Dredg

The one reason I wanted to go to this year’s Taste Of Chaos was to see Dredg live – and what a performance they put on. But before they hit the stage, we sat down on their tour bus for fifteen minutes to talk about the band’s upcoming plans, their fantasy tours, and, like always, cannibalism. While it didn’t got as smoothly as I hoped, it was still a fun interview, and I’d like to thank the band for doing it and to John (who makes an appearance in the interview) for setting it up. 

Please note, all the pictures are copyright their rightful owners.

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Bobby: Okay, you guys are just getting on this Taste Of Chaos tour, are you guys excited for it?

Gavin: No, not at all. *laughs*

Mark: It’s been fun. We’ve only been on it for how many weeks now? Two?

Drew: Two weeks, yeah.

Mark: It’s been fun. This is the first time we’re moving stages. We’ve been used to being on the main stage, so now we’re moving to the second stage so it’s a little different today, and the rest of the tour; but it’s been good.

Bobby: For me anyway, you guys seem a bit out of place on this tour. You guys being more progressive rock while most of the other bands are more hardcore/emo bands, what made you decide to come on and do the tour?

Drew: I just like Deftones and Thrice a lot, we like those bands.

Gavin: And it was work. Gives us something to do instead of sitting at home.

Dino: A lot of exposure too. A lot of new people hearing about us.

Gavin: They’ve been really open minded. I mean, we haven’t had any bad crowds or anything, so, why not?

Bobby: Okay, your first released, Leitmotif, was released back in 1999 and then re-released in 2001. I’ve read that you guys were working on a movie documenting the entire album, will you guys ever release that?

Gavin: Umm, Drew’s working on that.

Drew: Yeah, the main character died though, so it’s not going to happen.

Bobby: That’s too bad. Why did you guys want to do that in the first place?

Drew: Why did we want to do that? Because it’s another way for us to perform.

Bobby: Last month was the release of the independent film Waterborne, which of course, you guys did the entire score for. What was it like doing that?

Gavin: I didn’t work on it, it was those two *points at Dino and Mark*

Mark: It was fun. It was good. It was different than doing a rock record. A sort of departure from what we normally do, which is always a healthy thing.

Bobby: How did that all get set up? Like how did you guys end up doing that?

Mark: We’re friends with the writer/director. We’ve known each other for a long time and were always talking about working together, so he came to us with this film and we said “okay.”

Gavin: He did one of our videos. He did the video for “Of The Room.”

Bobby: Some people on your message board wanted to know do any of the score have any song titles?

Mark: At the moment, no. We named them after the scene that they were going to use them in, but there’s no actual title like we title our rock songs. It just helped us know where we were going to put it in the movie.

Bobby: Do you see yourself doing it again?

Mark: Sure. Dino’s doing another one right now by himself.

Bobby: For what movie?

Dino: It’s called Car Babes. It’s about a car business. CarBabesThe Movie.com – it has all the information about it.

Bobby: All your releases so far have been concept albums; Catch Without Arms is no different. I’ve read that it’s all about negative and positives, opposites and contractions – why gave you the inspiration to do that?

Gavin: I think the initial idea was to come up with a record that was split in half and we wanted to have a concept that was a little more direct and I think we just started from that. The idea of having the record in two halves was our main goal, so it only seemed logical to use a basic idea like Ying-Yang; something really broad.

Bobby: What is “Perspective One” against “Perspective Two” on the CD?

Mark: I think we felt like the two halves had different feelings. When we listened to them and put it together, the album order, we just felt like the first half of the record was split up by that last song, after “Sang Real”, just had a whole different feeling. So we just kind of split it up that way.

Dino: “Perspective One” is way better.

Bobby: Lately a lot of bands are doing concept albums. Green Day, Armor For Sleep, a whole bunch of bands. Why do you think bands are getting into the concept album idea?

Gavin: Because it’s interesting.

Mark: Yeah, it’s interesting. Some place else to take rock. Music goes in phases; well all of art goes in phases I guess. Not only commercially, but just as a feeling. It’s like people want to do more than just bring rock songs to the radio- so why not?

Bobby: After this Taste of Chaos tour you guys are going on a headlining tour with Ours. I’ve also read that after that you guys are going to be releasing a live CD, is that true?

Gavin: Yeah.

Bobby: When are you recording it?

Gavin: May 11th, in San Francisco at the Fillmore.

Bobby: Why did you decide to do a live CD at this point?

Gavin: Basically, it’s something we haven’t done and it’s something for us to release from us starting to write a new album and the new one coming out. So it’s for our fans, they get something new in this gap between this record now and the next record.

Mark: And we’ll have other stuff on it. I think we’re gonna try to put some sort of a DVD on it with some kind of documentary stuff on it as well. So some more material.

Bobby: Like you said there’s gonna be a DVD, is it going to be a making of Catch Without Arms or something?

Mark: Yeah, we’re hoping.

Bobby: I’ve also read that you can buy the artwork from Catch Without Arms. Can you just buy it of your website or can you buy it anywhere else?

Gavin: Yeah, we have them still. Some of them have sold. People can just basically contact us through e-mail or whatever and then we sell a painting.

Bobby: Do you guys do a lot of painting other than the CD booklet and stuff like that?

Gavin: Yeah, as a hobby kind of.

Bobby: Personally, I love going to concerts, they are one of the few things that keep me sane during this grade twelve year. Of course, some are more memorable than others, so thinking back to when you were still teenagers, what were some concerts that you went to that were really memorable for you?

Mark: Sigur Ros at Coachella in ’99, 2000, something like that. There’s so many, I don’t know.

Drew: I saw Deftones at Bottom of the Hill in ’96.

Mark: Willie Nelson, Top of the Harbor, ’96.

Gavin: Bon Jovi at the Shoreline Amphitheatre

Mark and Gavin: ‘84

Gavin: And my favorite concert, Paula Abdul, Information Society and Milli Vanilli in sixth grade, my girlfriend took me, that was pretty memorable.

Drew: Get any that night?

Gavin: No, actually, I didn’t. I tried to…

Drew: But no finger banging?

Gavin: No.

Bobby: Okay, if you guys could tour with one person or band, dead or alive, broken up or still going, who would you choose to tour with and why?

Dino: Dead or alive?

Bobby: Yeah.

Dino: It’ll have to be a dead band.

Mark: Or a band that isn’t around yet, like a future band. That’ll be cool. I’d want to tour with the Doors, because I don’t think I’d survive that tour. That would be great, it would be very fun.

Drew: Yeah, that’s a good one.

Dino: I’d pick Pink Floyd, but I wouldn’t want to because we’d look really shitty.

Gavin: Tour with Bob Marley.

Drew: Or the Grateful Dead and take a shit load of acid.

Gavin: We’re trying to get on that tour now actually even though none of the members are on tour. I hear they have some of the best acid in the US.

Mark: I really want to go on a tour that has Deftones, Thrice, Atreyu, something like that would be awesome.

Bobby: Now onto a bit more unusual questions that I just like to ask at all my interviews to keep it interesting.

All of them: Uh-oh.

Drew: Those weren’t unusual before?

Bobby: First off, if you guys were stranded on a desert island, no food and nothing to eat, which one of the band members would you eat to survive and why?

Mark: We’d eat our drum teach, Casey, first.

Dino: A lot of flesh.

Mark: I don’t know, who would be the most annoying? Get rid of him first.

Drew: Gavin’s probably got some spice to him.

Gavin: I got some pretty healthy spice going on. I’d be pretty good; I’d probably start eating myself first.

Mark: Dino has the most muscle, so he probably has some nice thighs which would be good.

Gavin: *Pointing to Drew* We would just kill him and dump his body in the ocean, we wouldn’t even eat him.

Drew: I’d eat Mark’s Norwegian ass though.

Bobby: Okay, if you were a member of the opposite sex for a day, week, month, how ever long you wanted, what would you do and why?

Gavin: Masturbate.

Mark: I’d probably try to see what you can get from being a female. I’d be a really ugly female though, so I probably wouldn’t get shit.

Drew: Go to the bar, get free drinks all night.

Mark: See how far we could take it.

Bobby: Okay, could you tell us something about the band or one of it’s members that not many people know about. Like a little quirk they do the road or something like that?

Drew: Nope, that’s too personal.

Gavin: A quirk? Um… I rub my lips a lot. Kind of a nervous thinking habit I have.

John: Kind of related to the question before.

Gavin: Yeah, whatever sex I am, I’ll just be rubbing my lips.

Bobby: Okay, if you guys could have one thing at this moment, anything at all, what would you have and why?

Drew: An espresso machine.

Dino: A jacuzzi in our bus.

Mark: I’d like to just be able to own a home instead of rent.

Bobby: That’s exactly what Thursday said too.

Drew: Fuck Thursday man.

Mark: That would be like my ultimate dream. I’d feel great, just to be like a normal person.

Gavin: That would be nice. I’d take like an apartment or condo or something.

Mark: Yeah, any sort of home that I could own.

Gavin: House boat.

Mark: Yeah, a house boat even.

Bobby: I guess that’s about it, thanks a lot for doing it, do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Mark: Thank you.