From the Bad Livers Archive: Live review, Cleveland OH 1999

Live review, Cleveland, OH October 21, 1999

Dirty Linen Magazine, Feb/Mar 2000 issue

Those bad boys of bluegrass, the Bad Livers, made an impromptu stop in Cleveland in October for a sparsely attended but well-received show. The Austin-based duo of Mark Rubin (bass and tuba) and Danny Barnes (banjo and fiddle) laid down a loose-limbed but driving 90 minutes of down-and- dirty, mildly subversive grass. They played a lively, fresh set despite coming straight from a nine-hour drive from Philly (where they recounted getting caught in the “Amish vortex" off the Pennsylvania Turnpike.) Barnes is a formidable banjo player, making the fast rolls look effortless. He has an ideal bluegrass voice, high and lonesome, but with a bluesy elasticity. Rubin put a solid bottom on everything and pumped the rhythm along nicely. 

The pair has a sharp, intelligent sense of humor. Unfortunately, their cryptic references to the work of Hovhannes and bajo sexto music floated over the heads of the bemused blue-collar Cleveland audience. They bantered with people shouting out requests, rejecting most in no uncertain terms. One obnoxiously overzealous fan's repeated request for “Chainsaw Therapy” was met with a shout of “Shut the fuck up!” by an exasperated Barnes. They closed out the concert with a languid, trippy rendition of Thelonious Monk's

“Blue Monk.” confidence. Unfortunately, only about a half-dozen earlybirds heard their set.

— Peggy J. Latkovich (Cleveland Heights, OH)

From the Bad Livers Archives: "Bad Livers cross the line between Bluegrass and Punk"

Matty Karras, Longbranch Press, Longbranch NJ, 1995

As you might expect of a band that finds it appropriate to link a Johnny Cash (“Ring of Fire'') and a Motorhead song (“Jailbait”) in a medley simply because they're in the same key, the banjo-bearing, fiddle-flying, tattoo-toting Bad Livers sometimes find themselves on stage in rustic folk halls and other times in raucous punk clubs.

It's all a question of what club booked them first in any given town, according to upright bass and tuba player Mark Rubin.

“In a town like Denver, we played this little folk club the first time we played there, and from here on out we'll play that little folk club,” Rubin said.

At the Jersey Shore, on the other hand, the Livers debuted a few years back at the Fast Lane, a punk-rock cave, opening for the Butthole Surfers. Their gigs since then have all been at the Brighton Bar, the Long Branch punk haven where they will return Monday night.

“Have you ever been backstage (at a punk club)?” Rubin asked. “You know how there's graffiti all over the walls? This is the new thing we're gonna do now. We're gonna take a bucket of Lysol, we're gonna paint all the walls white and leave a potted plant. That's how punk-rock Bad Livers are."

But no matter who or what they're playing for, the Bad Livers sound and smell the same: like a banjo-and-fiddle based bluegrass band that writes sad ballads and happy banjo blitzkriegs with old-time Appalachian mountain flavors, and plays them with the virtuosity of great bluegrass musicians and the devil-may-care attitude of punk rockers. The fast songs on the band's most recent album, "Horses in the Mines,” are jumping testimonials to fingers flying on strings and blizzards of words sung lovingly through singer Danny Barnes' nose; the slow ones have a fervor that recalls gospel music.

The three Bad Livers are by now used to the sideways looks they get from new audiences, but those looks usually turn to foot-shuffling smiles once they start playing. “We're really happy about what we're playing, and I think the audience can see that," Rubin said. And now that the Austin, Texas, band has spent several years crisscrossing the country in their van, playing whatever small town would have them, he said, “We've got it down to where people know us and we don't have to explain ourselves every time”

Not that there should be that much to explain. Despite the Appalachian flavor, Rubin's basic explanation for the Livers is: We're from Texas. (Or, in his case: "I'm from Oklahoma. And everyone from Oklahoma moves to Texas as soon as they can.") In the Lone Star State, he said, “We speak a particular language, and it's the kind of environment we fit in. We're students of history and students of music. And you can devote yourself to Texas music and spend your whole life and never get tired.

"Look. We're playing the Old Settler's Bluegrass and Fiddler's Convention in Red Rock, Texas (at the end of the current tour), and once a month we're at Emo's (Austin's reigning punk-rock joint). We are the house band. You can't get more disparate than that."

The band's records and live reputation have won it some prestigious spots on its current tour - opening for Los Lobos in Detroit and for the Band at the legendary Wolf Trap in Virginia – but it has remained loyal to tiny Quarterstick Records, where its label mates include punk's veteran commercial failures the Mekons.

“In Detroit, a good quarter of the the audience was already familiar with us, and the other three-quarters was exceptionally receptive," Rubin said. “That validated a concept I've had for a long time: Our music could compete on a much higher level, on a commercial level, without changing anything."

But he said he doubts any major record label is ready to agree. There have been offers, he said, “but it's business, and in business you make someone the sucker deal right off the bat."

For now the Livers are all working part-time day jobs - Rubin is a computer systems operator for Ticketmaster (but thinks Pearl Jam is right on the mark" in its crusade against the ticket agency's high prices) — and collecting ideas for future records and side projects, such as a third Bad Livers album, due about a year from now.

"It takes time,” Rubin said, “when you've gotta go work 20 hours a week, and then you've got fishing. For every hour of work, you've gotta fish at least 20 minutes."

Rubin, the band's resident gabber, who has played bass and other rhythm instruments ever since picking up a sousaphone when a marching band coach pointed to a pile of instruments and said, "Pick up the biggest instrument you can,” hardly has to explain what he's usually after when he casts his rod.

Largemouth bass, of course.

From the Bad Livers Archive: Telluride Bluegrass Festival Program 1994

Bad Livers : Expect a Full Meal

David Owen, Telluride Bluegrass Festival Program 1994

A lot of different terms have been used to describe Bad Livers – everything from acoustic, speed-metal, bluegrass, thrash to cowpunk. All these terms, however, mean little to the Livers, whose focus is on just playing what comes naturally and relying on the principle that good music cannot be kept down for long.

Born from the Austin, Texas, gig scene, Bad Livers came together in 1990 as much out of attrition as out of any master plan. Banjo player Danny Barnes began booking himself as the “Danny Barnes Trio” around the town. The established sound of this title was misleading, because the trio consisted of whomever Barnes could scrape together to play that night. Over time, Ralph White and Mark Rubin fell into place to round out the group, as the three discovered their mutual influences and interest in musical history.

While all three have backgrounds that include forays into the punk, reggae and Cajun scenes, Rubin says it is their collective interest in history and their respect for their instruments that keeps the music pure.

“Some musicians who play the traditional instruments play almost as if they are apologizing for them,” Rubin said while pumping nickels into a Lake Tahoe slot machine. “We like and respect the instruments and the music we play. We don't feel any need to lose any of that."

The other thing that stands out about Bad Livers is that they are committed, above all, to making the music that feels right to them with no concessions to those who would try to pigeonhole them into one industry slot or another. Whether paying homage to Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Metallica or the Stooges, the band is true to its roots and will not adjust its musical focus at the expense of . any of its other foundations. As one journalist once put it, “Listening to Bad Livers is like entering a parallel universe, where bluegrass is the only musical language. But it's expansive enough to accomodate everything from Johnny Cash to Jimi Hendrix.”

“We have had all sorts of temptations dangled in front of us by people who wanted us to become something we are not,” Rubin said. “The compromises have been too great.

We have a friend who is a blues player and record companies are always asking him to ‘put on the blues suit.' Those are allowances I just can't make. I am absolutely incapable of putting on the suit."

Fortunately for the band, they have found a record company, Touch & Go – the label for bands like Therapy? and Pegboy – that is willing to take them for what they are and make no demands.

“They give us just enough rope to hang ourselves with,” said Rubin. “We send them a tape and they put it out backed by whatever resources they have available."

Despite the frustrations of classification and the occasional novelty act tag that follows them, Rubin said the band knows what is most important is the music, and ultimately, that is what makes the difficult times worth it. “The only reason the greats like Bill Monroe ever made it, was because they were bullheaded and stayed in the ballgame," said Rubin. “They realized that you can't keep good music down. Our one accomplishment is that we are still here after three records and over 1,000 shows."

Their latest album, Horses in the Mines, was recorded in a wood shed on an old analog 8-track. “We didn't do it that way because we thought it would sound special or to be cool; it was because it was all we could afford," Rubin said. "But, the end result is something we are really proud of. I think it captured more of our live feel than our last album. It sounds a little like we set up in your living room."Bad Livers will also continue to tour as long as it remains feasible, knowing that the stage is their most powerful ally.

"We have had a range of experiences few can boast, from playing established folk rooms to premier punk clubs — and that has allowed us to touch a lot of different types," Rubin said. “It has also given us the opportunity to turn younger audiences on to the older artists who we respect and admire, turn them on to what turns us on."

"No matter what draws people in or what preconceived notion they have of us, it will not change how we act on stage. They are still going to get two full hours of Bad Livers," Rubin concluded. "We have never had an audience we didn't like, regardless of how they showed up. Good music cannot be denied."

Bad Livers will be performing at 12:30 p.m. Saturday..

From the Bad Livers Archive : fRoots UK Review of Industry & Thrift, 12/1998

BAD LIVERS Industry & Thrift,  Sugar Hill The nucleus the Bad Livers may now just be two guys, Danny Barnes and Mark Rubin, but with the aid of producer Lloyd Maines they're finally producing a mighty, full and cohesive sound. Working on the fringes of old-time and bluegrass, but crossing over with all sorts of raw roots from klezmer to country blues and honky tonk, they've finally got away from their earlier lo-fi fetish and do full justice to their singular vision. Whether it's driven by tuba and banjo (Lumpy, Beanpole & Dirt) or totally manic flat-pick guitar and slapped string bass (Brand New Hat, or the Doc Watson-on-uppers Cannonball Rag), they've now worked out how to capture the energy and fertile imagination that previously seemed to be the wishful thinking of the press release. Elsewhere, mandolins, clarinets, fiddles, squeezeboxes, bottleneck and pedal steel guitars layer in and out, and the only regret in the whole package is the complete lack of who-plays-what credits. Oh, and there's the obligatory uncredited extra track on the end, where banjo and bass go wiggy.

An important, landmark album from a band long admired more for their absence of rules than what they actually achieved.

Responses to questions about "Punk" and "Old Time"

A nice young man asked if I’d be willing to participate in a research for a college paper he was working on, and exploration of the great number of self identified “punk” musicians involved in “old time.” Though he had never heard of me, or Bad Livers, several of his other interviewees recommended he approach me. Here are my responses:

Hello Mark Rubin, Thank you for being willing to participate in my project.

You are very welcome, Mr. XXX. I always appreciate the opportunity to share my observations.

The questions are below. If you feel that I am missing anything or if you want to add anything else please feel free to tell me.

I think you’ll find my recommendations in the provided answers. Jews tend to answer questions with questions. I apologize what whatever cultural disconnect that might provide.

What drew you into the punk rock/alt/harder scene? The purposeful rejection of the overarching consumerist narrative of the time. And finding, finally, a community of the fellow marginalized. Bear in mind my involvement in a “music” emanating from this counterculture was simply an advent of my already radicalized socio-political world view. This was the Reagan years, ’81-86. You cannot possibly conceive of what rejecting the narrative presented to you would be like at that time, and in a relatively rural environment. Either throw my lot in with these people, Kikes like me, Blacks, Fags, Meskins, Injuns, poor white trash etc, i.e. “Degenerates.” Or try and assimilate into a culture I don’t recognize and wouldn’t let me participate anyway. It was a once wonderful vibrant culture, with its own language, art, dance and even music, until the rich boys and jocks showed up with fucking love songs. These, the very people we worked hard to get away form. But like anything genuinely revolutionary, it was coopted by the well-off and became no more than another consumerist proto-culture, a hobby. It had once been the soundtrack to anti-consumerist radicalism, but it died for good right around 1989 and anything that appears after is mighty suspect. Most all the authentic voices were silenced by the new fashion craze. Capitalism can take down anything it seems. Except Fugazi. They’ll be punk rock long after the Apocalypse.

Can you talk about your journey into that community and what role you fulfilled there?

See above. For a brief time I roadied for the Flaming Lips on trips to Texas. With a Anarcho-collective group, we hosted 100’s of “hardcore"shows in Norman OK from 82-86 before I split for Dallas to join the collection of like minded musicians there. Literally everyone you can think of that toured at that time stayed at my flophouse after the gig we arranged at a the the local VFW hall and ran the PA. Minutemen, Black Flag, etc..I still in touch with many of them today. At least those still involved in the struggle. Bad Livers actually toured the US opening for the Butthole Surfers in 1991, which many have told me in the years since opened their ears to aggressive music forms outside of “rock."

When did you first hear Old-Time?

Define that term, It’s literally meaningless to me. Do you mean regional music that represents and speaks for the traditions and aspirations of a unified community? I grew up hearing Tohona-O’ohdam fiddlers and Chicken scratch bands as a kid on my family’s ranch in Arizona. The vaqueros we hired introduced me to their corridos and mariachi. In Nebraska and Kansas my family went to the Czech towns to dance their polkas and schottisches. I literally grew up at square dances my parents dance at with a local live dance band every Thursday, with fiddler sawing tunes accompanied by three-finger roll banjo. My brother was a adopted from the Kiowa tribe and on Sunday afternoons we went to the local pow-wow at the Rez and heard the singing and drumming. I recall we had Pakistani foreign exchange students who lived with us and played tabla and sarrood in our living room sometimes. I learned to sing in the Church of Christ next door to my home and stayed around in the parking lot afterwards when the pastor drove off and the beer and the banjos came out for a “bluegrass” weekly jam. I played with my dad in a village brass band playing the same tunes they had since they first formed after the Civil War as well, evoking “old times." When I moved to Dallas, I lived in a Mexican slum and got hip to Los Alegres de Teran, which my next door neighbor said was “old style.” So, what signifies “old-time” to you?

What were the circumstances around that?

It was the culture of my neighbors. Jews have to be good neighbors. They’ll still burn a cross on our yard anyway, but one must be nice.

What made you start playing Old-Time?

Again, sorry, I utter reject the notion that white skinned, Protestant immigrants get to use any term they like and make it mean anything they like. Like “waterboarding” means “torture,” or “resettlement camps” means “gas chambers,” all gifts of white skinned “Christians.” Your nomenclature is woefully insufficient I fear. Are you really asking “Why did you abandon your own family and cultural history just to steal someone else’s because it seems fun?” Is that your question ultimately?

What is it like being in this category of Old-Time musician? Were the people in the tradition welcoming?

Music doesn’t exist, cultures do. How welcoming would you be to someone who invited themselves to your party, eats all the food, drinks all your beer and takes one of your girls out to parking lot to have fun with? Hmmm…I stick to my own knitting and I didn’t grown up in a culture that rewards and supports thoughtless appropriation, so I get along just fine with my neighbors. Most importantly, I'm filled to the brim with my own culture and have no need to top it off with somebody else’s anyway. When I’m at a jam session, if anybody asks, I have a song of my culture that I can share. I cannot muster a whit of respect for those who posses the temerity to live otherwise. They may not be bad people, but even the casual observer would agree that’s really awful behavior.

What do you feel like your role in the Old-Time community is?

Zero. None of my business. I hang out and keep my mouth shut until I am invited to participate and then only just so, as I was raised. There’s this bizarre new “proto-culture” left over from urban hippies culture that identifies itself this way I’ve come to encounter. To my experience (nearly 30 years now) it’s simply just yet another consumerist enterprise that any thoughtful person would naturally avoid altogether, as it’s readily identifiable as an abysmal example of White Supremacy. My role? Destroy the entire system that allows people to abusively disrespect and dehumanize others in this offhand way. Question and confront anyone who engages in such, appealing to their inner goodness and humanity, to simply just fucking stop, stop right now and think about what the fuck it is they’re doing. They can’t all be bad people, because if they knew what we knew, they just wouldn’t be that way. I stand in opposition to these notions and my excoriations, stinging sometimes, are my expressions of love and concern, seeking compassion and working for world that people can meet as equals with respect and mutual understanding. Which, so we’re clear, these perspectives are deeply ingrained into both cultures' tradition, Kike and “punk."

What are the crossovers with punk rock and Old-Time?

As they have been expressed in the last 40 years, they are both consumerist fictions, a coopted facade to support Capitalism and ultimately destroy the native traditions of communities they lampoon. It's an effort to delegitimize them so as to assimilate them into the mainstream were they can be sold stuff easier. Culture thus is anathema to Capitalism and and anything that stands in the way of commerce is to be removed or destroyed.That’s it. Literally nothing more. I contend that if you can’t see the unified thread that connects all peoples who are marginalized, then I question what you’re are looking at. Further his kind of questioning belies a premise I utter reject and bears no relation to any reality I’ve experiences in living communities. Except of course, to any consumerist trained to abuse other people as a sport. That anyone can hold themselves at arms length for a other group of people and then parse their “music” independently because they themselves can’t understand it any other way simply represents the absolute worst behavior this country engages in. “Old Time” is a fiction, and was ever since Uncle Dave published his “old-time” songs, and was listed as a description on the 78’s. The clueless hippies found these discs and made the term up whole cloth, so they could put yet another culture in a box so they could understand it. It’s important to note that famed Anti-semite Henry Ford actively supported, even recording and distributing 78’s his fantasy imaginings, American “old time” music and culture as a was to confront the hoards of immigrants defiling his great country. This from a man who ensured Ford Motors supplied a copy of the “Elders of Zion” book in the glovebox of every Model T that came off the line. (“Take America Back.” )

“Mountain” is a moniker for a living culture of which “mountain music" represents only one tiny facet of. In reality, living “mountain” people (like the Spencers on Whitetop Mountain for instance) don’t have the privilege these folks exhibit by pulling apart their heritage, nor can they stop others from describing their lives as a “genre,” yet another consumerist fiction. In doing so, these rude outsiders are in fact choosing to refuse or acknowledge that this “music” is simply a desperate and fleeting moment that this entirely marginalized community uses as tool to regain their basic humanity, endangered the very forces you wish me to comment on? The people I see today who come from some other culture and glom on to another do so because they truly believe its a dead art, available for them to revive. How would you feel, a living person who is set upon by necrophiliacs? What cultural treasure do they possess? Would any take umbrage to some Chinese millionaires appropriating in the same sort of crude and classist burlesque that these people do? Do they have anything at all to contribute to these communities beside scorn and ridicule and theft? Is that your question?

For the record, no, they don’t. Like the Vikings they are descended of, they simply show up anyplace and take whatever suits them, without a single consequence supported by an angry sky god that requires blood. Hollow and hungry vessels buoyed by privilege they fill themselves up and care little what they leave in their wake. “Blues,” “Country,” “Old-time,” etc.. using this terminology and referring to “genres,” that’s how we in living cultures identify the racists and classist arriving to do ill. Like Ralph Rinzler, they yank the gold top Les Paul out of Doc Watson’s hand and make him play an acoustic, because Ralph knows his market and couldn’t care less about Doc’s people. “Genuine Hillbilly, come and see!” That’s what you say to me when you say “Old-Time."

Can you also add a few of your favorite fiddlers/banjo players from "the tradition" that influenced you? (I understand that "traditional" carries a lot of weight and I am using this term loosely to describe those who grew up in the vein of Old-Time) I am compiling a playlist alongside this research paper made up of tracks of "traditional" Old-Time musicians who former punk musicians connect with.

Just Google me. Who I’ve recorded, produced and toured with should give you a nice long list of my neighbors and folks I live or lived around. I toured with many, until I was told by the promoters they didn’t need a “white” bassist. Former “punks?” Adam Tanner had a great Metal noise act long ago. And though we disagree on the points I’ve noted, we stay in touch.

Thanks for participating!

A genuine pleasure. My responses to these queries are my expressions the culture I grew up in, how it lives right now and expresses as a unified culture; a people of which I am simply one of. Not some Ayn Rand solo act told all their lives they can do whatever they like with whatever they find, just as long as they have the gold to buy it.

It was “Nazi punks fuck off” then and its no different today. The Nazis just play banjo now. No fucking difference at all. Share that widely.

A bi gezundt,

MR

www.markrubin.com www.jewofoklahoma.com

The Past Sure Is Tense

It's not often that you get a window into your brain at the time you make a big decision.

I stumbled upon this interview I gave back in 2000 while doing advance press for the Bad Livers Blood and Mood tour.

It was in the messy aftermath of a gig at the 400 Club in Minneapolis MN mentioned in this very interview, that sealed my decision to turn off the lights on my participation in Bad Livers. He calls me up on my cell phone and runs up about 2 1/2 hours on my phone, while we're driving through a snow storm in Wisconsin. The writer senses I'm a little "morose" in this interview, please know that I am in fact reading from a 3 x 5" card given to me by my band mate in an often vain attempt that I keep the journalist on our talking points about the "new direction" of the band. However, the stuff about dying on the highway and preconceived journalistic agendas is all me.

I'm a much happier camper these days. No, really.

Mirrored here:

The road less traveled

Posted on April 12, 2000 by Mark Goldstein

Life on the road — and in the recording studio — is a mighty risky business for The Bad Livers. Mark Rubin, the band’s bassist (and occasional tuba player), explained this to me after an exceptionally rough day on tour.

“Well, you know … there’s a big conceit in the music business about touring,” he said, via the band’s van phone. The night before, the Livers had driven 14 hours from St. Louis to a Minneapolis gig, only to face an uncontrollable crowd that screamed epithets along with its requests.

“A lot of people die on the highway, in between hither and yon. When you see a guy onstage play[ing] music, he literally had to risk his own life to get there,” the bassist noted morosely.

But then, The Bad Livers have built their reputation by putting their musical lives on the line (and that’severy day). Rubin (who hails from Austin) and bandmate Danny Barnes (who resides in Washington state) started out playing acoustic roots music. Soon, however, a layer of punk flavored the mix, alongside other favorite musical influences — call it the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup effect. (“Dan [the band's vocalist, guitarist and electronics guru] is the alchemist, as far as that all goes,” Rubin is quick to note.) As a result, the group’s sound has been labeled “slamgrass” (as in bluegrass and slam dancing), attracting a cult following — as well as the ire of bluegrass fans everywhere — in the process.

“There are a lot of people who have … an agenda … about music,” Rubin says about critical purists. “They see something in our music that they think relates to that agenda, and so they’ve signed us up for it. The fact of the matter is, we’ve never joined any of those clubs. So if they want to reflect their agenda unto us all day long, they can — but they’ll be very disappointed.”

The group has survived yet another dangerous left turn with its latest release, Blood and Mood (Sugar Hill Records, 2000), which Rubin declares is “the way kids are making records right now.” With this album, all bets are off, as the band incorporates electronic elements and makes sort of a rural version of the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (EMD/Capitol, 1989).

“With the Blood and Mood operating system, we’re presenting music in a way with which people can readily identify,” Rubin explains. In a way, Blood and Mood is a logical next step to the band’s early work, which included bluegrass versions of songs by such artists as Metallica, Iggy Pop and the Misfits.

It’s all new territory for the Livers, though, and that’s probably why the album is as fun (and occasionally as rough and silly) as it is. Blood and Mood is a genuinely experimental release, and Barnes and Rubin are like two kids with new toys. Even the CD’s awkward moments are playful, and seemingly necessary to the conception of gems like “Fist Magnet,” “Death Trip” and “Love Songs Suck,” all highly danceable tunes (a theory I tested with a friend in her kitchen — thankfully without serious injury).

This is the band’s fifth trip to Asheville — so be sure to check your rear-view mirrors this week, folks, because for the first time, the band is packing a full array of electronic gadgetry (not to mention a drummer, Steve Bender).

“I’d recommend that your readers come with open ears and with no preconceptions,” cautions Rubin. Ever the ethnophile, he wields a precedent to help make his point: “When Bill Monroe came out, he used absolutely the highest technology available to him, and a lot of old-timers stood around him and told him he was crazy for using it — it was called ‘radio.’ A lot of people thought radio was going to destroy the music industry.”

And if Rubin has his own agenda, it’s more along the lines of “debunking myths” and dodging categorization. “Christ, they’re just records, you know what I mean? … It’s probably better just to express and present people with this joy that you have, and that, in and of itself, will be infectious and interesting.”

Still, it must be asked: How exactly did “slamgrass” happen?

“I guess early on [before Blood and Mood], we put kind of a filter on how we would express ourselves to the world,” Rubin recalls. “The filter at the time was in an acoustic format, and as we got older and experienced more things, both Danny and I came to the realization that it’s better just to play music and not worry about what box it goes into or what kind of outside filter you want to put onto it. … I think the realization came to us when we were working on the soundtrack for The Newton Boys (Sony/Columbia, 1998), because … Danny was leading the Seattle Symphony through his own compositions. And there was a moment there, like, ‘Heck, why didn’t you do this before?’ And the reason was, ‘Because you didn’t think about it.’ We had our own preconceptions about what we did, which limited [us]. And the only limitations you have are the ones you put on yourself.

“That’s kind of what Blood and Mood is,” continues the newly liberated bassist. “It’s like complete freedom, no restrictions. It’s actually been very, very satisfying. I mean, if it never sells a copy — and it may not — it doesn’t matter, because we made this burnin’ record. We listen to it in our own van, and it makes us happy. So we win.”