WORDS & PHOTO: Rebecca Seung
RS: You were born in Birmingham, Alabama?
DS: Yeah, in an area called Midfield. I’m not sure if it was Midfield or Fairfield or Central Park, but it was in that area, like West Birmingham. I loved it, didn’t know any better. I don’t know if I’d like it now. It looks kinda the same, and it feels kinda the same. But when you’re young and you don’t know any better, you just love where you’re from.
RS: When did you come to Montgomery?
DS: I’ve been in and out of here for about 7 years or so, back and forth. Back up to Birmingham, went out to San Francisco, went out to San Diego, lived in London for a little while.
RS: What’s your favorite?
DS: Right now, I’m thinking maybe I had the best times of my life in Birmingham. Every time I go back, there’s more stuff happening than there was when I lived up there. I don’t know if the novelty would wear off or if it would remain feeling cool when I live up there again. Hope so, ‘cause the longer I’m away from it the more fond I feel for it... but I just wanna do whatever it takes to keep traveling to different places.
RS: So is touring like the ultimate thing for you?
DS: Yeah, I guess so. While you’re out there, you don’t have to worry about starving or anything. I like traveling when I’m not playing music, but then, sometimes when I travel when I’m not playing music, I feel an anxiety when nighttime comes around. I’m like, "when is load in, when is sound check?" It’s not that I’m unable to enjoy myself, but I’m in a foreign place without time restrictions and having to be somewhere and your muscles being sore as shit. I’m there to party, and I don’t know how to do it anymore. I don’t like going to bars, having to buy the drinks. I’m integrating back into just hanging out again. I don’t mean to be such a hermit.
RS: Well, what would you change about Montgomery?
DS: Oh, that’s asking a lot. It’s just a little rougher than it has to be around here. I wish it wasn’t because then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go out.
I feel like in Birmingham I can go up there now and be my kind of goofy self that smiles too much and doesn’t always say the right thing, and maybe my personality or my demeanor or my look or something is off putting to people. I don’t know what it is, I’m fine with it, but in Birmingham I feel comfortable enough to be myself because I know within any kind of little clique or group of people, I’m gonna know one of the people out of that group and have done them a favor or vice versa or worked with each other or dated each other or punched each other, I know there’s gonna be some kind of connection there - whether it’s a good connection or not. I know where I stand, I know where I am.
RS: So what about music? What are some of your all time favorites?
DS: Chuck Berry’s gotta be in there.
Alice Cooper Group, cause when he went solo, it wasn’t the same, and a lot of people don’t know that. They just think Alice Cooper is Alice Cooper, but there was a point when he fired the whole band and got a new band and made it more about the stage show and things like that, and a lot of people didn’t really notice the transition but there was one. When they were the group, they were one of the best. There was no dead weight, no person in the band didn’t do anything.
Devo too, Devo’s gotta be in there. That guy is the most underrated lyricist. I won’t go so far as to call Devo underrated. It seems like a lot of people want to classify them as a one hit wonder, and I guess they are, but they were far more than that. They get their credit though. They’re still around, still touring, still selling out venues. I feel like Beatles fan think the Beatles are underrated sometimes. It’s weird talking to some Beatles fans. It’s like, how much credit do you think they need?
I think the Ramones thought that they were slighted, too. They thought that bands like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains were stealing their thunder, and it’s like, get real man. They might be big, but they don’t have the influence that a band like the Ramones did. And how famous do you wanna be? The Ramones were pretty fucking famous. I think from '77 on, there wasn’t a point when they couldn’t get 5,000 people at a show, at any Ramones show.
That people embrace a lot of these celebrities is astonishing to me. Like Kid Rock? When I saw that guy, I thought "that guy is as ridiculous as Vanilla Ice any day of the week, right?"
RS: I think more ridiculous.
DS: Yeah, at least Vanilla Ice - at least that song was good. When I saw Kid Rock, it’s like, no way anybody’s buying this shit. That dude still gets on the cover of Rolling Stone. He was on CNN dropping his opinions with Piers Morgan about political stuff, and it’s like, "why are you asking this guy?" I don’t care what Kid Rock has to say about politics. I don’t even care what he has to say about music. You watch that CNN shit, you go crazy anyways. But, it’s like all of a sudden Kid Rock’s opinion matters. Those people seem kind of ridiculous enough to capture my attention, and I say ridiculous in the best possible way. Very entertaining dudes.
RS: Did you teach yourself how to play guitar?
Dad knew how to play guitar, so there was always a guitar around. Eventually I just begged and begged him. It’s weird cause I’m scrawny, and I was a scrawny kid, too. And when I wanted to play football, my dad was like yeah, I’ll teach you how to play football. I sucked so bad, but I had the heart. Highly encouraging of that, but when I wanted to play guitar, he discouraged it. I had to beg and beg and beg to play guitar, and I started getting better at that, so eventually he warmed up to the idea of teaching me. As a reward system for getting a grade or something, he’d teach me a new chord, but I was learning the chords instead of getting the grades.
RS: When did you start playing shows?
DS: When I was 13 or 14, I started playing shows at bars in Birmingham. I could get in because I was working.
RS: Did you have to leave as soon as the set was over?
DS: Sometimes, they’d be pretty lenient in those places. I had the most fun at bars when I was a teenager. When I turned 21 they stopped being as fun.
RS: They started charging you?
DS: Yeah.
RS: Dan pulled up a youtube video of rapper Dangeruss.
DS: It’s weird now that people call everybody else out for the ironic thing. Now people just have weird taste, you know what I mean. I feel weird 'cause I go around with this Star Trek shirt on but I like Star Trek, but then, being a 30 year old who lives at home, I shouldn’t be walking around with a fucking Star Trek shirt on and be into it. So either way is a lose-lose.
Either you’re the guy who’s into Star Trek and is wearing the shirt, or you’re the guy who’s 10 years late on wearing the shirt that’s funny but you don’t mean it. If that’s going away, I think it should start to become socially unacceptable for people to be nerds too cause that's gone too far, a little bit.
RS: We’re too nerdy now?
DS: The whole world is. They nourished it, and we became the makers. When we were kids, we were entertained by E.T. and stuff like that, but that was people our parents’ age and their vision of what they thought we would like. Now we’re the people making the childish things, and we’re like, Iron Man, Batman... But I fucking loved those Batman movies, so I don’t know.
RS: What else have you done other than play music? I know you’ve had a lot of odd jobs.
DS: I used to cut hair. I could see myself going back to that. Worked in movie theatres, done a lot of dishes. Mostly try to avoid work now. I feel like I’m winning if I don’t work. I want to work again, I want to get back into it. But it’s like, you can’t goof off your whole life and then go and get what everybody else has been working for.
RS: So are you thinking about not playing music anymore?
DS: No, I still love music, but at some point, you just outgrow your own usefulness. I can keep going, but I know what to expect out of it now. I know what I can get out of it. And it’s good, and it’s nicer to know. I keep getting reassured.
Every time I go back over to Europe, I think they forgot about me, or the audience won’t be there, but they are - they come back. And they’re good, you know. And I keep thinking they aren’t gonna do it forever, but maybe they will. If you don’t expect to do much more than play to several people at a bar - which is what I wanna do - if you expect that when you go out, and you get that, I’m fine with it.
RS: You just released that 7” with Richie Ramone. What are you working on now?
DS: Yeah, I was working on some stuff today. Going to send it off to some folks, see if they’d be interested. It’d be the same deal as we had with Richie. I’d like to work with him again, but it was pretty expensive.
That’s how I got into starting to do that stuff, 'cause my friends wanna get paid to do sessions and do things like that, and they ask about as much as these people who live in LA. My friends’ bands, I like them, but I don’t sit around and listen to them, and I definitely haven’t had the history with them. But bands like the Ramones or the Go-Gos or X, those are people I’ve been listening to for 30 years now - I’ve been listening to them my whole life. And they’re still working, they’re still out there looking for work. And I figure, people who do this kind of thing, they figure a day working in entertainment is better than a day not working in entertainment.
So you can look these people up and see the rates they charge, if we’re not doing it as a friend thing anymore. Ever since my friends have known I work with record labels, it’s like, I gotta pay for stuff. When I did it before I had a record label, people always wanna volunteer, can’t do enough to help you, but now they know there’s a record label. But that money still comes out of me, when I have to pay people to be on records cause you’ve gotta recoup - which doesn’t happen. I’m lucky, 'cause I don’t recoup on my records. They always spend more money to make my records than they get back, so it doesn’t make any sense for me to be on a record label anymore, but they like it, so they do it, so that’s cool. It’s a good position to be in.
Follow Rebecca and her music thoughts on her blog GetBent