Can you describe what the songwriting process is like for you guys?
CF: Well these guys are the musicians, not me. I’m a bumbling boob up there. But anyway—
DH: The wrecking ball.
CF: Don calls me the wrecking ball. It normally starts with writing a bunch of lyrics. Then Colby is like a musical genius—he really is. He graduated Berklee School of Music at twenty-years-old. He can play every instrument. He can whip up songs in literally two minutes, and he’s just an amazing guitarist and vocalist and overall composer. So I give him some lyrics, normally, and he writes a tune behind it. We might collaborate on some lyrics, or some poetry, and get a quick melody going. Then Aram and Don come in and just take it to the next level, and it’s really amazing. We wrote three new songs in the studio a few weeks ago, and the next day, after Colby and I stayed up drinking and writing songs, the band just came together and crushed them. It was unbelievable. So, normally starting with lyrics, Colby comes in, writes a melody, and the band comes together and kills it. It’s pretty fuckin’ awesome, I gotta say.
DH: Just to give you an idea—in all seriousness—of the level of chemistry that’s happening here, at times, in a way that you just have to kind of not get your brain in the way and question it, you just have to recognize it for what it is. We did our gig in Florida at the Blackbird Ordinary, and Friday had a set of lyrics called “Pedro Peed in the Ravioli Bucket” that he had partly written, like one verse or something, a while back. He kind of had the riff in his mind and he sort of had a melody for it. And they were bugging us to go on—it was like 1am or something—and they’re saying, “You guys really gotta go on the stage now.” We were just barely lamenting the fact that we weren’t gonna be able to play this, because Friday sort of said these lyrics as one verse, then Colby had a riff, and you could hear that this was gonna be a great tune, but it wasn’t done yet. And Colby just says, “Whoa, hold on, we can finish this before we go on stage.” Aram and I were standing there, the four of us just standing there—a couple other people in the room even—and Friday and Colby finished the verses. As we’re walking to the stage—they’re really bothered, like, “You guys gotta go onstage right now”—Friday and Colby literally finished writing the song and singing it on the way to the stage. It was like a 50-foot walk to the stage. We literally got on the stage, counted it off, and started killing it. Just fuckin’ played it, and Friday sang it, and it was like we’d been doing it the whole time. But that song, without exaggeration, literally five minutes before we walked onstage, there was one verse to it. In the next five minutes, three of those minutes in the band room and two minutes walking to the stage, the song was finished and then presented to the audience. And it was good—that’s the thing. It wasn’t just some junk.
AB: And we didn’t play it again until we were in the studio. Maybe we ran it two or three times, so the track we got is like the third time we’d ever played the tune.
DH: Right, the third time it’s ever been played. And it was so good that night in Florida that everybody remembered “we gotta put that on the album.” And no one had even filmed it on their phone or anything. We couldn’t find any version of it. The gig wasn’t recorded, we just remembered it.
AB: The lyrics are so strong, it carries you through. In all seriousness, it really is about the lyrics, which are deep. I mean, it’s easy to slay grooves when someone’s singing “Pedro Peed in the Ravioli Bucket.”
DH: “The dishwasher saw, but he said ‘fuck it.’”
AB: Yeah, I mean that kind of sums it up right there.
DH: That’s it. And how can you not rock to that?
You’d have to be a sad, sad person.
DH: But then, wait, what’s the line after that? “The period stains ripped a queef?” I mean, it gets deep and sloppy after that. What are those lyrics again?
CF: It goes “Chef came out of the bathroom, slipped on some grease/His wife was right behind him, she ripped out a queef/Marinara slip ’n’ slide, skating in beef/sushi bloody enema, constipation relief – Pedro Peed In The Ravioli Bucket…”
DH: How can you not rock to that? That’s what he brought to the band room. We’re standing there, you could hear the song. He brought that, and we’re like, that has to be finished before we go onstage. We have to open with that.
CF: That really set the tone for an awesome show. That was one of the best shows ever. In my opinion, I think it was the best show ever. And of course it wasn’t recorded. Classic.
You say that America doesn’t need Touchpants, but I hear lyrics like that and I have to disagree. I think we do.
CF: You’ll see. When you hear this album, you’ll see if America needs to hear it or not.
DH: I think it’s worth printing those lyrics, just as a little sample for the readers, because that gives people an idea of the original use of the English language to express deep, human longing.
So “Pedro Peed in the Ravioli Bucket” is going to make it on to Straight Outta Cumpton?
CF: I believe so. I would hope. We’re in a voting process, but I would really like it to open the album.
DH: I think that’s the one thing none of us have disagreed on. Everyone’s felt like “Pedro” opens the album. No one’s even debated that one.
Does that mean Touchpants is a democratic institution?
DH: No. I mean, Aram and I basically live in fear. We all live in fear of Friday’s wrath. The truth is we’re in the band because we’re forced to be in the band. It’s not like our choice. It’s kind of like Cosa Nostra or something. You’re in the band or you’re not in the band. And we all know what that means.
AB: Constant state of fear.
CF: You guys are not supposed to express that during this interview. Fuck.
AB: Friday hits me once a day.
DH: Sam, call the police. It’s the only time I’m gonna get a chance to say this. If I’m dead by the time this goes to print, you’ll know why. There, the cat’s out of the bag.
I’ve got the recorded evidence right here.
AB: Friday lectured us backstage above Nectar’s one night for maybe an hour about how the band wasn’t as tight as he’d like it to be that night, despite that he has no musical ability or knowledge. It really kept us in line, and I think we really tightened it up for the next show.
DH: I believe there was some slapping about the head and neck as well.
AB: Yeah, oh yeah.
DH: It’s a scary thing. When we don’t play up to par, whew. The Wrecking Ball. Heads roll.
AB: He has an idea of what he thinks this music is, and if we don’t live up to that, it’s scary back there. He’s a violent man, and he’s a little big.
DH: Technically you could call Touchpants a terrorist organization in that the three of us live in terror of Friday.
AB: Yeah, that’s right on. Friday, what do you have to say?
CF: Well, I don’t run things like a certain drummer back in the ‘60s who used to yell horrible things at his bandmates on the bus—we won’t mention him—but if these guys don’t stay in line, I’ll lay down the fuckin’ hammer.
DH: You hear that? You can hear the menace in his voice. But when that menace is put behind “Pedro Peed in the Ravioli Bucket,” that’s where it pays off.
AB: All the fear is worth it for those few moments onstage.
CF: It’s as if Buddy Rich was a frontman singer, but the frontman singer has no talent whatsoever.
DH: “As if.” Come on, be fair to yourself. You have a very trace amount of talent.
CF: Well, trace is like the microbes found in my fungus on my bunions.
AB: You’re like a wordsmith. You’re pretty incredible. It’s some serious poetry, all kidding aside.
DH: Should we change your name to Touchpants Buddy or Touchpants Wordsmith?
CF: You certainly won’t be calling me Touchpants Rich. What else you got, Sam?
I lost track of my questions 25 minutes ago. Do you guys have anything else you’d like to add?
DH: I like how we had to wait until he was out of questions to actually give him an interview.
CF: Well, you can look forward to a summer release of Straight Outta Cumpton, our first full band release. And we’re gonna keep pumping out records, we hope, after that, and get this fuckin’ ship rolling
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