How has this whole experience for you been? I can imagine going from working in music stores to this sort of world; is it all you expected it to be?
No. It’s not anything like I expected it to be. There’s way more that has to be done than I thought I could get away with.
It’s more work.
It’s way more fucking work (laughs). It’s not quite, ‘Oh I get to play guitar, cool.’ Nope, ‘cause you gotta get up early to get in a van, because we still don’t have a bus. Get in the van, drive for five hours, sit inside a club after you load in, soundcheck, then you wait around.
Lot of waiting around.
Yeah, the whole hurry-up-and-wait thing. Then you play the show, which is fun, and then you get to hang out, which is cool, and then you’re really drunk, and have to get to your hotel, and then have to wake up at 8 a.m. to get back in the car to drive to your next show. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun, but the days are a lot longer than I thought. I wanted to play guitar and be in a band because I didn’t want to wake up early to go to work (laughs), and that didn’t work at all. But it’s been unreal man, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, to just play music, but I never really thought it was going to happen. People ask me that if I’m surprised that I’m doing this; I’m surprised that I’m doing this but not because I wanted to do it, I guess I didn’t have enough faith in myself to get this far.
You’re surprised it worked.
Yeah. Exactly.
Does your sister at least think you’re cool now?
Yeah. She lives in Italy now so she’s way cooler than I am anyway.
Are you tired of playing these songs, have you been working on other stuff?
Well, we’re always writing, you know. As far as stuff for a new record, nothing’s been too set as of yet. When we’re playing live, I’ll throw in something. I won’t play verbatim what the record is. ‘Here’s Looking At You Kid,’ during the solo, sometimes I’ll play Richard Marx’s ‘Wherever you go, whatever you do…’ sometimes I’ll play that, because it’s in the same key (laughs). I try to keep myself entertained. The drummer and I have a stoner metal side project called Spiro Agnew. And I’m always dabbling in Garage Band writing cheesy techno songs or something, you know.
