May 1st, 2006, 12:00 pm
So how has the tour been going so far?
Really good. This is our 3rd tour with Dog Fashion Disco, and they re always good tours, because both of us have similar fan bases but still a little different so when we tour together, it always goes really well.
Some people, like YOU, could say why are they touring together again?! They ve already done that!
But truthfully, it s good money for us, so we can do some more daring tours afterwards. A Dog Fashion tour means both of us want to make some quick cash.
Well, that pretty much ruined my question about touring with DFD yet again, so what are your plans for after this tour?
Are you going back in the studio?
Yeah. There was a time where we didn t know if Tub Ring was still in existence.
So Rob and I, who wrote everything in Tub Ring, started 3-2-1 Activate!, but then the MTV thing came along so we asked the guys from 3-2-1 if they wanted to be Tub Ring. We did the show and everyone pretty much accepted the change a lot easier than I thought they would, so as soon as we re done with this tour, right back in the studio and next album.
Do you have any new songs written yet?
We do. The way we write, Rob sorta writes the skeleton of the song and brings it in and we all put our respective parts to it.
As soon as it s for the most part done I put my vocals to it. He just handed me a demo with like 7 songs, and when we were with 3-2-1, we actually wrote a full album of songs and we re going to take a couple of those that could fit as Tub Ring songs. We might actually release a 3-2-1 album too.
Well, changing gears, here s a serious question: If you had to fuck either Todd (DFD) or Barry (LWID), who would you choose?
Wow! You know, Barry is a little new to me.
This is my first time meeting him. He s a great guy, but you know what, I like to be a little more comfortable with the guys I have sex with, so I m gonna have to go with Todd just because I know him a little bit better. A couple more tours with Look What I Did and Barry s right in there.
haha, well, speaking of being fucked in the ass how did the whole MTV contest go?
The MTV thing was a lot of fun! I d lose on MTV again if given the chance.
It was great promotion. It s really weird because being a rock band or something against the norm, you would think going on MTV that all of our fans would be like, ugh, sell out! bullshit!
! but they were all 100% behind us and it really meant a lot. Since then, tonight Pete Meiser came out and sang with us and we talked to Hello, Goodbye a few times since then.
So it was all positive and we made good with the MTV people, so granted we didn t win and we probably didn t have a chance from the beginning but I have nothing bad to say about it. It actually went really well.
Have you noticed any benefit from it yet?
Umm, yeah. Nothing huge, but every now and then there ll be a new group of 10 or so people that ll be like, I saw you on MTV! Nothing like we re selling out stadiums or anything, but enough that it was definitely good for us.
Like I said, one of the best things about it, people had accepted the band member changes through that.
So what would be your favorite Black My Heart song?
haha, uh, I think it s the one that s, We Are The Scene Together And We All Have To Stick Together, Hardcore Forever!
That one. Or the one Music Is For All of Us, Let s Not Throw Bar Stools At People Anymore. That one s a good song.
Is there anything you d like to add about that whole incident? Are you guys going to be pressing charges?
Our bass player is pressing charges.
We ve gotten E-mails from the guy giving his side of the story, but never really apologizing. Truthfully, I was the least involved, because during all this the venue was kinda shitty too and the vocals had cut out and we were holding a note because I was trying to fix the vocals, and there s no sound guy and luckily I know a little about that, so I m trying to fix it. That s when they took it upon themselves to start throwing shit at us.
So we got an E-mail through our MySpace page from the guy giving his side, saying it was stupid of him for saying hardcore forever!, but never really apologizing for head butting Trevor and all that. So I said, sure but you re in a touring band too and you know that when you re out and, we re all trying to make it, we don t have the money to buy a new guitar and keyboard.
That kinda puts us in a bad place, so maybe you could do something so that we don t have to press charges, but I haven t heard back yet. And we re not trying to be shitty, I mean, I used to listen to hardcore. Back in like Freshman year of High School or Junior High, I used to listen to Chain of Strength, and Bold, and Youth of Today, and Gorilla Biscuits and I hardly drink or do drugs
Well, the problem is they re not even a real hardcore band.
They don t even know what their scene is about.
And they re all about unity until they want to fight. The show, 3 fights had already broken out before.
The thing that was said by us was, you guys are going to have to listen to Elton John for a week to get all this hardcore out of your system. And everyone can agree, that wasn t disparaging against hardcore. It s turned into this whole fight and it didn t need to be.
I have nothing against hardcore or straight edge. It was the fact that, we re on tour, we have a show tomorrow and you broke our shit, so let s fix that problem. When we say, hey, who did that?
and our bass player is head butted and his tooth goes through his lip I m not too impressed with that.
Well, on a lighter note, what s going on with Super 8-bit Brothers and 3-2-1 Activate?
3-2-1 Activate!
has turned into Tub Ring, but we have a whole album worth of material. So if we have the time, we ll still release an album and see if people like it. It s just fun for us.
Super 8-bit Brothers is the coolest thing in the world. It s just Rob and I playing to a backup track and we got to go on tour with Mindless Self Indulgence in front of a few thousand people doing glorified karaoke. It s so ridiculous, but so easy to do, so we ll do that forever.
What do you think of some of the other bands that have that whole Nintendo sound, like HORSE The Band?
HORSE The Band I like. I like what they do because they actually use crazy sounds like that and make it into a style of music.
A lot of the Nintendo bands, I see the place for it, but I kinda hate the fact that sometimes when people hear Super 8-bit they re like, oh, another one of those bands. I don t want to sound stupid about it, but we really did that stuff like 7 years ago. Rob and I just moved in together and we were playing Super Smash Brothers against each other and we d go in the room, after playing for like 3 hours, and write a song just for fun.
I really wish we would ve put it out then, because then we would ve been ahead of the curve. And it s really funny, the video game industry is a billion dollar industry, and people think it s this little niche market. People are like, I like video games and I like music I should buy your CD!
Everyone likes video games!
Does it ever annoy you that if you came out now, with the Internet being so huge, you d probably be better off than having come out like 15 years ago?
Uh, it doesn t annoy me.
I think about people that are in High School now and when they have to do papers. It s a thousand times easier now, than when I had to do research papers and have to go to the library. I never really thought about it in context of the band though yeah, fuck music now!
At the same time, we re still trying to get people to hear our music, we re still struggling. It s great that people trade our stuff on the Internet. I understand maybe why giant bands are pissed off about it, but for a band like us, trade the music and tell people about it on the Internet.
We re a total word of mouth band. I realize somebody telling four friends to check out Tub Ring is helping us more than anybody else.
So you have no problem with someone illegally downloading your CD?
Definitely not. And the thing is, there needs to be a shift in music. I remember when CDs came out, after cassettes, and everyone was like, a new format!
I wonder what the next format will be, and the new format is mp3s. People just need to figure out how to market off that.
Which means you don t need record labels for distribution anymore.
Which is good for you guys. What is your current label situation?
Yeah.
We are finally off of Invisible, and this tour we ve actually been talking to a few different labels. I wouldn t go as far to say a bidding war but now we re gonna see what we can do and who s gonna give us the best offer. By the end of the tour, we ll be on something else.
And it ll be really weird because our next album will be the first album that we didn t pay for out of our pockets or on my credit card. So I m pretty excited about that.
The future of Tub Ring seems to have been pretty uncertain lately.
Do you see the band breaking up anytime soon?
If you would ve asked me this question a year ago, who knows, but the new guys we re playing with we re like Menudo. We got young guys in and they add this new energy to it and I m enjoying it more than ever.
So, we re giving it another chance. We re still in debt, so I still have to make more albums to try get out of debt. We played a show towards the end with the old Tub Ring with Foxy Shazam, and those guys were playing crazy stuff and I watch them get into and I was like these guys have what we used to, they have the energy and they re excited about, and we lost that.
I was just depressed. With the new band, we have that again. So the future is bright.
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