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LOCOBAZOOKA, 07.10.02 Locobazooka... Is it crazy gum? Is it Lollapalooza on a train? Is it a weapon of mass destruction? It is all of these and more... Okay, so it’s none of those. What it really is is an outdoor festival whose main objective is to "bring bands that individually would only play major markets to smaller cities." To that end, 2002’s lineup read like a Christmas wish list - Sevendust, Filter, Mushroomhead, nonpoint, Earshot, Dragpipe, Dry Cell, Audiovent and Mad At Gravity. We sat with the Mushroomhead trifecta of Shmotz, Pig Benis and Stitch prior to their set. An excerpt from that conversation follows. S&T: Before the second [Slipknot album] came out, a friend of mine who’s a diehard Slipknot fan said they’d have maybe one or two – max – more albums. There’s nowhere for them to go. Stitch: Go their separate ways and do side projects. S&T: They’re doing that now. Benis: It’s sometimes good to take a break. We all have side projects, we always have. S&T: That’s how you guys hooked up, right? Stitch: Yeah, this was a side project at one time. S&T: Which is the reason for the masks. Stitch: Right. S&T: Sometimes you guys would open up for yourselves…. Benis: Yep, that happened. My brother (original Mushroomhead bassist Mr. Murdernickle) was in the band when we first started, and I came in about a year-and-a-half or something like that after they started it. But yeah, we would open up for other bands or sometimes our side projects would open up for Mushroomhead. S&T: So you’d have to play twice in one night. Benis: Yeah. We’ve done it a couple of times – it’s tough but it’s fun. And it’s funny, because only the people who’ve hung around long enough know that you’re the same guys from the other band, ‘cause we don’t wear masks for our side projects, of course. So there’s a certain core of people that know, this guy is this guy and that guy is that guy, and they have twice the fun. S&T: Right, right. Have you guys ever been photographed out of costume, masks off? Stitch: As Mushroomhead? No. Benis: Although I think there were a couple of pictures taken today while we were signing… We’re not like KISS, to where it’s absolutely no pictures whatsoever. I mean, once the show’s over, we like to try to cover up our faces for pictures. If it doesn’t happen, what are you going to do? Shmotz: We’re doing it less and less. Benis: Yeah, I think we are letting it go more and more, just because it’s such a hassle. Shmotz: Plus you really want to meet these people and go face-to-face with people anyway. Benis: When you’re signing [autographs] through a mask, you can’t conversate, they can’t see the expression on your face. You know, it’s really tough to get an idea of what they like or what they don’t like, or even who the hell they are. S&T: Do you see a time when the masks come off altogether? Benis: Not any time soon, no. Shmotz: They keep changing. We’re not guaranteeing that we’re gonna have the X-face forever. And we’re not guaranteeing we’re gonna wear the same colors forever. We’ve changed, probably five full times already, with little subtle transitions in between. Constantly, it’s something always changing, ‘cause we get sick of it. Benis: We get bored. S&T: Sure. Benis: And plus the writing evolves, and because we try to keep everything together with the show and the writing, then the show evolves too. Shmotz: We kind of match the way we look onstage, sound-wise, with the songs that we’ve selected to do live. We put on a good live show with the costumes that we have that seem to make sense. But then you start doing more festivals or doing an hour-and-a-half long set, or any of those things that are going to change the way things are somehow or another might come through in the show or the look and everything. S&T: Yeah, well that was my next question. You guys are doing thirty minutes out there in full regalia, masks and all, and it’s not too bad out here now, but you’re talking about 100 degrees down South. What if you’re Sevendust today and you have to do an hour? Shmotz: Well, we can still hack an hour. Benis: What it is is, you set up your set, your show, to have lulls in it. Just like a song where you build, and you slow down, and you build. You can’t go 100% all the time – nobody does. Shmotz: Yeah, you gotta put a mellow tune in the middle, it gives everyone a breather, then back at it. And as far as the 110 degrees goes, if we’re playing at one or two o’clock, we’ll get up at nine, ten and just start guzzling water immediately. You can tell by how hot it is out what you’re gonna need to consume. Take some vitamins, try to play it right, and then go up there, sweat it all out and start all over again and try to re-hydrate. That’s all it is. It’s grueling, but it’s cool. I mean, I’m used to being super-hot up there – I’ve come close to passing out sometimes. But that’s part of it. It’s like in war, that’s your stripes. That’s part of doing it. Everyone has their days, you know? S&T: It’s rough to breathe in those things? Benis: Sometimes. Shmotz: Yeah, when you really need a lot of air all at once, ‘cause you’re sucking it in through the eyeholes. [Laughs] Benis: The problem is, there’s little access holes in there, but they get all covered up with sweat and spit and snot, so you’re sucking in your own sweat. Shmotz: [Laughing] Right! It creates suction on your face, every time you breathe it shuts down. Benis: Yeah, it’s a mess. S&T: So today’s gotta be a pleasure then. Shmotz: Today was a pleasure. I was freezing my ass off up there. Well what is [the temperature] here today? S&T: I don’t even know. Shmotz: 80? 75? Stitch: I think the high was supposed to be like 84, so… Shmotz: It don’t even feel like that, ‘cause there’s a nice breeze. Cool mountain air. Benis: It just took that confetti right out! [Laughter] Shmotz: Yeah, it’s gone – it’s in the next county! Benis: The sucker went straight sideways. Stitch: I didn’t even notice. Benis: I tried aiming ‘em out more, so that they would get out, but it didn’t work. S&T: We came up pretty much to cover the show as a whole, and we’re trying to get a couple of minutes with each band trying to get the pros and cons of doing a show at night indoors versus doing a festival in the middle of the day outdoors. Benis: Well, there’s several. I think one of the biggest ones is, playing early during the day can be a real convenience as far as having the rest of the day to do other things, hang out and talk to people and, uh, drink. [Laughs] In a club, you kind of get tied up all day. Shmotz: Yeah, you’re whole day is in preparation for that night’s show. Plus you gotta mind your Ps and Qs – you’re obviously not getting hammered during the day. We like to consume some alcohol once in awhile. That’s really a big difference. You really get it out of the way and you’re forced to do all your work in two hours instead of making it an all-day affair, and the more you tinker around with everything, the more problems you can make or not make. We go up there now, it’s like – boom! You deal with it, you get off, you’re done for the day. Benis: I think definitely another big thing is the fact that there’s no lights on this whole tour. I mean, they don’t bring any lights. And because we like to put on a good show, we usually have a nice little light package with fog and smoke but when you’re outside, you ace all that, so you have to rely on just your own personal showmanship and musicianship. Fortunately, I think that we do a good enough job with the music and our songs hold up no matter which way. But in a theater or a club, with the right setting, the right lighting, the right spookiness and all that kind of stuff, the atmosphere is so much more intense. S&T: The first night I met you guys, I did a show review and I talked about it being rock and roll theater. Benis: Well, we definitely like to put on a whole show. It’s not just us standing up there looking around at each other, playing Grateful Dead kind of stuff, or whatever. We all definitely like seeing the whole package. Shmotz: Yeah, that whole theatrical genre that they were lumping us into doesn’t even hold true as much as it used to. We used to have a huge show and we’d try to bring scenes across in a song, you know, with the ballerina during the piano part, and stuff like that. And we really don’t do a lot of that anymore. It’s just like big explosions and the confetti cannons going off and we rely a lot on pounding people with lights to create some sort of weird atmosphere, so it seems fairly theatrical, but we don’t have that really theatrical edge like we used to. Benis: I think that’s part of the evolution that you were touching on before. I think earlier more of our writing was a trippy, mess-with-your-head type of music and the show really showcased that as well. And then we got into more of an aggressive, unified thing and our costumes show that and our stageshow shows that, and where that’s gonna go next, I don’t know. Stitch: I think we’re going to go in reverse. Go backwards again. Get whacked out. [Laughs] S&T: So we’re about midway through this tour? Shmotz: Yep. S&T: And then jump right to the west coast for Ozzfest, or something in between that? Shmotz: We’ve got a couple of shows to get there. Benis: Yeah, we go home for about a week and then do a couple of gigs on our own and then jump into Ozzfest. We start in Chicago, I think. Shmotz: I think we have a show that gets us out there, like the night before, we got three shows before Ozzfest. Stitch: I think we’re doing Erie, Detroit… S&T: [Do you have any scheduled] off-day shows? Stitch: Yeah. We’ll get all kinds of off-day shows, ‘cause Ozzy doesn’t like to play more than one night, and then a day off, two days off. S&T: We took a friend last year, the first time she ever saw Ozzy, and she’s like, "Oh, it’s kind of sad, he just kind of stands there and does that thing," and I’m like, "No, twenty years ago I saw him and it was the same fucking show!" [Laughs] Stitch: He just kind of walks around hunched over. Benis: But you know, everybody still gets that electric vibe. We did some Ozzfest shows over in Europe with him… Shmotz: Yeah, I got a tingle during "Mr. Crowley," and I was like, "Damn, he still fucking belts it out." Stitch: And everybody’s totally into it when he gets out there and plays. You can’t fault the dude for doing anything wrong that way. S&T: He’s more important now then he was back then. Ozzfest is THE tour. Shmotz: Oh yeah. Things are finally paying off for him, and rightly so, you know. That’s persistence for ya. You end up at the top eventually. S&T: And marry a real smart lady. Benis: Right. Understanding, trusting. But we’ve got a lot of 9:30a.m.’s to look forward to on that tour. Shmotz: Yeah, we’re on at 9:30 for some of the Ozzfest shows. Benis: All this past year of touring has been about going out there and proving ourselves. We’re not done yet, obviously, we’re just keep doing it, you know. Our whole career has been continuing to prove ourselves. Everybody’s wanted to count us out forever, whether it’s locally in the Cleveland press or internationally after Slipknot was out and kind of stole a little thunder or whatever and people wanted to write us off, agencies didn’t want to work with us, promoters didn’t want to work with us, and we just kept proving that we have a fan base and it’s worth their money to come out and spend it on you and it’s worth their time. I don’t know when that’s going to end. Maybe after we hit gold or platinum, I don’t know. Stitch: Nah, we’ll never have enough. Shmotz: Right. You’re only as good as your last record. S&T: Yeah, [the industry’s] real fickle, man. It’s bad. It’s worse now, ‘cause they make LP’s for some really bad crap, and I know bands that aren’t signed that should be. We get new CD’s every week and with some I pop them in and think, "Who thought this was a good idea?" Plus there's no time for you to grow, you get one album to prove yourself. Shmotz: It depends, you know. If your first album has a whole ton of success and your second one doesn’t, you’re done. Like, if you come up slow but you keep moving upward, you’re doing all right. But if you come out and you sell 100,000 records, and then you do another album and it sells 250,000 and then the next one sells 500,000, that’s a success story too. It’s when you start that downward trend that you’re gonna lose everybody who jumped on your train. S&T: I think Sevendust [on the lineup that day] is the ultimate cult band, you know what I mean? I don’t know if they’ll ever have the commercial success that they probably deserve, but that’s what they did – little pieces, and now they have a solid fan base and know they’re going to sell x amount. Eventually the first album will go platinum, like in another year or something, and then the second one like that. They might never explode but if they stick together, they’ll be here fifteen years from now. Benis: And that could very well be us. Stitch: Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d rather have it like that. Shmotz: Right, that’s more normal. I think as far as evolution goes, Drowning Pool got so huge so quick… Benis: And like, Linkin Park, it’s gonna be tough to write another album that has – they had like four hits… Shmotz: Sold seven million! [Laughs] They had like five or six hits on that album. And they haven’t even gone through them all, I don’t think! Stitch: They sold more records than anybody last year. Shmotz: I heard they’re doing a re-mix of that album, so it’ll sell another fucking seven million of the same fucking record. That’s why there’s all this talk of us going in and re-recording our record, but if something happens from this tour and Ozzfest and we start selling records again, then guess what? See if in a fucking year we’re going to be touring again and it’ll be like another record. S&T: Right. Any plans right now, or you just seeing how things go? Shmotz: Just seeing how things go. I mean, we’re ready to go as far as writing music. We have a bunch of stuff that’s going already, we have a lot of ideas that we haven’t really physically done, but we have a lot of shit on tape, putting stuff together, we’ve got good ideas about where we’re going with it. But we just need some time to get in the studio. S&T: You just kind of fuck around with it on the road? Shmotz: Yeah, we keep beating it up, keep listening to it, you know, nine million different ways twisting shit up and then eventually see what we come up with. Benis: It’s hard to write when you’re on the bus all the time. With festival shows like this, you’re never around to hear and we never get a line check, let alone a sound check. At least when we’re playing at a club, we can take a few minutes and fool around with an idea, but with playing festivals, we just don’t have any time to write new material. S&T: How’s the vibe been backstage with the rest of the bands? Shmotz: Everybody’s been real cool. We’ve been hanging with Dry Cell. We like those guys, they’re pretty cool. S&T: Did you just meet them here? Shmotz: Yeah. We really dig ‘em. I think they got a lot of talent in that band. Benis: And they’re young, so they’re just going to get better. Shmotz: Yup. I always love to see that. The guys got a great opportunity and they’re damn good at it already. I’m jealous. S&T: Who else? Benis: Well, like, the singer for Sevendust, LJ. He’s real friendly, real cool. Shmotz: Which is nice, ‘cause he’s the host. You never know where you sit on a tour – you’ve got to meet everybody, talk to people and when people are a little frigid, you never feel like you fit in, but he comes right out and says, "Hey, how you doing? I’m LJ." Benis: I think most of the musicians kind of keep to themselves, or keep to their group, but it does take a little time ‘til you start seeing the same guys’ faces. Dragpipe – they were real friendly. S&T: How were they? ‘Cause I’ve never heard of them, but everybody’s been saying they put on a good show. Shmotz: Yeah, they’re pretty cool. Benis: One or two of the guys from Filter would come around. So yeah, it’s going good. Everybody’s cool with each other. Shmotz: Yeah, the heat’s been brutal too, which is one reason why people haven’t been mingling as much. Everyone runs right for their fucking bus to get into the [air conditioning]!! And you’re wiped out after being on stage for an hour. You don’t feel like hanging out and getting drunk. You want to sip on water, watch a movie and go to bed. So it’s brutal. Once we get up here I think we’ll start mixing around a bit more with everybody. Stitch: Yeah, the northern states, for sure. It’ll cool down a bit. Benis: Met some of the guys from Earshot too. Shmotz: They ought to do nametags on these fucking tours. S&T: Yeah, "Hello My Name Is." Shmotz: Yeah, I can’t remember shit, man. You hear like nine fucking names a day, ten names a day, and try to remember them! interview by scott sisti |
