Good times with some old friends – I’ve been fortunate to have a long standing relationship with the Clutch organization over the years and great to spend time with them in a few places this year. Finally made it out to the desert to see my buddy Dave Catching & his new project. Not to mention, rawkin’ with the Melvins & more.
Enjoy ?
Clutch
Found myself in the same city a few times this year with these guys. We’re old friends & I do my best to stay in touch with them. First was in my hometown in Dallas still in town after the holidays & then out in Los Angeles while I out there for the ASCAP Expo.
Jan 8th – House Of Blues – Dallas, TX
It was actually the first time I’d seen Clutch & the guys in over a year & a half – last time being at the ghastly Rocklahoma festival – Memorable for Neil (Fallon/Singer) & I making jokes about headliners (what Axl Rose is calling) Guns N Roses these days that seemed to write themselves and the oppressive Hades-like-heat.
I told Neil that it being May and styling hot, that the promoters saw it in theirs hearts to move the show to this month as it was originally held in July.
Gotta love Oklahoma.
Normally they wouldn’t be playing this time of the year as after their annual “Holiday Run” between the day after Christmas and New Year’s they take a break.
These shows were booked simply to tour their way down to central Texas outside of Austin where they were to begin recording their next LP.
They played four new songs with working titles (see below) that sounded very much in the same mindset as their last record Earthrocker but also with more of a flair of the celestial sounds of their 2nd LP. Old friends Lionize opened & a good time was had by all.
Didn’t get much time to chat other than with my buddy Oscar (tour manager) because they were headed down that night. Oscar who is always hilarious & I made the most of it by busting each other’s balls for about 15 solid mins before letting them get to it.
Setlist –
50,000 Unstoppable Watts
Struck Down
Texan Book of the Dead
Earth Rocker
Unto the Breach
The Witch (New)
Payback
Cyborg Bette
Book, Saddle, & Go
ZZ (New)
T.S.O.V.A. (New)
Crucial Velocity
The Elephant Riders
Our Lady of Electric Light (New)
Encore:
Burning Beard
Animal Farm
Electric Worry /One Eye Dollar
April 29th – Hollywood Palladium – Hollywood,CA
Somehow after all these years I realized that I had never seen Clutch in California or anywhere west of Texas & I also had never been to the Palladium before so I was excited on both accounts. On tour all Summer with Mastadon & Graveyard as part of the Missing Link tour, it seems I kept missing them just by a day or two due to my own hectic schedule so while in Hollywood for most of April, they were playing just down the street from the ASCAP Expo I was attending that week.
My old friend (& former client) Bryan Hinkley was also in town for the Expo. He is Clutch’s former stage manager and 2nd guitarist on past tours.
Along with his brother Billy (both formerly from Boston hardcore legends Tree) they have a great band Never Got Caught that I managed a few years ago.
Neil sings on a few of the tracks on their LP Creepshow – Check it out here. Bryan is now part of a great collective called Gratitude Sound.
I met up with Bryan (who I hadn’t seen in over 3 years) before the show & in we went ready for a great show at this gorgeous venue.
Now almost four months removed from the show in January, the new songs were complete with titles and a release date & album name were announced –
Psychic Warfare (out in October) and at this show they played two new songs from it – X-Ray Visions (where they just released a great video for – see below) & Energy Weapons.
Gonna be a great record, excited for it’s release.
The night before the show, my friend Matt took me to this little dive in East Hollywood called Jumbo’s Clown Room, that’s not exactly a strip club. They have girls dancing on poles in all kinds of states of undress but no actual nudity. Suddenly instead of whatever cheesy Hair Metal that’s the usual fare I’m hearing Tight Like That from Clutch’s 2nd LP – Not something I would expect & wanted to meet the dancer that chose this. Her name is Lily Larue and she was totally rad & we laughed and talked about music for the rest of the time we were at the club and asked her if she was going to the show to which she replied with an enthusiastic “Yes!”.
Watching the show from sidestage, I spotted Lily right up front rawking out. Good times.
Setlist –
The Mob Goes Wild
Profits of Doom
Earth Rocker
Crucial Velocity
Gravel Road
Unto the Breach
Pure Rock Fury
Texan Book of the Dead
Cypress Grove
Cyborg Bette
The Regulator
X-Ray Visions
Energy Weapons
D.C. Sound Attack!
A Shogun Named Marcus
Electric Worry /One Eye Dollar
Lily Larue
Mastadon
After the show was one of those great nights where everyone got to catch up and hang & drink. It seemed like everyone from NYC was in town + friends in LA.
Paul Kleig (tour manager for Gogol Bordello) one of the funniest & most likable dudes ever was in town, manager & Master Ballbuster Jack Flanagan & I had another one of our hilarious talks. Brad from Fu Manchu, Nik Lak, (long-time graphics designer & album cover artist for Clutch) a really fun guy also from Brooklyn was there too. Spoke with Neil at length for the first time in a really long time and that’s always enjoyable. Tried to get Oscar to join me at Pinches for tacos but they had a bus call soon. Made plans to hang with Bryan at ASCAP before heading back out on Sunset praying my rental car was still there. Good times.
Goatsnake/Mojave Lords – May 2nd – Pappy & Harriet’s – Pioneertown,CA
Finally made my pilgrimage out deep into the law-less High Desert of Joshua Tree, California to see my buddy Dave Catching’s new project the appropriately named Mojave Lords along with another group Goatsnake that I’ve longed to see.
I’ve been to the desert before, out to Coachella for their annual Arts & Music Festival almost every year they’ve had it since 2002 (and then promptly stopped going a few years ago when it became the insufferable gathering that it is today). But that’s not really the desert is it? That’s some cushy space on perfectly sculpted polo grounds for hipsters to have their photo taken in.
Why was this so important to me? A disciple of desert legends Kyuss (who later morphed into Queens of the Stone Age) since they first appeared on my radar at a
Faith No More show in early ’93 – Somehow on all those trips to Coachella I never had the time to visit the area where all of that came from.
Hell, the infamous Welcome to Sky Valley sign is only a half an hour away from Indio.
How Dave & Mojave Lords and Pete Stahl & Goatsnake factor into all of this is interesting: I had met Catching way back in 1994 when he was tour managing Kyuss – The previous year I had gone to see the rap group House of Pain and opening the show was (unknown at the time) Rage Against the Machine and another band I’d never heard of Wool. I left that show way bigger fans of those bands than the headliner my young self had come to see.
Between 1993-1996 Kyuss and Wool defined my taste and littered just about every conversation I had (music or otherwise).
It never occurred to my naive youth that these two bands even had heard of each other let alone knew each other. (pre-internet).
Wool (in my mind) were from D.C. (by this time I had learned that the Stahl brothers were from Scream) & Kyuss was from the desert and never the twain shall meet.
So imagine my shock when the next time I run into Catching, he’s on tour with Wool! And then came a split 7″ with both bands (recorded live in the desert at the final Kyuss generator party).
They had actually toured together during this time but the tour never came to Texas – (Kyuss guitarist and QOTSA frontman) Josh Homme once told me that it
was “the greatest tour that nobody saw”.
Catching went on to be a touring member of QOTSA on their first few tours & by that time I was interning at Loosegroove Records (Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam’s label that put out the first Queens LP) So the next time I see Catching is with Queens opening for Ween in 1999 and that was the night I met the Ween guys that later resulted in me working with Claude & touring with them. Catching & Claude would later tour together in Queens off-shoot Eagles of Death Metal that Catching is still a member of today. So it’s all very incestous, even within my own history – so that’s why it was so important to me to get my ass out to the place where it all began.
Other than my own personal history, the venue they were playing at Pappy & Harriet’s has it’s own deep rich past :
In 1946, a group of filmmakers built a Western-style movie set in the high desert 25 miles north of Palm Springs for the cowboy actors Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Production designers decorated the facades of “Main Street” with a Western saloon, bank, chapel and a cantina. Pioneertown and its cantina were used in more than 50 films and television programs throughout the 1940s and 1950s, including The Cisco Kid and Judge Roy Bean.
In 1972, Francis Aleba and her husband purchased the building and developed the property into a cantina.
In 1982, Aleba’s daughter Harriet and her husband, Claude “Pappy” Allen, bought The Cantina and renamed it Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace. With its family style Tex-Mex cuisine and live music, The Cantina often featured Pappy, Harriet, and their granddaughter Kristina, and became a local haunt for bikers & people from all walks of life.
Now getting there – from Hollywood at night, proved to be far more challenging than I had anticipated. For one their was some other festival (not Coachella) happening that had the freeways backed up and then when I finally started to see the solar windmills and turn off Hwy 10 the winds were blowing so hard that it was all I could do to keep control of the car and with no street lights I could barely see and it was pitch darkness in every direction.
When I finally turned of the 29 I realized I was on my own – driving into nothingness, almost discouraged until I came upon it – like an oasis in the middle of nowhere.
It was perfect and just the way I had pictured it.
You may recall seeing it profiled on Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown
After having a great meal and tasting some local brew with Catching the Mojave Lords began to set up their equipment.
No stage, no bullshit in this place – the band is eye level and in your face. The band came out with a super fun record (with the perfect title) Unfuckwithable last year & were already playing songs from their upcoming 2nd LP.
Along with Eagles of Death Metal bassist B.O.C (Brian O’ Connor) and another friend of mine Gene Trautmann (also a former Queens alumni) on drums
the band began to thrash the place with straight-up hard rawking.
Soon Goatsnake took the stage playing songs from Black Age Blues, their first LP in 15 years that was set to be released in a few days.
Had a great time catching up with Dave & Gene after the show before heading back to Hollywood. One of the places I’d always wanted to see out here of course is
Rancho de La Luna, the legendary recording studio Catching started with Fred Drake way back in 1993 where all these great records were recorded.
I had to head back so I didn’t get the chance to visit but hopefully next time.
As a head’s up – ever since Dave Grohl & The Foo Fighters documentary profiled the Rancho naturally people are curious and would like to see it.
While I was happy for the episode and to see Dave finally get some long over-due credit and a wonderful tribute to Fred, the studio is also his home & the nightmare of having uninvited guests showing up at all hours of the night in the desert has become palpable.
So please, don’t show up to my friends house uninvited – it’s not gonna go the way you think it will.
Goatsnake Listening Party – May 3rd – Black – Hollywood, CA
The next night Pete Stahl was hosting a listening party for the new Goatsnake LP at a metal bar adaquitly named Black just a mile or so from where I was staying in Hollywood.
I love Pete, easily one of my fave singers of any genre but he’s a strange character sometimes & this was a strange night.
First of all, when I walked in I saw Scott from the band Repulsion with a vinyl setup in one of the booth’s in the indoor portion of the bar & he’s playing this record so loud, it’s literally unbearable. The kinda loud where you actually can’t hear your own voice – the bartenders couldn’t hear the patrons & the tiny speakers in this place were distorting to the point of near explosion. I actually went outside to get away from the record I came to hear.
Next, I have met Pete at least two dozen times over as many years – hell, Wool spent the night over at my friend Jeff’s house in Fort Worth several times in the early 90’s & I was over there for that, but every time I “meet” Pete, it’s always for the “first” time. Since we had just hung out the night before at Pappy & Harriet’s I was sure it wouldn’t be the case this time & didn’t feel the need to reintroduce myself when I saw him. Didn’t matter, even saying hello was difficult haha.
Good times, & you should def check this record out (at loud but still reasonable volume ?
The Melvins – June 11th – Trees – Dallas, TX
Speaking of unreasonable volume haha – Always happy to see the Melvins. Thankfully, they come thru at least once a year and for the last few it has (once again) become tradition for old buddy Tony & I to make a night of it. Ironically one of the last times I saw Wool (see above) they were on tour with the Melvins & L7.
Heavy, beyond words & one of the most original bands in history. Having said that, although I love the unlikely covers they do as it gives their performances a very all-bets-are-off vibe that for us makes them a must-see each time. It was more logical that they would do two Butthole Surfers covers with Jeff Pinkus in the band & this time when they played Moving to Florida, Singer/Guitarist Buzz Osbourne emoted his best Gibby Haynes as compared to doing it straight like last time.
And speaking of last time, that’s my only complaint – as I mentioned you can’t miss a Melvins show because their is no telling what they will do, but tonight they put on an almost identical show as last time. Still better than anybody else & I’d pay to see it again.
Setlist –
Hag Me
The Water Glass
Captain Comedown
Onions Make the Milk Taste Bad
Sesame Street Meat
Graveyard (Butthole Surfers cover)
Moving to Florida (Butthole Surfers cover)
It’s Shoved
Stop (James Gang cover)
Sweet Willy Rollbar
Bride of Crankenstein
A Growing Disgust
We Are Doomed
Youth of America (Wipers cover)
The Bit
Your Blessened
Night Goat
Fascists Eat Donuts (Pop-O-Pies cover)
Photos –
Roy Turner
Chad Beck
Leora Saul
Trevor Long
