The ZVEX Podcast
Join Zachary Vex of ZVEX Effects as he discusses a number of interesting topics with friends, musicians, colleagues, and creatives.
The ZVEX Podcast
Episode one: Kii Arens
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Kii Arens is an award-winning contemporary American pop artist, designer, director, photographer, musician, and cultural provocateur whose work has helped shape the visual language of modern pop culture. Based in Los Angeles, Arens has become one of the city’s most influential creative forces, known for blending fine art, music, film, fashion, and graphic design into a singular visual universe.
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Rock on!
Hi. This is Zachary Vex of Z Vex FX. And this is the Z Vex Podcast. Order up. Welcome to the Flagship Z Vex Podcast. We interview Kai Aarons. Kai Aarons is uh old friend of mine, and he operates a art gallery out in LA and um has been around the music scene and arts community for decades, and uh it's a lot of fun stories to tell. Let's get right to it. You know what I miss? I miss uh getting together with like you and uh Carrie Vrabel and Chris Strouth and and uh Samuel Peter Grubner and uh a zillion other people that would go bowling with us and having you run all the way across the entire bar from one end to the other before getting to the lane and then flinging the ball without even putting your fingers in the holes and without even touching the lane, it smacks completely into all the pins, kind of like Babe Ruth smacking it out of the park. And it sets off alarms on the uh on the speed indicator. That's what I miss. That's what I miss. I miss your style of bowling. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03St. Louis Park, Thursday night, punk rock bowling and karaoke. Oh god, that was fun.
SPEAKER_01What punk songs did you used to do for karaoke, Kai?
SPEAKER_03I don't like punk music, so I've I I don't none of them. The only punk record I like is uh Sex Busters.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the first one? Nevermind.
SPEAKER_03I actually like the dead Kennedys in in high school too.
SPEAKER_02Did you did you like uh Nevermind the Bullocks? Is that the one you liked? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03In my opinion, punk rock can only exist once because if it exists twice, it's a copy and it's no longer punk rock. So for me, the blueprint was the sex pistols.
SPEAKER_02It's not punk anymore, okay. You know, when the Sex Pistols did that, we were talking about this just with Chris two days ago. Uh it was cute. The production was cute, it was really pretty. Who was the guy who produced it?
SPEAKER_01Oh, it was um Chris Thomas.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean it was it was a total professional guy who came in and did it and made them sound like they were just the sweetest, nicest, cutest band. The only thing that was rough was uh the the edges, all of the lyrics and the so good.
SPEAKER_03I guess there's like a million guitars on that shit.
SPEAKER_02It's beautiful, man. It's a gorgeous recording. Really, yeah. It's really, really pretty.
SPEAKER_03I wouldn't call it pretty, but you know.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean from from an engineering perspective, you know. Just from the engineer production type idea, you know. So to me. It's not it doesn't sound coarse, it doesn't sound rough, it doesn't sound woofy, it doesn't sound out of balance. You know.
SPEAKER_03It just makes you grit your teeth and fucking love it from beginning to end.
SPEAKER_02Well the lyrics are that's the only thing that really makes me kind of grit my teeth. I think a texture sounds like a pop music.
SPEAKER_03Camera.
SPEAKER_01He told us to ask you about some guy named Jack the Rapper.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, man, so uh Christ. I was a DJ. I got a my last real job was in eleventh grade, I believe. I got a a call. Um well I was doing the morning announcements at high school, and the owner of the local roller skating rink heard me do it and said, Have you ever thought about being a DJ? And I'm like, Yeah. And I was working at the Gap at the time, and I got a phone call from the owner at the gap saying, Can you start Friday night? And I walked. I just walked. So uh being a DJ at that roller skating rink in 1984, um, you know, the inner city kids would bring in Dougie Fresh and Houdini and Sugar Hill Gang and Egyptian Lover and all these awesome songs, and that I was completely unaware of, you know, playing Lucky Star by Madonna and all the shit that was big then, Prince, of course. And um as time went on, I fell in love with Public Enemy, and I went and saw them at First Avenue, and I was really disappointed. Um they they performed along with their album that they had on a turntable on stage, Terminator X, and uh, but the record was skipping, and you could tear it, could tell that they it wasn't an even an instrumental track. So I'm like, you know, coming from the world of Alice Cooper and Queen and Bowie and KISS, acts that had full-on realized shows, rap was very new at that, you know. They weren't even borrowing from the likes of Parliament, etc., who was borrowing from Kiss. And I was like, I I I wanna I wanna jump in the ring. So I became Jack the Rapper, and my idea was to punch the fucking rapper and like, dude, there's a spotlight on stage, use it, you know what I mean? So and and and I'm not declaring that at any way was I equal or even close to the likes of Public Enemy, but that's what inspired me to start my own rap act. And um at the time I was hanging out with a guy named Jamie Ches, who was the drummer for all the Prince side projects, and and a lot of times would jam with Prince. Uh, he ended up moving to LA and marrying the lead singer, the Mary Jane girls. But uh him and I, he was helping me record music. And he did you know, Zach, did you know Jamie Ches?
SPEAKER_02I recognize the name, but I know I don't think I ever met him.
SPEAKER_03Great producer, great player, great singer, understood everything about recording, and I learned so much from him from him, and I would start to design album covers and cassette singles for an exchange for studio time. So when I started recording my own rap music, my shit was on a dat tape, and I would bring Jamie's dat player to the shows that I was putting myself into. I was entering contests and all that sort of thing. I was on KMOJ on Flush It or Rush It and shit. But when I showed up with the RCA cables for the sound guy to plug in, and everybody else was turning in a cassette, my shit just sounded like the by the when I got up there, everybody was going, Whoa, you know. And he was also working with Morris Hayes, um, who had just joined Prince's band when Prince became the symbol. And he he allowed me to use the kick and snare from get off really early on, like these fresh samples. And that at the time, that was like the biggest drum and snare sound. So when I would jump on stage, whether you like me or not, my shit sounded great.
SPEAKER_02So this was like what 85, 86, 87? 89.
SPEAKER_0388, 89 is when I started, and then I was done around 92. I kind of stopped doing it. But I had some successes. Opened up for Gangstar and EPMD and Chubb Rock and Father MC, DJ Quick. Of course, that was all one show. I won that rap contest that I joined called Rock Steady, Rap Steady at Paisley Park and played the Orpheum as Jack the Rapper. And uh then I moved to New York and tried to uh keep it moving. And uh Belle Biv DeVoe took a liking to what I was doing, considered me to kind of be the weird owl of rap, and I was down with that. Um, and um, you know, did a few different things, and eventually just the president of the record label, East West Records, just said this, no way, we're not we're not doing this. But that's how I ended up getting connected with the people who started Woodstock, as my job while I was living in New York was hosting karaoke all over the place. And one day I did a 50th birthday party for Joel Rosenman, who was the guy who gave the funding to Michael Lang with John Roberts to start Woodstock. And when I went to work for Woodstock as a an assistant, um, they were doing the thing where somebody had brought in the designs for merch and all the merch came in and it was all tie-dye. And I was kind of like, Do you guys have any clue about nine-inch nails or or the dookie album by Green Day? Because they're not gonna go for this tie-dye shit. And Michael just looks at me, and I was the youngest guy in the room, believe it or not, at 27, and he goes, Well, Kai, what would you do? And just kind of thinking off the top of my head, I'm like, I'm gonna burn the Woodstock logo in the sun in the center of a sunflower. And and and they just they just kind of went, Okay, can you have it done by tomorrow?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And and, you know, I I I ended up getting a call. This the story's going everywhere, but you're getting a nice little summation of what's going on. Perfect. Anyway, so I got a phone call from Elliot Landy, famous photographer who did the original Jimi Hendrix on fire in Monterey, and he was like the Woodstock photographer. He did Nashville Skyline. He's great, but I was beyond thrilled, and I knew who he was at the time at 27 that I was going to be collaborating with the likes of him, thinking, oh my god, what a what a start for my art career here in upstate New York for the Woodstock of thing. Trying to come up with this sunflower design, and he goes, I've got these sunflowers, man, check it out. And he pulls out all these black and white sunflowers that were kind of blurry, kind of like Woodstock, and nothing was at the time what I was looking for was hypercolor, you know. Delight had just broken out, orbital had just come out, like all of this new shit was starting to happen. And as a DJ, I'm always on top of that scene. And I just said, I'm sorry, Elliot, none of these images work for me. And how like deflated I was driving back to my hotel that night, going, Oh, this is too bad. I don't think I'm gonna be able to put together this design. And as I'm driving home, I look to the left of me on the side of that two-lane highway. No, there's a field of sunflowers.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all right.
SPEAKER_03So pulled over, went out and picked one out and took the sunflower uh to like some copy shop. It wasn't at Kinkos, in in uh Woodstock, dropped that fucking thing on the scanner, and showed up the next day, with which you can now Google the backstage pass of Woodstock 94. And that at that point, Michael Lang goes, you don't need to be doing any of the hotel bookings and shit that you've been doing. I just want you to hang out and vibe out and make art.
SPEAKER_02Nice.
SPEAKER_03And so when when I uh when the event was going on, John Bream reached out to me and goes, Hey, we heard that you did the artwork and we want to do a story on local boy does the Woodstock art. So did that, and nice man merchandising then discovered my my art and hired me to start doing tour shirts for like REM and Allison Chains and Seal and Cheryl Crow. And from that fucking point on, it's just been my art career.
SPEAKER_02Well, squeeze flip in there so I could figure out what the timeline was for that.
SPEAKER_03So, right around '92, my brother came back from New York. He had been signed by Ahmed Erdogan with his band. They were called Rattling Bones, but they were Funhouse, but they had changed their name in New York, and they were fucking great by that point because they had been that metal band obsession, which was excellent. Then they became Funhouse, and all of them made the big move and got two floors in the lower east side, and one thing led to another, and they got a deal with Amot Erdogan to go make an album. And um, that fell apart, I believe. Like the manager tried to strong arm the label into taking in another act, and Amot said, No, don't pull this shit on me. And uh literally, I think, pulled the tapes out of Bearsville Studio when they were in the middle of making their record and just said, Sorry guys, your your manager's pulling some shady shit. So disheartened my brother at the time, who had been switching his tastes from Alice Cooper and Kiss into like Sonic Youth and stuff like that. And he was he was really starting to play some. I mean, he was always been a great guitar player, but he was diving into some really cool experimental shit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So he started uh Toast, which was a three-piece band. Um actually it was a four-piece band, but the singer quit. And for the first time, Brynn became a singer. And that first song he did was that My Generation video that got that he broke in, that he snuck into MTV, and they played it on 120 minutes literally the next week. Because I mean it's a great video, and he's a great performer, and the song's amazing.
SPEAKER_02What do you mean by snuck in? Oh, that's such a cool story.
SPEAKER_03He snuck into MTV. He had the videotape that he made. A friend of his, John Jovanovich, worked for Southern Thunder in Minneapolis. I think it was called Southern Thunder, and he was a lighting guy and he wanted to try out these new programmable lights. So Brynn took his version of my generation and they just started recording on a VHS camera that they literally got from Kmart and took it back the next day and made the video that got on 120 minutes. And so all the record labels started calling because when you were on 120 minutes, you know, shit was breaking. This I think was right about the time when Nevermind came out. And uh so labels started calling, and you know, Brynn had recorded a bunch of music with some background vocals, etc., and then asked me if I would join the band, probably more as an artistic uh part of the band. Um it was always my moniker to be the world's worst guitar player, but I sang backups and played some rhythm guitar that was barely audible, uh, thankfully. But uh, so that's when I joined Flip, and that's when we got signed when we were being courted by many labels, and uh Hollywood Records came dancing the hardest towards us. Cool. And uh I remember the night we got signed at, I think we were in Goofy's bar on Hennepin. Sure. Um, that was the night we got signed to Hollywood Records, and so I was in that band from '94 to 2002.
SPEAKER_02Great place to be hanging out when you get signed.
SPEAKER_03Well, there was a uh street festival and it got it rained, and we we all we all went into Goofy's because it was pouring out.
SPEAKER_02Were you in the upper deck? Was somebody playing?
SPEAKER_03No, it wasn't Goofy's, it was Moby Dix.
SPEAKER_02Oh, all right, a whale of a drink.
SPEAKER_03Next to K90s.
SPEAKER_02Somebody's still got the neon for that. I just saw the neon posted on Facebook yesterday. Oh that flip video was almost entirely shot with a screaming wide angle uh fisheye lens. Yeah. And you kicked, literally kicked the lens. I mean, like kicked so high and stuck the head stocks of the guitars and stuff right up into the lens, and I was like watching that as you guys are doing it. And I was like, I knew how you could manipulate fisheye like that, you know. But that's the only thing you can really do with fisheye that is so freaky is to get really close to it because you can't.
SPEAKER_03Brynn just had that guitar, I'm like, and when you watch that video, I wasn't in the band, I was in the room uh when that was being made. Um I think Craig was banana, then became cherry. You could see he hits the record and backs up. Oh, yeah. And that's when Bryn, it's it's it's it's one take. Yeah. They did, I think they did a total of five takes when they when they shot that video. It was so simple.
SPEAKER_02And they just kept the one, no edits.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Bryn really understands performance.
SPEAKER_02It was well done, and it was the treatment of that particular lens was the most brilliant. It had no one had done that before, and I was like, whoa, somebody should have done this by now because that's what you do with fisheye. You mess with it. It's all it everything's in focus all the time. So why not get as close to it as possible, stick your nose right in it, you know?
SPEAKER_03Plus, the track was great.
SPEAKER_02Well, the tracks on it magnificent.
SPEAKER_03It was great. And that song, when I was working at Woodstock, here's something nobody knows. When I was working at Woodstock, I gave Michael Lang the video and he fucking loved it. He goes, I want to put you guys on day one. They would have they would have been playing Woodstock 94 on day one, but the locals got mad that they were bringing in another act that wasn't from the upstate New York area. So only Woodstock, like adjacent bands, played the show. So I was so bummed out because I called home and go, dude, I think you guys are gonna be playing Woodstock. And we did eventually get booked to play Woodstock 99 because okay, I had designed the artwork for Woodstock 99 based on my experience in '94. They they reached out to me. There was another company that had worked for two years on the on this design, and Michael reached out and he goes, We hate this shit. And I agree, I looked at it, it looked like a fucking Visa commercial that was so boring. And I'm like, let's just let me let me fuck around with some shit. And then I came back with some design a couple days later of this van that had a bumper sticker that said, Ink pierced, and ready to rock. This ain't your parents' woodstock.
SPEAKER_02Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_03Uh that I didn't even I didn't come up with that. Um, my girlfriend at the time, Terry Bennett, that was her idea. And so anyway, they took my art and we had no agreement. And all of a sudden, I get somebody reaches out, hey, I think you're in USA Today. Full page ad of my art.
SPEAKER_02And I'm like, uh oh.
SPEAKER_03I call a lawyer. I'm like, hey, uh, there we I don't really have an agreement yet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And the lawyer, she goes, you know, here's what you could do. And this is a nice little lesson for everybody. You could probably get about 100K out of them right now, and legally they would have to pay you. Or if you want to work for them again and work with people surrounding, go for about a third of that. So I go, Hey Michael, remember the band Flip? Um, at the at the time it they were called Toast. It would have been Toast playing Woodstock 94. But now I'm in the band, and now the band's called Flip. And he goes, Yeah, you guys are great. I said, How about we take about a third of that, put us on the bill. So that's how Flip got to play Woodstock 99.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_03We went on the Thursday, we were the sixth band on the main stage going on after G Love and the Special Sauce and right before Third Bass. That's the story of Flip and Woodstock.
SPEAKER_02Cool. It's a lot of fun. Great story.
SPEAKER_01I had uh I had read some, I don't know if it was Woodstock or if it was maybe something in the cities. You had helicopters dropping cereal on the crowd. Not at that show.
SPEAKER_03We did that at uh Edgefest, and we also did that at the Taste of Chicago, or no, at like River Fest or what's that festival in Milwaukee, that big music festival that happens every year. We played the main stage opening for uh cheap trick.
SPEAKER_02Nice.
SPEAKER_03And our our fucking helicopter pilot got thrown in jail that night and ended up on Jenny Jones as the serial bomber because we dropped cereal.
SPEAKER_02That's a great name for it's a great name for what he did. It's perfect.
SPEAKER_03Serial bomber. I know that's great. We thought it was pretty hilarious.
SPEAKER_02Makes it sound like he did it a lot of times, yeah. How many times have you bombed a cereal? Well, only once, but they call me the cereal bomber because it's cereal.
SPEAKER_03And how he pulled that off, but what happens is when, you know, because that festival happens on the inner harbor, I think, of Lake Michigan.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_03But like, yeah, but the airspace where he was was totally illegal to be that close to that many people dropping shit out of a helicopter. What the fuck? And I guess Cheap Trick was pulling in right when we when that was happening, and all of our cereal and stickers fucking hit their bus, really didn't even hit the audience because there was a little bit of a wind.
SPEAKER_02Oh boy. A little bit of a wind from the helicopter blowing.
SPEAKER_03Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02As God is my witness, I swear cereal can fly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we went for it, man. We we went for it.
SPEAKER_02Those are good stories, man.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. There's many to be had. I'm just starting to write a book right now, or I have a writer that's doing it with me, um, which is kind of a bit of my life story, but it's going to be called the Hot 100, and it's going to be my top 100 posters and the stories that uh go around them.
SPEAKER_02Well, I have two that I'd I'd like to ask about. One is uh, what did uh Dolly Parton make for breakfast for you when you went to visit her?
SPEAKER_03Well, it wasn't breakfast for me, it was breakfast for Danny Nozelle. And it was when I was doing the shoot for Backwoods Barbie, and I walked into her house, uh, she was making a fried bologna sandwich for Danny Nozell. And it was crazy. It smelled so good, and I actually really wanted one, but it was so strange because there was catering on the set, you know. But regardless, Dolly in her sweet heart of a of a human was making bologna food for her manager for Danny, and it was like this you know, this fried bologna sandwich, and then this fucking bowl full of mayonnaise.
SPEAKER_02It was like, whoa, what? Is that the side?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I don't know. I think you dunk it.
SPEAKER_02I'm getting hungry already.
SPEAKER_03Is it lunchtime?
SPEAKER_02I got nothing against mayonnaise. It's fine.
SPEAKER_03You know, I got nothing against it either.
SPEAKER_02I do have a mayonnaise lover.
SPEAKER_03I got big issues with ranch dressing, but there you go.
SPEAKER_02I'd rather have mayonnaise on a sandwich.
SPEAKER_01Fuck ranch. It's gonna be controversial with the Midwest people. Yeah, I said it.
SPEAKER_02I live in ranch country, so I can't say that out loud. People can hear me through the window.
SPEAKER_03Good luck with that bullshit.
SPEAKER_02And the other question I had about a uh poster. Is uh Willie Nelson on the bus.
SPEAKER_03I don't have any bus stories of Willie Nelson.
SPEAKER_02Willie Nelson opened a poster on a bus when he was on tour in the story that I heard and saw the poster and went, Why isn't this our poster for the tour?
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_02You had not heard that story?
SPEAKER_03No. Uh-uh. Is that um because I did two posters for him. It was the um Velvet Oh, the Velvet poster. Oh, God, yeah.
SPEAKER_02The Velvet Elvis style.
SPEAKER_03So I I I went through a period of making a lot of velvet posters. The first one I did was Dolly. Then I think I did Willie.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then I did Glenn Campbell. And I used to hire this guy Jorge in Tijuana.
SPEAKER_02I'm familiar.
SPEAKER_03$250 a pop to make black velvet paintings, like this one.
SPEAKER_02I've got one in the basement.
SPEAKER_03Of one of my posters?
SPEAKER_02No, I've got one from Jorge. Oh, you do? You gave me his contact information and I had him make one for me. And uh Brendan Bathrick, do you know Brendan? He passed away, sadly. He was a graphic designer who worked with me on a project. I'll show it to you sometime. Kai's holding up some artwork.
SPEAKER_03What's who is that? So this is my mom and dad.
SPEAKER_02Oh. They look so happy.
SPEAKER_03They were.
SPEAKER_02Do you see how it's getting all jiggly and that wiggle it a little bit? See how it's getting jiggled and wiggle it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Just a little bit.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Oh wow. It's catching the wind just right so that it looks all bouncy like jello. It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_03Oh, jello.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it looked like jello.
SPEAKER_03One of my favorite mediums to work in with arc is jello.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Anything made from hooves and fingernails. I love it.
SPEAKER_03I have a jello box that is this fucking big that I made out of plastic that lights up.
SPEAKER_02How did you get that giant phone? Where'd that come from? Oh, oh. You've got a phone the size of two human beings.
SPEAKER_03This story is amazing. I got hired to design the pool area for some uh well-to-do somebody in the hills here. And so I went to their house and just kind of sizing it up, and I was thinking about going beach ball theme all over the place, just those awesome colored beach balls and making them huge everywhere.
SPEAKER_02We're talking about a phone that's the bigger than my arms. It's huge, it's enormous.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So as I was leaving that place, me and my friend Sherry were in my Lincoln Town car, my 97 Lincoln Town car, and uh we notice a giant phone sitting out on the edge of the street like it's garbage.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_03And I'm like, what? So we pull over immediately. I go up to the door of this nice mid-century house and I knock on the door, no answer, and I'm peeking in windows, and then I see a guy in the backyard who is on his cell phone. It was really hot out that day, and he was standing in a sprinkler keeping cool, but still on the phone. So fucking Hollywood. Anyway, um, and I'm like, fuck, okay, whatever. If it's at the garbage, if it's in the garbage, it's mine, you know, it's mine. So I'm like, I'm gonna uh Sherry, stay here just in case he comes out. I'm gonna go back the car up the park driveway and we're let's throw this thing in the back of my car. Let's go. And she goes, okay. So I go get in my car, and then when I get out, there's a guy standing next to Sherry and he's staring at me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I'm like, what's up? What's up? What's going on, dude? And he goes, uh, and I'm like, this, this, you know, I want this fucking amazing phone. You've thrown it out. Yeah, he goes, my my my wife won't let me keep it. But um she I I've always just wanted to give it to an artist that, and and and he goes, I don't want to tell you anything else, but come here, follow me. So like, all right, so me and Sherry walk into their living room, and above their couch, there is a framed version of my Tame and Paula poster that he had on his wall. And I didn't know this guy, so now this phone is going to an artist that he likes. So that's the story of how I got the phone.
SPEAKER_02That's crazy.
SPEAKER_03That blew my mind. And he had my lala. He also had my And I love Tame and Paula.
SPEAKER_02What's that? I love Tame and Paula.
SPEAKER_03He's the best. And then he had my Lala logo as his screensaver at the same time. So the dude was a full-on fan. That was really bizarre.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's absolutely nuts. How'd you fit it in the car? It's too big for any car I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_03Did you have to have the trunk wide open with a Lincoln Town car, bro? That trunk, you know, I just moved a couple of the bodies.
SPEAKER_02Could you close the trunk on that phone?
SPEAKER_03You know, I strapped it down. Isn't that a treasure?
SPEAKER_02It's just gigantic. I love it. It's a it's an old style red office phone looking thing, like something, a desk phone with a without it's rotary, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it lights up. It was a when they came out with the red rotary phone, yeah. Uh I think they made like 10 of these that went on as displays at various phone.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, so that's where it came from. It was actually made by the Ma Bell. My Bell. It's a real Ma Bell prototype. Wow, how fantastic is that. So that's why you don't, you know, yeah. So you don't want to touch a thing on it. You don't want to change anything. It is the real deal.
SPEAKER_03It's the real deal, you know. But I managed to strap it on my wall.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, it's been on every wall of every place I've ever seen you in. Uh your original place that had the racing stripes on the floor. I was so impressed that you painted your floor. You're the first guy I ever met who painted his floor. You painted racing stripes on your floor that went down the wall, across the floor, and up the other wall. I was like, Jesus, somebody I gotta I should do that. I should do that somewhere and get kicked out immediately. Like, you know, you can't do that. But you did it.
SPEAKER_03I mean it was great. You kind of can't see it here. It's just I always kind of have a tendency to paint my place like I live in Wonkowille.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's always been cool. When you lived in your uh La La Land space, that was pretty nuts. You had a spiral staircase going up onto the platform with your uh loft.
SPEAKER_03My father made that. My father made that in St. Paul. And when we drove when I drove out here in 2004, what did he haul it in?
SPEAKER_02Um in the back of your giant vehicle?
SPEAKER_03Actually, yes. At the time I had a 92 Lincoln Town car um preferred ride. And but we also had a rented U-Haul truck, okay, which I brought my jukebox, which I still have, and all of the all of the things I can never let go of, you know.
SPEAKER_02So it must have come in pieces, and then you assembled it and painted it.
SPEAKER_03Yep, yep. My dad is uh a genius mind.
SPEAKER_02That uh was a beautiful, beautiful piece. It was a work of art.
SPEAKER_03He's designed things for he he made a really great piece for the Glenn Campbell Ghost on a Canvas video. When you see that video and you see the spinning logo from the good time hour, he he was the one that devised something that would allow the front to spin way one way and the back to spin another. He came up with the motor for that and the equipment to attach my set design that could be 90-degree angle. I mean, Zach, I think you two guys would really your brains would go pretty well together. And then when I did the Queens of the Stone Age video, Vampire of Time and Memory, and the piano that Josh, the leopard piano that Josh is playing, and I managed to have the piano open while he was performing, and I painted the inside of the piano red so when it opened it looked like a mouth, and I put teeth on it, so while he's performing, all of a sudden this piano slowly opens up and slowly closes. Very Sid Marty Croft, but with an angle with an edge. Sure. And the way he did that, he just went to a bike store, bought a pump, and bought one of those red balls and stuck a hose in it, right? Yeah. And had a ball at one end and a ball at the other end, had one ball inflated and one deflated. So when he wanted it to open up really smooth, he pushed on the ball, the air shot through, and the the thing just went like that perfectly. And then when you wanted to close, he let go of the ball, and the thing just went nice. Genius, genius.
SPEAKER_02It was hydraulic without without the hydraulics. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_03It was some MacGyver shit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he had the balls, man.
SPEAKER_03He yeah, still does. 88 and doing it up.
SPEAKER_02That's great thinking.
SPEAKER_03And he voted for Kamala. He's 88 and he comes from North St. Paul. That's that's a minority.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's that's good thinking, too. Your your uh your brother also makes uh guitar equipment. Um, I've seen a picture of uh Joe Perry standing in front of a old-fashioned uh living room radio, one of those tall ones that's like four feet tall. Great big old-fashioned one.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think that you know, maybe we've all tried to do this. He was always converting my mom and dad's stereos into amp somehow, like record player. So that kind of was always in his brain. You know, his the thing was is you know, anybody's significant other most likely does not want a Marshall stack in the living room, right? So why don't we do something with these underappreciated antiques? Yeah, and and that's what he he started doing, and you know, he uh he I think he's he sold a few of those babies that uh yeah, that cabinet that um Joe Perry is standing in front of looks like it's from maybe 30s or 40s, but yeah, I think Johnny Depp got one, I think Taylor Swift got one. Cool. I think there's a bunch of bunch of people that ended up because um, you know, our the guy that re produced our first record, Julian Raymond, is in Nashville and he's always championing Bryn's talents in one way or another.
SPEAKER_02Do you know Phil?
SPEAKER_03Solemn. Yeah very well. Yeah, yeah, and Holly.
SPEAKER_02We uh just did a thing with him, a little interview.
SPEAKER_03That's what I heard. Oh, but that was very entertaining.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, there were some good UFO stories. Yeah, yeah. We I lived in murals with him for a while for a couple years. I remember that. So thank you. Yeah, well, I had a few of them there. Um I'm not sure which one you came to. A bunch. I know there was one. Yeah, there was one that I that I had impromptu after uh hanging out with Black Keys at uh at Bryant Lake Bowl, and uh Dan Auerbach brought uh party favors, we should say, in the form of uh fungi. He's kind of a fungi himself.
SPEAKER_03What's fungi?
SPEAKER_02Uh magic spuddy. Oh, oh mushrooms. Okay, yeah, nice.
SPEAKER_03Not illegal, you can just say it. You can buy that at the fucking 7 Eleven now.
SPEAKER_02Can you?
SPEAKER_03No, but you can buy them at any store here.
SPEAKER_02Cool. So anyway, yeah, we uh we all got high on mushrooms and had not and then the suddenly the bar was closed and everybody went to my place. So that that lasted till last year 6 30. Yeah, 6 30 in the morning. Yeah. That might have been the night that uh knocked over my bar completely, which which was covered with like 50 glasses. It was really entertaining. The cleanup on that was pretty pretty strange. It took me an entire day.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_02It was fun.
SPEAKER_01I managed to do it was a good party.
SPEAKER_02Nobody could tell though, but the carpet came clean. I don't know. It just uh it was one of those magic carpets that they had at the murals.
SPEAKER_03Magic carpet ride, baby. Isn't that Steppenwolf?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it could be. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Out of Minneapolis, weren't they? Oh, I think they were.
SPEAKER_03One of the guys was Nick St.
SPEAKER_02Nicholas.
SPEAKER_03They recorded all of that album 50 feet from the house that I lived in for 11 years. I had it, there was the the recording, I think it was called American Record. I don't remember what it was called, but the all of the hits for uh Steppenwolf, all of three dog night was recorded a half a block. Well, just like I could throw a frisbee right out of my off of my deck and land right on top of the place that was that amazing studio with that great engineer. Bill was his name. He did like Mama Told Me Not to Come and just all these great songs.
SPEAKER_02What was the name of the studio?
SPEAKER_03Look up Steppenwolf and Three Dog Night Recording Studio, and you it'll pop up.
SPEAKER_01American Recording Company.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, which I am also working on the three the Three Dog Night documentary. Um I happen to be at Chuck Nagron's bedside about three weeks before he passed. We were showing an early cut of what's been worked on.
SPEAKER_02He he passed away about about a week ago.
SPEAKER_03About a month ago.
SPEAKER_02A month ago. Oh, it's longer than I thought. I thought it was to really recently.
SPEAKER_03And I will just say that when we went, when me and Nicole, Nicole's the director, and uh we went to bring the video over to him. He hadn't been out of his bed um since the last time we interviewed him.
SPEAKER_02So he had a chance to see it.
SPEAKER_03Yes! He saw he saw the the opening clip, but he made sure that he moved into a chair and sat up straight, and his wife and his daughter were in the bed next to him, and they were all holding each other, and uh they were crying, and they were very happy at what was being done to honor his unbelievable next level talent that, in my opinion, has yet to be beaten as a lead singer for a band. I'd say Chuck Nagron takes the cake.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, it's lovable. It's uh unusual. And that that period, you know, that that period, that the music that was coming out during that time, they still managed to completely stand out. Yeah, and even though it was filled with such a variety of music going on, and they still just completely stood out.
SPEAKER_03Yep, and the cross-section of band members that, you know, that were in there, and um the engineer was amazing, he was great at doing the the editing of the tape. I guess he told me his name is Bill, I don't know his last name. You could probably look it up and chime in if you want, but he told me that uh that Mama Told Me Not to Come is uh ten different pieces uh of tape that were put together, and that's how the dynamic shit happened. And you know, they picked covers, and there's a and the way they recorded them, there's quite a fucking talent to that. I think it's under like they're not in the rock and roll hall of fame, but they got they should be. They have way more hits than any and black crows are nominated right now. Come on.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes I mean we love those two albums, but sometimes it takes forever for the good guys to get in there, you know? It's weird. It's true. It's true.
SPEAKER_03You know, and I I here's what I'll say about the Rock Hall of Fame, and everybody complains every year that the right bands aren't in it. You know, if all the right bands were in it, it'd be done.
SPEAKER_02They wouldn't have anything left. Yeah, exactly. You know, so every year we'd have to wait for more re-ins, man. God knows. Come on. Will that ever happen?
SPEAKER_03People really, it's amazing it's a side today that hate and anger is such a hobby. It's so easy to be angry and push send. But if any one of us were sitting at a bar side by side, you know, if we were just sitting there, we ended up going, oh yeah, that's what you think, that's what I think. I'm buying this round. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02It's like I'm not I'm not sure how we got to that particular line uh from what we were saying about uh about about uh Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
SPEAKER_03Well, the arguments and people getting mad that their favorite band isn't in yet.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh, wait till next year, the year after, whatever. It's not your award show. Enjoy it, watch it, learn about bad finger, learn about bad company. I don't care if you don't like NWA, they matter.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it's still a relevant thing.
SPEAKER_03It should change the name, though.
SPEAKER_02What to uh to a popular music hall of fame?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, music hall of fame. The the the term rock is old.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03If you don't believe me, just watch the Hollywood Vampires band, the fucking you want to see old? Oh my god. That shit looks like a hot topics two-for-one sale with guitars. I don't know what's going on with that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_03The whole style, the aging of rock, and keep dyeing that hair black, and then one week later you kind of got the gray coming through, and it's like, yeah, I'm I'm I'm right there, baby, baby. My mustache and a little goatee, and it's oh for the NAM show.
SPEAKER_02I dressed up like uh Captain Jack Sparrow because that was our theme. We did the Pirates of the Caribbean theme one year. You know, every year we did something different.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I didn't I didn't add that out. That sounds fun.
SPEAKER_02So I grew it all out, and I you can buy these shavers that have got uh a blade on them that's a quarter inch wide. Oh wow, if you can believe that.
SPEAKER_03So you perfected it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I went in and I just was able to shave every last little teeny little, you know, it's like you're shaving off one one whisker at a time. It was really fun. And I kept it absolutely perfect, and I grew out as much as I could for the braided part, and then I bought these braids. There was a guy online selling braids that had the exact beads and everything, perfect copies of the movie, you know. So I really got to look down. I mean, uh I I pretty much nailed it.
SPEAKER_03So that's you down on Hollywood Boulevard in front of Grumman's Chinese Theater. Is that what's up?
SPEAKER_02It could have been.
SPEAKER_03It's so funny when you go by there and you see people wearing like the Superman outfit and they weigh probably like 130 pounds, but they're still going for it.
SPEAKER_01Zach's holding up a poster of his old band Tommy in the Life right now.
SPEAKER_02You know, I I used to this used to be me back in Dude, I know what like 87. No, but then so it was a pretty good start. Here's something pretty good start point for Jack Captain Jack Sparrow, you know.
SPEAKER_03Zach, I you and I met each other in the 80s. I'm I'm can I'm confident. I believe my brother's band was rehearsing in that basement.
SPEAKER_02In what basement? Underground?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Where was that? Was that underneath the bowling alley?
SPEAKER_0214 East 25th Street. It was up the street from Twin Tone um record label in uh creation audio and uh garage door. It was about a block away from those places.
SPEAKER_03Yep. My brother was rehearsing there.
SPEAKER_02Uh it was below when I got into there uh in 85, it was uh Minnesota Songwriters Association, and I got their piano for 20 bucks.
SPEAKER_03But I remember I think I walked into your thuck fucking room or whatever, yeah, and you had the long hair then, I think. I remember and I just remember going, wow, this is the future. I remember what like I think I walked into your studio or something, and I just saw I think I I saw you.
SPEAKER_02This is the future.
SPEAKER_03I remember seeing you and just kind of going, was the room built out yet?
SPEAKER_02Was the uh isolation in there?
SPEAKER_03I don't remember any of that, but did the replacements rehearse there in that underground shit as well?
SPEAKER_02I don't know if they did when the Minnesota Songwriters Association was in there. I don't know what was going on there, but the basement when I got in there was pretty empty, and I it had like one door with a really thin wall, so it wouldn't have made for a very good rehearsal space. It was tight, except that you know, if you're a band, you'll play it, you'll play anywhere, you know, it doesn't matter. It was a concrete bunker, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yep, basically short ceilings.
SPEAKER_02That's cool. We recorded all that early stuff with Ed Ackerson's band, uh 27 Various. His first album was recorded in the basement.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think that was the place. That was the place.
SPEAKER_02And I I did like 20, 25 records with Ed producing engineering with him in there, and and uh so he cut his teeth. We both learned from Scott Tuttle. Fauna. Scott Tuttle was the uh what was Tommy and the Life was the first band that I had, and then Fauna after that. Yeah. Oh and we actually had a couple other names in there too. Dazed for a while was the name of the band, and then uh I can't even remember.
SPEAKER_03Did you ever do the blue up in there?
SPEAKER_02I recorded a a couple of records for the blue up, yeah. In fact, the blue up was my first client. I recorded them in my apartment. Oh, Rachel was my very first apartment.
SPEAKER_03Rachel is so talented. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I recorded her band um at my apartment in I think November of '84 or somewhere.
SPEAKER_03Wow. I flipped my script.
SPEAKER_02My landlord called me up and and said, uh, did you bring drums into the building? And I said, Yeah. And he goes, if you do that again, you're kicked out. And I was like, okay. So then I went and found the Minnesota Songmakers Association space, which was for rent for 400 bucks a month in the back of like uh City Pages. And I grabbed it. Perfect. And it was all the money I could afford to pay for that plus the $250 a month I was paying for my apartment.
SPEAKER_03But you made it happen like you always do.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I made it happen because I was desperate as hell, and I had this girlfriend who had worked at a bank. She was really cute and she worked at a bank. All my musician buddies wanted to date her. They kept asking her out, and she was like, No, I have a boyfriend, and then they'd show her, she'd show them my our picture together, and they'd go, Oh, it's him. You know, like him. Not again. Jack asked. I came in, I came in from outside. I was not part of the music community. I just kind of snuck in and took over. I did weird stuff. Uh, you probably would appreciate it. Uh I got to know Alice at uh what was that place called? Fresh Air at a midnight.
SPEAKER_01Oh, we lost Zach. Is he coming back?
SPEAKER_00So as you can hear, uh, we lost Zach at the time of the recording due to some technical difficulties, but uh I'm still alive. He's still with us. Yeah, I didn't die. We hope you had fun listening to the Z Vex podcast.