Interview with Drag the River - Podcast 50

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day groundhog's day we had a we had monday off president's day also martin luther king day i think anyhow what matters is we had monday off i hope you enjoyed it if you are in america if you're in another country well maybe you should uh get some freedom anyhow we have a new interview up today featuring a fantastic band made up of i believe they're from colorado but i could be fucking wrong on that too but they're a great band drag the river they feature members of all sorts of including all and armchair martin and they're bound to be your favorite band uh sooner or later so you should just check it out we interviewed chad and john john has the last name snood snoodgrass he has the fucking awesomest last name ever but uh they're both great guys they both sing and play guitar in the band and they're really super awesome and so you're really going to want to pay attention to this now we haven't developed any uh contest yet because we haven't actually gotten anything for free but they both said if we just write virgil from suburban home he'll help hook it up so we will have a giveaway this week that was just my pants tearing if you heard that just i've been over and my ass is huge and it just ripped through but anyhow they both said that if we write virgil he'll hook it up so we will have a giveaway so stay tuned for the end of the show for that but also we will keep running our new mexican disaster squad and our only crime contest for at least another week we want to get as many entries on that as we can because those are both fucking awesome prizes and we want to make this a big thing we don't want to you know do injustice to new mexican disaster squad and they're like we got all this awesome shit and we're like okay we'll keep it so we want to have as many people get a crack at that as possible so check out those shows to learn how to enter that all right now before we jump into the con or the interview rather we're going to play a couple of tracks or one track from drag the river we're going to play uh the first track we're going to play is from it's crazy which is their new album so to speak uh we'll get into that more in a little bit but uh we're going to play the track uh mr cruise and uh it's office crazy then we're going to get to the interview so be sure to listen and be sure to listen to the end to learn how to enter

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parkside with a couple members of drag the river you guys text messaging i just learned how to do that during the interview yeah it's good to see you could figure it out hit reply it's good to see you could devote so much time to this multi you're multitasking it's all right all right so uh do you guys just want to introduce yourself what you're doing the band name all that uh my name's chad price has seen play guitar all right so we got the two singers slash guitar players of the band you guys want to give us uh i guess the easiest way to start is just kind of a brief history of the band i know you guys have had a bunch of different members and kind of been around for what 10 years now that's true so we've had a bunch of different members but but it's kind of uh a cast that keeps returning and it's digging it's not really uh like chad rex is playing with us now who played on our first recordings um and uh so that's not really like a change that's kind of a prodigal son returning home you know kind of thing of course uh now you guys start off like the whole group just kind of start off as just a project kind of playing around in the blasting room is that right when did it come around that you guys decided you wanted to be serious and kind of do it more as a full-time thing i guess yeah it's been like 10 years i guess uh me and john uh just sitting around in the garage like playing acoustic guitars and writing songs and whatnot and uh yeah we just had like some free time up at the blasting room and uh recorded that record and then once it came out like people uh you know were into it like more than you know we thought they would so uh and kind of just took off like pretty quick i guess awesome now how many years like how long you think you've been doing this more like with the extensive touring and everything just kind of all blurs together what's that question i don't get that one well how long has it been like because i know it started off before you guys were releasing albums and all that it seems like around 99 or 2000 is when we kind of got a little more serious you know that answered it but we we recorded all those demo songs in 96 97 and then we kind of just played some shows and then by the time like 2000 we were like going to like you know new york and everywhere between there and colorado and out here like we we played all the states and come 2000 now now we're at the point where we play uh i don't know i think it's gonna be about 200 shows this year wow it's about 150 last year this is a little more yeah i noticed you guys are on the road from like now until like may april yeah may yeah it's ridiculous we're actually i'm booking may shows right now so oh my god yeah well good luck with that no shit i got tivo i come home when i got full tivo got like two days worth of like just 48 hours with a straight tv to watch when you get back it's awesome we got um i heard it's actually snowing back home again but the last time that we got home um we were snowed into our houses seriously for like three or four days and i was stoked i didn't want to go anywhere you just watched three or four days tv i loved it it was awesome it's not a bad way to come home from tour no it's great um okay um i want to ask you you guys finally are you at the point now where it's not so much you guys are referred to more as drag the river instead of drag the river with members from right type of thing that's kind of how it started is it finally you guys are people finally just recognizing you as the real you know more as the band and not the sum of its parts there's there's a fair amount of people that yeah aren't really even familiar with the other bands so but you know we'll always have that that's what we've done that's who that's yeah fair enough now you guys uh had a album come out what or well not whole album i guess but explain that what was called uh gabba gabba hey buddies it came out uh earlier this month right yeah now tell them all about yeah explain that one to me uh it's just uh i don't even know it was an ep yeah and then we had like four or five other songs too like from that era and then a guy wanted to do the vinyl for it and we're trying to see if we could just fit it on a seven inch which we're close to and then maybe a 10 inch and i was like just make it a 12 inch dude so and there's only 500 of them so like the vinyl is so much longer it's like a full length record but it was called hey buddies but gabba gabba hey but we like the ramones who doesn't and we put a little leather jacket on the go and it's stupid it's just really dumb some of the best ideas can be really dumb oh i love it that's cool and then you guys there's only i mean when you write kind of serious some of the music songs are kind of serious songs so it's nice to have a little levity helps even things out totally dumb we're gonna put little we were talking about we wish that we had little cutouts so you could dress up the goat you don't like to like put like a hawaiian shirt on you guys should do that yeah i'm i'm fully in support of it could be a lot of money for packaging but i think it'd be worth it in the end we can figure it out it could be done well you guys i was gonna say where did the the idea for the goat come because you have a bunch of photos on your website of different goats now is that just one of those things that's because people just started sending them really yeah people are like you got one on the cover of your album here's another one if you're interested yeah like we're like you know we kind of already did that you know but thanks like well if we ever do it again you guys should just make an album cover of composite goat i think we should do that actually i like the goats that was just a goat that it's a friend had a goat he was at a barbecue party at our friend mike wing's house and he was eating this grass and it looked like he was talking i just thought it's hysterical so that's how it came to be that's how it came to be yeah we're sad talking animals is always funny i think yeah it's made in good television thus far mr ed yes so and i like francis i kind of prefer francis actually francis was the mule oh francis i'm not familiar with his work no i'm sorry francis is just like mr egg francis joins the wax that was a good one it was like world war ii movie are you serious yeah he was the kicker for the football team it was great same premise as mr ed but mr ed was a 30 minute you know yeah it was a show comedy francis had more like feature films he was more of a movie star of the time all right um no one knows francis you know francis over there i have no idea you don't know what i'm talking about no i don't i'll look it up well imdb they used to be on all the time and now they're not on anymore so i wonder you can find it is it like air bud no this is like this is like this is like 50s it's like a 50s dude yeah i'm sure by now it's on dvd because everything's on dvd at this point yeah what's like andy not andy andy mickey rooney i believe uh yeah he did a lot of that started with francis in some movies so check out google it up oh mickey rooney and francis i may be wrong it might be the the b version of mickey rooney yeah you know which is the other mickey rooney chad's looking like it hot chad doesn't have any idea all right anyways okay yeah back well back to the band um i actually found this out i'm sure someone else has found it out before me but there was a band from the early 90s which was michelle malone i believe in drag the river have you guys ever had any like legal problems with that or have they ever contacted you at all yeah the lawyer's really nice he is he really is he's really nice uh he just wanted us to recognize that there was a band called that before and that's all there is to it so you didn't have to like pay him anything i never even heard of them so i don't know have you when uh when we play in atlanta people show up to see that band to see that band yeah and they're like you're not they're not stoked either they're not like well this is good they're like no they're like if it doesn't have michelle malone it's not drag the river that's what this guy said didn't you say that something like that yeah they were not thrilled with us at all she's just been like just show up in a dress and be like show them went through some changes i don't i don't know i don't know if the lawyer would be so nice if he did that if you showed up in dress then you'd have a whole another issue on your hand all right um i actually uh someone had told me this and from what i've seen i'm just gonna get into the question screw the pretense but uh last song of a couple of your albums is like the entire album like reprise like straight through how did that how did that guy come about were you guys just figuring if someone wanted to save some money in a jukebox or exactly really another band that i mean i did that and it was called who wants to play bass and i put the whole record on the last track um it was the actual demos that i gave to people to learn the songs yeah i thought it was kind of a funny idea that's cool yeah um and then also i don't really like records that have like title tracks you know what i mean yeah um it puts too much emphasis on a particular song you know like track four is yeah you know good time party good time party there better be a good fucking song you know i mean um so the last song is the title track and then also i like a lot of people don't like putting 13 songs on a record so i think it's kind of bad luck but it's good luck and that's the whole record and i don't know as long as the 13th track is the entire album it's the entire album i think it works out pretty well in that i mean everything i've read about uh the review on uh it's crazy has been really really positive i mean they've been good i try not i i read some of that stuff when i see it it's scary sometimes you don't want to i'm sensitive yeah you guys do you ever just like does a suburban home ever just send you stuff like this guy said good things about you or do you just kind of skip it all together our buddy brian moss he's actually playing tonight he's our publicist he's actually originally from chicago yeah and he sends me stuff for the individual writers will send links and normally if they send you something then that means that they're stoked on it yeah so like that's good yeah the ones you might come across might not be the one that you want to know about just read the ones they send you yeah they're not going to send you one that's like this album blows or anything like that i don't care though it's good to read that stuff too yeah you know because you know if everyone liked you then we'd probably be pretty shitty you know what i mean that's true you have a lot more money those bands that that's true but you'd be shitty so right it's kind of it's kind of a trade-off in that respect right all right we're going to take a quick break right here from the middle of the interview to kind of bring you guys some more music from drag the river so you guys can enjoy that get a little more feel for what they're like now we're going to play a track off of their newest album now it's actually not new it's just a re-release of one of their old albums called closed so technically still their newest album is uh it's crazy but closed came out pretty recently but it's a re-release also they have gabba gabba hey buddies which is a 12 inch vinyl which is a re-release it came out this month of an old album called hey buddies but it has new tracks on it and it was only 500 of them were pressed and the goat on the cover has a leather jacket as opposed to the original where the goat had no jacket so they're releasing a whole bunch of shit but um nothing's really technically new it's just re-releases but if you listen to the interview they do talk about some new stuff so you won't listen to that but as i said we're going to play a track off of closed we're going to play the track losing everyone which as we mentioned in the interview was covered later by lag wagon and there's a whole six degrees of separation but we won't get into that so listen to that and be sure to listen to the end of the show when we tell you how to enter to win probably something really awesome because you'll want to win all right enjoy

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probably for the general populace more associated now is a lag wagon song you guys ever play that and people like think you're covering lag wagon or do people even like recognize now that that's your song no people know i think yeah pennant circus did one too and so did the nobodies yeah every time that we do those songs i always say that it's their song you're covering their stuff yeah because i like misinformation i've been pretty straightforward here though i'm assuming i'm gonna go home and look at francis yeah like that is bullshit i'm gonna look that up i may be wrong i think you're right i think i'm right but lots of times i'm kind of gullible sometimes people tell me things like i thought forever that mike d from uh the beastie boys someone told me his name is mike diamond and that's neil diamond's son and so and so was screech dustin diamond i heard that they're all related and i'm like well that kind of looks the same they're kind of curly-headed jewish dudes that make sense they look new york based i think that sounds right sounds about i'm just telling people forever like dude did you know that is such a lie and it's not even close to the truth and i just believe it oh you're just you're just sitting people down you're like i gotta tell you this i just found this out yeah like it's a big deal mike d is neil diamond's kid and it was not yeah and most people are like i don't care or wrong not true wrong uh at least at least it's nothing of real importance like francis the mule but uh dude those movies are awesome seriously i'm gonna go home and i'm gonna find them and if they're not there let me know about it too yeah if i don't find them i'm gonna complain it's gonna it's gonna come out when we post the interview and all probably terrible too i think there was a vampire one too yeah he's like in like a in like a castle you know like scared it's awesome i think actually francis you know how like you hide in like the armor yeah like i think he was in like a suit of armor hiding with a looking up the visor are you sure you're not talking about scooby-doo no it's a very scooby-doo type of thing absolutely i don't know how much we've even talked about music here oh this is good no it's quality that's the thing is if people want to know about your music they can listen yeah we'll get you interested in the people well what else you got on that favor believe me it's none of it's all that good so don't don't expect too much but uh there was a yeah it did i've asked anything that's really good it's all kind of downhill from here which is it's low because the hill wasn't that high but uh i was reading through your guys my space page and there was a guy from uh texas on there who said that uh you've saved his life and his marriage with your guys music and i think he specifically cited the hobo demo recordings and how did how does that make you guys feel was that ever anything you would expect um stunned i mean that's great yeah it's killer i mean i mean i love i love music you know and it saved me you know so the idea i don't even really think about that um you're making me think about it right now i mean that's awesome that someone would like music as much as i've liked music so that's pretty color yeah they've always said though that we're more of a band for a divorce not a wedding so that's really that's really good to know that that worked out for them you know hopefully or it says something really terrible about their marriage but hopefully hopefully it means it works out i hope he's listening to this he probably is he seemed pretty into you guys and now he's gonna be mad at me no he's not no no that was good no but uh i'm glad uh you know not a lot of bands can influence people in that way so at least you know there's one person out there hopefully more no that makes me feel really good oh that's two he was married so at least two so yeah thanks for that we actually have a couple people that uh you know more than a couple like people that come to our shows you've met them you know i mean like you're like oh we met at your show and we're here you know and then they always come that's cool together and have you ever met one of those yes i have see okay i'm not just making the shit up he's just he's like the quiet you know making it all awkward he's like i don't know he's talking about a mule and he'll just start dabbing once these microphones are off i can never get this guy to shut up all the time it's all right he's just trying to make me look bad which is dude that's cool i'll let it slide these things scare me if you're a singer you should probably get used to it all right it doesn't matter what you say anyway um okay one of the things that's really heavy in your guys music trying to focus back on the music is uh a lot of drinking and alcohol and things related to that and whatnot have you guys ever had a problem with like either fans or just alcohol on tour or anything has it caused any major issues for you as a band well it's ruining our life well look at us right now we're just not doing well i mean if there were video cameras here like this would yeah that's right we don't have the camera yeah coming over with an illustration you know like not using the raw footage because oh come on you know you're not that we're good looking actually but we're haggard you're you're well aged you're you're like a wine yeah or old like tobacco of sorts i feel like old crow though no i don't know i mean no drinking you know it's just i don't know i really don't like to glamorize it because it's not glamorous but i have to have a couple drinks to uh be comfortable i'd be more comfortable doing this interview if i had a drink i was thinking about that but we didn't get here early this is okay i'm doing good i like you you're good i like him over there too nerman nerman kind of it's weird he's just the uncomfortable silence he just sits there and watches he's awesome he's got all kinds of stuff over there that's killer i like that little mixer that's i could use that can i buy that it's flat it's cardboard it's from an ikea display right this is all getting like done on a rake a track not even happening no we just really wanted to sit in your van yeah so it's a tape recorder in your bag that's as high tech as we get all right um i wanted to ask i had read that uh your drummer dave had uh left his job and opened his own mechanic shop is that true yeah has he still got that something he's been wanting to do forever it's mainly uh he does like hot rod stuff i mean there's like like customizing and stuff and makes it weld shit together and he's really actually very good that's awesome it's been doing all right for him i mean i know it's been a few months now so yeah i mean he i was pretty stoked on that he uh i mean he made a lot of money in his job yeah and doesn't make a lot of money with us but his boss made him you know make a decision and he made probably the wrong decision but i'm glad i'm glad that he did that you know it was probably the worst decision of his life but uh we're happy about it no he has that skill he'll always have that skill you can do that in you know anytime yeah yeah what do you like i was curious because i mean obviously there's maybe three percent of if that bands in the world can live off of like music what do you guys do to make money when you're not on tour till mid may i look very meagerly yeah yeah i've got a great girlfriend that always helps yeah used to be a cashier i know exactly how that one helps yeah do you guys i uh i work at a screen printing shop oh yeah yeah so it's just me and the boss and we're buddies and so it's that helps we can take off whenever we want no big deal all right do you good do you like doing the screen printing that you guys do for your band yeah oh yeah oh see so now if someone buys it there's like additional you know it's even cooler now so hopefully people hopefully now hearing that people will buy that shit that's cool i mean it's just uh i hear these stories like bands are out like three or four months at a time it's just it's got to be hard to find a job that can balance out with at least one that doesn't suck so yeah it's it's impossible it's hard but yeah me and i'm sure everyone else who comes to this show is really appreciates that you guys you know do that and hopefully they'll buy shit we chose this life but we did you know uh i like it though yeah i'm not sick of it it takes very very special people i think to appreciate the life on the road because i was in a band for like a week and after like seriously we played one show like 60 miles north of here and i was like i can't fuck yeah i'm like i can't fucking travel with you guys literally it was a three-hour trip and people were pissing in bottles and i was like it's three hours yeah so at that point i was like i can't do it that's funny it was nice but i couldn't be in a band so yeah no it's it takes a certain type of person i guess it's wild red certainly interesting i mean i'm sure of that um how do you guys spend your recent valentine's day actually being on the road as that is valentine's day we always do valentine's day in lake forest california this is our sixth year oh wow i made the mistake of saying the first year that we would do it every year because i was drunk and you have and we've done it and we've uh they have us booked till 2011 they have one of those calendars that just you can scroll forward i was like let's just see how far that happens and i went 2011 are you serious so we'll do it till 2011 but after that after that we just i don't know man but we were there two nights ago it was awesome that's awesome you guys i mean you guys can sell eight you know million albums you guys will be playing lake forest uh we'll keep doing it i want to keep doing it yeah that's cool though i mean at least you got i mean even if everything goes to shit you got one gig a year yeah look at it that way don't even like it that's a long drive better ask for a good guarantee on that all right well we're gonna wrap it up here uh is there anything you guys want to plug me in obviously you're gonna be doing tours till or doing shows at least till mid may um you guys got what new album website all that stuff yeah i mean we just finished a new album we're gonna get it done oh yeah yeah cool oh that's right i read you're recording january right we recorded last january and we recorded more this january and we lost half the record and now we have 15 songs that we think are pretty color um yeah that's any idea on that it could be done anytime soon you know um it'll come out after summer whatever season is after summer any one of those is that fall that's fall probably come out in fall maybe the winter maybe the summer i don't know we're gonna put out a seven inch though i yeah awesome we like those finals fun fuck yeah i love them yeah all right well uh i want to thank you guys for being with us and uh best of luck with the show tonight thank you you're gonna stick around right oh yeah all right so that's gonna wrap up our interview for this week i hope you guys enjoyed it now i get a couple of news announcements like i said first off contests we'll get to that second because that's all you really want to listen to so first this is technically our 50th show which is pretty awesome i mean technically we've had more than 50 interviews because the warp tour were two a piece and also technically our 10th show is a best of of the first nine shows so i don't know if that counts but we'll say 50th and as you all know 50th is the gold anniversary so uh you guys want to send us in gold uh your doubloons ducats rings bullion um you know teeth shit like that we're totally cool with that uh you can just put that in the mail in an envelope and put sound scene revolution in the mail mail mail man will know where to take it we're like fucking santa claus where you just put santa claus north pole on an envelope and it gets to him in fact if you mail it to santa claus at the north pole he'll send it to us too because he gets all our mail because we're a lot alike santa gives out free shit we give out free shit santa likes your cookies we think your mom's hot so really it's all pretty similar but uh in the line of giving out stuff our contest this week we don't know what we're giving out but drag the river assured us virgil from suburban home would more likely than not give us stuff to give to you so if you want to enter the drag the river contest send us an email at sound scene revolution at gmail.com put drag the river contest in the subject line in the body of the email put your name and pertinent information including address uh p.o box if you want to do a p.o box your full name and uh the answer to the question because we have to make sure you were listening this week's question the re-release of hey buddies called gabba gabba hey buddies has a goat wearing a leather jacket if you could re-release any album what would it be and what animal would you put on the front of the cover and what would it be wearing for example if you wanted to re-release corn's life is peachy with a bear and a leather thong on the cover that's all you need to put we don't care how good your answer is we just want to make sure you were paying attention so that's it for this week i hope you enjoyed it as i mentioned our only crime and our new mexican disaster squad contest are up both of those have fucking amazing prizes the new mexican disaster squad has by far the best prize package we have ever given away so you really want to listen to that i'm not kidding you all right that wraps it up we're going to play one more track from drag the river i hope you enjoy it it's called beautiful and damned it's off of it's crazy and it's a really really good track and you should check it out and send us your gold right here

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