Category Archives: Interviews

The Guns are no longer firing, but there’s no ban on their Smog Veil retrospective album

Back in the ’80s, The Guns fired off several rounds of angsty punk rock that, at the time, was an influential part of the Cleveland music scene. Founded by suburban teenagers Scott Eakin and Dave Araca, The Guns were drawn from a conceptual punk band known as The Dark to embrace a more aggressive hardcore sound. The duo was eventually joined by bassist Sean Saley and became a fixture on the Cleveland scene opening for the likes of Hüsker Dü, Agnostic Front and Black Flag. After Saley’s family moved to Florida in 1984, The Guns played under a few different incarnations before its members moved on to other projects, with the band’s final performance being in 1986. After becoming an award-winning tattoo artist, Araca died of a brain aneurism in 1994. In 2005, Eakin and Saley reconvened for a Guns reunion at the Cleveland’s Screaming festival, with Saley moving to drums and Eakin’s fiancé Karen Gortner on bass. This version of The Guns played once more the following year at Cleveland’s Screaming, just months before Eakin had a fatal heart attack.

Both original Guns are now in the big holster in the sky, but that certainly doesn’t mean there is a ban on these Guns. Having recorded some tracks in ’84, as well as some new songs in ’05, The Guns had a stockpile of ammunition just waiting to be discharged. And in true ’80s punk rock fashion, Smog Veil Records has done just that with limited edition double vinyl LP retrospective simply called The Guns. And Saley, who currently plays drums for doom metal band Pentagram and D.C. hardcore band Teamster, is still happy to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about his days as an integral part of this underground icon.

First off, tell me a little bit more about this double vinyl release.

It’s a retrospective of the band’s entire existence, so there’s stuff that’s on there from about ’82 until around ’86 or so. It spans four or five years, the entire history of the band. The centerpiece is a 1984 recording that was intended at the time to be released as a full album, but never was. There’s a couple of sessions on there that were professionally recorded, aside from the live cuts from a boombox and all that stuff. But all of this happened between 25 and 30 years ago.

Is there any significance to the timing of the release? Is this some sort of anniversary for the band or anything like that?

No, not really. This has been happening for a really long time now. When we recorded the album that is the centerpiece to this whole thing in ’84, the reason it was never released was simply that we ran out of money. The guy who was going to put it out had a budget to record everything and press it onto vinyl. But we pretty much spent all his money just recording it. So it just never happened. But this has been on somebody’s back burner for a good six or seven years. It was supposed to come out on a California label called Grand Theft Audio. Tom Dark was talking with the guy who ran that label for a really long time, but the whole thing just eventually fizzled out. So Tom caught up with Frank Mauceri from Smog Veil Records and Frank was used to releasing older material from various Cleveland bands. The two of them have been talking about it for a few years, but I don’t really know how the seed germinated and someone said, “Let’s do this now.” So it’s not a particular anniversary or anything like that.

You were part of the band for a large part of its existence…

Maybe about half of it. It originally started as two people, Scott and David. They were in another band together called The Dark with Scott’s older brother Tom and Robert Griffin. Then they decided they wanted to play their own faster stuff with a more hardcore sound. So they did maybe four or five shows as a two piece for about a year or so. I ended up meeting those guys at a show in Cleveland and kind of wormed my way in, for lack of a better term. We were friends, we were hanging out and they had this band while I was playing drums in a couple of other bands and was OK on bass. So one day I just said, “You guys don’t have a bass player. We hang out all the time anyway, so why don’t we try to do this together?” That lasted for for close to two years, but during that time we played tons of shows between the middle of ’83 and the beginning of ’85. After I left, Bob Ries came in playing bass and singing some of the songs, basically taking the role I had had. Before I left, we got Scott Silverman in the band as another guitar player. But we only had a few rehearsals with him before I moved to Florida with my mother as a teenager.

That version of the band went on for about another year and a half or so before they broke up. So I was kind of in the middle of it, and it was sort of the heyday as far as shows and all that stuff. Later on, when you get into the sort of final lineup of the band, I think they probably became a better band at that point. They were super tight, everybody was learning to play their instruments better and there was definitely more of a metal influence towards the end. That was there when I was in the band, but by the end of it David had gotten an extra bass drum and suddenly every song had thundering double bass on it. So I think the final incarnation was probably really the best band. It’s too bad there’s not a proper representation of that lineup as far as a studio recording or anything like that. There’s some live stuff on this album that’s pretty lo-fi, but if you listen to it they’re just so tight it’s ridiculous.

There were pretty much three completely different lineups. You had the sloppy ’77 teenage punk stuff, then when I came into it we started writing more traditional really fast hardcore songs that started morphing into metal. But by the end they were probably more of a metal band. But all three lineups were almost equal in length, so I was right in the middle.

There were some reunion shows a few years ago, but with the two founding members no longer with us do you think there’s any possibility of seeing the surviving members getting together to perform in some capacity?

One incarnation of The Guns: (left to right) Dave Araca, Bob Ries, Scott Silverman, Scott Eakin. Photo by Mike Psenicka.

Unfortunately the original guys, Scott and Dave, have passed away. I stayed in touch with Dave when he was still around. During my last visit with him, I was supposed to get a tattoo from him, but it didn’t end up happening. Then he was gone, so that’s very unfortunate. One thing that’s obviously bittersweet about all this is that those two guys started the band, they were the heart of it all the way through, and it’s a terrible feeling to know they’re not physically here to see this album’s release. But I’m glad it’s out and I’m certain they would be happy about it.

I didn’t stay in touch with Scott as well. We had a reunion show, which was just me on drums and him playing guitars and singing, then we got his fiancee to play bass and it worked out really well. So he and I were in touch a little bit during his last couple of years and I’m really glad that happened because he was definitely one of my best friends growing up. I stay in touch with Bob through Facebook and stuff and I’m Facebook friends with Scott [Silverman], but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him post anything. I probably talk to Tom Dark, Scott’s older brother, more than anybody. After living in Florida briefly with my mom, I’ve lived in D.C. since I was 18 and played drums with Government Issue for a while. And I’ve lived here ever since.

Scott Silverman is still out there and he’s been in a couple of well-known bands since those days. He’s jammed with Brant Bjork from Fu Manchu with a band called Brant Bjork and The Bros. Bob also still plays, but he lives out in Seattle. So there aren’t really any plans and I couldn’t even imagine ever trying to get together in any capacity because David and Scott were The Guns. They started the band, they were the two constant members all the way through, they did the heart of the writing. So without those guys, I don’t think there’d ever be any attempt at trying to play or anything.

It’s good to see you’re still actively performing with Pentagram these days. How does that compare to your time in The Guns?

On an underground level, Pentagram is a pretty well-known band that has been together in one incarnation or another since the early ’70s. We toured Europe in June, did some one-off dates on the East Coast after that, then went back overseas last month to do some shows in the U.K., Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

I also play drums for a local D.C. hardcore band called Teamster, which is kind of along the same lines as The Guns, but maybe even a little faster, harder and more brutal. So I am still active in music, love it and get out there as much as I can. I’m definitely a lifer as far that goes, so I’ll be doing it until I drop dead or can’t do it anymore.

Bigfoot rocks Monstrosity Championship Wrestling with a wooly stomp

Despite new music and tour, nothing is too solid with Concrete Blonde

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Just prior to Concrete Blonde‘s tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its landmark Bloodletting album two years ago, I spoke to Johnette Napolitano for accessAtlanta (which you can read right here). That was actually my second time interviewing Napolitano and both experiences have lead me to the conclusion that it’s hard to keep up with her creative energy. For Concrete Blonde fans, that’s a good thing considering that the band recently released a white vinyl single for two new songs: “Rosalie” and “I Know the Ghost.” And after touring the world over the past couple of years, the band (rounded out by guitarist James Mankey and drummer Gabriel Ramirez) is currently on an East Coast tour. In the midst of that tour, Napolitano takes a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the possibility of a new Concrete Blonde album and her various other music projects.

I talked to you a couple of years ago just before your first rehearsal for the Bloodletting anniversary tour. Now you’re on tour again and have a new vinyl single, which is something you may not have anticipated last time we spoke. How did the new music and tour come about?

It just seems to be the right thing to do. We did that seven-inch single on white vinyl, which was fun to do. I don’t know how that idea really came about. It just seemed like the right thing to do. At my day job, that’s what I used to do is get masters to the plant to get them made into stampers and all that. That was my job, so I know a lot about vinyl and I just thought it would be fun to make a single. Obviously you can download anything digitally, but it was really fun. We took it out of the box and just went, “Oh, this is really cool.” It’s like it used to feel, that excitement when we made our first record. I think for Gabriel it was really cool because that’s how this band started was on vinyl. We’re excited about it and people apparently want us to play. That’s nothing that I take for granted. There are waves, especially in this fabulous entertainment industry we’re in, where trends come and go and things ebb and flow. The last thing you want to do is get out there and think everything’s cool and have six people show up.

Since that Bloodletting tour, we headlined a festival in China last year, which was a really amazing experience for all of us. We’ve been to South America a couple of times. As a matter of fact, we have to go back there in March or April because two days before a Brazilian festival I fell off one of my horses and broke four ribs and four vertebrae, so we’re going to make that up. Most of our touring in the last few years has been foreign. The States are a difficult place to work, as anybody in this business will tell you, because it’s like five different countries in one. You may do well New York, but nobody in Mississippi gives a shit, or vice versa. It’s really painstaking to make sure you’re connected in the right places and doing the right things to make sure people come because all you’ve got to do is one bad tour and nobody will come again.

The two songs on this seven-inch are stylistically very different from each other. One is very punk rock while the other is almost country…

Much like our first record.

Exactly. Are those the only two new songs you’ve been working on or do you have other new stuff that might be released soon?

I do. I always have a million half-finished things laying around. I’m my hardest critic and a song really has to earn its place before being immortalized. I love both of those songs. “Rosalie” just came to me in one piece while I was sitting on the porch of my cabin in Joshua Tree. It just blew in with the wind. It was just perfect. When that happens, all you’ve got to do is catch it. And with “I Know the Ghost,” “The Ghost” was a poem I wrote for a book called Rough Mix, which we have on sale, and I really liked it and loved the idea of setting it to music somehow. I also wanted to do something that we didn’t have to take that seriously; just a good old-fashioned West Coast punk feel because our roots are in West Coast punk. That’s when everybody started making their own records. That was a big deal and everybody was doing the DIY thing big time back then. That’s when Black Flag’s first record came out and Agent Orange and all that. Brett [Gurewitz] started Epitaph with a seven-inch single from Bad Religion, which both Jim and I worked on. But everybody was doing that then, so it makes sense. And on a very basic level, the sound of vinyl sounds good with certain stuff. Country music on vinyl just sounds so pure and right; and punk on vinyl sounds pure a right because there was a lot of that going on on vinyl. Now they have plug-ins to simulate the sound of vinyl if you record digitally.

The book is another thing you mentioned last time we talked. I’m glad to see that it’s out now.

Oh, yeah. It’s steadily selling on Amazon, which is really all I wanted to do. I want it to be a series and I’ve started another one on this tour. There are so many songs that it’s basically explaining what some of the songs are about. Then it has miscellaneous drawings, poems and things that don’t seem to fit anywhere else. I also did a CD series called Sketchbook and I only do 1,000 of each, then they’re gone. It gives me incentive to do another one because I have a loyal base of people who want every one I do. That’s really cool. I like that sort of approach. It’s not just throwing stuff out there for mass consumption; it’s custom little things for people who want them. People do appreciate that they have something special that is not going to be there once it’s gone.

You always seem to be working on musical projects with various other musicians. What else do you have in the works right now?

I’m still working with David J and David is all over the map. We’re working on a project called Tres Vampires with a DJ named Shok out of L.A. We’ve got three tracks down, only one mixed, and a video that really needs some re-editing. It’s hard to keep up with David J. He’s one of the most driven artists I’ve ever known. He really is off the planet and I’m a big fan.

You were also working with a flamenco group in New Orleans called Ven Pa’Ca and talking about opening your own flamenco club there. Did that ever happen?

I spent a lot of time down in New Orleans after my dad died and opening a place down there was definitely not as simple as I thought it was going to be. New Orleans is a scary place if they don’t want you there. I was at the airport and two big white men came to the bar where I was sitting and said, “Can we join you?” I said, “No,” but they sat down anyway. I was pretty much told that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be opening anything down there. It was pretty scary. I’d heard that New Orleans is no place to fuck with, but I don’t know who they think I am or whether they didn’t dig what I was doing. I had rented Preservation Hall for one day and shot flamenco with Leticia from Ven Pa’Ca. We did a version of “Mexican Moon” and it was really cool because it made sense for me to have flamenco there. But that’s not what the place really is about. New Orleans really doesn’t appreciate you deviating from what they want to go down, basically. That really did freak me out because they were just like, “We’ll bury you down here.” It was very creepy. I don’t know if they thought I was related to Janet Napolitano or what. It was really strange, so I kind of put that idea to the side because I think playing down there with the big boys is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

You mentioned that you’ve been working on other new songs. Does that mean we might see a new Concrete Blonde album in the near future?

Everybody keeps asking me that, but I’m afraid to make that commitment with the band, to tell you the truth. We have a relationship that is difficult sometimes, like anyone else who’s been together for so many years. It’s really important that nobody get too comfortable. That’s why I got pissed off at the band in the first place because everybody got really comfortable and everybody started taking things for granted. I like that we’re doing this, I like that there’s a single and there is new music, but I know I’ll never again in my life go out and tour for seven months at a time like we used to do in the old days. As a matter of fact, what has been the main factor in the last couple of years for me is I don’t like to leave home for more than a week out of the month. It throws me off balance and I really need to be home because I’ve got goats and horses and all that. But it’s not practical to do that. On the East Coast we’ve got to do it for two weeks to make it work, but it’s hard for me to be gone for that long. It’s hard on personal relationships and your life and it’s not worth it. To keep that balance is the most important thing for me and if it takes doing things in little spurts so everybody keeps it together and stays nice to each other, that’s great. The minute it’s not fun, there are a million other jobs to do that pay more.

As we just talked about, you also do various other musical projects with other people. So you seem to stay busy even when you’re not working with Concrete Blonde. Are you working on any other new musical projects?

I am pleased to be working with Billy Howerdel on the new Ashes Divide record. I just spent a couple of days not too long ago doing some heavy duty writing with Billy, which is always intense, but a total pleasure. It’s a beautiful record; I’m really pleased. I just love Billy Howerdel. He’s a great guy and I love his family. I’m just envious of him because he has a beautiful wife, beautiful kids, he makes beautiful music and he makes amazing food. That motherfucker cooks like an angel, so anytime you work with Billy you know you’re going to get fed really well.

The Casket Creatures bring horror rock to Monstrosity Championship Wrestling

Molly Harvey takes up Residents-y with Jeffrey Bützer’s Tender Prey

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Molly Harvey is no stranger to costumes and identity ambiguity. As a long-time collaborator with The Residents, an avant-garde act known for performing with giant eyeball heads and other theatrics, she has spent most of her career providing theatrics for music (or is it the other way around?). After working with the Bicycle Eaters’ Jeffrey Bützer, a multi-instrumentalist who has been known to stage musical tributes to David Lynch, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Tom Waits and others, last year on the Black Mass pre-Halloween show, Harvey has found different ways to portray other people. Tonight, Bützer and Harvey return to 529 with the likes of T.T. Mahony, Johnny McGowan, Matt Steadman and others as Tender Prey, a tribute to Nick Cave that includes songs ranging from The Birthday Party to Grinderman. The show is free and also includes performances by Cave Women (playing covers of Nick Cave, PJ Harvey and the like), Ben Trickey performing a Tom Waits set, Andy DeLoach doing Leonard Cohen and puppet shows from Ninja Puppet Productions. As the unmasked Harvey prepares to sing a few Cave songs, she talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about her theatrical background and future musical ideas.

Advertising for this show prominently credits you as being from The Residents. Since the identities of the members of that band have always been obscured, is it OK for you to be revealing yourself in this manner?

No, they’re going to kill me now. I was actually always named on the records and stuff, so I was always the one non-anonymous member. I was more of a collaborator. I wear costumes when we perform, so my identity is always obscured. When I was touring with them, there wasn’t any Facebook or anything. So I could play, then walk around the venue afterwards and nobody’d know who I was. But now it’d different because people can just look on Facebook and see me.

Do you still perform with The Residents?

I perform with them when they come to town. They’re on the West Coast, so it’s kind of hard for me to leave and tour with them. So I do little things with them when they come through.

How did you get involved with The Residents?

Just by weird happenstance. I moved to San Francisco when I was 21 and just happened to meet them. I worked in a cafe that they came into and, of course, I didn’t know it was them. But I developed a friendship with the singer and little by little we revealed things about each other and I realized he was involved with the band. I had studied theater in college and had just graduated. I think one day I was like, “Hey, can you use me to do anything?”

You’ve also worked with Gwar, an equally theatrical band, though not quite in the same vein as The Residents. How’d you get involved with Gwar and what did you do for that band?

I was living in Richmond in 1989 and I think almost all of Gwar is Virginia Commonwealth University art school dropouts. They’ve been doing Gwar for 28 years, which is crazy. They did a 35 millimeter film in the early ’90s called Skulhedface that Jello Biafra was the star of. So I did a scene in that. I never performed live with them, I just did the thing in the movie.

Richmond had an amazing music scene, and still does. Because of the art school, I think Richmond just attracts certain people. Now, with certain cult bands having come out of Richmond, a lot of people actually move there to start bands.

How did you start collaborating with Jeffrey Bützer?

I met Jeffrey through [guitarist] Matt Steadman. Jeffrey was a Residents fan and I knew Matt because we worked together. I was looking for something to do and Jeffrey is kind of a mover and a shaker and always has stuff going on. I guess Matt told Jeffrey about me and Jeffrey was familiar with what I do. So we talked and we still have a lot of ideas of stuff to do, but he’s a busy guy who’s in a million bands and is always making projects. We really want to do something original together, but so far we’ve just done these shows that are covers of people we like. They’re fun and people like to go see them. Last year we did Black Mass at 529. That was a lot of PJ Harvey, Leonard Cohen and stuff like that. He has faves.

What will your role be in the Nick Cave tribute tonight?

I’ll be splitting the songs. Michael Bradley is also singing some songs and he’s got the perfect Nick Cave voice. Then I’m singing six or seven songs, then Carrie Hodge from What Happened to Your Fire, Tiger? is going to sing backup on a couple and lead on one.

Bützer and I have had a few conversations about The Residents and he seems to be really excited about working with someone who has also worked with such a mysteriously avant-garde band. Was there any hesitation in letting him advertise you as a member of The Residents since the rest of the band does a great job of hiding its identities?

It’s nice to have people like Jeffrey because I never really tell people that. If I get up on stage with him at one of their shows, he’ll be like, “It’s Molly Harvey from The Residents!” Sometimes I’m like, “I don’t know if you should say that.” It’s always been a weird thing because my name was out there, but my face wasn’t. But at the same time, I’m not a prominent part of The Residents and they’re always changing and working with different people all the time. On a practical level, if I want to do more stuff, that’s a thing on my resume that differentiates me from everyone else. I’m never comfortable leading into a conversation with that, but having someone like Jeffrey doing it is kind of nice because he does make things happen and he is excited about it. Even though it is a little bit of a gray area, if it can lead toward me working with cool people that I may have never otherwise known, I’m all for it.

You mentioned that you’d like to do more original music with Bützer. Have you given much thought to what kind of project you’d like to work on with him?

My background is in theater. Even though I sang as a kid, I really approach singing as an actor or performer. I’m definitely not a trained musician, but I do write and in the past two or three years random people in my life have been like, “Have you ever thought about writing songs?” Working with The Residents, I certainly wasn’t writing their material, and doing theater I was interpreting other people’s words. But I’ve been asked enough that I finally gave it a try. I have a couple of characters I’ve come up with. Everything for me is very character driven, so it would be more of a narrative about a certain character. But there are some little things brewing.

Erik Turner has a Warrant for rock ‘n’ roll and winemaking

John 5 shreds with Rob Zombie on the Twins of Evil tour

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Though he received his first big jolt of recognition when he became Marilyn Manson‘s guitarist in 1998, for the past seven years John 5‘s shredding skills have been utilized as part of Rob Zombie‘s band. So when Manson and Zombie take to the stage tonight at the Desert Uprising festival in Phoenix for the first night of the Twins of Evil tour, it will be especially exciting for 5 given his history with both bands. Having released his latest solo CD God Told Me To a few months ago, 5 also contributed some guitar work for Zombie’s recent remix album Mondo Sex Head. Before taking the stage for the Twins of Evil tour, 5 talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the tour, the next Zombie album and other upcoming projects.

Rob Zombie’s recent remix CD featured some of his older material remixed by several of today’s top DJs and electronic musicians. But you also contributed some guitar work to the album. Which songs did you work on?

John 5 (left) is part of the gruesome twosome on the Twins of Evil tour (photo by Rick Fagan)

That’s right. There’s a lot going on right now. The remix CD just came out, we just finished up the new Zombie record, we’re doing the The Lords of Salem movie and the Twins of Evil tour is starting. A couple of DJs got a hold of me and said, “Hey, would you mind putting this, that and the other thing on there?” And I said, “Absolutely. It’ll be fun.” And for Jonathan Davis’ J Devil remix I did a little work and it came out really great. I love that album. It was a lot of fun and it’s cool to hear the songs remixed that way. I did some stuff on “Thunder Kiss” and “Superbeast.”

You mentioned the new Rob Zombie record. What can you say about that at this point?

I’m not sure when it comes out, but I just listened to the whole record and it is an aggressive, in-your-face record. I’ve been a fan of White Zombie and Rob Zombie since long before I was in the band, and from a fan’s outlook when listening to this record I hear a lot of the live, raw aggressiveness of White Zombie. A lot of artists say, “This is our best record and blah blah blah blah blah,” but I really am super excited about this and I think people are really going to enjoy it. It’s still very early and Rob is definitely going to come up with something great for the title of the record. These are really great songs and people are going to dig it. I’m looking forward to playing these songs live.

This will be your first record since your former Marilyn Manson bandmate Ginger Fish joined Zombie’s band. How involved was he in the recording process?

I’ve known Ginger forever and when we go in to record, I bring guitars and some pedals and this and that. Ginger came to the studio, I swear to God, with a semi full of drums and mics. I thought he was moving in or something. It was crazy all the stuff he brought. I was like, “What is going on here? He’s just playing drums!” But he’s great and he did a phenomenal job. That’s another great thing about the record is that it’s so alive with his crazy energy.

It’s been a few years since you and Ginger played in the same band together. What has it been like playing with him again?

John 5 (right) is a musical and visual presence in Rob Zombie's band (photo by Rick Fagan)

I always kept in touch with Ginger, so it’s been like jamming with an old friend. It worked before and it just seemed to fit perfect. I told Rob that Ginger would be perfect because I had played with him before, he’s loyal and he’s a great drummer. And it’s been working perfect. He’s been in the band for a little while, we’ve done a few tours with him and now we’ve done a record with him. It really is a perfect fit. Now we’re doing this tour together and it’s really going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to be a huge show and what better thing to do around Halloween time than go see Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie?

That’s a pairing a lot of people have been wanting to see since the late ’90s. But now with the added dynamic of yours and Ginger’s history with both bands just makes it that much more interesting.

It’s going to be exciting, to say the least. A lot of people are going to really enjoy it and it’s such a perfect time of year for it.

Both bands are known for putting on huge stage shows. Have the two bands been communicating about coordinating their shows or will there be a bit of one-upsmanship going on during the tour?

The only thing I’m sure of is Rob Zombie has always had such a massive show, but this tour is going to be even bigger. Our show is going to be so big and mammoth that people are going to be holding their heads and saying, “I can’t believe what I just saw.”

You also mentioned the The Lords of Salem movie. Are you involved with that in some way?

Yeah, I did the music score for the movie. It was a challenge to score a movie, especially a Rob Zombie movie. I used a lot of weird things to create the sounds like violin bows, banging on the guitar, quarters on the strings and all sorts of weird instruments. I’m really proud of how this music came out. It was one of the most challenging things I’ve done in a long time.

Was Zombie involved in the recording process at all?

John 5 (second from right) and Ginger Fish (right) reunite in more than one way on the Twins of Evil tour (photo by Rick Fagan)

Rob was actually directing, editing and talking to me about the score. We did a couple of pieces together and the guy’s a genius. I sit back and think about how he makes hit records and he does these movies, but for my birthday he painted me the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The guy can do everything. The painting is amazing, he does music, movies, but you know what? I can beat him at air hockey. That’s what I can beat him at. We played air hockey at the movie and I beat him, so I’ve got that going for me.

You also released a new solo album a few months ago, which is probably your most ambitious solo effort to date. For those who haven’t heard it, what would you like to say about that album?

I really can’t believe how well it’s doing. People enjoy when I put out this instrumental music because they never know what they’re going to get. They’re kind of like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. But with God Told Me To, there’s a DVD that goes with the record and Rob Zombie painted the cover. I’ve gotten a lot of love from that record and I appreciate that. And it really takes you on a journey, that’s for sure.

www.john-5.com

www.robzombie.com