by Tim Nydell

 

Yep, Corpus Christi.

 

It's not too bad - it's probably a hundred.

 

Well, it could be hotter.  We were in Dallas and it was a hundred and six.  It was hot. 

 

I'm from Vancouver, it's just as hot there right now.  My wife just called... I think it's around a hundred.

 

It's going good, man.  A lot of tours get really long, and gets a little frustrating... then we go home for a week... then you get so excited to get back on the road again.

 

It's not even a month.  It's not too bad - then we go home for five days.  We're starting to fly to shows... so it's cool.

 

Nothing - relax.  Write new songs.  We're always doing something.  Our first record - we took four months... we didn't do anything at all.  We did one show for Halloween and one show for New Years - we just wrote songs... got back together in the new year. 

 

Yeah, Brent is coming back on Monday or Tuesday.  I talked to him yesterday, he's excited to come back. 

 

He loves it - it was great.  Alice Cooper is legendary.

 

I have no idea.  I think the drummer in the band had to leave for something else - I think someone asked him to fill in for a couple weeks.  He said yes right away.

 

I think I was a teenager.  My dad was in a band when I was very young, and he used to rehearse in the basement.  They used to be called Seventh Hour because he used to play at seven pm.  When I was a kid, I used to go to bed around seven-thirty... so I hated it when they used to have practice.  Then I became a teenager I always thought it was cool.  They had every instrument and recording equipment... we would make stupid tapes.  So it was probably when I was a teenager.

 

The first thing I bought was a truck - a brand new truck.  Chevy Silverado - it was so nice.  It was the first new vehicle I ever bought - so when I got this truck... I got it all... full leather seats... power seats... everything.  So that was my splurge.

 

We get weird questions all the time, recently I got a question from a guy who said he had written some riffs twenty years ago... and he wanted to give them to me.  The guy thought they were awesome... I was like, "Why don't you write a song and do it yourself".  He said he sucked.  People write us lyrics and want us to do the song.  But it's cool that people do that. 

 

I guess we don't.  We just do what we do.  People listen to our CD... and go to our concert... they hear us play and say that our live sound is so much like the CD.

 

Yeah, I think a lot of bands have a hard time pulling it off... whether they have too much stuff in the songs or they just can't pull it off... I don't know.  We listen to our CD once every few months to make sure that we're doing all the parts... 'cause once in a while you forget what you're doing or say the wrong words.  People want to hear the single - they want to make sure it sounds like the way it is. 

 

If you could critique your own record, what would you say about it?
Well, if I were Rolling Stone... (laughs)  I'd probably give it half a star... which would be a compliment.  I was looking through Rolling Stone yesterday and it always seems that the classic albums that get re-released get five stars, but I guarantee if you go back twenty years they'd give it one star.  I don't know how'd I'd critique... it's difficult... we definitely have "radio rock".  I guess I can say that we have a lot of radio friendly songs, and that we always try to have reality in our lyrics.  We get a lot of people that say that our lyrics really mean a lot to them, and a lot of bands just sing gibberish metaphoric music.

 

Yeah, I think I'm writing lyrics all the time... I woke up during the night last night and wrote some lyrics down.  And as soon as we get back home, we'll be ready to write some new material. 

 

Not completely personal - you have to write from the heart, and people have to know what you're talking about.  If you write stuff from your own personal life... I mean... I have breakups, get depressed, get mad at life... so I write about that, and people relate to it. 

 

It's hard to say.  I'm married now, when I wrote that song I wasn't married... I never had a girl that left for Santa Monica, but I think just being in a relationship... being in a band and being away all the time... you get into fights and almost break up all the time - just because it's almost easier to break up instead of deal with the problems.  So Santa Monica is one of those songs where it's like, "well, you can leave"... and she's probably going to go somewhere nice and leave me in some shit-hole.  That's kind of what Santa Monica is about - my girlfriend left me, and went on to a better place.  I don't know if you've ever been to Santa Monica, but it's a beautiful place if you go down to the beach.  I kinda wrote that as being the place where she was going.

 

The guitar player in the band, Blower is his nickname, they like to do like on Jackass... push him down the street in a cart, they stapled his nutsack to another guys ass, they shot him in the balls with a BB gun.  I've witnessed some of that stuff, poor guy.  We went out for dinner once and I asked him why he lets them do that to him... he said, "I don't know".  (laughs)  I mean, shoot them back.