SALTY THE POCKETKNIFE
by Christine Natanael

LINKS:
saltythepocketknife.com

sonancerecords.com

When he mentioned that Dustin Diamond was a member of the group, I have to confess it went over my head. I mean, I was a little old to have watched Saved By The Bell, although I’m sure many of you reading this now grew up on it. Sorry.

Comprised of Rosebud on vocals, Evan Stone on drums, Scott Ireland on guitar, and the aforementioned Dustin Diamond on bass, they play a bizarre Zappa meets Mr. Bungle by way of No Doubt kinda stuff, (which actually sounds a lot stranger than it is). I was intrigued when I heard it. This wasn’t just some child star trying to take a stab at being a musician. He could actually play quite well. Which was a relief to me. It made my job a bit easier.

I met up with Dustin at the MTV studios where he had just finished taping an interview. The two of us, with manager and record label prez in tow, went around the corner to the bar at his hotel where alcohol got us all better acquainted very quickly. An hour or so later I got down to questioning Mr. Diamond about this project he calls Salty the Pocketknife. I started by asking him about the cd cover. Read on and discover what I found out…

CHRISTINE NATANAEL: All right, your buddy Eric Oats did this, right?

DUSTIN DIAMOND: Yeah.

CN: Where’d you meet him?

DD: In Milwaukee. Oats rocks. Oats is like…he wears these big yellow glasses and he does mostly pop art.

CN: I like pop art.

DD: He does like uh, Sarah Michelle Geller, and Madonna, and you know, these very portrait-esque…

CN: Yeah, like Warhol...

DD: Right on! So you know what I’m talking about. So he does those kind of things but --ok, I don’t know if you know this, but Mr. Bungle’s first album, they did this two-page fold out that was like, really, really trippy, that was like faces coming out of faces coming out of arms coming out of whatever. This actually plays directly into what I was getting into, though. The two-page foldout is a two-page CD foldout, so it’s like a big rectangle.
So I told my buddy Oats. I had asked everybody. I wanted this drawing done as a painting, on canvas…

CN: That’s the way the metal bands do their covers.

DD: I wanted it huge. I tried to find the artist but I could never find him. I looked through the liner notes and everything.

CN: The Mr. Bungle artist?

DD: Yeah.

CN: Wasn’t it the guy…

DD: It was like Peanut or something. All I know is that they use a bunch of stuff like the clown on the front from Cotton Candy Autopsy, which I’ve never been able to find, but…I ended up trying to find that. I said look, I’ll go to get tattoo artists. I’ll go to whoever will do it. Most people didn’t want to lose the integrity, taking the uh… they didn’t want to copy someone else’s work, because it’s pretty in-depth. And also it’s pretty fucking complicated.

CN: …the idea and to execute it?

DD: Yeah, people just couldn’t do it. It’s a bastard.

CN: Also it buys into the ego of the artist not wanting to do someone else’s work.

DD: Right. So I knew there would be a freak show out there that would be able to rock, you know, just do it right. And so…I ended up finding this guy named Eric Oats. And he’s like, ‘How big do you want it?’ ‘I want this…like take a door and turn it sideways. I want it 3, 3-½ feet by 7 feet.’

CN: Wow.

DD: And he said, ‘all right, I’ll see if I can do it.” And he did it. It’s in my basement right now as a centerpiece on the wall.

CN: Same colors…

DD: It is the exact same thing. I had him duplicate it and there’s the little logo that says Warner Bros. and whatever else and I said to take that out. Picture what it… because you can see kind of below it and above it, so what it looks like it would have been. And he did it and he put in stuff like there’s this skeletal head and the surface of Mars like Pop Olson, like, what do you call them, like craters. And there’s this fish and he has a hook through it with a line going but then the Warner Bros thing blocks that. He drew the line back with a blue hand that matches the blue skeleton head coming out with his hand just grasping the end of the hook so it all makes sense. But in the fingers of the hand he hid the name Oats. Then there’s these organ things and he stuck a tack into them that was a letter, like a parchment letter, and he wrote “there’s a tractor in my balls” and he signed it “Oats.” And what’s funny is that that’s the…

CN: Oh, that’s cute.

DD: Yah, and he put that in. And I know that Oats was rockin’ since then. He’s been a great friend, we got really tight, and I commissioned him to do the cover of the Salty album and uh, I haven’t told any other interviewers or anything else this, but you rock, so I’m gonna tell you because I think it’s funny. And really, I just didn’t think they’d get it. But um, the first cover of Salty I wanted to do was totally turned down.

CN: Why?

DD: I thought it was great. And my buddy Evan, the drummer, thought it was great. Ok, so what it was- it was a little kid- and I can send you a copy of it if you want to see what it looks like.

CN: Yeah, go ahead.

DD: It’s a kid who could be any kid in the world. He could be but, you know, with a penis of course.

CN: Like, I don’t have one.

DD: Right, of course. And he’s standing and he’s looking… you know, he’s wearing like your typical white shirt, you know, with the wife-beater cut for the white but the shoulder and sleeves and collar are red- it’s that baseball kind of shirt. Blue jeans, and he’s standing with his hands in his pockets. He’s just standing there. You’re just looking at the back of him so you can’t see his face. He’s got dirty blond hair and it says ‘Seven’ on the back of his shirt which is a testament to our odd time, right…

CN: Right.

DD: And he’s looking- he’s kind of in an art gallery, you can see the floor, the perspective is just below him looking up but not like from the floor

CN: Right.

DD: Just about hip level, like if you were on one knee looking. And he’s looking up at this big painting.

CN: What is it?

DD: And the painting is solid pink. Just like solid pink, but with like fleshy tones, ok?

CN: I think I know where you’re going with this.

DD: And then off to one side- in the square, it’s rounded so it’s not like covering the entire painting so you can see some like, edges.

CN: Right.

DD: And there’s just a big rip, like a big hole in the painting.

CN: Right.

DD: And we did shadowing and shading and I’ll send you a picture. It’s hilarious. It’s an actual painting; he painted it like 11 inches by 11 inches. And we were gonna call the album at the time Salty the Pocket Knife: Peaches. Because whenever anyone looked at it they’re like what is it, peaches? Is that peaches? So Evan and I are just busting up, k? It’s an asshole.

CN: They just don’t get it.

DD: It’s a big asshole. He’s just looking at a big pair of butt-cheeks with a big asshole painted right in the middle

CN: Which is right where his head would be.

DD: It’s huge! And it’s just hanging in the gigantic art gallery. And I thought it was so funny, it was such great art, and everyone’s like ‘Oh, the label said,’ ‘oh, we can’t… Leno’s not going to hold this up!’ You know, ‘We can’t.’ Everyone was appalled. I thought it was funny.

CN: Of course it is, but people wouldn’t expect that from you. And because of who you are and have been and because you can’t get away from that, you’re going to be able to do big shows like Leno…

DD: Yeah, yeah.

CN: …which obviously you’re very lucky to be able to do, because everybody on their first album, wouldn’t be able to do that.

DD: Oh, yeah. I’ll jump through the hoops that are necessary.

CN: Could you imagine Letterman holding up that CD cover?

DD: Yeah… [Laughing] I can’t… oh, well you should hear the second idea I had, then. I was like, ‘Oh, they’re not going to like that?’ So I ate like, a lot of bread and really built up my fiber, and I took this huge dump. Like, it was one of those where you want to get someone and say, ‘Dude, look at the size of this!’ And then what I did was I pulled a bunch of hair out of my brush and put it in the toilet. And you know, there’s pee in there too so it’s like this yellowish…and I got like the um, whatchamacallit…

CN: Did you photograph it? [Laughing]

DD: Oh yeah, digital photo-- oh yeah, top-notch, 1200 by 1200, it’s great. And uh, oh no, wait...wait. Wait ‘til you hear the title of the album. Ok, and then uh, uh, it’s got like a greenish color because yellow and blue make green, and we had like um…

CN: Oh, you’ve got the Tidy Bowl stuff in the bowl?

DD: Yeah, like 2000 Flushes. I was like ‘Oh, they don’t like that? Ok, I’ll give ‘em something.’ And the turd’s just right in the middle, you know. And it’s like, it’s a turd, it’s just qualified.

CN: Would you be stuck at that two-year-old level? Like elimination?

DD: Yeah, it’s great. You’ve gotta hear the title of the album.

CN: Ok, what is it.

DD: I put ‘Salty the Pocket Knife’ on one side, and then on the other side I put Soup. Salty the Pocket Knife, Soup. And my drummer just thought it was gross. He’s like, dude, just don’t ever send me anything like that again.

CN: [Laughing.]

DD: And I thought it was hilarious. So.

CN: My god, I’m hurtin’ myself (from laughing so hard).

DD: So they wanted something serious. And I’m like, ‘all right, all right. How about a guy, raised up with a hammer in a forge and he’s holding the CD in a clamp and he’s getting ready to come down on it?’

CN: Are those true stories or are you bullshitting me?

DD: Those are all true. I’ll send them to you. Well, maybe not the turd one.

CN: [Laughing] I hope not.

DD: But um, I’ll send ‘em to you. You know, and if people don’t like the ideas for album covers--turn them into t-shirts.

CN: Yeah, turn them into collector’s items.

DD: Someone will wear my turd around the city.

CN: I know a whole slew of people that would love that shirt.

DD: Yeah, and you know, the thing is, they wanted something serious, so I said, ‘All right, well what about the guy smashing the CD?’ And they’re all ‘Oh, yeah, there are all these deep levels, you know, we’re smashing the music industry, and we’re, you know, we’re redefining music, and…’ You know, it’s just ‘cause they didn’t want my turd…

CN: [Laughing]

DD: …or the uh, Peaches idea. Super Peaches. So I wanted to call the album Forge.

CN: Yeah, that would go with the image.

DD: Salty the Pocket Knife: Forge. And it sounds great; we’re forging ahead, we’re forging a new path, whatever you want to look into it. It just sounds cool, you know, Forge. Alright, so I had Forge drawn up, done up by my buddy Oats as cinders like it was burnt like the end of a cigarette, the entire thing.

CN: Yeah?

DD: And he designed the logo for Salty the Pocket Knife. And he was the only one to get the knife in there, on the “I” in knife but without having it look cheesy or contrived. So what we ended up doing was I said, ‘All right well, the back I want a concrete ground,’ and so Oats painted that. And I said, ‘I want a CD that’s smashed so that it makes sense.’

CN: After he hits it with the hammer, obviously…

DD: Obviously, right, it just makes sense. So um, he drew both of those separately and I used PaintShop Pro 8 over them, you know, burned and dodged and did all my stuff. Paint Shop Pro rocks. So what I ended up doing- and this was something I had to battle for- um, the CD had an image on the actual CD itself. I don’t mind it, but it wasn’t my original idea. But you never get all your ideas… I’m just happy I got the front and back cover. We ended up putting… well I wanted the CD just to be a regular CD with no label on the top and I wanted it cracked. So it makes sense- you’re listening to the CD, you know. So I wanted it to have the jagged lines of it being cracked or split.

CN: I did the same thing for the front page of my website—smashing the CD with a hammer and then scanning it. I can’t believe we had the same exact idea. That is so bizarre.

DD: Uh huh. So they put the crack on it but they put it the white over a grayish-black background that had like an image on it. I don’t know where they [the label] got the image but they liked it, so what do you do. But the label rocks, you know, because Sonance Records was who signed us.

CN: Oh, I heard you saying that one of the guys in your band knew the son of this guy? And he got the tape? And he didn’t even know you were in the band?

DD: Yeah, he just sent out…

CN: See, I eavesdropped on you.

DD: Yeah, totally. Ninja-style, uh, guerrilla-tactics. He sent it to Ben Frimmer, who’s Rick Frimmer, the head of Sonance’s, son. He’s like, ‘Whoa, this is rockin’.’ He didn’t know anything about me, which I prefer because then you know the music is standing for itself. And I mean, me and my past is just purely…it has nothing to do with the integrity of the band. It’s just like, well if that’s what it’s going to take to get any kind of push, then that’s what it’s going to take. I gotta try to steer it into regular channels, but if I could get publicity and push the band without ever having mentioned any of my past I’d do it. Because…

CN: A lot of people don’t want to go there.

DD: Yeah, but as long as they don’t know, if they like the music and find out later...

CN: I’m an idiot. Your publicist told me your name and I had no clue.

DD: Well there you are…because you rock.

CN: But I was intrigued by what I heard. I thought it was interesting. And bass isn’t a difficult instrument to be super-proficient on. A lot of people they just…

DD: You can’t be an egomaniac.

CN: They just…do what’s required but they’re not excellent at it. There’s a few people that have a spark.

DD: To be a good bass player, I think you have to understand the balance between…I think the bass player is one of the people who understands the power of…spacing. And silence. I mean, I’m not saying that other people don’t, it’s just the nature of the instrument. The singer tends to be the lead voice- that’s who’s driving, who you’re waiting for next. You’re waiting for that sound when they stop singing, when they take a pause, um, when they stop for solos--well by nature, solo is going to be the guitar, you’re going to have the guitar all “Hey, look at me! Look at how solo-y I am!” You know, it’s more of the ego spot.

CN: Guitar players are from planet Guitar, singers are from planet Ego.

DD: Yeah, but singers have a right to be because that’s their…

CN: They vocalize.

DD: Yeah, and guitar players are really like, ignore the other guys, look at me!

CN: And that ego.

DD: Its’ heavy; it’s enough to make a stereotype of it. And the bass player…the drummer you can just hear because he’s just the beat. But the bass player is really the pulse.

CN: He links the drums to the guitar and makes it lyrical

DD: You have to know how to make everyone else sound good by filling in the gaps. You have to be the least egomaniacal of the bunch. You have to, you know…

CN: Bass players by nature are that way, though.

DD: Right.

CN: They’re like the happy-go-lucky guys of the band.

DD: Right, but usually they’re not the most attractive guys of the band. Like you see all the girls and they crowd towards the guitar player, or like, a lot of girls like the drummer, but the bass player looks all lonely. ‘Hey guys, can I come along too?’

CN: Which is funny because they’re usually the coolest guys in the band.

DD: And they usually end up finding the girls that are most rockin’, the coolest girls that are fun to hang out with. I mean, think about life as an extension of high school. You’ve got the guitar players who are like you’re jock guys: ‘Hey, look at me. Look how cool I am.’ And you’re little bombshell girl is like ‘Oh my god!’ and then they end up having these horrible problems and everybody else laughs at them.

CN: Yeah, the psycho chick.

DD: Yeah, ‘I have all these problems.’ Yeah, I wonder why, ass-wipe. You know?

CN: [Laughing]

DD: And then the bass player is usually like, the guy who could--you see him and his lady are like hanging out, laughing, rocking, you know, ‘Hey you wanna hang out?’ ‘Yeah, cool.’ And they cruise off. You know, there’s no argument, there’s no bullshit; they just hang out.

CN: I have to ask you this. When you were a child, what was your first cognizant memory or realization of music that just like sucked you into it?

DD: Oh, easy. This is easy. And it’s not even the first thing I remember, it’s just, it was such an impactual thing. And it was: Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. And I’ll tell you why.

CN: Why?

DD: My dad had a really great sound system. He had these German speakers, uh, ‘the Klipschorns.’ And Klipsch were relatively new on the circuit I mean, they were known but they weren’t like today where ‘Klipsch, oh yeah, man, Klipsch.’ Yeah, my computer speakers are Klipsch. These were four-foot speakers that they nicknamed ‘Fred’ and ‘Ethel.’

CN: [Laughing] Huh… ok…

DD: ‘The Klipschorns.’ They were loud. We lived in an apartment complex in San Jose, northern California, and we had nasty neighbors upstairs. And I thought they had a good sound system. My dad had an equalizer and if he set it at 2 the people would come down. I mean, the thing was powerful. They’ve come a long way but back then it was still pretty good. And if you’d turn it up to 10, oh you’d blow any other speakers. ‘The Klipschorns’ were huge!

CN: Are you sure it wasn’t a PA system?

DD: Well, you couldn’t sit in there and listen, even with the earplugs. You couldn’t listen to it at the 10; it was just too loud and it would distort, you know.

CN: Anything beyond 8 is usually just too loud.

DD: It was too much power

CN: For the room, yeah.

DD: And it had a graphic equalizer on the front, too. So my dad could level this thing out. He could bass it out, yeah, and um, of course it starts out with a heartbeat. And I remember the bastards upstairs were pounding and they were pounding their music and my dad was complaining

CN: What were they playing?

DD: I don’t remember. It was so impactual that I couldn’t even remember what they were playing. But I remember my mom took me out because she was worried about my ears so my mom took me out to the apartment complex’s pool. Now this is a good walk.

CN: But you could hear it clear down there, right?

DD: Dude. My dad put on hearing protection, like shooter’s hearing things.

CN: I have those, the Leight ones.

DD: Where they’re powered by a battery and you turn ‘em up and you can hear a whisper but it cuts out…

CN: Oh, the white noise ones...

DD: But it cuts out like 28, 30 decibels of sound. Then he had earplugs on under that. He sits down. All the glass is taken off the shelves and stuff. And then comes this thing: Boom-boom. Boom-boom. The Dark Side of the Moon. And I’m out by the pool all of a sudden this guy hears it getting louder, it’s getting real loud. It starts shaking the room. So he cranks it up. People are coming out of their houses and stuff. People are pounding, right.

CN: Stereo wars. We have that every day.

DD: Yeah, I know, right? And I remember looking back-- I kid you not. Sounds funny but I kid not-- I could take you to the place exactly where it happened. The building…was moving. The building was shaking.

CN: [Laughing]

DD: And man, my dad won that. And then the rest kicks in…man, I love it. That album rocks. And what’s funny, oddly enough most people my age wouldn’t even remember this, but um, Gordon Lightfoot--my dad used to listen to Gordon Lightfoot and that was really cool.

CN: He has a great timbre to his voice.

DD: Yeah, Gord’s cool. When he did like, you know, “Circle of Steel” and “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Rainy Day People.” You know, “Carefree Highway”…

CN: I love “Lay Lady Lay.”

DD: Oh, just rockin’ man.

CN: Oh yeah, and “Edmund Fitzgerald,” that one too...

DD: Yeah, ”Edmund Fitzgerald”’s great. You know, and I’ve got such a vast array of music, you know, I learned --I knew Hall and Oats and nobody knew Hall and Oats growing up.

CN: That was so popular where I lived, though.

DD: Yeah. Eventually I just started gaining more and more and more knowledge… Of course The Beatles and classic stuff like that, I like to listen to. And Stones, the Vapors… “turning Japanese I think I’m …”

CN: Yeah. Yeah…

DD: Classics, you know. I remember The Tubes and just…My dad had a good vinyl collection.

CN: And you were little then. You had to be.

DD: I was small, but man, I just loved music. Man, I loved it. And this was way before acting, before anything else. I hadn’t even gone to school yet.

CN: And you were getting the good stuff.

DD: And I was digging it, you know. And my dad…the only thing I regret is that he wasn’t really a huge Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa fan, which I kind of bum out on because I wish I’d learned about that even earlier. I discovered that on my own. Like you know how there’s those big-brother bands?

CN: How old were you when you discovered that?

DD: It was late in life, it was teens, you know.

CN: But did you come to it through friends or what? Or you just came across it?

DD: I just came across it through hanging out with different guys who were into music. And it was like oh, their big brother told them about this, or the weird guy down the street tipped you to something and you were like, ‘oh!’

CN: All I remember about Zappa is some song about a vacuum cleaner and a closet and I don’t remember…something twisted…

DD: Yeah, um…

CN: I also used to listen to it when I was really stoned, so…

DD: Yeah, Joe’s Garage was a great album. Apostrophe, Thingfist, Tinseltown, Rebellion, Sheik Yerbouti, Hot Rats, Make a Jazz Noise Here, You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, all of those are good. You know, Ship Arriving Too Late To Save a Drowning Witch, Shut Up 'N' Play Yer Guitar…all those are good. The list just goes on. Oh it’s so great.

CN: You’re such a Zappa-head.

DD: Oh I knew the Zappa family. I used to audition with Ahmet. Ahmet and I used to go out on auditions together, you know, and um, you know the film Ghost Dad with Bill Cosby?

CN: No.

DD: I auditioned for that when it was supposed to be Steve Martin as the dad.

CN: Hmm.

DD: Ghost Dad. The dad gets killed and comes back as a ghost. You know, and it was a comedy and before they changed it, changed the whole premise from being Steve Martin to Bill Cosby. I was supposed to be the son and Ahmet was going out for one of the other brothers. And Dweezil I met early on. Never really knew Moon. In fact, I think I’ve only seen her in passing. I don’t even think she’d remember meeting me because I don’t think we were actually introduced; it was just because she was there. I know Judy, though, Frank’s wife. I was at his house a long time ago. I actually went um…MTV had the VJ Kennedy…

CN: Yeah, I remember her. The one everyone hated so much. But that’s why she was cool, because everyone hated her.

DD: Yeah, I went on a date with her.

CN: And everybody’s all “Dude, she sucks!” I think that’s why she’s cool, because she just sucks so bad.

DD: Yeah, she had an evil streak…like you.

CN: Why thank you, sir.

DD: And uh, I ended up dating her.

CN: [Laughing]

DD: Yeah, and uh…we went to Frank’s house and it was just…what an experience. What a trip. It was interesting. His house was built like a fractal. You know what a fractal is?

CN: Uh huh.

DD: It was like on the side of a hill. He has a fire pole inside of his house. You can get from the top floor to the bottom, just “vwoom.” There’s a pool table. He had a room with laundry machines. It’s just like, ‘What?’

CN: Why not?

DD: I mean, you’re waiting for the laundry you might as well play some pool. Here’s my biggest regret. Is that I didn’t, at that time…I discovered Zappa after this.

CN: Wow. So you didn’t get to talk to him about it.

DD: I never got a chance.

CN: To like pick his brain….

DD: To like even say, you know, anything of what I would have… It’s just I didn’t realize what greatness I was around. I just didn’t know at the time. So when I found out later it kind of bummed me out. It’s kind of like what I was saying earlier tonight about sitting with Jaco (Pastorius). It would have been phenomenal. And I didn’t discover Jaco until…well, obviously long after his demise.

CN: He was such a sweet guy. He was so mellow. He was a little touched, but you know.

DD: He’s wired weird, you know. That’s why I wonder if I’m destined for greatness because I am a weirdo. I am not wired right at all. But man, the people I come across, that I get along with, are really cool people. I mean, people that just rock and have an impact. And you can tell that they are just not like the rest of the sheep. I’m a shepherd, not a sheep. I do not follow; I lead. And they’re like… you know, it doesn’t have to be one leader. A group of leaders can lead just fine. There’s enough sheep out there to follow.

CN: Anyway, so you said you started playing guitar when you were five.

DD: Yeah. I mean, not rocking, but…

CN: Who taught you?

DD: Well, I mean my dad… not rocking, but…

CN: Yeah, you were learning the beginning stuff, the elementary, but…

DD: Yeah, I mean, he started showing me. By 7, he could be like ‘Play B minor’ and I could just do it.

CN: Was he a musician?

DD: Not really. I mean, that’s the weird thing. He could play and he did play. He used to write songs and stuff, so I guess yeah, but he just never… He wasn’t like… you know, you find out ‘What Does Your Dad Do?’ ‘Yeah, my dad used to smoke pot and travel around in a van with musicians writing,’ and you know… It wasn’t like that. It was like, my dad could play, and I used to watch him play. My father was really cool. I really loved music early on. He just mesmerized me and so I wanted to be able to do that. Since as far back as I can remember, I’d hear weird shit in my head. But the problem is I never had official training.

CN: Uh huh.

DD: So I know what I lack. I’m not at a level yet where it affects me; even though I’d like to rectify this, remedy this. I can’t play-- which effects jamming, too-- as fast as I can hear it. Like if I hear something, I can work it out and then play it, but I can’t do it as real-time, as I’m hearing it. I don’t know my instrument that well. That’s what hinders me.

CN: Well that comes when you jam all the time.

DD: Well, you see, Eva,- he can do it as he hears it. And that’s the crazy thing. I want to be that proficient at my instrument.

CN: I was never able to do that, either. I say I’m a trained monkey, because I can read music, I can play anything you put in front of me, and hit it, but like, improvise, it’s a blank slate. It’s like, ‘huh?’

DD: But, see, odd time, that’s where… you know…

CN: I like 7/8. I like weird time changes.

DD: We have a song in 9 on there.

CN: What’s the one you were talking about that goes between the two…it goes from like 8 to…

DD: 8, 7, 6?

CN: Yeah.

DD: That’s “Red Panties 145.”

CN: That’s the one I heard online today.

DD: Yeah. “Red Panties.”

CN: It actually starts off a little slow. I was like, ‘Huh? This is dragging a bit.’ But then it picked up and I was like, oh, this is pretty intriguing.

DD: Yeah, well it’s…

CN: It almost feels like it’s dragging because of the time signature.

DD: Right.

CN: Like it’s not quite getting up to speed but then it hits it.

DD: Right.

CN: And then when the guitar comes in and does the noodle-ing...

DD: Well, the reason being, even if you go back to the sixteenth note eventually it’s gonna reach the bottom where it’s going to recycle.

CN: Right.

DD: And when it feels this slow it’s been losing ground ever since and then it pops to the front, you’re thrust forward violently.

CN: Yeah, it’s like it pulls you.

DD: But uh, yeah that was probably like the second or third song that we wrote and that was based on a riff that I had come up with a long time before the band and had put out there and said, ‘Hey guys, this is something that I came up with.’ I was listening to old tapes and old mini-disc stuff where I’d just…tape players much like this one, actually where I used to just carry it with me. As far back as I can remember, you know… I’d just do all these weird…

CN: I’d like to hear some of those and recycle them as hip-hop.

DD: Oh I am. I have all kinds of embarrassing “bowm chik-a bowm-bowm” tapes. You know? Not really like that, I mean, I’m not a slap player, but just tapes of me bum-bum-bum-bumping. I have a couple where it’s the actual instrument but a lot of voice. Some I was um…we’ll just say I was ‘partied.’ I was kind of out of it. And I’m like, oh, I was tone-deaf! I can’t tell what the hell I was doing! But I got the rhythm down so I’ve just gotta fill in the notes.

CN: You get it the next morning and you’re like, what the hell was that?

DD: Yeah. What I used to do is, I used to put a video camera on me and I used to get myself prepared and I’d put a video camera on and I’d play without thinking. And it would be slow, there would be pauses, but it wasn’t for anyone else to observe; it was just for me. Because I knew that if I came up with something cool and was just jamming on it for a while, then it’s like once you notice this is sounding cool, then you might lose it.

CN: I’ve had a lot of people say that. When they’re like traveling on the road trying to compose new stuff when they’re on the tour bus, playing one album but trying to compose the next one. ‘Oh, damn, that was a good jam but now I forgot it!’

DD: Yeah. And I can’t remember it. And I’ve had things where like, my phone has a memo on it and when it runs out I’ve gotta like, call myself and leave it on my messages.

CN: You’re obsessive.

DD: Yeah, so: ‘You have 64 messages. Message one: Dun da-dun, dun, dun…’

CN: You’re obsessed.

DD: Yeah, but it’s… it rocks. There’s some you can do something with. A lot of em’ are just crap you have to listen through. And then you get a lot of stuff where you can use it. And you’re like ‘Whoa, that was worthwhile.’ “Red Panties” started out as that…8, 7, 6.

CN: Uh huh. So…Bug Guts, that was it?

DD: Yeah. Bug Guts was Scott and Rose by themselves, and then eventually they did an album with Evan. They hired Evan to come in as the drummer. They used a bass player named David Carpenter. David J. Carpenter. Who was actually a pretty darn good bass player.

CN: How did you come across that? Through Evan…because you were playing chess with him, right?

DD: Yeah. Through Evan I met Scott and Rose and then we got together and there was a gig where Dave couldn’t make it and I went and played in his place. I had to learn a bunch of Bug Guts stuff, which is hard anyway. So I went down and learned it pretty easily. So it was like well, we went down and started jamming, came up with good stuff, picked our stuff up within two days-a whole set worth of stuff which is all odd-time stuff and crazy crap-and it’s hard to play that stuff. There’s a lot of short, sharp breaks where you’ve gotta stop right on time and then change styles and everything else. And we could do it fairly quickly without having known each other for eons. And then we played, I think two or three times nameless. They announced us as Bug Guts but we really weren’t Bug Guts because we were playing whatever ended up as Salty stuff.

CN: Your new material.

DD: Yeah--Just because we didn’t have a name. ‘Here they are…uh…these guys!’ You know…

CN: So I heard you saying through the door when you were talking to MTV that it was Rosebud, actually that came up with the name Salty the Pocket Knife.

DD: Well, what happened was we were just sitting there jamming one time and she didn’t have any lyrics written out so she’s sort of going ‘uhm, ahnu-mm,ahhr…’ whatever like that. She was singing words, ‘Stab you in the ass’ and it was like, ‘What!?’ She’s all singing these weird words and it was almost like a break where we were writing stuff and it was getting so intense that we just broke into a stupid-silly jam. We were just having fun. She does, ‘Dun, dun, da-dun, dun-dun.’

CN: Sounds like something from the forties.

DD: Yeah, and she’s like, ‘Hello Mr. Ice Cream Man, better have… No, no wait. Salty the Pocket Knife, is coming ‘round to take your life.’

CN: [Laughing]

DD: Evan and I, we’re just jamming out or whatever and I’m starting to smile because we’re just screwing around or whatever. And she’s like, ‘Hello Mr. Ice Cream Man, better have my crack or I’ll stab you man. Salty the Pocket Knife…’ and we just stopped and broke out laughin’. We were trying to think of names and we came up with stuff like Cream Feet, Supreme Bulge, you know, Happening Guys, you know, uh…

CN: [Laughing]

DD: Gosh, I’m trying to think of ‘em…Pepperoni Plumbers, the Pork Pirates. Just throwing around crap. None of ‘em were considered. It was just who could throw out the funniest name. And so…when she sang that Evan suddenly goes, ‘what the hell were you saying? Were you saying Salty the Pocket Knife?’ and she goes, ‘Yeah, I guess.’ And we said, ‘That’s it.’ We just laughed, ‘That’s the name of the band. That’s it.’

CN: It’s so left field that most people aren’t even going to get it.

DD: I don’t even get it. But it rocks.

CN: It’s just strange but it’s…you know, I’ve heard worse.

DD: Well, see, the thing is, Scott and Rose are really…they’re not the type of people that lock down into any one thing, which goes in line with my thinking and Evan’s thinking. It’s that Evan and I are really the base of Salty the Pocket Knife. We’re really the core sound.

CN: Right, where you sort of meet Bug Guts and merge…

DD: Yah, people like the sound. But see, the sound of the music and everything. Because, well, of course Rose’s voice is her voice and it’s very unique, but…

CN: She uses it very dynamically.

DD: Yeah, she knows herself well. But the sound basically, though, the core sound, is me and the Ev-ster. And originally we wanted it as well, it’s going to be me and Evan, like almost like …King Crimson, where whoever we play with, we are the canvas that people are going to latch onto for the familiarity, but so it doesn’t get boring to have…you know, because we weren’t doing this for the money; we’re doing this for ourselves and to put out music that people will dig. But uh, of course we did this album and it’s been getting such great responses from the people that we’ve had tell us that they’ve heard it and that they liked it.

CN: Do you think people are actually surprised that you’re talented?

DD: Oh yes. I think everybody expects me to suck. [Laughing] But, hell, I expect me to suck.

CN: I think more that they expect the character that you played in that show to be…

DD: The one onstage?

CN: Yeah, like super-imposed. Yeah.

DD: Some people are stupid.

CN: Like they identify that character with you, not you as a person. And so they can’t quite, you know…

DD: Well, there are some people out there that need a little more encouragement, but there are some people who are just blatantly stupid. And I can’t be held responsible for that. And then there’s people out there who actually get it and those are the people that I will hang with. You know, it’s…

CN: You know, it’s like I say: ‘Those of you who think you know it all really annoy those of us who do.’

DD: Right, right. Well, I always say: ‘You see it your way and I’ll see it the right way.’

CN: There you go.

DD: You know, you get only so many chances in a lifetime to run into people that are really, really special, that are really, really cool. And you can’t let those times slip by. You just can’t. Even if it goes against your better judgment you can’t. There are times when I’ve been places, little things, not only in music but I mean, one instance, I was sitting somewhere and I had to go back, I had prior engagements to meet and I said, ‘screw it’ and I stayed an extra day because the person I met… We sat down and just started jamming and it was just such an amazing, I mean, everything from the music to philosophy to just chatting with the person was just so cool. That, you have to… you never know if you’re going to run into them again or what’s going to happen. Free spirits are free spirits, you know?

CN: Yeah.

DD: You get some powerful people, but they leave; sometimes they just don’t stay in one place. And that’s the thing that’s scary. The industry wants everyone to stay in one place, so settled in. Scott and Rose are like that, Ev and I are like that, but differences that happen are really along the same lines with me of you know, we lock together very well. And it’s very important for the rhythm sections.

CN: Yeah.

DD: And our ability to write and create… Scott and Rose originally were just, you know…we were going to put the canvas out and they were going to be this month’s flavor, this month’s, you know, tone…to our project. And that may even still be the case, I don’t know, but it’s hard when you’re pushing an album because you know, people want, ‘Ok, this is the band.’

CN: ‘ This is the lineup. Don’t ever change it, God forbid.’

DD: Even though when you look at Faith No More, Chuck Mosely and whoever else, and then they eventually ended up putting Mike Patton in there and people liked it even better...