JPG: Trying to get a few things in here before we’re cut off. Back to the factual aspect of your Wikipedia page, are you still referred to as the Million Dollar Hippie in Australia?

JB: I don’t know. I only hear that in interviews. No one ever calls me it, which is probably a good thing because who knows what I’ll fuckin’ say back to ‘em. Million Dollar Hippie. What a name. It’s really funny.

JPG: I was going to say that probably gets thrown in there because you dare to have a social conscious and an environmental conscious and…

JB: Yeah, I think it’s that and that it’s expected that people who are completely self-funded and they come from the streets and they have ethics and they fight for things and keep their ethics, they expect them to be poor not rich. My idea and my headspace and my attitude is that anything I do is good enough to be in the mainstream and I don’t have a problem being in the mainstream. So, I take it there. Usually, what happens, my fans bust down the wall before I do. Commercial radio wouldn’t play us until so many of our fans… (publicist chimes in again)

I think what we did, you just see it live and then the groundswell and the grassroots approach just seems to bring it to the mainstream. That’s what happened in Australia and that’s what happened in France and God knows what will happen everywhere else, so we’ll see.

JPG: I saw you at the ROTHBURY Festival last July, and early on in your set there was some technical difficulty that happened. You kept playing as a roadie adjusted whatever was wrong and then the guitar could be heard through the system again. And you just laughed it off. It just seemed so nice to see a musician not get frustrated or angry about the situation. Did we just capture you on a very good day?

JB: (laughs) Yeah, that depends. That was probably trivial. When my Marshall amp goes down you’ll see me spitting like a baby. Well, not like a baby, but I’ll be a lot less…it was probably something minor where I unplugged something and he plugged it back in and we can laugh it off. But, when my Marshall goes down that’s half my sound on the guitar, so, I tend to then get a little stressed.

But, it was a good day, and I wish I could be that way all the time. So, I’ll take that on. If I know I have such a great affect on people maybe I’ll look into that.

JPG: Well it kind of applies to one of the lines in the press release for April Uprising “be happy and enjoy the present moment.” I thought, ‘Well, that’s very zen of you.’

JB: Yeah, you can’t get caught up in this whole negative thing.

JPG: My wife always tries to remind me of that

JB: It’s a journey man, it’s a journey. You hear it all the time, all those clichés, it’s so true, but it’s so hard sometimes, easier to say than do. The key word is try.

JPG: Yes, absolutely.

JB: Maybe I should just do and stop trying.

Pages:« Previous Page