Let’s move on to Newport Folk, which you guys always have a lot of fun with. Is there anything you can say about this year’s Deer Tick & Friends shows?

All that stuff is still—it comes together so last minute. But, the lineup this year is pretty great. A lot of familiar faces, a lot of people that we haven’t played with before that we’re gonna approach. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.

Any major highlights from the shows in the past couple of years?

Last year, Brandi Carlile played with us out of nowhere. We hadn’t even spoken with her about anything, and she just happened to be there and [Newport Folk Festival producer] Jay Sweet convinced her to get up on stage. I don’t know who—it must have been her idea to do [Radiohead’s] “Creep” but, you know, we all know that song. That’s the kind of stuff that can happen.

Are there frequently impromptu surprises like that, when the band didn’t even know it would happen?

Yeah—yeah the year Jackson Browne sang with us was a surprise. That happened all last minute. You know, if Matt Vasquez end up on stage without his shirt on, knocking stuff over, that’s usually unplanned. [Laughs.]

And this year and going forward, are there any bucket-list people that you would love to join you for one of the Newport shows?

I would love to do something with Patti Smith. I would love to get Dave Grohl to the Newport Folk Festival for the first time.

That would be great. Could you talk about your relationship with Dave Grohl?

Dave just kind of emails or calls me out of the blue, and usually it has something to do with Nirvana.

How did you first meet him?

When I was 10 years old. But he doesn’t [remember]—I was just a fan. I had him sign my copy of In Utero. Years later, when I actually met him, I told him that story he thought it was pretty funny. I met him a couple of days before they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I walked into a rehearsal studio and there they were, Nirvana—minus Kurt [Cobain], obviously. And we jammed. It was totally surreal.

Obviously you guys hit it off enough for him to call you up about future Nirvana stuff, so that’s pretty cool.

Yeah, it’s cool as hell. I don’t really do it for any other reason than Dave asked me to do it. It’s absolutely an insane thing to do—an unrealistic thing to do. [Laughs.] But yeah, I learned that when Dave Grohl is trying to get in touch with you, you better answer the phone.

Do you just get a text from him, like when he brought you on during the surprise Nirvana reunion at Cal Jam last year?

Yeah that’s what happened last time almost exactly a week before. Dave is a pretty excitable person, so it was like “John!!!” With three exclamation points.

Moving on to the Deer Tick documentary, Straight Into a Storm, how has the response been to that and how was it revisiting old footage and memories?

I was at the New York premiere, and it was pretty funny. I mean, you forget a lot of details, and then they just come flooding back. There’s some footage in that of stuff from 10-plus years ago that I don’t even remember. Given my track record, I guess that’s not too hard to imagine. [Laughs.] At first it seems very uncomfortable and embarrassing, you know? There are other people in the theater laughing, and they get it, somewhat at least… I really don’t know how to feel about it. There was a certain point while making it that I just wanted it to stop but…

Yeah that makes sense. I was reading through a feature that Relix did around the two albums in 2017, and one quote that stuck out to me was when you said, “Maybe we don’t run around as much or get hurt as frequently on stage, but we still put on a show.” I thought that was very honest and telling, and I’m curious how this has continued to work and how you see the response from some of the fans that have been with you throughout the years.

It’s always changing a little bit as we change. I think now we’re definitely more focused. So, the people that come for the music, maybe they enjoy it much more than, say, the people who show up to see what crazy thing we might do. But, you know, every now and then things happen. I mean, we’re still Deer Tick. We still drink. We’ve cleaned up somewhat [laughs] but when it comes down to it, we’re still the same people.

Here’s an example of how we might do something totally unexpected but now we’re able to really put more thought into it: The last time we played Denver was around Halloween, so we turned the whole stage backdrop into the downtown of South Park, and we all dressed in character.

What character were you?

I was Stan. Our guitar tech dressed up as Towelie. I mean, I’m a huge fan of the show. For the changeover—because we were doing the two sets—over the speakers we played the “Fingerbang” song from [season 4, episode 9], and we all changed our outfits into the white outfits from the episode. And Dennis [Ryan], who was Chef, came out as Darth Chef from the episode where killed him off. [Laughs.] It was well-researched, and I think we pulled it off pretty well.

Any plans that you want to talk about coming up in Deer Tick land in 2019?

No big plans. Recording a little, working on a movie soundtrack—but I gotta be a little hush hush before that.

Have you guys done that before?

I’ve done it a little bit, but the band, no. So that’s cool, and it’s given us a lot of ideas for our next album, too. I mean, it’s in the very early, early, early stage. But not much—just excited to go play some shows again.

Pages:« Previous Page