Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My guest today is Basis Extraordinary Les claypool Less. A couple of things we were talking trying to get the technical stuff under control. You talked about early morning and it's just about noon. Are you a late night guy?
I am not a late night guy. It was more just a reference to dealing with technical issues as the first part of the day and being a lowly based player.
Okay. Then another thing, and this is well known, you were referred to as colonel. What's the derivation of that?
That came about with some of my guys when I started the Frog Brigade years ago that you know, I was the kernel of of of the brigade, and I like to joke that it's more K E R N A l as, more like as a bit of corn as opposed to some form of military authority figure.
Okay, So the Frog Brigade is going on the road. You have multiple bands associations. Why the Frog Brigade? Why now?
My manager told me to do it. I don't know. It's it's it's been a while since we've done the Frog Brigade. There seems to be a hunger for for some for some brigade, I've we're re releasing uh those old pron song h recordings, So uh, it just seemed like the right time. I had a big year with Primus last year, probably the most daunting uh Primus undertaking in the history of primis by doing that entire record, which again another another another test of the firing of
the synapse. So it's it's it's it's just time, it's it's it's time to shift gears a little bit.
Okay, everybody knows your name, but not everybody is familiar with the ins and outs of your career. Can you tell us a little bit more about the frog we gave.
Well so many years ago, well right around the turn of the century, we were having some issues in the Primus world and we weren't necessarily seeing eye to eye on things, and I think we had some burnout and there was some there was a little bit of fade going on, and we went on a hiatus, which was just another way of saying, we're breaking up and we might get back together at some point. And I I I did this gig in New Orleans which ended up being the being Oyster Head, and it sort of launched
me into this. It made it made my presence known in the jam world. So I got a call from an old friend of mine, Michael Bailey, who books the film More, and he was booking this festival in Calaveras County called the Mountain Air Festival and it's you know, famous calaver'se jumping frog, you know, famous from Mark Twain story.
And wait, wait, I don't think everybody knows that. So if you remember, go a little bit deeper about the jumping frog in Mark Twain.
Oh yeah, the famous jumping frog of Calaveras County. So I have a history with Calaverrese County because I used to play in this band, this old R and B
band when I was about nineteen years old. With we would play these basically Hell's Angels events all over northern California, and one of them was the Frog Jumps in Calaveras County and Calver's County has had these frog Jumps for decades and the bikers used to go to this thing, but they would get harassed, so they started their own, which was like a week prior and I used to go play thing. So anyway, Michael Bailey and BGP at the time had this Mountain.
Air Bill Graham Presents, Yes.
Had this Mountain Air Festival. And so because of the Oysterhead thing that I had put together in New Orleans, Michael Bailey said, hey, can you put something together for us? So I got Tim Alexander on drums, and I had Jack Irons, one of my favorite drummers on drums as well, two drummers, then my buddy Merv on guitar and Garrick on sacks, and we were going to call it the thunder Brigade. And Michael was like, you know, we're bringing up the primus guy into the jam world. Something called
the thunder Brigade might be a little heavy handed. So I said, well, let's call it the Frog Brigade because it's the Frog jumps and that's how Frog Brigade was born.
Okay, so Michael Bailey said, to do the gig. Tell us about the gig and what the music was like.
Well, basically, like Oysterhead, there was a it was a lot of just straight up improvisations. So my idea was to get some of my favorite guys together, Tim and Tim Alexander and I hadn't played together in a while because he had left Primus and this was sort of this was sort of his introduction back into the Primus world. And then Jack Irons was a buddy of mine, he was a neighbor. And Merv is just a guitar player who I've just have always adored. And then Scarek is Scarek.
He's a champion, He's known in that world very well. And we got together, picked a few songs and then just sort of jammed it out and it that and the Oysterhead thing really opened my eyes to the notion that hey, people want to see you do all those things that other people have been telling you not to do all these years, which is wiggle your fingers and take chances and dance on the edge. They want to
see you fall and potentially fall gracefully. And I just found that fascinating and it's since become a bit big part of my philosophy on how to approach music, which is just throw past at the walls and see what sticks.
You know, Okay, let's go back to you saying all the stuff you're not supposed to do in falling. You go a little deeper on that.
Well, Uh, I've always been one of those guys that could waggle my fingers pretty good. And I've definitely been in many situations over the years where they're like, you know, that's nice, less, but can you waggle your fingers maybe half as much as you're waggling your fingers? And you know, and when the when the when the job calls for it or the gig calls for it, I have no
problem doing that. That's what I do. You know, when I play with Tom Waits, I don't waggle my fingers nearly as much as I do in Primus, but something like primus.
Wait, well, let's be very specific, because not everybody is as knowledgeable certainly as you. When you say waggle your fingers, you're talking about a style of play or being more visually dynamic.
Ah, wiggle of the fingers. In my world, well, in my personal mind, it is just another way of saying playing technically.
Okay, So as opposed to if you're not playing technically, you're doing what.
Well, as opposed to holding down the route or playing a little more minimalistic. So okay, does that make sense?
Well, I think there's a lot more questions, but let's hold those questions to continue the narrative how you ended up changing to be in the quote unquote GM band world.
It wasn't so much a change. It was more of there was a there was a side of me that all of a sudden, Hey, wait a minute, here's some people that are enjoying music. For the musicians, there was no hey, I got to wear a red baseball cap backwards because that's the style now, or there was no thought of being on radio or MTV or any of this. It was people wanting to see musicians young and old, just do what they could do to the extent of the of their ability and take chances musically in front
of a large crowd. That's what I got out of it. When we did the Oysterhead thing was it was insane. It was like, we're going to go up and we've jammed together three times, and we're going to go play these songs that we just wrote and we're going to just jam. It was like being in high school and setting up in the garage and but yet in front of thousands of people.
And in.
The Primus world, you know, we were known for doing some improv, but it was we were within the parameters of our song structure, whereas doing the Oysterhead thing and then subsequently getting into Frog Brigade world structure wasn't such a big deal. You know, the parameters were much looser, or they were interpreted as being much looser. So it's just more free form expression with your instrument.
Okay, because I know what Oysterhead is, but not everybody does tell us about the formation and the members of oyster Head.
Well, Ryan abound that right right around that time. Excuse me. The fellows at Superfly who used to put on these these these events down at the Jazz Festival.
This is an emotion company.
Yes, down in New Orleans would do these things called super jams. And my manager was he managed Galactic at the time, so he was he was in that world, and he said, Hey, they want you to put together something for a SuperJAM. I'm like, what the hell is a super jam. Well, you get a hold of some you get some musicians together, and you just go and jam in front of a bunch of people. I was like, all right, well, I'm going to call my buddy Trey Anastasia because he's in a band that's kind of known
for jamming. And so I called up Trey I said, hey, they want us, they want me to do this event. Are you interested in coming and doing this thing? And he said, you know, I've always wanted to do a project with you and Stuart Copeland. And I said, well, I know Stuart, and I think he kind of I learned years later that he kind of tossed that out at me as like a, well, I don't really want to do this, but hey, if you can get you know,
Stuart Coput involved. It was, it was it was kind of a way of gracefully bowing out of this little did he know that I actually knew Stuart. So then I called Stuart. Stuart's like I've been waiting for this phone call for twenty five years. He was so excited and ready to do it. And the three of us got together and jammed a little bit, and then we
did this show. It was purely by the seat of our pants, and it was it was very foreign for Stuart because you know, the police was a was a pretty scripted unit, and you know, he would always talk about his pop sensibilities. And then there's Trey who's just used to going going for it in front of huge groups of people. And then there was me kind of dancing in the middle, and it was just a very
liberating thing. And and and that's what opened my eyes and probably other people's eyes to me in that world.
How did you know, Trey?
I had played with Fish many years ago. I had a band called Sausage, which was some of the original members of Primus, and we opened for Fish at Laguna Seca Days in California. And I always knew a Fish as this, you know, there was this band kind of came up around us, and there was we had some mutual friends, and there was a couple songs of theirs that we used to listen to every now and again. But I to be honest with you, I didn't realize
how big they were. And so we did this. You know, I just call them up, I just call them Trey, going, hey, you want to do this thing? And little did I know the show was going to sell out in five seconds and it was all, you know, fish heads, because I had no clue how big they were.
So and how did you know, Stewart, Well.
We did a rec he Primus did in the late eighties called anti Pop and it was after the Brown Album, and the Brown Album was our sort of our experimental record where we bought all this whole vintage gear and just made this record that Tom Waits and once told me it sounds like it needs a good wash, you know, because it's a very dirty dark It's the Brown album, it's the Brown sound. And the record company wasn't real
thrilled with that record nor with its performance. So when we came to do our next record, there was a lot of talk of, hey, you know, you guys have always done your own thing and done and gone your own way, but maybe it's time to work with a producer. And we had dabbled around with some producers on a few little projects prior to that and just never found anything that clicked with us. So the notion came up, well, let's work with a bunch of artists. We respect musicians
and whatnot as producers to produce individual songs. So one of the first calls we made was to Stuart, because I, you know, I've always you know, to me, the Rumblefish soundtrack is one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded. I absolutely adore that, and I love his sensibility, and so here comes Stuart. He was happy as a clam to come up and sit in my bean bag chair and point at us and tell us what to do and throw some of his pop sensibilities at us. So
that's how it and we just hit it off. He's a great guy. He's one of my best friends now, so I'll Kevin for a long time.
You start off by saying your manager told you to do the Frog Brigade. Now you talk about the labels saying telling you what to do. Your image is of someone who doesn't listen to anybody and does whatever he wants. So who are you relative to that?
Well, it wasn't like he told me to do the oysterhead thing or told me to do. He brought in the options to do this and I said, wow, that sounds interesting. It's a new thing. And the record company thing was, you know, well we can't. There's no producer that we really clicked with. We tried to get Brian Eno, but he wouldn't even talk to us, which I think would have been spectacular. But it was just kind of our way of doing it, our way, if that makes any sense.
Okay, a couple of questions. Where are you right? The second? I'm not talking about literally the street address, but what where are you relative to California.
I'm in the Sonoma coastal Wine Country, Okay, and I'm sitting at my kitchen table, and that is that's Penelope behind me right there's she's a figurehead from a ship.
Okay. You know, in the Internet era, you could be anywhere. But and you grew up exactly where I grew up.
In the East Bay of San Francisco Bay Area, so Panol, Richmond, else BRANDI well, it's it's it's it's a it's a little north of Berkeley.
And would your parents do for a living?
I come from a long line of auto mechanics. My father was auto mechanic. My uncles were all mechanics. My stepfather was a mechanic. My grandfather was a mechanic. But I did have one grandfather that was a fireman, and he actually has been immortalized, if you want to call it that in this song. Jerry was a race car driver, as Captain Pierce the Fireman.
Okay. Lots of auto mechanics, so they're all those auto mechanics. Are you an auto mechanic at least on any amateur level? Uh?
My father to this day gets upset with me when I work on my own vehicles because he's worried I'm going to smash up my hands, which is which is valid. But I tend to do it anyway because I'd rather do it than wait for somebody to come and do it. But I work on a lot of it, but not all of it. The guys like to make fun of me because I spend a lot of my time on tour working on my own tour bus. But I enjoy it.
Okay, tour bus is a whole another you know, league with diesel engines. How do you know to work on a tour bus?
You know, it's all, it's all, it's all, it's all relative. You know, you got to service the generator, you got I have a buddy that builds tour bus, big fancy tour coaches for for entertainers. And he said, there's two types of tour buses that that break down, old tour buses and new tour buses. They all break down, they all have issues. There's always something going on, and so there tends to be a lot for me to do, but keeps me busy.
Okay, most people rent their tour buses. Do you renter, do you own a tour bus?
I am not a very bright individual. So I actually have two tour buses now and we talk of us selling one of them, but my wife refused uses to let me sell. Her name is Lafonda. She was our first bus because she has fond memories of Lafonda's. So we're now using it at our tasting room for high end fancy tastings.
Okay, where are the buses right now?
One of them is that packet room station in sebastopall our wine tasting facility.
And where's the other one.
It's at our where we keep our gear in our our rehearsal space.
So if you have a tour bus, is it like you know some mechanical items, they work best if they're used all the time where someone is not on tour all the time. So like on the tour bus there, the more you drive it, the fewer problems you have. Or if you started up after six months, you know you got new problems. What's it like?
Well, so a tour bus is like a it's like a yacht. There's so many things on it. There's kitchens and bathrooms and pneumatic doors and so there's lots of things to go wrong. It is true with any mechanical item. The more you use it, the less apt it is to be unreliable. So I do have to exercise these things as often as I can, and I probably don't as much as I should.
Okay, tell me more about the wine tasting operation.
Well, we moved up to the Snowma coastal wine country. It's been like twenty eight years ago now, and I used to be a fellow that smoked quite a lot of the marijuana bush. And where we live, there's it's like living in Hollywood. If you live in Hollywood and you have a barbecue, who comes to your barbecue? There are grips, there's you know, lighting people, There's people within the industry tend to show up your barbecues. Well, here you have a barbecue, it's a lot of Cooper's, a
lot of vineyard managers, people in the wine industry. So while this wonderful wine Pino noir you say noir, was floating around, and at the time, I was trying to not smoke so much of the marijuana bush because I felt like it was adversely affecting my memory, and I wanted to remember what my children were like when they were little and I needed a new vice, so I started drinking all this local pino, and then a couple friends of mine one day said, hey, we should make
our own pino. It'll be cheaper than buying it, which was the stupidest thing I've ever said in my entire life, because it's a very costly endeavor. But it's become a wonderful thing for us on a social level because my wife runs it. We have it's just it's kind of like our clubhouse. We just go and hang out and drink this wine. We have a twenty foot fiberglass wianer that we serve these gourmet hot dogs out of, and the people that work for us are all amazing friends.
So we just kind of fell into it.
Okay, it's not only expensive. He usually takes a bit of time to get right. So how long you been doing it for.
We've been doing it since two thousand and seven. But we're very, very fortunate because at one point, actually there's twenty ten, we were on the hunt for a new wine maker, and we're little guys, We're like a thousand cases. But I was surprised all these winemakers came out of
the woodworks to make our wine. And I would ask them, so, who do you admire, who do you respect as a contemporary pino maker, And they always say, oh, Ross Cobb, Rosscobb, Rosscob, Ross Cobb's pretty fun to get a phone call from Ross Cobb. He's like, hey, lets I met you with John Cordy and the Vinyl guys, and I grew up with sections and we had similar friends. And he's a bass player, so boom got We got Ross Cobb as our winemaker. And he's been our winemaker for twelve years now.
And he's a very good friend. And he's a pretty good bass player.
Okay, but he's winemaker exclusives to you or he all works on multiple vineyards.
He does his own label, Cobb, and he does I think he does a couple other labels as well, but he's mainly us and him.
What does it take to make a good wine?
A good winemaker helps, but the main thing is sourcing good fruit. And where we live just happens to be the mecca of California peanuta. So we get a lot of good fruit and Ross knows what to do with it. You know, it's funny. I always say that, you know, I mean a band with Stuart Copeland, which is an unbelievable thing to me when I really think about it, even though he's a good buddy and it seems natural now. But it's a similar thing with Ross making our wine.
He's like the Stuart Copeland of winemakers. He's just that guy that has he has an approach and a thumb prints. I find making wine is very similar to make records. There's a lot of variables within those elements that make that create that thumb print if you're looking to create a thumbprint.
Okay, so is this a public operation? Can people drive their sample et cetera? Oh yeah, so people listening it might be in the area, give us a couple of names or whatever how they can find your place.
It's just purple packeter is the name of the wine and the name of the tasting room's packet m station and look for the giant fiberglass wain.
So at the end of the day, is this operation in the red or in the black?
It's let's just say it's kind of what's what's the combination of red and black? I would say pink, but that's more white and black. It's kind of it just floats itself.
Basically.
You know, there's an old saying if you want to make if you want to make a million dollars in the wine industry, start with five million and whittle it down, you know. So it's a lifestyle thing for us.
And how many people work there?
What do we have? We have six or seven folks working for us.
Okay, and you mentioned your wife. She doesn't want to get rid of the other tour bus. How'd you meet your wife?
I've known we've been together over thirty years. I met her in Berkeley. Her sisters were going to school in Berkeley, and she eventually went to Cal Berkeley and I lived in Berkeley. I hung out around caw But we've just been together for many, many years and Wet I met her through her sisters. It's been a long time.
And how many kids do you have?
I have two kids that are now in their mid twenties.
And what are they up to?
My son graduated from el KAT with a degree in game design, but now he's a fledgling filmmaker. In fact, he's working on the I'm a documentary right now. And my daughter has a sort of a vintage boutique hips hip. I wouldn't say hipster, but hip clothes clothing store in Pedaluma called Buck Lucky. That's actually doing she's having a good time.
With So they're both kind of still on the payroll.
They're on there. Well, Lina's not Lina's, she's she's her business is clicking right along, so she's doing her own thing. Cage he's he's done a few things on his own. He he just did him and Jimmy Hayward animated that that infamous Jim Carrey cartoon that he posted to leave what did he leave? Twitter with it or Instagram? I can remember. But my son was the animator on that. And he's got a few things of his own goings, and he's doing the Primus documentary.
So, your father's a mechanic, comes from a long line in mechanic. Your mother homemaker? Does she work outside the home?
My mother left the planet several years ago, but she worked as for many years as a she ran a pediatrician's office, so she was like the front desk lady or whatever you call it.
So how many kids in the family.
In my family? Yes, I have two children.
Are you talking about no? No, no, When you're growing up brothers and sisters.
I have a stepbrother and stepsister and a half brother and half sister.
And how many grew up in the house with you?
Well, when I was living with my mom, I was myself and my little brother and little sister, and they were quite a bit younger than me. And then when I moved to my father's when I became high school age, I was living with my stepbrother and step sister that were closer to my age.
Do you have any brothers or sisters who share the same father and mother as.
You, different father's, same mother.
Okay, so what's it like growing up shuttling between these two places and really being the only person in your own little league there?
Well, I, you know, I was a child of the seventies, and I think it was fairly common. You know, most of my friends were shuffling off every other weekend to see the the parent they weren't living full time with, so it seemed pretty pretty commonplace. You know, there were pros and cons. The pro is, you got two Christmases. You know, that was pretty that was pretty sweet. The con was, you know, I had to divide my time.
But it worked out for me. I went and moved in with my father when I was thirteen, which was a which was a great thing for me because that's where I got exposed to a more musical community and just got to kind of go reinvent myself. And where I had been living. My cousin, who I spent every day with until I was thirteen years old, he ended up spending the majority of his life in prison, So it was good that I moved on from that world.
What was he what were his crimes?
Well, addiction is a big thing in my family, whether it's alcohol or meth amphetamine. So he went down the crank trail, as we would have said, and just it consumed him and he spent a lot of time behind bars.
So you're growing up, what kind of kid are you? Popular? Outcast, good student, bad student?
I think I was somewhere in the middle. I think moving to my father was a chance for me to kind of reinvent myself and show up and be you know, move from group to group until I found who I was comfortable with. I did. I was the I was the kid in my family that was would have been the first one to go to college or the first male to go to college because I had good grades and whatnot. But I I had to work because I had no money. I had to work, and I wanted
to play music. I couldn't work and play music and go to college. I just wouldn't have been able to pull it off. So I tried it for a semester. It didn't work out, and then I opted to work and play music. And that's and here I am now talking to you.
You got a wild sense of humor. Where does that come from?
I'm going to say my grandfather, who has who actually has a Wamola Wiener named after him, Papa Simoni at our at our, at our hot dog joint. Our family tend to tended to deal with heavy issues with humor.
You know.
It was always deflected with humor. That's just always the way we did things. So he was a very humorous.
Fellow, Okay, and you pick up the bass? When and why?
So?
When I had mister Kelly's algebra class in ninth grade and there was a fellow who sat behind me who wore these big, thick pop bottled glasses, had this long hair, and he'd wore these these white T shirts, this kind of a little Filipino guy, and he would sit back there and look at guitar magazines and roll up dimebags. And I remember him showing he would show me these magazines, Hey, Clay, pooh man, look at that's that's the one I'm getting
right there. And he'd show me pictures of the stratocaster, and I remember the ad specifically a stratocaster, those guy holding it going it's a country machine, and somebody overs going it's a rock machine, and somebody else going it's a blues machine. He's like, that's the gold guitar I'm getting.
That's what I'm getting. And that guy happened to be Kirk Hammitt and he he he wanted me to sing for his band because I would always come in singing like Aerosmith songs and you know, a Zeppelin and whatnot. And he was like, kay poo, I want you to I want you to sing from a band. Man wants you to sing from a band. And he gave me some tapes. He turned me on too, Hendrix. He gave me some He wanted me to sing cream Sunshine of
your Love. That was gonna be my audition song. And I took the tapes and I listened to him, but I was too scared. I couldn't I couldn't do it. I was like, dude, I can't do it. I can't do it. But it gave me the itch to do something. And I met this other guy that needed that. You know, bass players weren't big demand because everybody wanted to be Eddie van Halen. Nobody wanted to play bass. They always
stuck the bass. The guy who couldn't play couldn't play guitar as well as the other guy, you know, so he needed a bass player. I knew this guy that was selling a bass for I think fifteen bucks or something. I was thirty bucks. I had fifteen bucks, and I went to my dad. I said, Dad, Jim Ledbetter's got this bass. He wants to sell us thirty dollars. I got fifteen. Can you loan me in fifteene? Is this something you really want to do? And I was like, yeah,
that's really what I want to do. All right, Well, let's do this, right, We're gonna go see Al. So we went to Al's Music Local local music store in town, and we bought a Fender. It was a Memphis p bass copy of a Fender Precision one hundred and fifty dollars. My dad loaned me the rest of the money, and I worked all summer pulling weeds and schlepping.
Well, one thing we know about a bass guitar is you need an app. So what about an app?
Well, I was screwed there. I didn't get my own app until I was like well into my twenties. I actually would the guitar player in this band that I ended up joining in high school. He had this little Gibson guitar amp and I would play through this little Gibson guitar. And the funny thing is I used to schlep that damn amp back and forth from my house because my house was like maybe half a mile from school, and I would carry that damn thing. And I only
weighed like ninety pounds. I'm carrying this damn thing. I had a twelve inch speaker. And now those amps are worth a fortune. They're actually worth quite a bit of money. I look them up. And but that's what I would play through. And you couldn't hear me at all. You could barely hear me. I was, you know, it was like most bass players in rock bands. I was just part of the landscape more than anything.
But rumor was in my day that if you played a bass who regular guitar amp, you're going to blow it up.
Oh yeah, I blew up some amps, but these were tiny and this is tiny amp, you know, so it didn't get loud enough to do much of anything.
You know. Okay, see you come on with a p bass copy, you got it? How do you learn how to play it.
Well? Because I didn't have an amp, I would sit there, much to the chagrin of my stepbrother and stepsister as they're watching their cartoons. I would sit on the edge of the couch and just play along. And a lot of times I would put on like rush records and stuff and just play along. I couldn't hear what I was doing, so I had no idea if I was in the right key or anything. But I could rhythmically
follow along. And that's kind of how I started, was interpreting these songs without hearing the notation, but just rhythmically following along.
And then how did you ultimately learn the right notes in the right key? I never did.
Yeah, you know, we just did this, Like I said, we just did this rush album. And part of the impetus of us doing the rush album is. It was always something that the three of us connected. When we first got together, me and Lure and Herb. We saw this guy with this giant drum kit, was like, well he must know some rush. We'd play little bits and pieces of Rush rifts that we knew from, but we never knew full songs, you know, just bits and pieces. So with Farewell the Kings, we had to learn the
entire thing. So I was never one of those guys that would sit and learn other people's songs, and I think a lot of it came from I just didn't have the equipment to do so.
So when you're talking to Kirk, you said, you know you taught You said, well, you're running around singing Aerosmith songs, et cetera. So prior to this turning point, what was your exposure to music and what were you in too?
Well, I don't know how you were growing up, but there was always the kid in the neighborhood who's house she hung out at because they had the best stereo, they had a pool table, maybe they had a dough boy swimming pool, you know. And Jeff Webster was that guy. And so Jeff Webster and his older brother Tom, they each had their own stereo, plus their parents had a badass stereo. Plus they had a pool table, plus they had babie guns. Plus they had a dough boy swimming pool.
And it was that's where we would hang out all the time. And I, you know, I had I really had no money. I had like a couple of records, but these guys had tons of records, so they were always playing music. And I was exposed to all this music, especially when there's an older brother involved. I remember being in I think we were shooting pool one day and I hear this darn no no, it's coming blaring out of his bedroom. I'm like, what the hell is that.
It was the greatest sound I'd ever heard in my life. And Jeff goes, oh, that's led Zeppelin. I like, wow, that guy's amazing. And it was heartbreaker and it was it just it just it just stuck to me. It was it was the greatest thing I'd ever heard in my entire life. So I went and got led Zeppelin too, and I put it on my crappy, little little plastic turntable with a couple of speakers, and and that was
that was part of the intro. But the thing. And and like I said, I don't I don't know your demographic or your age or where you know, where you grew up. But a big thing that that for us back in the day was those damn record clubs. You know, you could join the RCAA Record Club. There was Columbia Record Club where you could get X amount of records for a dollar, or there was RCAA Record Club where you could get not quite as many records, but it was only a penny. So I went for the penny
one because you know, they had no money. And I got you know, banned Gypsy's, and I got all the world's of stage, and I got Montrose jump on it, and I got I remember getting these records gone. This is the greatest thing in the world. But that's how we got turned on besides friends, but how we accumulated our record collection was through these clubs. And then of course they'd send you a record every month and you had to get it back to them by a certain dat or they charge you for it.
Well, the other thing is the scam was they charged you full retail price, So if the album was four dollars in a discount store, it was six ninety eight to the person in the club.
Yeah, but when you're thirteen, you just don't think that way. You're thinking. You know, it's like it's like buying the six foot Frankenstein in the back of the comic book for a dollar. You think you're going to get this, and it's a poster, you know, it's like a black and white poster. You don't think of that. My dad was always if it seems too good to be true, then it is too good to be true. Yeah, right, Dad,
you don't know what you're talking about. I'm getting six records for a penny, you know.
Just to you know, dot an I back there, A doll Boy was a high level above ground pool, probably the best brand. But did you also listen to the radio?
I mean, my mom always had the AM radio going when we were kids. You know, I remember her scooting across the floor doing her whatever type of Roba sizing or whatever you called it back then, with her beehive hair to like Diana Ross and whatnot. But yeah, I mean I remember when FM radio became a big deal for us. You know, you'd listen, you'd hear some song. I remember hearing, you know, waiting to hear what like
what the next sound was going to be? And I remember one day hearing this song and I was like, oh my god, that's the greatest song I've ever heard. And they didn't say who it was. So I kept listening and this was the Camel. I don't know if you know Camel, Yeah, k me l Sian Francisco.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I'm waiting to hear this song again. What the hell song was it? What the hell signed? And it took months and finally I hear it again and was a Man on the Silver Mountain by Rainbow. I was just like, oh my god, and it and next thing you know, I went out, I went down the Rainbow Trail.
Okay, so just to be clear, you're born in sixty three. Led Zeppelin two came out the fall of sixty nine. How many years behind that were you into it? And when did you kind of think in time such as you were listening to the stuff that was out right then?
Well, I mean I got into Zeppelin it would have been in the mid to late seventies. That's when I sort of became aware of such things. Prior to that, it was Beatles and I used to buy forty fives that was the big thing is is if I got an A on my report card, I'd get a dollar, and so I would take that dollar and go buy a forty five. So needless to say, I didn't have a lot of forty fives because I didn't get a
lot of a's on my report cards. But I remember one of the first ones I bought was you know, Stevie Wonder Superstition, and then Amos Moses by Jerry Reid and uh and then when we got into albums, that was like a whole that was a whole new ballgame. But I think the first album I ever bought was Why I says Loos Chacones. I can't remember the Cheach and Chong record. You know, we were we had a big Cheat and Chong phase, which I which once my father heard it, he took it away from me.
What was the routine on that particular album?
Uh, well, there was quite a few. That was the one where they would go to the you know there they go to the drive in. You know, they go to the drive in and sneak the guy in in the trunk and they can't get him out and he's pissing on the trunk and.
Okay, so you get the bass, how long after that are you playing with the band?
Immediately? I was immediately in a band because I had befriended the local guitar player who was like he was like the guy, he was the hot shot guy, and he's he had this He had started this band called Blind Illusion and they needed a bass player. And I was immediately in the band. And I didn't know how to play anything because it was all original material. I couldn't play anybody else's music but his. I only knew
how to play his song. So that's how I learned, was learning to play him showing me how to play his songs. It wasn't until I started branching off on my own and listening to you know, a lot of a lot of funk back then that I started getting in to being a little more aggressive with how I attacked my instrument.
Okay, you know, I can understand the regular guitar, I cannot understand the bass. And just you know, there are many different levels what notes to play, whether you're you know, Paul McCartney playing melody on the bass, other people Bill Wyman just holding down the bass. What's the trick or is it something you're either born with or not.
I don't know if there's a trick to it, but I do. It is funny seeing people that I have a friend that's a great guitar player, but when he gets on the bass, it's just a mess. I'm like, what the hell is going on here? So but to me, it's just it's four strings versus six string. I mean, I have six string basses too, So to me, the bass itself is, for me, is kind of transcended what it is theoretically supposed to be. It's it just happens to be the crayon that I picked out of the box.
I'm still painting the same pictures I probably would have painted with what ever instrument. But but so back then, though, it was, you know, I was just learning and getting my way around, and I'm holding down the route you're playing the root of the chord, you know. But once I started seeing guys like Lewis Johnson and Larry Graham and Stanley Clark tear into that thing, that it just changed my whole perspective on how to approach the instrument.
Okay, you know, how do you figure what notes to play on a fretless bass?
I mean, it's it's the same principle. It's just you're you're you're, you have a you're able to loosely interpretate interpret the note, you know. I mean, you could still get warbliness out of a fretted instrument by using vibrato and whatnot. But with the fretless you can slide in and out of the note, and and it's it's a little more uh, liquid sounding, I would say, but it's the same thing. You kind of. I got to know where you're going.
Okay, So you form this band, you're probably playing in somebody's living room or garage. Do you play any gigs live?
Our first gig, well, the very first gig I played, and it's actually in the high school yearbook for that year, and Kirk still remembers being in the audience was in the cafeteria of DeAnza High School. And I was so petrified that I stood sideways. I couldn't face the crowd. I stood sideways the entire time with my bell bottom chord zone and my platform shoes, and you know, and there we were.
Kirk wanted you to sing. So in this new band, were you singing at all?
No?
I still barely sing, I just I didn't finish puberty until I was like twenty nine, so my voice was cracking all over the place I would have been awful. Was like, I just didn't have I.
Didn't Okay, I got to go back to that joke, you didn't finish puberty until you were twenty nine.
What are you actually saying there?
It took me forever I grow in a mustache. It took me forever to be able to grow a mustache. My dad always had a mustache. I want a mustache. I mean, I'm you know, I'm joking a bit, but I was well into my twenties before I was able to grow a mustache.
What about your history with girls back then?
I had some girls, Okay, So on that level, purity worked, yes, yes, okay.
So by time I went I.
Went from I went from like I went from like five foot tall in ninth grade over the summer to six foot one. So I was like, went from little skinny guy to tall, skinny guy within a matter of months.
And how did that change your life?
I'm sure changed my life in many many ways. But I was definitely one of those late bloomer guys that was you know, I remember my my first you know, going into the locker room at June and Junior high and I'm, you know, there's a little less sitting down and I look over and I can't remember the guy's name, but he's he went through puberty, and he had this big giant bush with this big dogger hanging out, and I'm bald as an acorn sitting there, going, what the
hell is going on here? And I you know, it's it's it's it's uh, it's intimidating when you're the only guy and and and by the time you get to ninth grade, you're counting your pubes, just waiting to when you can catch up with everybody else. So so the height was just just a portion of of of of building my self esteem.
Okay, your name is Leslie short Less. I know a number of people from my father's generation with the name less Leslie, but it's not common amongst people your age. Was that an issue growing up? People give you a shit for your name, happy with your name?
Well, so I have mentioned Papa Simoni as the guy with the humor and who we've named the a Wiener after at the tasting room. He left the planet several years ago. But my parents were very young. My mom was seventeen when I was born. My dad was nineteen and her mom was sixteen or seventeen when she was born,
so my grandparents were very young. My grandfather was thirty four years old when I showed up, and needless to say, he was pretty pissed off that his sixteen year old daughter had got knocked up by this guy with grease back hair and a cigarette pack rolled up in his in his T shirt sleeve, you know, so to gain favor with and that's why we called him Papa. You want to be called grandpa. So to gain favor with Papa, they named him. They named me after him. He was
Leslie Edward Simoni. I'm Leslie Edward Claypool. As a kid, the name Leslie, it's a girl's name, that's a girl. I heard it all the time, but it was like whatever, it could have been worse. And my father's name is Lynn, and so he kind of grew up a similar thing had he had a girl's name, as kids would say. But I have no issue with it now. I was one of those guys because I wasn't big. I just
tried to be funny. You know, there's that old Richard Pryor joke about when he went to prison, he made the guys laugh so they wouldn't get the boutet.
You know.
I made guys laugh so I wouldn't get beat up. You know. It was like, hey, there's Less. Yeah, he's a funny guy, you know. So it kept the It kept most of the bullies a big but there's always some bully that just wants to be a dick.
And then were you always Less? Who were you ever? Leslie?
I was Leslie when I was little, but then I became became less. There was a lot of nicknames slung around too. We always had nicknames all of our buddies.
Right, And was your name less or did you have another nickname?
I've had many nicknames over the years, so but less has been what people call me.
Well, it's a very interesting thing because people don't have nicknames anymore. I mean, I'm really a bit older. Oh I'm a little bit older. You All the baseball players had nicknames, no, and there was no such thing as David. David was always Dave and all this other stuff. You know, I'm raw, I was never Robert. I was always Bob. But whatever. So by time you graduate from high school, what's the status of your musical career.
I was really into a lot of funk and what was called fusion at the time, like Stanley Clark, Clark Project, Ronnie Laws, Dixie Dregs, things like that.
He as far out as Weather Report and Maha vishn Orchestra or not.
A little bit. Not as much. I tended to like the things. It had to be funky or I just wasn't that into it, you know. And I never really went deep into the jocko world because I was a Stanley Clark guy. You know, I wanted to see that, you know, I wanted Larry Graham. You Larry Graham just blew my mind. But as I was graduating in high school, that was when I you know, I was a huge rushead throughout all of it. That was they were my guys, you know, until.
I Okay, wait, wait, a couple of questions here. Why is funk centered in the Bay Area. You talk about Graham Central Station, et cetera. It's a hot bet of funk. Do you have any ideas there?
Well, I mean there's also I mean, there's Minneapolis funk, there's Cincinnati funk, you know, talking to Bootsy a while back and I was like, hey, Bootsy, so who's who's who is the funkiest of all time? And he was like, Ohio Players, Man, Ohio Players, they were the funkiest by far. And so it just sort of depends on what kind of funk it's. It's it's regional, you know, like you listen to Minneapolis funk, it's got a different feel to
it than like New Orleans funk. So but yes, Larry Graham and Slicestone coming out of the Bay Area, that was pretty sweet.
Okay, So what's the status of funk today in the world of music?
Shit, I don't know. I'm an old guy. What the hell do I know. I'd have no idea, to be honest with you, I really don't.
Well, it certainly isn't dominant, but everything, you know, the whole landscape has changed. But going back to okay, how did you get into Rush?
And that was my first concert. So I remember my buddy Jeff Webster, who was the guy who had all the records and he had the fancy stereo in the dough Boy swimming pool. We picked out things to listen to by the cover, you look at the cover. Oh, we got to listen to this. This has got to be amazing. And so one day I picked up the cover and there's this guy sitting there in a chair with all this rubble behind him, and it was rushed for all the kings we put it on. It's like,
oh my god. So I got turned on to rush. And then when I became a when I was talking about picking up the base, it was Geddy was the guy. And we got tickets to well, a bunch of friends of mine got tickets to go see the Hemispheres show at the Cow Palace. And I didn't have a ticket, but I had some money, and I hopped in the car with these guys and Dan Maloney, he was the older brother of these two twins Joe and Mike Maloney that I knew, and he was like the guy would
buy his beer. He was old enough to get his beer. And on he drove drove us all to the Cow Palace to see Hemispheres, and we bought some. He bought some low Umbrow on the way there, but he would buy it from Nick's Delicatessen, which never kept the beer
quite cold enough because open top. So it was kind of warm low umbrowse So I drank three low umbrows and my you know, ninety pound body, and you know, got there and threw up in the parking lot and bought a scout ticket even though the show wasn't sold out, and just watched this show that completely totally blew my
mind and changed my life. It was Pat Travers opening for Rush on the Hemispheres tour, so I got to see Mars on Base, which was amazing, got to see Tommy Aldridge do this incredible solo and do you know, play with his bare hands, and then Rush just and watching the signus that rossa Nante going through the black hole on my my little fourteen year old mind was just percolating. So that was my intro into Rush.
Well, I think Rush started on Mercury then went to Atlantic. If you go to a Rush show I saw the second and last tour, there are very few women in the audience. I mean, if you meet these guys. Of course one's dead now, very nice guys from Canada explain magic and why it's such a male thing.
You know, I think it's a lot like it's a lot like being a treky, you know, It's like it's one of those. It's kind of a guilty pleasure, very devout, devoted group of individuals, somewhat obsessive. You know, they weren't writing songs about partying and chicks and all this stuff.
They were writing about you know, black holes and and ships named Rossinante and battling evil forces and dungeons and dragons and all this cool mythological stuff that was that was enticing for guys that maybe the Red sci Fi or were trekys. But and then the musicality was just insane. It would blow my mind when people go, ah, I don't like Rush. I was like, what are you talking about? You know, some people were rubbed a little bit the wrong way by Getty's voice, But you know it's like
John Lydon. You know, John Lydon's one of my favorite singers of all time. You know, some people don't like the sound of John's voice, but there's a character to it that's unbelievable. Fits the tone, fits the aesthetic of what they're doing.
And how do you feel is a Rush fanatic that they've hung it up? Do you think they should get another drummer go on the road.
Well, we just played with them recently. You know, I keep pretty good contact with Geddy. I really don't know. That's kind of their thing. It's that's a tough one, you know. That's that's a that's a kinship and a and being in a band. It's it's it's like a it's a it's a marriage. It's there's all the same emotions. There's all the same drama and pleasure, and you know, there's you know, besides rolling around under the sheets. But the it's a it's a very it's it's a very
tight bond. And so it's not for me to say what they should do, to be honest with you, but uh, it would be an it would be an interesting thing to see for sure. And I have seen him. I mean they played with us, so I've seen him play without without Neil. But I mean it's like The Police without Stuart Copeland. It just doesn't seem to it just it would be, it would be.
The difference is is that Steing goes on the road, whereas life sinning Getty appear to be retired.
I know Alex has a he has a new project that he's doing with some friends. I've heard it, and it's it's it's it's cool. I think, like anything, you you you move through your life, and you you reflect what's interesting to you at that particular time. And if they become nostalgic about it or or or what have you, they'll go and do it, I would think. But I'm not sure if right now they're they're they're they're fields.
Okay, just staying with that nostalgic point. Even you too is playing complete albums. Now, you're a guy who's constantly evolving. How do you feel about nostalgia?
I mean, I love nostalgia, but there's also a part of me that that's I have a little bit of I love nostalgia as a as a fan, you know, I love it. It's it's it's it's an amazing, wonderful thing. As a musician, a creative person, I like to keep moving forward. It's hard for me, Like we're trying to do all these live records, these Primus live records. It's hard for me to listen to them because I'm like, you know, I'll listen to them, and I it's fun,
but I'd rather hear some new stuff. I'd rather keep moving forward. But as a fan, and I know I speak for a lot of fans, people come to your shows they want to see, they want to they want to see, they want to see those songs that made them feel like they did when they were in nineteen ninety eight and they were hanging out, you know, wakeboarding on some lake or whatever, whatever, whatever, They can associate it with good times, bad times, whatever it is. Music
is the It's like a smell. It brings you back to a certain time in your life and hopefully those are good times. And so I think, as a fan, you want to see that, but I do. I also like the Miles Davis theory, which was he just wanted to keep going forward. He'd never want to play anything. He didn't want to go back and play that stuff.
You know, to what degree do you personally feel a responsibility to your audience.
Well, when I'm in primus mode, I feel that responsibility and we go out and we play. We play a smattering of we don't have hits, but there's those ones that people recognize. But I also know that people really dig it when we dig deep into something that we played twice back in ninety six or whatever. You know, people like that. That's part of the deep fandom and I think that's what that's what we cater to because
that's part of ourselves. But I've always said since the get go, as a selfish person, I like to go out and play what I want to play because I feel like if I'm enjoying what I'm doing, that will translate, whereas if I'm going I won't name any names, but I've met some musicians that have had some big ass hit and it's not necessarily it's kind of like a Poppy Ballady thing and they go, oh my god, we got to play that damn song again. I wish we could just be like you guys and just go play
all this crazy shit, you know. So I'm kind of glad we're not tethered by something like that because we've never really had that big hit, you know. But I also like counterbalancing that by going out and doing like my Bastard Jazz project, where we just show up and just start jamming and it's unbelievable. It's so much fun, so I get to scratch that itch.
Do you feel that you have a large enough dedicated fan base that they'll follow you or whatever you want to do, or you ever do something and say, well, shit me people, people aren't going to be interested in this one.
I just don't think that way. When I did think that way, I got in trouble. And I say that back going back to like the Antipop era, you know, all of a sudden, we had done this record, the Brown Album, which we were so proud of, and we had taken all these chances, and it was super low fi and old school, and it just didn't resonate as well. But then again, it resonated better with other people.
You know.
Tom Waits once told me that's his favorite Primus record. That means the.
World to me.
But then going in to do Antipop and here in the you guys might want to work with a producer. Hey maybe you should work with this guy. Hey maybe I'll bring somebody in to do this, and be second guessing and starting the second guest and starting to think, oh, well, we used to get the radio, we used to get MTV, how do we get that again? And for many years I couldn't even listen to Antipop because I remember that time is just not a very pleasant time. There was
a lot of second guessing. It was when we started not really getting along so well. It just kind of sucked. But now as time goes by and you know, the edges of rode off of things and you can remember the good times, as we do with everything in our lives, I can listen to it and go, wow, that's actually kind of cool. I Sonically, I think it's a great
sounding record. But when we came back to it, like when we just did the consparanoia thing with Primus, it was we did when we're not thinking about MTV or which we have in a long time, or radio or any of that stuff. I think we made better stuff
in the early days. We never thought we were going to I remember having a meeting with our attorney after our it was either our first or second record, and we got offered a publishing deal and it was a considerable amount of money, and he was like, you know, the only way this publishing deal is going to be bad for you is if you sell over one hundred thousand records. Do you honestly believe you're going to sell over one hundred thousand records? And we're like, yeah, one
hundred thousand records. That's a shitload of records. We never thought we were gonna get on radio or MTV or any of that stuff and we sold way more than one hundred thousand records.
So okay, since you keep mentioning him, how do you meet Tom Waite?
Well, I was a big Tom Waits fan way back in the day. A friend of mine's mom. She always had this really cool she was a very good friend. She had amazing taste. She was one turned me onto the Residence and all that Snake Finger, all that Ralph record stuff. But she played me some Tom Waits one day. I was like, holy shit, this is amazing. And then my buddy Joe Gore played me Rain Dogs when it came out, and I was like, holy shit, this is unbelievable.
So I was a big Tom Waits fan. I was turning on Lure and everybody onto Tom Waits at first. I remember playing. I was like, you gotta hear Tom Waits, and Lure thought, I said John Waite, which was like the singer for Candy or something, and he's like, what
the hell are you talking about. But when we went to do our first record with Interscope, we had this song Tommy the Cat, which we deliberately did not put on the Frizzle Fry record because we wanted it to be on whatever our major label release was going to be. Because Frizzle Fry we recorded ourselves. We're originally going to
put it on ourselves. But so I was talking to Tom Wally, who is our champion at Innerscope, and I said, you know, I'd love to just get somebody else to be the voice of Tommy the Cat, you know, some interesting character, someone like Tom Waits. He's like, well, why don't we get Tom Waits. I said, what the hell, what do you mean that you can do that. He's like, yeah, you know, we'll get a hold of him mis management. So I wrote him this letter.
Hey, you know.
So we were recording at Fantasy Records and Lure was I had left me and Lern had an apartment in Berkeley, and I'd gone home for something to left Lurr to do his guitar solos. I get home and I click on the the answering machines.
Hey less, says Tom.
Tom Waite's yeah, yeah, I've been listening to this song. Yeah, that would be a wonderful thing, because I had said it would be a wonderful thing if you did this. And I called Laura. I'm like, oh my god, Laura, you got to hear this. I put the phone over there, and Tom came down and he did the voice of Tommy the Cat, and he brought his son, Casey, who was four years old at the time. And I've known
Casey ever since. But we just kind of kept in touch, and I moved up to the country kind of near where he lived, and we just have always kept in touch. And I played on a bunch of his records, and I've turned him on to some musicians, and I know his family. He's him and Kathleen. They're great, They're amazing people, great people, good friends.
Okay, you talk about Trey, you talk about Tom Waite, you talk about Stuart Copeland. Is that your personality to really make friends with everybody, know everybody? Or are you more of a homebody or you in contact with people all the time?
Those are the only three people I know?
Oh really?
Now? Ah, I don't know. I've been very fortunate that, you know, I've I've always said this is that I've got to meet and befriend a lot of my heroes, and pretty much all of them have been really unbelievable. There's, you know, been a couple of instances with some film stars it's been a little weird, and there's been you know, but for the most part, everybody's been spectacular and unbelievable
and and they've become my friends and oftentimes collaborators. So to me, that's the greatest thing about anything I've done, besides being a father. I'm very proud of my children, my family. But when I think about that stuff, you know, like I said, you know, it's like I'm in a band with Stuart Copeland, which that's to me, that's like John Bonham, Stuart Copland, those are those are the guys. But he's also one of my closest friends. He's like, he's we just chitchat about bullshit.
You know.
That's an amazing thing to me.
You know, Okay, what do I know if you're a regular musician as opposed to someone with a name. People are networking all the time for work. So the nature of those people, as I say, a lot of these people are not front people. They are certainly from people who do a lot less networking back then and now. And it's one thing to meet famous people, and I've met a zillion, it's another thing to keep up the relationship. There are certain people I've met. Every time we connect,
you know, we have a great time. But my identity, my personality is I'm not going to reach out to them. Someone has to keep it. He keep hitting the ball back over the net to keep it Owen. That sounds like that's part of your personality.
Well, I like that analogy. I like the way you phrased that. I mean, look, first of all, I'm the worst guy when it comes to famous people or people that I respect. Like if I if you know, I had an opportunity one time. I had a film in this film festival in London, and and there was this Beatles film, the Beatles Documentary in there too, and George Martin was there, and I had an opport toay, hey, you want to meet George. I was like, I cannot
meet George Martin. I don't want to meet I can't meet George Martin because if it wouldn't have been perfect, if he would have been in a bad mood, which we all get in bad moods, and we're not always as gracious as maybe we should be, it would have it would have tainted something to me that is one of the most influential, glorious things of any creativity. I've that I've absorbed into my into my consciousness. So I just wanted to admire on the far. I didn't want
to meet Santa Claus. I wanted to you know, I met his on he was a great guy and met a couple of people who worked for him. But I couldn't meet George. And I'm totally fine with that. I've never been that guy that when there's There was one time I was doing this conference in it was a CMJ, I had a CMJ thing and and Lemmy had just spoke before me, and he was like in this in this in the dressing room, and they were like, oh, go on and meet let me go in, and I was I was like, what am I going to say
to Lemmy? I'm not that guy that goes up hoody dude, how's going? I really like your stuff. I've never been good at that. If I meet somebody on a you know, and it's meant to be, you know, we're getting a sandwich at the table or what, I don't know. I'm not good at going up and being that guy.
Never have been, and I don't know.
Okay, So so my relationships are based on just like, hey, we all like any other friends you meet that you happen to hit it off with.
Okay, two things. I not to having pictures taken. I don't need a wall of fame. Two I've learned I won't talk to anybody unless they know who I am. That's not something meaning my status. It's just otherwise it's unfulfilling. They're just shaking your hand in another person out there, you're testifying. But I am not good at keeping the relationship going. So my question is are you the person
hey and me? Well, give me your phone number, your email address, let's keep it going, and then you email them what's up now.
I'm terrible at that. In fact, my wife is way better at that type of thing. My social life would be awful if it wasn't for her. You know, I have my few fishing buddies, and that's kind of kind of what I do. But it's funny because I have friends that whenever they show up in a town, that get their book out and they go, oh, I'm gonna call such and such and such a I never do any of that. I show up in town. I'm there to do my job.
I do my job.
If I see somebody that I know that happened to come to the show. That's a wonderful thing.
But I don't.
I very very rarely seek them out. But my life will because she's good at that stuff.
Okay, so you meet Tom Waits, you meet Stuart Coplan. How does it turn into a friendship.
Well, I mean, like I said, it's because we bonded over things besides, hey, how you doing. You're Tom Waits. You know, we bonded over other things. It's like like any other friendship. I mean, how often do you meet somebody at the at the hardware store, at some friends party and you keep up with them? It's sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. It depends on if you click in other ways.
Well, I find as you get older, it's like I was listening to a podcast and was it Rob Reiner saying, you know you can't show up at anybody's house anymore. You show up somebody's house, it's going to blow their mind. You know, you a criminal whatever. And it's harder to make new friends, not as hard in this business maybe for other people. But you mentioned phishing off handedly. Are you like a big fisher person?
Well, like I said, my are all mechanics. We didn't go to On weekends. When I go visit my dad, we were either working on some crappy rental property that my grandmother owned, or we were out fishing. That's what we did. We didn't go to baseball games. We didn't go to football games. He wasn't a sports guy. We would go fishing with my uncles and even my grandfather. I'd go fishing with my So it's just one of those things that I grew up with and I very much.
I enjoy it. To me, when I go fishing, I'm not thinking about anything else. It's like people that go golfing. They're just in the game and that's it. So that's been my thing since since I was a little guy.
How often do you go fishing? Do you go to Alaska in Chile to go fishing or you just guy, you know, doing it occasionally in the same area.
Well, I keep a boat out in Badega Bay. So, but they canceled salmon season this year because the counts were low, so it's not going to be as much fishing this year. But the blue fin came in last year, which was an amazing thing. I didn't get one, but I went out and chased him around. I have a pond. If I point that way, about two hundred yards that way. We have a pretty good sized pond that there's some bass in it. If I'm inclined, I can sneak down there.
I used to take the kids down there all the time, pop some bass and look at them and toss them back in the water. It's just to me, it's very relaxing.
Okay, you talk about the pond. How much property do you have.
We've got about thirty seven acres here.
How close is your closest a neighbor.
A couple hundred yards?
Oh okay. So you graduate from high school, you say you want to do music? What's the next step? And you say you have a day job? What's going on there? You say you're a fan of funk? Confusion at that time? What's the next step?
Well, my father always said he was very supportive. Actually, I mean, he's got me my first base. And I didn't even find out till years later that he got shipped from his family like what the.
Hell are you doing?
He's going to become a drug addict, the blah blah, you know, you know, they couldn't understand, and but he always used to tell me, hey, this music thing's great. He knew that it was keeping me out of trouble. You know, he watched my cousin go. You know, my cousin went and ended up eventually in jail. And if you don't keep and I still believe this to this day, is anytime a kid shows an interest in anything that gives them some form of focus, it keeps them. They're
less appt to get in trouble. And he knew it was going to keep me, keep me from going and doing just you know, mundane stupid shit. So he always told me, He's like, hey, this music thing's great, but learn a trade. Learn a trade, Learn a trade so they have something to fall back on. I have a shitload of trades. I used to bust tires, I used to mix auto paints. I was a shipping receiving guy. I was a bench tech at an audio company, and eventually I was a carpenter, which I really enjoyed, actually
so until we started printing our own T shirts. And that's was my last job. But so I had the fortune and misfortune of getting my heart completely destroyed. When I graduated high school. I had a girlfriend. I was going to marry her, and she was like the hot girl of the school, and she just destroyed me. I was a total wreck and I ended up meeting this guy.
A little bit slower. How did she destroy you just.
By like dumping me, well, not really dumping me, but she opted to not be with me anymore.
And okay, wait, wait, usually there's a choice. She's not with less, there's somebody else, or she's moving away, or she's going to college she envisions a better future.
No, no, let's not. I gotta get too deep. But let's just say everybody wanted to be with this girl, so she had a lot of options.
But anyway, okay, the obvious, the obvious question is where is she today?
I have no idea, but but she looked like Marie Osmond. Let's just put it that way.
You you right, You're enough for me? But okay, no, definitely not.
She was a cross between Marie Osmond and Pat Benattar.
She had that look.
Okay, so there you go. But anyway, I got my heart broke, so I wanted to get the hell out of my little town of else Branty. My friend Kathy Quavis, who had turned me on to the residence and Tom Waits and all this stuff. Her son was this punk rock dude and he was always going to shows in Berkeley. I said, hey, man, if you get the tickets, I'll drive because I had my sixty eight Cougar. So next thing you know, I'm hanging out with him in San Francisco.
Wait, sixty eight cougar is kind of a cool car. And you end up with a sixty eight Cougar.
That was my first car. That was my that was it was a beautiful car. Well, I told you, we're all out on mechanics, so I bought this sixty eighth. My dad bought the sixty eight Cougar for me like fifteen hundred bucks and we fixed it up. So anyway, so we would spend all this time going to Berkeley and San Francisco to go to all these shows. And I eventually moved to Berkeley and to basically get away from the the you know, the heartache of this this breakup.
And it changed my life for the better because a there's the level of progressive people in else Brownie versus Berkeley. It's quite a bit different. So I was meeting these people, these artists, and these different these people from different cultures and go into shows every single night, going to comedy shows, hanging out of the Berkeley Square and really got just turned onto a lot of amazing, amazing stuff in a
very short period of time. So that's when I started getting into more you know, abstract music, I guess you'd call it, getting into like early Peter Gabriel and Public Image Limited and the old Ralph record stuff and Fred Frith and some of the material stuff and just things that were my friends. And Elsea Brady would say, what's this weird ass shit you're listening to? So that was kind of for me. That was that was a big blossoming for me as an as a human and as an artist.
Okay, you're listening to all that stuff. What about your playing the bass in your professional career?
Well, at the time, I was playing in this in this R and B band called the Tommy Crank Band, which these guys were all way older than me, and we play literally play the biker bars all you Antioch and Sam Pablo and I'd play three to five nights a week, four sets a night, playing Old Booker T and the MG's and Sam and Dave and James Brown and the meters a lot of stuff that I didn't even realize what it was until years later. But these guys were all older than me and it it was
a wonderful experience. That was that was part of my paycheck. I would do that at night and then have my day gig and that. At the time, I was trying to get a band going, and I eventually in nineteen eighty four started this band called Primate and it and we made a demo and it Actually.
Before you get there, you're playing in the R and B band at night. What is the dream? Because you have to have a dream sustain you, otherwise lace too hard.
Well, my dream was to be a professional musician, but play my own stuff.
So I okay, so you were writing your own stuff, you knew what kind of music you wanted to make.
Then I had been playing. Look I was back then there was BAM magazine, Bay Area Music Magazine. Of course I'd look in the back of BAM you know who needs a bass player? And I auditioned for everybody there was. I auditioned for everybody that needed a bass player, and there was just nothing I found exciting. And there was a band called the Hoovers that I remember talking to them. They were a ska band and they were pretty cool, but they didn't want me. But other than that, there
was nothing that I found exciting. So I decided, I'm going to start my own thing, and I want to combine all these weird elements. And I just made some tapes in my apartment and then this guitar player called me. He said, hey, hear. I knew him high school. He's like, I here, You're looking for a guitar player. And I
just thought, yeah, there's no way. This guy he was, you know, he's he's he's from Panol and you know, I'm a birdy guy now, and he's more conservative and he plays like Tony Iomi and and you know, I want someone who's like Adrian Blue or or Robert Fripp. And he came and played for me, played with me, and he's he's a freak. He's still a freak to this day. He has we call it Todd time. He has the craziest sense of time and melody. And that
became the early Primate. It was Primate, and we made a recording and we got we're getting airplay on a local radio station called the Quake. And then I find. I get this phone call one day on my answering machine. Again, hey Les or whoever to whom it may concern, or whatever it was. I my name is such and such. I represent a band called the Primates, and you must cease and desist because we own that name. So we had to change our name, and subsequently we changed it
to Primus. Years later, this is like maybe three or four years ago, I meet this guy and he's like, I don't know if you remember me, but I'm such and Such. I was in a band called the Primates. I was like, yeah, your attorney called me and said cease and desist. And he's like, yeah, that was me. I was just bullshit and.
I was like, so, so you make this independent record.
Continue the narrative, Well, we had made a bunch of we made demo tapes for years before, you know, nothing was happening. We were playing. Nobody knew what to do with us. Michael Bailey, who booked the the Berkeley Square, was really the first guy that kind of went, wow, you guys have something going. I'm going to just book you.
And he would book us with you know, we played with the Swans, we played with the Papo, Pies, but we never really fit in with anybody, you know, And then all of a sudden, along came, you know, Fishbone and the Chili Peppers and Faith No More and bands like that, and all of a sudden there was bands that we could play with, we could open for, and and then the whole scene kind of started in the Bay Area with Limbo Maniacs and Csycopunk Pus and and Fungo Mungo, these these bands that we kind of had
a scene in Mister Bungle, of course, and it just kind of it kind of blossomed from there.
Okay, but you're still working your day job, you're playing some live gigs, you're making tapes in the uh bedroom. What do you expect to happen? And how active are you trying to make that happen? Well?
I was very active as far as you know. We'd rehearse three or four days a week, and we'd go do our gigs, and you know, one day you'd play for ten people, next day you play for twenty people, and hopefully the next day it's forty people. But then there's you get a little lull period and then you know, we're slowly building this thing. But back then, it wasn't like now where you could record an album on your laptop,
you know. I made that little demo of in the early days on a FASTEC But after that we would go into studios. So basically, me and Todd would save up every year, we'd save up one thousand dollars and we'd book because you could get a real studio for one thousand dollars a day. So we would book a studio for one day, twenty four hours, and we would
start and we'd spend the entire twenty four hours. We'd record like three or four songs and record and mix it all in that twenty four hour period, which I'm sure just killed the engineers, you know, They'm sure they hated it. But we would do that once a year, so it took you know, it took a handful of years before any of these demo tapes caught on because back then there was a there was a whole trading of the demo tapes, and it was kind of big in the metal world. But I wasn't. We weren't really
in the metal world at that point. We were we were we were in our own zone. But eventually we made a demo tape that got that caught on and people were buying it, and it was the Sausage Demo, which is actually to this day is pretty coveted on the internet if you can find it. And then eventually we recorded the suck On this record by borrowing some money from my father. He loaned us three thousand dollars so we could print up a thousand records.
Okay, you're how old and how many years since the thing begins?
So suck On this came out and I can't for it's eighty eight or eighty nine. And I had started the band in eighty four. Todd had left the band because he had a couple kids and we had our drummer was in a different band, so he was we're not focused. So I knew Larry Laan from playing with this other band, and I said, hey, just come join the band, because he was my buddy more than anything. And and then we auditioned this guy, Tim Alexander, who you know. He became the guy and we made that record.
They hadn't been in the band, they hadn't been in the band more than a couple of months, and we made that record, and Primus was actually pretty popular we were selling out local clubs. So I was scared to death because all of a sudden, both my guys were gone and I was starting with two new guys. And I was just very fortunate that because, as you know, chemistry is you can't beat chemistry, and you lose it, you replace an artist, and oftentimes it throws that chemistry
out of whack more often than not. But I got very lucky that the three of us had a really good chemistry and it caught on in a way, you know. But Primus has always been a slow burn. There's people go, oh, when did you become famous? It's like, well, may even fame yet, you know, We've always been that under the radar guys. You know, I've had friends that have these big peaks, but they also have the deep valleys. We've just kind of always gone, you know.
So okay, so you put out the independent album and then.
Yeah, we recorded it live at the Berkeley Square and we printed up a thousand copies with three thousand dollars of my dad's money, and we just drove around in my car Mageea taking him to record stores and oh, these people took five All these guys took Dan oh my god, Ah, and we were selling these things and our manager had the foresight to send them around to all the college radio stations around the country and it
just caught on. So we made enough money from that record to record our second record, which was Frizzle Fry. We recorded that ourselves, and at that time we were Gavin label sniffing around us. Rough Trade had gotten involved with the first record and released some of it, and then on the second record, Caroline took took it over and we did that one record deal with Caroline and they did a fantastic job. Janet Billy over there was
amazing Keith. I can't remember Keith's last name, but those were the early days when we're out there in the motor home driving around the country and just you know, it's an amazing, amazing, wonderful time. That time of where you're climbing the hill is such a wonderful, wonderful feeling, you know.
And then how does that turn into a deal with inners Go.
Well, it's funny because we were being courted by a few different labels and I had had bad experience with labels and producers in the early days. Just watching what had happened with friends, and I remember I think it was someone from PolyGram had gotten a hold of us early on, years before even our first record, and oh, I've been hearing a lot about you guys, and blah blah blah. No you ever think of you ever think of like changing your hairstyles? Do you ever think of
maybe getting a lead singer? You know, stuff like that. And it was like, well, no, that's not what we want to do. So I was always a little leary, and so we were being courted by a couple different labels. I don't remember who, but we did a show at The Stone in San Francisco and this guy came backstage afterwards, and he had gone there to see the opening band, who were also friends of ours, not even knowing anything about us, but saw how the crowd, because our crowds
would go nuts, saw how the crowd reacted. He came backstage he said, Hey, my name's Tom Wally. I'm with this new label called Innerscope, and I want to sign you guys right now. And my manager's like, well, you know we talking. Was super nice guy and a very charming guy, and my manager was like, well, you know, we really should look at this other deal because it's blah blah blah blah. And I was like, I like
this guy. This guy wants to say. He had no idea that we'd already sold eighty thousand of our own records. He just saw something he liked and saw how it was resonating with these people, and he wanted it. And at the time, the only release that Interscope had was a fellow by the name of Girardi with Rico Suave. So my manager's going, what the hell, how are we going to sign with this label? Oh my god, they have no track record. Blah blahlah blah. We should stign
with these other guys. I have a better And I was like, no, I like Tom Wally.
He gets it. And it was.
It was one of the best career moves we ever made because Tom was always he always let us do whatever we wanted for one thing, which was unheard of back then, and he was just supportive and he's just a great guy. He's a good human, you know. So it worked out for us.
Okay, how did you get a manager and how long did that particular manager last?
Well, Dave Leftwitz was our first real manage. We had a couple guys like friends, my friends that were trying in the early days. But Dave he worked for David Rubinson in some capacity and had an office in his space, and he was working with some of There was a big scene in the Bay Area called the world beat scene with the Looters in Big City and Mapenze, and I actually rooted for a lot of the bands, and he was a part of that scene. And he just kind of started taking over stuff for.
Us, and he just wait, wait, wait, wait, are you roadying at the same time you're playing with primates, which turns into primus.
I'm at times yeah back then sure, the uh. But anyway, Dave was a big part of that scene. And he just started taking over of doing some bookings for us and this and that and the next thing. And he had a he's always had a great sense of of of marketing. He kept up. He watched all the trades and all the you know, I didn't watch that ship. And he was very instrumental in getting US scene in places where it was kind of cool to be seen.
That makes sense. And then how long did he last?
He was with us for a long time. He was with us until basically until the mid two thousands.
I think, Okay, so you're within scopeters go very quickly turns into a machine. Uh how did that work for you or were you at arm's length? What were your interactions like with Jimmy?
It took a long time for Interscope to become a machine. Interscope was like a clubhouse in the early days. We knew everybody there. They were all our friends. They'd come on the road with us. It was amazing. Didn't know Jimmy very well. In fact, I always I thought, I always thought Jimmy was amazing, because the thing about Jimmy is he didn't he didn't bullshit you. He I remember him coming into a meeting with us one time and he sat there and he's like, look, I'm going to
tell you right now. I don't get Primus. I don't understand Primis. I don't know where one song starts and another one ends. He's like, but you know, Tom Wally gets you, and I get Tom Wally.
And that was it.
To be honest with you, I really wish I would have spent more time like getting to know Jimmy because he he he was a very interesting cat. But it wasn't. It was we weren't one of his bands, but he did chime in. He chimed in some cool stuff. It was his idea for that look of the one own as Big Brown Beaver video. He uh, he saw that Dura cell commercial. I don't know if you remember that dur cell commercial. He's like, that's Primus. That Primis has got to do something like that. So he said, and
I was directing the videos back then. He said, you got to do something like that. And I was thought, well, how can we do this without just ripping off the dura cell thing. So we came up with these toy cowboys and did the one on his Big Brown Beaver video. But in Interscope, Interscope was we would have never accomplished, but we accomplished. If it wasn't for Interscope, they were spectacular to us.
Okay, prior to Interscope signing you and graduating from high school, you ever think of giving up?
Yes, I don't know about giving up. I mean, you're a musician because you're compelled to play your instrument. You're a musician, whether you're making five bucks or five hundred bucks a night. You know, it's just that's what you do. But there was a time when my dad and everybody were kind of like, okay, you know, I was in my I guess I was twenty three or twenty four. Hey, this said, what's good? When are you going to go
to school? This music thing? What you know? And I went, I said all right, and I went to went back to school, and I to one semester of culinary school because I thought that's creative, that would be fun. And once I got in there, I realized, well, this is ridiculous. A when you leave culinary school, you start as just a schlepper. You're making minimum wage. I was already making like thirty bucks an hour as a carpenter, and the
hours totally conflict with any musician. You're either a dinner you're work in the dinner shift, or you're the breakfast shift. Neither one of those is going to work for me.
So I was.
I realized early on it wasn't going to that wasn't going to be a good ath.
Okay, So you ended up having pretty quickly big success on interscope, So what do you think. I don't know.
See, the thing is, I've never thought of primus as we never had big leaps, you know, those things that happened that were interesting that came quickly, like getting on MTV. I remember when we got one hundred and twenty minutes or whatever. I remember even Kirk Hamic going, what the hell, how'd you get on MTV? We're not even on MTV, you know. So those were interesting things, but it's still primus is a is an acquired taste. You know, it's not something for everyone. So it's always been this kind
of cultish thing to an extent. Even when we had little our toes dabbled slightly into the mainstream, it didn't last long.
You know.
It was always about this this this, this cultish fan base and somewhat obsessive fan base that's kept. That's that's made it so I could send my kids to college.
You know. Okay, so that publishing deal, which if you sold Nexus of one hundred thousand was better for the publishing company at this late date. Do you own those songs?
Is that we've never sold our publishing I mean the recordings are you know, those are interscripts, which is now universal, right, okay, But a lot of my stuff is my stuff, like pron Song and all that stuff. I were about to release all the pron song like Frog Brigade and the Claypool stuff. We're about to re release it because it's it all belongs to me.
How did it end within her scoop?
Uh? And we just kind of amicley just sort of went our separate ways, you know. I remember Steve Berman got winned in the early two thousands that we were getting back together with HERB and he said, Jimmy wants to talk to you. So Jimmy had me up into the up into his office and he said, look, he said, we want to do this. We want to do a project with you. We want to make it, make it right, make it work. We feel like we owe it to Primus. There's a lot of bands that came to Interscope because
of Primus. I've talked to quite a few bands that have said, yeah, we signed with Interscope because you guys were on Interscope, because we were known that we got to do what we wanted to do. They they left us alone. As long as it was working, they left us alone. So that's when we did the animals should not try and act like people. It was like a DVD EP thing with Interscope, and you know, it worked
out well. But you know, it's saying at that point they're such a big thing, that we're this odd band. I just don't think it did what any normal Primis thing would do. It wasn't going to become a you know, going Steffani hit or anything, you know what I mean.
It just it wasn't.
It was never in the cards. But I've never had any issues with with Interscope. It's always been They've always been okay.
There's always a parting of the ways the contract is up or something, and usually the label says, well, you know, it was nice, but we don't want to make any more records.
Yeah, I don't remember, to be honest with I don't even remember that because I was making my own records on pron Song, and to me, that was much more. I liked that because I owned them, you know, and I was just licensing them through different distributors. So it was it was just it was just better for me. And then when Primus came back and we did that one thing with Interscope, it wasn't part of a big deal.
But I am a big fan of owning. We've owned our own stuff now since the early two thousands, you know, we released stuff through but it's all licensing, and I think that's that's the way to go. That's a wonderful thing, especially now that records are you know, it used to be that was the cupcake. You know, you make a record, that's where you made your money, and you go and do a tour. That was the icing on the cake,
and then t shirts was the sprinkles. Well, now the cupcake is the touring and merch is a big part of that cupcake. And albums are like they're like business cards now, you know, they're how many people, especially kids, do you know, that buy records? They might be paying for Spotify, but they're not buying. They might buy some albums, but even albums, it's just a small, small, small, small fraction of what it used to be when you'd release recorded material on a certain format.
Okay, at this late date, do you get any recording royalty, strom inter scill Yeah, Okay, so you're not upside down, you're not in the red because usually record companies they cross collaterize all the records, even though you had one successful when you had a stiff and then they don't pay you. Well.
But that's another thing about Primus is we always I watched friends of mine go and make their first record, and they signed with some big deal somewhere, and they make their first record, and they spend three hundred thousand dollars making this record, and they pay the producer all this money and they sell like maybe eighty thousand copies. Well, because we didn't spend a shitload of money, eighty thousand copies is profit. That's that's a that's that's a that's
a profitable venture. When you spend three hundred thousand dollars on a record plus and you only sell eighty thousand copies, people get in the room and start talking about, well this is you know. The business heads get together and go, this is not This that they make doesn't make good business sense. And away they go, and then they owe
the record company all that money. All this time I was I was always very careful about spending record company money, because when all is said and done, it's your money. That's your money you're spending. So we were always very frugal. And when it came time to making videos, we would come up with these all these concepts for videos and I'd say, okay, we want to do this video. Here's the budget. It's going to cost X amount of dollars.
And they would say, okay, that's a great idea for a video, but your primus, we're going to give you.
Half of X.
And I would say, okay, I'm going to take that half of X and make the best version of that I can. And I keep telling my son this. As a filmmaker, I'm like, look look at how many popsicle sticks you have on the table and try and make the Golden gate bridge out of it. You know, don't you know, use the resources that are available to you to make the best thing you possibly can. I think
it makes you. I think it's it makes you more You have to be more resourceful on a creative level, and oftentimes I think it makes a better product because you have to kind of manipulate things.
So, Okay, you talked about the money putting your kids through college, So how's it been financially for you?
I mean, I'm not complaining, but you know, if I'd got the Metallica gig, I would have I would have a bigger house.
They like, well, let's say you stopped working right now, you got enough money to get to the end.
Ah. I tell my kids this all the time. I'm like, look, when I go, there's going to be no money, but you're going to have a hell of a yard sale because because I'm not real, I like to spend. When I was a kid, one of my heroes was Evil and Evil and uh, I remember him saying one time, and this was back in the day, he said, you know, I've made two million dollars in my career. And I might be paraphrasing. He may have said a different number, body,
but you'll get the gist. You're like, I've made two million dollars in my career and I've spent four And I was like, oh my god, and so.
Prended on.
I got two tour buses. I mean, I don't buy stupid shit. I mean we have you know, we have our tasting room, we have our you know, we have our house here. We just but you know, I'm in primus. It's like I said, it's it's we make, we make a comfortable living. But it's these records that we don't fly around in jets. Let me put it to you that way.
These records that you make and you license, are they break even propositions or red or black?
No, they make they make money, but it's you know, it's not like the money that we all used to make. And I think I can I'm speaking for everybody on that right. Remember when selling a million records, it's like, oh, well, these guys sold twelve million. Now you sell one hundred thousand records, that's a big deal.
You know. Okay, you talk about the videos. You know, you're a bass player, you're a member of the band. Do you just say, well, let me give a shot at that. You say, wow, I've always wanted to do this same thing with writing a book.
Now I say this quite often too, is my heroes. People expect me to who are your heroes? They expect me to say, and I do say, guys like Geddy Lee and whatnot. But my superheroes are guys like you know, Frank Capra and Leah Kazan and Stanley Kubrick and the Cohen brothers and Terry Gilliam. These are people. These are the guys that really have shaped me as far as a creative person. So when it when the notion of making videos came along, I was I was ready to go.
I was diving in. And even the same with my novel. It's I wrote the novel because I had written it as a screenplay, and we tried to make it into a film over and over and over again, and I finally just got to the point where, you know, the thing about filmmaking is it's much more of a collaborative process, especially when people start throwing money in there, They're going to have an opinion and you got to change stuff
around and more compromising going on. So we had had so many people come on and off of this project that I was changing things continuously, and I finally I was like, look, screw this, I'm going to write this script into novel form, because then at least the story that I originally wanted to tell exists somewhere before it gets convoluted by a bunch of opinions of people with money. Not that those are bad opinions, but it does change
the original narrative, I think. So I wrote the novel, so that's how I fell into that.
So if you wrote a novel, do you read novels?
Occasionally? I go through periods of reading a lot and then periods of reading nothing. I tend to read a lot of books about where to either place the microphone or how the Jake break System works on a eight V ninety two Detroit Diesel or now that I just recently, literally within the last month, finally got my pilot's license. I'm reading a lot about aviation.
Okay, you mentioned you know all these film directors, So film directors and narrative those are your heroes more than musicians in a lot of ways.
I definitely watch more film than I listened to music.
So right now, are you watching contemporary film?
Watched The Wail the other night. I thought it was spectacular. I was really blown away by that film about But I tend to you know, I tend to be the guy that has TCM on all the time.
Okay, how about watching streaming television?
Some of it I find some of it just takes over my life too much, so I avoid it until it's highly, highly highly recommended to me.
Okay, what's your favorite movie?
Doctor Strangelove?
And if you had to mention two movies that people are unaware of that they should see.
Well, if they haven't seen Doctor Strange Love, they said to see Doctor Strange Love and Facing the Crowd.
Okay, so at this late date, you've got this whole career to people like me, you were in your own sphere. There's less Claypool. There's nobody quite like you now, and you're doing a lot of collaborative stuff to what the greed is your you know, inbox ding or your phone ring with people saying hey, less I want you to come work on my thing.
I mean, it happens fairly regularly, and I have a hard time. I have a pretty full dance card.
Or you know.
I use the metaphor of pots on the stove. There's a lot of pots on my stove. It just depends on which when I pulled to the front burner. I mean, currently, I'm in the middle of two records, one me and Me and Sean Lennon are working on another Delirium record right now, and then Billy Strings and I started a record a couple months back. A few months back. Actually, so.
Okay, how did you meet Sean Lennon and ended up making a record with him?
Well, Sean Shawn's band, Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, opened for Primus on a tour, and funny thing was him and my son really hit it off right off the back because they're both like these kind of poin Dexter science nerds, and they were just like yammering away about the cosmos and physics. But but we all kind of hit it off. And Charlotte his his his, his, his partner, we all we just all hit it off. So one day him and I just kind of started jamming.
I always keep my doughbro bass around. We just started jamming on acoustic guitars and we ended up in the back of the bus just just jamming, and there was some really interesting things coming out, and so I just said, hey, why don't you come on out to Rancho. Let's let's let's record some stuff. It seems like we got it was it was just this, there was some interest, There was instant chemistry, and he wasn't playing things that I
that I was expecting he was. He's pretty angular and has an interesting approach to to his instrument And we got together and recorded our first album, which became the Delirium. Uh Claypool lenin Delirium Monolithophobos and what about Billy Strings, Well, so Billy is an interesting It's interesting because we as Delirium, me and Sean, we were playing a festival up in I think it was up in Tahoe, a few years back, and my wife comes to me and says, hey, look
at this set list. And it was the set list, and the first song of the setlist started with L. The second song of the setlist started with E, third song started with S, fourth song started with CE. It spelled out my name in the first letters of each song, and I was like, who the hell is this? It was Billy Strings, So I had met Billy and his band.
I didn't really remember it at the time, but then he's kept kind of sending me stuff on my Instagram, commenting mainly on fishing pictures because he's a big fisherman, and we just kind of hit it off and we went, we went, we went fishing, and we started just kind of jamming together, and we thought, let's record some stuff and see what happens. So we've been making a record and the notion is that it's all songs about fishing.
Okay. Is it kind of a unique project, like, I mean, he's on quite an ascension, or is it like, well, this would be the next step to reach more people, or is it like, well, this sounds interesting.
This is just a couple guys that like to fish getting together and twanging away you know, we were just it's very, very actual and it I have a thing called the Duo de Twang, which is myself and an old buddy of mine from high school, where we basically do these kind of twang versions of Primus songs and
some of my songs and other people's songs. And I call it my vacation band because we sit on stage and I stomp on this box for a drummer, kind of like stomping Tom Connors, because I'm a big stomping Tom Connor fan, and we just drink and tell jokes and play these songs in bars.
It was fun.
So I just thought, oh, this would be an extension of that with Billy. There's not a lot of there's not a lot of preconceived notion to it, except for, hey, let's write songs about fishing because we're both into fishing.
Okay, you talked about the cupcake and how big a part of the cupcake is now touring. Do you like going on the road.
I do, but it's like anything else. If you're on the road for a long time, you're dying to get home. But my wife said years ago, because she was like super mom, she was class mom. For like eight years in a row or something. Her whole world was the kids, and she said, hey, when the kids move out, I'm just letting you know right now, I'm coming on the road with you. And I said, okay, And that's when we bought our first tour bus, and I drive the
tour bus. I have a driver for after shows, but on days off, we take the tour bus and we go stay in campgrounds and whatnot, and so it's it's really fun for us. We're like this couple that cruises around and we go do shows and then on days off we go stay in campgrounds and I have all my fishing gear with me and a bicycle, and we were just it's fun for us to cruise around the country together, well around the world now because she goes everywhere with me.
Okay, So how many days a year do you attend to play? I know we had COVID, but generally, I.
Mean I'm doing I'm doing about three months solid. This, I'm doing two months, and then I've then a couple months off and then a month, so about three months this year, summer and fall.
So where have you been in the bus that the average person hasn't been and you say, wow, you got to go there.
I mean, I don't know if it's any different than where a lot of other musicians go. But that was one thing that I missed. Is in the early days when we had the motor home, which we called the Odor Home, we would drive it. We'd drive from here to there and go to the gig. And then next day you're driving across country, and I saw the country.
And then I spent decades doing my show, getting in the back of the bus, watching a movie, drinking or smoking or whatever the hell, falling asleep, waking up at five in the morning, shambling out, getting into my hotel, sleeping and getting up and going, Hey, anybody know where the Starbucks is? Oh, anybody want to get lunch? Oo? And then you get back, get in a car and go to the gig, do the show, get back in
the bus. You don't see anything. You see the inside of the bus, and you see a hotel room, and you see lots of coffee shops, Starbucks. So now that we have our own bus and I'm driving it a lot, I'm seeing the country. We're both seeing amazing things in the country. This last tour last year, my driver got COVID and I had to do all the driving all
through Canada and it was spectacular. It was unbelievable. It was a little stressful because I we'd do the show and I'd have to hop in the bus and drive as far as I could, and then we'd pull over and sleep and then get up and drive the rest of the way to the gig. But like driving from I think it was well driving through the Canadian Rockies into Vancouver that just this one day, we saw like six caribou, We saw a bear, we saw a couple moose. My wife saw beaver hanging out on this big old
damn it was. It was spectacular. It's unbelievable.
How hard is it to drive a bus? It's not hard.
I love it.
I enjoy it.
I have my Class B license now, so I'm able to drive this thing. But it's not terribly hard. It's like to anything else.
Just get used to it. And then what's up with the whole pilot's license thing? And do you plan to get a plane?
I would say, just to go back to the bus. Parking the bus is the hardest. I was gonna say, driving gets easy.
Parking, Okay, that begs the question, have you ever hit anything with the bus parking or something.
No, I'm gonna knock on some wood.
I've not.
Actually I shouldn't say that. I'm sure my wife is listening. So the first, our very first trip out, we are coming, I think we're coming into just outside of Utah. We're coming. We just come over this area where just beautiful views, and I see this, this this rest up. At the last second, I was like, I was swinging in there, and I swung in and I didn't realize how tight it was, and I'm backing up. And also this tree branch comes right through the side window and it literally
hits me in the back of the head. So that was my first and so far only crunch in the bus.
What does Primus mean in the rest of the world outside of the States.
It depends on where you go. You know, there's certain places where we're more popular than others we tend to We don't go to Europe that much, never really have, so we're not as popular in Europe as we are here, but in certain places we're a little more than We've always done pretty well in Australia, we do pretty well in South America, but we're the biggest in the States.
Okay, in the old days, pre internet, if you're on a major label, which you were, you're on MTV, everybody knows your name, whereas today you could be number one on Spotify. Most people have never even heard your music. So does that frustrate you? Do you want to have more people exposed to what you're doing.
I don't know if it frustrates me as much as it frustrates my daughter. I don't really pay attention, you know. It's like, if I can go doom some shows and people show up, and I can, you know, make my living and do my stuff, that's wonderful. If more people show up, that's wonderful. But I don't pay attention to how many Spotify plays we have or any of that stuff. But my daughter did tell me when she was in
high school. She's like, you need to get on social media because y'all your fans are getting old and they're gonna die, and then I'm not going to have any legacy. There's going to be nobody you need to get, you know. I'm like, wow, easy, easy. So I have an Instagram account now, but I don't want the hell to do with it. I post fishing pictures on it once in a while. That's that's really all I do.
Okay, and you talk about making these records. You have a studio in the house.
Yeah, we've been recording our records here Ran Show Relaxed so since nineteen ninety four, so we've done a lot of records here.
What have you got in the studio?
I have an old vintage JPI console twenty four eighty eight. I have a two inch sixteen track tape machine, but I just don't use it anymore. I have an ATR machine half inch, just don't use it anymore.
You know.
The digital stuff is just it's so much more convenient. And I ab'd with friends and nobody could really tell the difference. So it was like, all right, but you know, obviously pro tools.
So are you a gear head with a whole, you know, closet full of microphones or you basically have the basics of people bring in what they want. No.
I got a bunch of old stuff, vintage stuff, and some newer contemporary stuff. That's I go through periods of gearheading and not. I I do love my API. That thing is spectacular. It's the best sounding console I've ever even heard, so I geek out on that sort of thing. But I go through periods of geeking and then going off and geeking on something else.
You know, Okay, since you're so good with cars whatever. Every studio needs a tech. Do you do your own tech or do you call somebody.
I have a fellow by the name of Krieg who is amazing. But I do as much as I can because I did used to be a fledgling bench tech. So I do as much as I can. But he's the guy that keeps keeps, keeps the keeps the clock ticking.
And then do you play the bass every day or how often?
Uh? Then again it's I go through periods where I'm playing a lot, Like right now, I'm playing a lot because I just got a new I got a new six string, and I'm fiddling around with some new amps. But then there's other times when I won't play for weeks.
And certainly a p bass is a standard what what's your standard amp?
Standard AMP? I don't even know if I have a standard AMP. I avoided for decades going to the giant SVT head that weighs seven thousand pounds and you know, the hernia heead and now I have three of them. I finally scam succumbed, circame succumbed, but because I found that I had endorsements with different companies and whatnot, even
with Ampeg for a long time. And I go to Chile or somewhere and they put one of these vintage SVT heads up for me to rent, and it always sounded amazing, and I thought, Jesus Christ, I got it, just find and so I finally broke down. I bought one, and then I bought another one, and then I bought it. And they all sound different, and I have to redo the tubes every now and again, and it's just but they're amazing. You get one that sounds good and it's truly incredible sounding.
Okay, And you talk about watching TCM being a big movie addict, to what degree do you pay attention to the news.
I mean, I read my news every day. I have my feeds, so I mean actually often multiple times a day. So I feel like I'm fairly in tune. But I'm a big fan of people that excel at what they do, and I'm a big fan of consulting professionals. So when I have an issue with like say a medical issue, or of even friends that have medical issues. I have a friend of mine that graduated from Columbia Med. He's been a pediatric doc for decades now in Oakland, and
I call him after I talk to my doc. If I don't necessarily agree with what he's saying, I talk to him. If I don't get the information from him, I talk to a buddy of mine who's a brain surgeon in Manhattan, and that's where I get my information. I don't go onto blogs and decide that the vaccination is not good for me because some guy in some cabin somewhere said it adversely affect his ear, lobes or whatever.
I tend to rely on professionals, So it's the same a lot of times with with elements of the news that I may be intrigued by or concerned with. I have friends that like our manager. He's a huge sports guy. He knows everything about every every draft pick, every team. That's his thing, it's not my thing. I have a friend who's like that with politics, any little angle and dangle. He knows all what's happening, and so I like going to lunch with him once in a while and hearing
his perspective. Stuart Coplan's very good at that too, And Stuart he likes to be a contrarian, so he likes to take opposing viewpoints just to get the thing steamed up. So when all of a sudden done, I play the bass, and that's what you know if you want to know about the bass. I'm a pretty good resource to to talk to you about. I don't know everything, but I know enough to kind of move you along, and I tend to be that way with how I filter information.
Does that makes are you optimistic or pessimistic about the direction of the country.
I think as I'm getting older, I tend to be more of a curmudgeon, but I try not to be. And I'm very fortunate that my wife is one of the most positive humans, if not the most positive human I've ever met in my entire life, so it helps keep me balance. But I remember back in the days of the eighties and living in Berkeley, and we were all anti apartheid and I'm not buying shell gas and this and that and the next thing. But it was
all very superficial. We were just kind of we're bouncing, We're paraphrasing things that other people that were more knowledgeable than us, that were cool in our scene, were saying, now that I'm older, I'm a little more aware. It's it tends to and I see it with a lot of my friends too. It tends to make you a little more pessimistic.
And so.
I don't know if I answered your question.
Well, I know, I think that's good enough. So moving forward, you're doing this frog tour, your manager suggested it. What's coming down the pike? Do you just wake up every day with a new idea or do you have like a three year plan? What might we expect from last Claypool.
Well, I just spent the last i'd say three or four months intensely studying, studying harder than I've ever studied in my entire existence on the planet to get my pilot's license. So I'm kind of coming out of that because I just got my license a couple of weeks ago, and now I'm I can actually start living my life again.
So gearing up for the Sprog Brigade Tour. We're doing a benefit in a couple of weeks at Primus with a couple buddies from Tool and Queens of the Stone, A and A comic buddy of ours for a friend of ours who's who was battling cancer. But gearing up for this Sprogagate thing. I'm learning a bunch of songs. I got to relearn all that Pink Floyd animal stuff because we're going to do that in its entirety.
Saw.
I'm gearing up for that and gearing up for the summer run, and then eventually I'm going to get back in the studio with Sean and finish up this Delirium record, and eventually get with Billy and finish the thing with Billy strings.
What's this whole pilot's thing about.
So in the early nineties, I was living in Berkeley and my uncle who's retired now retired auto mechanic, he had his own plane. He had a bonanza and he took us up and I was like, yeah, this was this really cool, and I started taking lessons from his buddy, and then we moved up to the country and I just never finished. So all these years have gone by, the kids have moved out, and I thought, well, shit,
I should finish this thing. So I dove in head first, and really really just because I knew I had to do it. Between projects because it takes so much of my mental capacity that I knew I couldn't I couldn't be working on creative output and all this input data input at the same time. It just wouldn't have worked. So I just put everything on hold and I got my license. It took me from the beginning of December till a couple of weeks ago.
You got your license. You're going to get a plane.
I have a plane with a friend.
What kind of plane.
It's a Sirus SR twenty.
Okay, so it comes with a parachute theoretically, so the parachute, thank god, assuming you know a lot of people don't pull it because it tends up really damaging the plane. What about instrument rating.
I'm guess I'm gonna go for that next.
Okay. You're a very fourth right humorous person. But you talk about being into movies, et cetera. Are you always this kind of upbeat or do you go into dark areas? Do you get depressed? I mean, am I just seeing one side of less? Or is this who you are? Twenty four to seven? Oh?
No, no, no, no, I It's funny because, like I said, my wife is literally she's the most positive person I've ever met. She wakes up in the morning, she gives you a big smile. You know, I wake up in the morning. Sometimes I have a big smile. Sometimes I'm like eh, And our son is very much like her. He wakes up whistling. But our daughter's more like me. You know, peaks and valleys, so get you get less on a peak, and I'm a happy clam, but you get me on a valley, not such a happy clam.
And it's funny because I don't usually do sugar and I don't usually do desserts. Because my buddy Slavic, who's Polish, says, goddamn it, level don't know, no, no, goddamn desert man, You're going to turn into an asshole in twenty minutes. Because for twenty minutes I'm like w happy guy on sugar, and then twenty minutes later I'm like, I want to get out of here.
You know.
So I have my peaks and valleys.
Well how low do the valleys get?
They can get pretty low. But you know that's why I'm happy. I have my wife here. She's always lets me know when I'm feeling down or you know, things are looking less than cheery. She lets me know that I've got it pretty good, and I do. I have it spectacularly good.
Okay, so you're living your life now, Any dreams beyond this, anything you want to accomplish, talking about your daughter, talked about legacy, said that's not important, or you just say I'm just gonna merrily go along and that's my life.
Well, it's become very important to me recently to try and do the South of the Pumphouse film for a few different reasons. One, I think it's very relevant right now. It's super very intense UH social commentary, a lot of racism, a lot of misogynistic elements, and there's it's a pretty it's a it's a hotbed for sure. But also my buddy Mark Corer, who I was, who I was. He's a director who I was going to do this project
with many years ago. He he was one of the hot shot video directors in his day, and he he his first daughter was born with UH with an affliction, and since then he's he's that's what he that's been his life is taking care of her. And because of that he kind of fell out of you know, he was with Spike Jones and all those guys. He was one of those guys, and he should have been gone on to be a great filmmaker, and he just had He just kind of fell out of it to take
care of his family. And he's at a point now where where he can he can do this thing. So it's really important to me that we try and get this project going again, so that so that, hey, I can fulfill one of my dreams. But b because I think the world needs to see what Mark Core can do, because he's really one of the most talented people I know.
Well less not only are you unique in your playing, you're unique in your identity, your sense of humor. You're obviously very intelligent. It's been great talking to you. I want to thank you for taking the time for me and my audience.
Yeah. Well, you're a very kind man and it was a great conversation. I always enjoy a good conversation.
Okay, till next time. This is Bob left six