot more melodic. I guess it's a little more grown up in the sense that it's not trying to be anything, not trying to prove anything. I wrote the best songs I could write and tried to perform them the best that I could and really cared a lot more about the space and dynamic moments within the songs and multiple melodies working with each other between guitar lines and vocal lines. I just tried to make it a lot more musical and I think it's less about the angst and the energy and it's more about melody and emotion.

You recently collaborated with Darryl McDaniels of Run-D.M.C. How did that come about?
Yeah! That dude is great! It goes back to the band Generation Kill. They've been working with Darryl. The singer of Generation Kill, Rob Dukes, is an old friend of mine and he told me about it and said they were looking for someone to take care of production and mixing and we started working together. We got one song done called "Lot Lizard," a real nasty song that sounds great. I threw in some fretless guitar solos and stuff in there as well. It's a nice collaboration. It's some really cool dirty rap metal. It's dark. The stuff is definitely dark as far as subject matter and how it makes you feel. It's got some creepy stuff going on. You just got to hear it.

When can we hear it?
Now that is a good question. I know they're in the studio working on some more tracks and some writing and getting some other stuff done. They're going to be getting me some more music to play around with then hopefully they'll start sharing the stuff and giving people some sounds very soon.



You also collaborated with Scott Weiland, Disturbed's John Moyer, and Jon and Vince Votta as Art Of Anarchy. What brought that group together?
That started off with Jon and Vince. They're brothers, one plays guitar and the other plays drums. I've known them for about eighteen years and I've been producing all their bands that they've had. They wanted to start their own music company and the first thing they wanted to put out was a supergroup-type album. They wrote the songs, I brought them into my studio and we tracked all their parts and then I laid all my parts. John Moyer came in and laid the bass stuff. Scott did one song and then he decided to do the whole album. It's all about the music. It's really... it's an album. It's some really interesting stuff. A good solid rock album and that should be out hopefully by May or June. It's something that's been in the works since 2011. It's been a long time of just taking our time with it and trying to get everything right.

Let's talk Guns. Appetite was such a pivotal album and I'd just like to know what it was like joining them.
It seemed very normal. I always had my own band and was doing everything a band does: touring, putting out music, and everything. Every once in awhile, I would play with other people. Interesting people. I played with Nancy Sinatra. Lita Ford. I never joined another band, though. We just had a run or a show or I would even just pop up as a guest for one song. This was the first time I was going to be joining another band. Originally, I turned it down when we were talking about doing it eleven years ago. In 2006, we started talking again and I was like, "Alright, what the hell." We got together in New York. We jammed together one night on three songs. They were like, "You want to do another three tomorrow night?" "Alright, sure." I pretty much knew all the songs already because who doesn't? We jammed seven times and hit the road. For me, doing that kind of stuff is pretty normal. You get together with people and you make music and the more unexpected the situation is, the more fun it is. And that's what makes being a musician something that never gets old, never gets dull. You can never predict who you might be jamming with at some point and what an interesting moment that can be.

Final question: you're in charge of a music festival and you can get any five artists, dead or alive, to perform on the bill with you. Who do you choose?
Five artists dead or alive? Wow. That's a tough one! Of course, The Beatles gotta be there. Hendrix has to be there. Who else? I would want to see... Man, this is tough! There's so many I want to say. Manowar. I want Manowar on there. That's three. I'm going to say... Yes? Yes with Rick Wakeman and Bill Bruford. That's four. Who else... GG Allin. GG Allin to get naked, cut himself with glass, and piss on people, and then run off the stage and start beating the crap out of random people.

What song do you all perform together as the final jam?
Final jam. One song. This is even tougher now. What would they possibly play together? "Dancing Queen" from ABBA. Just because it's so out of place.

That's just wrong and so messed up. We've got to go with a different song. You bring back people from the dead to do that? No! Something from Steve Wonder maybe? What a tough one. You know what? I'm going to say we'll all do a Manowar song together. What could it be, though? Could it be "Black Wind, Fire, And Steel?" "Valhalla" because the verse keeps changing keys. Hendrix would have a chance to solo over it, Wakeman could do something, perfect. There you go.

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Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley: The Culture Brats Interview

On January 23rd, Spandau Ballet will embark on their first US tour in thirty years. We were lucky enough to catch up with singer Tony Hadley to discuss the tour, Band Aid 30, and which Guinness World Record he'd love to have his name attached to.

In about ten days, Spandau Ballet will begin its first US tour in 30 years. What did we do to you guys to make you stay away so long?
It's what we did to ourselves. We had a twenty-year fallout which was pretty acrimonious. In our film, Soul Boys Of The Western World, it's all documented there. A pretty painful breakup, really. Sometimes bands keep going because they think they have to. If I'm looking back on it, Through The Barricades should've been our last album, we should've taken five years off from each other, and then probably we would've survived. But unfortunately we pushed it too far and for various reasons, we just weren't enjoying it anymore and so we ended up taking a break from each other for twenty years and ended up in court which was very nasty. It took a lot of soul searching to get ourselves back together again. We got back together in 2009 and 2010 and I said at the time that carrying all that baggage, all that nasty energy, doesn't really do anybody any good. There I was on television saying, "No, we're never getting back together. We don't like each other." It doesn't do you any good. It took a long time, but we finally managed to rekindle our friendship.

I don't know why we didn't tour the States back in 2009 and 2010. I think we made some mistakes with America. I think maybe we were too clever. We certainly spent lots and lots of time in Europe and especially in places like Italy and Spain and Germany. What I think people forget, or what we forgot as a band, is in America there's so many great bands and so many great musicians, you've got to tour. You have to keep going back. You have to prove to people that you can cut your chops as a musician. Once you do that and once you get a following, and Duran was very good at doing that, then you've got your place in America and American pop. We unfortunately for one reason or another didn't do that and we needed to.

After thirty years, [we're] coming over to America with a very short tour. There's already talk about coming back in the summer and doing some festivals and outdoor shows. I toured there as a solo artist several years ago which was great. I toured small clubs, it was great fun. I enjoyed it. Hopefully this is the start of coming back to America on a much more regular basis.

We were in Austin, Texas for the SXSW film festival. We did the premiere of Soul Boys Of The Western World, but we also did a small club gig while we were there and the reaction was fantastic and I think that was what spurred us on to say, "Right. We're definitely going to come back and play some shows in the States."

What will the shows be like?
We've been in rehearsals for over a week. The one thing about the States is it was "True" that was the big hit. That was the thing that broke us in America. Previous to that, I'm sure that some Americans are not even aware that we were a culty band. We were a synth-based band that came out of this massive music and fashion explosion in London called The New Romantics. There were songs that were really kind of synth dance stuff: "To Cut A Long Story Short," "The Freeze," "Reformation," "Mandolin," all these songs before we ever got to "True." We're going to be looking at some of those songs, which are sounding great actually. And obviously "True," "Communication," "Lifeline," "Only When You Leave," and stuff that hopefully the American audiences are going to love and know. We did three new songs for the new album as well and we'll be playing those, too.

Will the songs be true to the originals or will you be doing any new arrangements?
Pretty true to the originals. Obviously you update sounds and things like that, solos might be different, although the "True" solo is written in stone. That never changes. Steve's sax solo, that can never change. You might introduce slightly new elements into the songs, but what I've always found as an artist is if you detract too much from the original, the fans don't like it. I've seen other artists try to be too clever and it just doesn't go down very well with the fans. When we play "True," everyone's going to know instantly that that's "True." We're not going to be too clever.



I've got to tell you I watched your performances on Kimmel and your voice, it still sounds amazing.
Cheers, mate!

Do you have to follow a crazy routine to keep it sounding so great?
I'm sort of lucky that I've always had a strong voice. I took it seriously from an early age. I've always been touring. I've toured with orchestras all over the world. I've sort of been singing all the time and I think the most important thing about any singer... It's when you stop, I think you've got problems or if you don't sing correctly, then obviously you've got problems. Touch wood, I've always been pretty lucky. I think that I'm singing better than ever and musically, I think the band is playing better than ever.

The Jimmy Kimmel show, bit of a weird one really in lot of ways. Spandau Ballet, where have you been for twenty-eight years? Well, we don't really care. So to get a chance to be on the Jimmy Kimmel show, and everyone was so gracious and kind and all the fans were there and they were all crazy. It was like, "Wow. This is good. This is nice." It was a great opportunity for us and hopefully the fans will be equally as kind when we come over to play next week.

You alluded to this earlier, but last you released the greatest-hits package called The Story and it contained three new tracks. Were these tracks from the vaults or were they new songs?
No. We spent so much time and energy on the film that Warners decided they wanted to release a greatest hits. They wanted two new tunes. We had a rehearsal and I went home and sort of wrote "Soul Boy" with a view to the film. If you listen to the lyrics, there's loads of references. "Died in your arms," which is Cutting Crew. There's song references in there as well. I went home and wrote that and Gary must've gone home and wrote "Steal" and "This Is The Love." We had probably half a dozen songs when we were there but we decided on those particular three. We had very little time in which to record and Trevor Horn was available which was fantastic. I was going on holiday. We had one day to do the vocals, one day to do the backing tracks. Went in, did three vocals in an afternoon and popped in the next morning to repair a couple lines and that was it. It was a very quick process, but sometimes that's the best way. We've spent time in the past when we've spent months going over stuff and rewriting. Sometimes, it's good to just fly off and be spontaneous.

Any chance there's a full album in the works?
Yeah, there is. We're doing a few dates in the States and then hopefully coming back in the summer. We've then got the rest of the world to tour. We'll finish round about September. Then I've got a new album I'm releasing, a new solo album. Then I'm going to be touring around the world. So it'll be I reckon in a couple of years. The good thing about Spandau now is we all love working together, but we've all got our own solo projects. So we'll go off and do our own individual things and give everyone a break from Spandau Ballet because they'll probably be sick to death of us by then and then get together and write a whole new album. So the next time we go out on the road, there will be a whole new album. There has to be.



Since you were one of the performers on the original "Do They Know It's Christmas?," I'd love to hear what you thought of the Band Aid 30 version.
The original is the original. You come out with the first Aston Martin car, it's a classic, it's a beauty. It's never ever going to be the same, whatever you produce after that, and that's the same with Band Aid. It was a very interesting decade, the '80s, and Band Aid was almost the birth of modern charity. It was the first time that music could really make a difference. Band Aid 30, I don't have a problem with it. I thought it was a pretty good version but the original is the original. From my own point of view, whatever those artists are doing, they're helping to raise awareness and make money and so I don't have a problem with it. I thought it was great.

You hold the Guinness World Record for "Highest Concert" for performing with Kim Wilde at 43,000 feet. If you could hold any other Guinness World Record, what would it be?
First pop musician in space.

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NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES

01.23.15 San Francisco, CA Warfield Theatre
01.25.15 Los Angeles, CA Wiltern Theatre
01.27.15 Denver, CO Paramount Theatre
01.30.15 Chicago, IL House of Blues
01.31.15 Detroit, MI Masonic Temple Theatre
02.03.15 Toronto, ONT Massey Hall
02.05.15 Boston, MA House of Blues
02.06.15 New York, NY Beacon Theatre
02.07.15 Westbury, NY Theatre at Westbury
02.09.15 Washington, DC 9:30 Club
02.10.15 Red Bank, NJ Count Basie Theatre