Ogre of Skinny Puppy

I always wake up this early. I pop the Rubicon of drugs every morning and that’s switched me over into this place where I usually wake up early. Plus with all the animals I have require feeding certain early hours of the morning.

No, just dogs and cats. No kids in this lifetime.

I would never say that I’m completely free of drugs. I smoke weed and will occasionally do something. But I think I’ve found in my lifetime that you reach the point of saturation and it becomes less fun with more hassle and no real awareness gained from certain substances. Not much forward momentum in a way. That’s become something that’s less important at this point.

I would have to say the opposite in a sense. I was always very aware of what was going on. The one thing was that I was able to keep one part of me lucid and on top, watching over the chaos. I never really had a problem that way. But I have to say the enjoyment comes more from the fact of being able to do the same things and manifest the same things without the use of something that would distract you and take you out of yourself. Maybe that’s what Al is talking about. The Last Rights tour was when I initially got out of treatment and it was really hard for me. There was a night and day difference. Over the last ten years there’s been this slow equilibrium compensation that’s brought me to a place where I can really enjoy being on stage. Back with our first tour we did the Futurama Festival and the headliner was Nick Cave and then we found ourselves doing it again this past summer and the headliner was Nick Cave too. We ended up playing the third or second slot and it was just an incredible show. I think experiences like that can have more lucidity and even though drugs take away a lot of the apprehension, they pile it on in the long run. That incredible show was an epiphany for me.

Plenty but Bill Morris was the one who really was producing and directing the video and did all of the editing for the live show. I helped him out just with going through Dwayne’s footage from 1988 and I edited it down from 80 hours to 35 minutes. Bill cut the video for Last Rights, shot the documentary and did all the interviews.

I’ve always wanted to explore that aspect of war. The documentary doesn’t really point fingers at the soldiers, which is one of the most crucial elements at this point. Obviously the war is against our soldiers and our soldiers are being used as your soldiers.

The important thing to get across is that what increases nationalism or extremism are the very things we have been doing for the last ten years in Iraq. The idea of embargoes and blocking oil and food and all of this stuff only really hurts people, much in the same way the British embargoed Germany after the first Word War. It increased the need for nationalism and allowed Hitler to rise up and take power.

No, I’m a green card holder and I pay my taxes. I love a lot of people here and I fucking hate the politics. It’s funny because it just seems like there was a time when it was just “America – Love It or Leave It” and it’s interesting how even that is on thin ice now. If you really loved this country you wouldn’t allow the things to happen that are happening in the world today. If you really believed all the things and all the ethics that come along with what the founding fathers framed you would know that dissent is part of freedom.

We had originally intended on filming all over the country in as many venues as we could, but the object lesson of finances came into play. We had to basically take what was the best situation, because the production company that was involved was Canadian it became a logistical question of “Do we want to fly in a crew and a bunch of equipment down to a US city?” which would just complicate things so we did it in Montreal and Toronto basically. We did two nights in a row and we had the crew come out and do pickup shots in Montreal. For the Toronto show we had a much more serious set up with a boom and some other stuff.

You always try and do the same at every show, but you are trying to hit all your marks and I definitely didn’t. It’s not like you’re singing the song in a studio, it’s going to be memorialized. Though in a recording situation, you really have to be critical of every syllable and every fluid enunciation that may be let out of your mouth. In that sense, I think there’s definitely that attention going into something like that where you’re trying to do the best that you can. But we basically did the same show with us maybe pushing ourselves harder.

The interesting thing was being able to objectively look at myself in a different light. I have a very distinct memory of that tour and of how I felt. To make a long story short, I got to look at myself and see “Oh, yeah. I was a prick back then.” Well maybe not a prick, but I was really pretty insecure. In 1988 we had just started doing this and that tour was a ball buster in the sense that it really made me have to address audiences that didn’t really understand the language. It opened up a whole bunch of things for me. But I remember being pretty insecure and not really at the top of my game. Now I look back at the video and it’s interesting because you’re perceiving yourself as other people were seeing you then. It was a bit of an eye opening experience.

With that tour I switched over from being a bit more introverted with the stage persona to finding my feet and finding some ground within it all. It was right after that after that tour I started hanging out with Al Jourgensen and doing Pigface. A lot of things were happening for me that were allowing me to grow and become who I was. It just comes down to how I see myself in a group.

It was literally lying around for a long time. Dwayne had done one edit that was just on a VHS tape. When I looked at all the footage I saw a linear story that could be told with some interesting insights into the band. Also there is this desire by both Key and myself to have somebody come and memorialize Dwayne a little bit more and put a bit more of a face to him. Unfortunately I think he’s been passed down into the realm, not by loyal fans, of somebody that had just died of a heroin overdose. think that this puts a bit of light to him and closes a chapter for us. Dwayne had painstakingly taken the studio camera with us everywhere on that tour and now it would give light to a certain time in the band’s history.

More of a music trading thing. We were in touch with a lot of people overseas in the early 80’s who were making music and sending tapes around to people. It was this industrial, completely abstracted, non-music and there was a bunch of people into it. We wouldn’t send money to one another we would just send tapes. So Skinny Puppy started like that. We were sending to people like Nocturnal Emissions and bunch of bands from that period. We tapped into it that way, kept making music and sending out tapes of it. We did one show after an Alien Sex Fiend gig in Vancouver at a small underground club and started from there. It’s always been very visual. That comes back to my insecurities back them. I was in an electronic band which seemed very sterile to me so out of fear, it pushed me into being more theatrical, which was probably one of the best decisions.

Yeah, I have a great deal of desire, but I have a huge amount of respect of what it actually takes to make a film that blows me away. I would go “Wow. That’s the music to me.” There are certain directors like that. Have you seen Oldboy?

His films are like an orchestra. There’s so much thought put into everything. People that can do that blow me away because it makes you feel like a little kid again. Would I like to make films? Yes. Would I make a good film? I don’t know. Probably not. If Park Chan-Wook did a film in America I would love to be a part of it.

Yeah. To be honest with you, the last horror movie that I remotely liked was High Tension and that was done by a European director. I’m not trying to dis on America here, but Western filmmaking to me is in a real doldrums right now. When you watch Asian filmmaking, you see this care that vibrantly affects you. I’m not getting that from American cinema right now, which sucks because I’m still waiting for a really good horror film.

I’ve known Danny since we toured with Pigface. He would always come up to the Skinny Puppy shows and I’d see him afterwards. He’s a really good friend of Kevin’s. They bowl together.

I don’t. I have nothing against bowling, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t do it all the time. I need to find hobbies though. Maybe that would be a good thing for me to do.

Right now Ogre is in a bit of a downtime because we just finished this tour and we’re about to start recording. Ogre is now looking for a new place to live.

I live downtown in a loft and we’ve been here a year and a half about and my roommate’s girlfriend is probably pregnant. So I’m dealing with that right now, which is a drag because I didn’t want to move again so soon. Now I’ve got a bit of downtime so I’m doing a lot of reading.

I read a lot of fiction, but right now I’m reading a non-fiction book by Haruki Murakami the Japanese writer. He wrote A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance, Dance, Dance.

They’re incredible. If you like Oldboy and stuff like that, that’s what these books are exactly like. Basically they’re all connected. There’s a sheep man that runs throughout all the books and it’s this weird entity that comes into his life. It’s all dealing with psychic detectives, psychic prostitutes. This guy loses his girlfriend and decides to go and try and to find himself. They’re odd concepts and they’re all over the place. It’s incredible writing though.

Yes.

When she sent me those letters I told her I was always going to keep them. I did diligently keep them in boxes for a number of years when I was living in Vancouver. Then I was having a serious problem with drugs and I eventually had to leave that apartment. I left basically the day that the new tenant was supposed to move in. I woke up that day with three weeks of dishes in my sink and nothing packed, so I had to move out really quickly. One of the few things I grabbed were those letters in a box. Over the years I had received fan mail and responded to some, but most of it just didn’t respond to, if you watch the Simpsons, I was no Ringo. Then after all those years I followed up and gave them back to her.

I totally agree. It should open up a dialogue and sometimes it’s a distant sharing of ideas. Also I’m sure it is a pressure release for a lot of kids in the same way that that certain music was to me. When I first listened to Joy Division, it changed my life and not in the sense that I wanted to kill myself but more in the sense that, “Wow. Somebody else feels this way and can still create things and express themselves.” But I guess he’s a bad example because he did ultimately kill himself.

Exactly. With most of those cases ultimately you look at them and the underlying issues surrounding the individual are far more malicious and malignant than the actual music they’re listening to and trying to find some comfort in. Though I think I draw the line when it comes down to racist bands and things like that. There’s an element to that that I would definitely speak out against if I had to, but something that’s dealing with feelings of abandonment, feelings of sadness and stuff like that is crucial for kids to be able to attach to that stuff.

I think the big kick to me was when we were doing theater stuff, showing certain ways of slaughtering animals that were negative and tying that in with fast food. That changed a lot of people. We did a bit with a cow being slaughtered and its throat being cut. I was hanging out over the audience with a big McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with a huge blood bag inside of it. The blood bag would just go off all over people with this meat and sometimes I would throw up because the blood bag would shoot back into my throat. With every night of doing that and I got pretty good at making it more and more disgusting. That had affect on people and a large group of kids came and told me that they decided to change the way they look at what they’re eating and how they chose what they’re eating. That was great. I always knew in my heart that my idea of doing this was to find a way out for myself and I hoped that that would be the way that kids would see it and that’s the way they generally do. More times than not during my career, we took chances with our shows and they were quite dangerous at times. But in a way it was a false kick, though there was the idea that if you create that tension in an audience to where they feel a performer could hurt himself, it creates this positive kick back in that they start hoping the person won’t kill themselves. Much in the same way when I was young I was watching the rodeo in Calgary and watching the chuckwagon races. Even though you wanted to watch something trashy, you were really hoping it wouldn’t happen. I definitely saw that in a lot of the kids that were watching, even to the point where I was doing my worst with stabbing myself on stage. One night in Tampa I stuck my knife more than an inch into my arm and it shocked me to where I didn’t know if I could pull it out. Then some kids found my room number afterwards and left me multiple messages saying “You don’t have to do that for us.” That opened my eyes up.

I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m a big poser.

No, we actually broke up on our last record. I had left the band in 1995 when we finished The Process. We just reached a point I think were we needed to take a step back. The unfortunate thing was that in that cusp of time, Dwayne died and that made the separation even deeper between Key and I. We were like, “There’s no reason to go on.” Then we did that show in Dresden and got offstage and looked at each other and just smiled and went back on and had an incredible show. We were at a point in our lives where we grew out of the things that at one point pushed us apart. We were smart enough to look at that and see what the good things were. We ultimately shared a lot of time in our life together and to throw that away over bad times was just ridiculous. With the times being what they are, it seems there’s a lot of inspiration for what Skinny Puppy stands for.

Totally but I’m not going to do it for a little while. We’re focusing on this new record write now. I’ve been writing some stuff on the side for it and just puttering around with it. I think Spitfire [Records] is interested in doing something. I also have a bunch of tracks that were never really put on the records. We might release some of those.

I think it’s amazing. It seems like there are some really attractive women on there and it seems like a great meeting place for like-minded people. Plus sex sells, right?

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck