Can you talk about your relationship with Slightly Stoopid and how you came to work with those guys?

We have management in common—their manager and our manager, are really good friends, Silverback and Newson Management. So back in the day, before Slightly Stoopid, Silverback was managing Sublime, and those guys were Greyboy Allstars fans. So we opened two nights at the House of Blues in L.A., like a week before Brad [Nowell] died, so we just barely met them, had no idea who they were. And then they became huge, and Brad had already died, so it was like a really weird thing. We kind of stayed in touch over the years, and eventually… Jon [Phillips] had been trying to get me to come sit in with Stoopid, and I had listened to them and was like, “I’m not feeling it.” And then a couple of years later, they were playing San Diego and he invited me down, and I went and it was good! They had switched out the original drummer, but they got Rymo [Ryan Moran] from B-Side Players, a San Diego band, and he was solid. So they had put some better parts in, and they got the horns from John Brown’s Body, and it started tightening up. And then they were from San Diego, so they were just fun to hang out with because they were like me. So now, they’re just really good friends of mine. I go out with them mostly to hang out more than for the music, just because they’re good friends.

Switching gears, let’s talk about Tiny Universe’s tribute to Prince. You guys started doing the Dirty Mind thing before he passed away, right?

Yeah, my keyboard player calls me the grim reaper, because we started doing the Beastie Boys tribute before MCA [Adam Yauch] died. And it was really weird; right when we started doing that—we had done like two shows—MCA passed away. And then we started doing the Prince thing and that was such a—he wasn’t even sick! That was huge. So David thinks we should get the government to pay us to do an ISIS tribute. Yeah, it was really like the biggest shock, Prince dying; that was really, really weird.

You know, I wasn’t like a Prince devotee like a lot of people, but I definitely experienced him in the beginning—those first three or four records, [his self-titled], Dirty Mind, Controversy, those three records. By Purple Rain, I was kind of moved on. Still one of the greatest songwriters of our age, for sure, and—we were talking about it the other day—such an underrated guitar player. That guy was a fricking shredder. Because he was such a showman, you don’t even think of the fact that he’s playing guitar like a virtuoso, because he’s dancing around the whole time.

Some of the great guitar players, though, really respected him and knew how great he was.

And then that whole Minneapolis sound—for me, growing up through the ‘80s, it’s like second nature, because as far as funk goes, there was James Brown, and then there was Minneapolis, and that was what we went out to clubs and danced to. When I was in my 20s, that’s what I was getting down to; there’s Prince and Time. I just saw Morris Day and the Time probably a year ago in San Diego, and they crushed. It was so good.

I’m very curious what it’s like playing with The Rolling Stones.

You know what, man? It’s just the most surreal thing. It’s insane, and it’s just fun to go there with them, and it’s not my gig, so I’m just riding along, and it’s just so fucking plush—the private jets, the five-star hotels…And then, getting to hang out with those guys…Getting to have dinner with Keith Richards, that’s crazy.

What’s a Keith Richards dinner conversation like?

It was really fun, man. Keith’s one of those guys that’s got a very distinctive syntax; sometimes you start talking to him, and you’re not getting it, you’re not getting quite what he’s talking about. When we were in Chile, we were looking for a steakhouse—Chile’s supposed to have great steakhouses—so we went and I found this place that was supposed to be the best place, and I was just telling the guys after rehearsal, like, “Hey I’m gonna go over to the steakhouse tonight. It’s supposed to be really good.” And I went over and told Keith and he was like, “Oh, okay.” Then, a couple hours later, his bodyguard calls and goes, “What’s the name of the steakhouse?” And they did the whole reconnaissance, you know, and he fricking shows up man! And I’m sitting with Keith Richards and I was, like, getting used to his growls and that kind of stuff—because sometimes you got to let him sit there like “ruahruhhhruhh,” and if you don’t know him, you think he’s maybe saying something that you missed.

So it was awesome, man. He’s literally a pirate—he reads captains’ logs, like old 1800s, 1700s captains’ logs from ships’ logs. If he can find something good, he reads a lot. He’s just super funny, man. I go “Keith, you like movies?” “Good ones. Ones with a story, not all this CGI bullshit.” [Laughs] Just totally makes sense and I’m like yeah, that’s great. Which I happen to love, all the CGI bullshit, because I’m a Marvel kid. I waited my whole life for Thor to be able to go [makes hammer motion].

I’m actually working on a story of my own—sci-fi. It was originally kind of a Marvel-ish, superheroes thing. But ten years ago, when they just started making all the movies, I realized there was no room for my story, so I sat on it for a while. I’ve redone it now so that it’s a little more original.

Like a movie, or a comic book?

Yeah movie-slash-book. We just got through the second draft of it, so it should be done in another couple months.

What’s it called?

It’s called “Entanglement,” and it’s a story about dimensional space. It’s cool.

So what plans do you have for 2017, with Tiny Universe and other projects?

Well, Tiny Universe, our record is done, so we are going to drop that at some point here in the next four to five months. And the band’s hitting on all cylinders. I’m looking forward to writing more music with the band and just kind of evolving now. We’ve been shuffling the second guitar for the last few years, and then a year ago, we found Seth [Freeman]. So now we’re feeling like it’s really what we want it to be—it’s just a matter of writing and organizing our thoughts together better. We’re having fun.

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