This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.
Stand-up don't get no respect - it's the hardest thing to do in show business. You don't have no band and there's no music.
Festivals are great because you get to just walk around the corner and see a new band that you've heard but not had the chance to check out.
We used to play the underground clubs like the UFO, and Middle Earth, and they were great because they would have on things like a poet, string quartets, and then a rock band! It was kinda cool!
My band is so dedicated, everybody works very hard. The No. 1 priority is the show, and it's pretty cool because we all pull together, and it's fun. It's like being on a sports team or something.
If I was just in one band, I would have a problem with the amount of time between records because I don't want to wave one flag. I just want to be part of something cool.
Music's been with me from the get-go. It was always around me as a kid. Dad got me my first guitar when I was 11 and, at school, if you wanted to be cool you had to be in a band.
When I went to shows with my friends, it was all about the experience with my friends. If I met the band, it was cool. But it was more about talking about the memories of the show with my friends.
If your album sells, that's cool, more people find out about you, more people get turned on to what we're really about-which is a live rock and roll band.
I'm just not a big fan of the too-cool-for-school indie world. Metal bands have never been invited or been able to be part of the cool kids, and I like it that way.
During the last regular session and the most recent special session, measures that I see as little more than Band-Aids were applied to three health programs in the state.
One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.
I've always chosen my band members based on their sense of humor. It might sound stupid, but it means not only are they fun to live with on a tour bus for years, but humor implies intelligence.
You know, we have a long history of covering different periods of this band's development with a live record... a sort of live thing that would be done for three or four records, and that was the intention with this particular package.
Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.
After wrestling with myself for six months, I began medical treatment. During that time I started a band with some friends of mine called Jack's Car, but that didn't last.
Gene Krupa was my big hero, and I used to play on my mother's flour cans and sugar cans with the kitchen knives, listening to the big bands on my dad's records. Gene Krupa and Harry James.
I am not opposed to doing a side project, like Death Cab for Cutie, where it's completely different from my own band.
I love bands that can collaborate, and I feel like the Rolling Stones wouldn't be nearly as great as they are if it wasn't for them having a real group.
It's been such a group effort. When you're a new band and you have limited resources, you end up getting people that are there because they love what you do, and that's great.
We started with Denny Cordell, and he was a great record producer. He knew exactly how to take a band that knew absolutely nothing, and guide you without trying to tell you what to do.
