Today (Thursday 6/7 in America, Friday 6/8 in Fiji) saw an all-time swell driven by a massive low-pressure system reeling out of the Tasman Sea smack into Cloudbreak during the Volcom Fiji Pro. After holding only two heats, contest directors and ASP Tour Manager Renato Hickel called off the competition for the day, allowing the world's best big-wave surfers to enjoy what eleven-time world champion Kelly Slater described as, "a day that will go down in surfing's history." As both an avid surfer and surf fan, it was hard not to stay glued to the webcam broadcast as guys like Ramon Navarro, Reef McIntosh, Mark Healey, Damien Hobgood, and even Pat Gudauskas (who pulled off a miracle drop) got some of the best waves of their lives. These guys, especially the guys not on tour, live and train for these moments. I have nothing but the utmost respect for them and it was a privilege to watch what transpired today.
That said, I'm not quite sure what the ASP stands for anymore. I know it used to be the Association of Surfing Professionals . . . after today though, maybe the Association of Surfing Pussies is a more apt fit. (This critique is not aimed at anyone on the tour but at the management of the ASP and the poor decision they made to call off the competition today.) Part and parcel of this supposed "Dream Tour" which allows for an ample waiting period for each event is to ensure that the competition is held in the best possible conditions. I understand that the contest was slated for man-on-man heats and that many perfect waves would have gone unridden. I understand that every big name in big wave surfing was on-hand and chomping at the bit to have a go at it. I understand that even with the contest called off, Volcom's webcast probably had a record number of hits, maxing out their ad revenue (kudos Mr. Woolcott). What I don't understand is babying professional athletes whose only job it is, is to surf. From two feet to twenty feet, these guys are supposed to be the best in the world. Let these guys earn their paychecks and the world's respect at the same time.
These contests at Teahupoo, Cloudbreak, and the Triple Crown are supposed to be the equalizers for the more mellow yet high performance (rippable) breaks like Snapper Rocks, Trestles, and Rio. If you're going to keep the tour guys from surfing contestable waves (ie - able to paddle into, which is why you didn't hear me moaning about this last year during the mega swell in Tahiti - check the video below to see the difference in conditions pertaining to what is and is not paddle-able), what's the point of these destination contests when all of the main sponsors have been clamoring for more urban locales to continually reach out with hands-on marketing to capture an ever greater audience and potential consumer base (NYC, Rio, et al.)? The beauty of the XXL contest is that it is world-wide and runs all year long; therefore, to give the XXL crew priority over the scheduled contest is completely baffling to me. Was today's session good for the soul of surfing, watching so many hellmen eager to push over the ledge without any jetskis whipping anyone in? Undoubtedly. But what is good for the soul of surfing is often contrary to what is good for the sport of surfing - and for those decision-makers who get their paychecks by running a so-called professional organization, they did themselves and the tour a great disservice today. Professional surfing was founded by die-hards like the legendary "Dead Ahead" Fred Hemmings, who when surfers pleaded with him to call off a Waimea contest during the '70s due to the massive and dangerous surf, he challenged them that if he paddled out and caught a single wave that they would hold the contest. The threat alone was enough and the contest went on as scheduled. Judging from today's decision, the contemporary ASP is sorely lacking in this type of leadership.
Kelly was right. Today was "a day that will go down in surfing's history," but possibly for more ambivalent reasons than he imagined.
As I write this, Ossicles will pass the 25,000 hit mark. In terms of internet traffic, 25K over the course of what will soon be three years is what one could put mildly as "stunted growth," but for scribblings, many of which were never supposed to have seen light (beyond my own eyes) . . . it's pretty cool to think that people are actually checking this stuff out. My audience has included Scandinavia, Brazil, South Africa, France, Australia . . . and I can't even speak Australian. But every once in a while, when you hit a milestone, it's good to stop and flex. Feel good about yourself. Get yourself a nice something-something. And then, just wallow in that accomplishment.
Ah yeah. That's so nice.
What a journey. I feel like we've learned so much along the way, together. Like I learned that most of you only like to read about mullets. The rest are here to read about music, look at surfing, and then a few creeps who have read about "Gaddaffi's Ass."
Brilliant marketing. I'll take two.
You've probably learned a lot about me as well. You know I post on my blog with little to no regularity. This is to maintain an aura of mystery, especially with the lady-folk. No one off galavanting around the globe should have time to make regular blog-posts. You gotta keep 'em guessing. Unfortunately, I haven't been getting much galavanting on as of late - thanks grad school (italics mean extra sarcasm, underlining means extra extra).
With the amount of reading, writing, and teaching I'm doing with school right now, I don't often come home and want to further any type of productivity that's tied my laptop (cooking has become a renewed passion because of this). But I do promise you this, dear reader(s), I will continue feeding the blog while I'm in school, just enough to keep it alive whenever I can, and that way, if it survives, it may truly be worth more of my attention. Who knows - maybe six-digits? If only . . .
. . . I could find an all-mullet rock band full of chicks that surfed and had asses like Gaddafi . . .
. . . this blog would be in the billions!
But seriously, thanks for dropping in to check it out. Your attention is not unappreciated, from whatever part of the globe it's coming from. And in the spirit of giving, here's my latest bit of embarrassing bragging rights:
Yours Truly with big-wave legend "Flea" Virostko, Middle Peak, Steamer Lane, March 2012
"don't be that guy"
Over the last week, during my spring break, I got to surf very good Black's Beach by myself, surf perfect waves with sixty guys at Malibu, surf all-time Rincon, and polish it off back at home with great waves at the Lane, catching waves through Indicators into the middle of Cowell's Bay. I surfed my magic Merrick single-fin the whole way up the coast; I didn't take a single picture; but I promise next time not to be so selfish.
Hope the sun is shining wherever you wander upon these words, aloha
Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings (Said 7).
In 1991, at the outbreak of the first Gulf War, I was nine years old, living in Virginia Beach, VA, the coastal neighbor to the Atlantic’s largest Naval station in Norfolk. The window-shaking noise of fighter jets was as Virginian as the blue crabs of the Chesapeake and wouldn’t even interrupt the conversation of life-long locals. Bumper stickers showcasing the silhouette of a F-16 stated solemnly that jet noise is “the sound of freedom.” Although most of my political knowledge at that tender age consisted of Dana Carvey’s impersonations of then President Bush on Saturday Night Live, it was impossible not to get swept up into the fervor of the then mobilizing agents of the media when the drums of war began to bang.
Radio spots on the local radio rock station thunderously declared our boys would be bombing Saddam back into the Stone Age. “Hulk-a-mania” was running rampant after Hulk Hogan defeated the Iron Sheik for the WWF championship, and Hogan’s theme song, “Real American,” whose chorus chanted, “I am a real American, fight for the rights of every man / I am a real American, fight for what’s right, fight for your life!” was a simplistic, macho mantra echoing throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s. These aspects, coupled with, “. . . at least a decade [of] movies about American commandos pitted[-ing] a hulking Rambo or technically whiz-like Delta Force against Arab/Muslim terrorist-desperadoes,” served to comprise the cultural ephemera that saturated my young mind and the imaginary of the collective American male consciousness en masse (Said 294-5). The American drive to war was thus not seen as a hubristic, imperial mission, but rather our tautological responsibility as the world’s one and only superpower to be “a righter of wrongs around the world, in the pursuit of tyranny, in defense of freedom no matter the place or cost” (Said 5).
Historically the American, and perhaps generally the Western, media have been sensory extensions of the main cultural context. Arabs are only an attenuated recent example of Others who have incurred the wrath of a stern White Man, a kind of Puritan superego whose errand into the wilderness knows few boundaries and who will go to great lengths indeed to make his points (Said 295).
“Arabs” are only one in a long line of those deemed the dangerous “Other” in American history, including Native Americans, African-Americans, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, ‘Reds’, et al. At a certain point in time, all of these racial and ethnic distinctions served to compose an ‘otherness’ that, in a Lacanian sense, helped to define our own national identity by exemplifying what we are not, serving to “separate what is non-white, non-Western, and non-Judeo-Christian from the acceptable and designated Western ethos, then herd it all together under various demeaning rubrics such as terrorist, marginal, second-rate, or unimportant” (Said 28). This ethnocentric ideological formation is the end result of an education system and mass media bent on cultural indoctrination that prizes, “identity, always identity, over and above knowing about others” (Said 299).
At the time of writing Culture and Imperialism, nearly twenty years ago, the mainstream American media was internationally dominant. “A handful of American trans-national corporations control the manufacture, distribution, and above all selection of news relied on by most of the world . . ." (Said 292). By controlling the flow of information, Anthony Smith, in The GeoPolitics of Information, describes:
[a] threat to independence in the late twentieth century from the new technology [that] could be greater than was colonialism itself . . . The new media have the power to penetrate more deeply into a ‘receiving’ culture than any previous manifestation of Western technology (Said 292).
Unlike the past physical presence of imperial colonists, which allowed for a manifest resistance, this phantasmal occupation of hegemonic culture through satellite broadcast enacts its methodologies of indoctrination not through revealed force, but in the barely perceptible, latent undercurrents of modern media. This ‘presence’ not only serves to undermine the unique cultures and mores of specific localities, acting as a conduit in the rise of a modern global monoculture (for example “American Idol”, “Turkish Idol”, et al), but more insidiously, act as “instruments of social pacification” (Said 292). Sean McBride dubbed this the “New World Information Order,” and Raymond Williams described it as, “a new and powerful form of social integration and control” (Said 291 & Williams 23).
Americans watched the war on television with a relatively unquestioned certainty that they were seeing the reality, whereas what they saw was the most covered and the least reported war in history. The images and the prints were controlled by the government, and the major American media copied one another, and were in turn copied or shown (like CNN) all over the world (Said 302).
At this stage of technological development, it was impossible for anyone (excepting Negroponte, and Al Gore would argue himself) to realize the drastic changes that the rise of the Internet would have in terms of the traditionally oligarchical control of information and the concomitant rise of previously subaltern voices. With the advent of new technologies, new voices began to emerge on the national and global media scene, for example, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now and the Al-Jazeera network, respectively. What is disheartening, in terms of the means now currently at the general populace’s disposal, which can be felt as a general malaise when it comes to politics and has now been proven empirically, is a complete lack of “public connection” (Gripsrud 22).
Public connection is the minimal precondition of at least periodical attention to what goes on in the central processes of democracy, in the political public sphere . . . Voter turnout around 50% in national elections was long unimaginable in Western Europe, but is now not very uncommon there and quite normal in the US . . . 60% of UK citizens now agree that ‘people like me have no say in government’ . . . Such a lack of interest and confidence is matched also in the use of various media . . . only 12% use the internet as a ‘regular’ news source, i.e. between two and five days per week . . . Several studies reveal that, even for its most frequent and active users, the internet is rarely used as a source of information on news and current affairs. Many . . . were very updated, interested in and knowledgeable about celebrities or sports, but they found no signs that such interests ever lead to interest in the central political processes of the country (Griprud 22-23).
Because advertising dollars drive content, substantial news coverage in the US media has been subsequently replaced by what has been termed ‘infotainment.’ Content is no longer as highly valued as high-gloss production graphics, and CNN’s decision to chase ratings rather than maintain an editorial standard, has seen a shift to a large segment of Americans getting their news from the cable network Comedy Central on their satirical shows “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”
American news has devolved to the point that even Secretary of State Clinton, before the Senate Foreign Relations committee in March 2011, decried that America is now losing the “information war” in the world.
Viewership of Al-Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You many not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and . . . arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners (huffingtonpost.com 3/3/11 “Hillary Clinton Calls Al Jazeera ‘Real News,’ Criticizes U.S. Media").
For a figure of Clinton’s political stature to herald the coverage of Al-Jazeera, which was harshly denounced by the US government in the past for airing Al-Qaeda video messages in the post-9/11 world, is emblematic of how far the power dynamic has shifted. This contemporary inability of America sustain its imperial hegemony and to maintain complete control over “the apparatus for the diffusion and control of information” is more apparent in the cases of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, disseminated images of innocent victims of Predator drone strikes, and most recently, the burning of the Qur’an (Said 291). In this new era wherein all one needs is an Internet connection to broadcast their voice globally, the once stalwart “image of Americans as virtuous, clean warriors” will never be the same (Said 301).
WORKS CITED
Gripsrud, Jostein, ed. Relocating Television: Television in the Digital Context. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Random House, 1993.
Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975.
Looking forward to getting back down to SoCal for my spring break and dug up this gem from last year, filmed and edited in the span of an afternoon by my cuzzy Russell Spencer. Can't wait for a solid afternoon sippin' on cold ones in Prestie's VW at the Oside harbor . . . enjoy this slice of life from the best coast.
Despite currently being overseas, the reality, especially the financial reality of going back to school for my master's is looming over me like a dark cloud. That being the case, I've been searching for and applying to some pretty random scholarships trying to scrape some change together so I don't have to choose between books and food next year. A lot of these scholarships have ridiculous essays like "Why do you deserve this scholarship?", etc, etc, and have equally ridiculous word count limitations. Here is my latest entry limited at a sparse 250 words, enjoy, and keep your fingers crossed for me. Aloha for now . . .
Why do I deserve $1,000? Hmmm. . . my mustache makes Tom Selleck look like my little sister; I can eat a 5x5 (that's 5 burger patties and 5 pieces of cheese) at In-N-Out and still polish off my fries and a milkshake; I can beat any elementary school child in one-on-one basketball; I can run an eight-minute mile and then do at least ten push-ups before vomiting; I don't like wearing shoes but I still do just to be polite and not to embarrass my girlfriend in public; I once saw a movie in Germany that starred Jon Bon Jovi as a vampire slayer; I'm occasionally nice to the elderly despite the way they smell; I eat all my vegetables; I've never stolen my books for college classes even though I know how much beer that money could buy; I can speak Kitten; I bathe regularly despite exuding freshness naturally; I think the concept of handkerchiefs is a menace to public health; I don't talk on my cellular phone on the bus; I never hooked up with any of my little sister's friends in high school; I pick up other people's trash at the beach; I have never fed a seagull Alka-Seltzer tablets despite my morbid curiosity; I'm not afraid to dance in public and I am fully aware of how stupid I look; I once ate a whole stick of butter; and I have been a public school teacher for two years and still haven't hit a student.
Why Isn't a US Predator Drone Sticking Out of Gaddafi's Ass Right Now?
Today, February 23rd, two days after Libyan military aircraft opened fire on peaceful protesters, - http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/report-libya-air-force-bombs-protesters-heading-for-army-base-1.344775 - the known death toll now standing at over 300, President Obama is calling for “the world to speak with one voice” against the atrocities taking place. He stated that the Libyan government “must be held accountable.” So how does the Nobel Prize winning peacemaker plan to do this? What is the most powerful man in the world going to do to stand up for democracy (this is a big parenthesis: We have already witnessed his unwillingness to act on the behalf of a united populace in Egypt, but that 'revolution' was relatively peaceful being that the military stood behind the movement. Despite early confrontations with the police, a camel-back Tahrir Square charge, and the violence sustained by reporters, especially the “brutal and sustained sexual assault" on Lara Logan - if you look at the numbers in black in white, with the detached lens of a statistician, this was a successful and peaceful revolution and Obama's unwillingness to come out directly against Mubarack can be understood in terms of diplomacy; Mubarack's long-standing cooperative relationship with the US; and in terms of his being a stabilizing pillar within the Middle Eastern leadership. Gaddafi is another story . . . ) ?
The answer?
sanctions
America's rapid response to this humanitarian crisis, in which Gaddafi, a known sponsor of terrorism (Lockerbie bombing, '86 Berlin discotheque bombing, and '89 UTA Flight 772 bombing; as well as supplying military aid to any group claiming to fight “imperialism” - i.e. PLO, IRA, etc.) who has only been tolerated on the international stage because he controls the largest oil reserves in Africa (9th largest in the world) is sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Geneva next Monday to join a UN Human Rights Council meeting, where they will negotiate a resolution on Libya. Of those options discussed in the resolution, the sanctions are the most hard hitting; with others including a call on Libya to protect its citizens, condemnation of the violence and a demand for an international inquiry and access for humanitarian groups. Talk about shock and awe. Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave right now (especially after the Somali pirate debacle).
Get 'em Ronnie!
Iran has been under US sanctions since 1979, when the Iran hostage crisis began after a group of radical students in Tehran seized the American embassy and took 66 hostages, and they have been under increasing international pressure since 2005 when Ahmadinejad lifted the suspension on uranium enrichment which had been previously brokered with the EU3 (France, Germany, & UK). Most people my age (born in '82) don't have first-hand knowledge of these goings-ons (if they have any knowledge of them at all), but after numerous (failed) rescue attempts and diplomatic manueverings, what eventually ended the standoff between Iran and the US was the election of Ronald Reagan. Running against the painstakingly peaceful Jimmy Carter (for a commander-in-chief . . . I'm very anti-war, but that little red button is there for a reason), Reagan made a campaign promise that if elected president, he would bomb Iran as his first act in office. On January 20, 1981, 20 minutes after Reagan had been sworn into office, all the remaining hostages were on a plane out of Iran.
The carrot and the stick.
Sanctions are a pencil-pusher's attempt at making peace, and by no-one's account have they ever brought about a speedy resolution to any situation. But when lives are on the line, and when a country full of people yearning for democracy, a people who have been under the rule of the same man since 1969 - over 41 years – are dieing trying to earn their basic freedom, America has an obligation to act swiftly and decisively. What good is having the world's greatest military if we only use it to occupy countries rather than free them ( . . . like having the "world's greatest health care system" I can't afford)?
Coming from a family tradition of backing the Democratic Party, it pains me to trash Obama (I remember staying up to watch his inauguration live via the internet when I was in Australia and getting all teary-eyed), but after failing to stand up for the middle-class and minorities that elected him domestically (failing to end tax-cuts for the nation's richest and adding $2.2 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years is only the latest in a long line of sellouts), if Obama fails to act now, on the international stage, then I fear he may face the same one-term fate that Carter did.
You won't be seeing this one in the 2012 campaign,
unless it's off the desk of Karl Rove.
(photo taken July 9, 2009)
Maybe not, he is a hell of a salesman, and Jay-Z is going to be involved in his campaign. As for me, I'm writing in Ralph Nader.
(For those wackos who are keeping their fingers crossed for Donald Trump to throw his hat in the ring, the “Don” allowed Gaddafi to literally 'pitch his tent' on one of his estates in Bedford, New Jersey during Gaddafi's visit to the UN General Session in 2009. Gaddafi had previously tried to set up camp in Central Park and on Libyan government property, but both were protested by community leaders.)
“It's like a sinking ship . . . and the water's on fire.” - Tom Waits
The show was slated to start at nine and I arrived early, to sit in on the sound-check and ask my friend Nate-O some questions about his new album and upcoming tour. The free show was a thank you to their hometown supporters and a bon voyage bash before they hit the road the next day. As the sound men adjusted their dials to hone the mics and amps, cocktail waitresses and bartenders would peak behind the curtain, trying to catch a preview of the show before they would be inundated later in the evening. There is something surreal about being the only person not intimately involved in the goings-on of the upcoming show to watch a band warm-up, and as I sat alone in an overstuffed half-moon booth nursing a PBR tall-boy, I kicked my feet up and entertained egocentric notions that this was all for me, a private performance. Such are the fleeting privileges of an early bird . . . for within an hour all the booths were filled with the band's close friends and family, while beyond the black curtains the bar filled to capacity and a line started to build outside.
Formerly of the Plug Uglies, Nathaniel “Nate-O” Bardeen has been a mainstay of the local music scene in north county San Diego, and along with his local band mates, they were bringing together a crowd full of camaraderie and pride at the fact that The Drowning Men, born and bred in Oceanside, CA, would now be getting to share their music with a national audience on the road, opening for the Celtic-infused folk rock legends Flogging Molly. I first met Nate-O through surfing, and later got to know him better on the “pitch” (that's a soccer field for you footy-laymen), where we would play pick-up games with the local boys at Buccaneer Beach Park. Nate-O, who sports a pencil-thin black mustache and whose arms are covered in traditional sailor tattoos, has an unassuming air, and for someone of his talent and ambition, is humble and boyishly shy, never letting on that he is in a band, let alone a burgeoning rock star. In fact, of all the things he wears on his sleeves, his ego is not one of them. He lives a simple life. He has a day job, laying tile. He enjoys the ordinary pleasures of his backyard mini-ramp, an occasional surf, playing footy with his friends, and of course, making music.
Between the sound check and show time, as the crowd's energy was becoming palpable in the air, I caught up with Nate-O behind the bar, asking him questions as he smoked cigarettes and his eyes sparkled with the nervous energy brought on by the endorphins of someone getting ready to take the stage, not only tonight, but for the next few weeks on the wide open road.
The show that transpired that evening was a raucous experience, the band's energy matched by the crowd's enthusiasm, as drinks were raised and song lyrics echoed by fans and friends. The atmosphere was one of celebration and brotherhood, a re-imagining of an Old World Irish pub ringing with sea chanteys. The Drowning Men's sound defies easy description, but lies in the aural realm of the Arcade Fire and Interpol, their music often containing a haunting quality that serves to sober the heart. In an age of rampant commercial production, music produced for monetary ends rather than to serve and soothe the soul, to say the things that cannot be said, the original and highest aim of music, The Drowning Men are making music that is real, music you don't just listen to, music you feel. For a taste, check them out at www.myspace.com/drowningmen and catch them at the NorVA, Friday, February 18th.
****
Who have been the biggest influences on you creatively, both musically and otherwise?
Musically, The Pogues, Tom Waits, Morissey, The Smiths, Nick Cave, The Bad Seeds . . . me personally, that's what I love listening to.
How did you first get into making music?
I was in high school and a friend of mine asked if I wanted to sing in some punk band and I was like, “yeah, I love punk rock.” So, I started singing, and then I started playing guitar. Once I picked up guitar, I just fell in love with it, playing music, writing music.
Is that when you first started writing your own songs?
Yeah, in high school, seventeen maybe, when I started playing guitar.
What instruments do you play now? How many?
umm... legit instruments... guitar, banjo, piano, mandolin... I play like fourteen, ones that I can actually claim. I can kind of get by on anything, or any kind of string thing.
Where did the band name come from?
I was reading a book by Nick Cave, and he mentioned “the drowning men” in it. At the time I was looking for a name for the band, and that's how I came up with. I love Leonard Cohen as well, and in one of his songs he mentions it too.
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
- Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne” '66
I've read in other interviews that your song writing process is relatively organic, beginning with a melody or riff that is brought to the collective table where it grows with the collaboration with all the band member's input, and that the lyrics are the last element that's added. Talk about the difficulties, or possibly the comfort, of finding words to fit a piece a music. Do you ever feel confined by the existing framework of the music, or do you feel that it supports the writing of the lyrics by supplying a construct to help flesh out whatever it is you're hoping to say?
I think, you know... I'm passionate about music and I've always been into instruments, the melodies of different instruments. So for me, it's always music first. And then, I let the music put me in a mood and then I'll fumble around with words and I'll base everything off of that, off the music, off the mood of the song. That's how I develop my lyrics. I know other people who do it totally different, they write their lyrics first and then add their music to their lyrics. I've never been able to do that yet. I'd like to explore that, but so far, it's just music first. I let the music tell me where I'm going to go with the vocals.
What was the difference, both in the creative process and in production, between your EP and this full length album?
I think that first EP we did, that was kind of like trying to find, kind of getting used to playing with each other, finding things and exploring. Then after time, we developed our style and just went off that. I think now, the album we've been working on now is totally different than our EP. In a way it's the same mood, but different. I don't know.
In '07 you had “Kill the Matador,” in '09 was “Beheading the Songbird.” Both have ironic and morbidly humorous titles, could you explain the significance behind these?
I just love it. I like the darker stuff; but I like it humorous too. You know, gently put. We're not an evil, morbid band. I just like it dark.
Could you tell me how you got booked on the tour, your relationship to Flogging Molly, and how you feel you relate to that traditional Celtic-infused music that they're known for?
I am a huge Irish folk fan, and that's what made me fall in love with Flogging Molly. I used to watch them their first year playing together and I fell in love with them then. I don't know what it is with Irish music, but there's a sincerity, a humor, and it's dark. There's passion, and the vocals, struggle, you know is what I love about Irish music. I used to play Irish, I used to be in Irish bands. I don't think The Drowning Men sound anything Irish really, but I'd be a fool to say that there can't be a hint of it in there. You know, I listen to it. Whatever I listen to, I'm going to put out. Whatever I take in, I'm going to put out. I love the band Flogging Molly, and our relationship, our personal relationship, we know Matt Hensley (accordion player for Flogging Molly and former pro skater), we've opened up for Flogging Molly in Vegas two or three years ago. So we've played with them once before and we have this relationship with Matt, and he's a big part of us getting on this tour.
Would you say your music is a product of your environment? And if so, expand on the role that the locale of Oceanside and the greater San Diego area has had on your music.
I definitely think it is . . . I don't know how, but it couldn't come from anywhere else. I can't really expand on it, it's just how it is. Us being here, and the environment that we grew up in, the music we grew up playing with, us knowing each other for a long bit. There's another band out there, The Burning of Rome, I don't want to say they're similar, but I see hints of us doing the same kind of thing in certain ways, and I'm stoked that they're from Oceanside as well.
What's the story behind the music video for “Disorder Here We Come?”
That came from our director dude, Ryan. That was all his idea. He brought it to us, was like this is what I want to do, we were like perfect. He's like this is what I hear, what I gather from you guys, and this is what I hear. We were just like, let's do it. We filmed the whole thing in Rory's garage. It was pretty insane.
If you could jam with any musician, living or dead, who would it be and why?
There's so many, I don't know. The first person to come to my mind right now is Leonard Cohen. I just think he writes some of the most beautiful music ever, that's why.
If you could punch any musician in the face, living or dead, who would it be and why?
I don't have an answer to that. Who would I want to punch? Umm . . . gosh, I don't know. I'm too gentle.
You've only got three musicians you can listen to for the rest of your life. They are:
