Interview with Dillinger Four - Podcast 110

Hi, this is Lane from Dillinger 4, and you're listening to Sound Scene Revolution on the internet. No call numbers here. Thanks for tuning in to Sound Scene Revolution. We got back from Fest. Alive and well, if you're listening to this. If you're not, one of us is dead. And, you know, this is the last thing that we did, which is really, really embarrassing. So we are recording this a bit before Fest, just because we, Sound Guy and Airmen and myself, get back on different flights. And in addition, I will probably be too tired and too hungover to record. So in the interest of timeliness and of quality, we decided to pre-record. But in the interest of Fest, we brought you guys one of the biggest bands to play Fest every year.

And that is the Mighty Dillinger 4. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're like, how'd you get Dillinger 4 if you recorded this before Fest? Because we recorded Dillinger 4, like, weeks ago when they played in San Francisco. And then we sat on our hands and we're like, maybe we should post this at some point. So, this is some old. This is old. This isn't even timely. Dillinger 4 has released a new record or something since then. But it's still good. I like it. I think it's a fun interview. And I even enjoy that they make fun of me. There's something about that. It makes me feel like I'm doing my job if I get insulted at least once while we're doing the interview. So, in case you're curious, no, it doesn't have Patty.

That's the first thing that everyone's going to ask is, does it have Patty? Because he's the fat guy that gets drunk. Well, they're all kind of big. But Patty's the fat dude in Dillinger 4 who gets drunk and shaves his balls on stage. And we really want to hear that. It doesn't have him. There's three other dudes in the band and most of them are actually really interesting. One of them is a fucking doctor. So, check that shit out. But there's no Patty. But it's really, really interesting. And I think it's a lot of fun. And hopefully you'll like it. Alright? So, to kick shit off, we're going to play that one song that everybody knows by Dillinger 4 that everybody says sounds like that fucking Green Day song.

Double Whiskey Coke, No Ice. Enjoy it. We're going to play that. We're going to play the interview. The interview talks about a ton of shit. Oh yeah, we also picked a winner for the I Made This Mistake contest. He's going to get some shit in the mail. Ah, don't bring his name up. I don't care. It's David Smith or some shit. Oh, his name's Chris. Oh. Is that? We'll say it's Chris, right? Yeah, it's Chris. So, Chris is going to get some shit from us. Enjoy it. It's a pretty awesome amount of shit. And, yeah. But Dillinger 4, Double Whiskey Coke, No Ice. Then we're going to play the interview. Then we're going to play some songs. The interview. Outro songs. Then you'll come back next week. Enjoy it.

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So, thanks for listening. Sound Scene Revolution. We're hanging out out back of Bottom of the Hill with a couple members of Dillinger 4. If you guys want to introduce yourselves. I'm Eric. I play guitar and sing. I'm Lane. I play the drums. Fantastic. Thank you guys so much for taking the time and coming out and talking with us. No problem, man. First thing I guess I want to ask. I try and start with this because it helps. What is probably the most commonly received question that you guys get? Ooh. Every band gets the same. You get influence. You know, what are your influences? Who are you and why do I have to do this interview? What makes you worth this? Yeah, totally. That comes up a lot. Yeah, those are kind of the most common ones.

Actually, this year it's been, why did it take six years for you guys to make a record? That's probably the number one one that we've done for a while. Like, when the record first came out last year, I was almost at a point of just having like sort of a cue card ready to just, you know, like, I was saying the same thing every time. Yeah. So, and that's probably on your list too, isn't it? Is that on your list? That is on my list. I knew it. It's standard. Actually, I have a variance of that, but I imagine also probably with, what's it, American Idiot coming out and probably a bunch of people were asking you guys what you think about that, the similarities between your guys. Oh, oh, yeah. Double Whiskey Coat.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Is there a similarity there? No, I've heard. I don't know. That's what everybody says. I don't own the Green Day album, so I wouldn't know. Me neither. Shouldn't you guys get a copy? Shouldn't they just send you one? You would think. So, actually, my next question is, why the hell did it take you guys so long to get back to the West Coast? Because you guys, the last time you were here was what, 2000? About the same time your last album came out. Yeah, it was, right? It was 2002, I think. You know, the problem is that there's this whole gap in the country between where we are and here that, I don't want to say it sucks. I like to believe it doesn't exist. It's great for a lot of reasons, but not for shows.

So, the thing is, with limited touring time, I mean, to be out here and play shows for a week, you can play a bunch of great shows, but to add an extra week or week and a half just to get from, you know what I mean, to get from Minnesota to here, makes for a pretty long tour. So, it's just taken a long time before we managed to make it work to where we could finagle another band to drive our equipment out so we could just fly out. So, you can just show up and go from there? Right, exactly. So, who hauled the equipment? The Arrivals, which is a band that we've known forever and Patty now plays bass for also. So, it was a little easier. Right, exactly. You know, it all kind of worked out. Nice, nice. But, the last time you guys were here, you were playing, I want to say you played Slims.

I don't know if you were. Yeah, last time we were here, we played Slims and we played Gilman also. Oh, okay. And then, and we also came out a few years ago to LA for that Fuck Yeah Fest thing. Oh, okay. So, yeah, I mean, but that's, yeah, that's pretty much it. I think that was like 2005 or something like that, six. So, even that's been a long time. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, because it seems like you played Slims and Slims is a pretty good size venue. Yeah. And this time you guys are hitting like several smaller venues instead of doing like the one show you're doing this and then you did the one in Santa Cruz and so. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's weird because it's, you know, we had a choice of either trying to play a lot of days and play kind of everywhere or try and keep it, you know, to a smaller tour.

But we did have an extra day and Santa Cruz seemed like, you know, worth going to check out. But, I mean, the whole tour is only, I think, nine shows. So, the idea was to keep it, you know, keep it sort of condensed. But, and yeah, you're right, you know, Slims is a bigger venue. But, you know, the thing is like playing those bigger venues, I mean, and Slims isn't a huge venue, but, you know, it's like, why, it's like, it's more fun to play, it's, I mean, it's more fun to play to 100 people in a room that holds 100 people than, you know, to play to 300 people in a room that holds six. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's just the bottom line. So, I'd rather, I mean, you know, you would hate to see someone get turned away, but I think we found pretty appropriate size venues where it'll be full, but not too bad.

No. Well, I think also, again, because you're playing a couple of shows in the same area, it definitely will help on that. That's the thing, and we, I mean, and the other thing is that we played, we played, we played Bottom of the Hill, I think in 2000 or 2001, and we said we had a good time here. We liked it. So, when the choice came up, if Slims are Bottom of the Hill, we decided to go Bottom of the Hill. Yeah. Everything I've heard about this place is, it's really good, so. I mean, yeah, we like it. I mean, look at this. Everyone's got big pasta dinners and stuff. Yeah. It's not bad. They got a fridge, which for. They got a fridge? They got cable TV in the dressing room? Come on. All my understanding is the fridge's sole purpose is to hold beer.

I've never seen anything in here but beer. No. And, you know, there really shouldn't be in a backstage anything. In a backstage fridge? But beer. Good enough. There was water. We don't know how that got done. Yeah, we don't know who did that. We did not request that. That's not on the rider. We don't care about no water. Fair enough. So, I guess the main thing, like you said, and people are asking you about why it took six years between albums, was it basically, my understanding was it wasn't six years recording the album. It was six years of you all have lives outside of this band. Right. And then it took you guys, what, a year or however long to make it. Is that about it? Yeah. I mean, if we worked on that record for six years and that was the record we made, come on.

That'd be bad. You could have turned out more. I was going to say, have you heard the record? I didn't want to be like, it doesn't sound like a six-year record. That's kind of a dick thing to say. I'll say it. But yeah, no, I mean, we wrote that record pretty much in the same time frame that we did all our other records, but we just had a few years where just various things, like Lane started having kids, and I have a bar, I mean, it was called Triple Rock, and we expanded that, started doing shows, and yeah, just got busy, I guess, you know, I mean, it's not like, I mean, it's not like we ever made records at a breakneck pace in the first place. You know what I mean? Like, one every two years was, like, considered pretty slow, although now I think people would consider that a lot for us, but they didn't realize what level we could stretch it to.

If you think one every two years is bad, we can one every eight, see how that goes. Right. We wanted to give Axl a chance to get Chinese Democracy out, but you didn't want to steal his thunder. At some point, we just had to release ours. If there was an album that was worth 13 years. Right. It was not that one. Not that record. Not that record. I haven't, again, I don't own it. I've heard parts of it, and I was kind of like, yeah, I was underwhelmed, but 13 years is a lot to live up to. So, while you guys are out on the road, who watches over Triple Rock? Lion Angels. Someone. I hope someone got the keys. You just leave a sign up, and you're on the honor system. Yeah, right. No, well, I don't know with my wife or whatever, so, like, you know, we were partners before we were married on the business.

So, yeah, so it's totally, it's fine. And it's not like, you know, I mean, the people that work there, I think, like, they do just fine whether I'm standing there or not. They don't. I mean, like, it's... You just happen to be the co-owner, it doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, it's been open for 11 years. Like, they pretty much know what to do. Nice, nice. Whether I'm there or not. Especially, and, you know, plus, like, you know, just being able to, you know, with the internet and stuff, I mean, and phones and, you know, to be able to, you know, it's a lot easier to be away for anyone now than it was, you know, even, you know, six years ago or definitely 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I was going to ask, I mean, the, it's definitely gotten a level of notoriety from, I mean, obviously no effect to the song about it.

I mean, but Other Artists Atmosphere has mentioned it a bunch before. Does that, I mean, has it become kind of those, one of those things where people from out of the area come to, you know, the area and they just happen, they go to the bar and they're like, I was here and I just really had to come through. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, we definitely get people that are, that are there like sort of in a, yeah, I don't want to say touristy capacity, but a little bit like that. You know, they want to see what the place is that, that they've heard about from other things, for sure. Are they ever like underwhelmed or they're ever, they're like, oh. Probably. Hopefully they don't just straight up tell me that, but.

They're like, this isn't what I had hoped it was going to be. But, you know, I think sometimes people think it's a lot more, you know, early on, I think people thought it was going to be a lot more like, just kind of like punk bar, everything's black and, and graffitied and gross. Well, it's like the Gilman, but with a bar. Right, yeah. And it's, it's, it's not exactly that. I mean, it's, no, it's, it's, it's got its divy characteristics, but it's, you know, I hope it's not. It's like a TGI Fridays on crack. Really not at all. As long as they wear pieces of flair, that's all that really matters. Do you have a flair policy? We should. We should. You have to have so many tattoos or patches. Right. In order to serve there.

I like it. All right. We're back. We're going to do some more, uh, Dillender 4, some more songs, some more interviews, uh, interview, not same interview, different sections. Uh, I hope you've enjoyed it thus far. I put an hour of research into it, just painstaking. I was doing other things at the time, so it was more intense research because I had to focus on several things. So I hope the research paid off. I hope you enjoyed it. But anyhow, before we go back into the interview, excuse me, I'm dying to swine flu here. I recorded that, don't worry. Nice. We got that for posterity. But, uh, so before we go back to the interview, we're going to play a track off of their latest album, Civil War, which came out last year, I think.

So it'll be num, eight, nine more years before we get another album. But, um, we're going to play a jingle for the product, uh, off of that album. Um, I think, I've been really bad with titles lately. That's the title iTunes gave. I thought it was a longer title. So if it's wrong, fucking blame iTunes. But, uh, we're going to play that track and then we're going to go back to the interview. And it's, this is, uh, this is the, the second half is really where it goes to shit. But, so if you thought the first half was bad, the first half is kind of like, like the new Star Wars movies, right? Like, uh, the ones with Anakin Skywalker and shit. So it was kind of bad. The second half is really like the Star Wars holiday special where it's like unbelievably bad.

So enjoy that. Um, and then we'll be back to play some more songs. So we'll catch you guys next week, or we'll catch you guys after this. Later. The devil. Ouch.

Talking about, I guess, back to the music aspect of stuff is, uh, you guys have become kind of synonymous with the Fest and Gainesville. I mean, there was a song about it on the last album and everything. And you guys pretty much every year by the time they announced bands, they're like, oh, Dillinger Forrest by, and everyone's like, of course. Yeah. Um, is that like one of those things that it's, it's become kind of a conscious effort at this point where you guys are like, every year you want to play? Or is it just, not really. I mean, the first, like we didn't make it to the very original ones. And then, um, I think we missed one or maybe even two before we, before we were able to come the first time.

Um, but, uh, I mean, you know, I mean, we, we love it. It's, it was a really, you know, in the years that, that we didn't have records coming out and we weren't doing as much and we weren't touring, that was a really, it became a really nice place for us to go. We see all of our friends and other bands from like everywhere. Um, so many people were started coming from all the, you know, it was just, it was a really good place to check in with everybody once a year. So it kind of became like a vehicle for that. Yeah. And, um, and you know, it's just, it's all, it's all old, old friends that do it and it's all friends that play it and it's all, you know, so I mean, that, that really is like, you know, for, for all the years we've been doing the band, like those are the people that we all sort of came up to get.

I don't really know. Like that's, that's our, if the, if we have our own kind of scene within a scene like that, it's, it's there, it's those people really, you know? So, um, both the people that do it and people that go to it. Everyone who's there. Yeah. It's kind of like having a favorite shirt. Yeah. I can see that. Well, it's, it's everyone I know who has played there and continues to try and play there with any regularity. They just say it's, it's basically like doing the best show of your life every year. Like it's just an amazing place to be. Yeah. People are really enthusiastic and, and you know, for all, you know, it's like, I mean, the biggest bands that play it are by like real music industry standards, like pretty small, but it's packed, you know what I mean?

Every, even the small, you'll go to a show at one o'clock in the afternoon. And, um, you know, everyone's hung over, but it's full, you know, like for everyone, you know, for the most part, I've seen very few like poorly attended shows at the best. No, definitely. Well, it's like, uh, dead to me is going to be playing here this Friday and they're playing down the street at maybe 150 person bar and they played there and they were at the venue, you know, midday and the place is packed and how often do you get to do that? But it's, it's gotta be pretty rad. So right on. Um, speaking of no idea in the fest, um, I was doing research on this, try not to be completely awful at it, but, uh, there was an interview in 2003 where you mentioned doing an EP for no idea.

Yeah. Uh, is that just never material? It's in the works. How long has it been in the works for at this stage? I think we've been talking to bar about that record since, no, we've, we've probably been talking about the mythological EP. I no idea for, yeah, I don't know, probably better part of this decade for sure. Now, is it one of those things you have material for or you're just, at some point you're going to, it's yeah, it's just, yeah, I don't know. It always like, I mean, we were going to do it, I think before we even did our first fat record. Oh wow. But then we're like, no, but the timing, now we have to get the record. We have to get the record done first now. So it got bumped. It just keeps getting, I don't know.

We just know, I think like, you know, far from no ideas, just, you know, someday we'll do it and we know someday we'll do it. So it just, it never ends up being a priority. Of course we're highly prolific. That's the thing. But we do know, you know, there's a rough sketch for the record. It will have guitar and bass and drums and some vocals. Right. There'll be some music, probably vocals. Chances are it'll be in 4-4. Yeah. Yeah. It's good to know you guys are, you got the plan going on it, but I don't think of our, maybe I'm wrong. He's never struck me as a real deadline oriented guy. No, no. Yeah. Between the two of us, it'll be, you know, our band and them, it'll, it'll be a long time probably. But it's on the books.

It's happening. Eventually. All right. Um, I think it was the same interview. You mentioned, uh, motorhead seven inch. Oh, do we, I think so. This, this is the damning interviews. That's another good idea that we had probably thought at some one week. We're like, yeah, we can do a seven inch with motorhead. That'd be great. I'll give them a call. We'll see what I can set up. We ended up recording one song for, for like a really small kind of local, local comp and recorded one motorhead song. It came out really, really bad. And I think that maybe scared us off, but we're like, yeah, maybe, maybe we don't have the chops to do this and said, I will never listen to this again ever. Is it so it never got released or I hope not.

I don't know. No, that, no, the cop got released, but yeah, but don't look for it. Don't look for it. As far as your concern doesn't exist. Don't ask for you guys to play that song. Don't look for the motorhead. We could probably wing it tonight better than it sounded on the, well, I, I would say you should do that then for everyone who attends the bottom of the hill show. You're come on. You're in the hometown of your label. You got to, you got to, you know, show off for the label heads. They're in Europe on tour.

You'd think that Mike could have coordinated no effects, his tour schedule to be in town. It seems like we, yeah, his priorities are clearly out of whack. Yeah. Yeah. He's out there touring and not paying attention to you guys. Not at all. That's what happens when you get to big labels. No text today. Not even like, Hey guys, thinking about you. Yeah. Nothing. Nothing. Hey, hope to see you soon. TTYL. That's right. That's how he operates. But anyhow, um, see here. Oh, um, so hold on. I was reading something. I don't know if all of this. Oh, you guys released first two records were on hopeless records. Do you guys happen to keep up with any of their current catalog at all? No, no, no, I just, it kind of struck me.

I was looking at that. Was it when you guys went to go to fat? Was that something where he just kind of felt you were in different directions? It was, it was definitely like, yeah, I mean, because the bands that, that Lewis was signing and that really was a big part of it. I mean, the bands that Lewis was signing at the time. And I, and I mean, I love that dude. Like, I think he's a great guy, but you know, his taste in music is different than it was. Yes. But, um, but I mean, anything condemning or not like when he signed thrice and when he signed like event seven fold, I was just like, are you serious, dude? Like, this is what, like, this is what you're hanging. You're like, you think this is going to, and wow, was he right as far as from a perspective of like, you know, commercial, a lot of money and being a big record label, but yeah.

And those aren't even in my opinion, I don't care because no one cares what I think, but they're not even, if someone was like, those are the worst bands that he signed. Oh, that would have been a hell of a lot better. Yeah. Yeah, but you know, he's done, he's done really well with that label, but it's, you know, it's definitely not, not, I think you've seen Mike, he's handsome. Yeah. He's a good looking man. Yeah.

I like that. That's, that's your addition to the, that Mike's a good looking dude. Courted us. You can't say no to that. You can't say no. He brings you in, he buys you dinner, a little candlelight. It was a nice dinner. It wasn't cheap. He didn't take us to, you know, IHOP or anything like that. I would probably settle for IHOP.

So I guess before I wrap up here, I want to ask, we already asked what you guys, the question you received the most. What's the question you've probably wanted to answer the most or just general statement that you'd like to make, but have not had the opportunity to in an interview?

I don't wish to discuss that matter. It's a man's interview question. Ouch. I've hit, I've hit. I'm out of questions. Interview yourself. Well, I'm just saying like, is there ever been something that you've written like for part of a song that you're like, yeah, one day I really hope to explain that in detail and no one's ever brought it up? No, it's never happened. Ever. Narrowman has a question. Hit it. If you were to interview yourself, what question would you ask yourself? Good question. You just took my ripoff question. Would you like a beer? Would be the first thing I would ask myself. That's the best question. You know what? Would you like $500? No disrespect. No disrespect about this interview. The best interview we ever did, his name was Jay and he showed up with like a dozen varieties of beer and malt liquors and the interview was us trying each one and then giving our comments on it.

Yeah, now that's an interview. And it was probably the best interview we ever did. That's true. I would imagine that'd be pretty good, but we can't bring liquor in the bottom of the hill. If we tried, they would get this out. I'm sure there was no other place we could have met. That's right. Next time you coordinate it, I'll bring the alcohol and you can tell me what you think. Oh, so it's on me now. It's on you. I've tried. I've put everything into this. We just met. You got to prepare for this. I didn't even know I was going to be in an interview. This is getting adversarial now. Don't put this on me. We don't talk anymore. You've closed off. All right. Well, I know you guys want to see who's playing tonight. Vanessa put me on strict regulations and we had to finish before the show started.

Because she was like, once the show started, she's like, they don't want shit to do with you. She's a stern taskmaster. She was like, you're dead at that point. But I want to thank you guys so much for taking time. Anything, last things you guys want to add?

No. No? All right. No, we're bad with that. We're not creative folks. Hey, I'm okay with that. It makes my job a hell of a lot easier. I'm sure on the plane home, I'll think of something. Just call me. We'll email you. Yeah. Email me. Send it to Vanessa. She'll send it to me. Right. We'll patch it in. We'll handle it that way. No problem. Thank you. Well, thank you guys so much for taking the time and good luck with all of this. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks. All right. So that was the whole interview. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. I want to take a second to thank Dillinger for, even though the chances of them listening are pretty much non-existent, but seriously, they haven't been to the Bay Area in like six years, and this is their first time back, and it's the home of their label, Fat Records, which, I mean, they're obviously there to impress the label heads, which if you've read the fat postings, you know, because Patty shaved not only his head on stage, but then used that same electric razor to shave his balls on stage.

You know, they know a ton of people there, and so they're really busy, and they're saying hi, and they're hanging out with friends, and so the fact that they took five minutes to bullshit with us is really, it's great for me. So, awesome, right? Okay, so that's this show, it's in the can, it's done, I hope you liked it, and to commemorate Dillinger 4 and the fact that they just played Fest, we're gonna end with Gainesville, off of Civil War, their latest album. Gainesville, if you're not aware, is a song all about the city of Gainesville, and how it hosts the Fest every year. I'm not even fucking around. These guys like the Fest so much, they wrote a song about it, so, I like it, I hope you like it, I hope you thought the show was alright, if you didn't, we did 110 of them before, or yeah, we've done 110 before this, 109?

No, this is 111. No, 110 was the last one, wasn't it? This is 110? Well, we've done 109 shows before this, we'll probably do at least five more shitty shows. Maybe before we quit. So enjoy it, and we'll catch you guys next week. Always send us emails, soundscenerevolution at gmail.com, we have a MySpace, which I check incredibly infrequently. We should get a Twitter, twitter.com slash soundscenerevolution. It's actually too long for the Twitter URL, but expect something similar. We're gonna start that right the fuck now. We'll catch you guys next week. This is Gainesville by Dillinger 4. See you all next week with brand new Fest interviews. Later.

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