PART ONE

1. Where are you based now - I always thought you'd moved to N.Y. but the address for Moonbus was in Texas? How do you spend your days post-Trees?
When I was growing up in Ellensburg, WA, I never imagined I would end up traveling and living all over the country. After moving from Ellensburg to Seattle in the early 90’s I commuted back and forth to NY were my girlfriend (now my wife) Janet lived. Last week she got a job in Texas so we could be closer to her family and here we are.
Since we moved here I have not just about absolutely nothing. I’ve remained a hermit, I know nobody here. I spend as much time as I can with my wife and four year old daughter. It’s nice not to have to travel all the time like I used to with the band. I have a job delivering newspapers in the middle of the night, which I really enjoy. They don’t have paper tubes here and I get to drive around at 3am throwing newspapers into people’s yards. The money’s not bad for the hours either.
I had not written any songs or even played my guitar for over a year. However, the last couple of months I have started writing again and I am really having fun doing it. I guess I really needed to clear my head out after the last decade of insanity with the band.

2. Let's start at the top. 60's music, especially psych, obviously means a lot to you. Was this something you heard around the house when you were younger?
My first introduction to psychedelic music was through the Beatles. I remember hearing Beatles songs when I was very young (I was born in ‘62) and then when I was about 12 or 13 I started going to garage sales with my mom every weekend. This was in the mid 70’s and everyone seemed to be selling their record collections. Besides that there was actually a pretty good record store in Ellensburg called Ace Records. They had tons of 60’s and early 70’s stuff in there that no one had ever bought, so when I was in high school I started to buy lots of stuff in there when I had cash. Ace always seemed to have two copies of things I thought looked cool and later I found out that Mark Lanegan had bought many of the second copies of albums I had purchased.

3. Was there one moment that made you think 'Wow, I've gotta be in a band!'?
Oddly enough I can actually remember thinking that thought. It was at my senior graduation party after high school graduation. I remember thinking that what I wanted to do with my life was be in a rock band. Looking back this seems like it was a totally outrageous dream at the time, I had no idea how to go about it and in Ellensburg (as well as Seattle at the time) was pretty much the middle of nowhere. since I couldn’t even get into the one or two bands (cheesy cover bands) that kids my age had in town. I was pretty much a hermit and I had to wait for Van to get a little older (he’s 4 and a half years my junior) before I would play with anybody.

  4. What about pre-Trees bands? Not much has ever been mentioned about Explosive Generation and the like. What kind of stuff were you playing then, and what covers were particular favorites? (I think I have a tape of you doing Memory of a Free Festival from a later period)
The Explosive Generation was Van, Mark Pickerel, myself and one or two other people. We played covers because we didn’t even really grasp the concept that we could do our own songs. No body had written anything yet although I was very heavily into writing poetry at the time. This helped a lot later. We played everything from the Dead Kennedy’s, Black Flag, Sex Pistols, X, XTC, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Cream pretty much just about anything that we liked. Van and Mark Pickerel were really into various types of Metal and we even played Judas Priest, Def Leopard and a couple of Ozzy Osborne songs. I was not into this at all but never the less I actually learned stuff like “Rock of Ages” by Def Leopard. It seemed pretty scary then and its scarier now.
We never got to play many shows because there was nowhere to play in Ellensburg except bars and high school dances. We never did the bars (we were too young anyway) but we did do a high school dance. Later we got really desperate and put on a couple of shows by ourselves at Hal Holmes Community Center to which a few people came.
Anyway, it wasn’t until we enlisted Mark Lanegan that the seed of the idea of being a real band was planted.

Mr Pickerel denies any allegations of ‘metalness’ and blames it on a David Frazini. Do you remember him?
Thinking back, I guess Pickerel was more into new wave than metal. Everybody thought he looked just like Rick Ocasek from The Cars. Dave Frazini was the drummer for The Explosive Generation for much of the time. For some reason, Mark P didn’t want to play with us any more, perhaps because rock music was to Satanic (Van and Mark P were both supposed born again Christians at the time and members of the CMA church youth group). Frazini played with us for about a year and I suppose the highlight was a TV commercial the band did for his father’s pizza place that was on local cable access TV.

5. Was your family supportive of yours and Van's decision to be in a band; obviously it's a slightly unorthodox career.
My mom and dad always loved what we were doing. My dad even loaned us a few thousand dollars to do our first album “Clairvoyance”.

6. Without either Calvin Johnson or Steve Fisk's help in the early days, would you still have made it? Did you keep in contact with either of them?
Steve Fisk really helped us a lot. He had quite a few connections in the underground music scene in Seattle (still in its infancy) and in California as well. He helped greatly in getting SST and Greg Ginn aware of us. I imagine if it wouldn’t have been for him we’d all still be in Ellensburg working at Twin City Foods.
We met Calvin a little bit later. He had a lot to do with getting us some of our first shows in Olympia. They had a nice little music scene going there and that is where we got our first education about how a band can be a band without a big record company. He distributed “Other Worlds” which was a cassette only release on K, which at the time was a cassette only label. I don’t know if people remember the “cassette revolution” he started, at least in Washington State. I think that had a lot to do with the flowering of some great music in the Northwest. It helped give people the idea that anybody could have a band and write their own songs.
I used to see Steve Fisk around Seattle occasionally but it’s been a while. As for Calvin I hadn’t heard from him for ages but he just sent me a copy of the new Beat Happening box set, which is very cool. (it actually has the stuff from the album we did with them).

7. Without being too awkward, I possibly prefer the earlier albums to some of the later material. Do you go back to listen to any of these albums ('Even if' for example) and how do you rate them now?
In many ways I agree with you. Although I do believe that we finally made the record we had always wanted to with “Dust”. I listen to a lot of the old stuff now and then. There was so much musical inspiration that came so easily in the SST albums. By the time we got on Epic the band was becoming for of a job.

8. Continuing with the early albums, they sound like they may have been more influenced by you and your musical taste. Did you have overall artistic control at this time?
Mark has always had artistic control of the Screaming Trees. This is rather odd since I was usually the main songwriter (with the exception of Sweet Oblivion which was very collaboratory). Our method of writing evolved fairly quickly. I would always be writing new songs and Mark would always be listening to them and encouraging me. We tried writing stuff together in the same room but I was always thinking that lyrics I would come up with were stupid. Very often the lyrics I wrote by myself were really stupid (in the psychedelic sense of the word). What ended up happening is that when Mark liked a song he fixed it and made it much cooler. This may have been a bit hard for me to see at the time but I soon realized that this method of collaboration creating some great stuff. There are of course some exceptions to this way of writing. Occasionally I would do the music and Mark would write lyrics (Gray Diamond Desert) and sometimes Van and Mark would write together (Straight Out Anyplace, and later Dollar Bill and Julie Paradise).

9. I was always confused as to how long and why Donna Dresch was in the band....
Donna was in the band for about three or four months in 1988. Van actually quit the band because he had to go to work at about three jobs to support his newly born son Ulysses. She played with us on the US tour we did for “Invisible Lantern” when we opened up for fIREHOSE. We were planning on doing a double album at the time as well (what later became Buzz Factory) and we went to LA to record it with her playing bass. We finished the album after two weeks of recording at a place called Spinhead that no longer exists. After living with the tapes on tour we decided to ask SST to rerecord the record (that would bring the album budget up to $4000, a small fortune by SST standards). Amazingly Mark somehow talked them into it. By the time we went to Reciprocal in Seattle to record it with Jack Endino, Van had rejoined the band and we had some new material. What we did at Spinhead was apparently destroyed although there may be a cassette of it floating around somewhere. I wish I had one. (The sessions included different versions of some of the songs from Buzz Factory, some stuff that I ended up doing on my Purple Outside record and some unheard songs as well.)
Donna was a great bass player and she especially great live, but it wasn’t the same without Van.

10. Would you have preferred to have sung lead occasionally?
I love to sing and I love to write songs. I also love Mark Lanegan’s voice. I have always considered it a privilege to have him sing stuff that I wrote. He is definitely the voice of the Trees and I think I would have felt odd singing lead myself. (I guess Mark could have played guitar or maybe tambourine, ha, ha)

11. Apart from 'Change has Come', did Sub Pop attempt to sign you up - it always struck me as odd that you were in the area yet didn't join on a longer basis?
The whole reason we did “Change Has Come” was to do a 45 single. SST for some reason would not do a “7 with us. The original idea was just on 45, which turned in two. Later in evolved into a 5-song ep. I think that Sub Pop was always interested in signing us, however our deal with SST predated them by a couple of years. We didn’t even know anything was going on in Seattle till sometime in late 1988. We didn’t play there much until later.

12. Was there one event that led to Mark Pickerel leaving the band?
No, it kind of happened over a period of a year or so. I believe it probably had a lot to do with his girlfriend at the time. His temporary replacement Sean Hollister did our 1990 European tour with us before Mark P. had quit, even before we did Uncle Anesthesia. He finally quit just before that album came out.

Mark also mentioned you supported Alice Cooper at one point
Yes, we opened for Alice Cooper in Missoula, Montana at the beginning of 1988, I believe. It was during his 80’s comeback. The situation was, of course, quite bizarre. A few days after Christmas in 1987 we got a call from some one who wanted us to open for Alice Cooper in Missoula. Apparently the opening act (which was reportedly Motorhead but I’m not sure if that’s true) cancelled and they wanted a Northwest band for the show. At the time I suppose we were one of the few bands in the area with any kind of national following (although it was quite small) so I guess that’s why they called us. We said yes and then proceeded to try and figure out why they wanted us. I remember thinking it was probably a hoax and we would drive all the way there in the snow (300 or 400 miles) and no one would know what we were talking about. When we got there, we were playing in a basketball gym/arena, which probably held 3 or 4 thousand people. It was quite comical; we got up there, with our teeny tiny amps in front of Alice Cooper’s gargantuan stage set up and ripped through about ten songs. Amazingly, no one booed us off stage and even one or two people yelled “Trees! Trees!” We never met Alice Cooper but we stood on the side of the stage and watched the show. Years later, when we ended up on Epic (the label Alice Cooper was on at the time of the show) our A&R person was Bob Pfeiffer, who was also Coopers’ A&R person. WE of course relayed the whole story of this show to him and he told Alice, but we still never met the guy. Not that I ever wanted to, of course.
[I think Lee protesteth too much, readers!]

  13. 'Uncle Anesthesia' seems a little 'over-cooked'. Was there a lot of pressure on you to have a certain kind of sound by Sony? Was this the lowest point of the Trees with regards to fist-fights etc?
Sony really had almost no input as to the way we sounded, even after Sweet Oblivion. We can only blame ourselves and our producer for the way it turned out. I don’t believe that we ever released anything we thought was bad, but that is definitely our most awkward album and I don’t know if it’s the sound, the songs or a combination of both.
As to the lowest point of the Trees, this was not it. During that time we were probably apprehensive about doing the major label thing but we’d done everything we had ever dreamed of already and since we had the chance we figured we’d give it a try.
The lowest point came in 94-95 when we were struggling to come up with a follow up to Sweet Oblivion. I don’t believe in my wildest fantasy that I could have imagined that we’d sell 300-400 hundred thousand copies of a record, and I think that Epic considered us a reasonable success, although for many artists selling that “few” records would a huge disaster. We never went in too much for physical violence between each other (although Van and I did occasionally). Our fight usually involved mental anguish. Drugs complicated the situation greatly as well. I would say that the fact that we finished “Dust” and toured after it were complete miracles.

14. When I saw you with the Trees in Manchester, you stormed off with guitar problems after five minutes and by the end of the show you were belting out Devo covers and trashing your instruments. What would you say was your most Rock 'n' Roll moment over the years with regards to completely unhinged debauched excess and general bad behaviour?
I personally am usually fairly reserved but have had a few moments, especially onstage. The answer to your question would undoubtedly be the 1992 Roskilde (or Rockslide as a drunk Van put it) Festival in Denmark. It was the year Seattle music and we were there to be part of it. Other bands included Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The most people we had ever played in front of before was probably 3 or 4 thousand. At this show there were probably 60,000 or so. I guess everyone one was a bit nervous. Before the show Mark drank at least one big bottle of Jagermeister and god knows what else. When we got on stage everything went fine for the first six or seven songs. Then I distinctly remember looking to the side of the stage and hearing Krist Noveselic who was watching say, “play the one about Satan.” I replied, “they’re all about Satan.” Then all hell broke loose. We went into either Nearly Lost You or Change Has Come, I can’t remember which. About halfway into the song Mark stopped singing and I could figure what was up. We just kept playing and waited for him to come back in but he never did. After a minute he snapped and knocked over a TV camera (apparently worth $10,000 we found out later) and the stage hand or security or someone went after him. We were still playing and I remember trying to block one of the security guys with my body because he looked like he was going to kill Mark. The scene quickly degraded into a Who-like orgy of instrument destruction Barrett smashed his drums, I smashed my guitar (by some thankful coincidence not my main one, this was the only time I smashed a guitar on purpose) and Van must have smashed something too. We got off stage and ran. Mark went directly to the dressing room and promptly upturned the tables full of food and drinks and anything else he could get hold of. Then our manager got Mark out of there fast and hid him somewhere assuming that the stage crew and Danish TV people were not pacifists. The rest of us stuck around and had a very nice night watching other bands play (there were about five stages and the show went on all night). I’m not sure if we ever paid for the damage or not. Somewhere there exists a videotape of this incident, but I know not where.

15. How did you get on with Josh when he joined the band? Were you familiar with his stuff with Kyuss? Who made the approach? Josh was a great addition to the band. I had never played with another guitarist and I believe that my playing at our shows greatly improved with his addition. I could actually play instead of just trashing the guitar to fill in the sound.
I had heard Kyuss but it was Van who came up with the idea and asked Josh. I’m not sure what the connection was but I know that Josh was going to school at the University of Washington in Seattle when he started playing with us. If we had done another record I imagine that we would have had Josh on it.

16. When 'Dust' started receiving such great reviews, did you think that you'd really made it? I still didn't get the impression, as an outsider, that you were really any happier as a band at that time, especially as Mark was still struggling with his problems. The reviews of Dust were very satisfying, especially after the amount of work and agony we went through to finish it. Like I said before the time leading up to doing this album was the worst ever for the band. Even though Mark’s condition continued to decline after the record came out and we did Lollapalooza I had a great deal of fun on that tour and the UK tour afterwards. One of the most frustrating things is that having taken so long to finish the record (we recorded and aborted it in 94) we had spent a ton of money and now the cash hard in coming. Since the Trees was a 24 hour a day job for all of us it was very frustrating and unfortunately although Dust sold ok it did not come close to the “commercial success” of Sweet Oblivion. Artistic success, however, is in the long term much more important than financial success.

17. Your shows at the Viper Rooms towards the end of the band - did you feel that this would lead to something long term for the band? There must have been label interest (name and shame Gary Lee, name and shame!)
We had asked to be release from our Epic contract because we owed them something like a million dollars and the label was going through a very extensive restructuring (in other words they fired everyone we knew there). Amazingly they let us out of our deal. I guess we were a tax write off in the end, although they must have made some money off of Sweet Oblivion.
After this we recorded several sets of demos and were trying to find a new label. But at the time with Brittany Spears and Eminem at the tops of the charts there was basically zero interest. (Today with so much “generic post grunge with eddie vedder type singers and lots of tattoos and piercings” on the radio and mtv perhaps the climate would be more favorable to a rock band like us. Perhaps.)
I think Sub Pop would have put out a record for us, but I guess we saw that as a step backwards, something that we’d already done. Another thing was that although we had a lot of very good material, for some reason the demos we were doing just didn’t seem to be quite right. Consequently the Trees just sort of faded away slowly.

18. Do you feel your final show was a fitting end? It seemed very half-hearted.
It’s sort of an irony but after we stopped playing and doing records in the late 90’s we started getting paid WAY more money for shows. We only did a handful of shows in that time but for the Seattle Bumbershoot show and the Seattle EMP show we got paid ridiculous amounts of money (finally!) This was good because we were all broke as usual.
The EMP show was a very fun show. We had fun rehearsing for it and playing it. No one really said anything but we all figured that this would probably be our last show. Contrary to popular belief the Trees NEVER broke before this. Although we wouldn’t do stuff for months we were always a band and always had plans.
The EMP itself is quite a monstrosity. It looks like a 4 dimensional creature puked at the foot of the space needle. The exhibits are kind of interesting but to put a whole artistic movement under glass like that is like boiling the soup too long. If you do it’s not soup anymore. I saw one of Van’s old bass guitars behind the glass of a museum case (they actually bought a pair of his ratty old Converse All-stars, but I guess they’re still in the back room.) There were faces of past friends and acquaintances there and I guess it’s more sad than anything. I thought maybe we could all make the music business change, but instead the music that was created in the Northwest during that time just became another tool for the music industry to make money. I suppose it’s probably harder now than ever for a band who’s just starting out. Anyway I guess it seems like the time had come to end it.

19. Having heard the fabulous demo songs that were recorded before the band's demise, and a few other unreleased tracks (isn't there a double album's worth from the 'Uncle..' days?), would you consider releasing these tracks in the future, possibly as part of a box set?
I personally like the idea of doing something like that. If there was interest from someone in doing so it could be a possibility.

20. Please be as honest as possible. What is your relationship like at this moment in time with Lanegan, Barrett and Van?
I don’t talk to them much but I do occasionally. Mark Lanegan called me out of the blue a few weeks ago and we had a very nice chat, he’s apparently living in North Carolina of all places. Van and I exchange e-mail once in awhile, he still living in Stanwood in Western Washington. I have spoken to Barrett since the EMP show but Mark tells me he’s living in New Mexico. How did we ever end up all over the place?
I don’t believe that anyone in the band hates anyone else or is even mad about anything that went on during our career. We had many artistic and personal conflicts over the years but time has past and I personally am just proud and amazed and what we accomplished as the Screaming Trees. When we set out all we wanted to do was be a “real band”. To me that just meant recording albums and doing shows. I suppose we went way beyond anything I every imagined. So I have no animosity towards any of my band mates.

PART TWO

1. Purple Outside. How did this project come about? Was it due to Trees downtime or a desire to make yourself heard?
I guess it was sometime in 1989 that Mark, Van and myself got the crazy idea to do solo albums. Since SST always seemed very receptive to releasing new material we figured we ask them if they wanted to do it. Mark called up Greg Ginn and he was very into the idea. I think we each got about a $1500 dollar budget, which was about the same amount as the Trees were getting at the time. A bit of time past and Mark ended up getting hooked up with Sub Pop so his “Winding Sheet” album came out there. The Purple Outside album and Van’s Solomon Grundy album were released on New Alliance, which by that time was basically SST by another name. I had been planning on doing a record by myself for a couple of years. We always had a lot of time when the band wasn’t doing anything in those days. We did six week US tours in the spring and fall and then Europe in the winter. When we were recording albums in Ellensburg we usually took several months but we didn’t work straight through. We just go into the studio every few weeks (mostly because we kept having new material).
I had originally figured I’d do it on cassette like the “Other Worlds” album. However, every time I had the stuff I thought I’d use, we decided to use it for the Screaming Trees. Many of the early songs from Even If and Invisible Lantern would have been on those tapes but (luckily) they ended up on those albums.
I pretty much recorded the album the same way that the Trees did at Velvetone studio, except Rod Doak was engineering instead of Steve Fisk.

2. Patrick. Did you learn nothing from playing with Van? Seriously, how did you find working with him differed from what you were used to?
At the time Patrick was only about 16 or 17 years old. I’m about ten years older than him so basically he would just do what I told him to (unlike Van). We practiced the songs together a bit before we went in the studio then we just went in and beat out the basic tracks. It was a little different since no one was playing bass (it was overdubbed). Patrick has played in a ton of bands in Ellensburg and Seattle since then (he plays guitar and sings quite well). His main thing is playing with Van in his band Valis (I guess Van didn’t learn anything form playing with me either!)

3. Did you play any shows to support this? I guess it was around this time Mark started to dabble in his solo career - were you surprised at the direction he took?
The Purple Outside never played any shows. I guess we could have if we’d had a bass player but it never happened. The only solo shows I’ve ever done were some acoustic shows back in 1997-98.
I was not surprised by Mark’s direction since his musical tastes had always varied from mine. He was always great at finding good music and I’ve been turned onto many of my favorite artists by him. I really like his solo stuff and I think he has made some great albums.
4. The Dr Janet single. How did this come about and was it only intended to be a one-off release? Is the band name anything to do with your good lady wife?
The Dr. Janet single was something we did for fun. I don’t think we ever talked about doing anything other than that single. Since I had been staying in New York quite about I thought it would be cool to do something with people I new from the East. The name was chosen because I was in New York because of Janet and she was probably went to more rock shows there than any other person at the time (everyone called her Dr. Janet because she has a PhD in chemistry. She also picked the cover song to do.)

5. I take it Sub Pop approached you for the Singles Club 7"? I reckon it's one of your finest solo moments - were you not encouraged to pursue a solo career full time at this point?
I had talked to them about doing something once or twice and eventually they came up with that. “Grasshopper’s Daydream” was recorded a bit weird. I went into the studio in Seattle and laid down myself singing and playing acoustic then I just had Van do whatever he wanted to with it, I was very happy with the results. “Behind the Smile” (nothing to the with the Marie Osmond autobiography) I did all by myself.
I have wanted to have a full time solo career but either I don’t know the right people or I’m just lazy. I sent out tapes at one time but no one was interested. I quite a hermit also so that doesn’t make it any easier. Maybe one of these days I get back in the swing of things.

6. ‘Illuminaut’ and ‘Moon in the Fifth House’ both have a very homemade feel. How did you put them both together?
Both these albums were done on my four-track at home (wherever that was a the time). They are both older material that I remixed and put together to release on CD. Most of ‘Illuminaut’ predates the Purple Outside album. ‘Moon in the Fifth House’ is stuff from between about 1992 to the present.

7. On both albums, I take it that there is a fair amount of rejected Trees material? Some songs ("Strange Town") seem to pick up where previous songs left off ("Before We Arise") Yes, I always made sure that Mark heard every song I did because often I had no idea if they were good or not. There is a huge amount of material that went unrecorded by the Trees over the years. When I was going through a lot of it a couple of years ago I realized that a lot of it was very good. I have plans to release three or four more cds of this stuff on the Moonbus in the next year or two.

8. What's with the Marxist reference on the sleeve of 'Moon…'?
I’ve always been musically apolitical but with everything that’s going on today I just thought I put that on there. I really think that the only solution to the world’s problems is for the United States (and someday the world) to change from capitalism to democratic communism (this will never happen, it’s just a dream of mine.) Communism in the 20th century was not only a miserable failure but also it also brought out the worst in human nature when it transformed into totalitarianism. In order for communism to work a society must be at a very high level or industrial production with a very high standard of living, the U.S. fits the bill perfectly. However, because greed is what oils the gears of the U.S. economy the rich will continue to get richer and trample on the poor while holding the carrot of the American Dream in front of their noses. Don’t worry, I’ll never write a song about it.

9. Who's Tulgey Wood?
My next-door neighbor in San Angelo.

  10. How were the solo shows you've done received? Do you play alone/purely original material?
There weren’t many people at them (except in Seattle) but they were really fun. I play alone with my acoustic guitar and do mostly songs of mine that no one has ever heard before, and a couple of older Trees songs (“Transfiguration”, “Cold Rain”) for good measure.
One thing I really got out of doing those shows was the ability to play and sing my songs at the same time. In the past I had always laid down a guitar part on my 4 –track, then overdubbed the vocals. Now I almost always work on performing the songs first then record myself playing and singing at the same time. It’s a lot more fun that way.

11. Would you consider forming a band again, or take your own chances?
I would like to be in a band but I don’t really have anyone to play with here in San Angelo.

12. I think you'd fit in well with the continuing wave of new psychedelic bands (Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control etc). Do you listen to any of this stuff or do you prefer to settle back to 'Pebbles 3'?
I have heard the Apples in Stereo and thought they were very cool. My main problem with listening to new music is that I have no money to buy anything. Perhaps I’ll start looking at the Internet for free stuff. I still listen to a lot of old things and that is of course where my main inspiration comes from. I do like volume 3 of Pebbles the stuff that I love the best is the English Freakbeat stuff from the Rubble Collection put out on Bam Caruso in the eighties. I’ve been listening to a lot of that stuff lately; I never get tired of it.

13. What would you say your best songs were, both with the Trees and solo?
There are so many it’s hard to say, but I’ll try. With the Trees I would go for “Transfiguration”, “Look at You”, “Change has Come”, “Even If”, “Winter Song”. For my solo stuff it’s probably something you’ve never heard (but may soon).

14. Musically, what's been your biggest mistake?
Recording and releasing “Nearly Lost You”. I apologize to Van but as time goes on I hate that song more and more. It was our only big commercial success but in many ways that became a curse to the Screaming Trees and caused us much pain and suffering (money is the root of all evil.) I guess it goes to show that in order to have a hit it’s got to be shit.

15. A lot of your songs seem very abstract in terms of subject matter. Are there exceptions ("The Spider" for example)?
My lyrics have always been very abstract and poetic. With the Trees stuff Mark always tended to take what I had written more into the realm of reality. However, what I’ve always done with my songs and poems is to try and describe my own inner landscape, which really can’t be described properly in words.

16. You say your starting to play guitar again - can we expect more self released material or would you look for a label to do it for you? It's interesting you should choose this method, I know even commercial(ish) bands like Ween are taking this route now.
I like doing the stuff myself, it really makes it fun again and it feels like art. It’s possible I may to for doing something on a small label but I’m sure I’ll continue to release stuff on my own. I’m working on a bunch of new stuff right now that I’ll probably put out on the Moonbus soon.

 
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