Alexa play tap Root, My passage isn't here, I gotta go, and I'm Dave and you were listening to Life Is Peachey, a nostalgia field podcast that allows me to sit here and waffle on about the bands and the albums that became the soundtrack to my life growing up in the nineties the early two thousands, and while we're at it, sharing a few memories from her Name is Murdered Productions. Hey, Hey, and welcome insert dad joke here.
Well, this is too serendipitous to be true and the best life is peachy segue to date because we are here to look back on tap Roots sophomore. Welcome with bassist Phil lipscom whatever your name is good, Ready for the big surprise and before the end of twenty twenty three catches up with us. Let's jump straight into that wondrous time machine and deep dive dissect this amazing album and period of life and existence found Ray found Phil, Thank you for your time
and energy, and welcome to the Life is peag podcast. Anthor Man, how you doing, I'm good. I'm good. Sorry if my voice is a little raspy. It's four thirty am. Where I am but I have my coffee and banana and oo infinity and are I'm good to go? Where are you at? Originally from Australia, but at the time of this recording,
happily living in the Netherlands with my wife. And I only say at the time because when this episode sees the light of day, my wife and I will have moved out of the Netherlands and who knows where it will be. Right. We just married earlier this year and the plan is to spend a little time in Australia soon. Congratulations, Yeah, thanks man. We married at the end of April, so yeah, it's all very lovely and fresh and feels amazing. Okay, wow, very fresh, yeah, very
fresh, very fresh. And speaking of fresh, Taproots celebrated new music in twenty twenty three, and this marks the longest gap between releases for the music because I don't know the lyrics are missing. The moment I first heard favorite song, I was taken to a very special place, and if I'm being completely honest, it's a place only Tapero take me. It felt like catching up all reconnecting with an old friend, that familiar, comforting feeling, you
know. Yeah, man, connection never went away. I don't even know the missing seems my free treeful. I'm all about celebrating tap Root and anything from your back catalworld. Your music really means a lot to me and comes from such a special time in my life, and it's most likely the same for many listening right now. There it can be only one, but some listening may also find themselves thinking, why are we here somewhat randomly deep diving
welcome when the twentieth anniversary was actually in twenty twenty two. But to do is a gift? Well, I didn't have a chance to make that happen last year, so here I am doing it now because I just couldn't let this one slide. And beyond that, I don't think there ever needs to be any reason to celebrate tap Root's highly unique sophomore and that special feeling your
music gives so many of us. No one doesn't like tap Root. You love a bang Bam, I get that again, drenching my bans in an hour, I'll be okay, I way, that's bang, We'll go why boman and list I'm bad ly fa then shin and so. Amongst the whirlwind of everything that's going on right now, in the tap Root camp. If we pump the brakes for a second, take a deep breath, and allow someone like me to come up to you and say welcome. What are some
of the first thoughts or feelings that come swirling to mind? I'm olgasy. Welcome is our second album, possibly most popular album, and it's the one that's got Pullem on it, which pretty much solidified our career. Right. I love that album with my second favorite, probably out of our albums, with Blue Fair Research being my first. What did we just become best friends? Yep? Yes, man, Blue Sky Research is my favorite Type Root album. Too awesome, man, lots of good memories of that album.
I might can go on and on about that album. Yeah, it's a real special one and definitely deserves its own episode in twenty twenty five, that one hits the big two. Oh, just saying where the way right? Thanks? I remember first coming across tap Root thanks to an Australian music video program called Rage which in the hours of Friday Saturday morning it would play new released music from some of the heavier bands. And it was thanks to this
I first saw Gift's debut single again and again on TV. This song ticked all the boxes for high school Dave and what I was into and definitely paved the way towards a lifelong love for tap Root. Amongst that explosion of Gift, a very exciting time for music, the scene and Pandemonius fanfare. What would you say were some of the main lessons you learned about yourself, whether let's see personally or creatively Following its release and this subsequent touring cycle, Yeah,
it was a whirlwind. Let me try to take us through it. So lead up to Gift, the whole getting signed thing was pretty wild because we're just a band from Michigan, you know, and getting all that attention pretty quickly. Let's see, we played a show with System of a Down to kind of get our management solidified under us, which was Velvet Hammer. They got us an opening game with the System, who they managed, and about a month later they had us flying out to LA to showcase for Rick
Rubin and American Records. And then after that Fred Durs thing hit, Hey man, he fucked up. You don't ever bite the hand the seeds in this business bill and you're fucking managers of its a fucking idiot, loser, motherfucker going nowhere. He just chosen that parent, took you under my wing. What you don't want to have fucking talk about your excellent radio on per
He embarrassed like me and interscoll family association. When the buss does maybe three man interesting and name around, he's going to be blackballed and probably be really and he will too. He's a fucking idiot. You're gonna fucking learn from this time. Right here, he'll be what you're band now. You just s fucked yourself. You need to be associated with somebody in this business.
He needs something to get you out there and put you out there and believe that's what pissed off bred Durrist is that he thought we were going behind his back, but we were just looking at our options. I think we could have communicated better about the whole thing with him, like say, hey man, this is what we're looking at. It's not that we're trying to do anything behind your back, but we're just trying to explore our options as a
businessman. You should understand that. But we're young and dumb and we just did it and was like, well, let's hopefully he doesn't get mad about this or hopefully it's okay. Without actually asking him, we're being upfront about it. Now, you're a real Blue Flames special, aren't you so young? Dumb and full of comb I know, I guess we just must have ourselves an asshole short of John. So it turned into what it turned into. It is what it is now. You got enemies and you're fucking yourself
already. Don't fucking show up my show if you do any gift. Fuck all right, you fucking punk. You're fucking dumb, motherfucker. You're learning right now exactly how to ruin your career before it gets started. Fuck you. We ended applying to LA and New York several times the showcase with the various labels, which was just I don't know, man, I've traveled a
lot with doing it like that. I remember flying into Lax and have a limo driver holding the sign that says tap root on it, and just like what is going on here and this game to play for these different labels and feeling all this movement about the band going on was again just a wild time and eventually signed to Atlantic Records and from there it was record Gift and we've done recordings but all of our recordings were like save up about seventy hundred bucks,
go in the studio for a weekend and record three tracks as fast as we can. So doing Gift was just such a different experience, and that we had a little bit of time, not a lot of time, but we had a little bit of time to focus on drums only, and then bass and then guitars and then vocals and really flesh the songs out a little
bit. I don't even know what I learned in that first session. Man, it was just such a whirlwind of just go and play the songs the best you can and play them again and then he ended, and again, and just trusting the producer Lerick Wilde at the time and to see where he goes. And I think we did a good job of capturing who we were because the first album was essentially a culmination of the past three years from when the band started. When we did the first album, the songs we'd played
live a bunch of times. For the most part, I think Now was the only song that was written specifically. I don't believe we ever played that one live before we recorded it. But everything else was stuff that we played live and played over and over again, and we're familiar with one of the things. I still find crazy because like one of our first days in the studio, MTV came in and did one of these like you Hear It First things for us, and that aired, and all of a sudden people knew
who were so many people saw that. Years and years later, I hear the story over and over again. That was the first thing that people heard on us. And for that little clip of us playing to have had such an influence on people, like actually wanted to check us out. It just shows the power that MTV used to have. It's like a five minute clip
or something. If I remember I MTV News You Hear It First. And on the topic of tap Root's debut gift over on my second podcast channel, the Life Is Peachy Mixtape Sessions, I go track by track through tap Root's debut with the amazing gents of the New Breed podcast. I'll link that in the description of this episode. That are a stack of other tracks waiting for you too, so after this episode, don't forget to go check that out.
And the following is an excerpt from track eleven of the mixtape sessions. The link to the second podcast channel can be found in the description for this episode. So I want to start with you, David. Were you aware of these guys before you actually picked up the album, Like, had you heard anything or was this like a blind purchase for you? The music video Again and Again was my first introduction. I probably had Red Hype because you
know, there was Korng, there was Metal Hammer. There was so many magazines and they were my bibles. That's how I discovered everything, particularly in Australia as well. When a lot of these bands before they were signed. Obviously we're playing in a Marria on the independent circuit. Unsigned, we didn't get them over to Australia, so it was all magazine education for me. I was aware of Taproot, and then I saw the music video, and
then the album came out and I got the album. Back in the day, I would go to the music store, put the headphones on, listen to the album and if the opening riff got me, you know, it had to be such a good opening riff, and then I would follow through with the rest of the song, and if I enjoyed that first song, I would just buy the album. The opening riff of Smile, I mean,
it's huge. It's amazing. That song ticks all the boxes. I think it's a perfect example of Mike de Wolfe's signature sound, huge, crunchy guitar tones and the vocals got a bit of everything vocal wise as well, and the end of the song it's just an amazing, perfect Defton esque ending riff. So yeah, I was hooked man after hearing this song. Yeah, I mean it's a hell of a way to start the record. Alexa
tap root smile. How would you describe what it was like for you during the Gift during cycle going from this somewhat green band from Michigan to then doing some pretty heavy hitting tours and festivals in front of, yeah, thousands of people. Was that a natural adjustment for you? We played a bunch of shows at home and built up a really solid following, but our first actual
tour was with popa Roach and I get it. Yeah, we felt we were a pretty good live band, and then those first shows with them just really made us go, wow, we need to step up our game because those guys were so solid and so good and so energetic and they still are and they made us step up what we were doing. Our energy on stage and I remember, I actually remember there was probably five shows in and we were playing I think LA My back was hurting so bad. I was trying
to push and just move more and my lower back was just dying. I remember leaning on my legs. Guys, you know, like I'm just getting down, but I'm just tired. I was. My back was just giving out on me. That's so funny. Yeah, dude, those guys were great. We got really lucky on that touring cycle. We got to tour with Depth Tones, we got to store with Incubus, Lincoln Park, Alien, m Farm, Dpe, Papa Roach, Disturbed, Who's who of bands you know, mud Baine, Slip Knot, Faticac. I remember playing this
short run. It ended up one of the guys got sick, Clown got sick. It was five shows and we end up only getting to play like two I think maybe three. Mud Bain was just coming out, and you know, it was seeing them sound check. This is the man, you know, obviously we're fans of. And also we're seeing these guys sound check without their masks. No one saw them without their masks, and we're like, oh my god, we get to see them without their masks. How
cool a wild man, Yeah, wild times Man. Even as I'm thinking about it, the names just keep coming. Osbest two thousand and two thousand and one, that seemed like an amazing time right there. That traveling Circus. Yeah, that really again just solidified us as a band that people knew, especially in that genre. Again, the power of them to be the power of Ozbest. It didn't necessarily make everybody blow up by any means, but it at least puts your name as a forerunner, you know, something
that people remembered because everyone was going to Asbest back then. Aspes was the concert of the summer. You go to ospest, you knew all the bands, You at least knew their names, You remember them, you saw them if you could. Yeah, being from Australia, I've vicariously lived out was first through the music magazines. Yeah, that was definitely a great way for me to hone in on what was going on, what was worth looking into.
I read about it in a book. But yeah, teenage Dave would have probably done many questionable things back then for a chance to experience all's first. Just once, I don't love someone, you gotta be a stranger when I look into you. Help Me. Joy's just help Me to your Famselephants
of Everything Day. Was there a natural, conscious or subconscious moment where it felt like ideas were starting to take shape and form and it was time to begin writing new material or was that timeframe decided for you guys from any outside factors. I think it was always happening if you looked at I guess the
timeline of the songs we wrote on Gift. We kind of went this progression from the very rap rock elements and then started moving away to more just the heavier and then also more melodic type stuff that we are pretty much known for, and just that songwriting growth of trying new things. I just kind of our entire career. One things I've always found funny because we're the same group
of guys. What we find is a song that was like, oh my god, this is such a different song for us, This is such a step away from what we normally do, and then we play it for people and be like, yeah, yeah, this is you guys in a bad way or good It just was what it was. It sounded like us, even if we felt we were stepping outside of the box. I mean, we're like all of a sudden doing some salsa or something. But for us, we were still within our genre but still stepping and doing other things.
But by just pushing those boundaries and working with the different producers we work with, we're able to craft our songwriting into what it became because I think at the beginning, you know, you're young and you're just trying to figure out what songwriting human is, and a lot of the stuff we would do early on would be just trying to kind of mess with our crowds, you know, like weird time changes, throwing extra beat here and there, just what
we found fun, right, And I think that stuff's still cool, but it can take away from the actual song itself. And so we started more writing for the song instead of just for these weird moments. And we said those weird moments because that's just kind of what we do. But I guess
we just smoothed out some of that that makes sense. I'm a big fan of each tap Root album predominantly because they all stand alone, and you guys are the kings of progressing your craft and songwriting between albums while still maintaining that core substance that fans fell in love with in the very first place, you
know, not losing your identity along the way. Guys, and I've always thought that's quite a difficult thing for a band to pull off and execute well, to have a back catalogue of progressive albums evolving one after the other. But in the same instance, you always know, you always can feel it's that same band that not a lot of bands can do that, let alone do it as seamlessly and impressively as Tap Root and Welcome has always particularly interested
me. It's quite a strange record in terms of its writing, its approach, and delivery. And if we go back and use that overarching label known as the new metal umbrella, which essentially every band was somewhat lumped under for a period of time, then I would happily call your sophomore avante gode new metal. I'm committing to that. Well, first, let me address new metal thing. Yes, let's do it. Is it the ehant in the room? So new metal in and of itself? I mean for a while
there, you know, I'm guilty of feeling this way too. It sort of got a bad rap pun intended, and looking back on it, though, with the nostalgia we have now of that time, period. To me, new metal isn't about the rapping and the DJ and all that stuff that it was known for at the time, because when you look at the bands
that are considered new metal, most of them don't even have that. New metal to me is more just that time period, that generation of music that just had that vibe from when Corn and Deftones and those bands just changed the landscape of music, and everything that came out after that just had this different
feel to it for me. I mean I say Corn because that was the band that changed the way I even thought about music, because before that, metal was like like and Slayer and Pantera, you know, that's metal that's heavy, and then Corn comes out and it's just this whole other animal, and I'm like, what is going on here? And I just loved it. That first one record, I wore the crap out of it, man, that was one of my favorite records of all time. And from there
finding you know, bands like Depthtones and It's Monny. I didn't even like depth Zones at first because it didn't sound enough like Corn. I wanted that exact thing. It took me a while to warm up to them because I had such expectations from here and the Oh yeah, they're similar to corn even though they are in the art, you know, I mean, they're really not looking back again. Just that time period of music. It just had a certain angst and feel and vibe to it that music before and after it
didn't quite have that. To me, is new metal if life was a just looking back, you can see it more clear really than when you're in the midst of it. And then for us, in a lot of the bands that were like us, where we're trying to distance ourselves from it because we didn't want to be pigeonholed in this one genre, we're not like that. We're trying to do something different. But then looking back, it's like, no, that's our generation of music. Now. I embrace it.
I think it's great. Anything you have to comment on that, well, it definitely feels more like a term of endearment in twenty twenty three, right, it really is. It really is, man, and I think it's cool again to become what it was where it was kind of a joke to now it's just this thing that we have all this nostalgia for and we miss the same way I did. I missed hair metal when like I loved it at the time, and then it became cheesy, and now I'm like,
dude, I love that stuff. I still love that stuff. Just because you like rock and roll doesn't make you stupid or any significant I think that's what every maybe generation of music goes through to a degree. I don't know. I didn't go through the other stuff, so I can't say, right.
So would you then say that when maybe you and other bands were trying to alienate or distance yourselves from the new metal label, was that in itself an influence and did that have an impact with regards to the writing of Welcome. Probably to say that it wasn't would be probably disingenuous to a degree. But songs like again and Again One night Stand impact. These are like the
later songs in our gift cycle and then we talked about with Welcome. Welcome doesn't really have hardly any of those elements to us of just a natural progression of just we tried it out and then we're moving away from it. And I don't know if that didn't become such a big thing, if we would have moved away in the same way, or if we would have ended up here anyway. But I feel like we kind of would have ended up where
we ended up anyway. To a degree, that was our trajectory as it was already, so to figure it out because I've got no doubt that when my dream's gone, Jill, it's because of you. Writing Welcome was a processes. We were fortunate in that we had our hit song right away. Steve actually wrote poem on his own in like I want to say, early two thousand and one or late two thousand. Yeah, I remember the song floating around prior to Welcome under the title poem to soph Yeah, funny brother
song. We were playing at ausgest and it got one of the biggest reactions and no one even knew the song. It just had a certain feel to it, and so we knew right away like this is our single. We weren't writing as to be a single. It's just a song that just came out and this is it. And so from there it was just write what we wanted to write and see what came out. And we had a lot
more time. The first record, like I said, was the culmination of the three years before that, and now we're in a situation where we've got maybe six months to write a new record, and that's what we get, you know. I mean, there's no playing live and seeing what people think of it. There's none of that. It's just you just sit in here and work on writing. You are the one. Therefore me tear they trains and dance up, boorns and men, thrill, dmic and the fan.
I'm you're al brand, thanks Jill me. Which isn't what we were used to doing either. And so a lot of long days, boring days. Some days come up with something, some days you don't. I believe we wrote like eighty ideas what during that time period that obviously most of that on the cutting room floor just didn't quite make it into being anything. Some really
cool songs, and I was still listen to some of myself. We would just released pressed the B sides that had some of that early stuff and our actual the B side thing with like one hundred and forty semi tracks, which is absolute madness, by the way, Yeah it is. That's one of those things that we discarded and I still listen. I was like, man, what would have that happened with Toby Wright helping us develop that into like a full on song. Some of these songs I think could have been something
more right, Yeah, I mean even a B side from Gift. That track day by Day is one of my favorite tap roots songs, and it luckily turned up on the Dracula two thousand soundtrack back in the day. But until B sides was released, there were obviously countless tape root songs up to one hundred and forty to be exact, Wow, that never saw the light of day and could easily have not only been partial fan favorites, but a favorite for you too, perhaps for sure? You know it is what it
is. I mean, our album Welcome is a great album. I'm very proud of it. And so what did we learned? A few things? We usually write altogether, and one of the things we did on that album was there's a few songs Steve would be doing something else, like working on his vocals with somebody or something, or work with Toby on lyrics. And Steve's a really good songwriter. Like when we have trouble I can't figure out something, we kind of lean on Steve a lot, like, Hey,
Steve, what do you think we can do here? Kind of thing, and not having him there made us depend on ourselves and figure it out. On our own and just dig in a little harder instead of having this sort of crutch, as it were, of what we can do in certain parts.
And I remember mine being one of the first songs that we wrote without We were all all the instrumentation without him being there, and then he came in and if I remember righting, the lyrics kind of came out of that feeling of like him coming in and hearing a song that we did without him, and he just got inspired to write those lyrics just from hearing the song that we came up with, which is pretty cool. Yeah, one of my favorite songs from Welcome to Be Fair. It's a very unique way to
open the album. Yeah, it's a fun one. I mean, just straight in with those hits and everything. I see myself, But it's not random. How could I and I am may? I guess maybe when doing an album, you have working titles, right. And Spacey is another one I like to talk about, even though it didn't make the record. The
greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And then it became Kevin Spacey just because Kevin Spacey was an actor that we you know, just ought to be funny to call it Kevin Spacey, well before all the controversy around Kevin Spacey that is around now. But that's also a song that stands out to me because it is the only song that we just
organically just straight up jamming. Someone started something and we all start playing, and then the next part comes out just organically, and then the next part, and it just kind of flowed and the arrangement changed for all of those parts to that song pretty much as is came about just from no communication other than just playing NonStop for about fifteen minutes of just letting this vibe happen throughout
the room. And I mean that was still really the way of the world back then, right, four guys in a room jamming and vibing, opposed to say now where members obviously don't even need to live in the same town, let alone in the same state or country to essentially run together. Yeah, exactly. And that was just such a cool feeling to that have that come out like that, and then to arrange it afterwards into the song that
it became. And it didn't quite go because of the trategy of Lane, Stali and Steve just never had anything that he loved that he did with it, and then we had the chance rather for Lane Staley to potentially record on it, and then he ended up passing away instead. It was just like, we just don't want to do anything more with it other than keep it as an instrumental at this point, man the what if hey Yeah yeah, wow, I'd never heard that story before. Yeah, So just to flesh
out that story a little more. We'd written the song, recorded the song, but just there was no lyrics to it. There's a couple of things Steve had done melodically and kind of like more sounds that I'd heard him do, and it just wasn't quite coming together. And so we're talking about who could possibly record on it, who could possibly be a guest vocalist or something.
And Toby Wright was our producer who'd worked with Alison Chains previously, so he had sent it to Lane and he was actually on his way up to see Lane and talk about it more in depth when we found out that Lane passed away. The rock world lost one of its more honest voices this weekend when Alison Chains front man Lane Staley was found dead in his Seattle home on Friday. He was thirty four long, and I guess his mom had told Toby that our CD was in his CD player. Wow. I don't know
if you had any ideas. It's just one of those big like what ifs. It's daily quote was a sweet man with a keen sense of humor and a deep sense of humanity. He was an amazing musician on inspiration and comfort to so many. Following on from mentioning Toby, just now, how did
the band come to work with producer Toby Ryan? When we've did our first record, our top two choices were all work in Toby, you know, like some guys know all of the producers and who produced what and all that, and we weren't as big into that aspect of it, you know. We do. Ross Robinson, That's one of the guys that we're very familiar with because he was just doing so many cool albums at the time. I can't stress hard enough how important it is to shine something beyond your fucking body.
Okay, you got to conjure the thing that's just screaming to come out of you, screaming, dying to come out of you. This is it. Everything that you ever loved has to come through, right now this is all we have. This is all we have. We have nothing else. We don't even get to keep our fucking bodies. But this lasts and inspires jealous I know, losing scenting Scar. But we left it to the label and our management to find and introduce us to people. And we'd go on
these lunch meetings with these guys and see how we vibed. And Toby and Alric were the two, and I think Toby was more expensive, so label went with Alric, which works for that record though, right because that record was more like we just needed a good engineer. We weren't really developing the songs too much further than where they were at. We just needed it to
sound better than our demos before that. And then so for the second record, we wanted Toby, and we got Toby because our label was willing to put a little bit more money behind us. And yeah, we clicked with him really well, and working with him was fantastic. And I remember when I was doing Breathe, it's the only song I played fretless on front to back. So there's a couple of little parts I do on a couple other songs. That's a song I played front to back. It's just stuff and
it was standard tuning. I'm playing it and I'm just not quite getting a couple of things on it. Flass coming back down me, I know. And I don't know if this is true or just told me just mess with me, or if it was legit. But apparently he took a phone call while I was taking a little break and it was Less Playpaul, and he kind of said, hey, I just talked to Less But I forget exactly
what told me. Saif just kind of gave me some words from less plap or just saying basically some words of encouragement from less stapable, And I was like, all right, let's do this, you know, like you know, let's just keep plugging away and nailing this. On the Wikipedia page for Welcome, it states that during the early development of Welcome, Taproot had given
producer Toby Wright roughly forty complete songs. Wright said that while they were good, the songs were not up to the band's potential, and he forced you
guys to start from scratch. What did you take from working with Toby and what would you say was some of the things he brought to the Welcome experience, so having worked with Alison Chains, I know he worked with Steve a lot on the harmonies and just kind of getting those a little bit more dialed in and developing that style of vocals that Steve was already kind of doing and just making it more so. This guy's methonical sacting and most of all patient.
He's a nutbags comming. Toby, you had this way of hearing what we were doing and just making us here a little differently. Several times I remember we'd have a song and you'd be like, why don't you take what you have in the verse and try to make at the chorus and take what you have in the chorus and put that as the verse and try that as the bridge. You're kind of moving our parts around with the orchestration and to
seeing what will come out. And there were definitely a few that that worked really well, and it's just like, wow, how did you hear that? Dad? I was lucky enough to have Toby join the podcast with forty below Summers, Max and Joey to celebrate their major label debut Invitation to the Dance, as he was the mixer on that release, Gaslas. The following is an excerpt from episode fourteen of the Life Is Peachy Podcast with Toby Wright.
Oh, that was an extremely amazing time in life. I feel that this is a time and place in music, and today's music doesn't mean as much as it did that back then, and I think that's especially true for people your age, people a little bit younger than you. And I don't know whether it's the bands and their music now or whether it's just my attachment to the past and all the great music that I was a part of for
so long, you know what I mean. I'm still part of a great number of musical ventures, but at the same time, I don't feel like it's as important as it used to be. Of course, don't know him on a personal level by any means, but my impression is that he has quite a unique connection or relationship with music and its energy and impact. Would you say there's any merit to that observation or did you pick up on anything interesting while working with him? Toby was great to us, man, it
was such a fun time working with him. I mean, he's very into musicianship though right like he wants bands to play live. He's very about the live experience of music as opposed to just programming it in or any of that stuff. He wants live drums. He wants as live a feeling as you can get helives. Musicians should be able to play their instruments. Crazy thought, right, And we practiced a lot. He had us practicing a lot.
And I actually just finished Jared's book True rock Stars about a month or two months ago, Jared being our drummer, and I kind of realized this at the time, but I wasn't paying as much attention. I was just kind of in my own world. I did not have the I guess empathy that I have now for the situation. Toby wanted a different drummer at one point, like He's like, man, I don't know if Jared can do this. I don't know if Jared's good enough to be doing the record that
I want to hear. And Jared talks about this in the book. He ended up buying a practice kit, bringing it to the apartments where we lived at, like one of these mesh heads and all that stuff, so he can practice and work on his techniques and work on his writing and work on everything. Love in missing thing, he was just plug away at it. I remember him doing it. I just thought that's just what he wanted to do. I didn't realize he was making a point to step up his game
so that he can make sure to be on the record. And so again that's this kind of guy Tolb he is. Toby was always like, if you can't hack it, we'll find someone that can. Now that Jared would have been out of the band, but just some might not record on the record. I guess other bands may or may not do that. I don't know, but that's kind of what his feeling was, and Jared stepped up and he nailed it. Jared got to the point where Toby was happy with
what he did. I feel in many ways, all four of you stepped up on that album and took things to a whole of a level. Yeah. Yeah, we're kind of had to. Yeah, it sounds like it on my side. Yeah. The other crazy thing was work with Toby or anytime the studio actually, but this time in the studio was where it affected
me the most. I think just with the concentration and the focus of working on a song is we would have lunch and then work on the song a little bit, and then you're taking a break and next thing, you know, it's like, hey, what do you guys want for dinner? I'm
like dinner? What time is it? And it'd be like six hours later and your dinner time and you're like I just time just takes on this whole different feel when you're just in the studio listening to the song and just trying to play to it and trying to get it just right, and they're punching you in and trying to clean up some things that you were doing, or you're trying to rehash a part that you had written it wasn't quite fitting in like we thought it were an hour on my side, time of the studio
is just this whole another thing. It just flows fast, feels slow, but it goes by fast. I like to play looking Back as a Welcomes track list. What are some of your favorite songs or ones that have stood the test of time for you? Breathe as one of them. Reade's one of my favorite songs on that album. Art Art is one of those ones that just turned into so much more than what it started as myself, that little scream slash harmony. Steve, doesn't that chorus so good? Yeah?
Right, so good? So good. That's such a cool song. Time was cool. That's when we don't play enough live. Dreams is another highlight for me. Yeah, Dreams Man Dreams is a cool one. I love that one. Yeah, say it again. It's just a very interesting, intricate album. Did the songs translate live? I think so. We still play myself all the time mine obviously poem Dreams was one I wanted to play more. Steve for some reason, didn't love it as much live, but
we did play it quite a few times. I thought it did well art. We used to do a lot time. We did it for a small stint. Everything's a song we did for a while live a lot. That was a cool one. It's just an album. A thing is really Yeah, that's a name, like, oh yeah, that is that album. Yeah, it's kind of like, huh, this song's on this album. Wait, this one's on this album too. This is a good album, isn't it. It's science. What I excesest is my excess adness, so
deprecasion. I hate myself sometime some songs. When with one of the ones that was not fun to play live. It just has such a weird deal to it when you try to play it live. It's hard, not harder than technical, but just not fun to groove to. It's a cool song to listen to, but not a cool song to play live. We did that a few times and we put the plug on that. To be,
Oh, not to be, not to be. Do you have any particular moments or memories that come back to you when looking back on the actual recording experience of Welcome And let's see what do I got that moment with less paple or you know, not with less payple. I was recording Breathe was a big one for me. See I'm mixing because we worked with Blue Sky Research and Welcome with Toby, we kind of melding my head and I think I remember Blue Sky Research a little bit more as far as some of the goofy
stuff we were doing. It's been a long time. Sometimes sometimes okay, well, digg in on something more specific, then I'd love to wreck your brains about the mind music video directed by Chavo from System of a Down. Very cool video, but I had no idea he was a director at the time, or if maybe that was even just one off for him. So how did that whole collaboration come together? Chavo's cool sharing the same management.
He gave us an inside scoop into what each other was doing to a degree, and so Chago, if memory served, he was trying to get out there and wanted to direct more. He try his hand at different things. And so when it was brought to us, like, hey, Havo is interested in this, he's got a treatment, he's got an idea. Would you guys be interested, it was like, of course. I mean they
were one of our favorite bands and they were always cool to us. So him wanting to do that, it's sort of like a mutual benefit, you know, we get to have him, he has to have us. It just worked out really nicely. And then the concept I don't know if that was his or some treatment someone else wrote and he just took it and turned into what it did. But I love that video. It was such a cool video. We have that idea of like that little special effect of the
aura would stay behind or whatever's going on in there. They actually built those rooms, wrote all the lyrics all over it. And what's funny, I don't think of to see this if you actually just watched the video, but we started looking at it and certain words would be changed, and people were kind of having fun with it along the way, like they would change some the lyrics a little bit, or some of the spellings, and that was kind of a neat little thing. We have these two rooms of the like
silverish blue room and then the red room. It was just a fun, quirky little video. And then we took to people from the poem video Cooper and I want to say her name, Jessica. I could be wrong, but I remember Cooper because Cooper we actually hung out with outside of there a few times and he became kind of a friend of ours. And the male lead, so we brought them into that video too, which I thought was
nice. And it's always cool to tie in from previous things. Yeah, I'm a big fan of that interlinking and creating universe within your own body of work. Not in my movie, yeah, but music videos, honestly,
they are pain in the ass, oh man. A lot of work, A lot of work, yeah, because you're not actually playing, but you gotta pretend to play, pretend to go crazy, and it's like a lot of waiting around and then all right, everyone out here, and then you just try to go crazy for a bit and then play a bunch of times, and then you sit around for a while again, you eat too much food because there's craft services and long days, man, long days. Honestly,
my least favorite thing about being a band. I thought I recalled reading back in the day there was a third music video plan for art. Is there any merit to that? I don't think it ever got to the point where there was almost gonna be a video. I think it had been talked about, but my recollection never got that far. People only do things because they get paid, and that's just really sad. There's often a lot of
pressure when it comes to the sophomore follow up. So at that point in time, did any of that ween on you guys either placed on the situation from yourselves or the label to follow up Gift? Well, we didn't write eighty songs for fun, but to that end, and I think we're very fortunate on this, and maybe so we had already a poem in the bag, right. We kind of knew what our single was gonna be, so
we didn't get much pressure from the label. We never got much pressure from our label in that sense, because we wrote melodic songs, we wrote catchy stuff, we'd like that anyway. So we never got a lot of pressure from our label to specifically write a song like this band or that band, or do this or do that. It gave us a lot of freedom to do whatever we wanted. But I'm sure also if we went completely left field, they might be like, get back over here. We're gonna give you
freedom, but not too much freedom. You have freedom as long as you play in the area that you're supposed to play in, as long as you don't test that freedom too much. That's interesting to hear though, because I
actually consider welcome to be quite left field. So father to that point, and going a little deeper into what you just touched on this point in time, how did Tabroot feel on the roster of Atlantic Records and what elements of a relationship with a major label factors in or impacts on the creative process if
at all. Let's see good and bad. To be honest, I think one of the things where Atlantic could have done better is they seem to have this idea of like we have our bands, we have our pod, we have our kid rock, we have jewel, we have whatever right they have. These people that they know is are going to do well and that's their main focus, and then everyone else they kind of give a half assed effort.
Canna make it lotchuna take it. And I say that because even though it ended up being a hit on every radio station across the country, poem didn't have what they called buzzworthy time feel to it where every station's playing at the same time, because it didn't have that big push from Atlantic to say, hey, this is what we're doing, this is what you guys need to play, this is what we're pushing. Let's make this into something,
because it obviously had that appeal. It was more like these five radio stations liked it and they start playing it right away, and then a month later, these other stations are playing, and then another few weeks these stations are playing. By that time, those first stations are trying to play the next single because they've had it for two months, while these other stations that's brand
new to them. So it eventually became a hit again across the country, but it never turned into this big like millions of records, sold, millions of dollars in my bank account, any of that stuff. Their early work was a little too a way for my chage made some money on it, for sure, but I mean the record even go gold. You know, as big as that song is, I mean it still gets played on radio
today. As big as that song got on radio stations, it just never turned into that because it never got that national at the same time appeal, which I was upset about it at the time, But looking back, I think it's helped our longevity of our career. Now we have a certain amount of credibility because we never were that one hit and done. We've had to
work hard. We've had to plug away and plug away and plug away, and we've had songs that have been modest hits, but never this runaway thing that people got sick of because they heard it so much or anything like that. To do this, I still function, Yeah, why did Jones side line? How go on that Gerones side? My body and my soul mind
right now, I can't make you go out right. So I think that's helped us at this point because we've kind of kept this what I call you know, when you have that band that you like that no one's really heard of yet, they're still kind of close to you. They just stay that way and you can kind of keep them close the whole time, or they
blow up real big. And when they blow up real big, if they end up in everybody CD player, it loses something of that feeling of like I feel like I'm part of this, right It's like now everyone's got it and it's just not as special anymore. Exactly what you're talking about. I had that back in the day was system of a down. Oh love them when their debut came out, but then they just became so big and too
known, and good for them. Of course that's amazing, and you want bands to experience success, but it definitely felt like I had lost my personal connection with them as a result. And that does happen. It's just a very interesting concept. I can tell you. That's not I can tell you right now. Yeah, it just is what it is, like, you can't deny it. It just is what it is. It's something about human
nature and the way we are with music. But by not having blown up like some of these other bands, I think to a degree, we've been able to keep that with our fan base, and our fan base has been very loyal. Even through this period where we you stop playing shows and weren't doing much. You have this not very strong social media presence, and we write weird albums like the Episodes that kind of take fans in a different direction.
And we have Our Long Road Home. Funny thing about that album, I'm jumping ahead a bit, but Our Long Road Home was a pretty good selling record in its first week, but because it was so different than what we've done, it was the most returned album the next week after that. But then years and years later it's one of our most requested albums because even though it was unexpected at the time, when you look back on it, it's a really solid album. Oh yeah, definitely, dude. Like I
keep mentioning, I consider tap Root as masters of progression. Whether one hopes for more or this or less of this between album releases, I don't really care about that when it comes to listening to new music from you, because it always just feels authentic. It never feels forced or contrived or following the new gimmick you guys. It just always talked with I can tell you you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
I'm a fan of my band to a degree, I can see it from an outsider's point of view. In addition to being an insider, I don't know what it is about that. You know, Steve byte the lyrics. I can see where the main songwriters. So I would contribute my parts and stuff, But some of these songs came out without me, you hardly having a part. And to be honest, Paul, for instance, poem was literated by Steve. We just played it and kind of made it our own to a degree. But I mean, if you hear that first demo,
it's like, yeah, that's the same song. Because of that, I can kind of have both viewpoints. A fan of Steve and Mike and their old bands before I was even in the band with them, So I've always been a fan of Steve. I've always been a fan of the things he does and the way he writes and all that. So when I look at our albums, I think each one and I think you've alluded to this has its own feel, its own voice's own vibe. Yeah. To me, it's that moment in time for where we were, and that's why it
sounds like it does. Our Along Road Home, I mean, that's the first album we recorded at home, and we did three records out in LA and all that time spent, and you know, months and months away from family, and we're just like, we're done with that. We're gonna spend this time at home. We just traveled to the studio every day, went back home, fleshed out this record, a lot of it just in the studio that didn't write everything beforehand, and then you know, rehearsed a bunch
and then going to the student record because we didn't have that luxury. But we also now had the luxury of just going to the studio fleshing out parts and fleshing out the songs as we wrote them. And so that album is actually one of the albums that I can play the least, right, some of those parts. That time I played it is the only time I ever
played it. We didn't play it live again later. I never had to relearn it, and that particular take was the one that worked, and I might have written something completely different or that's the first I ever played it like that, and then we moved on and then that's what was there, and that's it. Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah, do you remember how you were feeling on the eve of the album's release. M M, Yeah, definitely proud the album release was cool. I think we made a point
on almost every album to go buy it in the record store. That's cool, And we'd always grabbed the records and put them up front, right of course. But what always made me just really excited was whenever I heard the song on the radio. That to me, it was the culmination. It's like, oh my god, I can't believe we're on the radio right now. This is just crazy. Yeah, man, I can imagine what a
trip. It sounds the same from a Vivio or something. Every once in a while it would just come on or get an I'm just listening to the radio and boom, there it is. It's like, oh, that's so cool. Do you know what sucks about being a Baldwin? Have bomb myselfla black glass and tire. Youre going browning effect and drenching my very night. All building Okay some day so I can say that, Jill Moodmin's the right
way way same. You and Steven have spent so much of your life together decades long as friends, bend maids, business partners, whatever it may be. I'm sure over time that's an extremely nuanced relationship. How would you describe where you and Steven are at these days with each other and within Tap Root.
It's interesting. I mean, the thing with Steve is when you're in a band with somebody and in just thinking happens because we're friends really before we were in the band, and then we obviously became better friends because of the band. But then when you spend so much time with somebody on the road, when you get off the road, you generally don't see them at all. You're just like I am doing my own thing and you do your own
thing, like we don't need to hang out. And it's always fun though, So there's these cycles of like I went and talk to them for months, and then we'd get together and it would just be so much fun getting back together, you know, like we never lost a beat. And that's what I love about it. That's what I love about Steve, That's what I love about Jared. These guys that I've been with for so long, it's like you see them again even if you haven't talked to them for months,
and it's just boom, You've got this connection that's deeper. You've experienced things together that most people have not gotten to do. So to myself, it helps me Jesus, Sam literally travel the world together. So when we get together, it's just like finding your brother again, seeing your brother again. I have to not seeing them for a while. You don't have to talk to them all the time, but when you do and you see him or you talk to them, just all good again. We've been doing these
weekly live streams that we call Taboo Tuesdays. That's really where I talked to Steve often during the week, but I get to see him. We'll do some interviews together sometimes, and it's funny. We've done some interviews lately and that's us talking for the first time in years. I'm really talking. We'll talk while being interviewed and then we'll just kind of share stories and all learn stuff about him that I didn't know because we're not talking that much. You
know, it's more business when we're not actually in the same room. Song don't know girls. Just so over twenty years of fresh respect, where does Welcome sit with you personally and creatively? Within the back catalog of tap Root and your own life? So I'll summarize it like this. The first three albums, almost any song on there other than say something like like right, which we never played live, but almost every other song I can play having
not played them in years. Some of those songs I haven't played since like two thousand and three or two, And when I went to just kind of play through it we're rehearsing for our tour, it was just back there, no problem. They sit in my memory so strongly because of all the time we spent on them in the studio and just playing them afterwards and listen to
those albums over and over again. They're pretty strong in my head. Whereas I hit Fracture, which I've played hundreds of times from Plead the Fifth, I went to play that one and I'm like, what do I do here? What's going wrong? You know, there's something special about those first three records and the time and place and the time we spent and the touring we did on them and all that. There's a much stronger sense in me then the later albums. Again, I love our later it's just something about it.
Those are the records to me right, Gift, Welcome, Blue Say, Research, our Atlantic records, those will hold the special place. I love our Long Road Home, I love Plead the Fifth, I love the episodes eight or each their own things, but when I think of really what pitomizes our band, it's onose first three records temperary. Then oh absolutely, I mean, you know, we're touring on tour busses, we're playing with
all the bands, we're doing all the festivals. Everything was still real easy, you know, because after Bruce got researched, the music industry kind of took her this downturn. Our genre kind of took a downturn. Became a struggle for a while after that, which was well, honestly, where I learned the most about myself and the things I can do as far as our band cycle. That's some kind of where I had to step up. Jared left the band. I had become more responsible. I had to learn how
to do budgets. I had to learn how to talk to people. I had to learn to bandage the band to a degree, dig into the business side, figure out the tax stuff, figure out so many things that were being done for us before that. A lot of new life skills prolonged from never completely growing up because being full time in a band from a young age, well without that that a good job. Now I've not learned to do
spreadsheets by having to learn to do budgets. I learned to do so many things that help me and just talk to people and how to interact with people that help me In my job now, I'm a facility manager at a warehouse and I deal with so many different things and this ability that I've learned to kind of go with the flow and guide that flow certain directions and know how to talk to people, know how to not be a dick, you know, deal with somebody that's being a dick, but not be a dick back,
because that's what I have to do. All that came from having to help manage the band for the second half of our career. And if you're still here with us, and we'd love to hear more about Phil's life beyond the band and coming back to the scene after a decade with a new Taproo guitarist in Taylor Roberts, and what that dynamic is like. It's just a
hop and a skip over to patreon dot com. Slash Life is Peachy podcast Episode twenty nine's bonus interview is available right now under the Michael Bolton teer. But yeah, it's amazing man being able to take life skills, learn from the band and incorporate them into other aspects of your life. Bank goodness, I don't know what I would have done about it. Amazing. Well, on that note, Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to
look back on Welcome. I appreciate it so much. Yeah, man, Yeah, it's got all over the place, but I hope it's really okay. Oh nah, it's great. Man. I love letting these interviews go wherever they like, and it's all relative and important, so I'm here for it. Definitely, no complaints from me. Man. I appreciate it. Man, Thank you so much. I appreciate the interview. This was fun. I'm always interested to see what direction interviews go, and I'm glad we
got to go some different directions and where it usually goes. And thank you for being so in depth with the questions you want to hear about and the things you want to hear about, and letting me expand upon things and being interested. It's nice to talk about these things. And it's nice to kind of revisit this time in my life. Because I have kids now, I don't get to think about this anymore. That time it was just such a separate life. It's just other life. And as I do interviews like guys
like you and other people. It's just like, oh, yeah, I remember that now, I remember there's some of this stuff, so I don't walk through this again. Man. In a few months after replay some shows or something fine about when we can bag do you want to hit me up again? We'll do something again and hopefully some more stuff comes to my as I'm back in the mix. Yes, man, I would love that because
I could keep racking your brains for ages. So that would be great to Yeah, take you up on that offer if you still feel like it in the future, and of course yeah, definitely. Twenty twenty five Blue Sky Research that one hits the big two. Oh Arthur Van, They'll have and there we have an episode twenty nine of the Life Is Peachy Podcast, my
chat with Phil Lipscoon looking back on taproots amazing sophomore Welcome. Next up in twenty twenty four, The who, the what, the where and Why is always revealed first up over on Patreon, where lip patreons find out early guest and album reveals exclusively via two of the available three tiers, and as mentioned before, additional episode content and interviews are waiting for you under the Michael Bolton tier at patreon dot com slash Life is Peachey Podcast Any Love over at Patreon
really does help to make the necessary time that is required to write, record, and edit these episodes on top of my full time job with her name is Murder. It really does make a difference. More support means more time and the most important thing, more episodes for you And if you haven't already followed the link in this episode's description, a subscribe to my second podcast channel, the Mixtape Sessions, because there are a bunch of new tracks hitting the
channel in twenty twenty four. Interviews already recorded with the likes of X Machine Heads Dave McLain, for example, the last thing didn't prove to be Ali and Gall of what we need to do. So the mindset was like we're going to go in, you know, bring in another producer, change our look and to get production sound that was more popular at the time. It was just going for something different and different at that time was Corn and that
whole scene and Meannoin Ross. I think Ross would definitely produce the record. I'll give them a call, you know. So it was kind of like that easy if you interested in what I do with her name is murder. Head over to Life is Peachey Instagram, where you'll find photo and video content from my recent end of year Astray intour with Sepultur. That was an amazing
time. Until we hang out again in twenty twenty four. I want to send everyone happy and amazing New Year and of course an amazing New Year's Day and beyond. I wish nothing but the best and brightest for you all. Thank you so much for your love and support. Stay safe, have fun, big love, See at the party. Rechter, Bye bye. You
know I can eat a page for hours. This episode was written, edited and produced by myself, recorded from the comfort of my own home, door war style, with each guest calling in from wherever they happen to be around the world at that particular time. The Life is Peachy theme song is an original tune for this podcast, written by Tim Richardson. The Life Is Peachy Podcast is not monetized. All music rights and credits go to its rightful owners.
Further details can be found in the description of the specific episode. All artwork is original and illustrated for The Life Is Peachy Podcast by Chris Lisa lifting Alexa. Play Tap root