Download: Weedeater “God Luck And Good Speed”

(from God Luck and Good Speed out now on Southern Lord)

North Carolina’s Weedeater are unflagging primal monstermen who convert weed and bourbon into simple energy and don’t stop touring til at least three things burst and deflate. They are working on a new album for Southern Lord and speak now from the road. This interview by Matt Dupree.

No offense but your website’s a little old…
“Dixie” Dave Collins (bass/vocals): Is that weedeatertheband.com? Yeah, that’s not done by us. It’s done by this kid in the Cape Fear area and he’s had all kinds of medical issues. He had some giant brain tumor pulled out of his head. We’ve tried many times to tell him to take the damn site down but he just leaves it up there and I don’t have the heart to break his balls too much on it. So the updated site would be the MySpace site that our management takes care of. I don’t mess with computers too much—they tend to fuck up and freeze every time I touch ‘em. They hate me, for some reason and that’s fine, because I don’t like them either. We’ve done everything the old-fashioned way for thirteen or fourteen years now so we’ll stick to it and let other people handle that.
There’s mention of a High Times article where you get into a naming debate over ‘stoner rock’ and ‘weed metal.’
The term ‘stoner rock’ has been thrown around since day one around us, but it just sounds like a ridiculous term to me. Everybody that’s ever played rock has been stoned on something. I mean even people that didn’t play rock, you know—Louis Armstrong. Chuck Berry is stoner rock to me. I just think it’s weird, and people were always calling us stoner rock. There’s a skateboard company called Speed Metal Bearings and I ripped off their logo and changed it to ‘Weed Metal’ and decided to use the moniker ‘weed metal’ instead of stoner rock just as a joke. Since you have to name your music, you know? People always ask you what genre you are—you must pigeonhole yourself so why not come up with your own term?
I like to make up fake genres when describing bands to friends.
That’s the basic idea. Dwell Records released the first Hail!Hornet record and there was a little sticker on the front—it’s supposed to sell the record, and it was like, ‘Torturous oppressive grime metal!’ ‘Wow, that makes me not want to buy this—let me buy this torturous oppressive music that’ll hurt my feelings… and make me cry. Make me have to take a shit.’ You have to overdo it.
And you have to take it really seriously.
You must take everything really, really seriously. Which is totally of out-of-context in all we’ve done in Weedeater for sure. People always ask me what’s the number one thing you need to be in a touring band and second to the actual vehicle that gets you from show to show, I would say a sense of humor. Without having that, you’ll never stay together. We’ve been the same three guys without a member change for 14 or 15 years and touring for 13 of them, and touring pretty heavily. None of us would survive and we’d have killed each other just today if we didn’t have a good sense of humor and a bag of weed. That’s pretty much where we’re coming from on that one. It works well for us.
You’ve recorded albums with both Steve Albini and Billy Anderson who are both legends of record engineering. Do you have a preference between the two for the new record?
I really don’t. Both of those are great. Their styles are a little bit different, but for the most part they’re very similar in that they’re both incredible producers who work well with analog, which we like to do. And they’re very good at capturing live sound, which we like a lot, too. We don’t even know who we’re doing this new one with—it’ll most likely be one of those two guys though. It’ll be the second of three records that’ll be on Southern Lord.
How many instruments do you play?
Piano or organ, bass, guitar, banjo, ukulele, lap steel, fiddle, a little bit of drums. That’s probably about it. Melodeon. Clarinet.
Is there any chance for some clarinet on a future album?
We’ve discussed that for sure. A distorted-to-hell clarinet.
I would be shocked if it wasn’t distorted.
It just wouldn’t be right.
You’ve used the word ‘uncareful’ to describe how you write lyrics. What exactly did you mean?
That may not do it justice. ‘Haphazard’ might be more appropriate. We’re very fond of wordsmithing—putting weird words and bending sayings around, and we write lyrics out in that same vein. I like wordsmithing without words missing and I like for things to be clever and different. You know, we’re supposed to be stupid hicks, so we kind of play on that. At the same time, if you get it, they’re pretty clever and put together pretty well in my opinion.
I’ve heard your hometown Wilmington is just a city full of bars.
Pretty much correct. Downtown Wilmington sits on the Cape Fear River about two or three miles from the mouth. We’re just surrounded by beaches and the college is there—University of North Carolina Wilmington—so the whole Cape Fear area is just jammed full of bars and drunks and crazy fuckers, pretty much. They filmed Dawson’s Creek there and some other shitty… One Tree Hill… or whatever. I actually lived on that creek. It’s actually called Page’s Creek—that’s the real name of it. It’s where I put my Jon boat in when I go island hopping and drinking and smoking and swimming. But I prefer to think of all the Stephen King movies that were filmed here. And David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. I guess Screen Gems is getting ready to move back to Wilmington—they’ve got the biggest soundstage on the East Coast from what I’m told.
You still run a head shop, right? I’m sure that means increased traffic from the Hollywood transplants.
The shop that I work at is one of a chain of six, and we’re consistently the top-seller. We make about double what the next store does per day. We’ve got the tourists coming to the beach, we’ve got the college students and we’ve got just all the burnout crazy drunks there. We also sell porn and sex toys and all that as well. And with the economy like this, with the recession and all, people aren’t gonna go out to the movies and go eat. They’re gonna go home, and so they’re gonna need a pipe, some porno and a dildo. So actually if anything we may have seen a spike in sales while all the other retail stores were in decline.
On the newest album, God Luck and Good Speed, you borrowed ‘Alone’ from your side project Barstul.
Me and Shep—our guitarist—are Barstul. I wanted to re-record it for God Luck and Good Speed because I thought it fit very well with the flow of the record, and Albini heard it and he said, ‘Man, we can place mics all day and maybe get something close to as good as that sounds. I think we should just put it on there as is.’ That’s actually a four-track recording from my garage when me and Shep were completely wasted one night. I asked Mike Dean when we were on tour with COC and he kinda mobile-ly mastered on their bus, and it came out sounding great.
Is Barstul gonna make a proper record?
Yeah, we have a demo that I haven’t really shopped around to anyone yet. We’d like to re-record all that stuff. We’ve got a full record worth of stuff at least—all original songs. Actually on our record Sixteen Tons, the song ‘Whoa Is Me’ is also a Barstul song. That’s just me playing acoustic bass and the pedals on my organ, and guitar and vocal. It’s probably something we’ll do in the future—incorporating that into Weedeater but also have Barstul be a separate entity.
Do any other bands consume chemicals as capably as Weedeater, or are you guys the gold standard for chemical consumption?
I guess we’re pretty hard at it. We try and take care of ourselves but it’s not so easy to do, especially touring around as much as we like to do. But everybody in the genre is at least partially involved in it. We may push the envelope a little bit, but envelopes are there to be pushed, I imagine. I’m sitting in the van right now, drinking whiskey and Pabst Blue Ribbon and doing an interview with you. It’s definitely easier to speak my mind and just say what I feel if I’ve had a few drinks. It’s actually easier for me to do anything, even get out of bed, if I’ve had a few drinks. I could use to burn one right now but I don’t know where everybody is, I think they’re in the club. They need to come out here and load one up so I can get high, ‘cause that’s the next step.

WEEDEATER WITH DOWN, THE MELVINS AND DANAVA ON SAT., AUG. 15, AT THE WILTERN, 3790 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 7PM / $30 / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. WEEDEATER’S GOD LUCK AND GOOD SPEED IS OUT NOW ON SOUTHERN LORD. VISIT WEEDEATER AT WEEDEATERTHEBAND.COM OR ON MYSPACE AT MYSPACE.COM/WEEDEATER.

Download: The Shins “Australia”

(from Wincing The Night Away on Sub Pop)

The Shins right now are no longer the Shins they used to be—founder James Mercer debuted a new line-up (with members of Modest Mouse and Fruit Bats) last week and will be taking the band from Sub Pop to their own label Aural Apothecary for their next releases. He speaks now about this and Bob Dylan, Heath Ledger and Kermit the Frog, too. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

What was it like being interviewed by a Muppet at the Grammies?
James Mercer (vocals/guitar): It was crazy. You remember seeing children being interviewed by Kermit. It’s funny how quickly you look at the Muppet as a living being. It was fun being nominated for a Grammy and then getting interviewed by Kermit was such a silly and awesome little highlight of the night. I don’t think I ever dreamed I would have talked to a Muppet. But I definitely loved the Muppets growing up. I used to get so bummed whenever the show would end. I loved it.
Did you like the Muppet Babies?
That was the cartoon version? I was already a teenager at that point, so I couldn’t really get away with watching that. I was about six years old when the original Muppets came out. So I was at the perfect age to get into that. Now, for my kid, we got Yo Gabba Gabba. My baby girl loves that. The Shins performed on that show. She’s also into tricycles.
What’s the greatest thing your child said to you this week?
Oh, she’s going to be two, and she says some awesome stuff. [Consults wife] Oh, ‘Papa, change my poo poo diaper.’ Yep, and I’ve got the second baby on the way.
How has having a family affected how you do music?
I think there are some changes—related to how children affect your connection that you have with other people. I see other people around me as the children that they were, more so. It’s something that you can imagine and get there without having a kid. But having a child connects you with other people in a way that’s scary. It’s kind of scary to care about the human race. As a young man, I always thought the way to be happy was to not care, to be apathetic about the human race. Which is a weird, dark, place to be. That’s just over. That’s done. I’m not able to be ambivalent about the whole thing anymore. Now I have a huge part of me invested in the future of this planet and these people.
Having made an artistic contribution over the last decade that appears to have some major staying power, is there any parallel there that also makes you care for the world?
I actually don’t think so. There’s some separation there that I feel with the stuff that I produce. I have a personal connection to it and understand that when it leaves me it’s up to the strange factors of pop culture and how that’s going to ingest it. You lose control of it once it leaves you in a way—how it’s perceived. You do your work up front and then everything else is out of your control.
If you could show your top five Shins songs to one person, who would you want to hear them?
Oh boy, I would be really happy if the greats got what I was doing and appreciated it. Bob Dylan would be somebody that I would enjoy his appreciation. Brian Wilson would be a neat person to talk to. David Bowie, if he gave a shit about what I was doing, I would be impressed. Fats Domino is popping into my head.
If you had to pair each of your band members with a mentor from rock and roll history for a day, who would they be?
Joe should hang out with Tito Puente for a day. Ron Lewis our bass player should hang out with Jack Cassidy. Eric Johnson should hang out with Crosby from Crosby, Stills & Nash. Who would be perfect for Dave? I’ve got it: Robert Fripp from King Crimson. And I don’t know who they would match me with. Some old songwriter. Maybe one of the Beatles? Paul McCartney.
You have thirty songs ready to record with the new lineup—how much of it is open to their input?
The way I’ve always done it is I come up with a song that’s kind of the coffeeshop version with the acoustic guitar. And then the guys, we start fleshing it out, and we’ll talk about ‘how many times do we do that part?’ and structure it. The two songs we’re doing right now—‘Double Bubble’ and ‘The Rifle’s Spiral’—I showed up with two parts and they took them and we arranged it together.
What song are you most excited about right now?
I’m really excited about the one we’re calling ‘Double Bubble,’ I don’t know if that’s what it will be called in the end but that’s the working title. It’s really fun to play and the audience really likes it. It’s got a good energy to it. It’s fun to dance to, actually, which is really cool.
Is ‘Double Bubble’ a reference to gum?
Is there something called Double Bubble? Maybe it does. It actually just popped into my head as fitting the feel of the song. Maybe they’ll give us a year supply of Double Bubble.
Will the next album be the first release on your label since splitting with Sub Pop?
It looks like my old band, Flake—we’re going to reissue the record that we did and that might be the first release on Aural Apothecary. The first Shins thing that we ever did was on Aural Apothecary but we’re starting the label again to release Shins things on it but have more control—make more money. I know a fair amount about record labels, and my manager knows more. In a way, it’s kind of simple. You call up a vinyl pressing plant and get prices—they’ll tell you what they need. Then you send off a master, they press it into records and send it to your house, then you send it to record stores yourself. That’s the stripped-down version of what a company like Sub Pop does for you. Maybe they’ve got someone who does marketing and writes press releases but you can do a lot of stuff from your bedroom really. What we’ll be doing with my manager—and he did this for White Stripes, so he’s got that example to work with—we’ll get a distribution deal with a proper label and we’ll strike up a deal where we pay them a certain amount of money and they loan us their distribution infrastructure. Yes.
Now you can be a stay-at-home dad.
I’m already that for the last year, it seems like.
Do you see yourself dedicating the rest of your life to music?
Hmm. I never thought of it that way. Really, I don’t think I could say that. It’s something that’s been lucrative for me and it’s something I enjoy doing. But, other than that, I’d say,’Gee, I don’t know.’ I’m not sure if I’m the type of person who dedicates his life to anything. I’m dedicated to my wife, Marisa, right now, I think. She’s the one I hang out with when I need to forget I’m a musician for a while.
Who would you like to make a hip-hop song with?
If I really wanted to do a hip-hop song, I’d go for Jay-Z. He seems to pull it off pretty well. I’d rap about bitches and hoes. And I’d have an all-black Bentley in the music video.
Does it feel different to carry the same name but have a different band?
It’s something to get used to. But it’s been going pretty well. I’ve known the guys for a while, except for Ron, but he is a really good guy. I collaborate often with different people. Like the Modest Mouse guys. You end up working with the people you hang out with. It’s a local thing. We have easy access to each other.
How did you end up performing at Heath Ledger’s funeral?
The main person who set that up was his assistant, who felt that it would be something he would have wanted. He had done a video for Modest Mouse and was a music fan. I knew him through my old tour manager. I met him because they were friends. He was a real rock fan. I sang a Neil Young cover at the funeral. It was ‘Heart of Gold.’ That was a strange day.

THE SHINS WITH THE DELTA SPIRIT ON SUN., MAY 10, AT THE PALLADIUM, 6215 SUNSET BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $35 / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. VISIT THE SHINS AT THESHINS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THESHINS.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JeDxJkAorU]