San Diego Freak Out reconvenes on Halloween for a very special installment featuring the Wild Wild Wets, Gary Wilson, Spacehall Sound Machine, the SDFO DJs, and San Diego Liquid Light Society (tickets here). We caught up with Andrew McGranahan, Taejon Romanik, and Mike Turi to dive deep into the history of the Freak Out and get a glimpse into the upcoming event at The Casbah as well as the forthcoming Wets’ fourth album currently in production.
ListenSD: What was the genesis of the San Diego Freak Out?
Mike Turi: I guess it started with Wild Wild Wets playing shows here and playing festivals out of town, and wanting to bring that energy home. We were playing LA Psych Fest events and I had gone out to Texas for the original Austin Psych Fest, so I was like, why can’t we have something like that here? And that was the stirrings.
At the time, Andrew didn’t live here in San Diego, so I told him, hey, I wanna do this thing, start on a small scale and make a mini fest. And at first, it was just 3 bands, just a regular show, but we decorated the place. And I think instantly people knew to come and freak out. I mean, it got weird. People were touching my gear and getting kicked out for being probably on drugs, right?
Taejon Romanik: Absolutely.
MT: And that kinda happened the first two or three times we put on the Freak Out: not everyone understood how far we were willing to go, but some people just took it and ran with it which is just great.
TR: Mike had that name, and then Andrew put the logo to it and the logo’s like a throwback reference to a pin?
MT: From a pin that I found!
TR: From, like, an Elvis pin or a political pin?
Andrew McGranahan: An old presidential campaign pin, I think.
TR: There was a branding and a pin before even a show or anything! Mike had the name and the idea, and then Andrew put the visual to it and before we even had a show lined up, we were all very excited about the notion of community. San Diego seemed like it was kinda in between scenes at that time, it definitely felt like a void, around 2010, 2012, like that era-era-area. So 2012, I guess..
MT: 2013? Wild Wild Wets started in 2010ish. By 2013, we were a couple of years in, getting the band going, doing much more touring back then. And that’s when we really wanted to have something home. You know, bring something here, and Freak Out was just a thought, like a mantra, you know? That’s what we’re telling people: Freak Out. It’s a state of mind, you know, the name tells you what to do.
LSD: When did the San Diego Freak Out DJs start spinning?
MT: We were doing playlists together back then, called Echo Echo Radio. And those were super fun, really good. I’m down here listening to stuff, Andrew was up in Modesto listening to everything, and I would send him 6 tracks, and then he would match that vibe. We’d come up with the title or or one of us would have a title, and then he would just make the art for it and it was cool to have that project when he was so far, because he had lived down here, but had moved up to Modesto so we were just keeping in contact and doing fun stuff together.
TR: Those were wonderful. They were like the end of iPod culture, pretty much the last gasp of owning music or holding music even in your hand, before streaming took over.
MT: We put it on mixcloud, but then we also would add a download link…we did maybe too much work.
TR: You could choose to listen to tracks or you could choose the continuous mix.
AM: I uploaded them all to GarageBand, just song by song and sometimes did a fade between them and just dumb shit like that.
TR: Those were great. Those went a long way in solidifying the parameters of the kind of sounds we were into anyway.
MT: And then when Andrew moved out here, we did the Christian Bland show as Echo Echo Radio DJs? We had already stopped making the playlists, and then it just, made sense to adopt the Freak Out name. And we could play out as the San Diego Freak Out DJs and then we don’t have to wait all year for the one Freak Out event: we’re out there all the time because the idea was to share the sound we’re into. If we’re DJing the show, then it becomes that beacon, that’s JJUUJJUU and other bands have said, we’re a beacon in the town: oh Freak Out DJs are playing it? These guys are only spinning at these really great shows, great lineups and bands. So we like to shine the light on all that.
LSD: How much do you think your vinyl collections overlap?
TR: That’s a great question. Where’s the Venn diagram?
AM: It’s not all that much. I mean, there’s, like, maybe some some of them, like, The Black Angels and Osees and stuff. And then, like, some city pop stuff maybe, but
MT: I don’t have any city pop stuff because you do.
AM: I certainly do.
TR: Honestly, jumping in with them, I’ve run into that more where I bring a record. I’m like, oh, Andrew’s got all three in his crate.
MT: I don’t have any animal collective, though, so you’re always saying ”Here you go”. But I mean, you got rid of a lot of, like, your heavy, heavy stuff too. Right? And then just opened the way for, like, more jazzy?
AG: I mean, I still have most of it, but I might I don’t know. I might sell some of it soon, I’ve been thinking about it because I need to make some space for the little one coming along.
TR: You got a 7 inch coming. Yeah. He’s got a new 7 inch coming out.
MT: The size of this guy, it could be a 10 inch. I don’t know. Could be long play!
AG: Nice. There’s a little bit, but Taejon put it pretty well that at this point, we know each other really well on what each person is gonna do for each show.
MT: At most, we’ll have 2 or 3 of the same records. And right now, it’s probably Grace Jones, the B-52s, and probably a Romeo song, maybe. Yeah.
AG: Well, definitely. And then I would also probably say John Carroll Kirby?
MT: Yeah, so there’s a lot of records at home, but for the gigs, we try to weed some stuff out. But then I’ll have a gig without Andrew, and then I’ll just load ’em back up. And then the next time we’re together, I’m like: oops, I got all these!
AG: Well, if I’m doing a solo gig, maybe I need to have that record, Absolutely.
MT: It’s whatever…who’s gonna play Rip It Up by Orange Juice first? That’s a fun game.
LSD: What kind of division of labor goes into planning a Freak Out event?
MT: I mean, it’s just booking and art, I would say. With the 10 year anniversary, Andrew’s Desert Daze connections and years of us collaborating with them, that really helped out as far as having them be a part of it.
AM: Right. Co presenters.
MT: That partnership, that was cool. Obviously, he basically has free rein with the art, but he’s always bouncing ideas off of us, see what we like, so we always keep it–
AG: Keep it collaborative?
MT: Yeah. I mean, this new one with the Halloween, it’s amazing. Andrew said he had an idea, and he mentioned Rasputin or something and then Disney?
AM: There’s a documentary on Disney Imagineers, the people behind all the rides and stuff at the parks. And so there was this random shot of a guy just talking with some people. And in the background, there’s like a 4 panel image of him or painting of him, but then his eyes suddenly turn into one humongous eye over the 4 different, panels. So, I was like, hey, that could be a pretty fun idea for some weird poster, and there you go.
TR: I remember one year on Halloween, you did a weird zombie take on a Andy Warhol film cover for one of our old, Soda Bar Halloween show notes. Oh, was that you?
MT: I did that.
TR: Was that you?
MT: All I did was take yeah. Yeah. I just took the what is that?
Chelsea motel? Chelsea girls? Chelsea girls? Chelsea girls? Chelsea motel, whatever.
Chelsea girls. Yeah. I just took the cover of that and then just Snoopified it. If I’m correct right, Snoop Dogg played that one with the Zombies? Good lineups on those Halloween. We set the Halloween shows at the soda bar that were full cover sets by local bands
Taejon: Blondie. Blondie was fun. Pink Floyd, Shocking Blue, Spaceman 3. Lot of times with guests, we had an alternative lineup, that was just the 2 of us doing Spaceman 3. And a lot of times we’d add folks from other bands and other Musician homies.
You know what I mean? I think that’s great. You’re gonna do a whole album or you’re gonna learn, you know, we would always only do like 5 songs. Say Maybe 6. I mean, maybe 6.
You know what I mean? Like maybe 6.
We it was a lot of those fun.
MT: It’ll teach you a lot. You’re like, oh, man. The zombies have some weird tricks. Yeah. You know?
Like, just you think it’s just, like, oh, like, you know, sixties songwriting. Yeah. Like, whatever. Not to say it’s simple. Every band that’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, like, little twists and turns.
LSD: San Diego Freak Out events always seem very consciously curated; what went into organizing the lineup for this Halloween show?
MT: Well, because Jena and I got married, I didn’t wanna do something this summer because I didn’t wanna have a mini freak out of my own, there was just a lot going on. I’ve been wanting to do a Halloween thing for years now. I mean, we haven’t played a Halloween show in a really long time. It just kinda made sense to do a Halloween show this year and instead of doing the summer thing — because we did the two night summer 10 year anniversary last year — I was like, let’s shift gears this year.
My friend Colin plays drums with Gary Wilson and I bumped into him at Blue Foot Bar in North Park and he was like “we gotta do a show”. And I was like, yeah, I can’t believe we haven’t played with Gary Wilson yet, we should totally freaking do that. Gary Wilson! I mean, obviously, every night is Halloween for Gary Wilson. But for people who haven’t seen him yet, or maybe haven’t haven’t seen him in a while, it’s like, dude, Halloween! That’s the time to see them. So perfect. I was talking to Dean Reis, and he was like, maybe we’ll just dress up in suits. That would be amazing. Just dress like fucking squares.
AM: Like part your hair and stuff.
MT: Yeah! I really hope they go trash chic! So it’s just one of those things, he planted that seed and then that’s usually all it takes. We’re gonna make this Freak Out.
LSD: This Halloween Freak Out sounds like a great opportunity to get even freakier. What sort of tricks will you be treating us with?
MT: We’re gonna have a costume contest! We have a couple of prize packages, maybe more by then, we have some gift cards from some very cool local businesses, Whips-n-Furs costume shop, Mothership, the spacey tiki exotic beautiful bar that Kindred made in South Park, there’s gonna be like a little swag thing from Vinyl Junkies. Our buddy who works for Mezcal Amarás is gonna be helping us sponsor the night. And I’m gonna put some stuff together too, some records and things like that. Some goodies. Gonna put together some totes!
TR: Two sets from the homies Spacehall Sound Machine back in the, Atari, err- the Razzamatazz Room.
MT: They’re gonna probably do what they do best and just rouse everybody into a big frenzy.
TR: We’ve had them play there before at the last Freak Out they played.
MT: Make sense to have them back there because they get to play twice and they can just do that because they’re they have the length in their set. They’re gonna start it off. And then Gary. And it was like, well, if we just had them play in the main room, they would just start off and that’s just not I feel like it was not enough. So they’re bad. Back at the razzmatazz.
TR: And, yeah, they’re so stoked. Straight to Gary Wilson. Straight back to them. Then costume contest. And then Wild Wild Wets. We’re gonna have some guests join us, other little surprises and stuff like that. We have a few secret guests coming on stage with us. We’re gonna play some numbers we haven’t played in a very, very, very long time and a few and maybe a number or two that we’ve never ever ever played, and, it’s gonna be full of surprises.
MT: Pretty much celebrating the whole catalog too. Kinda playing a little bit of everything. Right?
TR: Absolutely.
MT: And The Casbah is gonna let us decorate, and we have some other weird things I’m planning on doing in that department. The SD Liquid Light Society is gonna be doing the main room. I think there might be talks about doing something in the back room, but they’ll be taking over the main room for sure.
TR: It’ll be spooky. It’ll be sexy. It’ll be scary, fun, good, exhilarating times.
MT: Absolutely, yeah, I can’t wait. I love Halloween, and I love seeing people’s costumes. I’m excited to see who’s going to win. I’m really excited about that. Doing the cover shows, we never did costume contests or anything like that.
TR: But there are always crazy great costumes.
MT: And we’re gonna do something as a band, but we’re also on the fence if we’re gonna dress like that all night, dunno, haven’t figured it out yet.
LSD: When did you (Mike and Taejon) coalesce as the Wild Wild Wets?
MT: So a long time ago, I was in a band called The Old In Out where I sang and it was kind of an aggressive garage rock band and then I sang and played drums in a psych pop surfy band called Trap Gold, and they both kind of ended in their own ways for different reasons around the same time. And so me and some of the people that were in that circle at that time were like, well, what should we do? And I kind of started writing songs with just random people to see like, I had things in my mind, and so we’re just trying to get get them out there.
And then, at one point, I forgot I had, like, one song written. And we called up Taejon and he brought his guitar over, and he just started ripping. And we’re like, dude, this fucking guy rips, but we need a bass player. And he was like, oh, I’ll totally play bass.
TR: Yeah. I was playing I started playing bass in a few groups, and it was really fun. And once I met Mikey, we started arranging songs really quickly. I think they had three songs when we met. And before we knew it, maybe one or two practices, we had six songs and then, hey, let’s book a gig. And Mikey knew everyone in town and we booked a great gig with our homies, the Cosmonauts and the Night Beats at Soda Bar, that was our very first show. And we had to quickly write enough songs and maybe learn a cover or 2 to play that show!
And then it went from me playing bass to also playing guitar in the studio versions, but not live. And then it went from playing guitar half the time live, and then it went from our live guitarist not being able to do a tour that we had committed to. And so I the full time guitarist and taught all my bass lines to other folks throughout the years . We recorded our first album with me playing some guitar and all the bass. And then the second album Prisom and the third record Love Always, I played all the bass and all the guitars. And I would hop between the two instruments. Mikey did all the vocals and keys and overdubs, and there were drums that were hit.
AG: Albert’s playing bass on this new album?
TR: Yeah! That’s the most exciting thing about this, right now is that we are currently finishing the artwork, with Andrew, and we’re going to be putting out our 4th record, our 4th full length.
MT: We recorded 9 tracks. They’re fucking awesome. They’re mostly recorded in a very live essence. You know and Dave and Albert. And Taejon plays guitars, no bass at all. And Jason plays tambourine, which was a little bit weird for me to let go and let somebody else play percussion.
Obviously, he’s our conga player, but then suddenly he was playing tambourine and it’s awesome because we’re doing this as a group now, and this group is the best ever, I think.
TR: The whole album is live, and then we we’ve added some spices and layers on top, but the whole thing is live. And it was very collaborative, which was really cool. You know, Mike and I have generally driven this ship, and it’s cool to have a crew that’s in there, in the moment with us. I remember in particular recording with Mike Kamoo over there at Earthling Studios where we all said, hey, this song could really use some stomps and claps. And it’s all five of us! Jason Crane, David Mead, Alberto Sanchez, Mike, and I all stomping and clapping through all four and a half minutes of the song, all together.
MT: Yeah. We didn’t loop that one.
TR: No looping, just the whole track. Numb feet, numb hands, and camaraderie.
MT: It was really cool to do it as a five piece and at the very end, Taejon and I did our mixing and stuff that we do with all the records. But everybody was a part of it during the whole process.
LSD: How and when did the the current five piece lineup come together?
TR: It kinda came in stages, because Albert joined in 2018.
MT: He actually filled in for Sarah Linton, who’s playing with The Schizophonics and Death Valley Girls now. That was really cool, her style is also just very crazy so it was cool to hear. Every time we’ve had a new bass player, it’s always kinda cool to hear the little difference.
And Albert, he saw us play with Sarah, and he filmed it, a version of Sweet Machine, it’s live and he’s right up in front. And she was playing and it was maybe one of her last shows with us. And he’s like, do you guys ever need anybody? And then it was like, shit, we need somebody! And then we hit hit him up right away.
TJ: Because of scheduling conflicts, Albert started filling in, and it just worked out so well. Albert was genuinely already a fan of the Wild Wild Wets, which made it really easy to have him as a member.
Same goes for Dave Mead. We used to share a wall with it with his old bands at Icon Sound, or Black Box in in Golden Hill. Dave was a fan too and had always offered to play with us. So it was one of those things where when that time came, it was like an easy transition. Dave and I had played music kinda separately, just kinda recording things together, so it was really easy to bring them into Wild Wild Wets. And then Jason Crane actually used to be in our band for a long run during the Prisom era, and he actually went away to Ohio for many years, actually, to finish his doctorate. And, when he came back, it was like he slipped right back in just like it like he was
MT: And I was like, do you wanna play with us again? He was like, I can? He was as excited as we are. As we were at the time, you know, because he had just gotten back and was like, oh, hell yeah.
So yeah. And he’s great, that Hocus Pocus track, it was just just a single that we had put out. He plays the drums, the congas, and the trumpet on that track.
TR: And did about two takes of each.
MT: Yeah. Just the two takes, he came in, we were there all day getting things sorted and running into errors and Jason comes in–
TR: Like a pro. He’s there for an hour, knocks it out.
MT: I think it was the first one that we ended up keeping. I can’t even remember. So he was on Hocus Pocus and then he also played on The Fix and, that 7 inch, For Your Love. He’s on Prisom, but I recorded those and they’re in there, trust me! Those recordings are all very beefy, so everything had to match the tones of, like, the drums and everything. So everything kinda got, like, a little beefy on that one. But with this one, we sent Mike Kamoo a lot of examples, a bunch of stuff that we’re listening to. And he was like, what I’m hearing is: drum isolation. And in the past, we’ve never done that. I guess we’ve always been in the same room to a degree. He just did this great little trick where we were able to play live, but he like padded up the drums and everything in a way that gives them this very cool sound and this next record is less muddy and there’s nuances. Drums and percussion are all just very clear.
TR: It’s the most, like, organic and live-sounding any of our recordings have ever sounded because it is, but also just the way he captured it and the fact that he got our vibe. Mike Turi worked with Mike Kamoo back in the day for The Old In Out, so they had a rapport and he just got it right away. He got our sound and let us do our thing. And it was all done in one room where we could all make eye contact, and you can hear that in the songs, you can feel that in the recording…so we’re very excited to put that out this next year!
LSD: Do the other members add more to the writing experience, or do you two come to practice with fully formed ideas of what the new songs would be like?
MT: It all depends on the song. One specifically we walked into the studio and we had unlocked the secret of, like, how the song was gonna work out, but we still haven’t done it as a full band yet. Dave wasn’t there, but Jason was. And then we had another practice where Jason wasn’t there and Dave was and we’re trying to figure out this one song. How are we gonna do this song?
TR: It’s how it generally work though. It’s like it’ll either be, like, a live feeling from just jamming things out or I’ll bring in a riff or two, or Mike and I will have a phone demo, which is the whole song, but without everyone’s parts per se, but maybe ideas of their parts or most of the parts, but it’s all very organic usually. You know? It’s not one person’s vision.
MT: No, t’s definitely all of us coming in together. I mean, you just know. It’s like, oh, we’re at 8, we’re at 16 or whatever it is. You feel the changes and we write our songs, live for the most part, we get everything out there and then we get it down to a song.
TR: Even when I send Mike voice memo recordings or demos, even when there’s no vocals, I’ll know the space where the vocals will be. So its kind of flows pretty easily, usually.
MT: We basically established this Wild Wild Wets sound, and it’s definitely opening up now that we have these guys playing with us, it’s awesome, with Dave and Jason and Albert specifically, it’s nice when we get in the room, we’re all kind of already on the same page.
It’s weird, because everyone plays in their own bands and has their own music and everything. But when we come in and we’re playing Wild Wild Wets songs and we get in the room, we just start jamming on something. And that’s how we write all of our songs.
TR: That’s our favorite way to write, just curve-balling a riff on them and seeing how they react. And then if it’s working, then going with their reaction.
MT: Sometimes I’ll flip it and be like, alright, I got the baseline. I’m gonna try this out. So there’s one song called Hard No, our little revenge song on the next record that Taejon and I wrote in the early pandemic over email. We came back from a tour thing, a tough one. Well we got left, so we didn’t come back!
TR: That was a fun email project and then once we got to play with humans again, that email demo came together.
MT: He sends me this track, and it just made sense. So that song we wrote as a demo, but it was one of the first songs we started playing with Dave and Albert back when we first got back in the room together after COVID. And Dave is really cool about writing little drum hooks, and he just got that for Hard No and it’s so fun when you see him play it now. It’s been a few years, three of four years that he’s been mastering this little fill, and now he’s like a machine, I love it.
TR: The bass-drum relationship is amazing, and then the secret cheat code is that Dave Mead and I have been playing music kinda secretly, just the two of us for years. We would just kinda get together and spread our wings and–
MT: Wasn’t a secret! I knew about it.
TR: I know. I know. So we had our language kind of figured out.
MT: One day, I said, Dave’s gonna be playing with us. And I said that, and then it just manifested itself.
TR: If we had it our way, this would be the lineup of Wild Wild Wets to the end of time. I really do believe that we’ve had so many beautiful people come up on stage and play with us, but this is the first time that it’s really felt like familia, just one unit.
MT: They’re all really good at what they do and they totally get it. They come in and they get it and they’re in. They know what the mission statement is and they’re like 100% in. It’s nice to not work with anybody with their foot out the door. We’re a DIY project that’s just been doing it this way for a while. When this new record comes out, we’ll see it. We gotta start changing things up, we have a lot of records to sell.
LSD: Now that it’s been 10 years of LPs, where are we at with LP 4? Is it a smooth arc from 14th Floor to Prisom to Love Always to now or have we reached someplace new?
MT: Love Always was this weird mix. I even wrote it on the teaser sticker: it’s a mixtape to some degree. And it really is, all those songs are kind of a flavor, then these other songs are this other kind of flavor. It’s all stuff we’ve been doing forever, but it’s a really good version of this song (in our opinion, a really good version, whatever…a better version than the last time we recorded it!) Some of them stand out like The Seer and some things were definitely different for us. The whole recording experience, making a “clean” record, JeanCarlo was obsessed with lossless files, something we’ve never really thought about. We just, you know, we want it to sound good, but we also want it to have a grit and a little funk on it.
Did this record come out this year? Did it come out 20 years ago? That’s a fun little game that we used to play. But now when you listen to it, you’re like, oh, man. We could probably have recorded 4th Floor a little cleaner or Prisom a little cleaner, you know. So Love Always is this nice clean-cut mixtape of everything we tried to do. But this next record everything (besides Hard No) is the live band’s version of that song.
But everything else was written in the room together, as a band, 5 people playing, and it’s definitely different. Like, the from track, we we the whole record’s different too. We we have ways of doing our mixing and how we like to, like, tell stories. But we do have a lot of wanted to do a different thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we wanted to actually do a different one. I was like, let’s tell a different story, you know, because not Yeah.
TR: We had to check ourselves and get out of our own formulas a bit and push ourselves out of our own comfort zones a with pacing and some of the other things that generally think about. But one thing that we of retained is that Mike and I, for better or for worse, have turned every album into a concept album of sorts.
MT: This one more so than any, this one I did intentionally! Halfway through, I realized I kept on writing about these weird creatures, like Island Of Doctor Moreau sorts of things, down this rabbit hole of a mad scientist trying to make his own creatures, trying to make his own society and all the metaphors that go in with that. And then we as a whole started writing the second half of the record and I started leaning into that even more.
Where then there are other in the past, we just, like, oh, like, if we do this. And it’s almost more like the feels tell a story more than lyrically. And now this record, it actually it’s both, which is kind of exciting. It’s exciting in a secret way. Like, it’s a concept record, but it’s definitely cloaked….It’s not like a Pink Floyd song.
TR: I think we’ve always thought about pacing, and we do this every time we play a show. When we write a set list, we think about beginning, middle, and end, and we think about form. It isn’t just haphazard. We definitely think about beginning, middle, and end with everything that we do. So I think it really the time that you really feel that is on our albums because there’s a lineage. e do think in acts. Yeah.
MT: Big time. And this record, it was funny because certain things just made sense together. And we went to the studio with all of that in mind. It wasn’t like in the past, we knew the track order.
TR: With each album, the track order has come sooner and sooner.
MT: We knew the sequence: the storyline goes like this. And when you listen, certain things really worked very easily, before we even even walked into the studio. We had the track list already figured out.
TR: And it’s cliche to say, but this is the best album we’ve ever made. We said it last time, and it was true with Love Always, and this one is exponentially better, knowing that it took five people, six when you count Kamoo.
MT: Obviously, you’ve heard some of the songs and we’re gonna be playing them on Halloween because they’ve already become instant staples in our sets.
TR: Oh, we’ve had to hold back so much. This is the first time that we’ve made ourselves not play! We know we’ve made three more songs that we’re like, we wanna play ’em live, but we can’t, we just can’t. We can’t do it this time. Sometimes the cat’s gotta stay in the bag.
MT: It’s the only thing that we argue about. We don’t even argue about it. It’s not a big argument. It comes up once a month. I’m like, damn it. We have to wait. Waiting for the payoff. It’s definitely gonna pay off.
LSD: With the new album, touring seems to be a very different equation with a couple of young Wetlings in the mix?
TJ: But it it never was. It rarely ever was.
MT: Right? But we’re all at this understanding of doing smaller, runs. It’s realistic, but we have to be more adamant about doing them. And that could be even a few in New York and the Jersey area.
TR: But we need groundswell and funding, like anyone that’s a DIY artist. You need some promise of return. So, universe willing, we will find a way to get further out there away from San Diego, which we love to do.
MT: Start knocking on a lot of doors. Once we know when the record is finished and we have an idea, then we’re just gonna be knocking on everybody’s doors, sending out mailers, hello?
TR: Let us play.
LSD: We’re going to have to wait until 2025 for an LP 4 release date?
MT: Yeah, we don’t wanna rush anything at this point because we’re getting to that time of the year…
TR: The album truthfully could have come out this year, but we had so many milestones happening within our band: two weddings, two new babies.
MT: Yep. Two kids and two weddings, ot the year for us to go anywhere. But next year, obviously, they won’t be newborns. But even then, realistically, we won’t be able to go on any long tours. Just knocking on the doors of people that we know, hoping we can hitch rides with some acts and do whatever we can to try to play out and about. If we can head up north and drop down from there or go out east just for a little bit or whatever, we’re definitely open to it.
We thrive, we kill out of town. And it’s so fun because, you know, we got our home base here And we love it. And it’s so good. It’s so good to us, and good for our souls. It’s nerve wracking to go out of town because we get some really good love in San Diego, which a lot of out-of-town bands are, like, “how the hell do you do that in this town? We come here all the time, it’s packed, and it feels like there’s a disconnection.” And then we go up there, and they’re our neighbors, we show them love, they show us love.. it works.
LSD: Any big plans for the release of the new LP next year? Won’t that also mark 10 years of The 14th Floor?
MT: We were talking to the guy from France about maybe getting more of the LPs here. So we’ll see what happens. We’re definitely gonna have to celebrate 14th Floor somehow, because the new record won’t come out for the first portion of the year. So that would be a great thing to focus on in the early spring.
TR: There’s there’s been talk of the new one being a summer album since we recorded it in two summer sessions.
MT: Yeah, hopefully this summer. At some point, we’re gonna start to corral video makers for all the singles. The good news, too, for them is we don’t even wanna be in the videos! It’s not really our bag. I don’t mind being in the videos and I’ll act in it, whatever people wanna do. But we love it when the ball is in other people’s courts and they just take the music and make something else entirely with it. Like with The Cut video, Sierra Waller showed us the storyboards of everything and we were like, oh man, this is gonna be awesome. And it was, and it was all her visuals and it was great to see the final product.
With The Seer video, I made every frame of that. It was a whole year of a lot of drawing, which I had never done it before. It was very fun to do and very fun to see it all done. That was very exciting. But It’s just cool when other people have the reins, you know? So right now we have a few ideas in the fire.
TR: Yeah. Mike and I like creative control, but it’s very liberating to sometimes give that up, especially in the video arena. When you put something out there in the world, it can be discovered at any moment.
MT: That’s why this time of year, I like to throw the hocus pocus video out there that our our buddy Derek Acosta made. They got the devil skateboarding through a graveyard and all sorts of weird tarot stuff.