The world is a much different place today than it was when Touchpants released their seminal debut album Poopenis Poetry in 2006. From the recession to the Arab Spring and beyond, the reverberations from that seismic shift in comedy-rock can still be felt today. Yet while the world at large has certainly changed in many ways, so too has the band itself. 2012 saw the addition of bassist Aram Bedrosian, who joined original members Jon Fishman, Chris Friday and Colby Dix to form the current Touchpants lineup.
On several occasions during our interview, members of the band expressed their belief that Touchpants exists for no reason other than their own amusement. They reiterated the point that there is no grand purpose for their art. In the words of guitarist Colby Dix, “There’s little more to this than our own desperate need to express ourselves in a public forum in a way that we’re not allowed to at home.” Pay no attention to these modest claims (or feel free to do so), for they are the humble words of weary soldiers. Touchpants concerts are a rare occurrence—the band only convenes for their somewhat annual April 20 gig or the occasional Phish after show—but the value of the experience cannot be understated. Some may call them crass and others may call them juvenile, but historians will remember Touchpants as something else entirely.
Despite their aspirational contributions to art, philosophy and the philosophy of art, the men of Touchpants are not content to sit idly by as humanity once again finds itself peering over the precipice. The group recently returned to the studio to work on their first follow up to Poopenis Poetry, which is set to grace our earholes at some point in the near future. On top of that, they also announced a series of summer shows around a few of Phish’s upcoming tour dates. We caught up with Chris Friday, Colby Dix, Aram Bedrosian and a mysterious drummer by the name of Don Hellmann that may or may not be Phish/Pork Tornado drummer Jon Fishman (it’s Jon Fishman) to discuss the group’s forthcoming album, their clean water/economic development initiatives and so much more.
Let’s talk about the new album. What inspired you guys to put out a record now?
Colby Dix: Honestly, we put out an album—about ten years ago—of the poetry that we had written, and we’d been touring with a whole lot of songs, even at that point. But at this point, we’ve written so many more. We’ve got enough for probably two or three albums ready to go. So we felt like it was finally time to do it. We felt that about two years ago, when we first recorded these songs and then scrapped them all, mostly because I couldn’t be bothered to actually mix them. And now we’re finally at the point where we have a little bit of motivation and some time together—the right timing where things actually happened, where we get together for four days and hammer out the basics and recording of this and get it ready. But, you know, we’ve been ready to make an album for a long time. We just finally did.
Aram Bedrosian: You know, there are a lot of important issues facing the world, like the fact that most cats don’t like to go down on dudes. And we address that on the album.
Don Hellmann: Terrible, Aram, just terrible. Aram’s getting docked pay again.
Chris Friday: We pay him?
Can you guys talk a little about the recording process? Where have you guys been recording, what’s it been like?
CF: Boring!
DH: Wait, are we calling this album Straight Outta Cumpton, or did we change the title to I Came On Muhammad’s Neck?
CD: It’s going to be Straight Outta Cumpton.
DH: I wasn’t sure, because I don’t know what our interviewer’s working with.
CD: The working title is Straight Outta Cumpton. So yeah, we recorded both at Tank Recording Studio in Burlington a couple years ago, and more recently at The Barn, as was kind of posted on Facebook and beyond. Other than that, you know, we’re doing some work from home, we’re kind of mailing it in.
Will Tammy be making any guest appearances on the album?
CF: I think we should cut Aram out of the call. Tammy is not represented on the album, other than spiritually.
AB: I think you might want me here, Friday.
DH: Aram, I’m a little nervous about the beatings we’re gonna get later already. I feel like you and I have both said too much already. I’m a little afraid.
AB: I agree with you, Don. Because Friday’s gonna be really mad.
DH: Yeah, it’s a pretty tight ship.
CD: We understand your hesitation, guys, but we want you to feel like you can speak freely in this interview.
CF: This is Friday, and I think Don and Aram should shut the hell up.
AB: I just want to apologize…
DH: This is Friday, and this is really about the tender songwriting of Touchpants.
So Touchpants have played a lot of April 20 shows over the years. Why is it that you guys are so keen on celebrating Hitler’s birthday?
DH: This is Friday. The real, actual name of the band is Hitler’s Rainbow, and you’ve stumbled on to something there. We really didn’t know that anyone realized that, but you’re right on, yes. Hitler’s Rainbow.
CF: This is Don, and I am personally responsible for the entire genocide.
Which one are we talking here?
CF: All of them.
CD: Could we get back to the songs, please?
AB: This is terrible, and continue.
So obviously there’s a lot of problems facing our country today. Why does America need Touchpants?
CD: They don’t. Yeah, that’s pretty easy to answer. It’s certainly not based on necessity. Touchpants is necessary because there’s a hole in America that we need to fill. And that hole is hairy.
CF: Gloryhole.
DH: This is Aram. America doesn’t need this, but Iran does. And so does Armenia.
AB: This is Don. I read a lot of books, and I agree.
CF: There’s no need for Touchpants. The only people that need Touchpants are Touchpants, and that’s about as true of a statement that you’re gonna get all day.
CD: That’s really true. There’s little more to this than our own desperate need to express ourselves in a public forum in a way that we’re not allowed to at home.
DH: This is Don, and god dammit I agree with that. I have to identify myself correctly, if there’s one thing that you take away from this interview. You actually got a serious statement out of us.
CD: That’s the only one.
DH: That’s it: America doesn’t need Touchpants, only the members of Touchpants need Touchpants. The rest may very well not.
CD: And they probably shouldn’t even be exposed to Touchpants, given an actual choice in the matter.
DH: That also is true.
CF: It’s like impending weather: just run in the other direction, if you’re lucky enough to be able to.
DH: Like if you hear a tornado’s coming to your town, you’re gonna go the other way. If you hear Touchpants is coming, you should probably go the other way too, even faster.
Speaking of tornados—this one’s for Jon—how are you able to balance both Touchpants and Pork Tornado? Do you find that difficult?
DH: Jon who? There’s only Don and Friday and Colby and Aram.
Okay—did you say Don?
CD: Don. Don Hellmann – heir to the Hellmann’s fortune…
Well, Don Hellmann, how do you think that the hypothetical drummer for both Touchpants and Pork Tornado would be able to balance those two projects?
CD: I’ll answer for Don. There’s not really like a whole lot of need to balance those two. It’s not like one truly offsets the other. That comparison doesn’t really compare to what you need to balance your life and to let Touchpants exist altogether. It doesn’t mean so much in terms of Pork Tornado or any other middle-of-the-road fucking cover band that’s playing right now. It’s more important to realize that Touchpants and the weight of that, in terms of that balancing, is much heavier than anything else that is necessary for us at this time. Like, it has to happen. No matter what you put on the other side of that scale. it’s not going to tip and unbalance what is the Touchpants.
DH: I’d like to remind you, as Colby has pointed out earlier, which I think is the truest statement of the day, that Touchpants is there for us to express ourselves publicly in ways that we are not allowed to at home. I think that pretty much sums it up—that’s it.
CD: So we’re pretty much done with the interview at this point.
CF: I’ll quote Don really quick: “Stick the fork in the pork.”
DH: I did say that. In all honesty, Pork Tornado is on hiatus, and Touchpants has taken the lead in my life.
CD: It was somewhere around eight years ago that we took over that priority.
DH: It’s been sort of sneaking up the whole time. It just kind of burst out, like a dick.
CF: It came and it burst.
DH: It’s an undeniable cystic growth that can no longer be ignored.
CD: This is like asking John Mayer about Jennifer Aniston, man—that’s just some old news, you know? You gotta move on.
DH: I think that’s the quote to use, actually. That’s like asking Brad Pitt about Jennifer Aniston.
CD: I know, Jennifer Aniston hasn’t put out a good movie since Leprechaun.
DH: Did the leprechaun eat her face in that movie?
CD: No.
Nectar’s in Burlington, VT is currently celebrating it’s 40th year. What has the venue meant to you guys?
CD: Some shitty April gigs every year? I don’t know. A nice string of underpaid performances where they packed the bar to the fucking gills and didn’t give us a bonus. They mean a lot to us, though.
CF: Chris Walsh is helping us out a bunch. Of course, Don has played with some other groups there for the 40th anniversary. We have not yet. But, you know, they were the place Colby and I started in 2003, doing open mics there. Then Don jumped up on drums with us shortly after that. So, as it has been for many bands, it’s been a starting point for Touchpants, being able to earn a little bit of a loyal following around the Burlington area. So yeah, they’ve been huge. But, Chris Walsh’s interest and enthusiasm has been top notch. He knows the biz and has ideas beyond music for us that could beneficially play out nicely for our brand of pissogyny in the future.
CD: Yeah, I mean, we’re no Gordon Stone, but we get a pretty good draw over there.
Going back to America and the problems we’re facing today, let’s just say, hypothetical situation here, you walk into a sushi buffet. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are both there. Whose soy sauce do you ask to borrow, and why?
CD: For one, what the fuck is a boo-fay?
DH: Is that like a bouffant?
CD: The easiest answer there, obviously, would be to not so much ask to borrow, but to just take Bernie Sanders’ soy sauce. Because clearly he believes his soy sauce is everybody’s fuckin’ soy sauce, and he might as well share the wealth, you know? So just take it—I’m entitled to it.
CF: I wouldn’t take Hillary’s soy sauce, because it’s made by Monsanto.
CD: Ooh, I didn’t even think about that. Is that made by Mossimo, that clothing line out of Target? Is that what you’re talking about?
AB: Yeah, they make those bouffants.
What shows do you guys have planned for the summer? What are you going to do with this album?
CD: We have a tour announcement forthcoming. Unfortunately we can’t really divulge too much of that just yet until we have all the press stuff in line, but rest assured, we’ll be everywhere we need to be.
CF: You’re probably gonna see it announced this week, so you can add the dates upon that announcement. You’re gonna see five shows this summer at various points in the US. Until the fall. When we’re going big! With five more.
CD: This is Don. I mean, I figure by fall, I can probably quit Pork Tornado entirely and just focus on Touchpants full-time.
Let’s talk about the album’s title.
CF: Straight Outta Cumpton.
CF: And that’s Cumpton, C-U-M-P-T-O-N. Get it straight.
CD: Outta. O-U-T-T-A. Straight. As in something Aram is not. This is Aram. Sorry, I was speaking in the third person there.
CF: Let me explain you what a “cump” is. It’s the combination of having an orgasm (cum) and defecating (dump) at the same time. Hence the word cump. Hence the name of the album, Straight Outta Cumpton.
Do you guys have anything else to add, anything else you’d like to go into? What’s on your minds?
CF: If anybody comes to the shows this summer, just understand: this is the greatest and the worst thing you’ve ever seen, all at once. This is Don. Nah, it’s gonna rock. The shows will be electrically entertaining, for sure.
CD: We feel really confident, especially with the album we’ve got going right now and with the level of absolute fuckin’ badassery that we’re performing at, both as individuals and as humans on this planet. I really think we’re really making a difference this year, and I think that you’re gonna see that, not just in a live sense, but across all the channels of the Internet. That includes MySpace and Friendster—like we’re really reaching out now and actually making our stamp here on America. I think you’re gonna see some real changes.
When you say “changes,” do you mean musical changes or changes in the world?
CF: Changes in your bowel system, for the most part.
CD: And that’s a lot of it, because we tend to play places where the water isn’t necessarily sanitary. So there’s a lot of changes to the people who view our shows, because they get thirsty and then have a dysentery issue coming on. But, past that, we’re changing the face—not just of music—but of the political landscape, everywhere we go. We change people’s opinions, we change their minds. We’re literally going out there on a one-on-one basis and just changing the way people think and view, not just the world, but themselves. We’re turning people around from the inside out so that they can move forward in life and really feel like they can make a difference that isn’t just in their own communities, but beyond that. Some of them are working, sure, at the county, at the municipal level, others moving up to the state government. This is Aram, by the way.
DH: When Aram speaks like that, I am motivated to run for office. This is Friday, by the way.
CF: Our civic priorities are, number one, going out on the road. Therefore we will work on these water issues, and so will the people attending our shows—in their pants.
CD: And this is Aram again. The thing to us, the biggest thing that motivates us right now, is economic development. There’s so much need right now, in our small communities, to embrace—it’s not just another craft store on fuckin’ Main Street, you know? It’s not another bunch of musicians playing for free on the town commons. That’s not gonna revitalize your economy. We’re talking a small business incubator—things like that—that Touchpants is bringing to communities across America right now. If you want to get together with us during and/or after—preferably, actually, during—the show to talk about your business idea, we’re there for you 100% every time, every show. Let’s do this.
CF: But not after. Definitely not after.
CD: No, we don’t actually want to see much of any of you after. At all.
CF: Nobody.
CD: I don’t even want to see Aram, but I am Aram.
DH: That makes three of us. I like that, at the beginning, you said, “oh it makes it a lot easier if you say your name.” You really asked for this.
I realized that about a minute through. You can pretty much say anything you want at this point.
DH: I feel like the good thing about this is once this interview comes out, the New York Times and all the other editorials will be lining up at our door, of course. Is there actually anything you want to know about the band?
Well I know you guys have been a comedy band for many years now. You’ve released—one album, is it?
CD: Yeah, if you can call it that.
CF: Well, Poopenis Poetry was released in 2006, and it’s damn near the funniest comedy album ever made. And Aram is not on it, so you know it’s even better.
AB: I know, yeah. Poopenis Poetry really set the standard.
Do you think you guys have grown as a band between now and Poopenis Poetry?
AB: We just did a record as a whole band, and poetry is part of every show that we do, regardless.
Colby drops out of interview due to prior arrangement.
AB: See you later, Aram.
DH: Thank God he’s gone. Now we can really put some words in Colby’s mouth.
CF: The band has been a band since Don joined open mic-style in like late 2003. And then Aram came in 2012, his first gig was April 20, 2012. So it’s been a solid four years as the quartet, but before that it was just Colby, Don and myself.
DH: He plays on one gig a year.
CF: We took three years off, so it was like a third of a gig a year, on average.
DH: Now it’s really picked up to what? We’re like knocking on the door of like six or seven gigs a year or something.
CF: After Colby got off of his meth and heroin addiction, we started to play again. But things are better.
AB: This is Aram, and I don’t really think a whole lot about what to say or do, I just kinda show up and play bass. I try to not listen too much to the filth coming out of their mouths. It’s working pretty well so far. We’re up to five or six gigs a year, and I’m hoping by 2020 we’ll be doing a dozen a year.
DH: Are the lyrics filthy? I’m really just so focused on the instrumentation, and I just hear the vocals as another instrument. I don’t really know anything about the lyrical content.
AB: Nor should anyone.
DH: In all seriousness, I think that was well put before. Touchpants really does exist for Touchpants. Like, I love playing in this band. I think all of us do. I love playing with Aram, he’s a great bass player. I love Friday’s vocals. I love the whole thing. For me, it’s just pure fun. And whether or not it’s offensive or whatever, that’s part of the fun. You can always elect to not listen, but to me it’s had staying power.
AB: I wasn’t expecting it to happen, but there is some kind of chemistry going on with Touchpants. The album was really really good—in all seriousness, it’s pretty rocking. It’s sort of astronomically rocking in moments. It is a real pleasure. All kidding aside, it’s really nice to be in this group with these three sweet guys.
CF: You actually gave him something to print, holy shit.
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
