The Transplants - Rob Aston

It’s been a good time, for sure.

I hope so. I mean, it puts you in the places where people buy albums. A lot of kids come out to the shows everyday and stuff. It’s not everyday that we’re in Bonner Springs, Kansas. The record just came out and we can push it out here and promote it so it’s definitely a cool thing.

Everyone’s out here. Me, Matt, Travis, Ultimate Ronnie, Craigleg, and Kevin and Paul and they’re keyboarding, DJ. Also all of our crew too, all the guys who are working for us are basically our family.

Haunted Cities is actually a song that didn’t make the record. But the name itself creates a good visual and creates a good tone for the record. The record itself kind of a little more of the negative side of things. Haunted Cities just refers to all cities whether it’s LA or some shit over in fucking Baghdad.

Oh, fuck all that. I didn’t lose sleep over that. To tell you the truth, getting dropped was one of the best things that ever happened to me. At first I was bummed. But it was actually a blessing in disguise because we ended up using six of those songs for Haunted Cities so I ain’t mad at nobody. Everything happens for a reason.

No not at all. Some of them it would just be a thing where Tim would come in and do a verse for a couple of songs or Travis would just do drums better than how they were originally. It was hard to let go because I wanted those songs for my solo record but I’m a team player so anything i can do to get us out there and one step ahead, I’m not going to be selfish and wait for my shit to come out.

Yeah, for sure. It’s all our family, all the homies, Boo-Yaa Tribe, Sen Dog, B-Real, Cypress, Rakaa from Dilated Peoples and Paul Walls from Swisher House. But it makes sense for us because we do all kinds of crazy shit. Paul Walls is doing a hip-hop remix of the album. I like that version better than the original version, but that’s me, I like all my music slowed down,

No one had a problem to come join us because that’s all family. I would just call them and say, come on in. Everyone just came through and we did it on the spot. It’s cool for us to work with dudes like that because we’ve all listened to them forever. I grew up listening to Cypress Hill and Boo-Yaa. So for me to be able to work with them on the record, it pushes me to step my game up and take it to the next level because they’re all so good with what they do.

So far it’s been cool. They’ve been really supportive, pushing the record and they believe in us, so that’s nice. It’s nice to be on a label where they don’t fucking push you to the side and say, Oh we’ll figure them out later. They’re actually honest with us.

Oh they claimed “they didn’t understand it” and “didn’t get it” but it seems kind of funny to me since our second single happens to be one of those songs that was on my original record. I guess someone feels like an idiot over there.

Neil Pogue is like great. He brought out sounds and stuff when he was mixing the record that I forgot we even had in there. He’s great at bringing those sounds out and he’s so real good with the heavy stuff with the bass. This time around it was a lot of fun making the fucking record.

I watch it once in a while when it comes on. I try not to watch too much TV though.

Nah, not really [laughs]. I don’t even know if we can have that. I ain’t really trying to incriminate myself or any of my friends [laughs].

I don’t know if it’d be X rated, but there’d just be some goings on that would be frowned upon by certain people like law enforcement. [laughs]

I don’t know about it. I don’t even got a computer so I haven’t even gone to the website.

[laughs] What am I going to do with a computer? I’m probably the only person I know that don’t have one.

Magazines and DVDs.

Yeah, for sure. They’re proud of me for sure. They’re actually in LA right now working on a new record.

I never did because originally it wasn’t going to be a band. Tim got approved to do some work for a studio and he would learn how to run it and one day he just threw in a CD with some tracks on it and it didn’t have vocals and he asked me if I could write lyrics to it. I knew that those situations don’t come fucking everyday so I wasn’t trying to fuck off a good opportunity. Besides the fact that me and Tim are homies, I grew up listening to Operation Ivy and Rancid so for me to be asked by Tim Armstrong to write lyrics and work with him was crazy. Then we got a little more serious with it, we got a little better at it and we decided, Okay let’s get a drummer. Then we’ll put out a record out and see what happens so here we are now. I’ve got no complaints.

I was lucky because I had worked for bands prior to this I had the opportunity to see some of the stuff that happens basically firsthand, both the good and the bad. I guess the thing that is always shocking is the number of fucking scumbags that are in the music business, whether it’s other bands or whether it’s label people or radio people or TV or magazines or this or that. There’s just so many fucking scumbag motherfuckers out there who just want a piece of you and want to get in your pockets and want to fucking cut you loose.

I watch my back very carefully out here especially when it comes to the business end of things. But we got a good team, we got a good manager, and we got a great booking agent so it’s all good. You just got to watch yourself because you never know. There’s always going to be someone who is fucking going to try to get over on you some way.

This is the first band I’ve ever been in to tell you the truth.

Yeah I’ve never done nothing. I’ve never rapped, never wrote nothing, so yeah. I first started in 2000.

I’m still going to do a solo record after this record has done its course and it’ll probably be more of a hip hop record.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck