BEN WEINMAN: The Dillinger Escape Plan, creating your own market, and managing Kimbra

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners. And if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out, and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too. So please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levi urm audio. And let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts.

(00:00:55):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. My guest today is Ben Weinman, who's a guitar player, songwriter, entrepreneur, and artist manager who has just a ton of accolades in his career. He's a founding member of the Dillinger Escape Plan, who was around for 20 years and basically invented math metal. I'd say, I think that's an accurate thing to say. He's the founder of Party Smasher Inc, which is an independent record label, which was the home for Dillinger, as well as a super group founded by Ben and Brent Heinz of Mastodon called Giraffe Tongue Orchestra. Ben has been individually celebrated numerous times in every single publication you can imagine. He currently plays in suicidal tendencies and he manages the pop act and he's got an animal sanctuary. Let's get this started. I present you Ben Weinman. Ben Weinman. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

(00:02:21):

Thank you. Well, thank you. First off, thanks for letting us have Dillinger on nail the mix. It's very, very cool. We've wanted to have Steve on for a long time, and I can't think of a better way to do it.

Speaker 2 (00:02:31):

It was interesting. No, I listened to it. It was really great.

Speaker 1 (00:02:35):

I'm just curious because lots of bands work with, it's a lot. If they work with a producer for three records, that's considered

Speaker 2 (00:02:45):

A

Speaker 1 (00:02:46):

Lot, but to stick with a producer for an entire career span, I know he didn't produce every single thing, but he was involved in just about every single thing. For the producers listening out there, because mainly the audience here, in your opinion, what does it take for a band to feel comfortable enough or to want to go back to someone that many times and not be like, oh, why don't we just test the waters someplace else or something, fear of change, but you guys changed your style, so you guys evolve so much that I guess the reason I was thinking is because usually bands will see evolution musically as something where they also want to evolve, change production and all that. Yeah, change production. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:03:37):

Well, I'll tell you one thing. I mean, the thing about Dillinger is I think you nailed it. There's so much unpredictability and there's so much evolution and change, and as we kept formulating the vocabulary of our sound, we kept trying to add something new

Speaker 3 (00:03:52):

In every album that maybe we either touched on in the past and then fully realized in the next album or had never done before. So for us, any consistency helps. So that might be from not varying the set list that much from night to night because there's so much going on and so much unpredictable just within our performance that not having to think and run to your set list every five minutes to see what you're playing just helps. So production wise, working with someone like Steve who knows us so well, knows the music so well is so close to us personally, knows the intricacies and importance of the details that have to be focused on for a Dillinger album. Those things are extremely important, especially when we're going into such crazy territory on every album. So for us, it's never been about varying the producer, it's more been about building on what we've all done together and trying to take it to the next level.

Speaker 1 (00:04:56):

So it's almost like he's the constant in the equation in some ways.

Speaker 3 (00:04:59):

Yeah, totally. For us, changing producers on a Dillinger record would be the equivalent of trying to play a concerto on an unweighted mid keyboard. When you're used to playing it like a grand piano, it's just not productive. And also, like I said, I mean Steve and I worked so well together. I know Steve and Greg worked really well together, but Steve and I are brothers. He was my best man in my wedding. He's been in basically a part of Dillinger longer than anybody but myself in the band, if you think about it. So not only had we grown individually in our careers, but then together the relationship, the communication just got better and better to the point that psychologically we knew how to deal with each other even.

Speaker 1 (00:05:39):

So what you just said sounds like, I don't mean what you said is cliche, but that cliche about producers being the fifth or the sixth band member, that's kind of like what you just described, and what is it about your relationship that made you feel comfortable enough to go there with him?

Speaker 3 (00:06:00):

I guess maybe it was naive in some respects because there's always more than one way to skin a cat. But like I said, there was a reality to the fact that he had grown with the band so much that there was less of a learning curve for him in every single album that we did than with someone who was coming in from scratch,

Speaker 1 (00:06:20):

Didn't really know. Got it. I can imagine.

Speaker 3 (00:06:22):

So, I mean, look, a Dillinger album is not only extremely intricate and technical, but it's also very organic, and there's not many producers who can nail that. They're kind of either doing the very sampled BN gridded, detail oriented editing stuff, or they're like, let's get in a room and play and rock, and it is what it is. And Steve Albini or so Steve has always had that perfect mix of we need this to sound like a machine, but you really need to really play it,

Speaker 1 (00:06:58):

But a human machine,

Speaker 3 (00:06:59):

You need to really play it. And I know you guys touched on it on the nail, the mix, and it's something we talk about all the time, and something I learned from him is that something that was very frustrating for me working with Steve is that he'd always try to get me to keep replaying everything until it was perfect. And my whole point often was like, if you want it to be perfect, why don't you just cut and paste it seriously? It's like, why are you making me replay this until it sounds literally perfect? But as he said in your interview, and it's true, it's like God is in the details and it's not the one time you pace or the second time you pace. It's like where do you draw the line? And it's that collective sweat and blood and dullness of the pick on the 45th time you hit the string or the shaking of your hand when you're still trying to, it's those little tiny, tiny nuances that make an album really feel alive, at least for Dillinger. Anyway. So those are the things that he always understood. That's the stuff I learned from him. And also most of the production we were doing outside of Steve was just me doing stuff from home and things like that, and I was able to do that because of my work with Steve. So

Speaker 1 (00:08:08):

You learned studio stuff through watching him, or did you learn it on your own?

Speaker 3 (00:08:12):

I mean, because of my lack of resources, I didn't have consoles and outboard gear and all that stuff. Some of the technical stuff I would've learned from him wasn't really relevant. It's not like he was using tons of plugins and things like that, and I was working from a laptop most of my career and then or from a desktop using a PC and Cubase, so totally not the same world as him, A lot more midi, a lot more synthesizers and programming on my end. But the philosophy and the way of doing things and the fact that you take what you got and you try and make it sound real, so it's not necessarily, the idea to me was if you don't have the outboard gear, you don't have the analog and you don't have the tape, you do your best to make it sound that way.

(00:09:00):

Not like, okay, use this preset, use these drum samples that everyone uses, like the masu drum samples or, that was really ingrained in me from him that whatever, and Alan Duchess from West West side really taught me a lot too. I used to go to all the master sessions and we'd sit and talk and he was kind of like a Yoda. So the one thing that stuck to me that Alan used to say is, pick your tool and get to work. When everyone would always ask him, what's the best compressor? What's the best amplifier to use? How do you tape or what do you like better? He'd always say, it doesn't matter. Take what you've got and just get working. Stop worrying about those details. And that's coming. As a guy for the first year of our band didn't even have an amplifier and used a guitar that was hanging over a bar that said Coors Light on it and spray painted it silver with the worst action in it, something that wasn't even supposed to be played for the first year of this band. I played that guitar and I borrowed an amp. Absolutely every single show we played yet, we still made the band, we still played shows, we still made albums. So that's always been my philosophy, take what you got and get to work.

Speaker 1 (00:10:12):

So actually that was going to be what I was wondering if you still feel that way about guitars and amps and do you get precious about amps or is it kind of that same philosophy of take what you got, make the best of it, it is what it is.

Speaker 3 (00:10:28):

I love that stuff. I love Amps. I love sounds, I love playing with stuff, but I usually don't have time or the resources to do that kind of thing, and that's why while I have acquired a certain amount of skills and have done production for other bands and stuff like that, I've always found it necessary to go to someone like Steve for the big albums, for the real albums because it's like my focus has always been on just creating and then making it sound as good as possible by hooker, by crook. Whereas you go into a place like Steve and with a band like Dillinger, most of the creating is done by the time we go in the studio, fully realized demos that sound probably as good as some people's albums are already finished. And then we go in there and then it's like Steve beats the crap out of us. Steve gets the tones that are killer. Steve pushes us to the next level. Steve doesn't let us take shortcuts. Steve starts pushing our drummer to pull out every single ghost note until literally he's gone through seven bottles of ibuprofen and may have to get a stomach pumped.

(00:11:35):

Those are the kind of things that we would never do to ourselves and that he's just so genius at.

Speaker 1 (00:11:39):

It kind of takes a third party, I think, to push people to that level. I think it's actually super rare for someone to be able to push themselves that I feel like there's a point where you think you've hit your limit. I think everybody feels that way, whether it's exercise or guitar playing or anything. There's this ceiling we think we're at, which is usually inaccurate, but sometimes it takes somebody else to help us bust through it. I think.

Speaker 2 (00:12:11):

Totally. There's no way I would

Speaker 3 (00:12:12):

Put myself through that. Hell, it's masochist.

Speaker 2 (00:12:18):

There's no way.

Speaker 1 (00:12:18):

I'm curious, man. I saw you guys on that bungle tour a long time ago, and I had no idea who you guys were and I wasn't there for you guys. I didn't want to see an opening band.

Speaker 3 (00:12:30):

Yeah, I don't blame you.

Speaker 1 (00:12:31):

It was on the California tour, so I was like, fuck, I'm going to have to wait an hour to see. I had been waiting for 10 years to see Bungle.

Speaker 4 (00:12:40):

Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (00:12:41):

And then you guys played, and I was like, what the fuck is going on? And I was blown away because I was like, this is new and this is going somewhere. Did you guys feel that way too?

Speaker 3 (00:12:54):

Well, look, I mean, the fact that Mike asked us to go on that tour definitely was a boost of confidence that maybe we're doing something Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:13:02):

I can understand that.

Speaker 3 (00:13:03):

Yeah, it was a huge lesson. I learned a lot from Mike on that tour, just mostly from a kind of self-managed band person. I learned a lot about how to be frugal and professional at the same time. It was really, really a huge learning experience that tour. I will say that we really weren't in the best circumstances, and I'm surprised anybody got anything out of us. And I'd say you're a special person if you could see any merit in our performances. I mean, as you know, bungle came on stage with Willie who was a full percussionist from Zappa with Oh

Speaker 1 (00:13:38):

Yeah, I

Speaker 3 (00:13:38):

Remember 48 percussion instruments, all miked and senses and saxes and all kinds of stuff. So by the time we got to get on stage, not only did we not get a soundcheck, but sometimes we were working with three channels. So a band like Dillinger with just vocal and snare drum sounds pretty awful.

Speaker 1 (00:14:00):

I was right at the front, so I was probably hearing the

Speaker 3 (00:14:02):

Amp. Yeah, so you probably got some stage

Speaker 1 (00:14:04):

Amps.

Speaker 3 (00:14:06):

And also we were still pretty new to touring on a stage up until that point. We were doing VFW halls and basements, and the visceral performance was really more important than accuracy or reproducing the songs because not many people knew who we were. Not many people knew the music. So recreating people's expectations was less important than creating a real impression.

Speaker 1 (00:14:31):

Well, that's what happened,

Speaker 3 (00:14:33):

Right? So, so people either felt the energy and saw that this was something polarizing and in your face and it led them to investigate further, or they were like, this is the worst thing I ever saw in my life. It was really one or the other.

Speaker 1 (00:14:48):

Was it at all intimidating to play before Bungle because man, I saw them twice on that tour and they just were deadly,

Speaker 3 (00:14:59):

Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (00:14:59):

It was ridiculous. I don't think people understand now what that band was. There's nothing like it,

Speaker 3 (00:15:07):

Especially with the Bungle now, it's like, yeah, now Dongle's doing this death metal demos, which is sick, but there was nothing like that California tour. There was nothing in history.

Speaker 1 (00:15:19):

It hasn't been anything since

Speaker 3 (00:15:20):

I've never been on a tour with a band where every single night. I enjoyed watching the band every single night since that tour. Yeah, it was crazy. And we felt certainly very lucky. We were used to playing to a room of wild rabid wolves that wasn't new for us, but it was definitely the first time we were playing in front of that many people. It was that tour that was really the comparison for later on of whether or not I felt like we made it because we were going back and playing many of those clubs and selling them out and even playing bigger clubs or two nights in those clubs. And that's when I realized we were doing all right. We were doing okay. Yeah, because I compared it to that tour, which to me was really huge for me.

Speaker 1 (00:16:03):

Yeah, I mean, I completely understand. You brought up that Mike taught you a lot about the business side of things. You're known for your entrepreneurial side. Did a lot of that come from basically having him mentor you, or was that already how you were wired?

Speaker 3 (00:16:21):

It was definitely how I was wired because I always felt I was better that than actually playing an instrument. I always felt like my role in the band was not to sit around playing guitar all day, but to go out and network and absorb influence and create the aesthetic and ethic of the band and the values and stuff like that outside of just the technical aspect, which I felt really was going to differentiate us from just some technical middle band or something like that. And then our original drummer, like Chris Penny and some of the other guys were just so technically driven and practice and reading through books and things like that, that while I always had to struggle to catch up, technically the combination definitely created something I think special. But yeah, I was the guy who certainly got a job in an office just so after hours I can use the copier to make tons of flyers. I was the guy trying to talk to bands and give 'em our tapes, and I was the guy hand drawing every cassette tape cover hours and hours and hours and handing 'em out to people. And yeah, that was always my thing for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:17:36):

I think one of the big drawbacks that a lot of these musician bands have is that they don't have somebody like that in the band. And if you're all music all the time, you're going to miss out on, I think what's arguably just as important if you want to build a career.

Speaker 3 (00:17:54):

Yeah. Well, it's an interesting thing. I think people like you and I have a really rare perspective for still being in this business and being around relevant artists, but also coming from a time before YouTube and Facebook and Tune Core and whatever other tools we have now. Because like you said, there was a time when if you were the king of the basement, you were the king of the basement. Like Dillinger would've been that if I didn't come and do that. Those other guys' dedication, like Chris Penny's, the drummer's dedication to becoming the best literal drummer he could possibly be was also a massive part

(00:18:33):

Of who we were. You know what I mean? But I do think it was the chemistry of both those things that made it special. But yeah, I mean, he absolutely would've just been in the basement playing drums for forever, and no one would've ever heard it. You know what I mean? But nowadays, someone like that can have 3 million YouTube followers and they do drum stuff all day and night, and they've never played a show. So maybe someone like me is less important now than they were in the past. But yeah, I guess there's two different skills of thought with that whole thing. Do you want to actually play music out in front of people or do you just want to be in your room?

Speaker 1 (00:19:11):

The thing is though, because I'm sure you also know a lot of these musicians that are popular YouTubers who start that way, and the ones that I know who do well, and maybe they don't get a job at a place to copy flyers or anything because you don't need to do that these days. They do their own version of that. They're not fucking around. I think that the ones who do well have some sort of a business sense, and there's always that odd one who just went viral, but I think that's the exception. The ones I know who do well are super meticulous about the business side of things.

Speaker 3 (00:19:53):

Totally. I think someone like Misha from Periphery is a good example.

Speaker 1 (00:19:57):

Oh, yeah, that's the perfect example.

Speaker 3 (00:19:58):

That guy could teach classes in social media marketing, probably he's an amazing guitar player, great producer. But what impresses me the most about that guy is his self-promotion, marketing, internet savviness. That guy somehow finds the time to respond and speak to every single person who comments on his stuff and has created this community of, well, kind of like gent, guitar player, shredders, production guys that are kind of in a whole world of itself, like you said, a lot of 'em aren't playing shows they don't know how to perform, but some of them are making great money promoting pedals or monetizing YouTube views or playthroughs or whatever. It's a totally different world. I don't get it. It's not for me, but it's impressive for sure. It's definitely impressive.

Speaker 1 (00:20:56):

I've noticed that it's almost like the generation that we're from, you had to do all the groundwork, the ground game basically in order to create something. And nowadays it almost feels like if you do the ground game first, you're almost fucking up because people don't go, you're behind. Yeah, because people don't go to live shows the way they used to. So it's almost like you have to do the internet stuff first, build the audience and then go play to them.

Speaker 3 (00:21:26):

It's interesting. Yeah, I do lectures on the business of art because it's really just what I know is how to monetize being an compromising artist who tries to be honest and create something they care about. And then how do you survive and make money on that? I guess, like you said, I'm known for doing well, being fairly independent, and the DIY thing is definitely something I'm known for, but I've never been someone who advocates for do everything yourself, but more decide it yourself. Try different avenues, and if you can't get in the front door, go through the back door and make it happen. Like I said, even from not having an amp in the beginning, but the lectures I give are interesting because if somebody wants to learn about that kind of stuff, like becoming popular on the internet without playing a show, I can't teach them that.

(00:22:19):

That's not what I do. And in fact, Dillinger Escape plans last shows we sold out close to 10,000 tickets. Who knows how many more we could have sold if we did more nights, but we certainly don't have the social media presence that most bands have that are probably could never draw that many people or sell as many albums or something. And so sometimes it's a false economy, it doesn't correlate. But the things I talk about is how do you become a career artist? And I have this diagram where it's like fireworks going straight up in the air, straight up, and it says trendy band on top, and then it shows the Dillinger Escape Plan logo. Slowly going in a line, doesn't ever reach that top fireworks, but it's continuously just going in its own direction, up, up, up, up, up. And the fireworks come down real quick. It's up and it's down. And I've seen it happen all throughout my career on playing shows like Warp Tours and all kinds of stuff. Bands that were way bigger than us, way popular than us just haven't really lasted the test of time. Whereas really we could do this, we could have done it forever. Dillinger, we ended the band bigger than we ever were. And with an album that was arguably one of the most critically acclaimed albums,

Speaker 1 (00:23:36):

Oh yeah, you could have definitely kept going.

Speaker 3 (00:23:38):

What I know about is how to be a true artist, how to build a fan base for being honest and creating a trust in your audience that whatever you do is for the right reasons. Something that was very interesting to me was, there's two things that were very telling to me about the state of the industry right now. One of them was, I did an interview with somebody and they were telling me that their young cousin, he was asking the young cousin what music he liked because he's like, what are kids listening to these days? And he couldn't really mention any bands. He's like, I don't really know bands. I just know songs on the playlists. I listen to metal course playlists and I'm not sure what band is what. I just can tell you the songs. Oh, but that band, Dillinger Escape Plan I like. So basically what he was saying is everything in the playlist is just another metal course song interchangeable, but when he heard Dillinger, he knew exactly who we were.

Speaker 1 (00:24:37):

What do you attribute that to

Speaker 3 (00:24:38):

Getting out there? Having being out during a time when amalgamation of influences, geographical influence, hitting the road, touring, having someone from London, sleeping in my bedroom on the floor and playing guitar with them and learning things about the influences that they grew up on while still having this really solid influence from playing basements and touring around these coasts. And it was just like this thing that created bands that had a sound that isn't happening now because the world's so homogenized. Like I said, there's a lot of benefit to having access to everyone without having to play a show. But there is also something to be said for really pounding the pavement and creating a niche through hard work and blood and sweat and sleeping on floors and all that stuff. I'm not going to say one's better than the other, but that's definitely what we were. And it's definitely more of what I can teach kids. A lot of these kids ask me what the secret is, how do you

Speaker 1 (00:25:42):

The secret, the one

Speaker 3 (00:25:43):

Secret? How do you make it? What's the secret? When people ask me that from a business standpoint, I usually quote somebody I used to work with who used to own loud records and founded fans like the Wu-Tang clan and this and that, and he was very successful almost by mistake. When I talk to him about stuff like that, he's always like, luck, it's fucking luck. And once you get that luck, you have to be smart enough to parlay that into more success. So in other words, once you get that spark by mistake, everything lines up. Something happens like pour gasoline on it, but you can't really predict that. There's no real trick, there's no real secret to that happening. It's just like, do what you love, make music, do your thing. And if something happens, that's when you need to be smart.

Speaker 1 (00:26:35):

You can't predict what the audience is going to respond to. And also you can't predict and you can't control if a certain gatekeeper is going to be receptive to you, if you're going to meet the right partner at the right time to when they're ready to work with you on whatever it is, all these factors that are outside your control, I think that's the luck factor. And there's literally

Speaker 2 (00:26:59):

Totally

Speaker 1 (00:26:59):

Nothing you can do about that. But like you said, if you do so happen to stumble across that, it's on you to make the most of it.

Speaker 3 (00:27:08):

Absolutely. And a perfect example of that is an artist I managed named Kimra who was the part of that massive song, somebody I used to know the goer track, and that's another example of Take what you got and get to work. And that song was her most successful offering. She won two Grammys from it, it sold, it was probably, I think it was one of the top five biggest selling songs of the whole decade. It's got over a billion views on YouTube. That was this guy go ta. He was kind of a local Australian artist, pretty experimental, go out into the outback and hit pipes and rocks and make samples and was kind of known for doing that kind of weird stuff. Had this song, sent it to Kimra who they were friends with. I think the person he initially thought of doing it with wasn't available, said, oh, this girl, Kimra, I hung out with once or twice, sent her the track, she recorded it in her bedroom on a laptop with a blanket around her. And then I think Ashton Kutcher came across it and tweeted it out. I was like, this is really awesome, the video. And that was it. They were nuts. I mean, who could have thought that? And that's the song she did on her laptop in Logic with a blanket wrapped around her head.

Speaker 1 (00:28:29):

Yeah, you cannot predict for the Ashton Kutcher variable,

Speaker 2 (00:28:33):

Right? The Ashton, maybe that should be like a term Ashton.

Speaker 1 (00:28:37):

Yeah. You can't predict for that. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:28:40):

Can't predict the Ashton Kutcher

Speaker 1 (00:28:41):

On the topic of bands who take that trajectory you're talking about in the fireworks graph.

Speaker 2 (00:28:47):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:28:47):

And I actually believe that that's a better way to go and business too. And really any sort of successful venture, you should be playing the long game, in my opinion, always the long game is where it's at. However, because with that type of trajectory, it takes a lot longer to experience any tangible success. How do you know when to quit in your opinion? How do you know when it's just pointless?

Speaker 3 (00:29:15):

That's a really important point. I mean, leaving the cards on the table is a huge lesson, and I learned that very late in life. Honestly. I wish I learned it sooner. And part of learning that was going through a divorce to be quite frank with you, and that changed my life as far as not considering moving on from something giving up, but realizing I need to put my efforts into something else. So that's a really, really good question. And I think it's really important for people to know that when something's not working, when the chemistry's not there, it's okay to move on. It's okay, it's not quitting, it's just realizing one out of a thousand things work out. I need to acknowledge that and put my efforts elsewhere. And that's just being a smart minded person who's making unemotional decisions. And I think we all hope to evolve to that point. Some of us get there sooner than others, some of us never do. Again, I didn't get there until probably about five years ago when I realized it's okay if things don't make sense, and what you learn from them is more important than actually succeeding sometimes. And all of that will turn into success in some way. At some point, I started to see those results and I started to see the merit in moving on from things that don't work. And I can't tell you when that point is. I can tell you examples for me, but

Speaker 1 (00:30:43):

Do you mind sharing any?

Speaker 3 (00:30:44):

Sure. So a really great one was Draft Tongue Orchestra is a side project I did with William Deval from Allison Chains, Thomas Bridge, Brent Hines from Macon.

Speaker 1 (00:30:57):

I remember that.

Speaker 3 (00:30:58):

Pete Griffin played with Zappa, all kinds of stuff. And initially that band was myself, Brent Hines, Eric Avery from Jane's Addiction and John Theodore from Queen of Stone Age, Mars Volta. And Brent and I had been trying to do this project for about eight years before it actually happened, and we just kept trying and trying to make it work. And there were some things just chemistry wise that weren't working. Eric Avery and I weren't meshing, and I just kept trying to make it work no matter what, no matter how difficult it was, we did everything. We moved into Russ Robinson's house for two months and tried to make an album that didn't work. We tried sending files back and forth. We flew to Austin and got in a hotel room with acoustic guitars and tried to write music. None of it worked. And then at some point, I just told the guys, I realized that it was like, you know what?

(00:31:56):

It's okay. It's okay. This doesn't have to work. Everybody in this band has reached a level of success on their own merit and doesn't need to apologize for anything, and if the chemistry is not there, it's not there. I emailed the guys and said, I think I'm going to kind of pull out of this, even though I started it. I said, I think after a bunch of arguments and disagreements about direction and things like that, I just decided, you know what? This just isn't working. I'm going to pull out. And that was hard after eight years,

Speaker 1 (00:32:31):

That's a long time.

Speaker 3 (00:32:31):

To give up on something like that was huge for me. Eventually, Brent and I just decided to grab a bunch of dudes that we knew we always to play with, go to the studio with Steve Evetts, who we knew we had a great working relationship with, and just say, we're making the album. And we all got in the room and we made the album. And it was as long as it took to realize it wasn't working. It took two weeks to make that album. You know what I mean? It was just like when it's right, it's right when it's not, it's not. So ultimately the band ended up happening, but it wasn't until I pretty much quit for us to figure out that just we got to try a new way.

Speaker 1 (00:33:09):

What's interesting about that is that it's one of those things that on paper seems like such a great idea when you list that lineup on paper, it's like, how the fuck can this not work? It's the same with launching businesses. I think where this is why I always think that when people launch something, they should not wait until it's perfect. They should try to get something to market as soon as possible. You have no idea if something's going to actually work or not. And so a situation like that band, if you were to email me and say, I'm starting a band with this lineup, my immediate thoughts would be, fuck. That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (00:33:48):

Right? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:33:50):

I'm sure that's what you were thinking too.

Speaker 4 (00:33:51):

Totally,

Speaker 1 (00:33:53):

Yeah. But there's no way, none of us are psychic, so there's no way to know whether or not it's actually going to work. I think that goes for any venture. So knowing when to pull out is wisdom, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:34:06):

Right. Even with your girlfriend,

Speaker 1 (00:34:09):

You can interpret that anyway you want.

Speaker 3 (00:34:12):

Yeah, exactly. But I mean, I think that that's the DNA of a starter of a founder, whether it's music, a band guy or a startup, a business or any of those things. You have to have the DNA to be able to adapt and evolve, and the best businesses in the best bands come out of people that are the right people, not out of the best ideas. It's that the successful businesses and bands out there, those people who started those bands and were the leaders of bands, were going to succeed in one way or another, just in my opinion, because they have that DNA and I agree, you nailed, you hit the nail on the head that the ability to shift and play jazz and pivot is more important than having some kind of ability to succeed immediately at things.

Speaker 1 (00:35:03):

I had a failed business a few years ago as a beard oil company, and the product is great, partners are great, marketing was great, branding was great. Everything about it was great, but it failed. I think that our target audience, metal people was wrong. Even though they have beards, they don't have hygiene. And so that was the flaw in the equation, but it wasn't because we did anything wrong. And when I realized that, I was like, we're not doing anything wrong here. This is just not going to work. There's no product market fit is not meant to be Hang it up, it's cool, it's fine, whatever.

Speaker 3 (00:35:47):

Totally. And I mean, I think the day you said that was probably the day you became a super badass businessman, not the day you came up with this great idea. It's the day that you were like, you know what? I'm not going to take this personally. I need to just move on this learning some things from this, and that's it.

Speaker 1 (00:36:10):

It was definitely a huge weight off my shoulders, and it reinforced. Well, see, I already knew the importance of product market fit because of URM, so I know what it feels like to not have it, because when my band was going, even with all the label backing and everything happening just, and we were doing everything we could, it just was not working. No product market fit there. And it was like no matter how hard we worked, nothing good would happen. But then with URM and now the mix, that shit took off immediately. But I mean, this was after years and years of building up the educational presence. It's not like it took off in immediately without any buildup, but buildup, buildup, buildup, and then release that product. And it was exactly what that market wanted. And it's not like it was less work than anything else.

(00:37:01):

It was actually more work. But the difference was that there was a momentum and a current pushing it along that it just worked. And so when doing the Beard Oil company, I felt like I was in my band again where everything you're doing is swimming against a current with combat boots on. And it just strengthened that idea that there's forces external to yourself that have to be in your favor. And I'm a big personal responsibility guy, but at the same time, if the market's not ready, if the fan base is not ready for your music or market's not ready for your product, ain't shit you can do about that.

Speaker 3 (00:37:42):

No, it's always something. There's always some predictable things always

Speaker 1 (00:37:46):

With Dillinger, was it something where you kind of knew pretty quick that it was going to do all right? Or was there a lot of many years of, I'd say blind faith?

Speaker 3 (00:38:00):

It's a good question. I mean, some of the guys in Dillinger were in a band previous to Dillinger, and we were kind creating music that was a little more typical and derivative of the stuff we were into at the time. And it just didn't work. Nobody cared about it. The local scene didn't give a shit. We weren't getting any record deals or anything like that. We pretty much just gave up on the idea that you can just insert yourself in a scene and do well without some kind of a connection with some record label guy, or we're vegan, or we're a Christian band, or we're a Krishna band, or we're straight edge band. Or you can't just make music and stick yourself into something. And I think it was at that point that we decided to just fill that void that we felt needed to be filled, create that CD that we didn't see out there, and just make music without really worrying about a market actually.

(00:38:58):

And in doing that, during a time when new metal was thriving and limp, Bizkit corn, all that stuff was blowing up on a massive commercial level. It really created that market for us as the alternative to that. So even though we appealed to a very small amount of people, it was almost like if you don't like that kind of predictable cookie cut or metal, here we are. And so it just created a niche. And I guess in essence, us not following the trends is what created that niche for us. And you talk about business, that terminology, the Long Tail, which talks about, it's a marketing term.

Speaker 1 (00:39:38):

I love that term,

Speaker 3 (00:39:40):

Talks about all these little niches add up to much more than the few kind of super hits. And so having the ability to market with the internet and things like that, absolutely. Every little nook and cranny genre or thing like that enables you to reach a lot of people, especially if you limit the competition. And I always talk about the Vitamin Water kind of analogy. Everybody tried to make Colas Virgin made a Virgin Cola, it failed.

Speaker 1 (00:40:12):

Did they really?

Speaker 3 (00:40:13):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:40:13):

Why am I not surprised?

Speaker 3 (00:40:15):

Richard Branson, you know what I mean? If he can't make it happen, you know what I mean? But there's Coke, there's Pepsi, that's it. If you want to be Coke or Pepsi, you're not going to be Vitamin Water created something that didn't exist. It was literally just water with vitamins in it, and it just didn't exist. And it may have not appealed to the largest market, but it totally filled a void, and they became a new category of drink in a way, much like a band like Dillinger kind of started this math core metal thing. You know what I mean? That created a niche for something like that. Eventually, Coca-Cola bought Vitamin Water and it became a massive company.

Speaker 1 (00:40:57):

I thought you were about to say. Eventually Coca-Cola bought Dillinger

Speaker 3 (00:41:01):

Eventually. No, Coca-Cola never bought Dillinger. But point being that, I mean, major labels tried to sign Dillinger. That definitely happened despite the fact that we were such a crazy niche. And so basically unmarketable in many ways.

Speaker 1 (00:41:19):

I mean, Mr. Bungle was on a major.

Speaker 3 (00:41:21):

Yeah, yeah. They were

Speaker 1 (00:41:23):

Crazy. Shit happens.

Speaker 3 (00:41:25):

Crazy shit happens. But I guess point being is that we never expected it, but in creating music that was really just fulfilling our own need and void, in essence, we created a niche that ends up having a big enough audience to succeed.

Speaker 1 (00:41:42):

So you created your own market basically,

Speaker 3 (00:41:44):

Right? We filled the void

Speaker 1 (00:41:46):

Or tapped into a market that didn't even know it was there in the first place.

Speaker 3 (00:41:51):

Yeah, like I said, instead of trying, we could have very easily, we were coming up right outside New York City. We were starting to meet industry people, stuff like that. I could have very easily said, let's make some kind of a Deftones or Limp Bizkit or whatever, and tried to get a deal and all those things. It wouldn't have worked. It just wouldn't have worked. And I'm glad we decided to do our own thing. And like I said, we ended up feeling kind of this void, everybody who doesn't want that, here's stuff like Dillinger.

Speaker 1 (00:42:22):

So question I have is, so now we're talking about it in a way of, you just said filling a void in the market, kind of creating your own niche, that kind of terminology. But were you thinking that way at the time? And if so, how do you balance that, which is pure art?

Speaker 3 (00:42:41):

Well, I think when your market brand becomes being art than there's no other way to do it.

Speaker 1 (00:42:48):

I guess that's the win.

Speaker 3 (00:42:49):

I mean, our fans expected us to do the right thing. Our fans expected us to make music for the right reasons. Our fans expected us to make bold choices. Doing it for the right reasons from the beginning created a freedom that enabled us to do more melodic songs or tour with odd bands that you wouldn't expect us to tour with. Or it ended up creating a scenario where Dillinger skate plan was on Conan O'Brien and Charlie Rose and played with Old Dirty Bastard, and it created an ultimate freedom.

Speaker 1 (00:43:20):

I guess it's kind of one of those things where I feel like a band like OPEC has done the same thing where it's almost like if you set the precedent that you can do whatever you want, then you can do whatever you want.

Speaker 3 (00:43:33):

And we did it very early, and I always thought of bands like an Offspring or even a slayer. I always felt almost bad for them because if they didn't put out albums that sounded like what they were supposed to sound like, it wouldn't have succeeded. It would've been like, wow, this is a sellout, or this is what are they doing? Or whatever. But Dillinger, very early on, we established that you weren't going to be able to put us into a corner very, very early on. I mean, the first song we ever released was an instrumental Latin jam, like Latin kind of clean guitar thing. That was the first thing Dill I ever first thing on our self-titled CD that ever came out. And then our second album had singing and weird stuff on it, electronics. Immediately before our second album, we did an album with Mike Patton, which had everything across the board happening over it. So we very early on created a scenario of freedom based on a creative freedom.

Speaker 1 (00:44:30):

When you're talking to artists who are trying to do this, is that something that you encourage them to do? The reason I'm wondering is because not all artists are that style of artists. There are. For instance, I had Devin Townsend on the podcast and we talked about his collaboration with Chad Kroger.

Speaker 2 (00:44:50):

Oh boy.

Speaker 1 (00:44:51):

It's interesting though, because we kind of came to the conclusion that if you're that person who makes that kind of music and you're that good at it to where it's going to touch that many people, that is who you are as an artist. He was saying that from working with Chad, that dude's not trying to be that way. That's that guy's musical voice. Like it or not, that is him being true to himself, his nickelback. And I think that to be in one of those mega bands, it's generally the case. I don't think many of them are faking it because it's hard to connect with people if you're faking it.

Speaker 3 (00:45:28):

I think most people don't even realize what bothers them about those bands. I don't think people are mad at the bands as much as they're mad at the fans. That's a good point. I think when musicians and artists and things like that get disappointed at when a band is massive that's just kind of recreates the same song over and over again or is very formulaic or whatever, I think the reality is that we're all very disappointed that people aren't more open-minded and aren't searching for more, that they just want to have kind of easy to swallow music that just doesn't challenge them. And so I think we all are just upset that more people aren't like us and we can't put out a calculating infinity and have it all over the radio. And it's not so much that, hey, people shouldn't be allowed to just make an album that they want and be the kind of band that they want. We're just disappointed that people, that's so big.

Speaker 1 (00:46:28):

But you know what? I bet you that Chad Kroger doesn't want to make a calculating infinity.

Speaker 3 (00:46:33):

But I will say this, one of the reasons why we've always been in interesting scenarios, whether touring with big bands that you wouldn't expect us to is because a lot of these bands did feel kind of backed into a corner and did feel because of success, they couldn't do something like Dillinger, and they always kind of admired us and would bring us on tour because we were doing something that they really couldn't do without destroying their career. So there was always an admiration for a band like us, even though we were so, so small in comparison, and we never really could add anything to them other than the ability to just see a band they dug or try to expose their fans to something that they couldn't do in their own music without getting destroyed.

Speaker 1 (00:47:15):

So why do you think they took you guys?

Speaker 3 (00:47:17):

I think that's it.

Speaker 1 (00:47:18):

Just pure fandom, basically.

Speaker 3 (00:47:20):

A lot of these bands were admired the fact that we were doing something so against the grain, and I think kind of live vicariously through us. Although they're making money and they're all over the radio and stuff like that, if they put out a 43% burnt, it wouldn't worked. They couldn't do it. So the fact they could kind of live vicariously through us every night or whatever was something cool for them.

Speaker 1 (00:47:47):

So do you think that figuring out your own voice, because this kind of seems like one of the big topics of what we're talking about is knowing your artistic voice and rolling with it rather than trying to be something you're not. Is that something that you understood about yourself early on? At what point did you start to realize that you kind of make, I don't want to call it outsider music, but music that is outside the norm? Was it always that way?

Speaker 3 (00:48:17):

No, I mean, honestly, I was more of a blues player before Dillinger. I came up on Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton, and that's the kind of stuff I was learning early on when I was a kid. I wasn't,

Speaker 1 (00:48:31):

So what the hell happened?

Speaker 3 (00:48:32):

I wanted to create a band that would make the impact that Dillinger had. So I had to make music like that. I had to rise to the occasion in order to create the music that I had envisioned in my head. I wasn't a great technical player when Dillinger started at all. And I would write music I could not play. And then having a producer like Steve, I think that goes back to why we continued to work with him, is that I knew that by the time I got out of that studio I could play it because he would just push me and push me and push me. So part of the process was increasing my skill levels by just recording with something like that. So every time I came out of a Dillinger album, I was better guitar player because I was writing music. That was challenging for me based on the fact that I never came up really sitting down playing guitar all day. So yeah, I mean, I guess as far as the odd stuff, I mean, I was always attracted to weird music. I liked Fusion. I was getting into things like Maha Orchestra and King Crimson and stuff like that. I came up on show music, Broadway music that was really eclectic and dynamic and told a story and had a lot going on, and it was very dense instrumentation wise. So yeah, I mean, I definitely had a background with a lot of influence, but I certainly wasn't writing songs that were eclectic until Dillinger.

Speaker 1 (00:49:54):

Got it. So there was just a vision and you figured out a way to fulfill it basically.

Speaker 3 (00:49:59):

Yeah, and like I said, I think it was a combination of really our drummer, Chris Penny being really technical and me just really being kind of more punk and hardcore and wanting to just make emotional music and then finding a way to incorporate the common ground, which was things like Ma Orchestra, cynic, king Crimson, the Death metal we all liked from back in the day, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (00:50:25):

Hey, everybody, if enjoying this podcast, then you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God Angels and Airwaves. Knock Loose OPEC Shuga, bring Me the Horizon. Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(00:51:17):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jens Borin, Dan Lancaster to Mattson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering, low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(00:52:11):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and mixed rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. I feel like something that is super crucial for people to understand is that even if you're a big artist, this matters. But especially if you're more on the indie side, figuring out a way to establish multiple streams of revenue is just the way I think that a lot of musicians need to get the idea that making money off of just one thing is how it's done anymore. And I think that a lot of them still kind of hold onto that fantasy,

Speaker 3 (00:53:01):

That what? That you can just make money off of

Speaker 1 (00:53:04):

That you can just make money off one. You can just be in a band and just make money off the band. So I guess what I'm curious is at what point did you figure out that you needed to pull in multiple streams, and how did you go about setting that up so that, because I mean, let's face it, man, that kind of music, you could make nothing off of it or you can do okay, it's all in how you approach it.

Speaker 3 (00:53:26):

Well, I think a big part of it was realizing that we needed to be an international band. Dillinger was a band that was pretty much the same size in every major city in the world, whether we were playing Tokyo, London, New York City, Sydney, we were pretty much the same size band all over the world. I think part of that was the fact that we were unique and people spread the word. There was a lot of word of mouth, and people really who got Dillinger really enjoyed pushing it on people. So I know that that kind of spread the word in different places and enabled us to play in all these cities organically. Being able to play shows everywhere, sell merch everywhere, continuously tour without over saturating a market was very, very crucial for us making a living.

Speaker 1 (00:54:12):

So as opposed to playing U City in the US seven times per year, being able to spread it out across the whole world,

Speaker 3 (00:54:20):

Being able to be extremely active and busy while still creating a demand, it was something that was crucial for us in monetizing our career and enabled us to continuously sell merchandise at shows, to play shows, to spread the word, to play festivals and get bigger paydays. And that was really our bread and butter for most of our career.

Speaker 1 (00:54:43):

How long did it take before you could start traveling internationally and doing it like that?

Speaker 3 (00:54:48):

When the band started, I was in college, had just started really taking off. I had gotten my degree in psychology. I was working a corporate job, and I was in a master's program and doing Dillinger all simultaneously. And at one point I eventually was basically just working full time and then spending weekends and nights doing Dillinger, yet I kept getting these opportunities with the band to leave and go to Japan to play with Pantera, or

(00:55:17):

I think that was the one when we had to go to Tokyo, when we got the opportunity to go play some big festival in Tokyo, which ended up being Pantera's last show actually, interestingly enough. And my boss was just like, I don't really know how to deal with this anymore. I realized I had to make the decision to dive in head first, and I did. And I quit my job, broke up my girlfriend, except that I was going to be living at my parents' house for the next foreseeable future many, many years and just dove in and hit the road. And it was hard for a long time, but it also kind of chose us. We had to make the choice, the opportunities presented themselves.

Speaker 1 (00:56:00):

Yeah. Could you imagine saying no to that?

Speaker 3 (00:56:02):

Exactly. It got to the point where I was either going to get fired or not be able to do these opportunities, and I just had to make the choice to dive in. And I remember actually living with my parents for so long. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity and the relationship with them where I could do, and just after tours, we'd hand out checks to everyone in the band, and I remember not cashing my checks. I had a safe in my room with just checks on cash because I want the guys' checks not to bounce. And I knew that I could live with my parents and those guys had rent or whatever. So I remember just stacks of uncast checks for me and the band so that the band would have the money, the guys would've the money, and it was just things like that that you had to do in order to make it work.

Speaker 1 (00:56:55):

Well, one thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that money problems is the number one killer of smaller bands.

Speaker 3 (00:57:02):

Yeah. And now with this current situation, it's going to be the number one killer of mid-size bands too.

Speaker 1 (00:57:07):

Yeah, absolutely. Aren't you glad you got out before this?

Speaker 3 (00:57:11):

God, I mean, well I still play in suicidal tendencies full time, but it is a source of income, which has now been gone for half a year, and I still manage artists who now can't perform and that's a source of income for me. So I'm certainly happy that I'm not relying completely on just touring with Dillinger. But it's still

Speaker 1 (00:57:38):

Affecting

Speaker 3 (00:57:38):

You, really difficult. Yeah, it's certainly affecting me.

Speaker 1 (00:57:41):

How are you dealing with it?

Speaker 3 (00:57:43):

I'm just staying positive and particularly with the artists I work with, I'm really always looking for opportunities for them to monetize the situation. So for instance, we did a couple of streaming concerts. We did a sponsored concert by a company in New Zealand that was geo-targeted just to New Zealand where she got paid by the sponsor to do a Facebook Live thing. Just really a number of lot of people are looking for content right now, so we're doing promotions with native instruments and isotope and things like that where there's a little money in it and it gives the artists an opportunity to stay busy. You just have to really be creative and proactive. And I also am a big fan of Patreon. I use it myself and encourage the artists I work with to use it.

Speaker 1 (00:58:37):

What do you like about it?

Speaker 3 (00:58:38):

What I like about Patreon is there's flexibility. I don't consider it like a crowdfunding or I never liked crowdfunding stuff personally. I always thought that, I don't know, something about didn't feel good. I always felt like you were asking for money.

Speaker 1 (00:58:52):

What's interesting about crowdfunding is I think that it goes against the culture of music. There's something about music and audio people to where something about crowdfunding rubs them the wrong way, whereas in other

Speaker 2 (00:59:06):

Takes magic away.

Speaker 1 (00:59:07):

Exactly. I think that's what it is. I think in other lines, in other industries, it's perfectly okay. I know of certain authors who have crowdfunded books and the question was, do you want me to write this book or not?

Speaker 3 (00:59:19):

Right. And documentaries and Right.

Speaker 1 (00:59:21):

Yeah. And it makes perfect sense.

Speaker 3 (00:59:23):

It does. But I think with crowdfunding, to me it was always like you wanted an artist to just be making stuff and then you like it so you pay for it. Not like, I can't make my stuff. Well you give me some money. It's like, it just feels weird. But with Patreon it's like, look, I'm an artist. I'm creating with or without you. If you support me, it's going to help me continue to create and you're going to have access and a window into my process, into stuff, demos, things that into my bedroom while I'm working on music, all kinds of stuff. It's really just a super cool fan club really. And the more active you are and the more devoted your fans are, the more you can actually support yourself by just being really good at what you do as opposed to being like, I'm not going to make this unless you pay me.

(01:00:13):

The other thing I like about it is that you can either do it on a monthly basis or you can do it on a project, an item basis. So where I have Kimbra, her Patreon's amazing because there's two tiers. It's like $5 or $25, that's it. And she is so active on it, it almost scares me. It's like, whoa, you just gave them a demo for your biggest hit. That totally opens the curtain, you know what I mean? But it's super cool. Or you're playing brand new songs that aren't released yet to these kids on your guitar in your apartment. This shit's a year from being out and you're playing this stuff. So I mean it's pretty amazing stuff like access to special merchandise other people can't get. So she's got that going on for me, because I'm so busy and I'm doing so many things, I have it set up so that when I release music, the fan is charged.

(01:01:03):

If I don't release music, they're not charged. So I have no pressure to create all the time if I'm busy doing other things. And also I use it as a way to help support an animal sanctuary. I run with my wife at my house, so I like it because it's kind of like this multipurpose thing. It encouraged me to continue to make music despite the fact that Dillinger's not a band anymore. And it also helps these animals. So people can kind of be like, I like animals, I want men to make music. Let me support this win. When I have time and I create something and I'm encouraged to create something, I'm like, man, these animals need food. Let me sit in my computer and just start making cool shit. It incentivizes me to stay creative. So that's what I like about it. It still feels like part of the creative world.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):

When it pays by item, is it like you release it and I guess the cash register goes or do you release it and then they pay voluntarily?

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):

They pick a tier. It's like a dollar, and whenever I make a song, you get it automatically. So it's like it's price of a song. If you bought a song on iTunes or whatever, it's a dollar. So

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):

If you released a thousand songs this month, would they get charged a thousand dollars?

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):

There's all kinds of specific kind of details you can put into it. You can have

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):

A cap.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):

A cap, you can have caps. Yeah, you can have caps. You can always change tiers. You could be like, I did the $50 tier, but I'm kind of broke this month, so I'm going to drop it to the Von dollar tier and still get the song, but I'm not going to get the cool poster or something. It's very flexible and I've pretty much made a precedence that I don't really release at the most. I'll release a song a month and honestly it's been probably five months since I released anything just because I haven't felt it's been appropriate right now with people hurting so much and everything that's going on.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):

Yeah, I completely agree with you. We actually suspended release schedules for some in addition to nail the mix. We have an upper tier to our subscription, but we also release some premium courses. This month we did one with Will Putney. That's like his entire production process from start to finish with in real time. It's like 70 hours long, dude, it's crazy. And we know it's going to murder, we know it, but we put it off. We can't be charging people three or $400 right now for that. So we're putting it off until people are working again. I know that people would pay for it. That's the thing. So I would feel kind of slimy about it. I know that from experience that lots of times when people are broke, but they're super fans, they will put their fandom before their wellbeing and I don't want to take part in that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):

No, I feel you. I feel you. It's a tough one. It's

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):

Tough because also that's your stream of income.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):

Yeah, well that's the other thing. I mean, look, at the same time, and I've been pretty outspoken about this, I dunno how many people have reached out to me personally or for the artists I work with and asked us to do some kind of charity streaming thing where all the money goes to first line workers or frontline workers or something like that. And to me, my community is artists, I feel for all these other people, but I see this people struggling so much in our world and people music and movies and videos and art is what's keeping people sane right now during this time. And so I just find it odd that someone would be like, we are going to do a concert where you play and we're going to give the money to the artists. Why is that so taboo right now? It's like these artists are literally have children.

(01:04:49):

They have rent, they have mortgages, they can't tour, they can't go sell merch. It's already so difficult to survive in this business yet we're constantly being asked to donate our music and that bothers me. So I mean, I've actually had people change where they're donating the music to the money to based on me making them aware of that. So for example, metal injection did the whole festival, like online streaming festival, and Frank asked if I would participate and I said I'll participate, but I need to know that some of the money is going towards artists in some way, shape or form, if not to the artists themselves, which would be nice. I mean, they're all sitting at home struggling, at least like music cares who has done amazing things by helping artists suit off health insurance or drug abuse problems or need rehab or need a root canal in the middle of a tour or it's an amazing organization. So he split the proceeds with music cares because of that. So that's something I've definitely been outspoken about, the fact that I don't think that it should be taboo for musicians to ask for money.

(01:05:58):

You wouldn't ask a plumber to fix your toilet for free.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):

I completely, completely agree with you. I guess people make the argument that music isn't directly saving people's lives like the frontline workers. But what you said is, and I completely agree with, I think art is what keeps people sane also, it's what documents where people were feeling at certain points in history. It's like a marker for a time period.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):

And I'll tell you while musicians and artists are my community, my wife is a doctor, so I'm no stranger to the work that they do and the position they put themselves in, but guess who's getting paid a lot of money still. My wife. I mean, and she'll say it, she's like, we sign an oath, we sign a fucking oath to take care of people. That's what we do. Why is everyone doing parades for these people? They're working, they're getting paid, they're doing their job that they always wanted to do. So I mean, I hear another perspective from someone who does save lives and whereas she sees the artists that I deal with struggling to pay their rent.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):

That's really, really interesting because if you were to say that and not have that, if a doctor is saying that, that gives you a whole new perspective on the idea. Whereas if it's just someone who's not related and someone who has nothing to do with that and is like they signed a no, they're just doing their jobd, be that fucking dick. But hearing a doctor say it, it's a whole different perspective.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):

Yeah. My wife was eight months pregnant with our daughter. We were in a bus in Poland on an icy road broken down. The driver never woke us up to tell us we were broken down. We were all sleeping. It was like four in the morning and a truck hit us on the road. My wife and I were in the back lounge on the couch closest to the back wall because she was pregnant and she couldn't fit in the, we both couldn't fit in the bunk. And all of a sudden I hear what sounds like a wrecking ball hitting our bus, and I somehow scoop her up and throw her to her feet and the wall behind us explodes. Her head was against that wall. My back was against that wall. I don't know how we had a trailer, so maybe subconsciously I heard the trailer get hurt like a millisecond before

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):

Just one of those spidey sense things.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):

It was a spidey sense thing. And I was freaking out, are you okay? Is the baby immediately she ran to the front of bus and started helping people. That was it. She didn't think, I'm fucking eight months pregnant this, that. She ran to the front of the bus. One of our drummer hat was having a seizure. Our guitar player cracked a vertebrae and was turning blue, couldn't breathe. I was like, Hey, where's my cell phone? Is my laptop? Okay? I was so confused. She was there. Priorities. That's what they do. Yeah, that's what they do. That's what they do. And they're superheroes. But at the same time she's like, that's what we fucking do. That's what we do.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):

And they get paid handsomely

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):

And they get paid handsomely. Some of these people like, okay, cool, you're still making $250,000 a year, while people are literally like this country is falling apart. So I definitely look, I give them full credit,

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):

They deserve what they're making, but they don't need charity.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):

No. They full deserve it. And it's another perspective I get from having her as my wife is like, she's a breast cancer surgeon. She's the highest level of education. Cornell Sloan Kettering. She is more diplomas than I have fucking songs probably. And when these people come to me and they want an artist I work with to pay an fucking $4,000 a day for some kind of fucking photos thing or eight grand for an ad or something like that, I can't help but think to myself, my wife doesn't make that much a day and she literally has people's lives in her hands. You know what I mean? It makes it very hard for me to sympathize with certain people, but who I do sympathize with is musicians who are constantly asked to do everything for free.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):

Producers are too though producers

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):

And producers and producers.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):

I'm sorry, people listening. I don't feel as sorry for producers because producers get paid a lot better than musicians a lot of the time. And when it comes to label situations or whatever, the producer does get paid before the band typically. Typically. It's

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):

True,

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):

Not always. Even though I do feel bad for producers, the people I actually feel the worst for aren't even the musicians. It's the road crews because the musicians can use Patreon, they can be creative, they can figure out a way around it, but the people who are like the lifer road crew members, what the hell are they going to do? I guess if there's tears of who I feel bad for the lifer crew people are the ones that I really feel for because they can't make Patreons.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):

Absolutely. Ultimately, I feel most bad for anybody who can't feed their children right now, artists, plumber, whatever the fuck you are. Musicians and artists is my community. So I can speak on that more, but there's a lot of people right now hurting and it's a very strange time. And I think I'm lucky enough to have a house and a roof over my head and food and all this stuff, and I look out my window and I see goats and chickens. I don't see, I feel guilty almost, but I don't see, we have no cases of COVID in the hospital where my wife works now and there's no riots and I feel very isolated and in a bubble in a way. But I think it's easy for people like me and to forget that there are people out there that would rather the risk of getting this illness than completely lose their business.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):

And it's completely understandable.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):

So I think that takes a lot of empathy right now with everything going on with the racial tension, with the COVID stuff, with the economy, with politics. I think everyone just needs to be more empathetic in general. Really just needs to be empathetic and number one.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):

I agree. I really, really like what you said about taking care of your own community and the reason that I think that that's, we started doing things like that when COVID hit. It wasn't so much about giving money at first, but it was more about anyone who has been affected, anybody in the industry who's been affected could get anything from us for free during their time period not working. So that if they wanted to at least improve their skills, if you want to get better at recording so that you can,

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):

That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):

Make more stuff and put it out there and try to profit.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):

It's so cool. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):

So we did that and my philosophy, which I think is kind of what you're saying is I can't help everybody in the world and none of us can help everybody. We got to make choices as to who we're going to help. I think it's a fantasy to think that you can help every single cause and every single group of people. So my priority is going to be to help my demographic first, my people first. And so my people are producers and musicians and people in the industry. So that's what I've focused on. And I guess on the outside you don't get the same good guy points. I guess you don't get to parade around that. You're a really good person. But in my opinion, I think that if more people took care of their own, their own industries, their own coworkers, their customers, all that, their employees. So another thing that was huge to me was none of my employees are going to have any reduced pay during this entire time. I'm going to do everything possible that every single person we pay does not feel this. And so that's been another one of my priorities.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):

That's unbelievable. Look, I mean the truth is that if everybody just had those ethics and values, then it would spread to all industries and all people in some way. I think I kind of got slammed on my Instagram once recently with everything going on. I put some positive up even though everything I was seeing was negative and I was fully sympathetic and aware of everything going on, I just put something positive and I said during this awful time, I think sometimes good is more infectious than bad.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):

I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):

And I really ended up spending the day defending myself because I said something positive and I understand the point of view and I understand there's different perspectives, but I do think that seeing good and seeing people take care of people and seeing the outcome of that kind of behavior and values is more infectious than bad.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):

There's not just that. Okay, so first of all, I completely agree with you. The other thing is, so when COVID happened, I ramped up, I have two podcasts right now in addition to the two companies, and I ramped up the podcasts where we're doing three of these a week. This week for instance, I'm doing seven podcasts in six days. And so I've been talking to a lot of people. I'm noticing that there's two camps basically. And I'm talking to people that are our friends. I'm sure that most of the people I've spoken to are your friends too. And I've noticed there's either the people who are like, this sucks, but I'm going to figure out a way to make the absolute most of it and it does suck. I don't know when I'm going to tour again, but I'm going to figure something out. Or maybe it's like with me personally, for me, this was, I needed time to get my health together and that's what I've done for the past few months.

(01:15:52):

I couldn't have done it otherwise because now the mix travels every single month for about two weeks of the month, and it was wrecking me. So what I've been noticing is some people are like, okay, this is not a situation I can control. I wish I could, but I can't. I actually don't even know when this situation's going to end. Nobody does. We're all in this. It's going to go as long as it goes. So the question is, if you're in a fortunate enough situation where you're not starving or you're not sick outside of those scenarios, what are you doing with this time? Because at some point it's going to end. And then what? So I've noticed that there's the one camp of people who are thinking like that, who are doing every single thing possible, kind of like what you said about dill under early days, exploring every single nook and cranny of how to do the best out of this. And then I know a bunch of other people who are equally as successful, equally as brilliant, equally as cool. I love them to death, but their attitude is just rotten. And I understand why they feel that way, I get it. But I feel like they're giving in to something and they don't. I feel like it's not going to serve them well, and I feel bad for them.

(01:17:07):

I wish people were more positive about it. I stopped making positive posts though for the same reason at the beginning. I was posting things about making the most of this time and look at it like a gift, shit like that. And then I was like, you know what? Isn't going to be taken the wrong way.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):

Yeah, yeah. It's tough, man. It's really tough. It seems like there's no real right way to respond to what's going on right now without losing the narrative.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):

Well, you're going to piss somebody off no matter what you say,

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):

You're going to piss somebody off no matter what. And that's okay. I think that's okay. The one thing I do find is a lot of people just regurgitating things they saw on the internet or something like that, and then they kind of have to take it back because it's like they get railed for it or somebody challenges it or hurt their band. And the guys in the band say, yeah, why did you say this? And that kind of bothers me. There's so many theories about what's going on right now, the politics and with the current state of affairs, affairs defund the police and the awful things that have been happening and the Black Lives Matter stuff and the COVID stuff and the economy in this day and age, it's just really easy to find a direction and find evidence for it. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):

You could find evidence that 5G caused COVID if you want.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean here, pick any three digit number and write new cases and put it into Google and see what happens. I mean, it's all I'm saying. I mean there's just so much crazy shit happening right now. And I think the only thing we can do is try to just acknowledge there's only certain things we can control. We have to, like I said, try and have our values that we stick by, set good examples, live by them, and act more than speak in some respects. And sometimes speaking is part of that and just try and have a critical mind right now. So it is really hard to fully engage in the narrative right now because there's so much unknown and there's so many schools of thought. And often a lot of 'em have great points, even if they're conflicting. So I find it really difficult sometimes to join in the conversation with enough education and enough knowledge to feel confident.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):

It's a complex world and a very nuanced world. I think that one of the things that social media does and that is going on nowadays, which is causing lots of the problems, is the lack of nuance and the lack of ability for people to understand that there can be two parallel things that don't necessarily on the surface go together existing at the same time. And because of the polarization, they feel like they have to take one side or the other. When you don't, you really don't. But I get it, there's reasons that are personal to them for why they feel the way they do. And it's not for me to judge. But two questions. First of all, how does your wife feel about the 5G Shit?

Speaker 3 (01:20:09):

I mean, she's way more of a tinfoil hat person than I'll ever be.

Speaker 1 (01:20:14):

So your wife thinks 5G caused COVID.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):

She doesn't think they caused COVID. No, but she's definitely more open to the conspiracy theories out there than I am. She is very confused right now from a medical standpoint of what's going on.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):

That's kind of why I'm curious because honestly, the only people I trust are the medical community. I want to know what they think.

Speaker 3 (01:20:37):

Well, I think that they're confused too. I mean my wife, earlier on in this thing she had, she was doing a zoom with people, her patients to try to help answer questions because her patients are immune compromised. Some of them are chemotherapy, some of them a diagnosis early could mean the difference of their life, yet they couldn't go to the doctor or the hospital or could only do tele visits. And so it was a very stressful time for her and very sensitive. And she said it was for the first time in her life, she didn't feel confident answering any of the questions. She didn't know. She's usually like knows. She knows the answers.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):

Yeah, man, I had an experience last week, so I got gastritis in May, which is

(01:21:18):

Sucked, but it's a clearing up now. But I got really scared. It was really bad. I thought I had something way worse with me. It was bad. And so the option was either wait till who knows when to get an upper endoscopy or go get one and risk being in a hospital with a COVID all around. And so I asked my primary care doctor, what do you think I should do? And he was like, look man, there's no good answer here. If you're suffering, you probably want to go figure out what's wrong. At the same time, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that you have to make that decision. And when he said that, when he said There's no good choices, I was like, alright. They don't know what's going on either.

Speaker 3 (01:22:03):

Yeah, they don't know. They dunno. And I've had good conversations with some of her friends who are on the front lines and she's got this network of doctors and surgeons and they all talk and they, all of them have different opinions to be quite frank. Some of them are like the ventilators are what's killing everybody. It's not a lung thing, it's oxygen. It's not oxygen problem in the blood. And when you dry them out and you don't put them on IVs and you put their already stressed out organs on a ventilator, you're killing him. So there's been a lot of just not knowing how to handle it. And then some people are honestly saying, my father-in-law is also a doctor. And he got it and he was on the anti-malaria drug and he basically had a cold and was better and went back to work.

(01:22:59):

Now could that have just been an individual thing? Him and all his friends took the anti drug. They're all doctors, they all had minor symptoms, stayed home rested, watched tv, did a little gardening, and two weeks, three weeks later were better and have the antibodies. And then for everybody I hear like that, I hear someone who's like Dad died or something. So it's very, very scary and it's very hard to know what's going on. And I think the biggest problem is that they just don't know how to treat it and they don't know the reality. I think there's political things. Like I said, I'm not a conspiracy thing, but I think there's political gain and promoting some of this stuff. I think there's misinformation. I think things are already being reported as COVID deaths that are not because they don't have time to get tests back. And the hospitals need the money because they're not doing surgeries, they're not doing anything else. So if it's not a COVID case, they just, it's not going to pay the bills

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):

And the hospital will close

Speaker 3 (01:24:00):

And the hospital will close. So hey, this person had pneumonia, they had lung things, they had all these things. We don't know what it is. Put COVID, it's dead. They're dead. So I know I'd get criticized by somebody for every single one of these things I'm saying, and I'm not saying I know. I'm just saying

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):

This is what you're hearing.

Speaker 3 (01:24:19):

We don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):

So the thing that I will say is my philosophy on this is that none of us know shit. And

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):

Yes, that's mine too.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):

Yeah, you cannot believe anything you hear on the news about it because if you just look at what we've been told, it keeps flip-flopping one day. It's like, don't wear masks. Don't wear masks. You get shamed if you wear a mask now, wear masks. Wear masks. It's always changing. And also, like I said from my conversation with doctors, they don't know. They don't have good answers. You're saying right here, doctors have a bunch of different opinions and then there's all this shit politicizing it, and then we know that the media likes to take sides with that. And so you just don't know what to trust. And because of that, I don't know anybody reasonable who would disagree with the fact that we don't know what to trust these days and that people don't know what's going on. Anyone who says they actually know what's going on is full of shit. And so that being said, my philosophy is air on the side of caution.

Speaker 3 (01:25:23):

And I think it's a very scary thing to not have answers. And we've always, as human race, always tried to explain everything from thunder is the gods being mad to every single thing in the world that happens. We always need some kind of explanation. And I don't think that even the highest level of people in our government even agree on anything

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):

Doesn't seem like it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:48):

To think that there's some giant agenda that's making this happen, it's hard for me to believe because I feel like even the people in the highest levels, they don't even trust each other. So how could they all be coming together to make something this massive happened as far as those conspiracy things? So I just don't know. I think like you said, the best thing we can do is agree that we don't know and do our best to navigate with the information we get, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):

Yeah, err on the side of caution and do your best. And the reason I think that most conspiracies or bullshit is kind of what you just said, I think a lot of people are not taking into consideration human incompetence to pull off.

Speaker 3 (01:26:33):

Right, exactly. I think that most people are just not that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:37):

People are just not that organized to pull off some massive thing. How many people would need to be involved. There would be a leak at some point and just how hard it is to just get a tour together.

Speaker 4 (01:26:51):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):

Or producers listening. You know how hard it is to just get a record across the finish line. Can you imagine mounting an international conspiracy with tens of thousands of people involved? Totally.

Speaker 3 (01:27:04):

Exactly. That's my point. And maybe we're wrong. Maybe there's some kind of crazy illumining

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):

Shit. Maybe there is, we don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:27:10):

Maybe there is the fuck knows, but I know I'll never know. So at that respect, I need to just raise my kids and do what I can do to I guess send an example the best I can. I always say to people, if my kids grow up knowing that life isn't fucking fair and that's just, oh, that's okay, then I did the right thing.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):

That's a great lesson.

Speaker 3 (01:27:33):

Life ain't fair. And that's all right. Get over it. I mean, get over it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):

How do you teach 'em that life isn't fair? Honestly? Okay, so the first time that I was ever on a real tour was with Unearth and I was sharing a bus with them, and I remember they had a list of rules on a dry erase. And the first one,

Speaker 3 (01:27:52):

The one was you have to do pushups outside of the club and lift weights.

Speaker 1 (01:27:56):

No, no. It was nobody cares.

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):

Okay. Because I just remember when we toured with them, they'd

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):

Always get out of the bus and do, they would be lifting weights and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:28:05):

Oh yeah, they did that too. But the first rule was nobody cares so that you don't forget that nobody cares. And that's stuck with me for the past 15 years. It's one of the best lessons I've ever learned. And I feel like the earlier you learn that, which is basically saying life ain't fair, the better off you're going to be. How do you teach your kids that

Speaker 3 (01:28:29):

Every day? It comes up every single day. I mean, kids, there's no better lesson in life than raising kids. And I feel so fortunate that I'm doing it later in life that I didn't have kids when most of our parents did in their twenties or even early thirties because I was a fucking dipshit. I mean, God, dude, it's like I excused every single thing my parents ever did wrong or immediately, once I had kids,

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):

Dude, I didn't start feeling like an adult till like 38.

Speaker 3 (01:29:00):

Yeah, totally, man. But every single day a kid is bitching about something just so trivial every second, every fucking second. And it's just a constant reminder that these kids don't know that this will never affect their life, ever. What they are when they grow up has nothing to do with this thing that they're so upset about. Nothing. I mean, they could get an F in their second grade math thing and it will never affect them going to Harvard, honestly. You know what I mean? There's just so many lessons constantly.

Speaker 1 (01:29:40):

God, I wish my parents knew that when I got an F in 10th grade math.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):

Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):

Holy shit.

Speaker 3 (01:29:46):

Well, you're not supposed to tell the kids that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):

Yeah, true, true.

Speaker 3 (01:29:49):

But we know it. We know. But yeah, I mean, honestly, things, there's a lot of lessons that I really enjoy trying to teach my children that I wish I knew much earlier and maybe they'll never get it until they get it on their own. But it reminds me on a daily basis of the things that I need to be conscious of.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):

You know what? I'm going to teach my kids if I ever have them spreadsheets, I'm going to teach them about spreadsheets and I'm going to teach 'em about taxes and about credit.

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):

Spreadsheets is a good one. Spreadsheet's a good one.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):

Spreadsheets, taxes is credit. Three things my parents never taught me about that I had to learn about the hard way. Love my parents. They were great, but my dad's an artist. They're artistic people. They didn't think about, they just didn't teach me that shit. And I had to learn it, like I said, the hard way. So those are three things I'm going to teach my kids. I'll have them spreadsheet taxes, credit.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):

You got it down.

Speaker 1 (01:30:51):

Yeah, the holy trinity. Okay, so that said, I don't want to take up your whole day. I have a few questions here from our listeners if you don't mind me asking them for you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):

Alright, let's get to 'em.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):

Yeah. Okay. So Jordan McAdam says, what's it like working with Kimra? I think it's perfect that you guys work together. As you both exemplify out of the box thinking in your respective genres, what would you say you've learned from working with her and what would a metalhead be surprised about learning from a pop artist?

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):

That's a great question. And I think we just, for one thing, we respect each other a great deal because of the artistic side. And I think she really appreciates that I come at things as an artist, but also someone who's, and really has a lot of experience with the business stuff. I mean with the real hands down business stuff, everything. I mean, when I started working with her, she didn't even have a merch store. She was on the biggest song in the world old. She was on Saturday Night Live and she didn't have merch for sale. She had never profited off a tour ever and would take hundreds of thousands of dollars in tour support. These are things that were just, I needed to fix immediately. And I think she learned a lot from that and it wasn't easy to kind of change those habits. But one thing that when we started working together professionally, that is that I had to become a little less punk and she had to become a little more punk. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):

Meet in the middle.

Speaker 3 (01:32:18):

Yeah, okay. A photo shoot doesn't need to be $20,000, but I had to realize a photo shoot with her needs to be more than a thousand. Fair enough. I had to remind her that she did that goer track in her bedroom on a laptop every now and again when she is trying to bring in all these producers that are really expensive or studio musicians or this or that, whatever. But then I have to go help her source a Gucci outfit for a red carpet, which is something I never had to deal with with a hardcore metal. So it's a really, really collaborative thing. And I think we both have learned a lot and have grown a lot by working together. One thing I can say that people probably would be surprised to know is that she could probably tell you every time Signature in a Chuga song.

Speaker 1 (01:33:08):

I wouldn't be surprised. I think pop music is some of the highest level music out there.

Speaker 3 (01:33:14):

She's super, super next level alien talented.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):

I believe it. Alright, here's a question actually for my brother. What's up Daniel? He's been a long time fan of you guys, so I'm going to ask his question. He said,

Speaker 2 (01:33:27):

Oh cool. What's up dude,

Speaker 1 (01:33:27):

Please ask Ben about the old school Dillinger days when they used to throw mic stands into the crowd and light things on fire, things that would never fly in today's day and age, but were a big part of what made Dillinger escape plans such a unique spectacle to watch live back in the day.

Speaker 3 (01:33:43):

Yeah, that was an interesting, that whole side of Dillinger was really conflicting for me because in the beginning we were playing in basements in VFW Halls and we were just venting on weekends. That was what we were doing and we were playing in environments where people expected the band and the crowd to be kind of interchangeable. You never knew if the person on the stage was in the crowd or was the singer or whatever. And there was always some level of uninhibited free expression that people accepted were part of that environment. And people who had, at the very least, if they weren't from those CBGBs, like DC Bad Brains Roag days where it was actually dangerous to be at a show. They at the very least were admiring those days and wanted to taste it a little bit. And that's what we brought to the table. When we started getting bigger and player bigger venues and did the Patent EP and the Bungle tour, we started seeing faces in our crowd that wouldn't normally be at a show like that and certainly weren't prepared for that kind of behavior. I guess I can tell you an example, we were playing the metro in Chicago and it was sold out and it's a decent sized place and I was so pumped. Actually Macon was opening for us, ironically at the time, and

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):

Oh shit, nice.

Speaker 3 (01:35:14):

And we just killed it. We fucking killed it. And I was so pumped that at the last song, I took my guitar just out of pure excitement and just bashed it on the floor and then decided whatever didn't break, I'm going to try and throw across the room and break on the back wall of the club

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):

Because why not?

Speaker 3 (01:35:35):

Which was just not realistic. There was just too many people between the stage and the back wall.

Speaker 1 (01:35:44):

How far away was the back wall from the stage?

Speaker 3 (01:35:46):

I mean, it was a big club

Speaker 1 (01:35:48):

Too far for a guitar to hit, probably

Speaker 3 (01:35:51):

Too far for a guitar to make it without hitting people long way, that's for sure. And we hit a girl, I hit a girl, I say we, but I remember going downstairs real pumped and energized, and my buddy who was kind of co-manage and tore, managed with me, Tom comes downstairs and he was kind enough to say when it really wasn't, it was me like, I think we killed somebody. And I'm like, what? And he's like, you better come upstairs. I go upstairs and there's a girl laying in a puddle of blood with her two dude friends staring at me, they're going to kill me. I was like, oh my God, she's super scared. She has that head injury and we're waiting for paramedics to come and take care of her. And I'm just like, oh my God, I can't believe I did this. And I said to her, I said, is there anything I can do for you?

(01:36:42):

And she's like, there is one thing. Can you introduce me to Mike Patton? Jesus Christ. Again, it became clear to me that she was like a faith n more type of fan, not like a punk person. And this was just insane to her. And it really was hard for me because it made me question, and there were many other times where things like that happened where I felt so torn because if we didn't perform that people wanted their money back. They're like, we don't go to a Dillinger show to see someone stand there and not make us feel like

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):

It's dangerous.

Speaker 3 (01:37:14):

We're in danger. And then at the same time, there were times when people really got hurt. Most of the time it was the band members, but sometimes it wasn't. And as far as the old days, certain things flying first today, I'll tell you right now, I just finished settling my last lawsuit for Dillinger and we haven't been abandoned since 2017. It certainly didn't stop.

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):

You just answered something that I've been kind of wondering for a really long time was like, I just remember 10 or more years ago seeing videos of the fire and being like, how the hell is this allowed to happen? So you just answered the question.

Speaker 3 (01:37:53):

It wasn't it, our philosophy was ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):

Fair enough.

Speaker 3 (01:38:00):

There always was. And we got banned from every single club there was. We always ended up getting back eventually. Well, sometimes we'd have to sign things, sometimes time heals. But yeah, there was a lot of crazy stuff happening for sure up until the very last day.

Speaker 1 (01:38:17):

So did you introduce her to Mike Patin?

Speaker 3 (01:38:19):

No, I didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):

Okay. So speaking of Mike Patin, here's a question about him from, man, I'm going to fuck this one. How was it working with Mike Patin and how different was it comparing to working with other people? How did you get your end of it together composition, arrangement wise in a way that was good enough in your opinion, to share with Mike Patton? And honestly, were you fanboy through the whole process?

Speaker 3 (01:38:50):

Well, first of all, I mean we had already done that Mr. Bunga tour, and he was one of my, you were favorite singers, musicians in the world. And I remember I was almost, I had had a back injury. We played a show and someone punched me in the spine and kind of one of those thingss where the next day you wake up and you just can't move something swelled up or something. And we were about to get into a van and drive two days, three days cross country to California to start this tour. I literally could not even open a door. I, I was so fucked. And I was like, man, what am I going to do? And I remember just laying in the back of the van, a van with no seats and like a cargo van with just pillows and blankets and a gear in it and just not knowing how I was going to get on stage and play the most important shows in my life.

(01:39:45):

And when we got to, I think it was Santa Cruz or something, it was the first show somewhere, beach place in California or whatever. I walk in the room and I see Mr. Bunge Soundchecking and Mike Patton walks up, introduces himself, and I am somehow immediately felt better. I just got so excited. The adrenaline and everything just shielded me. I got on stage and went nuts. And that was the first and last time I was ever starstruck, to be honest with you. And then throughout the tour we just became friendly and had a mutual respect. And when we were going through the looking for a new singer, we had already started working on some new tunes and decided maybe this would be a good opportunity to work together. We had discussed it on the tour doing something and now is a good time while we were going through this transition. So we just sent him the kind of well-produced demos and he was like, I feel this. I think I could do something good with this. And the rest is history.

Speaker 1 (01:40:47):

Interesting that you say that. When you met him, it was just a cool thing. I've only met him once, but I was like 19. I walked up to him outside of a club, not to fanboy him, I just wanted to know what his vocal warmup routine was. It was on the California tour. I saw it twice, once in Boston, once in Atlanta. You guys weren't on it in the Boston part of it. You guys were at the Atlanta show. So anyways, he just happened to be walking down the street. I wasn't stalking him. I was like, oh, there he is. I'm going to ask him. And so I approached him and talked to him like a normal human being and just told him, I really respect what he does and what do you do to warm up before show, because he's such a wide range of vocals going on and it seems like it could really destroy your throat. And he was totally cool and walked me through the whole thing. At the same time, three fanboy came up and interrupted us and started just punishing the shit out of him, piss him

Speaker 4 (01:41:49):

Off, and

Speaker 1 (01:41:49):

He turned his back to them and kept talking to me like a normal person. And that made me feel really good. That's my Mike Patton's story.

Speaker 4 (01:41:58):

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you did it right. It's a great story and I have to say, I feel like kind of a similar experience.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):

Well, you know what it is, I think treat people like a human, not like a circus spectacle. And they'll probably be cool.

Speaker 4 (01:42:15):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:42:16):

In general.

Speaker 4 (01:42:16):

Totally.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):

Alright, man, well, I want to thank you for taking the time, Nick, come on. It's been awesome talking to you. I know that we've tried to hook up in the past and just didn't work and I'm really glad we got a chance to do this. And thank you again for giving the okay to be on now, the mix, really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:42:34):

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for doing that with the Dillinger stuff. And again, man, Steve is the best and I'm really glad you had him on, and thank you for having me as well.

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):

It was a pleasure. Okay, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levi URM audio and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.