A few weeks back, Rude Weirdo released a nine song album (recorded in 2009) called Barnyard Scratch at the Cathouse. I had a chance to sit down with the group's guitarist David Bird to discuss the release, other projects, and what's in store for Rude Weirdo's future. Listen to the full-more in deapth interview below and make sure to go out to Shotgun Fest for their next release, "Cream of the Crap."
37 Flood: John King told me you're in a band called American Lesions too.
David Bird: Yeah.
37: How's that going? I haven't see you guys. What've you been up to lately?
DB: Well we've only played like three or four shows, I guess. Just kinda' gettin' started. It's a lot of fun. That band started... it's been about... comin' up on a year. The guitarist, a guy named Nick Smith, he was putting together an OUT tribute band. A band I used to be in in the 90's. I didn't even know him, he just called me and asked me if I wanted to sing for it. Just for a Halloween show. And I did and it was great. I didn't even have to say anything to those guys, they knew the stuff backwards and forewards. Everybody was really good. We had a lot of fun and after that we were just like "let's do a band!"
37: I gotta' say, Rude Weirdo... you guys put out quality stuff at a pretty regular basis, but it is impossible to get a hold of.
DB: Yeah. I think mostly because we don't really care. (laughs) I mean we do. We like making stuff that we enjoy. But we do it all ourselves. We record on the cheap. We do it ourselves. We package it ourselves.
37: That's one thing that's really obvious when I listen to you guys' music is it just... it always sounds so fun. You know what I mean? From your guitar parts to the lyrics. You sound like you guys are having a really good time. Would you say that's the focus of the band?
DB: Yeah I'd say that's definitely... you know nobody has any pretensions or ambitions to be anything but to just have fun. We're not trying to get famous or anything like that, you know? We just like writing our silly stuff and having fun.
37: Let's talk about this new recording. The Barnyard Scratch album. Ever since the show, it's been the CD playing in my car. Both just preparing for this interview and because I really enjoy it.
DB: We recorded that in 2009. Been sitting on it for a long time.
37: Can I ask why?
DB: Well it was... you probably don't know Tony Bailey. He was an old friend of ours. One of my best friends. He died in September 2009 right after we recorded that, and it was his final recording. He was like, the best drummer I've ever seen or ever even been around. Just in a million bands around town, and that was his last recording. So we were kind of sitting on it for a while. Originally I think we were wanting to press it into vinyl, make a record, but it just kinda' got to the point where we were... just wanted to get it out there.
37: So it was a matter of just wanting to do it right because it was such an important recording to you guys.
DB: Yeah. On a personal level for me too, it's important. Yeah Tony, his performance on that too was really astounding to me. He'd had an overdose, he died of a drug overdose, but he'd had one like a week before we recorded that record. When he came to, the EMT guys were there, he thought he was being mugged so he started fighting them. He was a big guy. You didn't want to fight this guy, you know? (laughs) So they were doing this pressure point thing on him, holding his hands down, so he wouldn't fight, and the whole time we were recording that record he was complaining about his hands. We would play a song and he was like "man my hands are just killing me," and we were like, you know, "you're being a baby, whatever." But it turned out both his hands were broken. And he recorded.
That's something that still to this day when I listen to it it just blows my mind. If you were really familiar with his playing you might be able to tell, but all of his ferocity and stuff is there and he was playing with two broken hands. He was just an amazing person.
37: What are you guys working on right now?
DB: Well we've got another EP already done. It'll be at our next show, which is Shotgun Festival. Playing at Nachbar on the ninteenth, my birthday. That's called "Cream of the Crap." It just seems to work well this way: finish five or six songs, put them on an EP, Have a CD release.
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