Nick: So where are you?
Dixie Dave: [laughs] I�m at another bar. Wilmington [North Carolina] has a lot bars. It�s the smallest county but it�s between four beaches. There�s- what - four hundred bars! Nothing but bars. I�m at this place, Little Chuckie D�s. My buddy Big Will and I came in and they were playing Dead Kennedy�s �Too Drunk to Fuck.�
Nick: So Weedeater has a tour coming up in August with Black Cobra - you�ve known those guys for a while, right?
Dixie Dave: We me them years ago. Big Will was roadieing for us, we were on tour with a band and Rafa [Martinez] was drumming playing. He joined Acid King and then started Black Cobra later. The tour should be awesome. We have to name it something. We�ve tossed a couple of ideas around� �Year of the Pig� - it happens to be the year of the Rat anyway - or �Battered and Fried.� It�s one month. We�re looking at some stuff at the end of September in Brazil, 29 in a row, which we�ll do if the money works out.
Nick: You play a lot of shows.
Dixie Dave: I recently got divorced, a year and a half ago, so now even more so. Basically it�s all I do: play music and run a head shop.
Nick: You�ve played with Weedeater, Bongzilla, Buzzov~en of course, Sourvein, Hail!Hornet, and anything else?
Dixie Dave: Yeah, Barstul.
Nick: Your country band. There�s a MySpace page for it. Is there a record or what?
Dixie Dave: We recorded it at my buddy�s house. Barstul is still under wraps. It�s seven songs, forty-minutes - I�m shopping it around. We still have to sell it somebody. It�s pretty crazy, I mean, it�s very easy to listen to, but the lyrics are harder to grasp, well for most people, well, for normal people.
Nick: What are they about?
Dixie Dave: Car bombs - not gay-ass Irish car bombs - cocaine, hookers, Grand Theft Auto� and werewolves Gotta add the werewolves or they�ll get pissed.
Nick: A lot of these bands have the same members, Sourvein and Hail!Hornet for instance - you just played your first show with them last week right? How do you all find time for touring? Any more shows any time soon?
Dixie Dave: Yeah we played the first Hail!Hornet show in Richmond last week. We might play another one in Wilmington. We might do a small East Coast tour. It�s not easy. Me and [Erik] Larson have our bands [Weedeater and Alabama Thunderpussy, respectively] and the other guys [Troy Medlin and Vincent Burke] have Sourvein - they�re always busy [Dixie also played bass in Buzzov~en with Sourvein drummer Ramzi behind the kit before the group split up]. When I�m here at home I run a head shop, so it�s a huge balancing act. Either I�m gone or they�re gone. Wilmington has been a hotbed of music since I was a kid, but nothing escapes, no one has the balls to leave. So far just Sourvein, Weedeater, and ASG, but now there are some younger bands like Thunderlip! and The Hotness playing out - bands of all different genres.
Nick: How long have you been there? Do you remember the first show that made you say, �Fuck, I need to play music�?
Dixie Dave: I�ve been here since I was three years old. It�s crazy. First show�shit, oh fuck, I saw Black Flag when I was eleven. I�m thirty-five going on thirty-six now, so I guess that was in 1984 or so. I got a pretty good itch for it right then. My sister took me to shows. I remember I was eleven, drinking liquor behind a bar, Bessie�s - that�s defunct now - after a hardcore show. After she got me into that I got into metal and the two kind of melted together into what we do now. The country music came from my father.
Nick: You�ve described �what we do now� as �Weed Metal� as opposed to �Stoner Rock� - there was something like that for Hail!Hornet. What was it?
Dixie Dave: Grime-metal. G-R-I-M-E, not grind. Hey hold on a second, someone put on Green Day, fucking guys� we can handle it [singing in a nasal voice] I hope you had the time of your life.
Nick: So what was the first instrument you ever picked up?
Dixie Dave: Well, I couldn�t pick it up; it was a four-thousand pound piano. I sat down in front of it at six or seven. My sisters were forced into lessons - they didn�t want to play piano. I was forced into soccer - I didn�t want to do soccer. I watched their lessons and learned more than they did. So I was playing piano, which my dad thought was gay. My mom kicked my dad out and I continued to play. I asked for a bass guitar at 13. I played clarinet and other things in school. I�ve been playing bass ever since then. After that I learned guitar, banjo, ukulele, a little drums, and then the fiddle.
Nick: How long have you been playing fiddle?
Dixie Dave: About three months. I�m alright. I picked up the banjo way faster - the violin is a god-damn motherfucker.
Nick: So there�s a pretty big gap between Sixteen Tons and God Luck and Good Speed [2002 to 2007]. I know you�ve been playing with a lot of bands, but why so long between albums?
Dixie Dave: Yeah, it was five years. We originally recorded God Luck and Good Speed with Billy Anderson three, maybe four, years ago. We made a wrong decision back then: 40 shows in 50 days. It was twenty shows out to San Francisco, ten days off to record the record, then twenty days on our way back. When we arrived there we weren�t well-versed in the songs. I�d also been screaming my balls off for 20 days. When we got back we realized we wanted to rerecord it, but Billy was recording a band in South America. He got married and divorced down there. So we were searching around and found out Steve Albini was into our music. So we flew out to EA - Electrical Audio in Chicago - and rerecorded it there. Aside from that, there was touring with other bands in Europe. It�s pretty timely considering everything that happened. You gotta take a month off just for being hungover.
Nick: I�ve seen you play a few shows - you�re drinking before, during, and after your set every night. Does that get to you on the road?
Dixie Dave: I do the same thing at home [laughs]. You know, chill. It is what it is. We could try and get sober and write horrible music, but that�s not us. It�s not like we�re the first band to do what we do. We�re following a cookie cutter pattern and it works. As soon as bands get sober and see psychiatrists, they suck forever. Metallica is a great case in point. You sign up for this thing and you do it or not. All of us in Weedeater, the only way out is to die. Sure there are lots of bands that produce more than as, but none that work any harder on the road. We�ve been a three piece for 15 years - that�s a lot of time to live in excess and play in the same band.
Nick: Any favorite places to play?
Dixie Dave: Wroclaw, Poland, Prague, Denver� Chicago is great for us� Vienna, and all of Belgium. They�ll kill me if they read this and I leave them out - long live the Cock[pit]!
Nick: Why?
Dixie Dave: Probably because of the way the people get into it. They don�t have too many bands like us in Wroclaw. We thought they were going to break down the fucking block. The whole bar almost fell over. Belgium was very good. I won�t lie: it was the drugs. But great friends, great friends bring great drugs.
Nick: Speaking of drugs, you have, how shall I say, a reputation of sorts. What�s your favorite recreational drug?
Dixie Dave: My favorite, well, I don�t consider marijuana a drug. I smoke a lot of grass every day. I kind of wish I could stay away from alcohol, but I�m a huge fan of bourbon - this is my fourth bourbon with a splash of bourbon today - it�s my favorite drink - and I got off of work at 5:30, so I�m doing well [6:30-ish]. There�s the white stuff, cocaine and speed. Cocaine is usually bad, cut with a lot of stuff, but you know when you�re on the road� The speed is horrible - I know I�m killing myself - but it is what it is.
Nick: So Keko [the drummer of Weedeater] got married a few years ago. Has that changed the band�s activities and excesses?
Dixie Dave: Keko got married two or three years ago. It was insane. They had this completely ridiculous wedding. People from all over the world were there, it was a fucking blast. His bachelor party was ridiculous. We rented out this bar that holds 50 people - there were about 170 of us. A good friend came with 100 individual grams of cocaine and he ran out so quick he had to get a second 100. We were pretty retarded. Giving us an excuse to party is ridiculous. We�re already going to be partying, just have a wedding, bar mitzvah, christening, whatever.
Nick: Any additional stress from touring for you? There�s picture of your kid on your MySpace.
Dixie Dave: I was married for seven years and just got divorced. We worked through it pretty well. She was cool about things for a while. My daughter�s name is Kira - for the bass player of Black Flag during my favorite era. She turned eight in April when I was in Europe. We go bowling once a week.
Nick: How is she?
Dixie Dave: She bowls a 96. That�s great for her age. I think I�ll put her on the Pro Tour and retire.
Nick: Weedeater is intense live - how do you recreate that intensity on an album?
Dixie Dave: We record everything live, drums, bass, and guitar. We overdub vocals and extra instruments. It�s one initial track every time. And always on two inch, never digital. Basically we do the same thing we do live. It makes for a quick time. With Albini we had six or seven days set aside, but we did it in four. We got cash back on that one.
Nick: Speaking of analog, the Hail!Hornet album just got re-released on vinyl [on I�mBetterThanEveryone Records] Are any more of your projects going to released or re-released?
Dixie Dave: Yeah. Weedeater�s first album, And Justice for Y�all, is getting repressed on CD first. I hate to see people paying a hundred bucks for a CD, especially while a band is still active. It�s fucking retarded. That�s coming out on Sleeping Village, out of Detroit, by our friend Matt King and Willow - [gnome voice] protect the baby Willow - he�s putting out 16 Tons and And Justice for Y�all on vinyl half way through the tour.
Nick: Is there another record in the works?
Dixie Dave: We�ll get back in the studio, probably with Billy. We have so many friends in San Francisco, it�s just a great time, nothing against Albini. Billy is one of m y best friends. We�ll probably be recording early �09 before going to Europe. There�s a tentative title: Jason the Dragon. He�s a good friend of ours. It�ll be a concept album about his life, and he�s been through some wild shit. The lyrics are geared towards it, but the song titles don�t� generally have anything to do with the songs.
Nick: How do you write lyrics?
Dixie Dave: Very, very uncarefully�Oh man, now Louis Armstrong is playing. [singing] What a wonderful world� I love him. Whatever, it is what it is.
