And I remember the last time I saw you guys play, I think it was Hard Rock Café, you played as a four-piece.
Keith/Jordan: Yeah.
What happened with your bassist then?
Jordan: A shark attack.
Keith: A vicious shark attack. He attacked a shark and he had to go to jail. It was the San Jose sharks. The mascot.
(laughter)
Jordan: Aaron has a full-time job, which is why he’s not on any of our summer tours. I don’t want to say anymore.
Keith: He has a full-time job, which allows him not to tour.
Jordan: Or receive phone calls from us ANYMORE! No, just kidding. He’s a great guy, and, I just really wish he wasn’t nailed down…
Keith: Or call us. He writes up a lot of debt on certain things I guess, and he had to take a full-time job to pay it off. So, he doesn’t time to tour very much. So that show, he wasn’t there and Jordan played bass.
Jordan: It’s kind of funny because we just kind of, there was a point where we’d just bully him, and we’d be like “You’re taking off from work!” And he’d be like, “No!” But we’d still book the shows anyway, even though he said no. So like, oh man…
Would he still go to them?
Jordan/Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Jordan: We’d be like, “No, you go!” He’s like, “I gotta work!” He’d like, one time he had to tell his bosses his cat swallowed a staple, so he had to take his cat. So, he was constantly digging himself out of these holes that we dug for him. We’re like, “You’re taking off work!” And he’s like, “I took off three months already!”
Keith: Then it got to a point where we realized that all we had to do was book a show and tell him that he had to play, and then leave it up to him to handle the rest. So we pretty much did that all the time.
Jordan: Minus the show you saw.
Keith: Yeah.
Jordan: The show you saw, the night before he was like “Hey guys. Remember the night before when I told you I had to work? I was serious.” And we were just like, “Oh, fuck.”
(laughter)
So I picked up the four-string and started slap, slap, slapping. And it fucking worked.
Nice. And now you have Steve in the band.
Keith: Yep.
Jordan: Don’t tell Aaron.
(laughter)
Keith: He still doesn’t know. It’s our little secret.
How’d you guys hook up [with Steve]?
Steve: I paid them a lot. About 12.
12 G’s or 12 dollars?
Steve: Blow jobs.
Ah. That currency.
Keith: Per member.
(laughter)
And they’ve got big members.
(more laughter)
Jordan: Ratboy…
Keith: Especially Ratboy. Let’s talk about Ratboy’s chong (?). Let’s go off on a tangent here.
Jordan: Yeah, let’s go off on a tangent here. So we’ve been a band for like three years, and we’ve never seen Ratboy naked. Finally did at this tour. Dude’s got a fucking mule.
Keith: He’s got a mule…[at the same time]
Jordan: Oh my god. Oh my god.
Steve: A big crank.
Jordan: Some people are always like, “Oh, you guys don’t play double bass? It sounds like it at times.” But it’s not double bass. It’s just his fucking big leg, just fucking slipping under his shorts.
Keith: It’s his third leg.
Swinging back and forth?
Keith: It’s his rig.
Jordan: It’s his rig because it has a brain I’m assuming, because it’s so large, that it just beats on the drum.
So were you in any other bands before this? [to Steve]
Steve: No.
Jordan: We’re really weird because I was just talking about this with my girlfriend yesterday. And, the summer between sixth and seventh grade, I was in this band called Borderline Retarded with two kids on my street, so…
Keith: Were you really?
Jordan: It’s not a joke. Aaron Modern (sp) and Jared Tolioke (sp). Fucking Jerestein, fucking up the Lambgoat interview! Yeah, they didn’t know how to do anything but I kind of knew how to play guitar, so we just made a lot of noise. And then, from the time that ended to the time Every Time I Die started, I was not in any other band.
Keith: Nor was I.
Steve: No experience with bands.
Jordan: Steve was in Kid Gorgeous. I don’t know if he still is.
Steve: And this band called Pen15, where if you spelled it out, it looks like “penis.”
(laughter)
It was my roommate Steve, and my two wrestler friends, and we did Gorilla Biscuits covers. We actually didn’t play out live, we just practiced in the garage once.
Jordan: Oh yeah, Borderline Retarded never gigged either.
Steve: Yeah. Pen15 sessioned once, and then sometime between there and Every Time I Die, picked up a bass and slapped it pretty hard.
How’s it been playing with these guys and hanging out with them?
Steve: It’s a blast, having fun. It’s awesome.
So, Ferret bands have a knack of blowing up and getting popular with the kids…
Keith: Not us.
Steve: Not us.
Not you.
Jordan: Yeah, where’s our fucking piece of the pie, you know?
Keith: Loaded Ferret.
A lot of major labels are looking at hardcore bands. They’re looking for the next big thing. Have you guys been approached? Or can you not talk about that?
Keith: Let’s just say we can’t talk about that so as to not embarrass ourselves, the fact that we’ve been approached.
Jordan: Let’s hint that we have, as to not (laughter)
[Keith winks]
Keith winks. Mental note…
(laughter)
Jordan: All I know is that I walked in the mall in Buffalo the other day, and our shirts are in Hot Topic. But I got a little mirror…
You know what? It’s all over for you guys now because your shirts are at Hot Topic, and all the kids on Lambgoat are going to talk.
Keith: They’re going to hate us.
Steve: We’re going mainstream you know. We’re going corporate.
Jordan: Steve has a full-on boner, too, you know.
Steve: I had a wood.
What about Ratboy? Was he there? Did he hurt anyone with that thing?
(laughter)
Keith: Ratboy needs a XL shirt just to cover his manhood.
Steve: Yeah. Definitely likes to periscope like a boa.
(more laughter)
Keith: We call Ratboy’s nerve “spy-tech” because it’s in everyone’s business. (laughter)
Hypothetically speaking, if a major label were to approach you guys…
Keith: Yes. Without a doubt.
Jordan: It has nothing to do with selling out…
Keith: Yes it does.
Jordan: Yeah, Ok, it does. All I’m saying is that I’m not doing so well in school and I’m constantly being fired from jobs because I tour. So, if I could stop that, if I could stop worrying about getting fired or getting “F’s,” that’d be nice, you know? I’m not going to lie. We’ve been touring in this like, god bless Taszz. God bless her soul.
Steve: Taszz is our van.
that with one z or two?
Jordan: Oh, ok. T-A-S-Z-Z. Don’t ask why. But, it’s just like, now that thing died, and it had not air conditioning, and now we’re in a van with air conditioning, and we’re just loving it. So, if the jump from no air conditioning, to air conditioning, could be that enjoyable, I think the jump from no money, to money, will be almost as good as the air conditioner.
Ok. You guys also have the split with Premonitions of War coming out…
Jordan: Do we?
Do you?
Keith: That was in the works…
Jordan: You want to know how I found out about that?
How did you find out about it?
Jordan: Lambgoat.
Keith: Lambgoat.
Jordan: And I’m not even lying. I’m not even lying. I love Premonitions of War, and they’re honestly, if we have to play shows I’d love to play with them. So far I’ve been blessed with the fact that I get to play shows with good bands, and they’re one of them. Our first tour was with them.
Keith: Yeah, our first tour was with them.
Jordan: And I think I heard it was going to be on Hex Records, and that’s just an amazing dude anyway. So it just kind of weird when you just turn on the Internet and, I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault. All I know is that I wasn’t, I’m not opposed to the idea, it just kind of got tossed at us. I mean it’s awesome, but the problem was it got thrown at us right before six months of touring, so obviously you have all these kids coming up to us at shows asking about it, among other things, and we just don’t have an answer them. I’d love to do a split with Premonitions of War and I guess we’ll just leave it at that.
Ok.
[Jordan’s cell phone rings]
Steve: Cancel it.
How about…
Keith: Are you hating this?
No! No, I am totally enjoying this.
Keith: Alright. Good.
How about the new songs that you mentioned that you were writing? How many do you guys have?
Keith: We, at the last tour when we were through Long Island, we played a new song that, as we mentioned before, we kind of scrapped it and are re-writing it. We have a complete new song. I think it's…
Jordan: We had room for our acoustic guitar on this tour, so we’ve been jamming in the van. We’ve had a couple of sessions in the van so far.
Keith: What do you want to know about it?
How is the writing process going?
Keith: Slow, because we’re on tour. As far as the lyrics are concerned, it’s been a really strenuous process because I don’t have time to get into a mental state of any sort. I’m just kind of floating around and I don’t know what to focus on, so we wrote that song…
[cell phone rings again]
...and for some reason, it took me the longest time it has ever taken me to write lyrics because I had just gotten off tour and we were just about to leave again. But we wanted to play it on the tour, so I had to just write through it. I don’t know. I’m proud of it. I wouldn’t do anything that I’m not proud of. So, I mean, I like it.
Jordan: Carl [Ferret] has just made his way in the goddamn interview.
(laughter)
So anything important you want us to say? Maybe…do you want to defend yourself at all against anything we’ve said?
How about the mullet? Why does he still have the mullet?
How about some of the influences that you’re drawing from musically and lyrically?
Keith: The musical influences as far as the lyrics are concerned have changed a lot since he last album. I unfortunately don’t listen to a lot of hardcore. I think I definitely get my fill on tour and hearing demos, and stuff like that. When I’m home, I listen to Jeff Buckley, and like the Beatles, and like Sigur Ros, and Radiohead. So it’s just like, I guess you can categorize Sigur Ros, obviously their words are just music. Like they’ve admittedly not made lyrics because they just want to sound like music. But like Radiohead and the Beatles, where it’s just like random stuff, which I am most fond of. Just a lot of the images they create, I like the way they do that through their lyrics. So, things like that is what I’m going for. This, as far as this first song is concerned, it’s not, it’s definitely kind of like, kind of like transcended any personal meaning to it, which I’m hoping to continue through the album, because I just think when you personalize lyrics, you can do it the three categories which is like love, you know, politics, and religion. And I definitely don’t want to do that because I don’t care. So, I’m just trying to get other outside influences.
How about influences in terms of the music?
Jordan: Ahhhm… sitcoms. Step By Step is a big influence on our music writing.
Like classic sitcoms?
Jordan: Depends. Early, late mid-90’s. I’m talking Step By Step with little Patrick Duffy always helps me write a little better. I wrote, half of the album was written after I watched the episode of Family Matters in which Urkel strapped on his rocket launcher, accidentally shot through the roof, and landed in Step By Step. He went all the way to Milwaukee, which is where I believe Step By Step takes place. Yeah, you know, Golden Girls. It’s mostly just like the T.G.I.F., you know what I’m saying? Re-runs. Full House. Jesse Kasopolis.
Keith: Jesse Kasopolis was a big influence.
Jordan: We wouldn’t be where we are today without Jesse and the Rippers. Or, like I said, not just sitcoms, but the bands that come from sitcoms. We wouldn’t be anywhere without Jesse and the Rippers, Zack Attack…
Keith: What else we got?
Jordan: What other bands from sitcoms have influenced us?
Steve: Oh! What was the name of that band from California Dreams?
Keith: Ok, Jesse and the Glowworms from Full House…
Jordan/Steve: No, Jesse and the Rippers. (laughter)
Keith: No, no, no, but they were the Glowworms when they played the airport with the (indecipherable) guys…
Jordan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah! (laughter) Wow, exactly. Then we’ve got, like I said, obviously I’ll repeat myself: Zack Attack. That was huge.
Keith: Oh, there was Zit Remedy from DeGrassi Junior High.
Jordan: Yes.
I don’t recall that.
Keith: Haha. Sorry dude. Were there any other bands on sitcoms? Who else started bands?
Jordan: Well, fucking Cody from Step By Step. I’m sorry I have to keep going back to Patrick Duffy’s genius.
No, it’s ok.
Jordan: Cody would jam the garage. He never got anything started. It’s too bad. It’s really too bad. That dude deserves to rage in a band, and I really hoped I would have seen him in a band by the time the show was cancelled, but I didn’t.
Keith: So, that’s about it, basically, as far as sitcom bands go. Oh! ALF had a band that he wrote for Lynn. Remember he made a video for Lynn because he liked her so much.
Jordan: Oh yeah.
Keith: And he did the whole Tom Cruise in Risky Business thing, and then he did a Kaja Goo Goo (sp?) sort of thing, with his hair flap…
(laughter)
Jordan: What did Stephanie Tanner call her band when she did the Ace of Base cover with Kimmy Gibbler. I don’t know their name but that changed my life.
Ok…how about the website, shittydudes.com? It keeps directing me to Ferret Music.
Keith: Is it?
Is it down?
Jordan: One second…
Keith: I guess so. I don’t know.
Jordan: No, it’s not. No, no, no, no, I know what you’re talking about. I found out about the Internet a little bit ago and it’s pretty sweet, so. There was a day where if you clicked on it you would go to Ferret and you would have to scroll down to go to our page, but that’s been all taken care of.
Ok.
Jordan: Don’t write it [the interview, because of its length]. Just put it up on Kazaa or Yahoo!
Steve: Or Morpheous.
Jordan: Morpheous. What was the first one?
Steve: Napster.
Everyone: Napster.
Keith: Well, we’re almost done, right?
Yeah. How about the web address? Why did you choose shittydudes? Are you really shitty dudes?
ETID: Look at us. Yeah, look at us.
(laughter)
Keith: Yeah, we’re really shitty dudes.
What constitutes a shitty dude? Aside from the way you guys look now.
Jordan: Eating out of dumpsters…
Steve: Backstabbing…
Keith: Shit talking. Never stop shit talking.
Jordan: Drinking by dumpsters. We were at a party the other day and we left to drink by dumpsters.
Keith: Yeah, we went into an alley because the party scene wasn’t conducive to our shittiness. So, we had to go sit in an alley on milk crates by dumpsters. That’s about it.
Jordan: Actually, Andy shat outside yesterday…
Steve: On a rock…
Jordan: On a rock. Zack, our roadie, I hope he doesn’t come out because he said if he got the chance, he’d just come and talk about how much he hates Lambgoat. He wanted to be in the interview. I told him “no,” because we have sincere love for Lambgoat.
Steve: We have mad love. Mad ivory for Lambgoat.
Someone: Ivory? Where’d that come from?
(laughter)
Jordan: So, anyway, he shat in a river after some cliff jumping yesterday, and apparently it floated downstream at people, so, I believe that constitutes as a shitty dude. Shit diving.
Keith: Shit diving.
Do the ladies like shitty dudes?
Jordan: Apparently!
Keith: That’s not a concern of ours.
(laughter)
Jordan: I don’t know why?
Keith: That’s not a concern of ours. But if it works, it works.
How about the current, not punk revival, but bands like Thursday, Poison the Well, a lot of emo bands going to the mainstream? What do you think about that?
Keith: I think it’s good for them.
Jordan: Poison the who? (laughs)
I think it’s “the Well.”
Jordan: Sorry, never heard of them.
Keith: Poison the Well. I haven’t checked that out. Are they on MTV?
Jordan: Thursday was on, Thursday was on Warped Tour. They’re great!
Keith: We’re just kidding. We really like Poison the Well a lot. They’re good friends of ours. They took us out on tour. Right before the last tour, we went up for like two weeks or so with Poison the Well, American Nightmare and Eighteen Visions, and it was probably the best tour ever. But more power to them, and anybody that has any nay saying to do just wishes that they could do what they’re doing…
[cars are honking loudly]
Yeah, honk louder. So yeah, more power to them.
What about some favorite records of yours that have come out this year?
Keith: Like hardcore records?
Any records. Doesn’t matter.
Jordan: Andrew W.K.
Andrew W.K.?
Jordan: Oh yeah. I really like that record.
Keith: I don’t buy music very much.
Jordan: I like the new Glassjaw.
The new Glassjaw is good.
Jordan: Although, be warned. The Lambgoat message board says that the new Eighteen Visions isn’t very good, it actually is. I didn’t even listen to it for the first, they kept giving me copies. I was like, “No, Lambgoat [message board] says it’s bad! I’m not going to listen to it! I check the message board, and it’s bad. I’m not going to.” And then finally, I saw a post that said it was good, so I was like, “Alright, I’ll listen to it I guess.” And it actually is good.
(laughter)
How about some records that you’re looking forward to for the rest of the year?
Jordan: I guess I’ll have to go to the message board and find out.
Yes.
Keith: I’m looking forward to the new Billy Bob Thornton album.
Jordan: I’m looking forward to our record. I said that earlier in the interview, but I seriously am.
And what do you guys usually do on your off-time from the band? Any hobbies or any interesting habits?
Jordan: I wish my answer wasn’t as boring as like school, work, hang out, but it really is. It’s a boring answer, but it’s not boring by any means if you’ve ever been to Buffalo, or specifically, Maryvale Drive. You’d understand that it’s not boring at all, but it just doesn’t look good on paper.
Keith: The thing about Buffalo is, it doesn’t leave a lot of options.
Jordan: So you have to make your own fun.
Keith: You realize how shitty of a town is. Then you look at, only in Buffalo, and heaven, that the bar open until four in the morning.
(laughter)
So, yeah…
Jordan: We’ll be packing up after a show, and we’re just spoiled because in Buffalo, bars are open until four. And then on a special day, when you turn the clocks back, they’re open until technically four, even though it’s really five. Five in the morning. So we’ll be spoiled. We’ll be loading up after the show, and we’ll psyched to party hard, and people are like, “Oh, well bars are closing in about a half hour.”
Keith: Which is good, I mean. They’re open until four, and you think that usually people get into fights with their wives or pummel their kids at three, and that gives them a good hour of drinking.
Makes sense…
Keith: I mean, they got to go drink it off, so they’ve got the bars. The bars in Buffalo.
Jordan: And it’s close to Canada. And while I don’t promote Canada in any way whatsoever, other than the strip clubs, which is really good because they’re practically in Buffalo, and like you’ll go to strip clubs around the country when you’re on tour and like, they have keep their clothes on, and you’re not allowed to...
Steve: Masturbate.
(laughter)
Jordan: Which is just absurd, because in Canada, which is practically Buffalo, you’re allowed to…
Steve: Masturbate.
Jordan: Masturbate each other. And by each other, I mean the band, while looking at naked men, so it’s great.
Keith: We treat our band like a strip club in which we are allowed to fellate and masturbate each other at all hours of the night.
(laughter)
Excellent.
Keith: Drinks and cover charges.
Jordan: Masturbation is encouraged at Canadian strip clubs in any shape or form. And that’s just a shame that it’s not treated that way around the country.
Anything else you guys want to mention or plug?
Jordan: Chopper?
Keith: Pussy.
Jordan: Pussy farming?
(laughter)
Keith: I don’t have anything to plug. I guess pussy wolving, would be my, that’s my goal.
I don’t think I’ve heard that one before.
Keith: To wolf pussy? You just strap on some headphones and go to town.
(laughter)
Steve: I just want to plug mine and Jordan’s side project, it’s called Chopper.
Jordan: Don’t forget Andy.
Steve: Oh yeah, Andy is in it too.
What does Chopper do?
Jordan: Thrashes, rages, and storms. I think we’ve got a gig, I think Pantera might be opening up for us in a couple of months after we write the record.
Steve: You’ll hear about it.
Keith: Keep your eye on the Lambgoat message board.
(laughter)
I look forward to it. That’s about it guys. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.
Steve: Good interview.
Keith: No problem.
Jordan: Can you just like, tell them to go to our website, too? Because I think when we get home we might actually update it.
Ok.
Jordan: Do that, and we’ll tell stories about tour, we’ll tell about how I was full blown grunge crowd riding, circa ’91 the other day, to Eighteen Visions and about the food fight that ensued, and we’re only about five days into tour so there’s going to be a lot of sweet stories to come of it. As if shatting outside, swimming in shit, and getting cheese dumped on you when you’re crowd riding, and heckling wiggers in downtown Cleveland wasn’t enough. We still have four more weeks. So, get excited for that.
Awesome. Sounds great.
ETID: Thank you very much.
Footnote: *Totally Sweet Dude
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