Live Coverage of Bonnaroo 2010 on MoeTrainsTracks.com by Moe and B!

It’s that time of year again, and Moe Train’s Tracks is headed to Manchester, TN for the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival!  King B and The Train will be bringing you a totally new Tracks experience with this year’s coverage.  We’ll be blogging on the site as all of the action unfolds over the weekend, as well as getting great interviews with the fest’s top musicians, concert photos and more!

We embark on our trip from Philadelphia and will be arriving in Manchester, TN about 12 (ugh!) hours later.  Who knows what the road will hold for us, besides a ridiculously long time on Route 81 (that road SUCKS!), and pure Excelsior insanity!  Keep connected to the Tracks by following on Twitter (@MoeTrainsTracks), and watching the site for lots of great updates…

We’ll be camped out by the front of the Bonnaroo arch, so if you see us, come say hi!  If we’re not there, we’ll be bouncing around the grounds doing our artist interviews, taking in a ton of shows, and interviewing people in the crowds.  We plan on checking out as much of the festival as possible, and we hope to meet as many of you as possible!  If you have any great tips  about what’s going on at the festival, or just want us to come stop by and hang out.. Message us on Twitter, and we’ll try to stop by!

Bonnaroo has always been one of our favorite festivals to cover and we’re especially looking forward to spreading our Global Domination Tour to Manchester, Tennessee and Bonnaroo!

WE’LL SEE YOU ON THE FARM!!!  BONNNNARRRROOOOOOOOOOOO!

Related articles:

• Bonnaroo Live Webcasts (jambase.com)
• Why They Call It… Bonnaroo (spin.com)
• FREE ALBUM! SPIN’s Picks for Bonnaroo 2010 (spin.com)

Bonnaroo Top 5 Activities: #5 – The Food Vendors

Within one month, we’ll be joining tens of thousands of festival fans in Manchester, TN at one of our favorite music festivals, Bonnaroo(oooooooooooooooooo!).  The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival has more than enough activities to keep you busy 24 hours a day throughout the festival weekend, not even counting the concerts!  Here’s a rundown of 5 of our favorite activities to hit when you’re not jamming out to the music…

(The red circle is our camping spot.)

5.  The Food Vendors

Go anywhere on the farm, and you’ll smell amazing food being cooked all over the place.  Sure, you may smell good food mixed with dirt and B.O., but it still smells pretty good!  Whether you’re in Centeroo getting churros, Chinese, gyros, gigantic slices of pizza, or you’re in the campgrounds having garlic grilled cheese, burritos, or funnel cakes, you’ll never go hungry.

For those who are Bonnaroo veterans, you are very familiar with the lines of vendors which greet you on the way into Centeroo.  Can corn dogs be considered a breakfast!  Hell yeah.  It’s Bonnaroo!  Virtually anything that you could crave (or have the munchies for) can be found on the farm.  We had the giant gyros almost every night, and they definitely gave us the strength to power on for the late night scene.

Didn’t do enough pregaming at your tent?  Hit the Brooers Tent and sample some amazing beers from all over the US.  It’s the microbrew fan’s dream.  Yeah, we know.  You’re not supposed to be drinking during the day… As soon as we get our interviews and on the scene crowd stuff done, we’re indulging.

So stay healthy at Roo.  Keep your body fueled with the amazing eats and drinks to be found on the farm.  It’ll keep you happy and alive!

Related articles:

• Ben & Jerry’s Bonnaroo Flavor (jambase.com)
• Bonnaroo Food Drive (jambase.com)
• Fuse & Twix want to send you and ten of your friends to Bonnaroo 2010 (gadling.com)

Roky Erickson (w/ Okkervil River) – True Love Cast Out All Evil (8.5/10)

“Rokkervil” took me by surprise.  Admittedly, I have never been a huge fan of Okkervil River (I know, I know) or Roky Erickson.  Roky’s history of imprisonment and hospitals for schizophrenia, drug use and mail obsession were intriguing enough to garner a listen.  (Well, that, The Explosives,his team up with Okkervil, and the fact that it’s Roky’s first new release in 14 years.)

Roky Erickson (w/ Okkervil River)

True Love Cast Out All Evil (8.5/10)

“Rokkervil” took me by surprise.  Admittedly, I have never been a huge fan of Okkervil River (I know, I know) or Roky Erickson.  Roky’s history of imprisonment and hospitals for schizophrenia, drug use and mail obsession were intriguing enough to garner a listen.  (Well, that, The Explosives,his team up with Okkervil, and the fact that it’s Roky’s first new release in 14 years.)

The album opens with with the obligatory lo-fi recording (these days!), and expands into a sonically endearing and heartfelt performance.  Roky’s gravely storytelling backed by Okkervil River’s solid instrumentation makes for one of my largest musical surprises of 2010.  What began as a hesitant listen, became the soundtrack for the rest of my late night.

- Moe

Second opinion: I was highly skeptical of this album also, especially after reading about this guy’s story (which I encourage everyone to do).  His back story though is eventually what supports the authenticity of his candor.  Okkervil River provides the perfect atmosphere to showcase his gravel-pit southern vocals.  Easily one of the most intriguing albums I’ve heard recently.  I’m really excited about this record, thanks Train!

Related articles:

• Roky Erickson to release first new material in 14 years (guardian.co.uk)
• Roky Erickson & Okkervil River – “Be And Bring Me Home” (Stereogum Premiere) (stereogum.com)

MoeTrainsTracks.com Version 2 (Pt. 2)

Here’s part 2 of the MoeTrainsTracks.com transformation:

• Album Reviews: We know. “Everyone’s a critic these days.” MTT has always been independent and uncensored, and our reviews will remain that way. No long, drawn out, wordfests that you have to sift through just to hear if we thought the album was Excelsior or not. We’ll keep it short, so you can get to the listening.
• Tracks’ Tweets: Yeah, we use Twitter. You can follow Moe Train (@MoeTrainsTracks) and King B (@MTTracks_KingB) on your own Twitter app, or read our streams on the front page of MTT.com. We’re constantly updating our Twitter streams, so keep an eye on it to know what we’re up to at all times!
• iPhone App Reviews: Excelsior is a big fan of our iPhones, and we’ll let you know some of the apps that get us through everyday life (and those which you shouldn’t waste your money on!) This section will just be a small added bonus on MTT.com, but don’t worry, the tech geek side in us will stay pretty quiet.
• Music News: We’ll always have the latest world music news streaming on the right sidebar on MTT.com.
• Photo Galleries: Our photo galleries will feature photos that we’ve shot, as well as outside contributors’ pics. We’d like to showcase individual photographers, so if you feel that your pictures are especially Excelsior, contact us, and you may be featured on the site!

  

  Image via CrunchBase

Thanks again to our 130,000+ listeners worldwide, and the tons of readers who have stuck with us since day one. We have a blast creating new content for all of you, and will continue on the same path for years to come. Don’t forget! Festival Season is upon us, and we’ll be seeing you out on the road very soon!

To Excelsior!

- Brian “B” Kracyla and Monty “Moe Train” Wiradilaga

Jeremy Stein (Rothbury Creator)

MTT has a chat with Jeremy Stein, creator of the Rothbury Festival about putting together a festival, dream acts, and the festival’s future.

Moe:  We sitting back stage her with Jeremy Stein, promoter and creator of Rothbury Festival.  Thanks for being with us.

Jeremy:  Fantastic being here guys, thanks.

M:  How did you go about putting together your vision of the Rothbury Festival?

J:  That’s good question.  I think it came together really over a course of years.  It’s funny, I was reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and there’s a big thing in there about taking 10,000 hours of work to really get a vision for something and think that’s what happened over the course of a decade.  We were putting on a lot of different events; 5,000 people, 15,000, 20,000, all over the world and also had a lot of different artists under our management firm who were traveling the world at festivals.

So I had this kind of rare experience to be able to go to festivals across Europe/Australia/Japan, and really make notes on all of them, and see what was working, and combining that with a general attempt to have a cultural event at Rothbury, and an art event.

Obviously music is a magnet, no question, but it’s so much more than that for everyone.  Some people even have trouble putting their finger on what that more is, but it’s so much more.  You combine all those factors and it almost surfaced organically.

M:  Last year, we called Rothbury ‘Festival of the Year’; for the lineup, for the atmosphere, for the people, the total experience.  How important was it for you to create an all-encompassing experience for your guests?

J:  The general idea is that it’s an immersive environment that people come to live at.  A lot of festivals, not for good or for bad but just the way they are, are generally daytime into the evening events and they shut down, and they’re not camping festivals so everyone goes home at night and they might come back the next day.  This kind of event is different.  Not only is it a big holiday weekend (4^th of July), and people are really looking forward to getting off work and they’re out of school and all those types of things, but they are living here for four days.  And when you’re living somewhere for four days, you get to know the people next to you, and you make some new friends out there.

Not only are you obviously here for the big shows and the big dance events and all that kind of stuff, but most of the time you’re not at a big show, you’re relaxing.  You can’t just be on level 11 for 24 hours a day. (Moe giggles)  So, that’s a big part of what the forest turned into, it’s a daytime lounge.  And when people can get that downtime in a shaded, cool environment with their friends, they have way more energy for the rest of the day and they’re not just totally burnt out at the end of the show.  That’s a pretty exciting scene.

M:  Did you take the forest idea from Fuji Rock?

J:  I’ve been to Fuji Rock a lot and there’s no question that we are kindred spirits.  Especially on their recycling.  They were doing that recycling before just about anyone else that I’ve seen out there.  They weren’t doing composting but the teams that we working at the cans and everything and having a strong green scene.  That was just more a part of the culture there than anything else but they were a little ahead of the curve.  I’m friends with those guys and it’s probably the closest relationship of a forested environment for a festival that I know of.

M:  In the future, what do you see for Rothbury and what is your perfect headlining act?

J:  Wow, that’s a tough question.  I think year to year, there’s no question that the headlining acts give a little bit of their own identity to what that year of the festival is, and some of them are available some years and just not another.  There’s no question either that there’s a top 25 names out there and we all know who they are, there’s no big secrets.  So, one year it’ll work for Rothbury and one year it won’t.  We just gotta go where the wind takes us.  I care just as much about the music, I’m not afraid about the music though, we’ll get the right music every year.

I think that now we’ve hit a critical mass where the industry knows what it is.  It’s just as exciting to the artist as it is to everyone else and they want to be here.  So, we’re gonna get there on the musical side.  I care as much about the community building, the interactive environment, and getting more people involved in the show.  The more everyone’s involved in the show, the more the entire grounds become the stage.  It’s not just you come to watch something, you come to be a part of something.  That’s what I’m after.

M:  Thank you very much for being with us.  We appreciate it.  The festival’s been killer.

J:  Great guys, good luck.  Have fun out there.

Related articles:

• Rothbury 2010 Canceled; Midwest May Gain Bamboozle Fest (rollingstone.com)

MGMT

A classic interview with Andrew and Ben From MGMT in 2008 just as they broke as major new players on the music scene.

MGMT Interview on Moe Train’s Tracks

Andrew Vanwyngarden, Ben Goldwasser (MGMT)

Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla (Moe Train’s Tracks)

Starlight Ballroom – Philadelphia, PA

Here’s a great interview that was rescued from The Tracks’ vaults…  Back in early 2008, MTT caught up with Andrew and Ben from MGMT in Philadelphia, PA.

MGMT had just gotten a major break in the music scene with the widespread critical success of Oracular Spectacular.  Keep an eye on MoeTrainsTracks.com for tons of great new content!

Moe:  We saw you guys down at Bonnaroo for your set, it was a great way to open up the weekend.  I was a pretty epic show if I must say.

Andrew: Yeah, it was fun.  We had been to Bonnaroo before so it was good to see it from the side of the artist instead of the person in the crowd.  It was only our second festival show.

M:  Oh really, where was the first, Coachella?

A:  Yeah.

M:  So how do they compare?

A:  I don’t know, Coachella was crazier for us because we were more nervous.  Bonnaroo was a little more relaxed and cool.

M:  You guys just started tour together with a band right?

Ben:  We started practicing with them about a year ago.  I think we were kinda thrust into exposure a little too quickly for our taste.  We played on national television after we had only been touring with the band for a couple of months.

M:  Was that on Letterman?

B:  Yeah.

M:  You looked a little nervous.

B:  Yeah, we were very nervous!  But we’re getting more comfortable and we don’t have to think as hard when we’re playing, its kinda getting to be more natural.  We’re getting used to playing for crowds.

M:  Did you guys have sound problems at Bonnaroo in the beginning, what was going on?

B:  Yeah, well, the festival thing, we hardly ever really get a sound check so it’s always a little weird starting out.

A:  I think the monitors were pretty messed up.

M:  (to Andrew) Oh, by the way, you had on some pretty fucking crazy pants.  I remember walking up to set and saying ‘holy shit’, those bright blue ones!

A:  Tropical floral bellbottoms, yeah.  Really big bellbottoms. 

M:  They looked comfortable though!

A:  Yeah, they’re real comfortable.

M:  Saw you guys backstage, you guys looked pretty chill, pretty relaxed, so I guess you feel like you’re falling into place with everything.

B:  We’re good at hanging out.  We’re good at relaxing.

M:  Any standout moments yet from your recent successes?

B:  We just played at the Oxygen festival in Ireland and that was really crazy.  There were all these people climbing up the towers that were holding up the tent and we had to stop the show because this girl made it all the way to the roof of the tent so that you couldn’t even see her anymore and everyone was yelling at her telling her to come down.

M:  Did she take a spill?

B:  No, it would have been ugly if she had!  That was probably at least 60 feet up in the air or something.  It was pretty crazy.

M:  I saw a video of you guys at some festival in Scotland that you guys were playing and you were walking around the grounds, checking out the scene; Andrew you like the thrill-rides?

A:  As much as I’d like to keep the myth going that I like thrill-rides, I’m new to them.  I’ve been on like Space Mountain and most of the Disney rides, and I like those a lot.  I was like twenty when I started going on roller coasters, so I don’t think I’d go on the Slingshot thing.  I would vomit.

M:  You guys got together at Wesleyan, and you were actually making music that you thought would be annoying?

A:  We knew it was annoying.

M:  Just to fuck around, just playing, just to amuse yourselves?

A:  I dunno…  We were young and foolish.

M:  You were freshman?

A:  Yeah.

M:  So it was basically putting that freshman energy, that drunken and banged up energy back into the music.

A:  Yeah, exactly.

M:  What’s up with the clothing optional dorm?

B:  At some point it was designated a “clothing optional” dorm but there aren’t many people walking around naked there.  There were a few, and we were friends with most of them.

A:  I did naked calisthenics with Vin Popper on time.  (all laugh)

B:  Nice.

M:  Tell us about some of those early dorm session jams.  We used to do the same thing.  We’d go out to parties, get all fucked up and come back and just grab our instruments at like 2 o’clock in the morning and start jamming.  So what was it like with you guys getting together?

B:  It was a lot like that.  It’s was just kinda very casual, just having fun.  We had a lot of other friends that we played music with and we were both in other bands at the same time.  It wasn’t like we started a band in order to get successful and get fans and all that, we just started it for something to do and didn’t really care if anyone liked it.

M:  You guys just probably wrote the album for yourselves.

B:  In a way, I mean, we know we were writing it for other people because we had signed a record deal at that point, so we had a delivery date, so there was a little bit of pressure on us but when we were writing the songs we didn’t think that anyone was actually gonna hear the album, so it was pretty much just writing it for ourselves.

M:  So I guess its still a surprise with all of this going on?

B:  Yeah, its still a surprise.  And, I don’t know, it keeps getting crazier!

M:  When you guys were first recording you guys had a pretty gritty sound right?  I mean, if you were recording back in your dorms you’re going to have that unintentional gritty, natural sound.  Did you guys try to replicate that sound?

B:  In a way it was the other way around because we were doing a lot of stuff just on computers, so a lot of it was very electronic and very clean sounding.  I think we’ve tried to get dirtier.

M:  You had the producer who worked with the Flaming Lips.  Did you guys pick him because he had that psychedelic background?

A:  We kinda just chose him because we talked to him and we’re fans of the Flaming Lips and other stuff he’s done, like Sleater-Kinney and Mogwai.  He’s not the kind of producer that wants to mold the band into something, he kinda just lets them do their own thing.  So, he was good for us.

M:  So did the album come out exactly how you wanted it to come out?

A:  At the time I think it did, yeah.

M:  Looking back now, what do you think?

A:  I’m sure now if we listened to it a bunch, we’d probably change stuff.  But we think it’s good that we can’t because it captures that moment.

M:  I see you in a lot of pictures wearing sunglasses, you’re not becoming Bono are you?

A:  I hope to God not!!  If I am you should stab me…

M:  What’s your beef with him?

A:  Nah, I just don’t like him.  I heard he’s a great guy, and he seems like he’s got good intentions.  I think it’s really the sunglasses that piss me off the most.  So, now I’m never going to wear sunglasses again.

M:  Will you burn them in effigy?

A:  We stabbed an effigy at our senior recital.

M:  Ben, you said, “To give music meaning you have to have your back up against something”; What, you don’t remember?

A:  (laughs) You sound like Thoreau or something.

M:  Yeah, I guess you were being pretty introspective.

B:  I guess maybe just having some resistance kind of helps.  With us, when we got signed and we had to deal with all the kind of big-record-label bullshit for the first time, I think it kind of forced us to look at what we’re doing and try to give it as much meaning as possible and try to ask ourselves why we were doing it in the first place.

M:  So what’s your validation?

A:  I don’t think we’re validated.

M:  No?  What will be your validation then?

A:  If aliens approve of our music.  So, we’re waiting for contact.

M:  Waiting for the return in 2012 when the earth ends?  I know you guys are joking around about your future, about what will happen hen things will come, but we’re sitting inside of a big tour bus.  Obviously this is probably five times bigger than your dorm room was.  You said that when the fame comes around and you get the big label money that you would go get blow jobs, you would ride horses to your gigs, and go get castles.  What’s going on with the success?

B:  Yeah, we’ve both gotten blow jobs before, which is cool.  We’re working on the horses and the castles.

M:  What have you benefited from just by being in the business?

A: We get a lot of free clothes, a lot of free stuff.  And we both got haircuts for the first time in a long time.  We used to cut our own hair and now we can afford real haircuts.

M:  If you guys think that everything musically has been done before, how does MGMT stray away from the norm’?

B:  I don’t know if everything’s been done before…

A:  All the good stuff has.

B:  Yeah, all the good stuff’s been done before but pretty much…

A:  You could string your guitar with celery or something, but that doesn’t mean it gonna be good music.

B:  Any new good thing I think comes out of recycled ideas and using them in creative ways.  Rock and roll is a pretty basic, simple form of music but there’s so many possibilities with it.

A:  You don’t have to make up your own language to write a good poem.

M:  Who is it that does that again…

A:  Sigur Ros!

M:  Oh yeah that’s right.  Did you guys see them at Bonnaroo, what’d you think?

A:  I heard for somebody that it’s much better to see them in a wide open cathedral-type space, like an indoor space, and I could see how that’d be true.  It didn’t translate that well to the festival thing.

M:  Yeah, it’s pretty grand I guess.  So, what’s the future of MGMT, or have not realized the present yet?

A:  We have trouble comprehending what’s happening at all times.  But the future should hold good things.   We’re trying to get a cabin somewhere in the woods.  James is gonna cut firewood, I had a vision of him walking towards me with an arm full of firewood and I’m gonna smile and then our dog is gonna lick our faces.

M:  (laughing)  Alright guys, thanks a lot.

Bill Kreutzmann (The Grateful Dead)

The Tracks brings you Mr. Bill Kreutzmann, drummer for The Grateful Dead.  In this interview, we touched on The Grateful Dead’s influence and interactions during President Obama‘s campaign, their responsibilities to the Deadheads, and if the Bay Area’s New Year’s Eve shows will be the curtain call for The Grateful Dead.

M:  Mr. Bill Kreutzmann, of the Grateful Dead, thank you very much for being here on the Tracks.

B:  Yeah, nice being here, thanks for having me.

M:  Legends… The Grateful Dead… Obviously if you think about American bands, you think about the Grateful Dead.  How do you feel the Grateful Dead’s influence and responsibility to the fans has been over the years?

B:  The responsibility lies in the love of playing music and trying to play the best music you possibly can.  For years and years we never pitched politics until this last horrendous eight years came up.  We’re always pretty much a-political and we didn’t tell the fans anything, we just entertained.  We just played music, that’s all we cared about.

M:  So you said these horrendous past eight years, how are the next years going to happen, how do you feel about it?

B:  I think the next eight years are going to be incredible.  At least it’s going to be a lot different, a lot better.  I got to meet President Obama and he’s real, man.  I stood closer than you and I are talking right now and I looked right in his eye.  He’s also from Hawaii so I kidded him about his surfing.  There was a picture of him bodysurfing and he had really good form, he was on his side and had his arm out like you’re supposed to have when you bodysurf.  I was kidding him about it, and he didn’t know where I was from, he thought Grateful Dead, he must have lived in the states or something.  He looked me in the eye real close and said, “You’re from Hawaii, aren’t you?”  That cat’s smart, man.  No, I really see a freshness.  We played the inauguration.  We played the Atlantic Ball.  He came and he met us there the first time and it was terrific.  The guy really took time to come and meet the people that helped him because we had played at Penn State to about 16,000 people, a young audience, college educated people, and that really helped.  I think the

young vote really helped him.  And the way he did his campaign was so smart.  Dave Axelrod is a wonderful person and he lead President Obama down the right path.  He said, “use computers, use the internet, don’t get lobbyist money, get donations” and that was smart.  Now he doesn’t owe any one person something, like some big corporation or something.  Of course, you know all about lobbying, I don’t want to get into all that nonsense, I dislike that myself.  That’s not politics.  You hire somebody from your state to be your senator and then they’re paid for by something

else.  That’s no good.

M:  So the Dead influenced the voter’s vote?  (laughs) Did you get him into office or what?

B:  I think we influenced them at Penn State for sure.  What happened to me is, about four or five years ago, I read his second book, The Audacity of Hope, and I said, my God, this is a dream if this guy can be president.  So I’m really happy with it.

M:  The show on New Year’s Eve is in the Bay Area.  The rumor is that that will be the farewell show for the Dead.

B:  That’s a rumor.  We have actually talked about that yet.  I’ve been asked a few questions today about plans and records and stuff but we haven’t actually gotten together and had a sit down about what we’re going to do yet.

M:  Well, thank you for the music for all these years.

B:  You bet, man!  It’s been fun!

M:  You’ve made a lot of people happy.

B:  It’s made me happy.  That’s probably why I’m still alive!  (laughs)

M:  Appreciate it.

B:  You’re welcome, man.

Related Articles:

• The Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead (futurelab.net)
• 7 Walkers Tour: Papa Mali, Bill Kreutzmann, George Porter Jr. (jambase.com)
• Bob Weir, Phil Lesh keeping the Dead alive with Furthur (pbpulse.com)

Festival Fever

Every year about this time, I get “Festival Fever.”  You know the feeling…  The weather’s shitty, you’ve been cooped up indoors for way too long, and all of the festival lineups are coming out.  You long for fun in the sun, and the amazing music which becomes the soundtrack of your life.

Well, that time is here, and The Train’s got the fever!  (No, it’s not a Swine Flu symptom.  I’ve gotten the shot, thank you.)  We’ve got about four months until The Tracks kicks it into super media mode, and does some more amazing interviews! (Check out the new interviews posted on the site)  King B and I love being out in the crowd and also back behind the scenes so we can bring you as many great and uncensored musician interviews as possible!

What do you do when you get the fever?  Do you start researching all of the bands that you’re going to see?  Listen to new music?  Check your tent to see if it still works?  Hit the gym, so you can physically make it through the grueling festival weekends?

Well, no matter what you do… You’d better get ready, because there’s not much time before FESTIVAL TIME!

- Moe

Related articles:

• Dan Deacon feeling better, played Purchase (pics), playing MtyMx & Bonnaroo, shares a name with a Philly cop (brooklynvegan.com)
• The Flu And Getting Lucky (plastic.com)

Dillinger Escape Plan Interview

The Tracks and Greg from Dillinger speak about camaraderie, DIY or Die and more at Bonnaroo.

DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN INTERVIEW WITH MOE TRAIN’S TRACKS

Greg Puciato, Monty Wiradilaga, Brian Kracyla

Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo 2009

You never know what’s going to happen during a Moe Train’s Tracks interview, as Greg Puciato, frontman of Dillinger Escape Plan, has his own interview with a dazed and confused girl, we speak about the camaraderie of the scene, how “DIY or Die” fuels his band, their new lineup, and next year’s upcoming album.  Enjoy.

M:  What’s going on man?

G:  Nothing, just hanging out, just walking around checking some stuff out.

Random girl:  (to Greg) Can you point me in the direction of the Rendezvous Tent?

G:  Umm. (Laughter)  What is your name?

RG:  I’m Caroline.

G:  Caroline, I’m Greg from the Dillinger Escape Plan, and we are doing an interview right now.

C:  Okay.

G:  Um, and I have no idea where I am right now either.

C:  I’m supposed to have a rendezvous at the Rendezvous Tent.

G:  That what you do at the Rendezvous Tent, right, but you don’t know how to get there, which poses a problem.  I don’t know either.  (to random passerby)  Do you know how to get to the Rendezvous Tent?

RP:  I don’t know how to get there.

G:  What good is trying to rendezvous with someone if you can’t get to the Rendezvous Tent?!  (all laughing)  Caroline, good luck trying to get there.

C:  Thank you.

G:  Wow!  How many drugs did that girl take?

M:  Welcome to Bonnaroo.

G:  Seriously, that was amazing.  She was higher than a kite.

M:  (Laughter) I think that’s the general consensus with most people here right now.

G:  Most people I look at here, if they don’t have sunglasses on, you can just look in their eye and be like, “You’re on some other thing right now in some other place.”

M:  Exactly.  Earlier today, when you guys came on, it was like, “Wake the fuck up Bonnaroo!”

G:  Dude, I can’t believe how siked people were.  I thought for sure, in general at this fest’ because it has a reputation for being more of a hippy peace-love type of thing, that as soon as we come out and start screaming at people and doing cool shit, people are going to turn around and just walk the other way, but people were siked, at one in the afternoon on the last day!  It was honestly, we were talking about it after the show, the best big show that we’ve ever played in the United States.

M:  Really?

G:  Yeah.  We felt like we played well.  People seemed stoked on us.

M:  Yeah, the reception was definitely great.

G:  This type of vibe, it just doesn’t exist that often in the U.S., this type of festival vibe.  It felt very European.  In the United States, when you think of a festival, you think of Ozzfest or Warped Tour, and it’s like the same thing all day long.  But this is cool because yesterday was Nine Inch Nails and today, if you wanted to, you can see the Dillinger Escape Plan and then Erika Badu.

M:  She’s still on right now.

G:  I really wanted to see her…

M:  I’ll cut it short then.

G:  It’s okay.  It’s cool because it seems like, for a very long time here, people have been very into the mind-set of like, “I’m only listen to metal” or “I only listen to hip-hop”.  Now, it’s cool to see so many people turn out for such an eclectic thing.

M:  Exactly.  It’s just always weird to see the different  the different scenes clashing.

G:  No, it’s cool, it’s very cool.

M:  In watching your set it became evident how camaraderie really works its way into your music.  You don’t see often where you can throw your mic into the crowd, let them sing, and when you call for it, they throw it right back to you.

G:  I think something about our music, we’ve been around for ten years, I think there’s some aspect to it, besides the obvious insane energy and aggression of it, there’s a vibe of everyone knowing that it’s not the easiest thing in the world to listen to and it’s not the easiest thing in the world to get.   For as many people who are siked on it there’s a lot of people that just probably hate it.  I think that makes the people that are into to it have this really us-against-the-world type of vibe.  We’ve always tried to be really hands-on with our fans and really communicative and never to-cool-for-school and always talk to them and do cool stuff with them.  If they right to us online we try to write back to every person.  I think, over the years, it’s created now a point where we have this really cool synchronous type vibe with our fans.  It’s neat man, it’s really nice.

M:  It’s also basically crossed the line from camaraderie to trust.

G:  Yeah, that kid could have stole the mic and ran away with it, but he threw it back.  That’s the other thing, I think when you have confidence and you give someone some responsibility and your cool to them, they feel obligated to be cool back.  If that kid had tried to run away with the mic I probably would have jumped on him and killed him.  But it feels good and it’s interesting, I have a lot of people say that our shows, even though they are so aggressive and so violent, it feels like the overall vibe is still positive in a way.  So, yeah, that’s really cool.

M:  Absolutely.  Also, not just that, but you doing stage diving and your guitarist stage diving with his guitar!  Now that’s trust.

G:  Yeah.  To me, we just try to take the vibe of playing in a basement to twenty people where we came from and try to get that to translate to bigger places and the only way to do that is to be as hands-on and as physically in people’s faces as possible and force them to wake up a little bit.  It sad to see so many people have such a rock star complex that the only time that they engage their fans is if they do some kind of scheduled meet-and-greet or a signing or something.  You know, hang out for a little bit and shake some people’s hands or jump into the crowd or do something.  I do know man, you (the rock star) are no better than anyone else. This is going to be over for us one day and who knows what we’re going to be doing.  So to try to act like you’re cooler than school is silly.

M:  Hippies versus hardcore kids…

G:  It’s two sides to the same coin because the whole hippy vibe and the punk rock thing, which is what hardcore came out of, are both very socially aware movements.  There both very communal, we’re all in this together versus some type of exterior force type of vibe, and one just took a much more aggressive approach than the other.  It’s kinda like one is Malcolm X and one is Martin Luther King Jr.  They want the same thing but one is like, “I’m gonna smoke you out” and the other is like, “I’m gonna kick you in the fucking face!”  But we want the same thing, so I think that’s why it translates.  It’s not like we’re just knuckleheads trying to incite the crowd to beat each other up.  I’d like to think it’s more intelligent than that.

M:  What do you think about the term “DIY or die” and how’s that relate to your band?

G:  Well, for us, that’s pretty much exactly how we try to do everything.  We don’t have a manager, we self-manage ourselves.  We are very hands-on, there’s no merch’, there’s no poster, there’s nothing about our band visually, sonically, how we are represented in press, anything, that we are not the seed of and have the final say in.  As much as it drives us nuts and we spend every waking moment of our lives working on this, I know that there is absolutely nothing out representing us that we didn’t see from its inception to its finality.  I think that it’s another thing that our fans appreciate.  If they get a t-shirt from us, they aren’t getting it from some graphic designer that works for the record company that we were just like, “Yeah, whatever, that sounds cool, how big is the check we’re gonna get?”  That thing has to look like something that I would wear, that means something to me, that’s looks cool.  I think, especially in the climate now where the record industry is just collapsing completely, that the people that can do the most DIY are the only ones that are going to stay afloat.

M:  That’s basically how the trend in music is going these days.

G:  It has to be.  It has to go back to that.  If you’re forced to be in a position financially to cut back every bit of slack you possibly can and to try to do as much by yourself as you possibly can, it’s gonna weed everybody out.  The only people that are going to stay alive are the people who really give a shit and the people who care enough to put in the time to do everything themselves.  The days of being a kid, and thinking that your rock star fantasy is going to come true and someone else is going to wipe your ass for you and do everything for you and you’re just gonna get a check at the end of the day, are completely over.

M:  Hit the road and promote yourself.

G:  Yeah man, go out and do the shows.  Don’t suck live.  Don’t write shitty music.  Put out cool shit and you’ll last.

M:  So what’s your favorite lyric, the one that means the most to you?

G:  You know what, it’s probably a lyric that’s going to be on our upcoming record because, for me, lyrics are snap-shots of where you were in your life, and you don’t want to be there forever.  So when we sing songs from our past records it’s like looking at a picture of myself in an auditory way.  I’ll be singing a song, and I’ll remember writing that song, I was twenty-three, I was in my basement, this is exactly what I was talking about.  I might not relate to it now.  Hopefully, you’re in a different place, especially when you’re yelling and screaming and pissed, you know.  You shouldn’t still be pissed six years later at the same thing.  The trick is to find a kernel of that memory and hone in on it, you can still mean what you saying and you’re not just spitting out consonants and vowels.  That’s for someone else to decide.  I know that’s a shitty answer, but I don’t have a favorite one of my lyrics.  I know they’re all pretty piss-poor, to be honest with you.  (laughter)  If you want to listen to lyrics, you should probably listen to Dylan or something.

M:  So when’s the new album coming out?

G:  February or January of 2010, which sounds like a long time but it’s realistically like 6 months away.  We do three more weeks of touring and then we go home and start recording in late July, early August.  January, February at the latest, we’ll get it out, and we’re siked man.

M:  What can we look forward to in the new album?

G:  Well, we got a new drummer, and that’s the biggest difference.  Our new drummer is just on fire!  He’s twenty-four and honestly the best drummer I’ve ever played with.  He wants to crush everyone.  He’s got this fire in him that he needs to prove to the world he’s the shit.  That’s kinda cool because he’s pushing us, and we’re really hard on ourselves so to be pushed by someone who is brand new is a really good feeling.  I can honestly say, after being in this band for a decade, that the stuff we’re writing now is the most inspired stuff we’ve ever written.  It’s hard to know whether you’re still going to be able to do stuff without becoming a caricature or parody of yourself.  The fact that we can still have something to say, ten years into it, with essentially the same style music, to me is nice, the fact that people still give a shit.  I think everyone will like it.  Anyone that likes us should be pleased with the new record.

M:  Awesome.  We look forward to it.  Thanks a lot for being with us.

G:  Definitely dude.