Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Steps podcast. My guests today are John Doe and the que Jervenka of the B and X, which just put out its final album and is on its final tour. How did the two of you meet?
We met at a writing workshop in Venice, California called Beyond Baroque, and Beyond Brokes still has writing workshops. It has the largest small press library and is a great community service in Venice, California.
So why did you go to the writing workshop?
Because we're writers. I had a writing workshop in Baltimore. It was part of a poetry series. I went to school at Antioch College and Ecceine worked there, and I thought this would be a place that I could meet like minded people in LA. When I moved.
Were both living in Venice in nineteen seventy six, and I got a job there, and so I lived upstairs from the workshop and the library. I worked in the library and stuff, and so I just I just ventured down there one night to see if I could qualify as a writer.
John, let's go back to Baltimore. What was it like growing up in Baltimore?
It was great as a young adult, I mean it was the same I moved there, and when was it? Early mid sixties? But as a young adult I first experienced a bohemian lifestyle in Fell's Point and was hanging around with John Waters' crew because they would just going to the same bars that I went into, and it pointed the way to realize my dreams, except not in Baltimore.
Let's go back. So before you lived in Baltimore, you live.
Where Wisconsin, and before that in Tennessee and before that in Illinois. Because my dad moved around.
And why did your dad move around?
Because he was a librarian and he wanted better jobs.
He was a librarian. What did your mother do?
She was school teacher? Well, she was a mom until my brother and I were in school, and then she became a school teacher and she became a school librarian. So they were smart folks.
So who's older? You were? Your brother?
My brother?
And so what's he up to?
He's a builder, he's retired.
Okay, So your father was a librarian. Were you a big weader growing up?
Not really, No, I wanted to be outside and do things. They would bring home a stack of books for summer reading, and they would sit on my dresser. I did read Edgar Allan Poe sometime around the sixth or seventh grade.
And were you a good student? Bad student?
Pretty good? It was just about the same as what I am now solid B.
You went to Antioch? Did you graduate?
Yeah? I quit school. I went to school for one year in DC, and then I quit for a couple of years, did construction, and then in Baltimore there was a experimental theater that was called the Theater Project, and I saw some performances there and thought they were pretty outside and interesting, and then found out that Antioch had a branch above a insurance company downtown Baltimore, and they had a writing program, and I thought I'd been writing
and I wanted to be a better writer. So I went back and yeah, I graduated.
And how'd you meet John Waters?
He was just hanging around and he was the biggest celebrity in Baltimore at the time.
Okay, well, Pink Flamingos came out in seventy four, so he had some movies before them, really like No Traction, But in Baltimore everybody knew who he was.
Those two, those two others Mondo Trashow and Multiple Maniacs. They had plenty of traction in Baltimore. There was a there was a really heavy duty and not heavy duty. There was a small but powerful bohemian underground art scene in Baltimore. So everybody knew John Waters and New Divine and knew although he didn't really hang out much, but Edie did, and so did David Lockery and so did Mary Vivian Pierce and Mixtole and all them.
And how did you decide he wanted to be a writer?
Oh? I don't know. I was playing music and people wrote music along with just learning how to play.
And well, well, let's go back. When did you start to play music?
Oh God, are we going to go back to my childhood? And when I started working?
Absolutely no, I don't want to do that.
I might rather talk about the President of the future. But I don't know. I played music because it seemed like a cool thing. I mean, I'm at that age when people saw the animals and the Beatles on ed Sullivan and stuff like that.
And how'd you end up coming to California?
Because I didn't like the East Coast. I was tired of the negative negativity and the weather. And I had been to New York a few times saw the Talking Heads and the Heartbreakers at Max's and CBGB's, and it seems like that whole scene was great. But it was pretty far down the road.
And you came to La. Where did you stay? How much money did you bring? Hot? Would you get a job? What'd you do?
I had a car, I brought some stuff, and I lived in Venice with a friend, and I got a job at Brentano's bookstore in Beverly Hills.
Okay, Excene, where are you from?
Well? I was born in Chicago, but when I was a little, tiny infant, my family moved to rural Illinois, so I grew up there.
And what did your parents do for a living?
My father had a very interesting life, but when I was born, he was a carpenter and my mom stayed home and lived in a very, very very small town. And so my dad would go to work and I would play in my Irish fama. I lived with us until I was in about third grade.
And then when did you get influenced by music?
Listening to the car radio when I was very very little. My favorite song growing up was Hello Mary Lou by Ricky Nelson on the radio. I really loved that song. But my big influence was well, of course, like John said, you know, I was born in nineteen fifty six, so I kind of missed the Halves Presley and the rockabilly stuff, but I was there for like the Beatles, and then of course the British invasion and the Doors and all that stuff. So I was pretty mind blowing.
And then how did you end up coming to California?
Well, I was living in Florida, and I was kind of at the end of the road as far as options, and I was living in Tallahassee and nineteen seventy six, which pretty dead end there for a freaky person like me. And so somebody called me out of the blue and said they were moving to California up San Francisco, and did I want to go with him and give them because they needed gas money. So I had two friends
out in southern California. I called one of them and she said, sure, and you can come live with me. And then she's the one that helped me find that job at the ontt Earl where I met John. I was only in Santa Monica there when I arrived for a couple of weeks before I got that job, and That was only a couple of weeks before I met John right after that. It was really quick.
How did you end up in Tallahassee.
Well, I was living in Saint Pete and I had a boyfriend and a job, and I was sixteen seventeen. I was very, very happy. My parents had moved to Central Florida. My other sister was living in Saint Pete, my older sister, and then my mom got sick and I had to move home because she died suddenly. And I had to move into this small town of three into people in central Florida and raised my little sisters with my dad, which was not which was a faithless job. And I did that for about a year and a half.
And then by the time then I moved back to Saint pet But then everybody moved to New York and stuff, so I just kind of went stayed with the friend of Tallahassee. You know, when you're in your teens, you've got this whole network of great people and artists like job I was talking about, and everything's great, and then everyone starts to move to different places and drift away,
and then you're just left behind. So Tallahassee was not a good place for me, So I took the option and I went to I rode in the car to California with one hundred and fifty dollars. I sold my nineteen fifty five zero Cadillac FI thre hundred dollars, paid my back rent, got to California with about one hundred and fifty dollars, got that job and immediately an apartment at the same place I was working, met John and started going to shows, and I was doing poetry and stuff.
So what was your school experience? Were you a good student, bad student? Did you?
I went to a very small town Catholic school, and I loved it because it was all there was in my town, gravel Road, you know, there was to go outside and play and go to school and go to church. That was it. But then my family would Saint Pete area when I was young, like fourteen.
I loved that.
But I quit high school on my sixteenth birthday. I did not like Florida schools. I hadn't learned anything since I moved down there. I didn't like the social thing. You know, it was the sixties, early seventies. I didn't need it.
I just quit, and you quit and then what'd you do for money and where'd you live?
Well?
I just got a job back then, you know, you just get a job in an apartment tomorrow and nobody had any problems with police. So I like, now, yeah, a minimum waste job in an apartment, just like that, sixteen years old.
And was there any dream or were you just kind of drifting taking it as it was.
I had a great boyfriend, a wonderful boyfriend, and I wasn't sure what we were going to end up doing, but it was really smart and creative, and I thought we were going to get married and I was going to do some art stuff and he was going to work hard because he was that kind of great guy. But then after my mom died, I realized maybe raising kids wasn't for me, and maybe being married wasn't for me, and I just wanted to escape my life. It's really bad,
and threw him over for no reason. And he's a great guy and I totally regret that, and he knows that. But I decided, you know, on a whim, to go to California. If somebody called me and said they needed guess money to Chicago, I had to go to Chicago.
Where's that guy today, I don't know.
I hate that question because you know, almost everybody's dad that we know he might still be around. I don't know.
So you didn't look up, you know, when everybody appeared on the internet.
I don't do Facebook or any that at the Internet is very is very scary to me. I just try to stay away from it as much as possible.
Do you have a smartphone?
I do have a smartphone, but I don't have any social media or anything like that.
Okay, so when you get this job, do you have any dreams of being a writer or that's just what you're doing right then?
I'm a writer. But you know, see that's the thing. It was so fun back then because you know, it was after it was before AIDS, and it was the gay time where everybody's like everyone was in self discovery. Everybody in the underclasses or the weirdos were all together.
So whether it was music or being gay or being straight, you know, whatever it was, we all kind of saw each other as these really cool counterculture people were all hanging out together and you know, smarter than the average bear because we knew what was real and what was it. And I was happy with that. I would have been fine just being a writer and a poet. I never had any dreams of being in a band. I love
the doors growing up, but I in Illinois. I never would have thought i'd meet Raymond Zrek and get in the band and all that. It just happened. It was just an accident. And I had a song that I wrote because I just decided to write a song one day and I sang it to John. He wanted to play it with Billy and I said, no, you can't just take my song. It's all I have in this world.
He said, fine, then you sing it, and I said, okay, then I will, which was kind of crazy since I'd never sung a song besides that one in my life, but I figured why not.
Hey, John, you talked about going to New York seeing the Talking Heads. Were you aware of the Ramones and the hard Ridge bands at that point?
Oh? Yeah, of course I was. Just my parents lived in Brooklyn and the Talking Heads happened to play the weekend that I went up there to visit them.
I see, so you came to LA. Did you plan to form a band and try to make it? Was that the plan? Oh?
I suppose I had a vision.
That I might.
I thought I could write songs. I had been out there with a friend and he and I were kind of a songwriting team. We wrote I don't know a dozen or so songs back in Baltimore, and there was some guy who we contacted and met with, and he liked our demos and said he would he would buy them for five hundred dollars apiece. And we thought, well, if we could do that a couple of times in more, if we could do that a few times a month,
then we'd we'd be okay. But I just knew I had to get out of Baltimore and didn't want to go to New York. And as soon as I walked off the plane, walked out of the airport the first time we went to LA, I just felt like it was home or it was it was a place that was exciting and intriguing. I think probably because of writers like Charles Bukowski and Jim Thompson, you know, Raymond Chandler movies and such.
How do you feel about LA fifty years later?
Oh, I haven't lived there in forever, so it's a it's there's still a little bit of something there. It's it's very very different. I like it. I wouldn't live there. It's really hard to get around, it's hard to stay connected to people that you know because people live on different sides of town. But there's still something, there's still some magic there. I suppose. I'm happy to be living in Austin right now.
So how did you decide to leave LA? And when did you leave La?
Left to LA when my wife at the time and mother of my children and I had enough money to buy a house, but not enough money to buy a house in LA and we're kind of tired of it and didn't want to raise kids in LA. So we moved up into the mountains about seventy five miles north
of Los Angeles so I could commute pretty easily. Raised three daughters for twenty years up there, and it was pretty idyllic mountain, very physically challenging at times, a lot of weather, snow and such, and that's exciting.
And what are your three daughters up to today?
They're all they all do things that they love. Ones a choreographer and dancer. They all live in the Bay Area. The other is a kind of high level producer, works on big events like outside lands and things like that, and the middle daughter is works in film. She's a set designer and a production designer, so they none of them have I'm very happy that none of them work at a soulless job in a cubicle, so I feel
like that's a real success. Plus, we we love each other and we're in contact, which sometimes doesn't happen.
So how'd you get from the Mountains to Austin?
Oh? I moved to Bakersfield when their mom and I split up, and I moved to the Bay Area when I met my beloved wife now and lived in We lived in the Bay for about eight or nine years, and she's originally from Texas. They have a lot of friends here in Austin. I could buy a house in Austin, and I thought I might be renting for forever. I rented houses for about ten years or so, and then talked to a friend and said I could I'm a realtor. I could find a house for you to buy, and we did.
So you have a whole career in Hollywood. Just being in Austin hurt or affect acting opportunities and other opportunities.
Not really, I mean, I don't act unless someone offers me a job or or sends me. I do an audition now and then, but they're all they're all self tape. Nowadays, you don't actually go into auditions. And there was a point at which I don't know, twenty years ago, I just stopped auditioning. I just said you, I've got a huge catalog of film. If you want to see what I can do, just take a look at that. If it's something really serious, maybe I'll come in an audition.
But no, it doesn't hurt it, especially now all the auditions are self tape. You just do it on your iPhone and send it to somebody.
Why'd you move to Bakersfield And what was that like?
Because it was close to where my kids lived, and Bakersfield was awesome. I mean it's apart from apart from the racism, it's great. I should have written short stories there, but I just soaked it up. I only lived there for about two or three years.
And could you feel the Merle Haggard influence, you know? Is that something you definitely?
Yeah. I lived in Oildale, which is where he lived. And Oildale's a kind of mixed white and Latino, really working class that still had a lot of hockey tonks there when I lived there, so it was pretty fun.
Now in the time since you've lived in Austin, Boston itself has changed. One of the changes you've noticed in Austin. And how do you feel about those?
Oh?
Well, I think every every middle sized city has changed markedly in the last five to ten years. Austin had a huge influx of people during the pandemic, mostly through tech. And I mean Austin has always had a venture capitalist startup.
Element.
There were friends of ours that moved here in the early two thousands from San Francisco. So there's still plenty of weird, cool stuff in Austin. But everything's changed. I mean in Nashville and Portland, in Tulsa, I mean, you name it.
So excene. Where do you live now?
I live in this cute little town called Orange. It's in California. It's an old fashioned, little historic town.
This is in Orange County, right.
Correct, Inland, not by the beach.
And how did you end up there? Oh?
I did end up here. That's exactly what happened. I ended up here, and that's very weird how that happened. I just was living somewhere else when I came here and I wasn't sure where to move, but Billy lives here, so that was kind of a draw. It's just a great place. I didn't even know what was here. I would have moved here a long time ago. I've been here fifteen years. It's kind of the town looking for it to kind of got a Midwestern vibe a little bit that I like it.
And John, how did you meet Billy Zoom?
Well, this is ancient history reported so many times. It was in a paper, a newspaper called The Recycler, and it came out every Thursday, and it was seventy five cents and you could get you could rescue a kitten, or you could buy a used refrigerator, or you could find an apartment, or you could find a lead singer. And Billy and I put ads in that paper. They were free. The ads were free, and we put ads
that were similarly worded. The same week and I called him and someone answered the I guess his girlfriend maybe answered the phone and took down a message, and he called me back. But we were kind of calling each other at the same time.
And what did your ad say?
I have no idea, but I think I think the fact that Ecsceine and I moved to LA around the same time that DJ and Billy had been there playing, and that we all got together wasn't just by chance. I'm not sure what fate is, but I think that there was a niche that needed to be filled or wanted to be filled, and we were all there and
we filled it. And Billy brought rockabilly guitar playing into punk rock and exscene, and I developed a style of singing that nobody else did, and so and we had a desire to write songs that chronicled what this punk rock bohemian life was all about. And it wasn't just I hate Ronald Reagan, and there was melodic and we're very traditional. We write verses and choruses and sometimes there's
a bridge and and you can sing along. But we're still old, not really ready for prime time because we're just a little that much too weird, and we don't sound like a disco song or we don't sound like the Beatles or somebody that's more accessible or palatable for like regular radio, unlike someone like the like Sonic Youth. We're not just iconoclasts and just like this is our thing and we're not going to budge. And you know, from the very beginning we wrote very accessible songs.
And when you came to California you put the ad in the recycler. Was that the dream to make it as a band?
Oh, I don't know. I had a vision after seeing the Heartbreakers and the and the Talking Heads, and having seen a bunch of other local bands in Baltimore, and then seeing people playing on the stage at the Whiskey and the Star Would I had a vision that I could do that. I saw myself, and once Billy and Naccine and I were together, I saw ourselves on stage doing that, and so I knew that could happen. I
knew that would happen, and it did. So everything beyond that has been just good fortune and hard work and really digging deep for creative variety and juices and always looking for something to excite ourselves and be curious about what's what's what's around the corner, that kind of thing.
And there was a huge punk scene in the lead seventies in Los Angeles, the Mask and everything else. Did you feel part of that or did you feel to the side of that.
Oh, we're right in the middle of a bit, but it was far from huge. It was about one hundred and fifty or two hundred people from seventy six until maybe the middle of seventy nine, and then maybe from then to eighty three it got a lot bigger because we had a lot of support from Slash Magazine and some from the LA Times and the LA Reader and
the LA Weekly and things like that. So it became a thing maybe in the in seventy nine, where everybody was writing about it and talking about it, saying, there's a lot of bands out there, and you're going to find one that really agrees, just hits that spot for you, hits that that sound, So just go find one. I
don't care what it is, go find it. If it's hardcore, I mean, if it's harder, then you'll love fear, and if it's more melodic, then you'll gravitate to the go go of the alley Kats or whatever.
And was your goal to get a record deal?
Ex Do you want to answer that one?
Because I didn't have any goals.
Uh.
I think that we still had some contempt for the establishment.
You think, so, I know I had contempt for everything.
I was prat, but yeah, I don't know that there was very much goals because there was just too much going on in the moment. It was an excitement from the time you woke up. We worked really hard though, that's for sure. I don't know. I didn't take anything seriously till much later.
I would say, I would say that, yes we did. We we submitted professionally made demos with ray men Xeric's influence and his validation to all the record companies, and they turned us down. And so Slash Records. Bob Biggs, bless his heart, just wanted to make music that he thought was cool because he's an artist. It had nothing to do with nothing to do with being part of the establishment. And yeah, we had a lot of resentment
towards them because they were stuck in the past. And I mean the go gos had to be signed by irs. This is clearly like a capitalistic financial like Low Hanging Fruit. They're cute girls that write their own songs and play their own instruments and write really poppy songs. And oh, I don't know about that. That's a little too weird for me. They have dyed hair. Are you in the business of finance or business of art?
So what were you surviving on?
Well, we had jobs. Yeah, and also like again, it was what we had, three people living in a one bedroom duplex. I don't know, maybe it was two hundred to three hundred dollars a month. I don't know how much money we made, but it wasn't much and it didn't take much. You know, if you had a if again, if you had a minimum wage job, two people could live just fine. Yeah, we didn't have any expenses. I didn't have a car. John had a car, but I
didn't have a car. None of us had insurance. We might have had a wall phone, or we might have shared a phone in the house we were living in. But there was no computers or cell phones or cameras or any I mean, we didn't even have seat belts. There was nothing to buy. There was nothing to do. You could get your tire at the at the pawn shot for fifty dollars.
You know.
Gas was cheap, beer was cheap. Life was cheap and fun. We were young. We didn't care. Everything was provided, you know, it was landed, milk and honey.
We had. We had jobs up until probably nineteen seventy nine.
I was still working when Los Angeles came out, I was working for a record collector, and I've had jobs off and on up until the pandemic because I just like to work. And I've always had to like supplement my income because I'm very you know, I'm just very hard working. But yeah, jobs, jobs are just jobs, you know, And I respect people to have any kind of job, because it's hard.
Well, if you're ex scene and someone encounters you working a job that is not playing music, do they say like, hey, what are you doing here?
Well, they say that all the time to people when you're at the laundromat or something, right like, oh my gosh, John, I've seen what are you doing at the launder mat? It's like, well, we got these clothes that we have to wash, you know. It's just people have these people have odd ideas about when you're in a band, that you're like super super like rich and you have a private jet and stuff, and or that you're really like down and dirty and you all live in this house
do drugs. But there's somewhere in the middle is just this regular person getting by and making a living. And I don't know, I never thought of myself as a rock star. I don't even I just think of myself as a person, so I find it humorous.
What degree when you're out and about are you recognized?
I wouldn't know. I don't pay attention. Sometimes people come up to me and say hey, scene. I go hey, they go, hey, I saw you guys play recently. It was amazing. Thank you my wife and Arabic fans, Well, that's great. What's your wife's name? But how nice to meet you. What do you guys do? Oh blah blah blah. I'm just a teacher, Just a teacher.
What are you talking about.
That's the hardest job in the world. I used to do that job, you know what I mean? Like, people are just people and they like what you do. And yes, people do kind of project things onto you because you're in a band, but really it's just another thing to do in life, like anything else. But I don't pay much attention to that. I'm just always been the same way since the early days, which is I assume everybody's good and they are. Ninety five percent of the people
I've met in my life have just been wonderful. And I've met a lot of ex fans and a lot of people at shows, and stuff, and they're almost always just great people.
Well, you keep reinforcing the point that in the old days you could get a minimum wage job and pay all your bills, which was true. Yeah, today's totally different. What do you think about today?
I think I think that it's it's by degrees that people have gotten to where we are where they just kind of accept more and more and more and more of things being hard, And I think that's very unfortunate. I kind of live for the day when things get somewhat saying again or saying at all. But you know, I think also people look back at different times and they see it more idyllically and more romanticized. But it really was a little bit easier and more well, definitely
there was more freedom. That's that's unbelievably true.
But I think I'm sorry to interrupt, but go ahead.
Well, I was just going to say, like, the one thing about technology is it's exposed. It's it's it's a great way for people to be exposed to historical movements and cultures and music and writing that they never would have found out about because somebody that by seventy eights and just plays them for their friends can now put them online and play them for everybody kind of doing what you're doing. And we didn't have that. We just
had to have word of mouth. You had to get in the car and go somewhere, and you had to hope you met somebody, and you didn't even have a phone. You just had to show up at somebody's house and say, hey, do you have that new record? I really want to hear it. I heard you have it, so you know, I mean, there's always a trade off. I don't know what people what it's like for young people now, but they'll be okay. I think, I hope.
I think that people survive. I'm not the That's the mysterious, mysterious and wonderful part of the human experiment is that somehow people survived. Whether it's now we live in the most fortunate of circumstances because there's not a war and that we're part of you know, that that is on our land and all that kind of thing.
So yeah, well, people had it harder at certain times. I mean, I think during World War two and euro upe to was a little harder. Yeah, but you know, I mean, you know, hard times make you know, week and week makes hard and all.
That well, John, you know, Austin had a reputation for being very weird, but Texas is sort of the flag bearer for the right wing movement at this point in time. Companies are moving there from California, Tesla Chevron just recently. Can is that palpable living in Texas?
Well? I just I mean I live in Austin, which is the blue bear and the tomato soup. If I lived in Bakersfield, if people don't live in a if you go outside of a major city fifty miles, you're going to find a very different landscape. But I think it's important for people to have respect for and talk
to people with different opinions. I don't know, I mean, Tesla is a is a very thorny issue here because they've built their plant ignoring all of the EPA, all of the building standards and just pay fines for it. So yeah, there's jobs, but it's a you know that that guy is just flaunts everything and says, well, I'll just buy my way out of it, and people do
that everywhere, which is unfortunate. They know that they're taking water, they're know that they're polluting things, and they're just willing to pay the fine because they don't give a shit, which is really unfortunate. But we'll see if Texas becomes a purple state or not. But like I said, go to Stockton, Go go out into New Jersey, go you know, anywhere seventy five miles outside of a city, and you're going to have a lot more provincial attitudes.
Well, we really have today and US versus them philosophy. On both sides. We have the rural people demonizing the cities, and then you have the so called elites believing they know you know. It seems that there's a constant divergence.
Well I don't want to I don't really want to get into politics. I don't think that's our job.
Well, let me say, as opposed to politics, like taking one side or another, what do you think the future of America is?
I I don't know. We'll find out in November.
How about you exceed.
I think the future has been planned out by those who engineer it for quite some time now, and it's whether or not. It's like the look of the draw, like with COVID, how it got dumbed down to this respiratory disease that suddenly didn't kill people anymore when it mutated.
We just don't know what happens in the future. Little things can change the world, you know, and little tiny things that people don't even people that have all the power, like the global kind of people, they make mistakes too, and and weird things happen that throw things off base. I mean, there could be you know, there's there's definitely
a magnetic change going on in the universe. You know, there's definitely like some weird ships going on that are cyclical with you know, where we are where Earth is right now, and people don't seem to be aware of that, so you know, things can happen. There could be a major volcanic eruption the cauld blot out the sun, you know, and make put us into this deep winter, and people could starve. Who knows what's going to happen. I hope
it's all positive things that happened. But I do know that I'm only in charge of what I do every day, and the only thing I'm I have control over my thoughts and my actions, and I try to keep those as simple and as and as good for all as possible and live live life is like that way. Like today I'm going to do this and this is what's going to happen. I'm gonna do these things for other people. I'm going to do this for myself, and I'm going
to be as positive as possible. It's very hard sometimes, but if you do that, everything else is fine.
I agree, because only have control.
Over I don't have control over what all these people are going to do to humanity. I hope they don't destroy it, but you know, I can't control it.
Yeah, But we grew up in an era where the musicians were revered as rich as anybody else in America, and what they said had meaning, whereas needless to say, mainstream musicians that is not the case today.
Well you can't say what you think anymore. We had freedom of speech and critical thinking. I used to say the worst, stupidest stuff. Not that it was like, you know, bad necessarily, but it was just I was very young and opinionated. I didn't have the world of view I had now, but I knew a lot of stuff. And if I said something, or anybody else said something in a group of like punk or artists, because it was all kinds of people in the punk'sying old young European
American Mexican everybody was there. You would just hear your words to get thrown right back in your face, like that's stupid. Why do you think that you could get in arguments with people and then go have a beer Because it wasn't about you know, like we understood context, and we also knew that if you can if you can throw your ideas out there and have somebody shoot them down, you've just learned something. You don't know if
you're right, if you can't admit you're wrong. And I had to admit I was wrong so many times, and I also made other people say look at things the different way. But my job isn't to change people's minds. My job is just to try to figure it out. And I think I do have a really great understand ending of life in general and the systems that control things and whatnot. But have that I also realized that, you know, we were just people, just like anyone else
with opinions. Just because we were in a bandit and make us smarter necessarily, I'm not.
Sure that is true. Usually the people with the bands were more thinkers. They lived in an alternative lifestyle. They were not part of the mind hive of the day. Meanwhile, Exeene, you only have you have one son? Do you have any other children?
They have one son, and what is he up to?
He's a great guy. I love my son so much. He did a documentary on the spand skating polyeu This Oklahoma sisters started to spand million years ago and they're still kids, and he did a documentary on that. He's a big martial arts guy. And he does a lot of other creative things. He works with his dad doing a publishing company called Percival Press that does books and music and movies. He does some acting. He's a good human being. That is what he is.
Okay. And what do the two of you think about our generation, which stopped the war was greedy when Reagan dropped the tax rate. Do you believe, because we're accused a lot by younger generations, we fucked up the world? Do you believe that I mentions of that.
Here and there. I think that's the job of young people, isn't it. That was my job when I was young. I got to yell at everybody and point fingers and everybody and tell them how wrong they were about things, and how like all their wars and taxes and everything had, you know, ruined the world. I think there's validity in doing that, But I also think that that that's a real good tactic by the people that are in power to make us hate each other and blame each other
for things that we didn't do. I think we're squarely in the middle of that, with the left right paradigm and all that other stuff. It's like, you, guys, you have to realize that everyone's going to be a victim here pretty darn soon unless we all stopped doing this. Let's try to act intelligent. But I think the dumbing down has has reached a certain level, so it might not be possible to fix it. But I don't know the future.
What do you say to people that, hey, this reunion and previous reunion, that this is really just about cash.
No, we said, we've been playing together since nineteen ninety eight, touring constantly, so it's not any kind of reunion. But I don't know where that comes from. We did a record right for COVID and that came out. I mean, we're a band. That's what bands play. Bands play music, They go on tour and they make records. They hang out. It's very hard to hang out with people for forty five, forty eight years. I guess we like what we do.
But yeah, everybody makes I think that everybody makes a living unless they're living on the streets and they're homeless, which is unfortunate.
Yeah, the point of X was was to have adventures, to report about it, to be artistic, to show, to encourage people to think for themselves, to because punk rock or music, you can say in general, is about freedom. And I would disagree that that musicians don't have the kind of clout that they did thirty forty years ago.
I would totally disagree with it. I think I think Megan the Stallion showing up with Kamala Harris has a has a great impact on a community that may not be I don't know that they wouldn't they wouldn't be there that that people. I don't know that Pearl Jam has has a lot of impact. They can. Pearl Jam doesn't have a lot of stage show and they just play rock and roll music to stadiums.
Pearl Jim's a thirty five year old man making the Stallion. You know in some videos and other thing push she testing limits having to do with sexuality, etc. And it's great, she has some power. But if you want to know, you know, it used to be in our era, if you want to know what was going on in the world, you put on a record. Do you still think that's the same.
Sure, I think I think it's a different You're you're just talking about different people. There's not the there's not the hour glass of creativity and then the bottleneck in the middle of it where it's all the gatekeepers of publicists and magazines and things like that, and then at the top of it is the audience. It's just a it's just a straight line now goes directly from the people to the audience, so it's not as directed like there's no one person who's uh is going to be
speaking for a generation. But I think that, yes, I think that people do put on records. Like Exsain was saying, you can rediscover there's nothing new, it's just when when did you hear about it?
Okay? So, certainly in our network television was a vapid wasteland movie. Certainly late sixties to the end of the seventies really a driving force. But today music is competing against streaming television, which is whether we say it's a danu Mall has certainly been you know, at a heyday, it's never been previously, And we do have social media
where there's a lot of creativity. So from my perspective, the power of not the power of music, the execution of music is not a dominant as it used to be. I mean, I think the two of you represent this point. You grew up in an era where before the Army ripped off our slogan be all you can be, you could live on minimum wage, whereas today when a kid graduates from high school or college, it's a completely different
environment and it's much harder. And when you're talking about middle class bohemians, I'm not even sure that's a major group at this point in time. You have the people who'll do anything for recognition and the other people are afraid of being broke going into corporate jobs.
Yes, that's all true.
I totally disagree later on me. There are bands there, all right, Because there are bands that are in their twenties and thirties that tour their asses off and go all around the country and go to Europe like Skating Polly our friends. They may have to have a straight job when they're not on the road. But there are other bands that make really good money that are about out art. They're not just about showing their ass on TikTok. So it's it's just like whether whether we're aware of it.
I'm not, I'm not twenty five years old, but I see other bands that are that are new and they're they live simply and they they interact with each other. Sonny War is another folk artists that that I know. She I don't think she has a straight job, but she has to play her ass off, and she has to find gigs, she has to beat the bushes, and and it's just a there's more of an alternate lifestyle that goes on. It's part of the indie music world.
Whether they're they're they're making money on live performance. So any records or any band camp that they're they're putting out there, that's just a promotional tool. Like in the old old days when you made records, it's a promotional Two.
Maybe we're talking about the difference between a cohesive social cultural movement and people just individually learning how to fend for themselves, and maybe they're both the same thing. I don't know.
People still go out to see music all the time, though.
No, No, nobody's arguing that they don't.
Yeah, yeah, well, you know, going a little bit deeper, Yes, it used to be. Distribution was very difficult, so therefore you needed essentially a major label to get your record in the store. So most acts could not participate, whereas everybody can participate. Having said that, if you start with the Beatles, they could write songs with changes. They were
good looking, they had incredible voices. You know, people will email me and go, you know, well, the music's not that good, what about the lyrics, And they say, you know, look at Bob Dylan, and they say, yeah, but he was the best lyricist of all time. I can't say that, you know, I think it's great that all these artists are earning a living, but I can't say that there's a plethora of them that if the light was shined upon them, they would be much larger an impact.
Yeah, the whole point of punk rock is to democratize and not to rely on major record companies. We got turned down and we were happy to be on Slash, and then we had the opportunity to record for Electra. Okay, good, that's just a way of getting our music out there. Little did we know that Electra was signing us as a window dressing to say, yeah, we're part of the
new new music. But we we began the network with college radio, which became indie Music, which which begat all the indie record company, These like Twin Tone or Bloodshot or Merge or all these ones that you may not get rich rich, and you may not be speaking for an entire generation, but you're gonna. I mean, look at look at what happened in uh South central l A. With with rap music that was speaking directly to their audience, and they made a shipload of money.
Yeah, but now Snoop Dogg is on the Olympics.
An iced tea is an actor on a very you know, long running procedural. That's not the point. The point is is that that that old model, because they fucked it up so much and put their head in the sand. When Napster came along and all that sort of stuff, they got what they deserve. And I don't I don't. I'm not sad about that. I don't mourn that because that was a were they were a kind of They gave the musicians scraps and the musicians had to make
so much money that mostly the record company. I don't bemoan their demise. So there's other ways of people like us working with with Fat Possum. Fat Passum is a great label and they're gonna get. They're gonna get.
I agree. I agree with everything you say. My point about Snoop Dogg being at the Olympics, it's not about the issue of selling out. It's about the issue of ubiquity, and amongst the alternative acts, we're thinking different in the present era. I can't think of two who have anywhere near the level of ubiquity that X had forty years ago, or even you know the bands, the Seattle Sound of
the nineties. There are more people making a living making music despite all the negativity about streaming services and payouts. But I find it it's not in a situation like it was in our heyday, where Filmo says, you got to hear this record and while it just blows your mind. I respect the fact that these people are earning a living, but I can't say that these are the records are changing my life.
You probably listen to a lot more music than I do, new music, especially I still listen mostly to really old country and blue dress and stuff like that and old music. But I would just say, if that's what you're seeing and that's your experience, I would say interesting. I don't know. I don't pay attention too much to what's going on now. I don't know who's great, who isn't great, how great things are, and how it compares to the past or the future. Who's the best lyricist out there right now,
I don't know who that is. Is there another Dyllan out there? I don't know.
I don't think it's much different between us and the number of people that we reached and the number of people that some band is reaching nowadays, whether it's Phoebe Bridge or or or. I meant when she began, she reached a hundred times more people. And to those people that listened to her or Elliott Smith, which she's very much like, it had this it has the same kind
of impact. They're speaking to them at their age, and we just spoke to some people at the age that we were, and they were I mean, the most records that we sold for Wild Gift or Los Angeles or even under the Big Black Son was maybe fifty thousand records. But everybody told their friends about him. So maybe some you know, Elliott Smith sold one hundred and fifty thousand records, but everybody was really that he really spoke to them on a personal level. So I just think I don't
have the experience. I don't have the connection with those younger bands now to be able to speak to it. But I know that it's it's very similar. It's like you're talking to me because I'm that age, and there's a lot of young bands that have girls that have gone to Girls Rock Camp that are now fronting bands that have a real punk rock kind of ethos. So yeah, it may not have the same kind of media coverage or media impact, but I think there's an underground and
that's to me the most important thing. That's that's why I like you were talking about how much do I get wrecked or do we get recognized? And it's like once in a while, but we are in the sweetest of sweet spots where we make a really good living, We get to do artistic things and people will say you changed my life or I don't know who you are. So that's a good place to be. That's a great place to be. And like Exceine said, if you just diffuse the the interaction like hey aren't you John Diales,
like yeah, what's up? And you don't get weird about it. You don't have a bodyguard because you don't need one. That's just fine.
So so, having made all these records, do you have a royalty stream, whether it be on record or publishing? Is there any or is it essentially insignificant?
Oh?
No, it's not insignificant because everybody got their records back after thirty five years, you know that, right, right? Yeah, and that was fantastic, eucepter thirty five years if not making the money from our records, we suddenly own them again. I mean we own them for the first time. And that's true for all the bands, and everybody's so happy they got their records back and they can finally make a living now. It's just wonderful.
No, but even even prior to that, I mean we're with ASKAP and am I and yeah, we have publishing companies and we get quarterly checks that are they're great. And there's also a sound exchange, which deals with live performance or radio performance. And I mean musicians are still getting the scraps. Let's not let's not overlook that with Spotify, with Pandora, with all that stuff, you're getting a hundredth
of a cent per play. So you can have thousands of plays and you'll get fifteen dollars and somebody's making money and they're they're they're using your content. But that's just the way it is. That's the way it's always going to be. They're trying to increase that a little bit. But I mean, even like the the heyday of like record companies they were getting they were giving the musicians ten or fifteen percent of every record sale, so they're kidding the scraps, Oh we have we have a lot
of expenses, and it's like you don't have shit. They were charging musicians breakage fee on CDs, and the breakage fee was for seventy eights because a certain number on shipping would be broken, and not as many CDs broke like seventy eights, so it's like part of the deal.
I talked to some musicians who've gotten their assets back, whether they be songs or records, and then they relicnsed them for the check. What have you done with the assets that you've gotten back?
We have, We've we don't want to have a record company. You're having an earthquake.
Yeah, it's just a little Well, there's been swarms and swarms and swarms up mostly their.
Central Oh that's exciting. I'm glad nothing that happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We license them to Fat Possible because we don't want to be in the business of being a record company. But we get a great return on that, and so we make ninety percent and they make ten percent and they're happy with that.
Or something like that. I wouldn't quote that figure, John, however, I would say that they're in the business of being a record label. We're in the business of making records and it works out really good. But if we try to do their job, we would screw it up terribly, and they can't do what we do, and we don't want each other to do that. I love the fact that we have this great label that works with us.
It's the first time, really. I mean, a lot of things have gotten better over the years in the music world, and that's one of them, is that there are things like that. But I don't know. I don't go into the business too much.
Yeah.
You also have the option to have a five year license or a seven year license. And then when that comes around again, then you say, well, yes I want to keep doing business with you, or no, I'm going to move with someplace else.
You know.
A funny thing about money, too, though, is if you think we started in seventy six, but let's say let's take from nineteen eighty till now, and you average out like our income per a year, it would probably be about fifty thousand dollars a year. I mean, we're not rich at all. But the thing is, it's funny when you think about that. It's like, if you have a few good years, that's great, but like, what about those years when you can make twelve thousand?
You know, Okay, you have these assets that are generating revenue, has anyone approached you about buying them? That's a big thing now.
Yeah, it is a big thing now. That started during COVID as far as I can remember, and a lot of people said, you know what, I'm never going to tour again. I might probably die. You know, there's never been a better chance to sell my stuff for a billion dollars. Didn't clean the queen legacy went for a billion or something. Supposedly, you know, if somebody said to us, yeah, you know, blah blah blah, we want to buy all your stuff, and here's how much money we're going to
give you. I think we would have to weigh that is, like how old we are and what we want to give to our kids. Like I'm fine dying the where I'm at and having my son own all my stuff. And I know he'll do the right stuff with it. He'll give it to like dog rescues and stuff. But I don't really care if we have plenty enough to eat and pay bills and have fun and travel a little bit. And who knows. I mean, you'd have to say, I don't know. It's just who it's a. It's a.
I have.
I have a hard time with with people that I respected selling their catalogs for millions and millions of dollars. I don't think that. I mean, do you really need that?
Well, that seems it seems like.
No, I'm not. I just have a hard time with it. And I don't think I would I would want to do that. I would rather keep it, like I've seens that would rather keep it in the family. I would rather. But somebody wives a lot of money at you. You never know what you're going to do until that.
So how did this leaders record come together?
As far as what songwriting.
Everything, the decision to make it, how you wrote the songs, how you recorded?
Oh gosh, how's every record come together the same exact way? Somebody says, I wrote these songs and then pretty soon you think maybe it could be a good record, and you work really hard and then you have an outlet. We had we had Rob the producer from the last record. I think what happened was the last record came out and then COVID happened, so we never really got We didn't get to tour and do anything. So it made us go, let's make another one, and this time hopefully
we'll get the tour unless there's another pandemic. So I think that if we had made the last record and COVID didn't happen, I don't know that we would have made another record. I think we just wanted to do it and see what happens. But I think that we learned we can do more stuff, and I hope we record a song here and there maybe someday. But I don't no, I don't like the finality of last record, last tour. But I think you have to sometimes come
to terms with that. I don't want people to miss seeing us because we didn't tell them it's our last tour. We want people to know where we're at.
Yeah, pretty much like that. Ecceene and I began talking about writing a new record, and she sent me lyrics and I worked on music and then sent it back to her and she would say, yeah, I love this and that's great and I don't know how you do that, but I'm glad you did. And then we take it to the rehearsal room and then it starts changing, and then we have to rewrite it because another one that I would work on, Excene would say, no, I don't like that story. What if we had a different story.
So we wrote, rewrote, re rehearsed, touring all through from the end of twenty twenty two to twenty to now. I mean we were playing the luxury we had as we played about five four or five of these songs
most of twenty twenty three. We do the live and you don't get a chance to do that when you after you've made a few records, you usually write songs, work them up, and then put them on a record, and you just have to hope that your first choice is the best choice, like Alan Ginsberg said, and we had a lot of opportunity to work through different different ways of playing them.
You know, a lot of bands break up over the songwriting royalties. The money tends to be in the publishing. So the two of you conventionally write the songs, the other two don't share in that income. Ever been any discussions about that?
Yeah, actually we did work on that for the last record. In this one, there is more owning, ownership and publishing stuff. Yeah, you know, we've all worked it out. That's just an internal stuff. You know, everybody has their stuff to work out. Bands are hard.
We we make such a so much more of our living, of our income comes from live performance than it does from I think it's when you get the gold records and you sell hundreds of thousands or millions of records. That's when people say, hey, what the hell you have a boat and I don't. I don't like you anymore. That's and that's just sad. It's sad that we're in such a greedy, capitalist society that your measure people measure their worth by the toys that you have, the stuff
that you have and that's that's pathetic, I think. I mean, it's no, I'm not just. I shouldn't just. I shouldn't say that it's sad. It's it makes me sad when people get all consumed by that.
So you like going on the road.
I still do. But it's really really physically hard and mentally hard. And you know, van life is done not an easy life, and motels are not easy. And the suitcase dragging and unpacking, packing every day every night, and then playing. You get up at seven o'clock in the morning and you don't play till nine o'clock at night, so you're kind of worn out by the time you get there. So by the time you do soundcheck and try to eat, and then you know it's just been
a long day already, ya. But then the live stuff's great. And I hope that we do it for a while longer, at least into next year a little bit. And we're just going miss that.
We're going to tour a little smarter and maybe in twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven, I'm knocking on wood, we'll play or next year we'll play twenty shows instead of eighty shows, and we'll give people a good reason to take a road trip to come to Atlanta where we're going to play two or three nights, or to Chicago or New York and like major cities and things like that.
There's not a chance in hell we'll ever play Atlanta for three nights.
But well, you don't know at any rate where there's there's not a lot of scarcity when it comes to what X has done because we tour all the time, and Eccine's right, physically it's difficult. Luckily for us, the hour and a half that we're actually creating is worth the other twenty two and a half hours. So that's why we do it, and it's what we do. It's our living. It's like, oh, I don't I don't like being a plumber anymore. I think I'm gonna quit. And it's not that it's just can you bend down and
get under the sink and how are your knees? It's and not wanting to be part of an organization that's falling apart, wanting to say, okay, let's getting to the point. If you want to see this, well it's still good, come on out.
And at what level do you tour? I mean there's from station wagons to private jets.
How does that fans?
We have two sprinters.
Yeah, so you know, the equipment, the merchandise, the people, the suitcases, two two vans, and then we get you know, we get hotel motels usually, but you know, nothing fancy, just you know, because if you do fancy stuff, you don't make any money, and we can't do that. So yeah, pretty bare bones. We're very frugal and very practical when.
You're on the road. Does everybody get their own hotel room?
Most of us?
Yeah, the band does. The crew shares.
You know, a lot of bands have fights and break up because they've been traveling with the same people in close quarters for all those years. To what degree is their friction in acts? And to what degree did being on the road contribute to the breakup of your marriage?
I think back then it was just you know, Channa and I met when I was twenty and we were together. I think we were a little young to be making a lifetime commitment. Uh, And there was so much other stuff all we wanted to do in our lives, and people kept interfering, and it was just a crazy time. And I don't think I was ready to settle down. I don't think that had as much to see with the band, though. I think Billy quick because he just got burned out on it. It was just going nowhere
at that point. It's hard. It's forty five years plus forty eight years. It's a long time to be with the same people over and over. That's why we're on the only US and Los Lobos are the only bands left right it's still tour because for one thing, it's really really hard, for another thing where most people still aren't alive. I think we're very grateful because you know,
what is the alternative? Would it be one of us would be dead, We'd all be dead, we would have broken up, we'd be you know, God only knows what would have happened to us. So we're really lucky. I don't look, I don't take it for granted. Even when people get out of my nerves. I just people are gonna get on your nerves no matter who they are, what you're doing, whether it's the band or not.
Yeah, it's a it's a family and family dynamics can be tricky. But but we've decided that we don't sweat the small stuff and we are gracious with each other, intolerant.
Yeah, to what degree do you care about legacy?
Oh? I care about it, but it's not in my control. And I don't want to get into I don't want to get into like, oh I should have done this different, or I should have done that different. You know, I did what I did because I did it. That's what I did. Take it or leave it. I don't know if you If you like it, great, If not, I can't. I don't care.
Yeah, I mean I know that that we have a small spot in the in the world of music, and maybe a little bit bigger impact on the world of punk rock. But it's there. We're in all the books for a lot of them, and if we're not, then it's just somebody being having an axe to grind.
So what was the difference between working with Raymond Zeric and other producers and Rob Schnow.
Rob and rare kind of similar in a lot of ways, and that they're both geniuses and creative, wonderful, funny people who just want us to be the best X we can be and not really trying to change everything. But they do come up with good ideas and we go, yeah, that's a great idea, we'll do that.
Yeah, I would agree with that. Ray was a lot more spiritual than Rob is. Rob doesn't get into that as much, but it's validating and just looking for good performances and to try to translate whatever enthusiasm and joy that's going on or whatever's happening in the studio to transfer that onto the tape.
Does it ever feel like an adolescent endeavor, like you're stuck in time, that you're doing the same thing you were doing in your twenties.
No, because we're not. Thank god, i'd be dead.
Yeah, I don't think so.
You know, there are a lot of acts who die there here get plastic surgery. The audience goes to relive a period in their youth. What are your audiences like?
They're multi generational and there's a lot of people who are twenty years old and younger, and there's people who are our age. So you don't realize how difficult it is to get this streak of gray along with the other It's very difficult to get that died in there. I'm joking. Never mind, I guess it wasn't a funny.
Joke, but well you and Bonnie Raid Yes, Well I'm proud to be compared to Bonnie Rait in any way, if just through hair, they're multi.
There's a lot of different kinds of people, and there always were. We didn't just have a young audience at the beginning. They were younger, but there was some old people way into their forties back in nineteen seventy nine. So no plastic surgery here, not yet.
Do you have any contact with the people from the La so called punk scene of the lead seventies, assuming they're still alive.
I don't really because I'm not doing the online thing, but Billy certainly does state. A lot of people just stay in touch. I see people occasionally. We did this TV thing and I got to see a bunch of people at that and that was really fun. But you know, a lot of people were part of that scene for just a minute, and they were there because they were
important to it and it was important to them. But they quickly moved on to other things and we kind of stuck with the band things, so you know, everybody went in different directions. A lot of people are gone. Also.
Yeah, I stay in touch with Robert Lopez from the Zeros. Yeah, there's different people guilty from from uh Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs came a little bit later, but yeah, here and there. I mean, there's there's no club that gets together every every month.
So you've had an acting career, John, Do you watch streaming television or movies or nothing?
Sure, I watch all kinds of stuff. I watch good stuff and crap and all kinds of things.
Well, what's some of the good stuff.
Oh that I'm and it's kind of this is kind of boring. But that television show Hacks was really smart and well written. I loved watching that. I'm watching this kind of goofy show called Outer Range with Josh Brolin and Lily Taylor. You know, just a variety of things. I saw the oh, the movie about the making of Fitzceraldo, Burden of something or other, I can't remember the title of it. And there was also a great indie movie called La Camaro that was really beautiful, all in Italian.
So yeah, I keep up.
So for those of us who were in Los Angeles in the lead seventies early eighties certainly aware of X. I certainly saw X. But for people who were listening to this who are not familiar with the music, what can you tell them about X that they don't understand.
All they would have to do. And this isn't a shameless plug. This just so happened to become real. All they have to do is they have to listen to the song Big Black X, and they can hear what we sound like now reflecting on a lot of the images and the experiences that we had in the late seventies. And that song came together kind of in the studio,
which is very unlike us. And Excene had written a couple of pages of just prose, and I thought it was really beautiful and wanted to put it into a lyrical form, and DJ and I developed a kind of we're going to go through the changes this many times for the verse, We're going to go through the change this many times for the chorus, and then all of the music changed and all of the lyrics changed. But I think it's a great representation of what we have done.
It's like Past President Future because it talks about we knew the gutter and also the future. We didn't actually know the future in nineteen seventy eight, but we had a clue as to what influence our kind of music might have on music in general, so we had we had a tiny hint and it is the present, so it's past, present and future on one three and a half minutes ish.
Okay. For those of you who've been listening and listening to John Doe and Exene Cervenka from X, they have a new album, Smoking Fiction. They're on their So Cold Final tour. Check them out if you're interested. I want to thank both of you for spending the time with my audience.
Well, thanks for letting us do this, and hello to everybody, and thank you for listening light On.
I'll see you around until next time. This is Bob left Stets