WhiteTrashDevil.com interview September 2001

Things are going well.

For those that haven't heard of MEATJACK would you like to fill everyone in on your history? And does it always have to be spelled in ALL-CAPS? Just making sure I don't get my ass kicked for screwing up...

Ha ha. Well, we prefer all caps, but we wouldn't kick your ass or anything like that. MEATJACK was formed in 1993 from the ashes of a band whose name shall remain unwritten. At that time we were changing our band name because of legal problems with another band, changing some members, and our sound a bit as well. So the time was ripe for a complete change. The core of the band has always been me and my brother Jason. He used to play guitar in MEATJACK as well as me. We were a four piece band for awhile. A few bass players later we got tired of the constantly leaving members so Jason decided to play bass, we became a three piece and it's been much, much better ever since then. Because of the constantly changing lineup, it took us until fall of 1999 to put out our debut CD "Trust" on At A Loss Records, but it was well worth the wait because the band had finally found its sound. Up to that point there was a slew of 7" records (including a split with Bongzilla) and songs on compilations. More recently we did a split CD & 10" with the sadly now defunct DAMAD and one of our songs ended up in the film and soundtrack for John Waters "Cecil B. Demented". We've done a ton of U.S. touring and look forward to much more, but it would be nice to go and tour somewhere else at this point.

So what are your plans for the rest of the year and early 2002? I know you have Will from Keelhaul filling in your open drum slot right now and I just want to point out that he is an excellent drummer. Is he going to record with you guys this time?

Currently, we're working on a MEATJACK video release. Our friend Skizz Cyzyk made videos for a few songs from the "Trust" album. We're going to combine that with some live footage that people have shot of us and some other things. We hope to have it out before the end of the year. Jason and I have been busy writing a ton of new material for our next album, plus some things that are going to come out on some European labels and compilations. The jaw-dropping-ly amazing Will Scharf has been helping us through this time of having no home-town drummer by doing some tours and helping us with the new songs. Given what our current drummer situation is, and that we're still looking for a full time guy who's in this area, it's still up in the air as to who'll be doing the drumming when it comes time to record the next album. Hopefully we'll be able to record it this winter. We're waiting for our friend Jon Smulyan (engineer for "Trust", DAMAD/MEATJACK split, etc.) to finish building his new studio. As soon as the album comes out we plan to hit the road for at least a month or two.

I want to ask about your side-project, SUCKPiG. How would you explain the SUCKPiG sound? And what influenced you to do that project?

I would begin to describe the SUCKPiG sound as at times apocalyptic and at times soothing, though it's probably much more on the disturbing side than soothing. I've been making recordings of these weird layered sound/noise-scapes and songs that I have in my mind for almost 15 years now. I put out a collection of those pieces in 1998 called "the tears of a PiG". I've always wanted to somehow do this in a live setting and have now just started to do that. Since MEATJACK hasn't been playing and practicing nearly as much as we used to, because of our drummer situation, I recently found myself with a lot of time on my hands. Probably the initial influence to do this live was Robert Fripp's Frippertronics. Lately I've seen artists like K.K. Null and The Thrones and it's given me a kick in the butt to put together a live version of this. Basically, it's just me, my guitar, my effects and a 4-track cassette deck.

What bands influenced MEATJACK's sound?

We like an rather large variety of music. Some of our favorite bands at the time that Jason and I started collaborating way the hell back in the late 80's (and currently as well) included King Crimson, Butthole Surfers, Voivod, Frank Zappa, Black Sabbath. I was really into Black Flag, movie soundtracks, Pink Floyd, Devo, The Residents, The Beatles, Bartok, Stravinsky.

What CD's have you been listening to lately? I got the new Icepick Revival disc from At A Loss, every time I think they are going a certain direction in a song they do the complete opposite, amazing band.

Some stuff that I've been listening to lately is the new Stinking Lizaveta, Spirit Caravan, the new Zeni Geva, Trans Am, J.J. Paradise Players Club, Thrones. That new Icepick Revival disc is amazing.

What new bands have you heard that you think will be the future of underground music?

Who knows. I never know what people are going to like. I seem to end up liking the bands that only 3 people go out and see.

What's the scene like in Baltimore?

It's not bad. We've got a few good clubs in town and we get a steady stream of good bands coming through here. Once again, because of our drummer situation, we don't play out much lately, so I'm a little out of touch with what's going on as far as good local bands. Swarm of the Lotus is pretty fucking amazing.

Musician question... What kind of guitar effects processors / pedals do you usually use? Some of the guitar sounds you come up with blow me away...

Thanks. I am currently using 2 Digitech Echo Plus-8 second Digital Delay/Sampler pedals, a Digitech Whammy II pedal, and then a couple of rack-mount multi-effects processors, the Rocktron Chameleon and the Rocktron Intellifex. Wait until you hear the new sounds that I'm coming up with. Lately I've had these extended periods of what I like to call "research & development" with my effects and stuff. I've come up with some crazy shit which is finding it's way into MEATJACK and SUCKPiG.

Do you watch wrestling? Just curious, I have a big wrestling conversation going on with Jeff from ANTiSEEN. We might do like an all wrestling discussion for one of these websites... for the record, I am white trash.

Ha ha. Nope.  Sorry to disappoint you. I've never been a big wrestling fan but everyone else in MEATJACK, as well as Joshua from At A Loss, are all into wrestling.

Sometimes someone will come in with an idea that they have or sometimes the band just jams and we come up with stuff then. We're very democratic. Everyone is encouraged and expected to contribute to ALL aspects of the music. The drummer can hum a guitar line or J.R., our projectionist, might give us lyrics or arrangement suggestions. So it's not like-only the guitarist comes up with the guitar lines, only the singer writes the lyrics, etc. Once we think that we're on to an idea that we like, we'll play it every which way to see what works best. We're constantly demo-ing stuff, listening back to it, changing things, adding parts. Lyrics usually come last, but not always. Lately it's been really weird. We've been writing all of this stuff with no drummer at first, but things seem to be working out okay. This is the first time that we've ever really worked like this. Probably because of that, some of the new stuff has these ambient parts that may not ever end up with drums on them.

Do you or At A Loss handle a lot of the band promotion? I live at the local photocopy store and have nightmares about flyers.

If you're just talking about the flyering part of promotion, usually we do that. Jason used to work at Kinko's so we used to have all of these really pro looking flyers and stuff. As far as all that other promo stuff (the phone calls, the mailings, blah, blah, blah) MEATJACK and At A Loss both deal with that stuff.

How has the internet helped MEATJACK? It seems like its keeping heavy music alive sometimes.

Yeah, it definitely helps. The fact that we're able to keep people up to date on a regular basis about what's going on with MEATJACK through our web site and e-mail list is great. Also, a lot of people who would probably never find out about us in any other way, are now finding out about us. We're such an unknown band. Sometimes we'd do tours and we'd hit a town and then maybe not hit that town again until many tours later, if at all. Some people wouldn't have even heard about us in the meantime. They didn't even know if we were still together or putting out albums or anything. So I definitely think that the Internet is a good thing.

Any MEATJACK propaganda you want to spread? I actually want to plug "Trust" to everyone that reads this. If you're reading this and that disc is not in your collection, buy it now, and you can be more underground than all your loser friends.

Exactly! Thanks for the plug. I'd just like to plug our websites: www.meatjack.com and www.suckpig.com and to let people know that we're still searching for a full time drummer, WE KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE!

Brian, thanks a lot for doing this, any final comments?

Thank you and everyone for your support. Keep rocking!

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