Jason Newsted spent 15 years holding down the low end in Metallica, playing bass for the band from 1986 through 2001. That era included records like …And Justice For All and Metallica—AKA The Black Album—plus the iconic S&M live album with the San Francisco Symphony.

But that was just the beginning for Newsted, an artistic polymath who has since pursued a life of balance and creative freedom. On this episode of Wong Notes, he opens up to Cory Wong about why he left Metallica, and details the “Olympian” physicality and discipline that hard international touring requires. Newsted needed a break; the band wanted to keep going. “You gotta sometimes give it a minute,” he says.

Newsted shares his thoughts on Dave Mustaine and his predecessor Cliff Burton, and goes deep on the issue of cellphone usage at concerts. (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t like it very much, and he’s got good reasons for his disdain.) But Newsted isn’t just a performer. He talks about his painting and the way that practice differs from music-making, plus his private artistic journeys with theremin, mandolin, and sequencers and loopers—rabbit holes he might not have gone down if he stayed in Metallica. “I don’t say no to any medium,” he says.

Maybe leaving Metallica created the need to explore. “I did not get to fulfill that journey,” he says, “so I’m making up for it.”

Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/WongNotes

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Produced by Jason Shadrick and Cory Wong

Additional Editing by Shawn Persinger

Presented by DistroKid

What's happening?

Welcome to Wong Notes podcast.

I'm your host, Corey Wong.

I'm so thrilled today.

I am so thrilled today to have this episode out because today on the podcast we have Jason Newsted.

Are you kidding me?

If you would have told twelve year old Corey that I'd be here today to have this podcast out where I get to sit down with one of my heroes, twelve year old Corey would be laughing.

No way.

No way.

So you know what?

When I was younger, still, still to this day, also, by the way, bands must have a dope bass player.

I knew this from the start, okay?

I was hooked on bands like the Chili Peppers, Primus and Metallica.

I think a lot of cats don't really realize the technical prowess that goes into the bass playing on metallica tunes and just like metal in general.

And Jason Newsted, the technical facility, the speed, the stamina and the accuracy that is required to play some of that music.

Dude, you gotta be kidding me.

Jason Newsted is so great at the instrument.

And after this conversation, really realize how deep of an artist this cat is and just how much of a deep understanding of music and life this guy has.

I mean, he's been through a lot.

He's gone through it.

We've all heard the stories, we've all heard all kinds of things.

But you sit and talk with Jason now and you understand the depth that this guy has.

And he's such a great person, such a nice dude.

So excited to have this interview coming out today.

I couldn't be more thrilled.

Couldn't be more thrilled.

Also, you want to know what else I'm excited about?

I'm about to go on tour doing a little midwest east coast tour.

If I'm coming to your city, come hang out, come say hi.

Corey Wong on tour.

Corey Wong the band again.

I do this sometimes.

I have to separate myself as a person from the band.

Corey Wong.

Because it just, it just helps the whole mental health thing, you know, the ups and the downs.

Anyways, I'm about to go on tour.

It's gonna be great.

Ten piece band.

Mark Lettieri is joining me in the band for the whole tour.

I have the band couch opening up all of the shows.

It's gonna be fantastic.

Lots of special guests coming out, different shows.

Theo Katzman's coming out for one of my shows at the Ryman in Nashville.

I'm playing two shows at the Ryman October 30 and 31 the 31st.

We're doing a big special Halloween party.

I just ordered a ton of costumes and some set pieces for the party that we're gonna be throwing.

It's a surprise.

So come hang, have some fun.

It's gonna be special.

Anyways, hope to see you there.

Hope to say hi, grab one of the vip ticks.

We're doing a little acoustic performance, a little private performance.

You get some merchandise.

We get to hang out, a little Q and A.

It's going to be a great time.

I'm just thrilled, stoked.

All right, enough of that.

Let's get to the podcast.

Jason Newstead, you guys know about Distrokid yet?

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Distrokid.

All right, let's hit this episode.

Wait a minute.

How's what's left of my hair doing?

Good.

All right.

Hey, it's looking great, bro.

Hi, Corey.

How are you today?

Great, man.

How you doing, Jason?

Good.

You can hear me okay?

Hear you perfect.

Well, my name's Corey.

I play guitar.

I have a band called.

We are big fans of what you do, man.

You know, I came across you guys a couple of years ago.

At first, it was rehearsal, might have been at a gig, but it might have been your own practice room.

But it was before a gig.

So I'm assuming it was at the arena or something.

Might even have been a Madison Square garden where you were in dressing room going over some shit.

That's the first time I saw you play guitar.

I didn't know even the name of the band.

I just saw these guys play something.

Just gave it, like 15 seconds.

You know, algorithms send you all that stuff when you're trying to keep learning and keep your feelers out for new music, you know, searching for new, younger heroes and all that stuff.

And I was really taking.

Of course, I gravitate to the bass thing.

And then when you started playing super clean and really, man, beautiful human syncopation without any kind of false syncopation, I really fucking dug it.

So from.

From then on, I looked to some live stuff, maybe some european something or other.

I can't remember what gig it was.

But anyway, there was some real wild.

The juice, you know, man.

Like, the juice was real pure, you know?

And I.

Yeah.

And I really.

And I dug the simpatico of the.

Of the unit.

Like, all you guys are bad motherfuckers by yourself.

But as all of us know, when you're a part of an entity that's greater than yourself, you know, you play your role, and everybody understands their role.

Every other player understands their role, too.

So that shit becomes this gigantic thing you couldn't have imagined when everybody's paying attention to each other.

And that's really what I got off of you guys yet really paying attention to each other.

The action, reaction, counterpoint, fire.

Fucking awesome.

So that's how I found out about you.

And that's why I said yes.

Because I get asked to do this stuff a lot, and I do it very rarely.

So I appreciate you.

I appreciate what you're doing, man.

Well, thank you so much, man.

That's very flattering.

It's a high honor to be seen by you on the Internet, because I've been watching you since I was a kid, man.

I've been such a huge man.

I love what you do.

And you've got such an incredible approach to artistry and music and.

And actually, I also really loved and appreciate the way that you play bass.

Cause you're a pick bass guy.

So many people hate on pick bass.

I love the pick bass, dude.

We should have this brief conversation, and I'll make sure everybody is recalibrated.

Okay.

So the way that the world measures things, not the rules that you and I made.

Okay.

But the way that the world measures things, no matter what language you speak or dialect, or what they call your money.

Anytime that you're introduced, if it's Corey, it's this advance, this.

This cv played with these cats.

Corey Wong, it says.

I'm just saying this, that once again, okay, disclaimer.

They made this up.

I'm just going along with it.

So it says, rock and Roll hall of Famer, six time Grammy winner, fucking you.

Fuck Jason Newstead.

Right?

That's how.

That's how I'm introduced.

No matter what happens, there's certain things that you have to just get your head around when they decide to say these things.

Sure.

So also in our world, in our specific little niche of a world, in our little guitar me world, these cats are the baddest motherfuckers.

This is the guy, the legend.

This is a legend bass player.

This is West Montgomery.

This is, you know, whatever, man.

The cream of the crop are these motherfuckers right here.

And they eagles sold that many records.

Michael Jackson sold that many records.

Tom Petty sold that many records.

Bob Marley, legend, sold Pink Floyd, Dyke side of the moon.

All right?

That's how they measure shit through and through and through.

Yes.

Right?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So if we look at the bass players of rock music, all right, across.

We'll call it 60 years.

60 years.

I'm 61.

61 this year.

So we'll call it 60 years.

The guys that are at the top four and five and maybe six and maybe eight earning spots of basis over all those years, all the top ones are pick players of the top earning bassist of all time in rock music.

Tell me those guys.

Base the pick players.

Tell me the top.

Who's number one.

Who's the.

What's the biggest, biggest band of all time in rock music?

Yeah.

McCartney.

Thank you.

Okay.

Does he play with a pick?

Yeah.

Okay.

And then there's a band called Kiss.

You ever heard of them?

Kiss?

Sure have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Their bass player is.

What's that guy's name?

Gene Simmons, baby.

Yeah.

Does he play with a pick?

Yeah.

Uh huh.

I thought so.

There's a guy called Chris Novoselic.

Nirvana, baby.

You heard of him?

Yeah.

Does he play with a pick?

Yes, he does.

Okay.

There is a guy named Sting who does a thumb and a pick.

Yeah.

But he doesn't do that.

But he doesn't do this.

Correct.

Okay.

There's a guy named Jason Newstead.

He's a man called Metallica.

He played with a pick.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's that.

That's the way the world measures it.

All right?

So now we're calibrated now, let's look at the cool factor.

The factor.

The coolest bass player that ever was his name, Lemmy Kilmeister.

And he's from a bank called Motorhead, right?

The coolest one played with a pick.

I think, you know, I think you settled any dispute right there.

We love Getty Lee is our God, and Steve Harris and Stanley Clark and Larry Graham and I go on and on and on, man.

Of course, finger players.

Fuck, yeah.

I love the flesh, and it's all good.

I'm actually a better finger player on guitar than I am on bass, so it's kind of a weird thing for people to look at in that way.

Actually, I play more with my fingers on guitar.

I love the way you put that.

I mean, and also, it's like there's a certain drive to it.

You know, I was actually just.

I was talking to Dave Navarro, and they had Flea playing with him for a while.

And it's like Eric, in Jane's addiction was such a pick player, and I associate so much of that music with pick bass.

And it's interesting to hear the way that Flea approached it with fingers.

It's like.

It's not like it was wrong, but it was just different.

And I think Navarro was even saying, like, man, flea was having a hard time getting it right because it's pick based music.

As I let my brain run with that a little bit.

The most recorded bassist in history is Carole Kay.

She played with a pic.

Yeah.

And then the second most record is probably Leland Sklar or someone like that.

It wouldn't be James Jamerson or Bobbitt or any of those guys because they didn't have as many records under their belt.

And there might be a couple of the cats that I'm missing.

But if the most recorded bassist of all time played with a pick also.

Well, even just hearing you talk about all these different people and listening to other things of you with your brother's record collections and stuff, listening to earth, wind and fire, listening to Queen, Hendrix, kiss, all these things, it's interesting to hear.

I think a lot of people that know your music wouldn't think, oh, yeah, Newstead grew up listening to some EWF, you know, or even that you're aware of some of these other people.

It's like, of course, this dude knows all these musicians and all this stuff, and it shows in the depth of your playing.

But I'm wondering, bands like Earth, Wind and Fire, what did you take from them and their bass players that you applied to, the way you play music or approach.

Right?

So earth, Wind and Fire has only ever had only one bass player in Verdean White.

And he is, I think, the last member.

I think, the last original.

I know that Philip Bailey has been there for a lot of decades, but he was not original original.

So Verdean is the only bassist they've ever had.

Let's think about the grand picture of things.

Ten years old, 73.

Just let your mind go with it there.

What's on the radio, what's popular coming out of the Motown thing up through the folk explosion.

Then there becomes, like, kind of slabby rock music.

Hendrix at the end of the sixties.

That develops into that kind of thing.

And what was starting to be played on the radio was all.

I mean, always all the way from, like, mid sixties Motown music.

And I'm sure in Minnesota, it reached over far enough in Chicago, Detroit.

And I was with Kalamazoo, halfway in between those two.

So there's always that wls and things playing Motown, rhythm and blues, those things.

It developed into getting away with Ohio players.

Because it's Ohio, and it says it in the name.

So it's going to be played on that midwestern radio.

And they get away with a few things.

They can get away with love, roller coaster and fire and these things.

So everybody's already got a little bit of it.

It's okay for the white folks to groove to it, you know.

And so that became a thing.

And then that developed into disco.

And that was really a wide reaching type of thing.

Because popularity and the power of the radio at the time.

So that was kind of inundated with that music.

Because that's what was being played.

Not just in my brother's record collections, but also in the discotheque itself and that kind of thing.

So always gravitated to the bass dominant music, which it was all the funk music.

All.

Everybody riding on the concrete, man.

Everybody riding on that funk from the.

From the bait, from the thumb.

So that was just automatically all of us, even if we're just am radio listeners, normally know how to do.

That's all the technology we got, is turning it up.

You know, automatically you're kind of infected with that thing wanting to tap your foot.

Because the space in between the bass notes and stuff, you know.

So I think I gravitated to that naturally.

And then once kiss showed up that I wanted to play bass.

But I didn't play too funky for a long, long time.

Didn't play funky until much.

Didn't play funky till much later.

Well, the other thing that's interesting, hearing you talk about that and listening to the radio and being a heavy metal bass player and musician, singer songwriter, I think you were tapped into something.

When I listen back and I think about all the bands that you've been a part of, you guys were able to have a general public appeal that many of your peers in the heavy metal realm didn't have.

Is there something in particular that you were paying attention to or that you guys were aiming for that others weren't?

I think the target was the same, but the.

What was in the quiver would be different for each outfit.

Metallica.

Metallica was blessed with two very gifted natural talent players.

And Cliff Burton and James Hetfield and mustaine before that.

Mustaine is a motherfucker, man, from the.

From the go.

He just is.

Always has been what?

Idiosyncrasies of personalities, man, whatever, and give a shit.

He's always had a gift.

Always.

Still to this day he does.

And how he fought back to keep playing fucking.

Hey, dude, that's nothing but respect, you know?

And so those guys having James and Cliff in it, when that.

When the chips are down, the red lights on, and people are paying attention, you know, that having those two gifted guys automatically Lars grasp of it all already a very worldly young man, you know, at 19, he already been around the world five or seven times, you know, with his dad.

Right?

He already been around the world probably one time by the time he was five and shit.

So just that kind of worldliness and the grasp of the.

Of the.

Now we all look at a global reach, Mandy.

You look at the global reach from your pocket.

You expect every show, bro.

If you're paying for nine people in the kitchen somewhere, it's still a global gig.

It's going to be a Vietnam four minutes from now.

You better not fuck up, and you better be dressed nice.

You know, that's.

It wasn't like that before.

It was one fan at a time and all that thing they felt.

But those fans were won over by the actual construction of those tracks.

They were, they were.

They were always head and shoulders above the other guys that were going for the same target.

If we're talking about anthrax and Slayer and different cats that start, man, oh, guys that started the same time having the same intentions.

Right?

They got some attention from the.

Got same intentions, different amount of attention because of the appeal of their songs to people.

Like things that people could sink their teeth into.

Yeah, anthrax had a couple songs like that.

You could sing along to about a second chorus.

You sing it along a little bit, you know, but Metallica had stuff that you can get in, and by the time the second or at least third chorus came in, you're singing along with it, you know, that's just like this certain hooky shit.

Even though it had the slabs and it had all the fuzz on it, you know, it still was super, super appealing in that way.

Combine that with always the right place, the right time, and who you know and when you know them.

Sure.

That Michael Elago saw them at the time that he did in New York playing brought them to the attention of Cliff Bernstein.

Yeah.

But because the management had so much already, so many miles under their feet with AC DC and Nugent Leopard, I mean, all legendary shit that they already knew where they were going.

They saw the commitment and conviction of this band and of Metallica and the appeal that James had as a frontman and that thing and the actual dexterity, bro.

Agility and dexterity, something you're very familiar with like that.

He just had that shit above everybody else.

I play with some bad motherfuckers, man.

Those guys in flotsam are no slouches, man, ever.

You know, even they were ahead of their time, too, Mikey when he was 16, you know what I mean?

So I was used to those kind of play, but not at that caliber like these cats.

I know.

I don't know if, you know, I don't know if you are one of them or that, you know, some of them, but I would have to practice, like, 5 hours to get to where Hetfield gets out of bed and plays cold, you know what I'm saying?

These people that have this certain give, fucking pick it up and go fucking hey, ba ba da.

You know, the accuracy and the precision, it's just there.

And really, actually, no matter how many beers and stuff at that time, somehow it still was able to fire like that, you know?

So, I mean, long answer to the question, but it comes down to a bunch of different elements.

Mm hmm.

The band had the songs.

The band had the personnel.

The band had the conviction as a unit.

The management set them up for these shows.

Those who was venom in Europe.

They become big in Europe first, start catching on.

Second album is a gigantic leap from the first one.

As far as the appeal that you're speaking of.

The listen ability.

Yeah.

That.

The sonic awesomeness, you know, so appealing to so many people that were ready for it.

Okay, here's the last element, the demographics.

So if there's how many hundred thousand white males, twelve to 18 years old, that are down with the devil and they want to hear that thing.

Okay, there was that many people on the.

On our planet, in our country at that time for them to catch on in America.

A whole bunch of bands catch on in Europe and never catch on in America.

It happens.

But they did it.

They were able to do because they were set up for success by the management, gave them a chance to go and hit the ball.

They hit it out of the park most of the time.

So they got asked back to that city the next time in the bigger venue and then the bigger venue, and then the biggest venue in the same town.

But because, but because of all those same elements, continued perpetually.

Band retained conviction, players retained talent.

Managers kept.

Kept the nose to the stone.

People were there to buy the tickets and the album and pay for them, and the band could take the money and reinvest it in themselves and make something happen and go to the next five countries that we couldn't last time.

This type of stuff, we were selling tangible product back then to make the world go round.

That has been removed.

That has been removed from the equation.

Right.

So that, yeah, we have to talk about that later or whatever, but that's why Metallica hit, because those things all kind of came.

The planets aligned with those elements.

Yeah, I'd love to get into the current stage of the industry in a little bit, but there's something you said that a lot of people don't really realize as musicians, even those that are right in it, but especially a lot of people that just watch their favorite band play and it's like, wow, these guys have a lot of technical facility.

Cool.

Some people think, oh, it's just a thing, but at the end of the day, you're an athlete, especially at the level that you've been playing at.

And that many of us have to maintain is there's a real physical and athletic element in taking care of your body, taking care of your chops, and, you know, maintaining that.

I'm curious for you, when you were really coming up and, and over the years, what has that physical demand been like for you and how did you get to that level?

I always kept myself pretty much the same.

And I rode a lot of bicycle.

I still do.

There's still just a certain.

Certain things that are innate in the beginning when you're all young and rubbery and shit and you can bounce off a bunch of things and things can bounce off of you.

You can have that vodka that night, get back up and still do the show with that thing.

One really important part, just mentioning that part of it.

I didn't ever drink any alcohol or just.

We would maybe we'd sometimes share community beer and everybody takes a hit and then we go on like that.

But I didn't.

I didn't imbibe in anything like that for any performances in my life.

You know, afterwards.

Afterwards have a cold sapporo and do the thing and all that.

But I never went too far with any product, any.

Any of the inebriation stuff.

I still, like, have a little herb in the thing, but I never went too far with any of those things.

Fortunately for us, for me in particular, I was still so green, still so wet behind the years, you know, they already had a couple tours under their belt.

They had those three albums that were the blueprints for all the shit, you know?

And I was stepping into that.

They were.

They were full fucking locomotive going, how many are a mile an hour?

I just got to jump down.

Trying to hang on.

I didn't.

I haven't been through what they've been through, you know?

What the fuck, man?

Trying to catch up with all of that thing and say, I was in this mode.

Fuck.

Trying to catch up the whole time and being expected to just step in and be where they are, even though they already did all that.

And I've just been playing at clubs in Phoenix and I supposed to be.

Here we.

Oh, fuck.

Yeah, I got that.

You know, dude.

Whoa.

The.

Thrown into the blue flames.

So we played 20 or 25 countries by that time and started to get my stride a little bit, find my role.

Find my role in the band and how to play it.

I know I wasn't going to be the main songwriter or the leader anymore, like in Flotsam or this or this or this.

I was going to be the base guy and the live guy.

I was going to show him what's up with the juice.

And that's what you're talking about.

So the physicality of it all, when you're younger, you can go through a lot more and bounce back quicker as time went on and the demand became greater physically and mentally.

Okay.

At the beginning when you're jamming with your band and you're just doing the gigs where you're in control, you're your own manager and all that stuff, you wearing all the hats in the early days, yeah, your plate is filled up with 85 or 90% of the music and the jam and making the flyers and writing the songs and being cool and developing all your stuff.

And then that 10% is like, going, talking to people a little bit, making sure to let somebody know where you're playing, sell some tickets, and this business part of it, promotion part of it, as the time goes on and the demand of popularity goes up and demand on your time and youre attention and the plate begins to fill up with other things that have really nothing to do with the physicality of the music and the flesh on the strings that starts being removed a little bit, and you got video, photo shoot, award show, longer tour, less days in between, all this thing starts adding up and the plate gets filled up with all the kind of apparatus of it.

You know, you still got 100 people out on tour with you that need to get a check for their kids that week, all that shit.

So you got that.

You know, there's always something coming.

There's always something two weeks away, three weeks away, eight weeks away, four days away.

There's always something coming at you like that.

So the mental part of it, I think, is actually more difficult than the physical part.

You can go and lose some weights and ride your bike and keep yourself stretched and hydrated and stuff.

What you learn to do as the demand becomes greater and you get a little more money, you get a dude out on the road that does your diet and does your thing so you can be the athlete, you know, you're not just going to get up and run the fucking marathon the next day.

You got to work up to that shit, you know what I'm saying?

Six weeks before the tour, you're on your bike sweating every day, making sure the thing chops, vocal stuff, all that before you hit the first day, you got to be ready.

Like an athlete, like a boxer, like an olympian.

It is, it is like that.

So, but the, but the.

A lot of people can jump high and run fast and all that, that's, that's that thing.

Okay?

But when you tie it to the middle and always have to know what's coming next from here, whether it's on your instrument or in the interview question or in this thing, it presented that way representing the entire outfit.

When you're on your own, when there's nobody else in the band or the entity there with you, you're just there dressed up, and you're there to represent the make a wish foundation for the band and all that name, all that shit.

That's when it starts, you know, being a little more challenging, in my opinion.

Sure.

You don't so many people.

It affects so many people.

You don't know where you're going to reach, man.

You don't know how far you're going to reach.

My mom shows me this picture inside of National Geographic.

For all I know, the guy's got.

He's in the middle of a rice paddy in some Malaysia somewhere, up to his knees, you know, in mud with a metallica shirt on.

Like, dude, what the what?

How do I.

How do we know?

How do you know where your music's gonna go?

Who's gonna watch your Madison Square garden video today?

You don't fucking know.

It could be guy Tim Buck, too, man.

You don't know.

You don't know where you're gonna reach.

Yeah, yeah.

So people that come and see the shows, and they get really emotional.

They're so tied to it, they see that they're part of something bigger themselves, too.

All singing the songs together become like a community, like an army, you know, there's.

It's not that you don't care about what goes on with the people and all the things, but you can't be responsible for everybody, you know?

And so this kind of challenge, like, you want to represent the bandaid and yourself the best that you can consistently, because you could have 300 shows that were just, holy fuck.

And then one where you wiped out or your had, you know, bronchitis and you couldn't sing, right.

That's the one that.

And especially today with the global thing we're talking about, you know?

So answering your question, the physicality.

Physicality.

If you eat right and keep your hydration and do your thing, then that could be maintained for quite a while.

But this guy right here, you gotta sometimes give it a minute.

And that's kind of what came down.

That's what came down for me in that entity.

I just.

Sure, I need it.

I needed a minute.

I just fucking needed a minute.

That's all.

You know?

But they'll know, man.

We got to keep fucking going.

I'm okay.

Well, you got to go without me, dude, because I want to be alive next year.

And right now it says 20 whatever years later.

And I'm here smiling at you, buddy, you know?

Yeah, but it's mentally, physically, I think.

Yeah, I think we're in an interesting era with that because we're at a point where all that stuff is so immediate.

It's not just, we had one bad show and there was a few write ups about it, and then the write ups got shared around and blah, blah, blah.

People were on the phone talking about it.

It's like, it is immediate.

Somebody posts a video from that gig, and everywhere in the world now everybody else can see some random cats video of you wiping out or whatever.

And it is a lot more mentally taxing on us and our availability that we have with social media and kind of the need for it.

And honestly, I enjoy the fact that I can be somebody who can connect with the fans on a personal level, and hopefully it maintains a healthy balance and a healthy barrier in certain cases.

But I think with the immediacy of where we're at in society, we're noticing a lot more need.

And just like, a call to, like, yo, we all got to look out for each other, and we have to have a little bit of.

A little more awareness of our mental health, maybe more.

So maybe we're talking about it a little more now, I don't know, than what it was in the nineties or.

But it's definitely a huge conversation that's been going on.

I have a question for you.

Yeah.

So.

And it's the thing that really, it gets in my craw the most.

It gets under my skin the most these days.

How have you been able to manage or get along with or accept the screen between you and.

And your audience?

Like, I'm right fucking here.

Why do you have to have this in between us?

I am out here trying to share with you.

I didn't.

You came here for me, right?

I did come here for you, but you came here for me.

You paid to come to see this.

Yeah.

And I came out because I like doing it.

But if the respect is not there and you're not paying attention, I ain't fucking come right.

Yeah.

I'm just not.

I'm not doing anymore because I was.

I came up a few minutes ago.

We're talking about visceral man.

Fucking sweat and blood and broken bones and the beginnings of what became mosh pits, the origins, you know, and the real fucking thing.

And so as I got out of the big act just in time before everyone had a camera in their pocket.

Yeah.

You know, it used to be that when you wanted, man, take a photo.

Yeah.

They pull out their instamatic and we do a picture.

That's what I knew.

Yeah.

So I'm asking you from my.

From my era, or what do you want to call it to your era now?

I want to know the pros and the beauty somehow.

Like, I get the connectivity.

I think harness, like, you're speaking of harnessing it to their advantage and yours.

So it could be a blossom, like every.

Like it's supposed to be.

What I'm talking about is the hindrance of why you're there, the connection that is the most important thing and why we do this, why we keep going back to it.

Why do I keep going back to it?

Because of the feeling that we feel when we end the song together and it goes, fuck.

And we go, fuck.

Like, that strength, that beauty and the juice and the adrenaline and all the thing that comes from it.

We know it.

We've tasted it frequently.

We want to keep tasting it.

When it's good, it's so sweet.

When it's bad, it's fucking sour.

So that connection being removed, is it removing the connection or enhancing the connection?

I think it's both, honestly, and I think it's the listener or the audience members intent.

A lot of times.

I mean, this has been part of.

Every time I've done a gig that quote unquote mattered, it's been in the phone era.

It's been in the social media era.

So, yes, I do think that the presence and being present is so important, and it has such a deeper thing.

I remember years ago going to.

To prince shows here in Minneapolis at Paisley park, where it's just like you're putting your phone in a little bag, and we're locking it, and all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, we're waiting around for 2 hours for prince to come out, but guess what's happening?

There's a dj playing, and people are talking to each other in a different way.

There's a community thing that all of a sudden, it felt more special.

So, yes, I long for that.

But I am also aware that, you know, we're just in a time where we're all.

I mean, I'm guilty of it sometimes, tied to our phones and certain things.

And sometimes, you know, like I said, the intention of somebody.

A lot of times, people go to a concert, and it might be the cool thing to go to that concert.

So they want to take videos, and they want to let all of their followers and people know I'm the kind of person that does cool things, like go to Coachella or whatever.

And I'm the kind of person that's into cool, young, hip bands.

So I'm going to post a video of the band so people know that I'm cool.

You know, I think that sort of thing, it's like, oh, come on.

Like, all right, whatever.

But there is also some people that they just.

In their mind, they're like, I have to have some way to remember this thing.

And the only way that I know how to capture what I can remember is through my phone, rather than just like, you know, my dad telling stories about seeing Hendrix for 750 in the front row.

You know, he has that memory so locked in.

Cause he was so present.

And I think many of us have a hard time being present enough and having the practice of being present enough.

Yep.

And you got it because it's the generation.

It's what they came up with.

You guys didn't have phones on the wall or hooked to the, you know, to the house and stuff.

It's just a different thing.

So it's.

It's just normal.

It's just normal.

But.

But I've been part of the change, or those from my era have been, you know, through all of the change of technology in that way.

And it's really.

It's different than, you know, hey, there's radio, then there's screen.

The silver screen, then there's television, then there's, you know, it's not like that.

I don't think.

I think it's way more.

Way more distracting and kind of forms the person.

And I want to speak to what you said there.

There's maybe a little percentage of people that are doing it for, you know, posterity and that they're gonna have.

That.

They have a collection.

They want to get that.

That's their own thing, and they're keeping it for themselves.

That's.

That's minor.

And then the people that.

Unless.

Unless I have a picture of it over a video of it showing me doing it, nobody believes I did it, and maybe I don't either.

You know, that.

That.

That's.

That's a little fucked up, and it's real shallow.

And speaking to the last thing you said, you know, I wrote in a.

It was a song for a Newstead band about tiny trains of thought, right?

And when you read a book or you.

Or you take, you know, a lesson like this, not.

Not from somebody showing you on the Internet.

No.

Goes like that, but actually, like, used to learn off the lp and fuck till you got it, you know, that type of stuff.

The stuff that I learned from Sabbath and Russia and everything when I was 15.

I could whip up for you right now for the stuff that I looked at and learned from Jason Isabel or John Prine or something.

Just cheating on the chords.

I couldn't really play unless I looked at some notes.

You know what I'm saying?

So that the tiny trains of thought and the shallow depths that are created from just having this instant gratification thing there.

And the thought that I am not worth anything unless I can prove to somebody I was taking part in something else and being around someone famous.

So that therefore, I am somehow precipitously famous as well.

You know, this kind of thing, it's like in different places that you go where there's a lot of stellar athletes and musicians camp out down in Florida, kind of where we hang with golfers and baseball players.

And all the people kind of converge in those places.

There's a thing, and I wish I could tell you the terminology.

I can't remember the term for it, but it is a term where people, you know, to rub elbows with those persons that have achieved something in the spotlight, then that gives them their own spotlight somehow.

This is an inference or a little tributary of this type of shit.

Yeah.

One.

I mean, it's a.

Some people get tensed up talking about this.

Or some people even are like, oh, well, this is a guy who's just kind of got this old curmudgeonly approach to it.

But.

But.

And there is that.

Yes, there is some people.

But honestly, I really appreciate the way that you're talking about it, because the.

When I hear you talk about it, it feels like it's coming from a posture of, I care so much about the art.

I care so much about what I'm doing.

I place so much value on this.

I really just wish that you would pay attention to this.

Don't just go to the museum and take a picture of the Van Gogh and then move on.

Like, go there, take a look at it and absorb it.

Take a look at the tone, colors, the intention.

Why did this painting happen in the first place?

What decisions were made for this painting to exist?

What was this person going through in their life?

So, for me, when I hear you talk about this, it actually does not at all come across as, man, I wish it was back in the old days.

It comes from a place of, like, you know what?

Back in the day, we had this.

Here's what I'm noticing now.

Oh, man.

I feel like some of these people are missing out.

You know, I almost feel like you come from an empathy stance rather than an anger.

So the thing I spend most of my time doing now, if I am to play music, I choose four to six shows a year, and they're all benefits, and they usually go to kids art programs and music programs.

And we did a veterans benefit just a couple nights ago, and this kind of stuff, whatever I put my name on my logo with the chop house band next to.

It's got to be something.

It's got to be something that's up to snuff.

It's got to be something that's sound.

And so the feeling that we were speaking about a little while ago that you and I feel all the time when we play, and the reward that comes from it, whether you recorded something that you had in your mind and you're able to develop the structure and the arrangement and make it all cool like you want or as sparse as you want or whatever, being able to do that and feel the feeling of the completion, the anticipation of it being done, that reward and all kind of thing like that.

So anticipation is probably top three most valuable things a human can have.

And feeling the feeling of hitting those chords together, remembering a three minute song, even if it's just Mary had a little lamb, or this land is your land or something, where you remember the structure of it to that place and you feel good about doing.

That relationship that you have with your instrument is something no one can take from you.

No matter how many people are in the symphony or in the ensemble or whatever, you got your own thing, so it's your own voice and your.

And your own guitar, then nobody could take that from you, man, no matter what happens.

So developing that relationship with an instrument, no matter which one you choose, man, whichever one you gravitate towards, go for it.

Just because your dad played violin don't mean you can't play bassoon or whatever the fuck.

It's up to you what you gravitate towards if you feel like doing music.

But if you go that way, I want kids to feel that feeling that I still chase every day, you know, and that.

And it is at its highest high, its highest conclusion, you know, of success when the connection is made with the other human.

Right.

When we hear somebody really good, Adele or someone sing a capella, we get wiped out, man.

Our bodies are covered with bumps, and we didn't try.

We didn't try.

There was no effort involved.

It just fucking happened.

The music just floats through the air, man.

It just floats through the air.

So if you can attract somebody like that and make a kid feel that way.

I want as many people as possible to feel that feeling.

So the highest feeling that you can feel is that way is without a fucking interrupter in between.

Whatever generation does whatever they do, peace.

I'm not telling you what you can and can't do.

That's not what I'm doing at all.

I'm just trying to say all the software in the world, all the greatest holy fancy shit that they even showed anybody yet is never going to outdo our receptors that we're already born with.

To feel the female fucking base pull the sternum out of your chest, you know, like the vacuum of the fucking power and that kind of thing.

Let allow yourself to take it in and get crushed by it, get enveloped by it, get enlightened by it.

This is only hindering your enlightenment.

And it's like, it fucks with me, man.

I thought, everybody's going to do whatever they do, man.

And it helps promote people and get that, and they see the show, and if it's a good show, it helps you suck.

Peace, man.

Peace.

I just one time would like to look across the crowd and see not all those cameras come up and just everybody going, instead of that, putting their pocket going, fuck, yeah.

You know?

Feel the feeling, man.

That's what I want.

That's all I want.

Yeah.

Honestly, hearing you talk about this stuff now in a lot of ways answers an earlier question about what are you paying attention to?

And so much of.

So much of the way that I'm hearing you talk about this and just looking at.

At the things that you've done through your career, show me that you're a real artiste.

I mean.

I mean that in a lot of ways, and you approach things in a way that's so respectful to the art.

I know that I've watched a lot of.

There's two examples that I really lat latched onto preparing for this interview.

One was hearing some of your solo bass performances in concerts where it's like, I've heard a lot of people do stuff where it's just the bass guitar, and it's either, you know, there's a lot of ways to approach it, but I felt like you did it in a way that showed technical mastery only for the sake of, this is what the song is that I want to play, and technical mastery is just part of what needs to happen to get this thing across.

And then also, when hearing about you having some injuries, you didn't just say, I'm hanging up the spikes I got nothing left to say.

You say, I am still a person who has something to express.

There's a certain part of myself to express, and then looking at some of your paintings, it's like there's depth in there.

There's so much that I can tell that you're wanting to express, and there's a real, like you're saying a human connection that you're wanting to make a real self expression with that self expression.

I'm curious, when it comes to painting, is there something you're able to express in your artistry that you're not able to express in your music?

Yes, because it's best, usually, Corey, when the instruments in tune, you know, and with the paint, very few rules for me, you know, there doesn't have to be in tune, and sometimes I really don't want it to be in tune at all.

Yeah.

So it's the opportunity and the boundaries are pretty much non existent, so I don't say no to any medium.

Mix whatever I need to with whatever I need to to make the thing for that day, whatever it happens.

So it's really a lot broader chance to express and a lot freer.

There's.

I don't have things to answer up to and stuff, you know, I.

I made a full record with chop.

I spent a couple years back to the full thing, all the dough.

Real studios hired people to play all the shit, man, and it came out pretty good.

Let's do it again for the first time in months yesterday.

But I didn't share with anybody other than just like, q prime here and stuff.

It wasn't like that for me, you know, if I eventually let people hear that and everything, it's cool, but it's the thing that I went all the way.

I'm relating it to the canvas.

So it's the only time that I've been able to do that kind of what we're just speaking over the canvas.

I have a lot less limitations.

So, of course it's going to have this bass thing and it's going to have this.

It's going to have this, but the other stuff and the female vocal and army's a vocal and cellos and french horns and whatever it is to make the textures of these songs that cover all the way from the softest kind of mandolini stuff all the way to full fucking tomb down slabs, all within an hour and hours worth of music.

But I was able for the first time to do that.

All the stuff that I actually heard when I first wrote the song, like if it had this and this and this and this towering shit and, oh, all that, first time I got to do it.

The reason I brought it up, I guess, is because I hold myself back from doing anything too big of a step, because I am so conscious of protecting the legacy.

And I think that I've hindered myself sometimes.

I'm not maybe just releasing everything.

And so we did three or 4 hours or 5 hours on the GoPro last week.

It's just, I got all of it on video, audio, whatever.

Actually, whatever was the medium of the day, the mode of the day.

So I have the big tape and I have that other real tape and I got dats and all the shit through all the years of the different formats.

Yeah.

But everything is recorded.

So someday is my nephew's son going to go through that shit and find something magical?

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, there's cool shit.

There's incredible shit in there.

And I think probably if I played you a couple things, you'd go, okay, you know, because it's.

It's beautiful, man.

It's fucking beautiful.

But it's not.

I don't necessarily want to put it out there as that foot.

I.

People want to come and see the band play and hear the songs, or I share a couple with somebody, wherever.

That's that.

It's no longer a goal to compete or do these things like that.

Sure.

I think that's beautiful.

I mean, honestly, I love your awareness in all of it and your never ending desire to just keep creating and keep exploring.

I mean, I watched a video, sorry, yesterday, of the chop house bandaid, and I was like, oh, Jason's playing an acoustasonic fender guitar and singing.

And I was listening to you play all these songs that I thought, wow, I would not have.

This isn't necessarily what I expected, but it's so dope and it just has, it has a thing to it that's really cool.

And hearing your voice and your tone and the way that you approach.

And then that's where I realized I was like, oh, I didn't know.

The pick thing, it's like, oh, yeah, the pick thing just comes so natural.

And then seeing you play some finger style on guitar, like you're saying, it's really interesting to see that side of your artistry, but it also is, I can understand why you might be a little bit conflicted on how it is a part of your legacy or something of how people know who you are?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think enough time.

I'm really getting to the point.

I think enough time has passed because my really.

My peak was probably, I guess, what, 31, 30 or 31 years ago, black album, second year of the black album tour.

That's probably a peaky peak, you know, so that's a while ago.

That's a few generations for people to remember or whatever.

So I get away with just about anything now, if I wanted to release some stuff, and it's.

I'm not gonna say never, you know, on any of that, but something just came across my mind when you said that.

I think it's fantastic.

And that's why.

That's why, when I do say yes to these things, this is what I expect, because you've got, you know, depth and everything, and it just.

I love it.

I really do.

What I just realized, if.

If I wouldn't have made the move that I did out of the big ban, would I still have this hunger now?

Would I still want to learn mandolin and theremin and guitar and every other fucking thing that I've tried to come up and play with sequencers and all the shit that I'm still messing with all the time.

I was doing loop stuff before any of those cats even knew what a fucking loop was, dude.

I mean, way back when, the.

When the.

Probably by DD four or DD five had that little looper guy on it for 30 seconds worth or something.

Yeah, I fucked that up all the way from back then, dude, always.

And I had my rig where it had the Roland VG eight, and so I would take the VG eight synthesizer guy and put it on the P bass setting, 59 p bass setting, and then just run that through my SVT.

And then I would have the guitar, regular pickup with the EMG, the 81, and the whatever.

Metallica setup going through my old basement and that shit going, right.

So it was a one voice thing like royal blood.

So I'd been experimenting, but would I have gone to the place of collecting songs still on a pretty much on a weekly basis?

Finding heroes, like I talked about earlier, finding younger heroes.

You know, we're always going to be able to go to whichever.

You go to Picasso and the thing and the thing, or you can go to Eric Clapton.

What do you want to.

There's always going to be the people that came before you, that made it possible for you that you call your heroes, be an author, an athlete, a musician, a lawyer, whatever the hell.

But then when the younger people, like yourself, Jason, is.

Well, we've been friends for some years now, you know, this kind of thing.

Trying to get my foot in the door with a little americana vibe, hoping I can get a little osmosis, just kind of hang out a little bit, you know?

But taking that all in and taking on younger heroes, and it's so healthy.

And I'm not sure if my spoiled, arrogant ass wouldn't have gravitated toward.

If I stayed in the big band and only played bass, would I stayed in that tunnel vision?

Would I have just worried about collecting only bases?

And would I only done that and try to be a better bass player?

Or would I gone on to learn as much acoustic or really want to be a songwriter?

Would I have ever done that more than just writing on bass?

I don't know.

I don't know.

There's not.

You know, all I know is it happened, and they're still going, and I'm still going.

And Buck, I don't know.

But I'm not sure if the hunger would be the same if I.

I didn't get to fulfill that thing.

That's simple as fuck.

I did not get to fulfill that journey that got cut short for me.

So I'm making up for it.

There's something that Brian Sagafino, the drummer of Echo Brain, we've been playing since he was, like, 16 years old, and he's, I don't know, 40 something now.

But back then, we were making the first Echo brain album, and he said, jay, what are you gonna do now?

I'm like, what do you mean?

And he goes, well, you already climbed the tallest mountain.

I mean, what are you gonna do?

Everything else from now on?

The rest of your life is gonna pale in comparison.

There's nothing you're ever gonna do that's gonna reach this.

And I didn't really take too seriously at the time, but now that a couple decades have gone past since the Echo brain tour, I'm like, fuck it.

Hey, man, that kid had it back then.

He knew when he was 19 exactly what it was so plain to see that a young person could see it.

But I was so I just.

I just came down last year, you know, I've been still floating from all that shit for 20 fucking years.

I'm just now coming down and getting my feet on the earth and like, oh, this is what normalcy is.

It took a long time.

Well, there's a huge difference between success and fulfillment, and obviously, you've achieved an objective amount of success.

Like you've said, you know, as one of the top bass players in the world, one of the top bands in the world, and so many other projects that.

That have, you know, brought so much meaning and success as well for you.

Now, what are you.

What are you doing to define fulfillment or success in your life?

Yeah.

As I contemplated Brian's statement, I thought about, you know, that way, what we talked about, maybe part of our theme of conversation about how.

How the world measures it or how public measures it or fandom measures it.

Voivod is a far more challenging outfit to perform in and record with than Metallica, ever.

Washington.

Yeah.

Okay.

So people looking at, like, that, okay, you did that.

And that's the thing.

Everybody looks at the awards and the sales and the thing.

The challenge as a musician, the only way that I could not only either go straight across and just stay at that, you know what I mean?

Or I could go up a different mountain that was equally as challenging.

It might not be as tall, but it's harder to climb.

So you come and play with piggy.

Okay.

This is a different universe, bro.

Right.

His tune.

He always did his.

I can't even matter.

Like, in.

Is there a thing such as tenths?

Like, he could tune in tenths?

Yeah.

Is that a thing?

Yeah.

Okay, so I remember specifically, we told this story a few times, and I think Michelle probably has, too, but his kids in a.

It was in the guitar premier.

Not premier guitar, but one of the, you know, guitar magazines from back in the day.

And they were.

It was from maybe around the nothing face turn in the nineties, where they were getting a lot more attention.

Like, Soundgarden opened for him that year, that type of shit.

You know, they were.

They were finally getting somewhere, and so they had some tablature of Piggy's parts on a certain song in the magazine.

Yeah.

And it showed this.

It showed the thing.

And fucking, you know, you need another finger coming out over here to do it, you know?

And he goes, no, this.

This is wrong.

This is wrong.

See?

It's wrong.

And he goes, like, then they put one finger across.

Like, I was sh.

All fucking sideways dissonant thing, you know, he goes, say, that's so stupid.

Like, he outsmarted the guitar somehow.

Yeah.

You know, he would only.

I can use one finger when they needed nine something.

Yeah.

So there was just.

And French as their dominant language or their first language.

And I didn't know anything other than greeting and ordering a cheese sandwich or whatever goes on.

And so he's donating me fuss a lottie, and I may be CDFG.

And so when he said, doll feed.

Yeah, like this.

And I'm going, what the fuck, man?

Right?

So I just have to watch it.

Like, if you were.

If we were jamming, right?

And you said, jay, follow this thing.

And you go, not too complicated, you know, just for me.

Right.

So just do, like a little thing there.

Three or four chord structure there.

And, uh.

And I go, okay, watch your hand.

And I watch your hand.

I see it, and then I go, boom, here we go.

Right?

Okay.

But.

Because I can.

I can see it.

But when you did it, it was.

It's not.

That's not a fucking d and that's not a g.

That's like.

That's a q.

Flatulent, demented something or other.

And that's a.

Whatever this is, dude.

I don't fucking know.

Ah, that's good.

That's what I'm saying.

I tried to find a different angle to climb as tough of a mountain, and so playing with those guys, that totally lit my head up.

Talk about having to be on your toes, dude.

I mean, it's so much different than anything I really ever played.

We got how many other songs I play with the metallic?

110 or something, and 90% of them is e minor.

E flat.

You know, minor.

It's a yemenite.

That's not, I don't know, living on that big string.

I could have just had four of the big strings on the base, you know, and I just kept snapping them off, and it wouldn't have mattered.

You might be selling yourself short on that.

You have some.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, you've seen, like, you're saying you're paying attention.

You are.

It's cool to me hearing you say, oh, I want to find some younger heroes.

So, clearly, you're on the Internet.

You're looking.

You're basically doing the equivalent of crate digging, but on the Internet, which is cool when you see a lot of artists that are younger, that are wanting to get to that place where they're known, and they might not be known.

They can't quite put a finger on why I'm good at my instrument, but why don't people care?

Do you have any advice for those folks, or do you have some just kind of general.

The things from your experience?

I think that the competition is so much greater, and the one thing that I would say specifically about that is I got it from somebody else and they said that the Internet was the killer of creativity or whatever, because you or seeing some 900 other people that can play faster than you or whatever, there's always somebody that can play faster.

But now you're aware of it right there.

Sure.

I remember in Scottsdale, Arizona, where we were working on flotsam in the early years, and it was probably.

I worked two jobs, bro.

I really worked hard to get to keep the van going and stuff like that.

And I was looking out over, over Scottsdale.

It wasn't like it is now.

Fucking psycho.

But.

But it was just nice little village almost.

It was two or three in the morning, and I got my bass, and I played very, a lot more without an amp than I did with an amp because there wasn't little compact shits or anything, a little headphone set up or anything back then.

So it's kind of what got me where I got to because I beat the piss out of it with a really heavy pick and the heaviest gauge bass string.

And so I just would be this fucking ticket.

Even when there's not plugged in, you could hear what I was playing.

And so when that got plugged in, it went, because I still played with the same intensity like I'd always practice without an amp.

So it kind of came in that play.

So I'm doing that, doing that thing, and I look it over Scottsdale, I'm like, you know, 230 in the morning.

There's a few lights on out there.

I know for a fact that I am the only person right now doing this.

I am the only one, as far as I can see, up at 230, beating the piss out of a base.

I know it.

And whether it was true or not, I believed it all the way through.

I didn't have any screen or any kind of other connection from the fucking globe to tell me that I wasn't the only one doing that.

So my confidence and my self esteem and all that shit top this motherfucker.

Because there wasn't anybody.

I didn't see any competition, didn't view that, didn't view the world like that at all.

We were going to crush.

That's it.

There wasn't.

I wasn't any.

Any option at all.

We were only going to win.

And that was my take on it.

All that, all that time.

So now if you can keep a little bit of that, how much ever you can keep present in your balance, something I want to talk to you about earlier when you're saying a few things.

If you.

How much you have your music or your art or these things that make up your balance.

If you got your circle of 13 or 15 or 17 people are your closest people.

And what makes up your balance is your love of your children, your yoga, your guitar, your production, your touring, your wife, your.

Whatever these things, church, whatever the people, whatever people do, you start taking one of those major pieces out of that balance, you start going all fucking wobbly.

Any of those.

But especially the music.

You take the music away because of how it is all encompassing, right?

It can throw you off so severely.

And that's really what I am afraid for people like, you know, if you don't give up on yourself, if you really like it, man, if you like feeling the feeling, okay, there's only.

There's only this many bands that have lasted 40 years with close to the same members, and there's only this many with the original members for 40 years, you know?

And so there's always going to be that.

You're not going to the upper echelon.

The thing, the prince, Madonna, Metallica thing.

That's just.

That's fucking Netherland.

That's so nearly impossible.

Especially today.

Especially today with a whole band, not just one person that they push up the charts.

And the girl is cute this week and put her up there and do that thing and pump the shit out of it and formulaic pro tools shit and all that false shit.

It's not that.

It's four or five males getting along without any diffuser within it for 40 years and helping each other reach each other's dreams and stuff.

Individual and collective, you know, that's a fucking big ask.

So just be realistic about your expectations.

Be realistic about your expectations.

Be realistic about your expectations.

You know, don't fool yourself about you're better than you're not or whatever.

But if you feel that feeling and you create that relationship with the instrument that we spoke of, don't let anybody take that from you.

Try as hard as you can when it feels good, if it's not right, you'll know it, okay?

And most people are going to fall off.

Most people are.

But if you really mean it and you really love that feeling, to keep chasing it, that's all I can say.

That's my words.

Just keep chasing it.

That's it.

I love that.

I love that.

Well, man, you are so well spoken and it's so fun to chat with you and understand how deep you go.

I mean, I could go for hours, but I want to respect your time, and we try to keep these things around an hour.

So I really appreciate you being with us today and sharing your wisdom, sharing your knowledge, and just the depth that you have.

I really am excited to continue to follow your journey, and I hope everybody else listening continues to just be excited about the stuff that you're making, the songs that you're writing, the americana and folk and explorative things that you're doing.

I'm here just stoked, man.

I'm here for it all.

Cool.

Cool.

Yeah.

Everybody just keep your.

Keep your ears open, you know, keep taking on the influences you're speaking of earlier.

I don't spend a whole lot of time on the Internet or that, but a lot of people send me stuff, and my friends or whatever from different parts of the world was the.

Jay, have you seen this yet?

Jay, you seen this yet?

This is a band from our local and thing like that.

And every once in a while, one of them will catch me, and I'm like, holy shit.

Thank you.

So, this is the kind of stuff that I encourage people to do.

Don't get overloaded by the distraction of this thing.

Please.

Skin your knees and chip your teeth and break your bones.

For real.

Not like this, okay?

Please just get it.

Get an instrument in your hands.

Make it loud.

Do all the things.

Splatter some paint.

Feel alive.

Do something each day that shows you were here, that kind of shit.

Time is the most valuable thing that you have.

You can only make withdrawals.

You can't make deposits from that account.

So just live each moment that you can.

The best, and try to.

Like we were speaking of before.

If you're going to make the time to go see a band, then be respectful to the band when you're there.

If it's the metal show, get loud as fuck.

But if it's the Americana show and Isbel's playing or somebody like that, show respect to the player.

Let's hear the notes of the guitar, that kind of thing.

You can have your phone out and all that, but don't be yelling, screaming in my ear when I'm trying to enjoy the show.

Yeah, but also, I.

I just want to talk a little bit about what you pour into the funnel, and then whatever comes out at the bottom of the funnel.

That's you, right?

That's you.

And then you get to go, and then somebody else will pick it up, and then they'll go on with it and put in their funnel.

So you've already done that for a bunch of people, in your own way.

But I saw Larry and Les and Tim a couple weeks ago.

They played like a mile from my wife's mom's house down out in the middle of fucking nowhere in New York here.

And I hadn't seen, we've been friends since, you know, 87 or something.

And so I hadn't seen him in a long time.

And it was so cool.

And the bass tone.

Jesus Christ, dude.

What the fuck?

I mean, I hadn't been her up on the stage with live music for, like, at that volume for a couple years.

But the actual, they're, they're so specific in their tones.

Like, Larry's got the next to the biggest pedal set up other than Frusciante.

And then less has got all that crazy shit going on over here.

And it has its own, it's always got that almost Tom Waitzian push pull clock.

Just barely making it around the thing and, you know, like this kind of shit.

So it's fucking beautiful.

So unique and respectable.

And they've been doing it for 40 years, right?

They were 82, 82, 84 for Primus, I think.

And same with Chili's.

And they're still out there doing it.

I mean, they flee both those guys.

Base tone, but especially less this last time.

I was, I was fucking floored, man.

Just floored by it all.

And I think that for me right now, I think Larry.

Well, Larry's always been one of the very best of ever, ever, ever.

As far as a soundscape guitarist.

Oh, yeah.

I.

How did, how do you find a place to fit in when the bass covers everything, when the bass already plays the whole fucking song for you?

You know, where do you find, you know, how do you find that place?

You know, like Mark Rebo and Tom waits fan or Joe Gore, all these cats that.

Just the most sideways possible approach.

And it sounds so perfect.

Yeah.

You know, the application is so unique.

So like him, Joe Bonamasa, I think even Corey Wong.

These kind of cats that are right now firing that way, though, that's what I want the kids to pour in their funnel.

Oh, man, that means a lot.

That means a lot.

There you go.

Well, thank you, man.

So now you're gonna.

Now you tell me what you're doing, and you tell me just a little bit about your bass player and a couple other things about Volf pet, because I need to know.

Well, yeah, we have been doing our thing for a while.

Kind of took a little bit of a break for a couple years with the whole thing that happened.

And then you know, the global thing.

And then now we're back at it and we're going to be recording an album live on stage in front of an audience, which will be fun.

Balls.

Balls.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bass player Joe Dart.

I mean, he's incredible.

He's.

That's a Joe Darren.

He's a finger and slap cat, but just like me, he grew up listening to flea and Primus and Jamerson and all the rock stuff.

I mean, we were kids of the nineties watching MTV, so everything that was on there, we watched all that stuff, listened to all that.

But then also we're deep into jazz and deep into the fusion thing and deep into Jaco and.

Yeah, so, you know, Joe's got an incredible thing happening.

He's.

He's kind of a rocko Jaco type approach.

Yeah.

When I hear him play.

Yeah, he's tough.

He's tough as fuck.

He plays high action.

He plays really hard on the strings and it's.

It's cool, man.

His articulation is sick.

That's why he has his own stage on the stage.

Yeah, he's incredible.

That's super cool, man.

It really is.

Well, yeah, I think the complexity of your stuff, it's just really kind of.

It's way beyond me, so I appreciate it, man.

It's fucking amazing how you remember all that.

I'll never know.

I'll never know how you keep track of all that shit.

Well, we'll have to sit down and jam together sometime, man.

I would.

I would really like that.

And I also.

I think we should maybe just nerd out for 2 seconds on the guitar stuff.

I think that your attention.

Your attention was brought maybe to this one.

I put the instruments up on the reverb a few weeks ago and I wanted to speak about like getting instrument kind of what we talked about before with the kids, with the little kids rock and music wheel and these different foundations that put guitars and kids hands over the time.

And being able to go around the world a few times and collect for 30 years as we went around, picked up cool shit, you know, the collection was actually collected.

Right.

I went to.

To the pawnshop in Timbuktu and pulled that guitar out and shipped it home.

And this stuff, I collected it one by one or seven by seven or whatever.

There would always be.

There would be cats that would come in.

The reason I say that is in the tuning room where the amplifiers and little jump set, you know, warm up room.

In those years through, just as we were starting to get people's attention issue 91 four.

There would always be guys that came from whichever guitar shop or play was, you know, 60, 70, 90 miles radius of the vintage place.

When we walked into the room, there would be all these cases, you know, opened up like, oh, is that what I think it is?

You know, this kind of shit.

57 strat, you know, all this shit.

These guys got money coming out of their ass.

They're gonna bought this stuff, and we're looking at, like, you know, even in that day, we're still playing high performance instruments.

We had.

It wasn't about cool vintage shit.

That's.

You don't bring that on the road, man.

You crazy.

So.

But that's how we did it, though.

The guy would come and say, here, these are these ones.

All this.

We're looking like a whatever, dude.

Because back then, that was not it.

And so we talked to the tour manager, say, I want that one, that one, that one, that one.

And just wait and leave the cases there and not let the guy go back in the room.

And they wait till everything is done.

They're rolling out the road, cases and shit.

The crew is wrapping everything up for the big fucking show, and the guys.

And nobody said anything to about no money.

And the tour manager goes, we'll take those seven for next to nothing.

And he'll go, well, okay.

Because he's got a pile of money in his hand like that.

I'll give you this for those.

And they're like, okay.

And so we.

We get the ones for much less than he was asking.

But that's how we would accumulate that many at a time, that people, they would bring them to us that way.

So it was kind of the combination of those two things.

You end up accumulating way more than you ever need.

It's neat because once you get bit by it, it's hard to get on bit right now, right, exactly.

I know you do.

So now I got to this place where over time, you know, like you're saying about, you could tell a guitar with, if you're blindfolded, you could tell it this strat from the same strat and the serial numbers only two digits off or whatever.

But that.

That's how it is.

You know, that's how it is.

Some of them have a bunch of fucking songs in it.

Some have a couple songs.

Some are great to look at and all that shit, but that's not going to stay in the collection ain't got no songs in it.

It just got no songs in it.

So get to that place where those were just sitting in the case for 20 or 30 years.

Just in the case.

That's not fucking cool at all.

You just have somebody out to a young hero that maybe can get a hold of that thing that I couldn't get a hold of and make something out of it.

I mean, you guys, now that.

Who's the kid?

The tattoos all up his neck, that.

All that fucking crazy shit.

You got the neck to same width all the way down.

Yeah, yeah, Tim.

What the fuck?

What the fuck?

So let's have.

Give me.

Take that ten string, a lebbic and do some shit with that thing.

Take that three string Tony Levin bass and play bass.

Slide on it or some psycho shitter.

Do something inventive.

You young people, you know, that's what I see, that there comes a time we're, like, hoarding all this stuff.

And I got all these guitars and they come to the spot like, you know, it's really fucking pretty asinine that you only got two hands and you already picked the ones you like.

Those are the ones that are all beat up and shit.

It's already obvious which ones are which.

You know, you don't have to know.

Eventually go back after the two and look at one's got the most wear.

That's the one you're keeping.

Right.

So I try to just kind of purging a bit and hopefully get some of those out there for the people that know better to make some noise with them.

You know, there's a lot more people.

We're talking about competition and bands and all the things.

There's a lot more people out there to enjoy the instruments.

So I hope that can happen.

That's great.

I'm going to say it's.

I was going to say that it's more about giving people opportunity to play the thing that is about anything else.

There's no kind of thing, you know, you don't.

It's just try to.

Try to make sense of it and have them sitting there rotten instead of being.

Instead of creating something.

Makes no sense.

I just want to ask one more question about the.

You.

You don't use a full amp rig.

You use some kind of emulator, something or other.

You like.

You have your own custom made.

Yeah.

I worked with neural DSP on a plugin called the archetype.

Corey Wong plugin.

I'll send it to you.

And it's a plugin where we basically modeled a bunch of amps that I really like.

And we dove deep.

I mean, I put them through the wringer, if I'm going to be honest.

They were like, oh, this is an exact replica of this.