The Minnesota Music Note

MN Music Note - Ep 35 - How James Flagg Took Tribute Bands to Another Level

• William McLeod • Episode 35

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:17:09


What does it actually take to step into the shoes of bands like Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Alice in Chains… and make fans believe it?

In this episode of The Minnesota Music Note, we sit down with James Flagg — the powerhouse vocalist and musician behind Minnesota tribute bands Mad Alice, 10,000 Days, and Stone and Echo. From learning drums on couch cushions as a kid to fronting some of the Midwest’s most respected tribute acts, James shares the wild, funny, frustrating, and inspiring journey that shaped him into the performer he is today.

We get deep into the reality of tribute band culture, the pressure of honoring iconic music, chaotic road stories, the evolution of Minnesota’s music scene, and how one Facebook post changed the course of his career forever.

In this episode, we talk about:
- Growing up obsessed with drums and teaching himself music from scratch
- His early bands and the evolution of Bubble Math
- The truth about being in original bands vs tribute bands
- The insane story of playing to an empty bar in Reno
- How Mad Alice became one of Minnesota’s standout Alice in Chains tributes
- Auditioning to become the singer of 10,000 Days
- Why chemistry matters more than talent in a band
- The creation of Stone and Echo, the A Perfect Circle tribute
- Recording struggles, DIY albums, and learning music production
- His solo project Jaunt and Ghost and love for 80s-inspired music

If you’re a fan of Tool, Alice in Chains, A Perfect Circle, Minnesota music culture, or just love hearing real stories from musicians who’ve lived it — this episode is for you.

Tune into the full episode now and get an inside look at the passion, obsession, humor, and hard work behind some of the Midwest’s best tribute bands.

🎙️ Are you part of the Minnesota music scene?
If you’re in a band, running venues, organizing events, producing music, or helping grow the local scene in any way — we’d love to connect with you and potentially feature you on the podcast.

Resources:
More of James Flagg’s Performance Videos:

10,000 Days “The Grudge” at The Doghouse (James on Vox)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5grzSgMs1kE

Season of the Fly (Original) Music Video “Safe?” (James on Drums and Vox)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZdVk7Tec7E&list=RDTZdVk7Tec7E&start_radio=1

Bubblemath (Original) Music Video “Everything” (James on drums and backing Vox)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFw8H3AGtA&list=RDQtFw8H3AGtA&start_radio=1

Just & Ghost “Brand New Dawn” (James’ Original solo project)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lL1RU7sUrM&list=RD8lL1RU7sUrM&start_radio=1

Just & Ghost (Original) Music Video “Tomorrow’s a Thief” (From a sound track I did for a short
film called “The Guilty Prince of Chinatown”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAsSMhrm0l4&list=RDMAsSMhrm0l4&start_radio=1

Modern Condition (Original) Music Video “Kings of Cool” (James on drums and Vox) Featuring
Shawn Q Kroll (From The Hybrid Theory)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoKg-RlmGb8&list=RDeoKg-RlmGb8&start_radio=1

PodcastCrew website: podcastcrew.online

The MN Music Note FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/minnesotamusicnote/

Email: william@podcastcrew.online

SPEAKER_01

Thanks so much for coming. Honored to have you here. I was just telling a little backstory that my wife and I, the first time we saw you perform uh in person, was actually with your perfect circle uh tribute band. Sure. And you had absolutely mastered the use of that box of the boss uh you know vocal pedal with all the different effects and stuff like that. And my wife being a singer, she's like, oh man, I could sing, but that's so cool. Like knowing how to do it and when to do it and how to kind of program that. I bought her for for the record for everybody here. I bought her a pedal three weeks later and she took it out of the box. That's about as far as she's gotten in terms of what kind of pedals to get. It wasn't uh so I couldn't find any of the boss ones, which is the one that you recommended that you have or whatever, because they were sold out everywhere. But I found a different brand and I don't remember what the brand is. Yeah, I use a TC Helicon. TC Helicon. Okay, so maybe it was boss that I got. So TC Helicon could have been the one that you had mentioned.

SPEAKER_00

And then yeah, I got for like Matt Alice, I use the the mic mechanic, I think it's called. They don't make it anymore. It's just a very basic delay pedal, but the one I use in Stone and Echo is the same one I use in 10,000 Days, which our guitar player Jose Lozano basically he didn't give it to me, but upon joining, he's like, Here, use this, don't use it for anything else. It's like okay, you know, and I brought it home with the manual. I had never used a a vocal pedal like that before, and I was a tad overwhelmed with all the the options. You can it's not just delay, I mean, it's got everything on it. And uh one thing I wasn't really keen to was using uh the tap delay function of it. So I I actually went through just to like re relieve myself of the anxieties, I went through and created a preset for every single tool song. I sat down and listened to the recordings and like, oh, it's about right here, and I'd go and dive in there and set that the actual timing of the delays so I didn't have to worry about tap. Make the set list, and I just dial up whatever song it is and got it close enough. And now with Stone and Echo, I finally figured out how the tap works. So I just got three delays on there, and then when the song comes up, I listen to the the groove, tap along to how I want the delay to be. Hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Premium shit, man. The more you know. Yeah, right. So how long did it take you, like, you know, from from box opening and uh, you know, uh reading the manual and stuff like that, how to like to get into like really figuring that thing out?

SPEAKER_00

Uh not too long. I mean, I've had other pieces of gear where you know there's things that are, you know, similar to I mean, just even having like a a keyboard, you'd kind of learn how to fish around in the menu and what certain things mean. And um, if I have something that I need to do, I'm pretty good about knowing what it's called and where to find it in the manual and get it going just like that. And there's lots of stuff it can do that I don't know how to do because I don't have a need to do it, so therefore I never look into it. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. It didn't take too long though.

SPEAKER_01

All right, so I know who you are. We've met before. Audience may not. Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us what you do out in the world?

SPEAKER_00

Um James Flagg. I was born and raised in Minnesota. Um, I used to be James Swenson Flag, but I dropped the hyphenated last name upon having children because I didn't want to pass that weirdness on to them. Um I am a drummer. I saw a drum kit when I was like three years old. I went with my mom to her brother's place, and her brother had a roommate, had a drum kit down in the basement. I think I went downstairs to I was just walking around exploring and I saw this thing, this huge thing in the basement, and right away I knew it was important, you know. And I went upstairs and I talked to my mom. I was like, what is this? You know, and she talked to the roommate and said, Hey, do you mind if Jimmy goes messes with your drums? Why don't you go down there and just make some noise or whatever? And there's some sticks sitting there, and I very slowly went around the whole kit and tapping every little thing, seeing what the sound it makes. I couldn't reach the pedals or anything like that, but it left an imprint on me, and I knew that this, whatever it was, was for me. I never had anybody push me toward music or drumming. It was just that thing in the world that I gravitated to. Um, unfortunately, we lived in apartments, just my mom and myself.

SPEAKER_01

This is pre-e-kit at this point. This is pre-e-kit. Or they probably had a couple of like really old school ones that like hitting a concrete, you know, block or something.

SPEAKER_00

Sure, yeah. No, these were the couch cushion days. Um, so that's pretty much what I did up until I was 12. Was I would set up the cushions on my couch and I'd have a pair of drumsticks, and how I hit the cushion and where I hit it would give me a different tone, and just sit there and bang and stuff and play along to whatever song I was uh liking at the time. And yeah, it seemed like forever that I couldn't have a drum kit, and I would see them in music videos or in the Sears catalog, and just I was aching for it, you know. And my dad got my dad uh got me a snare drum, probably when I was like eight, and I immediately just busted it and just didn't know what to do. I was like, what is this thing? You know, this isn't a drum set, this is a loud drum, but you know, it's fun. Um, yeah, when I was 12, my mom bought a house, and actually a couple miles from here. This is my old stomping ground Robinsdale, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Um about a block away from Kevin Sunburg, like I was telling you.

SPEAKER_01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00

Uh we bought that house and within the week, it was around Christmas time. Uh my mom, my dad, and my grandma, they went went in, pitched in on a drum set for me from uh place was called B Sharp Music. And it was a percussion plus drum set. I think it was like 500 bucks new. Got me a you know, cymbal pack Zildjian Shimitar. I think I'm pronouncing that wrong. Uh Scimitar? Shimitar? I don't know. Yeah, that sounds right. Symbols that you break after a few months, you know, they're all cracked and busted up, and the hi-hats had like inverted on themselves. So, you know what I mean? Uh so it made pretty unique sounds after a short while. Yeah, so when I was 12, I finally got a drum kit and started making some noise and I was happy. Nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so drums, drums since then. So mom mom lets you set it up. Uh, when did you like get a better kit and kind of where did you go from your your first kit?

SPEAKER_00

My first kit uh lasted me up through tech school. I went to Eden Prairie Hennepin Tech for uh audio recording. Uh thought it would be a good idea to help me in my my adventures in being in a band and like, oh, I should learn how to record myself and sound good, which ultimately didn't really pan out. It led me to advertising. Um But uh with a student loan when I was going to tech school, I got a student loan and I went to Guitar Center and I bought a DW kit. It was a floor model, so it was a little bit discounted, but it was nice and I still have it. That's still my kit that I played in. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I haven't wanted another kit since then.

SPEAKER_01

It's I've seen uh seen you in my feet. Is it that that white kit or whatever that you're setting up in the basement?

SPEAKER_00

Well, no, it's not white, but it's it would have been whatever picture you've you've seen. It's kind of a it's like gray silver. It kind of has a scale look to it, or like a fleck. I don't know what the finish would be called. As I was telling you before, I am terrible with specs and names and all that stuff. I think that's all right.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's that's safe with me, man, because I have no idea what any of my stuff's called either. So I know what brand of kit I play, and I know it's a maple kit, but yeah, it's not like the metallic sparkle or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00

It definitely has like a scaly look about it.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. Yeah. All right. Cool. All right, so you got this really nice DW kit, and and what did you do with it after that?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'd were you in bands already when you up to this point? Oh, yeah. Uh okay. So my first band, I would say, would be in 10th grade. I met the the guy that played the the guitar player in the school. His name is Charles Christensen, goes by Chaz. I think I think right now he's in a band called System 13, maybe indeed.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. A couple of different bands, yeah. But Chaz System 13. I just saw him at Route 47 on Thursday at the open jam or whatever.

SPEAKER_00

So I was in a band with him for a few years in high school. So he was the guitar player at the stage. He was the guy that I needed to meet, supposedly, because uh when I got my drums, you know, I'm not not trying to toot my own horn, but I hit the ground running because I started when I was three in my mind. Right. Plenty of couch cushion experience. Um and I was like, Well, I gotta meet this guy, you know. He came over and we immediately jumped into some Sepultura jams. Uh nice. Like, I think the first one of the first songs we played was Territory. Nice, he's got that, you know, he's really fast and energetic. Yeah. Well, we need a bass player. And I mentioned Kevin Sunberg, his younger brother Paul, who's still a very good friend of mine, he would bring his brother's left-handed bass over to my house, and we slowly started figuring out like for whom the bell tolls and some Metallica jams and whatnot. And eventually he got his own bass so he could play it right-handed, and he hopped in with Charles and I. So we were a three-piece, and we called ourselves draw and quarter. And we did not have a singer, so uh Charles would sing a little bit and I would sing a little bit behind the kit. Uh, Paul didn't touch the mic at all. But that's you know, we just started learning covers and just kind of took it from there. Um singing and drumming was uh something that interested me because of my my biggest influence is Phil Collins.

SPEAKER_01

Really?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, my favorite band is Genesis.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, okay. And so he is he is definitely the quintessential guy who if you had asked me who might be the guy who sings and plays drums, that you would have followed. It would have been I would have said that right away. Because he's the guy that I know of that does that. So yeah, awesome.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, he's Phil Collins is the soundtrack to my youth for sure. Is that right? Yeah, when I was eight years old, I got the invisible touch tape and no jacket required, and I just had that in my my Walkman all the time anywhere I went. Nice jamming out to that stuff, so um, that definitely got me started singing and drumming, or at least told me that it was okay to do that. Um yeah, so it was that until I got into college and bought myself the the DW kit. Um by this time I I wasn't really jamming with Charles anymore. We kind of like went our own separate ways and I was still hanging out with Paul, but we couldn't really get our own band off the ground. We just got together and jammed bass and drums, uh, you know, a dream theater song or whatever here and there just for fun, hanging out. But it wasn't it didn't have the level of seriousness that I was kind of hungry for at the time. I was like, well, where does it go now? You know?

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So I picked up a city pages at school, and I saw an ad in the City Pages that just said, like odd time signatures, question mark with a phone number. I said, Yes, I do. So I called it, and there was this uh message, this greeting recording. I didn't get a person, but it was basically like uh a phone number that was set up to find a drummer, you know, and it had a little sample of what what these guys were doing. And interesting. It me it immediately sounded like old Genesis, which I wasn't really big on. I was into the new, I was I liked 80s Genesis, which true Genesis fans will, you know, tisk tisk me for that, but that's just how I got into it first was invisible touch. Well, this stuff sounded like the old, kind of like Peter Gabriel, just kind of whimsical, and like what the hell is going on in here? You know, and left my message, got together with those guys, and they gave me a little demo to work on, and I just thought it was weird and different and challenging, so I I ran with it, and they seemed like cool guys to hang out with. Um, kind of geeky like me, but a lot smarter. Um and that turned into bubble math, or they were bubble math at the time. They had a different drummer before me. Uh so yeah, I I took their their tape that had like four or five songs on it, I think, and I said I'll talk to you later. And a couple weeks later I went back out there and showed them what I was doing, and they thought it was cool. And soon after that, or right around that time, I had entered in the drum uh the drum off at Guitar Center. Okay. Um, and I I got first place in the first round, which isn't a huge deal. I mean, I was going up against some clowns, and then I took like runner up in the second round and didn't really continue after that, but it got them kind of excited to see what I was doing because I was using a lot of double kick, which at the time they weren't really messing around with double kick. I should back up. They had the two guitar players, I think, had bought uh Roland V drum. Is it the V Drum kit? The electric electric kit. They only had a single pedal on it. After they saw the drum off, they went and bought another pedal so they could have double kick on it. And it's kind of funny if you listen to uh pre-bubble math stuff, it's called out music. It's kind of like this slow, kind of almost jazzy, playful stuff. And then I got in there and I'm coming from the school of Pantera and Sepultura, Metallica Megadeth, all that fun stuff, and it just kind of injected a little bit of up up tempo stuff, a little a little bit of fury in there, and the two came together and just kind of turned into something really cool.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. Yeah. So is all this kind of like bubble math catalog out there for people to find?

SPEAKER_00

Right now we have three albums out. Uh, our first one came out in 2002. Uh it was a lot of fun. Um, and then we went see if I got this right, 2002. Our next album was 2017. So 15 years went by. That's a pretty big hiatus. What happened? Yeah, we we're a dysfunctional band.

SPEAKER_01

I see. We just couldn't admittedly dysfunctional.

SPEAKER_00

That's all right. We couldn't fire on all cylinders. One of us always had something going on, whether it was me moving away to for work or whatever. We were just kind of always in different spots of of life doing things that conflicted. There was always a setback, and hindsight, I understand why it happened. Still makes me sad because I think that the amount of talent in bubble math, had we all just been on the same page and hungry for it, I think we could have done something. I think we'd have quite a reputation by now. We did uh in 2003, we did a like a little East Coast mini tour, which is like eight shows with a destination show at the end. The whole reason we went on the tour was to play prog day in, I think it's uh South Carolina. So, you know, they had probably like a thousand or maybe 1,500 people there in this out this field outdoors and all these prog bands. It's like a couple day event, you know, that well, let's go play prog day, and then we'll play uh, you know, this place in Wisconsin, and you know, this place in Pittsburgh and some other Chicago. We had, you know, had these like gas shows, you know, get some gas money on the way to the prog day. And then a couple years later, 2005, we did the same thing, but out west we went to a festival called CalProg in Whittier, California. And we played a handful of shows on the way to that show, which also included one of my most memorable shows that I've ever done.

SPEAKER_01

Would you like to hear about it? This is uh this is you almost asked my question.

SPEAKER_00

I can't help but notice that it's one of your questions. Um so we're driving through and we had a show in Reno on the way out to California. I don't remember the name of the place. It was this little dive bar. And this is pre-this is like right around the time that MySpace was just starting to show up. There wasn't there wasn't social media really at the time. It was like right at the the brink of it. Um, so we didn't really have a way to promote it, or you know, nobody knew we were coming, and we didn't have any fans in the air. We just figured, oh, maybe it'll be some walkthrough traffic, whatever. We show up and we get all set up. Nobody's there. There's the bartender and the sound engineer, and we did our sound check, and all right, it's time for music. Bartender, sound engineer. Got into it and a couple songs into it, those guys are like, these guys are fucking weird. We're out of here. Those they took a walk, they just left. The sound guy and the bartender left. They left. And we're on stage playing through an empty room. Completely it was practice in this bar in Reno. Um, and I remember looking over at Kai, our keyboard player, and he like had tears and like snot coming up because he was just laughing so hard at the situation. We're all just just laughing because it's hilarious. We played one song, you know, like, well, that's kind of rough. Let's just play that one again because we want to sound good at Kel Prague, you know. This is obviously a practice, no witnesses, let's run it again. And and then right around the time we were done playing, the sound guy and the the bartender comes back and sorry there's nobody here. That's a bummer. Uh doesn't really feel right giving you nothing. So uh well, how about uh a round of yag bombs? Okay. So we took our yag bombs and then drove back to our hotel. And they didn't even pay you guys for what, you know, like we didn't bring anybody. We didn't know. It's just it was funny, you know. I was memorable for sure. Like, I that's one of my favorites. I was it was depressing but hilarious, right?

SPEAKER_01

In in hindsight, it's always an entertaining story, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and then two nights later we're playing to a like a packed auditorium with like you know, like a thousand people that are just like bubble math, yeah, playing rock star, like signing CDs and selling shirts after the show, you know. It's uh quite the dynamic experience, you know. Quite the contrast of the week and a half out on the road. So a little taste of the road.

SPEAKER_01

All right, so give me give me story number two then. That was exciting. What what else did you do? Were you out there touring or even in in the cities playing? Could be bubble math, could be with somebody else. Like what what else interesting has happened to you in recent years?

SPEAKER_00

No, and I didn't know you're gonna put me on the spot like that. Interesting. Um I don't know. You know, we I played some good shows with uh this other band, Season of the Fly. Um, we opened for a couple of national acts that seemed like a big deal at the time. Hindsight, I'm like, oh whatever. Like we opened for Saliva at the I think it was the Delwin up in St. Joe that came up. That one was memorable for me, not necessarily because of who we were opening for, but it was just a bizarre night. Um there was a torrential downpour, and I remember carrying I was playing bass in this band, bass and lead vocals. And uh just my gear was getting so wet carrying it in there. And about halfway through our set, it crapped out on me, and I didn't I, you know, under the pressure in front of a you know a decent sized crowd, I didn't I didn't want to stop playing. So I just set my bass down and we finished the set without bass in it. And that's when I grabbed the mic and got a little more animated because I wasn't like focused on my my fretboard, you know, because I wasn't a great bass player, I needed to stare at my frets, you know. Um, but it was funny, it gave me a little taste of just not having an inst that was like the first time I didn't have an instrument in front of me, whether it's a drum kit or a bass guitar.

SPEAKER_01

Forced into it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you know, I was like, dang, that was that was kind of fun, you know. I mean, you know. Ten years later, Matt Alice, 10,000 days doing that. You know, it's kind of fun being able to move around and just focus on singing.

SPEAKER_01

Very cool, man. So so what what is this the the type of music that you guys play here? Season of the fly. Uh season of the fly.

SPEAKER_00

Season of the fly. It's it's uh hard rock. I don't know if you'd call it like post-grunge. These guys. I got into Season of the Fly because uh, well, around 2003, I felt like I was uh needing something other than drums. Um I wasn't developing anymore. I wasn't hungry to, you know, hone in on my skills or like really take it to the next level. I felt like I had plateaued in a way. And uh I had always said, Yeah, you know what would be fun is playing bass guitar. I think bass would be fun, you know. I bought my friend Paul's bass and an amp, and a coworker of mine at the time. She was dating a guy who had Pro Tools, a Pro Tools studio, which is what I had learned in at tech school, like to work on Pro Tools, but I didn't have access to it. And that was really appealing to me, you know, to meet somebody who had Pro Tools and they were looking for a bass player and they were looking for a singer and all this stuff. So she's like, You really need to meet this guy, Dan. So I met him, and uh yeah, we just kind of hit it off. He gave me their demo of them jamming these tunes that they had wrote. There's like three songs on there, just drums and guitar and no melody. It was just like an empty canvas, and I figured out how to play him on bass well enough. And the goal for me at the time was just to be their bass player, and they were gonna find another singer, which didn't really pan out. We just didn't find we had some auditions trying different singers, and I don't know, there was this personality cla I wouldn't say clashes, there's just something awkward about all of them, you know, like a chemistry thing. Like, do we feel like we can hang out with this person? Nope, nope, nope, nope. And eventually we just got impatient, and I just started singing on some of the demos we were writing and recording at the time. And they said, you know what? This sounds great. Would you like to just be the singer? And I was like, Well, I don't have really have a choice. I'm enjoying playing the bass anyway, so sure, for now, let's let's do that, you know. And it always just kept on being a for now, let's keep doing this all the way up to we recorded our first album because we didn't have uh a whole lot of money to go to a professional studio, but he had Pro Tools, so we just tried to do the best that we could with the knowledge we had at the time. And right um, we decided to record an acoustic album first because we thought that production-wise it would be easier to pull off, I think. Uh and is it in retrospect?

SPEAKER_01

Not really.

SPEAKER_00

Well, we had to go really experimental, especially with the drums. Drum production has always been an enigma to me. I've never been good at it. We weren't good at it, we didn't have the gear, but we came up with a drum kit that was sort of special. Um, our drummer at the time, instead of a kick drum, he used a floor tom on its side. And instead of toms, he had bongos. And instead of a hi-hat, he had a couple of splashes, you know. So it was just this little kind of experimental drum kit. And it in a way, in my mind, it made sense because we were kind of just sort of sidestepping it and cheating and getting around like the traditional sounding good sounding drums. Like, well, let's just come out with something different, and then this will be so cool that we'll play a bunch of shows and people like us and we'll save up money, and then we can go into a studio and actually record something for real. And that didn't happen. We tried soon after that. We tried this is like 2007 now. Well, I could back up. We did a battle of the bands in 2006. Uh it was called Emergenza Battle of the Bands, where you had to uh sell tickets and okay for money, and then you give the money to this organization, and then you advance on to the next round, and that was an exciting time because we just had the one debut album and we played some shows locally, but uh, we're all in our mid-20s, and these guys had a really impressive circle of friends. Like they just had this nice network of people that were always stopping by to hang out and party, and like right away when we came out with this little demo acoustic album, like we sold like you know a few hundred of them just on our own and saved up a decent amount of money with it. And people, you know, it was just a way to get together and hang out with friends. Oh, let's go to the season of the fly show. So we joined this Battle of the Bands in 2006, Emergenza, and we took first place in the first round, and the second round, and the third round. And at each one of these, we would sell our own tickets to uh a bus ride because we're coming from St. Cloud down to Minneapolis. We're like, well, our friends like to drink. We want to get them there, we want to get them home safely. So we would rent a bus from I think it was like Voigt's bus company, whatever. And we'd rent a bus, tack on a little bit of extra money to the Emergenza ticket so that we could pay for it, and we'd do these battle the bands and have two buses show up with our homies and you know, that's nice. And one place we played, I think it was round two at the 400 bar. I don't know if it's still there. They drank all their beer. It was like it was just they literally ran out of beer. They ran out of beer like that that night, and I think they were just down to their shit beer, whatever it was, may have been like Corona or something. But yeah, they like they like to party and drink, and they were uh just a ravenous crowd who you know, good crowd. We'd end a song and just it's just it's fantastic. Like a bus full of locusts coming in or something. Yeah, yeah. I can't imagine the other bands being like, dang, what are we gonna? How do you compete with that? These guys, they're they're here to party, so so yeah, we took first in the first three rounds that sent us out to Milwaukee for round four. For us, it was the regional, but for Milwaukee, it was like their their round three. So it was us, one other band that wasn't from Milwaukee, and then like ten Milwaukee bands. I'm like, this is gonna not go well, I think. Because now we didn't have a bus, we didn't have a bus coming from St. Cloud to Milwaukee. We're gonna six-hour bus ride. No, no, no, no, no. And we took second, which was close, but not good enough to go down to Chicago, where we probably would have got spanked by some serious bands. But after that battle in 2006, we're like, you know what? Let's try again, let's do a hard rock album. Because in our minds, we're a hard rock band, influences Alice and Chains, Tool, Soundgarden, all the grunge stuff. Sure. Um, you know, we're trying to do something similar to that that genre, okay, but with our own stamp on it, our own sound. Cool. Um, and we recorded The Garden, which was 24 songs. Looking back, I'm just laughing about it because I don't know. We had all these songs, and for some reason we just thought they were all a masterpiece, and we didn't want to abandon the acoustic sound sound that we had started with the debut album. So we're like, well, we need to do an acoustic CD again, but let's also do a hard rock CD. So it's a double disc, 12 hard rock, 12 acoustics. Okay, and we had this whiteboard with all the song names. Is that what this is here? No, we haven't gotten this far. We haven't gotten a wonderfly. Right, okay. This is still original band lineup. This is our follow-up project to our, I think there's only eight songs on the first CD we did. Eight songs to 24. All of 2007. That's what we're doing. We're hanging out in our little makeshift studio and still not really knowing what we're doing, uh, trying to find a new way to get drum production to sound good. I I didn't know, I mean, I went to school for recording, but I it never really got that deep or detailed into any one instrument. Like, I didn't know how to make the kick drum slap. It always kind of had this sound about it. You know howdy, and I'd be like, Well, we gotta turn up the find where the transient is, it's gotta be somewhere around here so it slaps, and then all of a sudden it's distorting. Like, that's not right. And so it was a compression issue or a preamp. We just didn't have the gear, we didn't have the knowledge. Uh so recording that, I went through and I found a kick drum tone that I thought was pretty sweet and would fit the rest of the kit. The rest of the kit sounded fine. Tom's and snare and symbols, fine. Kick drum. And I shudder to think of how much time I spent going through each song after we had recorded it and manually replacing each kick drum hit with this kick drum sample that I had in there. And I know for a fact back then there was probably something, it was like sound replacer or some sort of way that you could trigger or any of that stuff. I just I didn't know how to do it. So I was like, I rolled up my sleeves and I spent a lot of time sitting up there smoking my grass, replacing each kick drum with the and eventually it got done. But we had this big whiteboard with all the instruments and all the songs, and it's like this huge grid with you know, put a little X on it like, all right, we got lead guitars done for surface, okay, you know, and that's what we did tonight. For and then like a year and a half later, eventually we were done. And you know, there's some good songs on there. I can't listen to it anymore. Why? Because the production on it is just you've come a little further down the line now, and you know you know what it is. I'm uh I'm I'm into production value, and it always kind of crushed me that it would that's what kind of held us back, in my opinion. I think we had some really good songs, but they just weren't presented in the right light with the right production value. And dang it.

SPEAKER_01

And you tried you and these guys are not together anymore to go back and try to rewrite some of that stuff or re-record it.

SPEAKER_00

No, uh, so after the garden had happened, so then now we'd fast forward a little bit to about 2010 before we were talking about doing another thing, and there were tensions within the band, within you know, just some members. There was some semantics that I couldn't get around. There's we'd get together to write, and inevitably there'd be an argument or some sort of commun the way the communication style between some of us wasn't rubbing good anymore. I wasn't I wasn't enjoying the vibes. So this would be 2003 when we started to 2010 or so. About seven years, we were with this lineup, and we did the the debut acoustic and then the double CD, and we're getting ready to do album three, which is Wonderfly here. And we decided to part ways with our drummer. Um, which again, you know, drums production was an issue. Now we're like, well, we need to find a drummer. We got these songs, but I didn't want to wait a long time to find the right guy. So I'm thinking about these songs and kind of like tapping them on my, you know, tapping them out, thinking of how what they would sound like with drums. And ultimately what we did was we programmed drums for this album Wanted Fly Here. We, I mean me. I sat down again. I did a lot of computer work for this stuff. Um yeah, and just piece by piece, note for note, I'm putting kick drums and snares and wow, you know, it wasn't it wasn't performed on a a kit by any means. It was in my mind. I was very uh aware of trying to represent how it would sound on it because I had the parts in my head. Right, right. I just didn't want to pr record them because we're still in the same predicament of not knowing how to record good sounding drums.

SPEAKER_01

But so it was it seemed at the time maybe easier just to get right into the programming from the start. And a year and a half later you merge with gray hairs and yeah, yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_00

So all the drums you hear on this on this here album right here is me programming it one note at a time in this uh I forget the name of the program, one of those virtual drum programs that our guitar player Dan had on his Pro Tools system. Wow. And the rest of it sounds pretty good. You know, we started hitting our stride with songwriting, I think. There's some good tunes on there. There's still they the drums still don't sound awesome. You can tell there's like something fake about them, maybe. I don't know if they're uh I tried to not have them like too quantized, you know. I didn't want them to sound sloppy. I probably like put a little human feel on there or something, but I think you know it's good. There's some good parts on there. It wasn't until after that one we did this one, The Heart of Diphtra, that's got real drums on it. Let's see now. 20. So Wonderfly came out 2011. I okay, so we were trying to find a drummer, and I said we were saying, like, let's just find a bass player too, because the plan was I'm gonna come out front. I was like, You fellas remember that saliva show when I was out front? Let's get some more of that going. I wanna come out.

SPEAKER_04

I'm I'm coming out anyway.

SPEAKER_00

So I grabbed the mic and uh I was like, we're gonna get a drummer, we're gonna get a bass player. We got a bass player, John Hollingsworth, awesome dude, good singer, good bass player. He's with us in Mad Alice, you know, ever since 2011. He joined, it's been a great time. Never found a drummer. We tried a couple of dudes, but it just didn't work. That's why I ended up programming stuff. All the bass lines on on Wonderfly are me, because that's I was bassist at the time. But so this was like a transition album. Fake drums, me on bass, but we got a uh a new guy to play live. And so fast forward a couple years to Heart of Dipter, we had some more songs that we wanted to do. What was the story? No, no, no. Our goal was to play what's the name of that thing down in Texas, Austin, Texas. South by Southwest? South by Southwest, yes. Okay. We had uh uh uh a drive to we're gonna go down and do this mini tour and play South by Southwest, and we started up a a Kickstart uh campaign to send us on the road. So, like, well, how are we gonna generate money to go to be able to afford to go down there and do that? I know we'll record a new album. So that was the goal. Um, we had done a battle of the bands in St. Cloud and won it, and the prize was you get to play at the Halfway Jam, I think, up in St. Cloud. There's I think it was called Halfway. So, you know, it was a prize gig, but also you get eight hours of recording time at I think it was uh I don't know if it's rock rocktown. I told you I'm terrible with names. It's all right, man. It's rock something. St. Joe is a studio in St. Joe. We went in there, we had eight hours to record. I was like, dudes, I got these tunes. I wrote, I sat down and I wrote this. Is a concept album, Heart of Dipter. All the songs are they tell a story. Okay, and I'm under the gun, like just writing fast. I took three months of piano lessons so I could kind of understand some chord movements, and I wrote some tunes and wrote some lyrics, and I said, dudes, let's use the eight hours that we won at the Battle of the Bands, and we'll go into the studio and I'll bang out some kick-ass drums. Okay. So that's what I did. I went in there, all the songs on that album I recorded in it ended up being about nine hours. I was a hurting unit at the end of the day, but I'm pretty happy with all the performances on it. It's like probably the most uh organic or real recording we had. That was our last album, The Heart of Dipdrow. It's got me on drums, me on lead vocals. John Hollingsworth plays all his bass lines on this one, and there was no overdubbing of vocals. So all the harmonies on there are him singing harmonies. And I just thought I thought it was cool because listening back to it, it it almost sounds like I did all the harmony work on there too. Like our voices were just locked in, just locked in, sounding good.

SPEAKER_01

Is he the other one that sings with you at Matt Alice?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, and that had a big impact in us, you know, getting him in in that line. I was like, I sing good with this guy, and and we can hang out, you know.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, I can tell you from my experience that you close your eyes at one of your concerts and you think you're at a Alice and James, it's so so good, man.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so vocals are everything. Season of the Fly was a fun project. Definitely learned a lot about just playing shows and recording and writing. Had a lot of great times, a lot of good memories. I'm still in touch with all the dudes. Uh on good terms with everybody. It never had an official end, it just sort of fizzled around 2015. We just kind of we had a a decent amount of debt because we bought some studio gear, computers, and microphones and you know stuff. We had some debt, credit card debt, and so we we met up with a booking agent to help us pay it off with gigs, playing covers, and it just became work. It wasn't like I mean, it was still fun, but it was work. And any money we made, we'd give, well, here, John, you can have your cut, because this isn't your debt. Here's thanks for playing with us. And then the guys who's had the debt were like throwing that money at the credit card, you know, for a couple years, and finally the card was paid off. And I think it was such a relief, we just kind of like, well, it was fun. You you know, good luck. We just sort of we needed to do something else at that time, and so when uh when season fizzled from the ashes of season of the fly rose mad Alice. Okay, because uh a few months had gone by, maybe half a year. It was in January of 2014, I believe. I had made a post on Facebook saying, you know what? It'd be kind of fun to do an Allison Chains tribute. Wow. So the tribute's almost 10 years old now. Our first show is June 2014. Wow. So 12. Yeah, 12. Coming up on 12. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And uh what kind of what gave me the idea. Well, I mean, it's not like my idea to have an Alice and Chains tribute, but in the process of recording season stuff, there were moments where I'm trying to find my own voice, you know, like I wasn't a singer, I was a drummer. What do I sound like on the mic? And occasionally they'd say, uh, sound a little like Lane Staley there. Maybe try something else. We were trying to find our own sound. You know, I sound a little bit like Maynard on that. Don't do something else. Okay, fine. I I eventually found what I do, I think. But knowing that I had that in me, said, Well, what if I try to sound like Lane? I wonder how that would work, you know. Put the word out. I immediately had some bites on it from people that I know could play. I was interested in playing with some just some different people. I wanted to meet some new people, different chemistry, and see where that would go. So I got a lineup together right away. Kyle from Season of the Fly immediately wanted in. He's like, dude, I'm not in on this, you know what? So okay, fine. You can be in. We'll be a five-piece. The idea at first was just gonna be a four-piece, like uh Alice and Chains is live anyway. So I had a four-piece together, and then we added Kyle in for the two guitars. Um things were kind of rough with our guitar player and bass player about six months into it. So we dropped the guitar player, went back to a four-piece, keeping Kyle and guitar. We also dropped the bass player, and that's when I reached out to Johnny and I said, Dude, come on. You know you want to be in this man. He said, Yes, I do. So that's that's what we did with with Matt Alice. That's how that kind of came came about. And had a drummer, uh Dom, for the longest time. Dom, great dude. Uh eventually he said, I can't I can't do it anymore. And we were all really sad to to see him go, but I get it. You know, it's plain shows, it's tiring, and he's coming from Wilmer, and a lot of driving for him. And yeah, the money was okay. But if there's anything that's difficult about it, it makes it kind of easy to you know to hang up your hat and say, I gave it a good run. He was with us for probably eight years. I think it was 2022 when he stopped.

SPEAKER_01

And then Wilmer's a good what two hours drive in the city is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, he's driving like 90 minutes just to come to practice at you know where we were at. So but I thought I thought I was gonna be done at that when we lost Dom. I was like, oh shit, dude. I don't want to I don't like trying out people, you know. I don't like meeting people. It might sound strange, but I just like I'm reluctant to put myself out there and just like meet new people because a lot of people are just weird or creepy or irritating or whatever.

SPEAKER_01

But it's funny, isn't it? And we're we're episode 30 something now, right? In recording, and I would say that probably 90% of the people that have come and sat in that chair, yeah, kind of say the same thing. I'm like, I'm an introverted extrovert. I don't really want to talk to people. Oh, yeah. But when you get me up on stage, you just let it loose, and that's that's the way you find your switch.

SPEAKER_00

I definitely got a stage switch, you know, before I go up there, like switch that thing on. All right, here we go. Let's do it. Yeah, get off stage and back to being like, leave me alone.

SPEAKER_01

And it's not in it's not a little bit of my crocs and my house coat and just leave me alone.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, put on my sweatpants, nobody look at me. I'm like, um, so yeah, I wasn't excited when Dom quit. I was like, dude, I don't. I told Kyle, I was like, dude, are we trying to keep doing it's been eight years? Uh you want more of this? You know, he's probably mid-40s at the time, and I was early 40s and already feeling kind of tired. But uh he's like, no, dude, we got we gotta find a drummer. I I at least got another five years. I got another five in me. I was like, You got five? I got five. You got five? I got five.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Well, turns out, and we all knew this, John John's Hollingsworth, his younger brother, Connor, you know, plays drums and okay, great drummer. He is a really good drummer. Great drummer.

unknown

Um

SPEAKER_00

I was kind of still wanting. Well, Kyle and I both agreed, like, we should still have tryouts because who knows? I don't want to have tryouts, but we really should have tryouts, just to be fair to ourselves. I didn't want to just like give it to Connor. You know, I was like, you better earn this shit and you're going to try out, you know. And it turned out my my only gripe was he was playing on kind of a nappy drum kit at the time. Nice dude though. I've always liked Connor. You know, he's like half my age, but he brought our average age way the fuck down, which is which was great. Um but I just basically told him, I was like, hey man, I I know that you would be a great fit for the band, but well, how do you feel about buying a new drum set? You know, and I don't know how he did it and where he got the money, but dude went out and he got himself a new drum set. You know, I'd say, okay. To me, that's tryouts. That's that's a sign of commitment. Commitment, you know, he wants it, you know, to go out and get yourself a new instrument. And it's inspiring too, you know, like when you sit down on an instrument that sounds good, you want to play, you want to practice more. So he got this new drum set and came out and we ran down a one-hour set of tunes, and he just had the fills and the the flavor of Sean Kenny. Like I could tell he did his due diligence on this stuff. And you know, I was giving him a little bit of pointers here and there and looking at Kyle, like, what do you think? Uh is this gonna work? You know, giving him the Yeah, this is Kyle the whole time. Pretty good. So yeah, he uh he hopped right in there and the chemistry was was great right off the bat. And by this time we had also added a fifth guitar player again, Jordan, who has been just an awesome addition to the band because if you listen to their albums, which we try to pay tribute to their albums, more so than their live show. We like the harmonies, we like all the guitars. I don't like when the solo kicks in and the rhythm guitar disappears. You know, it's nice when that riff is still there and you got a solo on. Yeah, got the chunkiness to it. And Jordan can sing and Kyle can sing, and John can sing, and I can sing. So now we got four vocals to hit all these awesome harmonies that you hear on the albums, and it's just been a fun ride, and it's still a great time. Like when we play shows, we all hop in the the same truck together. Is that right? Oh, yeah. You do you all kind of live out that way then? Kinda. We're yeah, I mean, for the most part cities, anyways, yeah. Yep, Kyle's in Foley. A couple of us are in St. Cloud. Jordan, I think, is forgive me, Jordan. I don't know what town you live in. What is it, like Becker, kinda-ish? Okay. Between Kyle and us, but we meet typically meet up at Kyle's place in Foley if we we're heading down to the city, as we'll all drive there and then we'll hop in his truck. I own a trailer, we throw all the gear in the trailer, and it's laughs all the way to the gig, all the way home. That's great, man. Yeah, it's the camaraderie in Matt Alice is off the charts, and that's one thing that really I think fuels the project, you know. Uh not to mention just the awesome material, but the hang. The hang is great in Matt Alice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And yeah, you'd mention something down that that vein other, but you know, like it's when you've got four or five people in a band, right? It's you sometimes it's like being married to them. And yeah, when you get to the point where you start getting any under each other's skin, it's like you just no matter what you can do, you just can't break through that sometimes, you know. You gotta break ways and move on.

SPEAKER_00

Stop being that way. Oh, okay. You know, it just doesn't work, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Like two minutes later it starts over.

SPEAKER_00

If you get to the point where you need to tell someone to stop being that way, I was like, well, writing's on the wall, you know. Yeah, how long until you just want to punch them. We don't have that. You know, even when we're irritated with each other, it's delivered in heavy sarcasm or some sort of a joke, and we're immediately laughing about it. And I think a big part of it is just knowing that uh, yeah, we're just some dudes playing some music that doesn't belong to us. There's no illusions of grandeur in this band. I don't feel like there's any egos in it. If something is sounding sour, isn't played quite right, anyone can bring it up and mention it and we'll listen to the recording and yep, that's done like this. Yeah, okay. You know, you do it like that because it's not your music. There's really no reason to battle about anything. You know, that we have a common goal of sounding good and having fun, and those two go together hand in hand. You know, if you're not sounding good, it ain't fun.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And if you're not having fun, you're probably not gonna get into it and sound good. So yeah, it's I like being in attribute now to you just because like I say, I've done the original band grind for a long time, and trying to sell yourself and build an audience is hard work. I'm not a salesperson. I don't like trying to push my shit on people. It's like, well, maybe they like it, maybe they find it. I don't know. You're not gonna make it in the industry unless you're like out there working it, you know. I'm like, yeah, it's a lot of work. I don't want to sell it.

SPEAKER_01

It's gotta be somebody out there pushing, pushing really hard to get the right eyeballs and stuff. Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So tributes are fun. They're you got a built-in audience, they know what they're gonna get. And if you're good at doing that, they're gonna like you.

SPEAKER_01

So, so Matt Alice, 12 years. So, when did you kind of get a little further down the line with 10,000 days? And uh, I forget the Aperfect Circle cover.

SPEAKER_00

Stone and Echo. Stone and Echo, yeah. That's the that's the new toy. That's the newest. Okay, the new toy, yeah. It's a couple years old. Um, so let's see how where do I want to start here? I'm always looking for something new to get in trouble with because I I wouldn't say I get bored, but I'm just always like wondering what's next or what else could I be doing. Um, let's see. Mad Alice was looking for bands to play with, and we stumbled upon you know on Facebook, inevitably you come across all sorts of bands that are in the area, and I found 10,000 days they had a fellow named Marcus Lear singing for them at the time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and this would have been probably like 2017, 16. I don't know. I had reached out to the page. I'm pretty sure I don't know who responded to me. I think it was Jose. I think I had started talking to him through the chats, asking about like doing a show together. Come to find out. I don't think Jose was the the biggest Alice and Chains fan. So it took a little bit of coaxing to say, like, hey man, can can we just open for you guys sometime? What do you what do you think? Oh, I'll talk to Sal about it. Okay, didn't hear anything back and nudge nudge, nudge nudge. Hey, what do you guys? You need anyone for this thing? You know, what do you got coming up? You know, eventually they're like, ah, should we just let these guys open for us so he'll shut the fuck up? Okay, we opened for them at Route 47 in Fridley.

SPEAKER_01

So I'm hoping to get Jose on here, so I'm gonna ask him about this story too. Well, we'll see, we'll see what his perspective was.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'd like to know his side of things too. Jose, what the fuck's up, man? Um, so yeah, I reached out, then we got onto their bill at Route 47, and Marcus was singing for them. I was like, dang, these guys sound really good, you know. And I like I was I've always been a tool fan. Um and something about seeing them play with Marcus, nothing against Marcus, awesome guy. I've met him a couple times, great singer, great player. When I saw them up their plan, I said, Who is this guy singing in my band? I immediately felt possessive of this tool tribute. You know, like I dang, that's sweet. That these guys, the tones, the accuracy, you know, it wasn't just a cover band playing tool. Like these guys put in their time and really impressed me with just the vibe and this the musicianship and the tones. Did they have the displays and all that stuff? Yeah, it all that's back in the house. I felt like I felt like just amateur hour with my band Matt Alice at the time. It was really inspiring for me to try to like for us to kick it into gear too and see like, well, what can we tweak? What can we make better? You know, we we've I think Matt Alice's each year we get a little better, we hone in on things, but it was an eye-opening experience opening for 10,000 days. Um, so it gets kind of weird here. That happened. We opened for them, and then my band Bubble Math 2017, I said, was our second album, right? So we had a show up in St. Cloud, and I was trying to think of what would be a good, weird, quirky band to play with bubble math. You know, I'm trying to think of other original bands, proggy. There's not a whole lot of prog going around that I that I thought would fit. I mean, there's like prog metal. Stuff was either too heavy for us because we're kind of bubble math is quirky. We used to call it prank, like progressive punk. Like it's just it's it's proggy, it's math rock, but it's very fast paced, it's like totally ADHD. Like you know, our slogan used to be like, we don't give the audience a chance to get bored. As soon as you think you know what's going on, we're doing this now, you know, and like we don't repeat shit. And so it was it was prong. I'm like, what's gonna fit with prong prank? I like it. And there was this band, a tribute to Primus called Frizzle Fry. And I reached out to Frizzle Fry, and you know, because I seen some of their videos, and I've always been a Primus fan because they're quirky and strange and undeniably Primus.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so I reached out to them, I was like, hey, you guys, you know, play a show with my weird band up in St. Cloud, and I'm like, okay. They came up and Frizzle Fry opened for Bubble Math. Um, so that put them on the radar for me, like, oh, this this Primus tribute is really cool. I wonder, you know, good to keep them in mind for other bands to play with with Mad Alice because I we were trying to switch it up and not always play with the same bands, just reach into different. So I reached out to Frizzle Fry to open for Mad Alice at the red carpet up in St. Cloud. This would have been probably late 2017 after the bubble math gig. They couldn't do it because their drummer was busy. Oh, your drummer's busy? Well, send me your set list. Do you mind if what if I played drums for you guys? They're like, What? What I was like, you know I can play. You played with bubble math, you saw me play, I can play some Primus. I love Primus. Come on up. I'll just do this one-off show. Give me your set. You open for Matt Alice, I have some fun on the kit. Come on. Yeah, okay. So they sent me their set list, and I was stressing out because suddenly I'm like listening to Primus with a critical ear, like trying to, like, oh shit, I gotta figure out what these fills and taste to the way. It's not just casually listening to Primus. It's like, oh, okay, all right, I gotta know this stuff. We got together for one practice done at their place, ran through the set. It was good enough. And they came up, did the show, um, got together for another practice. I was gonna be their backup backup drummer because I think at the time they had two drummers that they would alternate between depending on who was available. So the red carpet show, neither of them were available, so I was their backup backup drummer. If you need a third option, call me. We got together for a second a second uh practice just to stay frosty on it. Uh, this was before their bass player moved, uh Rob moved to to China. He had to see about a girl. I think he's still in China. Um but at the second practice, I think it was uh Grant, guitar player, um mentioned to me that he heard that Marcus was gonna be leaving 10,000 days soon. He heard it through the grapevine, or maybe he knew directly or heard right from from Marcus himself. I don't know. It was just kind of hearsay at the time. I'm like, really? And I messaged Jose again. I was like, I heard you uh losing your singer coming up here soon. Yeah, we haven't announced it yet, but you know, we'll probably say something soon at this next gig. His his final show is gonna be at uh Road 47, and I think it was like April of 2018, maybe it was March, March or April, early 2018 was his last show. And Jose said, We're gonna take the summer off and just kind of chill and recollect our everything, you know. And then we'll uh put the word out that we're looking for someone and I'll let you know. Oh, okay. And then I don't remember how soon it was after I think a couple months went by. I asked him about it again, and eventually he sent me uh a demo, a demo of these somehow he got a hold of instrumental recordings. I don't know if it was like for guitar hero or something that they had done, or if it was the actual tool, it just didn't have vocals on it. It was like three songs. I think it was like Vicarious, Parabola, and I don't remember what the third one was. There was like three songs in there, and me working in a studio for advertising. You know, I have a microphone, took his demo and I recorded it, you know, went in the studio and sang along as best as I could to these things. And I listening back to it, I was like, I do not have Maynard the way I thought I did. I said, I don't know if this is gonna work, but yeah, what the hell? I already have my wife's permission. I might as well send them the demo. Here's what I did. I guess last time they they had did auditions for vocalists, they had people show up before they even knew they could sing, and that was problematic because like all of a sudden you got a guy in there two minutes into it, you're like, yeah, no, no, nope, not gonna happen. So this time they could seven and a half minutes long song, right? I'm like, God, what are we gonna do for the next 25 minutes? How do we get this guy out of here? I can relate to that. Like, we were looking for singers with Season of the Fly, and it's it's a bogus journey, it's not fun. So they had the luxury of sending out these uh instrumentals and uh having people submit recordings just so that they knew you could carry a tune, anyways. Right. I got together with them for a couple of auditions in person, and I'm just even after my experience in Matt Alice and everything else, I'm still like kind of nervous because I'm around new people. Okay, I don't like I already said I don't like new people. These are some new people, and I'm trying to impress, you know, I'm trying to sell myself as a maynardist. And uh I had a a tremendous vibrato that Sal was very aware of. He kept on telling after every sign, he's like, Yeah, a little less vibrato would be good, you know. I was just keep telling me about the vibrato. I'm like, shit, it's gonna how do I tell him it's nerves? It's like I can control it if I'm not nervous. And eventually, you know, I I the nerves wore down, and now I can hit a nice smooth note for the guy. But yeah, after the first tryout, I was like, dude, you gotta give me another swing at it. I know you I know you're seeing other people. You like give me give me one more swing. Let me come back up, we'll run the tunes again, and and we did. And soon after that, I think Jose let me know and gave me the offer officially. I was like, Yeah, we think it's gonna work if you wanna you wanna do it. And I said, fuck yeah, I wanna do it. You know, and then like a day later, so I was like, Well, I know this is kind of soon, but are you available for a gig at such and such play? I think it was Max Bar outside October 10th, 2018. So Marcus quit early 2018, went through the summer. October was my first show with him.

SPEAKER_01

Nice.

SPEAKER_00

We did that for well through COVID and all that bullshit. And I was gonna say, and then 2019 everything shut down. Yeah, there's some wasted time in there. Um I had asked them along the way, I was like, You guys ever do uh like perfect circle tunes? And Jose is like, no. Well, how come they're not tool? Fair, that's fair, you know. We do tool, okay. And I don't know how it came up again, but we started talking about doing a perfect circle tribute uh a few years ago, and the uh the issue of who's gonna be Billy popped up. And I think maybe I have this wrong, but I think our Billy Howardell, uh Christopher, was one of the guys that was interested in 10,000 Days, like maybe was trying to get in on some vocals there. Um, so but it also turned out that he played guitar, so like we knew he could sing and he played guitar, and turns out he's like a huge APC fan. Nice. So I don't think it took much convincing when they reached out to him to see if he wanted in on that project. And we got together a couple times and it was just like, yeah, this is gonna work. This is cool. And I I love the Stone and Echo project. Um I'm surprised that more people don't like a perfect circle than than they do, than they should. I think their songs are magical. I don't know. I do too.

SPEAKER_01

I was shocked actually when you guys it was years ago I saw you at the tribute fest in in uh Monticello at uh God, what was the name of that bar out there? The Nordic when they had that little outdoor thing. It wasn't a tribute fest necessarily, but you guys played there and I was shocked how many songs I knew.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that was uh Monty Invasion, I think. Monty Invasion June or something. That was a great, great show. Yeah, but yeah. That's weird playing in the sunshine. Is it? Yeah, we were we were in the sunshine for that one. I mean, I get it. It was a pretty hot day though. You got like eight bands on the bill, you can't start when it's dark and then end at 4 a.m. So I get it, you know. And we're a perfect circle is, you know, by nature, not all that heavy. Yeah, you can't put a perfect circle after a Metallica set or in park, you know, so it makes sense. Yeah. But yeah, it's weird playing in the sunshine. That was a fun gig though. That was it's been a fun day, yeah, because it's it's new, but also the songs are magical and I enjoy singing them a lot.

SPEAKER_01

So well, how often do you play out there with that band now? With Stone and Echo?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Uh well, we've only been at it a couple years, but it's been maybe three or four times a year. Okay. We've only done a few sets that weren't opening for 10,000 days. I think, I mean, that is obviously the shoe in to getting some playing in front of some people, is like, well, we'll open for ourselves.

SPEAKER_01

Um I know Kevin, Kevin always used to like before I had seen either band, he used to joke around the fact that yeah, it's like let dudes just like hand each other the instruments and go and just start playing a different set. I was like, that's so cool, man. Yeah, that's some serious musicianship right there. You just can like I'm gonna go sit over here and do this one instead. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Nice, man. So what's next? You got you got a lot of things going on. You got anything in the pipeline or any any new dreams or exciting things that are piquing your interest?

SPEAKER_00

What's next is I want to get back into doing some writing. Okay. Uh, I should mention I have a solo project called Junt and Ghost that I started back in 2014 also, and it was just with the idea of uh it was built out of frustration of working with other people who always will want to have their input on your art, you know, like, hey, here's a thing. Oh, that's great. Let me rape it and turn it into this. Damn it, you know. Okay. I just wanted something that was mine. Okay. From start to finish, and it would be I could collaborate. I, you know, musicians know musicians. If I want to have a buddy in on vocals or a buddy in on bass guitar or whatever, someone writing lyrics, you know, it could be just for that song. Right. It was never meant to have a band or play shows, it's not meant to sell albums or get famous or make money. It was just straight up selfish self-expression. Me writing music for me. And, you know, I've put out a couple of EPs so far and a handful of songs that didn't make it on those EPs. Um, a lot of it is influenced by 80s pop, which is what I tend to listen to when I turn on the radio. I like I use music as a form of time travel these days. I like to go back.

SPEAKER_01

Like like like name a couple songs that just still get you going from 80s pop.

SPEAKER_00

From 80s pop? Yeah. Uh well, my favorite song of all time still is Drive by the Cars.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Um and obviously any Genesis. I'll throw in Invisible Touch by Genesis. I'm just like, uh, mmm. Just love it. But any of that stuff with uh, you know, Cindy Lauper. Alright. Just synths, a lot of synthesis stuff. Synthsy stuff, happy stuff, electronic drums, yeah. You know, it just it just brings me back to being I'm an 80s baby, so it just puts me back in a happy place when I listen to it. Um so that's a huge influence for my Junt and Ghost material. Uh, but I do try to keep it pretty eclectic too. I don't once I do a song that sounds like this, the next one is gonna be, you know, the pendulum's gonna swing over here and I'm gonna do something heavy and kind of gnarly. And after that, I'm gonna do try my hand in on like a doing a rap song or something, you know. Like I don't want any rules to it. And the first handful of songs I was really trying to. flex the the spectrum of sound so that I could come back to this. I didn't want to like pigeonhole myself into like oh I do this type of thing. Interesting. So um and also some of that comes with uh scoring music for film. Uh I know a couple of people that make short films and it's just low budget stuff and they'll send me uh their edits and say, hey you want to put some music to this and say yeah that'll be fun. Usually like 10 minutes, 20 minutes long and I'll do my thing on it and John and Ghost in the beginning I would uh challenge myself to write a song that would be on the end credits that was kind of based on the movie or the characters within. So it was like this nice cohesive project and I've done a handful of those as well which has been fun. I do have uh John and ghost music on iTunes and Apple Music and YouTube and whatnot too.

SPEAKER_01

So So I d have you figured out the whole drum recording thing? And now you're doing your drums now? No?

SPEAKER_00

Um a budget, you know like I I don't make a ton of money and there are other priorities when you have a family and young kids growing up the money I make goes into mortgage or karate lessons or softball or seven thousand projects or a new bed or some shit. You know they always need new clothes and like I decide to get a paycheck and so I mean gear, you know gear is expensive. Yes it is and I at this point I know people that can do drums. I got a good friend who I was in a band with the band name is ModCon. He's got a recording studio name is Mike Lardy real cool dude he can record awesome sounding drums and I know he gives me a bro deal because you know if I go over there and I want to record something he should be charging me a lot and that's actually where Matt Alice rehearses you know and he'll record the practice and I'm just super cool dude very very kind and generous with his facility but if I wanted to if I had something solid and like dude I need some real drums on this I know that I could go over to Mike's and bang on some drums or I know another guy down here in uh St. Paul named Ty Brookman. He can record some awesome sounding drums. He recorded the Mad Alice EP I don't know if you have you heard the spins Matt Alice? I don't think so that's on iTunes as well. Mad Alice we decided to write not write not right. We took some Alice and Chains songs and reimagined them for an acoustic jam like had interesting Rain When I died on dirt it's heavy song. Yeah but what would that sound like if it was on Jar of Flies or if it was on sap or if it was acoustic and the reason for that is we were doing an acoustic show at you know Chan Hassan Dinner Theaters or up at the Pioneer Place in St. Cloud all acoustic and we needed more material than just sap and jar of flies. It was like well let's reimagine some songs for the acoustic put a little spin on them some twists you know whatever. Man I look forward to hearing that it turned out cool but back to my point Ty Brookman records awesome drums he recorded that EP it's also on iTunes so Matt Alice the Spins is the name of it there's like six songs on there pretty cool I did it a couple years ago. Yeah recorded so yeah it's not a whole lot of motivation for me to save up money that I don't have to buy gear that to record drums anymore. I got I got my set in my house so I can practice and get my jobs done and have fun. And if I want to get real I'll just go over to uh homies place and lay it down. Very cool. Alright man so who do you nominate to be on this gonna be more than one person if you can't limit it to one button well I'm gonna go with give you a couple options you could reach out to my homie Sean Q Kroll who is was also in Modcon Modern Condition. He's an MC rapper writes awesome lyrics very creative dude he's also the frontman or the rapper in hybrid theory a tribute to Lincoln Park so he's got some experience he's been in a bunch of bands played a bunch of shows the dude knows how to work a crowd he's also just very resourceful a very hands-on do-it-yourself kind of guy cool very nice dude too I met him a couple times different shows I'll bet you probably be like me he'll sit down here and just start talking and you'll be like alright well starting um other than that if you wanted to reach out to my my guy Kai Esbenson keyboard player for Bubble Math Okay I don't know what his experience is in the music scene per se. I do know that he is just a a fun person to talk to because he's just a wealth of knowledge and also a great lyricist and he just knows a lot of interesting things and I know that he likes to do interviews. Cool. So if you wanted to reach out to him and he doesn't live too far away then I think he's down in Bloomington anyways. I'll let you pop up for a chat. Cool sounds good.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for coming in dude I appreciate having a and yeah by the way thank you for these it's fantastic respect the wood you put your drinks on them you'll be fine I got a metal table so I can actually listen to these very good very good cool man thank you very much you bet. Hey there Minnesota music family if I haven't personally reached out to you yet consider this your 100% official invitation to join me on the Minnesota Music note. I'm Will McLeod co-founder of the podcast crew here in beautiful Robinsdale host of the show and the guy behind the kit for the band Hits and the Misses. I started this podcast because I want to get to know the people who make our scene tick. Whether you're fronting a band, spinning hip hop, running sound, booking shows, running shows or teaching the next generation of talent, your story belongs here. We've had everyone from videographers to festival organizers on the mic and we're just getting started. It doesn't matter if you're playing arenas or just making magic in your basement if you're part of the Minnesota music community I want to chat slide into my DMs or hit the email below and let's hang out and talk shop