Normally, this is where I put in a brief introduction to the artist being interviewed, but lets be honest with each other… its been 30 years and if you somehow don’t know about the California skate-punks Diesel Boy we’ve got bigger problems. Instead I will tell you that I immediately fell in love with the song “Titty Twister” and the band when I found them on the Survival of the Fattest comp I picked up in 1996. Working out in a timeline when music was still physical and affordable I spent the next few years buying up the band’s back-catalogue off still developing internet marketplaces. Having lead vocalist, Dave Lake, taking a few moments out of his day to roll the dice with me and chat about band and the new Gets Old record is a clear high-point for me and I should probably stop gushing so you can read Dave’s replies to my poorly-phrased, generic queries.
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Congrats on the upcoming release of Gets Old. This will be your first record in over 20 years. I think I speak for each of our readers when I say… Where the hell have you guys been and what finally brought about this return record?
We’ve been busy living life! When we stopped playing and touring in the early 2000s, we switched our focus to things that touring didn’t easily allow: relationships, families, careers outside music. That’s kept us all pretty busy for the last 20 years. We’ve all dabbled with other musical projects since but Diesel Boy was never far from our collective heart. We tried to make a reunion record several years ago but we never got it done. Finally, over the pandemic, we took another shot at it, and thankfully were able to get it over the finish line this time.
You’ve all been in this scene for a while, what is your biggest regret? A gig you turned down, advice you didn’t take, what one thing do you wish you handled differently as a musician?
Maybe not exactly the answer you were seeking, but what comes to mind is not being more communicative with the other guys about my desire to stop touring back in the day. I had taken a job at a music dotcom that eventually got sold to Microsoft and I was off on a new adventure in a new city. We never had a band meeting about stopping and never really talked about ending things. It just sort of happened. My situation wasn’t the only factor to us winding down, but there were some complicated feelings back then because we never really had a chance to get everything out on the table and discuss collectively what we wanted to do.
Diesel Boy is such an influential act and means so much to so many of us. Does the high bar you’ve set for yourselves in the past help, hinder or affect your creativity today and to what extent?
That’s nice of you to say. The best thing you can do when writing songs is to get out of your own way as much as possible. You have to chase your own creative muse and can’t worry too much about how something might fit into your larger body of work. If it doesn’t hold your interest, you’re not going to feel inspired to finish it. I’m not always writing for Diesel Boy, so sometimes you have to retrofit a song to make it work and fit the style. Once you’ve done all that, you just have to cross your fingers and hope people respond to it.
What stood out most to you with this recording compared to your previous trips to the studio?
For starters, this record wasn’t produced by Ryan Greene, who produced our four previous albums. It was produced by Matt Bayles, who has worked a lot with heavier bands like Mastodon and Isis. We were fans of his work and were curious to see what he could do with a wimpy pop-punk band like us. Spoiler: He made us sound great and it was fun to make a record with him.
The other thing is that Gets Old is a hodgepodge of material written across many years. Some of these songs date back like ten years, while others were written over the pandemic. It’s also not the same band. There’s two of us from ye olden days, plus two new dudes, so we had to learn how to play together as a unit while also trying to make the songs sound like a cohesive bunch, which I think we achieved.
What’s the state of the scene from your point of view? We are living in a “just deal with COVID” world and everything about this timeline is some level of completely fucked. Beyond the lyrics, what impact, if any, does the current cultural and political landscape have on the band?
We’ve never been a band that traffics in politics or contemporary issues really, except for pop culture. There’s a song on the album called “Internet Girl” about dating a woman who is more interested in technology than her partner, with lots of references to current technologies. I’m sure that will age nicely!
Beyond that, there are a few songs in our catalog that have lyrics that make me bristle in their overtness and/or objectification, so we’ll be shying away from playing those on the road.
Diesel Boy has a very accomplished career, and I don’t mean to downplay that, but I think it’s fair to say, that a large portion of your fanbase discovered you thanks to “Titty Twister” and your appearance on the Survival of the Fattest comp. In the new digital business of the music industry, how can young bands find their own path to larger audiences in lieu of compilations?
Social media, I suppose, but we’re old and out of touch. As well, the algorithms that underpin the streaming services are built in part to surface new music they think listeners will like, which seems like the least they could do for all the money they take out of artist’s pockets. Curated playlists are about as close as to those compilations as you can get these days but there’s no romance in a list of file names.
For some bands, there are other avenues. For example, Metallica licensing “Master of Puppets” to “Stranger Things.” That would never have happened thirty years ago, but commercials and TV shows seem to be one of the few ways that established bands can reach a younger, mass audience.
Since the last record the band has traded in the Sonoma Valley for Seattle. Why do you think the area churns out so many brilliant musicians and songwriters? How does the area feed into this new music you are writing, if at all?
Seattle is a great town. It’s hip and lively and has good food and beautiful scenery. It’s an inspiring place. It also has a tight-knit, vibrant music scene with lots of venues for both young bands and established ones. You could see a killer band on any night of the week in Seattle. It’s gotten insanely expensive to live here, however, so many musicians have been flushed out to surrounding places like Tacoma, but the grey and gloomy weather of the area still churns out lots of moody music. It’s not so much a pop-punk town though. Metal and indie are rock are king.
I think the musical history of this place is just in the air. There’s a Sub Pop store at the airport. There’s a Jimi Hendrix sculpture on Broadway. KEXP is a non-profit, artist-friendly station with renown outside of Seattle. There’s a pop culture museum with a big focus on the history of Seattle music. Music is just in the pores of this city.
One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?
I have no idea which artists your readers may or may not know, but here are some artists I’ve been listening to recently, some new and some not: The Beths, Martha, Gordi, Overwhelming Colorfast, Olafur Arnalds, The Alarm, Frenzal Rhomb, The 1975, Big Thief, Dave Hause, The National, Phoebe Bridgers, Kathleen Edwards.
Beyond the release of Gets Old, what’s next for Diesel Boy?
We’re playing our first shows in 20 years in Portland and Seattle in July and then we’re heading to Europe in August to play some festivals and do a short tour. After that we’ll be focused on weekend dates and festivals as we can fit them in. The obligations that come with middle-age keep us busy but we’re hoping we can add some fun Diesel Boy stuff into the mix as well.
Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A Pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
