BR: In the liner notes for “Funny Word” you mention Taylor Goldsmith [drummer for Dawes and Middle Brother] as an inspiration. Is there a story there?

JM: That actually started out as a Middle Brother song. Taylor had a list of song titles – that was one of his ways of coming up with ideas. And one of them was “Love Is A Funny Word” – I took that and made something out of it.

BR: It’s a great pull-the-cord-and-let-it-rip performance by everybody – it sounds like the whole band tumbles into a heap at the end.

JM: Yeah – I threw my guitar across the room at the end of that. (laughs)

BR: Jeez – which guitar?

JM: My Mustang.

BR: Well, that’s a hell of a thing to do, John. (laughter) We should tell any kids reading this not to try that at home, right?

JM: Naw – it’s okay to smash ‘em if it’s a Squier. (laughs)

BR: Nice. There goes your chance to land a big-bucks endorsement deal with Squier.

JM: Yeah, no doubt. (laughter)

BR: “Main Street” sounds like one of those classic old New York Dolls tunes with the girl group vibe that they would just bash the hell out of.

JM: Cool – thanks. (laughs) I’ve got a few Dolls albums – that’s good shit.

BR: Absolutely. My notes on “Chevy Express” read “a young Lou Reed fronting an unplugged Nirvana.”

JM: (laughs) I like that. (laughs) That’s actually the first time we’d played the song together. I sat in a different room, completely isolated from everybody and had Adam take everything out of my headphones. I couldn’t hear anything the guys were doing; he cued me and we did the take.

BR: Great – bigtime tension in the performance. How about the arrangement on “Electric”, with the keys and strings?

JM: I wrote it on my guitar, but when it came time to record, I wanted Rob to play it on the Wurlitzer – kind of like Harry Nilsson’s “Early In The Morning”. In the meantime, we‘d brought in a string section for another song that didn’t make it onto the record. We thought we’d try them on “Electric” and gave it a shot. I guess it worked. (laughs)

*BR: For “Miss K.”, I wrote down “a happy drunk’s take on ‘Born To Run’ without the drama.” *

JM: Yeah, that was my attempt at writing a love song. (laughs)

BR: Oh, sure – I can hear that: “Come on Miss K/Wrap your drunken arms around me/Talk dirty/Turn me on/Let’s get going” (laughter) I mean, next to a bouquet of roses, it doesn’t get much better than that.

JM: No, it doesn’t. (laughter)

BR: Now, ever since I got my pre-release copy of the album a while back, I’ve been wondering: there’s just about a half-hour of silence between “Miss K.” and the hidden track, “Mr. Cigarette”, which is a Paul Westerberg tune. Is that the way it is on the finished album?

JM: (laughs) Yeah. We wanted to make the album even more annoying.

BR: Ah – well then, I thought it would be helpful for all the folks at home if you could pass along some suggestions about what they could do while waiting out the 30 minutes of silence between the two cuts.

JM: I would probably tell them to go to footfetishes.com, sign up as a member, watch it and, you know … (laughter)

BR: Perfect. I knew you’d have some good advice. Look, it sounds like the van’s pulling over – I’d better let you go. Thanks for taking the time to talk, John. Take care and good luck. Be careful out there.

JM: Alright, man – thanks so much. Take it easy. (laughs)

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