IPOD
RADIO
Les Claypool
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Jun 30, 2006
God where do you begin with a talent like Les Claypool? He has one of the most unique voices and bass playing style in all of the entire music industry. He first broke out with Primus, one of the best bands ever, but they still manage to suck at the same time. With the popularity that Primus gave Claypool he was able to strike out with a number of smaller projects such as Sausage [which is mediocre], the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, Bucket of Bernie Brains and his own solo work. 2006 is a big year for Claypool because he has a mockumentary he directed called Electric Apricot making the festival rounds, a new solo album Of Whales and Woe and his first novel, South of the Pumphouse, will be out in early July.
Buy Of Whales and Woe
Daniel Robert Epstein: This is the first record you’ve done that’s credited solely to you.
Les Claypool: Yeah but it’s pretty much mostly in name because the Holy Mackerel record I did many years ago was my solo record. I just have always had a hard time just saying, this is Les Claypool. I’ve always had something along with it whether it was Frog Brigade or Holy Mackerel. I did the Bucket of Bernie Brains thing, but that was a real band. But my agent finally said, “Look you have all these projects and people are calling to book you for these festivals and whatnot and I never know which band is going to go. So I’m just booking you as Les Claypool and you just show up with whoever you want.” Since then I’ve just been going under my own moniker.
DRE:
It is same thing when we buy tickets to your shows. We’re just never exactly sure who we’re going to get.
Les:
Yeah, I’m the Forrest Gump of bass players. The box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.
DRE:
The album is really stripped down as well.
Les:
Yeah, I would say this hearkens back to the Holy Mackerel type stuff. It’s a similar approach to a lot of material. It’s definitely more aggressive than anything I’ve done since Pork Soda. It’s got a lot more hair on it.
DRE:
Why is that, do you have more hair on you?
Les:
I do have more hair on me. But it was drums and me banging on my four string bass. That’s what started all these songs. It had a very primal raw start so there wasn’t a lot of elaborate arranging or anything to these pieces. There’s not a lot of foresight in these things. They just come together. I assume they reflect my state of mind at the time, but I couldn’t really analyze it and tell you why it’s like that.
DRE:
A few weeks ago I got to speak to Mike Patton, a guy who mirrors your career a bit. Both of you have so many different projects and you’re admired so much. He said that his latest album was basically sitting on his desktop of his computer and he’d just fool around with it whenever he had a chance. When you’re on one project are you just doing that until it’s over?
Les:
There are usually a few pots on the stove, which would be apparent with me having a book coming out in July as well as my record as well as a tour as well as a film we’re trying to get distribution for. There tends to be a lot of things going on. I’m touring with my band right now, I have an Oysterhead show next week and a Primus show at the end of all that. I keep a lot of balls in the air. But my approach to this record was at least technically a lot different than Mike’s because I’ve become this vintage analog gear nut, so I have all this insane old vintage analog gear. This album was all tracked to 2” 16-track through an old API console and mixed down to a half inch ATR machine. It has that analog sound to it.
DRE:
Is that because you’re not into computers?
Les:
I just prefer the sound of analog. You can’t deny the convenience of utilizing ProTools and these various programs, but there’s an inherent quality to analog which is very pleasant to the ears. A lot of the programs and software and plug-ins you get with your various ProTools rigs are designed to replicate a lot of these sounds. They do a good job so I do use ProTools in the final stage but the original basic tracks are all done in analog.
DRE:
Was this album done in your personal studio?
Les:
It’s all done at my house.
DRE:
Is your home studio very elaborate?
Les:
I’ve lived there now for 12 years and I’ve made a lot of records in this building, which was basically a pool house. When we bought the place, both my mother and my mother-in-law each tried to stake claim to this building and I said “No way, I’m going to start filling it full of gear.” It looks like a little apartment full of all this old gear. It’s not pristine by any stretch of the imagination.
DRE:
How did you select the guys that are on this album with you?
Les:
I’ve been playing with Skerik and Mike [Dillon] for years. I produced Gabby La La’s first record and she’s been touring with me this last year. So they’re people I’ve worked with.
DRE:
Were they just around?
Les:
I brought them all in when they were in town. Skerik and Mike tend to be on tour quite a bit, so when they were in the area I just had them come up for a day or two and lay some stuff down on these tracks.
DRE:
When you come up with a riff or a line, how do you know it goes on Of Whales and Woe and not go with Oysterhead or any of the other things you’re working with?
Les:
The stuff we do with Oysterhead is done when we all sit in a room and jam together. It’s the same with Primus, for the most part. Every now and again we all bring in stuff, but when I made the Holy Mackerel record I always joked that it was the material that I didn’t want to inflict upon the guys in Primus. It was all these leftover things. I’ll write the drum part as well as the guitar part and blah blah blah and that’s just not how we do things in Primus or in Oysterhead. Everybody writes their own parts.
DRE:
So it’s simply because you’re not with those guys?
Les:
It depends. It’s not like I sit down and write a song and go, “That’s going to be on my album!” I go in and I’ll record some stuff. Usually I’m just fiddling around, because one of my favorite things to do with all this vintage analog gear is to go out and try to get drum sounds. That’s my favorite thing. So I’ll be out there fiddling around, next thing you know I’ve got a beat recorded, then I start laying bass over the top of it and then these things start stacking up. I will go back and listen to them and go, “That’s interesting” and write some lyrics and throw on parts or bring somebody in to put in parts. The next thing you know I have a song.
DRE:
So it’s cobbled together.
Les:
It’s always different. There’s no real formula to any of this stuff. If you start thinking about it too much, I think it becomes a bit contrived. I would imagine you do some creative writing. For me, I’m just constantly writing stuff down in my notebooks. If I get an idea I write it down in my calendar or it might be something that turns into a song someday or it may not. It’s the same with music. You get a little something and you think it’s interesting, you lay it down somewhere, at some points it becomes a song and many times it doesn’t become anything.
DRE:
Where does that stuff go?
Les:
It’s all laying around. It’s like building materials. If you know people that are carpenters, there are always random bits of building materials lying around their property. Some of it gets used and a lot of it doesn’t.
DRE:
From listening to your music over the years I knew there was something going on with fishing, but I didn’t know you were actually into fishing. I read that you were on some fly-fishing TV show.
Les:
When I was growing up we didn’t have any money. I come from a long line of auto mechanics and what we did on weekends was that if I wasn’t digging or something with my dad or fixing some deck or remodeling a bathroom or whatever, we were out floating around in San Pablo Bay trying to catch sturgeon or we were out in the ocean, salmon fishing. Every year we would take camping vacations in the same spot. What do you do when you camp? A lot of fishing.
DRE:
A lot of people would call it an obsession with fishing. It’s in everything. I’ve got a copy of your book and that has fishing in it as well.
Les:
Hemingway wrote a lot about fishing and bullfighting. Bukowski wrote about booze and horse racing.
DRE:
Do you have other vices or hobbies?
Les:
Yeah, there are all kinds of things I enjoy doing. I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with fishing. I’m always fiddling around with cars. I have my tractor that I go out with and rip and tear through big mounds of poison oak and blackberry bushes, mow the fields, I have to work the land. I’ve got this damn land that I got to deal with it. But the main thing is, I’ve got kids and hanging out with them is the greatest activity.
DRE:
How old are your kids?
Les:
My son just turned ten and my daughter will be nine next month.
DRE:
Do they play music yet?
Les:
My daughter’s taking piano. My son’s learning a little bit of violin. He’s yet to really find what he wants to do. She really enjoys piano so she’s getting pretty good. They’re actually on the first song of the record, they were out in the studio banging on some stuff and I just recorded it.
DRE:
Oh so they are Cage and Lena!
Les:
Yeah.
DRE:
What was the inspiration for making Electric Apricot?
Les:
I’ve written a few screenplays and I had some ideas for various things over the years so this was just an idea. I was talking to Matt Stone about it one day and we were laughing about. Then I was talking to Jason McHugh who is a mutual friend of ours who produced a lot of Trey [Parker] and Matt’s live action stuff and he just pushed it through. It was a lot of work and a hell of an achievement. We’ve been in three film festivals and won awards in all three.
DRE:
Congratulations, so is it an improvised mockumentary or was it all scripted?
Les:
There was a definite storyline and some of it was scripted, but most of it was reacting to scenarios. As director, I just corralled these guys through the storyline but we relied a lot on their improvisational skills.
DRE:
Are you in the movie?
Les:
I am a character in the movie who is part of the main band.
DRE:
What’s the main band’s deal?
Les:
They’re a hippie jam band.
DRE:
I read that your book [South of the Pumphouse] was a screenplay at one point.
Les:
It was a 60 page screenplay about ten years ago and then as it slowly evolved into a 120 page screenplay over the years, we raised money, had producers come on and go off and film companies interested and then not interested, same as the record industry. Finally I decided to write it as a novel so that if it ever gets made into a film and it’s convoluted, at least the original story will exist somewhere for whoever might care. So I wrote it, found a literary agent and they got me this deal with Akashic Books. It’s been great. They’re really good people and they are the hotshot indies.
DRE:
Are you going to look at repitching it as a movie?
Les:
I’m sure we will at some point. We have a few different other projects on the table that we’re taking around right now, but I’m sure Pumphouse will be one of them.
DRE:
I know you’ve directed some animated music videos and you’ve done songs for both South Park and Robot Chicken. Do you have ideas you want to do as a cartoon?
Les:
I’ve got a couple treatments written up. There’s a long list of things I’d like to do. How much of it will come to fruition, I have no idea.
DRE:
Who are you looking to collaborate with that you haven’t yet?
Les:
I don’t really know. A lot of these collaborations come out of the blue. I was working with working with Adrian Belew and Danny Carey a while ago but we never really finished it. We just did some stuff for Adrian’s record and that was fun. I’d love to do some stuff with my string bass, some acoustic bass stuff. I’d love to play with someone like Merle Haggard or Neil Young or Willie Nelson. I think that would be great with a duo type thing, but I don’t know if they’d want to work with me.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
God where do you begin with a talent like Les Claypool? He has one of the most unique voices and bass playing style in all of the entire music industry. He first broke out with Primus, one of the best bands ever, but they still manage to suck at the same time. With the popularity that Primus gave Claypool he was able to strike out with a number of smaller projects such as Sausage [which is mediocre], the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, Bucket of Bernie Brains and his own solo work. 2006 is a big year for Claypool because he has a mockumentary he directed called Electric Apricot making the festival rounds, a new solo album Of Whales and Woe and his first novel, South of the Pumphouse, will be out in early July.
Buy Of Whales and Woe
Daniel Robert Epstein: This is the first record you’ve done that’s credited solely to you.
Les Claypool: Yeah but it’s pretty much mostly in name because the Holy Mackerel record I did many years ago was my solo record. I just have always had a hard time just saying, this is Les Claypool. I’ve always had something along with it whether it was Frog Brigade or Holy Mackerel. I did the Bucket of Bernie Brains thing, but that was a real band. But my agent finally said, “Look you have all these projects and people are calling to book you for these festivals and whatnot and I never know which band is going to go. So I’m just booking you as Les Claypool and you just show up with whoever you want.” Since then I’ve just been going under my own moniker.
DRE:
It is same thing when we buy tickets to your shows. We’re just never exactly sure who we’re going to get.
Les:
Yeah, I’m the Forrest Gump of bass players. The box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.
DRE:
The album is really stripped down as well.
Les:
Yeah, I would say this hearkens back to the Holy Mackerel type stuff. It’s a similar approach to a lot of material. It’s definitely more aggressive than anything I’ve done since Pork Soda. It’s got a lot more hair on it.
DRE:
Why is that, do you have more hair on you?
Les:
I do have more hair on me. But it was drums and me banging on my four string bass. That’s what started all these songs. It had a very primal raw start so there wasn’t a lot of elaborate arranging or anything to these pieces. There’s not a lot of foresight in these things. They just come together. I assume they reflect my state of mind at the time, but I couldn’t really analyze it and tell you why it’s like that.
DRE:
A few weeks ago I got to speak to Mike Patton, a guy who mirrors your career a bit. Both of you have so many different projects and you’re admired so much. He said that his latest album was basically sitting on his desktop of his computer and he’d just fool around with it whenever he had a chance. When you’re on one project are you just doing that until it’s over?
Les:
There are usually a few pots on the stove, which would be apparent with me having a book coming out in July as well as my record as well as a tour as well as a film we’re trying to get distribution for. There tends to be a lot of things going on. I’m touring with my band right now, I have an Oysterhead show next week and a Primus show at the end of all that. I keep a lot of balls in the air. But my approach to this record was at least technically a lot different than Mike’s because I’ve become this vintage analog gear nut, so I have all this insane old vintage analog gear. This album was all tracked to 2” 16-track through an old API console and mixed down to a half inch ATR machine. It has that analog sound to it.
DRE:
Is that because you’re not into computers?
Les:
I just prefer the sound of analog. You can’t deny the convenience of utilizing ProTools and these various programs, but there’s an inherent quality to analog which is very pleasant to the ears. A lot of the programs and software and plug-ins you get with your various ProTools rigs are designed to replicate a lot of these sounds. They do a good job so I do use ProTools in the final stage but the original basic tracks are all done in analog.
DRE:
Was this album done in your personal studio?
Les:
It’s all done at my house.
DRE:
Is your home studio very elaborate?
Les:
I’ve lived there now for 12 years and I’ve made a lot of records in this building, which was basically a pool house. When we bought the place, both my mother and my mother-in-law each tried to stake claim to this building and I said “No way, I’m going to start filling it full of gear.” It looks like a little apartment full of all this old gear. It’s not pristine by any stretch of the imagination.
DRE:
How did you select the guys that are on this album with you?
Les:
I’ve been playing with Skerik and Mike [Dillon] for years. I produced Gabby La La’s first record and she’s been touring with me this last year. So they’re people I’ve worked with.
DRE:
Were they just around?
Les:
I brought them all in when they were in town. Skerik and Mike tend to be on tour quite a bit, so when they were in the area I just had them come up for a day or two and lay some stuff down on these tracks.
DRE:
When you come up with a riff or a line, how do you know it goes on Of Whales and Woe and not go with Oysterhead or any of the other things you’re working with?
Les:
The stuff we do with Oysterhead is done when we all sit in a room and jam together. It’s the same with Primus, for the most part. Every now and again we all bring in stuff, but when I made the Holy Mackerel record I always joked that it was the material that I didn’t want to inflict upon the guys in Primus. It was all these leftover things. I’ll write the drum part as well as the guitar part and blah blah blah and that’s just not how we do things in Primus or in Oysterhead. Everybody writes their own parts.
DRE:
So it’s simply because you’re not with those guys?
Les:
It depends. It’s not like I sit down and write a song and go, “That’s going to be on my album!” I go in and I’ll record some stuff. Usually I’m just fiddling around, because one of my favorite things to do with all this vintage analog gear is to go out and try to get drum sounds. That’s my favorite thing. So I’ll be out there fiddling around, next thing you know I’ve got a beat recorded, then I start laying bass over the top of it and then these things start stacking up. I will go back and listen to them and go, “That’s interesting” and write some lyrics and throw on parts or bring somebody in to put in parts. The next thing you know I have a song.
DRE:
So it’s cobbled together.
Les:
It’s always different. There’s no real formula to any of this stuff. If you start thinking about it too much, I think it becomes a bit contrived. I would imagine you do some creative writing. For me, I’m just constantly writing stuff down in my notebooks. If I get an idea I write it down in my calendar or it might be something that turns into a song someday or it may not. It’s the same with music. You get a little something and you think it’s interesting, you lay it down somewhere, at some points it becomes a song and many times it doesn’t become anything.
DRE:
Where does that stuff go?
Les:
It’s all laying around. It’s like building materials. If you know people that are carpenters, there are always random bits of building materials lying around their property. Some of it gets used and a lot of it doesn’t.
DRE:
From listening to your music over the years I knew there was something going on with fishing, but I didn’t know you were actually into fishing. I read that you were on some fly-fishing TV show.
Les:
When I was growing up we didn’t have any money. I come from a long line of auto mechanics and what we did on weekends was that if I wasn’t digging or something with my dad or fixing some deck or remodeling a bathroom or whatever, we were out floating around in San Pablo Bay trying to catch sturgeon or we were out in the ocean, salmon fishing. Every year we would take camping vacations in the same spot. What do you do when you camp? A lot of fishing.
DRE:
A lot of people would call it an obsession with fishing. It’s in everything. I’ve got a copy of your book and that has fishing in it as well.
Les:
Hemingway wrote a lot about fishing and bullfighting. Bukowski wrote about booze and horse racing.
DRE:
Do you have other vices or hobbies?
Les:
Yeah, there are all kinds of things I enjoy doing. I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with fishing. I’m always fiddling around with cars. I have my tractor that I go out with and rip and tear through big mounds of poison oak and blackberry bushes, mow the fields, I have to work the land. I’ve got this damn land that I got to deal with it. But the main thing is, I’ve got kids and hanging out with them is the greatest activity.
DRE:
How old are your kids?
Les:
My son just turned ten and my daughter will be nine next month.
DRE:
Do they play music yet?
Les:
My daughter’s taking piano. My son’s learning a little bit of violin. He’s yet to really find what he wants to do. She really enjoys piano so she’s getting pretty good. They’re actually on the first song of the record, they were out in the studio banging on some stuff and I just recorded it.
DRE:
Oh so they are Cage and Lena!
Les:
Yeah.
DRE:
What was the inspiration for making Electric Apricot?
Les:
I’ve written a few screenplays and I had some ideas for various things over the years so this was just an idea. I was talking to Matt Stone about it one day and we were laughing about. Then I was talking to Jason McHugh who is a mutual friend of ours who produced a lot of Trey [Parker] and Matt’s live action stuff and he just pushed it through. It was a lot of work and a hell of an achievement. We’ve been in three film festivals and won awards in all three.
DRE:
Congratulations, so is it an improvised mockumentary or was it all scripted?
Les:
There was a definite storyline and some of it was scripted, but most of it was reacting to scenarios. As director, I just corralled these guys through the storyline but we relied a lot on their improvisational skills.
DRE:
Are you in the movie?
Les:
I am a character in the movie who is part of the main band.
DRE:
What’s the main band’s deal?
Les:
They’re a hippie jam band.
DRE:
I read that your book [South of the Pumphouse] was a screenplay at one point.
Les:
It was a 60 page screenplay about ten years ago and then as it slowly evolved into a 120 page screenplay over the years, we raised money, had producers come on and go off and film companies interested and then not interested, same as the record industry. Finally I decided to write it as a novel so that if it ever gets made into a film and it’s convoluted, at least the original story will exist somewhere for whoever might care. So I wrote it, found a literary agent and they got me this deal with Akashic Books. It’s been great. They’re really good people and they are the hotshot indies.
DRE:
Are you going to look at repitching it as a movie?
Les:
I’m sure we will at some point. We have a few different other projects on the table that we’re taking around right now, but I’m sure Pumphouse will be one of them.
DRE:
I know you’ve directed some animated music videos and you’ve done songs for both South Park and Robot Chicken. Do you have ideas you want to do as a cartoon?
Les:
I’ve got a couple treatments written up. There’s a long list of things I’d like to do. How much of it will come to fruition, I have no idea.
DRE:
Who are you looking to collaborate with that you haven’t yet?
Les:
I don’t really know. A lot of these collaborations come out of the blue. I was working with working with Adrian Belew and Danny Carey a while ago but we never really finished it. We just did some stuff for Adrian’s record and that was fun. I’d love to do some stuff with my string bass, some acoustic bass stuff. I’d love to play with someone like Merle Haggard or Neil Young or Willie Nelson. I think that would be great with a duo type thing, but I don’t know if they’d want to work with me.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
