On this episode of the podcast, the boys are joined by a very special guest, Joe D'Andrea. Joe is a stand-up comedian, songwriter, actor, and rock god. He is also the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band, Slayer. We discuss the band's new documentary, "Slayer: Who the Hell is That?" and much more. We also talk about the new Slayer album, "The Meaning of Life" and much, much more! This episode is brought to you by Vevolution Records. Thanks to Pale Fire and Mossy Creek! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. All rights reserved. Used by permission. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our record labels, unless otherwise stated. We do not own the rights to any music used in this podcast. This podcast is not affiliated with any of our songs, music, or product. If you like what you hear, share it on social media or share it with a friend or become a supporter of our cause, we will not hesitate to pay you a small monthly fee. Thank you for supporting the cause! We make no claim of any of the music we mention in the show. It helps support the cause and is in no way affiliated with the cause. - Thank you! - We are a good friend of the cause, thank you very much. We appreciate it greatly. And we appreciate it. Love ya'll. XOXO - Tom and Joe Dweck Joe . - Joe Dandrea and the rest of the boys -- Thank you so much, Joe - Joe Dominguez & the rest Thank You, Joe, , Mike King Thanks, Joe & Mike King, P.A. & the guys ( ) Cheers! (A.K. ( ) Thank you Joe, P. (Thank you, Joe and the boys, Matt, Jake, and the Crew, Mike King & the crew at Vevil :D) XO, J.B. ( ) - P.J. (Alfred ANDREWS, R. B. (R. M.
00:01:12.000So you pick the right wig for the right tangent, and then you just go.
00:01:17.000I like what you did, too, where you're mixing different styles of music.
00:01:20.000You're mixing, like, legit country music.
00:01:22.000And then some of the songs sound almost like Tool.
00:01:26.000You know, some of the sounds have, like, your same type of vocals that you would in one of your Tool songs, but it's just got this completely different extra vibe to it.
00:01:36.000Yeah, I think there's a lot of flexibility just because we are kind of a moving target, so when we start to kind of get inspired in some direction, we're not really confined to, you know, I love Slayer, but Slayer is Slayer.
00:02:38.000That's kind of how we did this new DVD. There's the whole documentaries at the beginning.
00:02:43.000When you go out and watch the DVD again, you can actually skip the documentary if you want to, but it was important to see the documentary and see Billy Dee and Hildeberger so that you understood when they came back up later in the actual show, who the hell, who the fuck is that?
00:02:58.000If you didn't see the documentary, you don't understand who those people are.
00:03:01.000When you do the live shows, do you play the documentary first?
00:04:36.000I mean, you just threw yourself into winemaking.
00:04:39.000Yeah, I mean, that's one of those, you know, you could pretty much read the back of a yeast packet to figure out, like, what to do to inoculate fruit.
00:04:46.000But, you know, to really actually learn how to make wine, you just have to dive in, you know?
00:04:50.000You can go to, I suppose you can go to, you know, college to get all the nuances and be taught how to make wine with fear in mind, but...
00:05:07.000Then, you know, after that, then it's like the nuance is the, you know, the upper percent of just intuition, instincts.
00:05:16.000Do you mingle at all with the people in the wine world?
00:05:19.000Do you communicate with other people in the wine industry and go to conferences?
00:05:23.000I've got guys on speed dial that I know that are world-class winemakers from around the world.
00:05:27.000If I have a question that I think that they've seen the answer to or seen that challenge or seen that hurdle, I will not even hesitate to text or call or write or email or something just to go, okay, so here's the challenge or here's the thing I'm going to try.
00:05:45.000And based on, you know, the kind of fruit that we get, because the fruit we get is not like you would get in Napa or get in, necessarily get in New Zealand.
00:05:56.000It might be more specifically like Adelaide Hills, but not necessarily the Barossa.
00:06:00.000You know, so there's, you know, different stuff.
00:06:13.000For the most part, you have to give it some food now and then, some kind of nutrients that are not going to cripple.
00:06:22.000You don't want to give it steroids or anything like that, but you want to give it something that it needs if it needs a little extra dose of something.
00:08:10.000So Chris has his team of people in the actual vineyard making sure that they all have their finger on the pulse of what I'm looking for in the grapes to make the wine.
00:08:18.000We have, of course, our shipping staff and, you know, the business affairs managers and stuff.
00:08:23.000But in the cellar, it's just my wife and I. It's just us making the wine, pressing the grapes, inoculating.
00:08:30.000So there's not actually a staff of people in the actual cellar because that's my house.
00:09:09.000Like, when you decide that you're going to start making your own wine, you get a piece of land, you decide where you're going to grow grapes, you decide...
00:09:16.000How the fuck do you piece together a team to create wine?
00:09:47.000Yeah, because every year that I'm making wine on my own, you know, previous years, like from 2004 up to about 2009, I had other, you know, people, I was kind of like looking over their shoulder and trying to be involved in doing it.
00:09:59.000But until 2010, you know, like part of nine, but part of 10, until I was actually in, you know, doing it myself, You're only going to learn that way.
00:10:15.000And now, how many months out of the year does it take to do that, and then the rest you devote to whatever else, like Pussifer or anything else you like doing?
00:10:38.000Do you enjoy that, that you're committed to this, like, four-month project, that for four months you're accounted for, that's it, this is your life?
00:10:45.000Yeah, I mean, it's nice to know that, you know, I'm going to be sleeping in my own bed.
00:10:51.000You're up at, you know, I'm up at 630 doing punchdowns and just checking things out and make sure everything's, you know, not, you know, something didn't blow up or I forgot to seal something so it's leaking or, you know, there's just those tragic things that kind of happen in the cellar that you look over and the spout wasn't shut and there's,
00:11:07.000like, Pinot Gris pouring onto the ground.
00:12:14.000So then when that's over, November's done, do you just chillax for a little bit?
00:12:20.000Last couple years, no, I would jump right into doing some stuff with Perfect Circle or Pussifer.
00:12:26.000If the guys were ready with Tool, I would work with them, or maybe we'd go out and do some quick tour or something.
00:12:32.000And that's only just to kind of You know, keep it alive and because you've done some work that you need to kind of tidy up and do something with.
00:12:39.000Like we came out with conditions of my parole and I had to like, I had to promote that record so I had to get on the road right away in November.
00:12:48.000And in between, you add some jiu-jitsu.
00:12:50.000Yeah, that was the fun part this year.
00:12:53.000Poor Matt Mitchell from Pustle Free came out to record some tracks with me.
00:12:59.000I'm up at 6'7", out there doing my thing, and then I would come in and we'd try to work on a song or work on some tracks, and he was helping record some stuff.
00:13:07.000And then I go, I gotta go, I gotta quickly distem this fruit, and then at 11.45, I've got to drive down the hill because I've got to go do jujitsu from noon to 1, and then I'll be back up here at 1.15.
00:13:25.000We can do a vocal, but then I've got to press the chardonnay.
00:13:39.000First time I met him was on a Perfect Circle tour.
00:13:42.000So what do these people think that have seen you pre-wine and post-wine?
00:13:46.000Did they think originally, like, oh, this is just his new thing, he'll do it for a little bit, and then it's probably, you know, it'll last a year or so.
00:14:13.000In northern Arizona, right now I have planted...
00:14:18.00040, just under 40 planted, and only about 10 of those are actually producing at the moment.
00:14:25.000Southern Arizona, my sister company, Arizona Stronghold, I have access to fruit from our vineyards down there, so there's a lot of growers all over the state, and there's growers just over the border into New Mexico as well, just over from those counties, so there's also kind of a mirror image terrain over in New Mexico with even more established vineyards than we have in Arizona.
00:14:47.000So 40 acres you're planting on, but only 10 of them you're actually harvesting fruit from?
00:14:54.000Yeah, and probably by next year I'll see a little bit more from the other 30, and then by 2015 I'll see full production from everything.
00:15:18.000And it all depends on what you're kind of going for.
00:15:20.000You know, if you want to plant, like, tighter spacing and set fruit a little earlier on the plant when it's younger so it doesn't quite get big and kind of, like, almost stunt its growth in a way, you get some really concentrated fruit on a smaller vine.
00:15:38.000But you've seen some that are, like, these huge old-school vines.
00:15:42.000There's different schools of thought on that.
00:15:43.000You got guys that pull out everything in 20 to 30 years or just pull everything out and start over because the vine might produce, you know, an eighth of what it was producing when it was younger.
00:15:54.000And if it's not great, I mean, if it's like producing an eighth of, you know, that fruit and it's fantastic, just undeniable fruit, well, yeah, hang on to it.
00:16:01.000But if it's not, most guys are pulling it out.
00:16:05.000Do you find that this whole process, you know, The whole process of creating this new thing and then getting involved in this completely new endeavor, does that do anything to the rest of your creativity?
00:16:16.000Do you find that it opens up new possibilities for other things that you create?
00:16:20.000I mean, yeah, it opens up other stuff because it's a whole different kind of creativity.
00:16:27.000When you're in the cellar and you're just hovering over some of these wines, you're having to be kind of, you know...
00:16:59.000And then you have something come in that's completely underripe, and you go, hmm, if I put these together, they're right at the right number that I want, rather than trying to finish something that's not high enough sugar and something that's way too high sugar.
00:17:11.000You know, there's little moments like that that happen that you just didn't expect and you can't plan.
00:17:16.000It's just chaos, and you just have to just navigate the chaos.
00:17:19.000Were you a big fan of wine before you did this, or is this just something that you just decided to slowly but surely step into?
00:17:28.000I guess I had a great-grandfather who made wine in northern Italy, but I didn't know that until I was actually planting grapes.
00:17:37.000But I was into wine a little bit, you know, back in, I lived in Boston for a while, so I, you know, I enjoyed wine with my friend Kurt.
00:17:43.000He worked at a nice Italian wine shop, so he'd always bring stuff home on the weekends, and we'd, you know, he would grill, and I would drink this wine, and, you know, years later I'd go, oh, wow, that was pretty, I think we're drinking some pretty awesome wine.
00:18:49.000You don't have to know any of that stuff.
00:18:51.000If you know somebody that owns a cool shop or has a nice tasting room like Matthew over at Coval, just go talk to Matthew about what they have on their list or go to Silver Lake Wine or talk to Randy or April or George to go, okay, what's open when you have their tastings?
00:22:49.000But that's that one that just like, no matter what, no matter who owns that spot, there's always going to be people gathering in that spot for a cup of coffee or like some kind of, you know, sunrise kind of event.
00:24:36.000L.A. has so many of those really cool old-school spots that have just been around for so long.
00:24:45.000And I think, back to our Sedona conversation, it's probably some version of that, where those spots just kind of have that...
00:24:52.000And, you know, just in general, I was driving to L.A. from kind of the Sedona, Prescott area, and I forgot that the Yarnell fires, they kind of had the road closed off,
00:26:02.000And when you see that kind of place, you can go, you can see how somebody who, you know, when Sedona isn't there yet, you can see how somebody would go, I want to start something here.
00:26:13.000There's an energy here that I want to, like, you know, Did you see that video of those dopey Boy Scout guys who tipped over those hundred million year old rocks?
00:27:06.000But the point is, it was one of these really cool ancient structures where it's this...
00:27:13.000This giant like top like a mushroom cap almost and it's just all this wind and sand has eroded it to the point where this is like this little peak that's holding this thing in place and it was so fucking cool looking and these tools just decided to tip it over.
00:30:26.000There was actually a mixed martial arts fighter, former UFC champion Evan Tanner, who went on this sort of vision quest in Death Valley and wound up getting disoriented, lost his water, and died.
00:33:41.000I mean, you know, it's all a matter of perspective and, I guess...
00:33:49.000It's a microcosm, macrocosm kind of situation where if you're in a big city like this, you're going to see a cross-section of a certain kind of people.
00:33:58.000My friend Todd today was just talking about the talking in reference to just any kind of infrastructure or hierarchy.
00:34:08.000You got your 10% that are kicking ass.
00:34:11.000You got your 80% that are just kind of coasting.
00:34:15.000So you're going to end up, if it's LA or if it's like a 400 population town, you're going to have similar percentages.
00:34:23.000There's going to be 10% that care and know what they're doing or want to know what they're doing and then 80% that are just there and then 10% that you just want to run over.
00:34:37.000That's the one good thing about being in a place like New York City or LA where there's a large population is that 10% is a larger number.
00:34:45.000You can cultivate a good group of them.
00:34:47.000Yeah, but you have to go out and find them.
00:34:50.000Yeah, you've got to find them, you've got to keep them close, and you've got to feed off of each other.
00:34:54.000And then hopefully encourage some other people, perhaps that are in the other 80%, to break free.
00:35:03.000When you die 75. Because we're all capable.
00:35:05.000We're all capable of, you know, learning, doing.
00:35:09.000Do you feel a responsibility for that or towards that as an artist?
00:35:13.000Do you ever feel like because of what you're doing, because you're so motivated, you get so much done, you have so many different projects going, do you realize the impact of that?
00:35:23.000Because a lot of people are inspired by not just the work ethic that you have, but how much quality shit you produce, whether it's wine or music.
00:36:49.000I have a lot of people around me, especially within the music, within the film, within the animation, all those things, but especially In the vineyards and the restaurant stuff, I see people that are just, every day,
00:37:12.000That's not something you can kind of just start on a whim and not expect to be responsible for keeping the boat floating.
00:37:17.000That's like, you know, I see there's a restaurant in...
00:37:20.000In Arizona called F&B, Pavle and Charlene, and just watching what they go through, but not go through, that's the wrong way to put it, but just their process and their motivation and their fire.
00:37:37.000Their drive just it's very inspiring And then a lot of the winemakers that I know in the state as well They're just you're watching them go through their changes and you're watching them go Where they discover a new thing about a new potential of what they can do and how much better they can make it and You know just see you just see that process.
00:42:06.000Yeah, which is pretty an interesting way of exploring the idea because otherwise it seems like intangible.
00:42:12.000Well, when, yeah, when we have javelina around Arizona and as soon as the javelina are coming and we're near the vineyard or near their yard, the dog is up.
00:42:58.000Yeah, but it's one of those situations where if you don't field dress them properly, they've got some weird glands that'll just ruin all the meat.
00:43:08.000You cut the wrong gland and it's done.
00:45:28.000He's the guy that puts everybody in pink underwear and pink jumpsuits and has the men stay outside in tents, no air conditioning, makes them work.
00:48:45.000I mean, you know, if we have a day where we can go in and train and we have like a nice day off or a day off, you know, two days off, then I can risk it.
00:48:54.000But, you know, to go in and just, there's what time, you know, when would you do it on a show day?
00:49:08.000I saw a photo of you with BJ Penn back when, you know, he was like a purple belt.
00:49:13.000I got injured in like 2003 or 2002, actually before that, and then it just kind of compounded, and then I had to just stop around 2003. That was the back thing, right?
00:49:43.000That's what they take and heat up and then spin in the centrifuge.
00:49:48.000I'll let you know how it works out, but I've been dealing with a back injury for the past...
00:49:55.000All together for about four or five years now, but pretty bad over the last year and a half, on and off, and started to get numbness in my hands and things along those lines, where I was realizing that my nerves were getting impeded and smushed, and I realized I had to do something about it.
00:50:12.000So I don't have any of the symptoms anymore, but this is supposed to do an amazing job.
00:51:53.000If you've watched, like, really high-level guys go at it, one of the more fascinating aspects of it is it looks like there's very little effort being applied, you know, especially when they're sparring.
00:52:05.000A little bit more so when they're competing.
00:52:07.000When they're competing, you know, they're going after it.
00:52:09.000But when they're sparring, like, a lot of times these guys are just sort of rolling around, it seems like.
00:52:15.000It's like walk, walk, walk, sprint, walk, walk.
00:52:19.000Never give the guy a position where he could sprint to the finish line.
00:52:23.000Always make him, he's got four or five steps before he can sprint, because a regular person won't see the difference between that, between what looks like casual rolling, and even though they're casually rolling, he's always going to be two or three spots away from the finish line.
00:53:05.000I mean, the word martial art, it seems wrong to people that don't participate in it.
00:53:10.000Like, the word art seems like the wrong thing.
00:53:12.000But when you do it, you realize, like, if you watch it and you see, if you have an aptitude for it, you understand it, and you see what's going on, then you watch someone who's really good at it, it becomes beautiful.
00:53:34.000And very, very inspirational, man, I think.
00:53:37.000And it's also another one of those things that I think, like creating wine, like putting together a band, like putting together a comedy act, like writing a novel, like these things that we do when we put our thoughts and our creativity into something,
00:53:53.000they sort of, they don't just exist in a vacuum, but they sort of enhance all the other aspects of our life, too.
00:54:17.000You can kind of you can kind of solve puzzles better if you're just if you're if I notice if I just I just need a break and I just start slouching off It starts to kind of compound if you don't get back into Something walking running.
00:54:32.000Do you ever fuck around with yoga a little bit?
00:54:34.000Yeah, I need to do more That's one of those things that I just feel like it's that that's the that's the on the to-do list that I just keep being embarrassed about having to put it on the next to-do list and Yeah, that's one of those things that everybody always says too.
00:55:00.000Yeah, I have a couple good DVDs that I slap in the laptop on the road.
00:55:04.000That's a very satisfying thing to do, to work out in a hotel room completely alone and do just a whole yoga class through a laptop when you get through it.
00:55:15.000It's a real feeling of accomplishment.
00:55:16.000Because I could have just ate Doritos and watched TV instead.
00:55:38.000I was out of town, so when I'm in a hotel out of town and my wife, wherever she is, it's my opportunity to watch all those stupid movies that she just won't watch while I'm around.
00:56:10.000Laughing at myself, knowing that she's probably laughing, knowing that it sucks so bad, and here I am watching the whole thing and just laughing at myself for watching.
00:56:17.000The craziest thing is the first one was really good.
00:56:21.000You know, and I tried to explain that to my 17-year-old after we saw it.
00:56:45.000LAUGHTER There's something going on now, man, with science fiction movies where there's so much CGI and they can get away with doing so much on the screen visually that I'm detached.
00:56:59.000I went to see Star Trek, the last Star Trek one, Into the Darkness, whatever the fuck it was.
00:57:04.000And I was like, this is just a bunch of things happening.
00:57:06.000I have no connection at all to any of these people.
00:57:09.000The first one I was pretty connected with.
00:57:28.000Taking even a mediocre script and just running with it.
00:57:33.000When you see an artist kind of taking those, being able to tell those stories to where you just believe it.
00:57:39.000I don't know if I used this example with you last time, but I just saw it again this season of Sons of Anarchy, watching Kim Coates fully get an erection over Alton Goggins in drag.
00:57:54.000And it's just, you know, it's, you know, Walton Goggins has fake tits, and he's, you know, like, a mask, and he's trying to get his son back, and, you know, the lipstick's all smeared, and, and, like, you know, Kim Coates is trying to figure out how he's gonna date this dude.
00:58:08.000It's just such an awkward, but they completely sell it, like, like, all the way, you're, you're convinced, like, that, he loves her.
00:58:18.000And it's like, not a her, it's Walton Goggins, and a, and with fake boobs.
01:01:03.000This particular actor is having some issues, so you'll want to watch the show to watch if you can see if you can get a whiff of the crazy coming off them.
01:01:37.000Yeah, and it's hard to, you know, I have a lot of friends that go through that kind of stuff, and that's one of the hardest things to get out of your system.
01:01:45.000You'd probably rather, you know, you're better off trying to get off heroin, because the pills just go deep.
01:01:51.000Yeah, well, the pills essentially are heroin.
01:02:01.000And they prescribe them like they're giving out free gum.
01:02:05.000I mean, it's amazing how many people are on prescription painkillers in this country and how many of those painkillers are opiates and how many of those people are addicted to those opiates.
01:02:15.000We're fucking weird when it comes to that, man, without a doubt.
01:02:18.000That's one of the most disturbing aspects of our society, the amount of pills that people consume.
01:02:24.000You know, it's dark, and when you see someone that you care...
01:02:28.000It kind of started, right, kind of, you know, like about a generation before us with the Valium, all of a sudden.
01:02:34.000Sure, the Rolling Stone song, Mother's Little Helper.
01:02:37.000Yeah, she goes running for the shelter.
01:02:40.000Yeah, that's when they first found out that you could live a shitty life and get through it with some sort of medication.
01:02:48.000And just medicate yourself and dull the angst and dull the desire to free yourself from this fucking hellish existence.
01:04:47.000And so when I see him, when you know, when you kind of know where you've been, you know where you're going.
01:04:55.000So I have a feeling that just having my son see what I did, see what my dad has done, he has, in a way, he has a good compass, good navigation skills.
01:05:10.000Yeah, the only concern that I have, the big concern, is that Children today are growing up with so many more variables than we ever did and Also much more potential for quicker learning because of the internet and and with that Again more potential more more possibilities more variables more things to think about it's like more more that could potentially be overwhelming right and I think most kids are I think there's like you know just my father
01:05:40.000was a high school teacher and by the time he retired it was basically because They kind of pushed him out to get into a new person who wasn't going to question the curriculum.
01:05:51.000He was very adamant about making the people who came into that classroom.
01:05:55.000You had to make an effort in his classroom to pass the class.
01:06:08.000You had to put in, over the course of the year, you were also doing homework and coming in with completed thoughts that counted towards your grades.
01:06:16.000And if you didn't complete all aspects of that in his class, you didn't do well.
01:06:20.000Yeah, if there's any one thing that you can instill in a child that's going to guarantee them a healthier existence is an appreciation for work, an appreciation for accomplishing things, setting and accomplishing goals.
01:06:37.000So few kids are ever indoctrinated into that sort of way of life.
01:06:46.000We didn't get to school unless he got up at 6am and snow-blowed the driveway in the winter.
01:07:02.000Our driveway was almost a quarter mile long, so if we didn't snow blow the driveway, we weren't getting to the main road that was hopefully plowed.
01:08:12.000It was also the thing that I really appreciated a lot about growing up in a really fucking cold place.
01:08:18.000Despite, on top of learning that, you know, there's a good to having really fucking cold, snowy days, and that's you really appreciate the sunny days with a different vigor, you know?
01:08:45.000When you're out there and it's like a full-on snowstorm and there's just a foot and a half of snow on the ground, the trees are covered with snow, you don't hear shit.
01:08:56.000It's this weird, eerie, ringing silence.
01:09:00.000Yeah, because if it's a rainstorm, of course you're hearing rain.
01:09:10.000Which just absorbs everything and you're just like, you're such like an isolation tank.
01:09:15.000Yeah, you hear like every now and then you hear like a car in the distance trying to get out of a driveway.
01:09:22.000Or your neighbor yelling, fuck it won't start!
01:09:26.000Yeah, I grew up in this area that was across the street from a river, and it was a fairly rural area, and this giant park and a river was across the street from my house, and the street was pretty steep, and every time it would snow,
01:09:43.000or especially if it would rain, the street would become a hockey rink.
01:09:47.000And I would watch cars drive down the hill and just right when they got to my house, they'd be losing control.
01:10:08.000In, you know, decades, like, for any length of time.
01:10:11.000But in Jerome, we get snow in the winter.
01:10:14.000And it's amazing to me how people just cannot drive in it.
01:10:17.000We get it every year, you know, a little bit, sometimes a lot more.
01:10:21.000But having to, like, I immediately just get in my Jeep and I go up to a point in the town where it's the problem spot and just park and wait because there's somebody that can't get up the hill or around the bend because they just can't understand not to slam on the gas.
01:11:03.000The cool thing about accidents in the snow is they just sort of bump into each other and slide around.
01:11:10.000No one's glued on the ground, so it's not the same kind of impact.
01:11:15.000Well, you know, I go up there to help them out just because I know if I don't, there's going to be like 20 cars behind them that can't get where they're going.
01:11:22.000So it's just more a matter of bringing a plunger to the shit show.
01:11:28.000There's a certain amount of camaraderie, too, when things like that happen.
01:11:32.000Snow and people have to help push people's cars out of spots and things like that.
01:11:37.000That's another thing that people don't deal with in L.A. The lack of weather in L.A. is, I think, one of the reasons why people are so cocky.
01:11:49.000You know, I remember after the earthquake in 94, it's just when I moved here, in 93, whatever it was, I moved here right after that happened.
01:12:02.000It was like it brought people together for a little bit.
01:12:04.000That was a weird, that was a strange experience to be, you know, I was all, you know, like Steve Martin the jerk out in the backyard with my dogs in front of me, like, you know, like, Hearing the trees just like creaking.
01:12:16.000Around and all the car alarms, like a symphony of car alarms going off.
01:12:19.000It was crazy, like hearing the glass shatter everywhere.
01:13:15.000And there was that feeling about, like, Los Angeles then, where people were humbled.
01:13:20.000You know, they were, like, a little nicer to each other.
01:13:22.000And I felt it again in New York right after September 11th.
01:13:26.000I remember I lived in New York in the early 90s, and then...
01:13:31.000When I went back to New York, I remember, like, California, I'm thinking that people in California were, like, a lot more mellow and nicer than people in New York, and people in New York always had that sort of hard edge to it.
01:13:43.000But when I went after September 11th, that edge was gone.
01:13:46.000There was this warmth to people in New York and a friendliness that I hadn't ever experienced here before.
01:13:52.000I was like, this is really interesting.
01:13:54.000I'm like, there's a real tangible positive impact That this tragedy has had.
01:13:59.000It's that people are appreciating each other more.
01:14:49.000You never have to deal with adversity in California.
01:14:52.000There's a lack of appreciation for the fact that you're actually on a planet.
01:14:58.000That you're actually a part of nature.
01:15:01.000There's no seasons here, so you don't really get the chance to see that change.
01:15:05.000What a perfect place to put the factory of all things fake.
01:15:10.000If you really wanted to think about a great way to fuck up a culture, just take a spot where the weather never changes and then put cameras on people and pretend they're interesting.
01:17:06.000I was with some indigenous people who invited me into their ceremony, so it was quite a special moment.
01:17:14.000Yeah, I have no personal experience, but I have one friend that did it and said that he was In an apartment building and he was listening to people talk that were easily five blocks away.
01:17:27.000And he was listening to every word out of their mouth.
01:17:30.000And he couldn't believe that he could hear it, but he was absolutely sure that he could hear it.
01:18:02.000And I try to get people to look at psychedelic experiences as this way.
01:18:08.000Whether it was real or whether it wasn't real, the experience was exactly the same.
01:18:13.000So if you took mushrooms and truly did go to another dimension and communicate with ultimate knowledge and tune into the love of the universe, tune into the frequency of life and of progress and Or,
01:18:31.000whether it happened in your mind, it's still the same experience.
01:18:36.000But, you know, if people are going to do those things, I think it goes back to what you were talking about before, about understanding, you know, preparation for this thing you're going to do.
01:19:17.000Prepare for the journey and learn how to let go.
01:19:20.000And if you are going to do those things, do it hopefully with somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing.
01:19:25.000Because if you start messing with that stuff and neither one of you know what you're doing, you're both going to be under that fog of fear.
01:20:12.000Just, you know, they're just not, they're never going to, just because of the whole nature of how it breaks down some of those barriers between your left and right brain, just metaphorically, you know, just how you think about your creative processes.
01:20:29.000They can never quite get their feet back on the ground to understand what it means to actually do a thing, rather than just, you know.
01:21:16.000Whatever journey you took, even if it's not on the psychedelics, even if it's just some entire...
01:21:22.000You're going to go for a month to be silent in some...
01:21:27.000You know, some spiritual place and introspection and, you know, do a fast or whatever.
01:21:34.000You don't want to do that like, you know, 12 months out of the year.
01:21:38.000They don't have any contrast with anything.
01:21:40.000Just go do it, get intense about it, prepare for it before you go, and then be ready to take a while to come out of it when you are coming back, and then you live your normal life.
01:21:53.000Do you feel like when you're creating wine or when you're putting together a DVD or when you take on a project that you're kind of on a journey like that as well?
01:22:13.000And then every time those things are accomplished, there's this feeling of reinforcement of the process.
01:22:18.000Yeah, I mean, you know, everybody has a way to trick themselves into thinking they're right, or, you know, kind of consistently put a particular process in to get some result back that reinforces the behavior.
01:22:30.000But, you know, aside from that, if you're just preparing...
01:22:36.000There's definitely a satisfaction coming from even the happy accidents along the way, things you learned that you didn't think you were going to learn, stuff that was actually a challenge that you hadn't prepared for but you managed to get through.
01:22:48.000Those are the kind of things that really make those results satisfying.
01:22:53.000Do you intentionally seek inspiration like through books or through documentaries or anything?
01:22:59.000Not intentionally, but just, you know, I'll be reading a book or an article or seeing a film and somebody will use a word that resonates on some level and I go, ooh, I'm going to write the word down.
01:23:13.000Then I might build something on that word.
01:23:29.000I mean, if you're into physics and just geometry and general chemistry, there's these structures that are already there in terms of the relationships between numbers and shapes and angles and just molecules.
01:23:46.000And they're very similar in respect to just emotional experiences, just life experiences, even just the journey from an infant to an elderly person.
01:24:00.000There's very common angles and structure and commonality between those experiences that can resonate.
01:24:10.000So if I see a word That for some reason resonates with me at the age of 35 or 40. I write it down right away because most likely there's some kind of geometry or resonance with that word that's speaking to me at this age in this stage of my life that I should pay attention to.
01:24:28.000So I'll write it down and I'll see, I'll explore more to see if it is in fact something that wouldn't be relevant when I was 20, might not be relevant when I'm 60, but it's relevant now.
01:24:38.000So I'll look at it and I'll build on it.
01:24:40.000Yeah, that's an interesting thing about getting older and the ideas that you come across, these ideas are sort of cross-referencing with these other experiences that you've had in your life up to this point now, and now it resonates.
01:25:14.000I watched a whole documentary on this guy making traditional-style samurai swords and the incredibly intensive, laborious process involved in folding steel, hammering it down, folding it, hammering it down.
01:26:24.000And it's just these different families, families or individuals who live up in Alaska and then go from one to the next and follow these people in this one tribe that's...
01:26:40.000And the woman is a native Inuit woman.
01:26:43.000And the man is American from the lower 48. And they have children together.
01:26:47.000And, you know, like they've lost family members because they fell through the ice and died.
01:26:53.000I mean, this is like, this is real shit.
01:26:55.000This woman who's, they're walking across the ice and they're like knocking holes into the ice to make sure that it's Deep enough for them to walk with their children and they're gonna put this net down underneath this ice and feed it to each other on the other side of the river and they're gonna catch fish and that's how they're all eating.
01:27:55.000Intense spiritual connection with their food that way.
01:27:58.000You know, when they're pulling these fish out of this water and they're grabbing hold of it and making sure it doesn't fall back under the ice, like, there's this intense connection between this animal, this creature that they just caught.
01:28:12.000We don't really ever get, and when they eat that animal, there's also this intense feeling of satisfaction that goes with that, this substance living.
01:29:05.000The only way, I think, is for people to figure it out on their own.
01:29:08.000To be inspired by people who have figured that out?
01:29:12.000You know, this marble is way smarter than we are, so when it decides that there's any even, you know, if the kids get a little too cocky, it'll toss a few tidal waves or toss a few meteors at it.
01:30:01.000Eventually, how dependent we are on just everything digital and electrical, just a simple, naturally occurring electromagnetic pulse will just fucking ruin people's lives.
01:30:15.000Yeah, one big fat solar storm that erases everybody's Kindle.
01:30:37.000There are only a couple of things I've released with Full Surface that haven't come out on vinyl because they're just digital, but pretty much everything.
01:30:44.000Even the remixes we do, we'll do vinyl for it too.
01:30:48.000Well, there's a weird push now for not even just a digital copy of something, but in the cloud, to leave everything in the cloud.
01:30:56.000Like, have you seen these new Google Chromebooks?
01:31:58.000I'm not going to have this photo if something crazy happens like that and it's lost.
01:32:02.000Yeah, and also the latest revelations that the NSA tapped into the Google Cloud and basically accessed everything that was up there, which is, you know, Google's all pissed off, but come on, you didn't see that coming?
01:32:15.000You know, aren't you guys at the front of the line?
01:32:17.000Don't you know what's possible and not possible?
01:32:45.000It takes every camera, it will access any camera that's in the system, the cameras on your phones, every microphone, and it puts together all of this data looking at all the digital information.
01:32:58.000And predicts, like, international threats.
01:33:00.000But the trick, you know, the whole trick of the story is, like, nobody really knows about this thing at all.
01:33:05.000It's so self-contained that it inserts this information into studies or, you know, when they're looking at somebody.
01:33:35.000It's funny because everything about what this show is all of a sudden came out with all this NSA spying.
01:33:43.000They're like, that's what they're doing already.
01:33:45.000So this show is like kind of being a cutting edge thing, like going, oh, there's this supercomputer doing all this stuff, and they're looking through the cameras, and they're gathering all the information, and all of a sudden you go...
01:34:10.000You know, I mean, everybody sort of just realized, like, oh shit, like, everything you've ever emailed somebody actually is somewhere in a database.
01:34:58.000Yeah, I agree in that personally, but I also see it as something that's very different than I think what people are realizing.
01:35:07.000I think everybody's worried about their personal privacy and people are worried about...
01:35:12.000Not just their personal privacy but the government being able to access their personal privacy and to be able to look into their photographs and read their emails and I get all that but I think that ultimately what we're dealing with is a dissolving of boundaries between people and information and that it's going to be some there's going to be some breakthrough one day Whether it's some ability to read minds or some new
01:35:42.000way of connecting people, some new way of separating boundaries, that's going to make this seem like a joke.
01:35:50.000That this is just basically one more step in this never-ending trend of dissolving of boundaries.
01:37:00.000The questions are just leading to this weird ultimate reality, which is that the trend seems to be, across the line, this dissolving of boundaries between people and ideas and people and information.
01:37:15.000And then eventually everyone's going to have access to everything.
01:37:20.000And again, I think that that's, you know, I get caught up in the idea of like, Well, maybe this is part of some, you know, this might be just our tendency to do things.
01:37:30.000You know, this is what we do to control people, you know, just through the ages.
01:37:33.000Power, you know, power wants more power.
01:37:36.000But at some point you have to wonder, like, so is that choice and the dominant, you know, whoever's in charge, that's a tendency of whatever we are, whatever makes us up.
01:37:49.000Is that an extension of what, again, going back to the marble, Is that what the marble wants?
01:37:54.000In some way, is that consciousness just trying to sort some things out and take us to the next step?
01:38:28.000Try to be more like the paranoid, opposite, defensive, reasonably defensive person who wants to know what the fuck do you need to see in my emails?
01:38:41.000I don't understand why that's important to you.
01:38:43.000I try to look at it as someone who's analyzing the human beings as a complete alien outsider, looking at us collectively as a group, which is what we move as a group.
01:38:56.000And I would say, well, look, here's this thing that works collectively to make technology, but thinks it's an individual.
01:39:04.000They all think that they're individuals, but essentially all they're doing with their manic desire to acquire goods and to acquire material possessions, what they're really doing is just pushing innovation because they need the biggest, baddest, newest, craziest.
01:39:18.000They constantly need the latest and greatest.
01:39:21.000They're pushing for these innovations, and these innovations are constantly, within three, four, five months, the exponential increase of these things is making every new step far more powerful than any step before it,
01:39:37.000and it's happening faster and faster and faster.
01:39:41.000And I don't even think the creatures even realize they're doing it.
01:39:45.000The periods, as McKenna had put it, the periods between novelty and normality are like a hum now.
01:39:53.000It's not even a peak and valley anymore.
01:39:56.000Yeah, McKenna described it as a funnel.
01:39:58.000That, you know, if you spun a quarter around the top of the funnel, it would take a long time to go all the way around the circle.
01:40:05.000But as it gets lower and lower, it's getting faster and faster and faster and faster until it reaches what he thought would be a point of ultimate novelty.
01:40:13.000But he thought it was going to be December 21, 2012. But I think, you know, he had a...
01:40:23.000At the end of the day, as brilliant as he was, as fantastic as his mind was, he's still just a person with an idea.
01:40:30.000We grab ideas sometimes and ride those bitches right into the rocks.
01:40:34.000But, you know, if you look at those beautiful chaos equations that kind of make those cool kind of paisley-looking things, but you look really close and you see, like, oh, the detail becomes...
01:40:58.000He might ultimately have been right in some sort of a way that December 21st, it might not have even been that exact day, but that era, the era between 2012-2013, which is the era we're living in and experiencing right now, it might ultimately be this new Opening for this new future and this what we're talking about whether that's that TV show or the Revelations about the NSA that could be just the first steps and opening up this new door of perception this new door
01:41:33.000Yeah mix and it makes you know makes a person When I'm you know trying to write songs or trying to make this wine or you know doing you know doing whatever writing doing comedy bits or whatever It almost makes it feel weird.
01:41:46.000You almost feel kind of in an odd, like, self-conscious way of, like, what am I doing?
01:41:51.000Like, you go to a show and you see, like, the dude up there dancing around in front of the people that are, like, watching him dance around.
01:42:14.000That, when I look at that, and I think about it like that, like repeating the word to the point where it doesn't make any sense anymore, that thing just seems so strange, standing...
01:42:25.000So, I'm going to imagine, like most people, at some point in their career, whatever it is they're doing, they all of a sudden kind of go, what the fuck am I doing?
01:42:37.000Yeah, if you're paying too close attention to ballet, if you're locking into a ballet, you can enjoy it if you're in the moment and you're just appreciating the movements, but if you look at it too closely, then you start to step back and pull back and look at it in the perspective of this planet spinning a thousand miles an hour in a circle around this gigantic nuclear explosion.
01:43:01.000You're like, look at this asshole in tights.
01:44:29.000I mean, you always kind of take that out of perspective like...
01:44:34.000Somebody comes to this culture, and then there's this thing where you stick rocks in your ear, and that's like this thing you do, and there's like, oh, there's better rocks than other rocks that you stick in your ear, and then people start stumbling around and bumping into a wall.
01:44:47.000Okay, so you pick up a rock, and you put it in your ear, and there's different kinds of rocks that feel different and give you different effects, and there's certain rocks that are really expensive, and some that you can just pick up and stick in your ear, but you just basically bump into a wall afterwards, and that's cool, right?
01:47:06.000It's just a matter of balls colliding, and that interests you, but to the people that are involved in it, it's everything.
01:47:12.000Or a person who goes through that kind of process of self-discovery.
01:47:16.000You did something and it went in the hole you wanted it to go in, and you had that positive reinforcement and that encouragement from that behavior.
01:47:26.000Then you follow it more because, like, you got some kind of accolades either from yourself or from someone around you, so you start pursuing that thing, and it has more about your ego developing in terms of, like, the praise that you got for doing that thing.
01:47:52.000A footie fan until I had somebody kind of walking me through what was happening.
01:47:56.000And then I recognized something and I was, you know, patted on the back for recognizing this thing that I still don't have any fucking idea what I was talking about.
01:48:04.000But, you know, I'm watching it more because I want to see where this goes.
01:48:16.000But, you know, at the same time, now that I've got sucked into the rabbit hole, I completely enjoy what that is.
01:48:24.000And there's probably a bunch of English dudes right now outside of the studio ready to kick my ass for even mentioning that that might not be something that's interesting.
01:48:49.000It's that seeking higher truth in whatever discipline it is.
01:48:55.000Whether it's the discipline of football or winemaking or music making or jokes or jujitsu.
01:49:01.000Those microcosms, those worlds that exist sort of wholly on their own and are very difficult to appreciate by people standing outside of them.
01:49:12.000It's a very fascinating aspect of human beings.
01:49:16.000So I guess going back to what you were asking about the Pussy for DVD, the flexibility of everything that we do, I guess that's kind of what that is.
01:49:28.000And the guys that I work with, realizing how absurd some of the things are that we do anyway with our other projects or with this project.
01:49:35.000But we do it anyway because we're just really enjoying, we're in the rabbit hole, we enjoy seeing how far we can take a particular absurd obsession with something.
01:49:44.000And that's absolutely what I loved and appreciated about it.
01:49:47.000Besides the fact that it was funny and besides the fact that the music was good, I loved and appreciated the fact that I could tell that this structure was wholly your own.
01:49:59.000I don't know if you saw some of the shows that we normally have.
01:50:05.000Table and chairs that we set up at the front of the stage.
01:50:08.000Depending on the show, there will be different kinds of tables and chairs.
01:50:11.000We always have some wine and some stuff on stage because we have friends that have either opened for us or are coming down to see us or are actually playing in this particular band that while they're not doing anything, they sit down and have a glass of wine on stage at the front of the stage with us.
01:50:27.000We've done a lot of shows like that where we've had Like, you know, two drummers and two bass players and a couple extra guitar players and then like that rhythm section just sits down for five songs and just having wine and cheese at the front of the stage just kicking it and then they get back up and do it because it just felt,
01:50:45.000Even Karina Round will sing a couple songs and I'll sit down and just kind of, you know, watch the show from the stage.
01:50:53.000Is that something you saw someone else do or just decided to do it that way?
01:50:57.000I don't know that I've seen anybody do it.
01:50:59.000I'm sure that has to have been done at some point.
01:51:03.000I've been trying to put this other show together with no luck.
01:51:08.000Where we have several bands kind of come up and do a very similar thing, but they play, you know, four songs, and then they sit down, and maybe there's some kind of segue where one of those guys is playing with that other band, and then, like, a band does, you know, four songs or five songs, and they sit down,
01:51:24.000and the other guys come back up and say, just keep rotating.
01:51:27.000You know, rather than doing your whole set and, like, here's who I am, and this is what I do.
01:51:32.000You know, just kind of, you know, do it almost like a very well-rehearsed Rehearsal, you know?
01:51:39.000Yeah, a very well-rehearsed rehearsal.
01:51:43.000Like, not the final performance, but like a week before it.
01:51:46.000A little glimpse into what it was, you know, a little bit of the chaos of those guys getting up there to do their next three songs, and it's not like them in their rhythm and in their element of like, you know, start to finish, this is our set.
01:51:58.000This is more like, we're going to get up and do these three songs, and then...
01:52:01.000We kind of have to, and it's not like, you know, some guys have to get a full-on boner to go do their set and do the whole thing and, you know, we fucking nailed it, man, or whatever that is.
01:52:12.000But just the idea of getting up and performing those songs in a couple of ways and putting them and putting us in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar environment that kind of helps us Just look at it again and re-enjoy what we remember doing when we started doing it,
01:52:48.000But if done right, it's not necessarily the underbelly.
01:52:52.000It's a show in and of itself that has depth and movement and passion and uncertainty and fear and all the real stuff that comes along with a movie.
01:53:43.000I was going the wrong way, pushing the wrong way, and I had my hand out the wrong way, and he went the other way, and his whole body landed on my hand.
01:55:43.000Now, that's another art form that over the last, say, two, three decades has really come into its own in a very strange way that didn't really exist before.
01:59:06.000It's really interesting because they're the ones who created such beautiful, these beautiful full-piece body designs, those body suits that are actually just one long, flowing piece of art.
01:59:19.000That's the origin of that, but not respected in the country where it came from.
02:00:03.000We went there pretty shortly after Fukushima.
02:00:08.000Where there was this weird feeling of distrust for the government's assessment of the damage and the dangers.
02:00:16.000And we had this long conversation with this taxi driver because he had to drive us from the venue all the way down to Tokyo and it was about an hour's drive.
02:00:25.000And so he spoke pretty good English and he was saying that for the first time people are openly starting to question whether or not the government's being honest with them about whether or not they can eat vegetables.
02:00:38.000Whether or not their ground is radioactive and their fish are edible.
02:02:36.000I guess if you're, like, way up in one of those bluffs, You probably got a pretty good shot at sticking around.
02:02:41.000Of not falling completely in the ocean.
02:02:43.000But those things have massive landslides, too.
02:02:46.000There was a couple of years ago, there was a news report where these people were waking up in the middle of the night, these horrible cracking noises, and they realized that their houses were sliding off the side of this hill down into this valley.
02:03:39.000We put in grid coordinates for like the tank batteries to pull in and you know if you're gonna if you're gonna shove a big missile in a tube and launch it somewhere you had kept you have to know where you are and To know where it's going basically, so that's what we would do is we would put the the survey points What branch of the military are you in?
02:04:31.000Yeah, people that have gone through that, it's very interesting to see.
02:04:37.000I had a friend who was real lazy and kind of shiftless and never got anything done, and then went away, went to boot camp, came back, and this motherfucker always folded his napkin after that and sat up straight and got shit done,
02:05:01.000I wouldn't recommend it today, because joining today, you have a high likelihood of either being forced to assassinate someone for the government, or finding yourself in a position where you really wouldn't want to be, and people are shooting at you that don't like Americans.
02:05:14.000Unless it's your calling, I wouldn't really recommend it, but god damn.
02:05:19.000For some people, it really is a game changer.
02:05:47.000You know, I didn't, I just didn't believe it.
02:05:49.000And then I got appointed to go, I got through a long process, but basically got handed an opportunity to go to West Point by going to the preparatory school for a year.
02:06:03.000And got to the end, like when I finally got my appointment to go to West Point, they said basically you have to forfeit your army college fund to go to art school.
02:06:13.000And I didn't really go in to be a career military person.
02:06:16.000I kind of went in to get college funds so I could go pursue the arts.
02:06:20.000But you know, again, my behavior was being reinforced as far as the way I was excelling in the military.
02:06:30.000So it was very tempting to go, I could be an officer.
02:06:35.000And then, you know, I got to that moment where I had to, like, I had to make that decision.
02:06:38.000In that moment, you have, basically, I had, like, three hours to check the yes box and accept my appointment or check the no box and, you know, go back into the regular army and then go back and go to art school.
02:06:55.000And if I had not done that, I would have, provided I made it through West Point, which is not a guarantee, if I had made it through West Point, I would have been in the first Gulf War as a lieutenant.
02:07:11.000I had a friend who is a cop and he was in the Army Reserve for 20 years and had less than a month to go until he was out for 20 years and they shipped him to Iraq for a year and a half.
02:08:27.000And Wasn't planning on it, thought he was getting out, thought he was going home, thought reserve meant reserve, thought 30 days meant 30 days.
02:08:38.000No, it means two one-and-a-half-year tours, or at least all in total, somewhere around three years.
02:09:08.000That must be something you think about often.
02:09:12.000But, you know, I could see, you know, I could see how I could have excelled at that and done well for, you know, done my part in that setting.
02:09:23.000A lot of my friends are law enforcement and military, so I get along with them well.
02:09:29.000You know, I also have all my, you know, crazy liberal friends that I get along with well.
02:09:34.000So I think it just would have been, if it was a path that I would have chosen, I would have just done whatever I could do with it.
02:09:41.000The law enforcement friends, I bet, understand your friendship with the crazy hippies and liberals more than the crazy liberals understand your relationships with the law enforcement people.
02:12:42.000And then, you know, went to Walmart, like actually spent like two hours in Walmart grabbing stuff just for that day to see what we could come up with to come up with costumes.
02:12:52.000That Halloween shirt and everything was just like on a quick trip to Walmart to see what we can come up with.