"Please incinerate us": Radkey talks Weezer, One Piece, and the stories behind Bedroom Sand

When I meet up with the Kansas City sibling rock band trio, Radkey, the house is abuzz with the sort of frenetic energy trademark of their live performances. I knock on the door. No one answers.

“You just get here?” It’s Dee. He’s walking down the driveway from somewhere else, moving fast. Dee welcomes me in and downstairs. Isaiah and Solomon are drinking beers around a card table, with the owner of the house—introduced to me as “friend of the band, Steve". They get up to greet me. Dee disappears to change his clothes. We’re whisked away to a room with a record player. Solomon sits right down. Isaiah starts thumbing through records. Steve disappears as Dee emerges. They’re up, they’re down. The energy bouncing between these three brothers is visible. We settle in and start the interview.

Radkey knows the road. They’ve toured with Jack White, Foo Fighters, The Offspring, The Damned, Rise Against, and a half dozen other established bands. They’ve played South By Southwest. Riot Fest. Coachella. They’ve played for Zane Lowe and Jools Holland. Radkey embodies the ethos of a true rock band: playing gigs and putting out music however possible. For their latest album, Bedroom Sand, their DIY punk style met its greatest match—a squeaky clean, state-of-the-art studio on a college campus.

The defiant rock attitude of the music won in the end, and Radkey delivered another gem in their vintage-sounding playful punk catalog. Bedroom Sand is upbeat, ferocious, and dripping with the spirit of Radkey’s influences. It’s an album that proves rock isn’t anywhere near dead, and it doesn’t have to be so damn serious, either. The secret sauce for Radkey lies in their live show. It’s a downright acrobatic performance that comes in like a lion and out like a lion. Isaiah flips his bass around his head. Dee delivers lead vocals with a deep snarl, like the son of Glenn Danzig and Joey Ramone. Solomon is rocksteady on the drums, keeping everything on a warpath.

Radkey shows no signs of laying down the torch they’ve been passed.

[Editor’s Note: the below interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

[Editor’s Note 2: If you are receiving this via e-mail, GMail and others limit the length that displays in your app. When you get to the end, click “View Entire Message”—or just navigate to Substack.]

Nightswimming: I’ve been enjoying Bedroom Sand a lot. I think it’s good to have, like, fun music again. People say there are no rock bands anymore, and I think you guys prove that’s not true. There are a lot of rock bands out there doing cool things, and I think one of those cool things is this vintage sound that you’ve developed. Something where the influences are so clear, but it also feels fresh and unique.

Isaiah: Oh, thank you man!

Nightswimming: So this album was recorded kind of under cover of night, in a music school, in a state-of-the-art studio. I’m interested in how your punk sensibility meshed against this kind of sanitized space that you were recording in. I’m curious how that felt to be recording these defiant rock songs in a place where classical music and jazz are recorded.

Isaiah: Exactly! That was really cool because everyone else there was sort of, like, itching to have some fun too! We had a couple people who were working there be like, “Man, that’s crazy. That’s awesome shit you guys are doing in there. Like, you guys are swinging the bass around and shit!”.

It was also kind of a challenge because we did six songs in five days, and then the other two songs we did back here in Kansas City. It was a crazy experience because we were trying to experiment at the same time as trying to be efficient. Add on top of that, as homeschooled kids, we’ve not been on many college campuses, you know?

Nightswimming: Did that cause you to reflect at all on where you’ve been as a band thus far? You’ve been playing music for 15 years at this point, and putting out music for 10 years or so. To start out DIY, gigging locally, and then to evolve to where you’re recording this album in this space.

Isaiah: It was crazy to have the confidence to even produce it ourselves. We’d only produced one album before, which was Green Room. So that was a bit scary too. Like, okay, we’ve gotta call back on everything we’ve ever learned—

Dee: —and in such a short amount of time!

Isaiah: Right! We felt confident. We know how to stack these vocals! We can get the guitars huge!

Solomon: I think all of that prior experience helped a lot. Eight years ago or whatever, we probably would have gotten stuck on one song and run out of time. But we were able to make the correct decisions quickly.

Isaiah: We were adding some of those synthesizers as shit was getting packed up. We had to be very sure about them!

And one of the synths sounds just like what they used on old Atari games. Whole time, I was like “This sounds like Pitfall.”

Nightswimming: Video games are something you talk a lot about lyrically and represent in your aesthetic. I haven’t seen it directly referenced, but immediately when I hear your music and see your aesthetic, I think of Guitar Hero.

Isaiah: Yeah, dude!

Dee: Oh, yeah!

Nightswimming: Tell me about the importance of Guitar Hero to growing up as brothers in a band.

Isaiah: Guitar Hero was huge! Guitar Hero 2 was a big deal. Also Rock Band!

Solomon: Oh yeah, Rock Band!

Isaiah: We used to play with our friends and-

Dee: Every Wednesday?

Isaiah: Every Wednesday. Yeah, man.

And we were the Dirty Bas-turds. T-U-R-D-S. And we actually did leaderboards.

Dee: Everyone on expert.

Isaiah: We made up a decent chunk of those leaderboards back in the Rock Band days, too. And we learned about a ton of bands through those games! Like Blue Öyster Cult, I feel like I didn’t know about them before Rock Band.

Nightswimming: I think I heard about R.E.M. through Rock Band!

Isaiah: Same! “Orange Crush”?

Nightswimming: “Orange Crush”! Which is crazy that they would even really be in a video game, knowing what I know about them now. This art rock, college rock band from Georgia.

We had kids, at least at our school, that could 100% “Through the Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce.

Isaiah: I was searching my head for the title before you even said it!

Nightswimming: You would hear about it and you’d be like, “That’s bullshit”. And then you’d go and see it for yourself in some dank basement. Some kids really committed themselves to it.

Dee: I could never 100% that one!

Nightswimming: There’s a game studio [RedOctane] that’s doing something like it, called Stage Tour. I think it’s coming out this year.

Isaiah: Okay, we gotta get a song in that shit…

Nightswimming: Yeah! Find them! I saw some of the bands that they have on the list, and they might be looking for—

Dee: —The new shit?

Nightswimming: Yes, kinda young bands.

Dee: Okay!

Nightswimming: Yeah. Well, let’s figure this out. RedOctane developers, if you’re reading—Radkey wants in.

Nightswimming: So, you guys have played live a ton. In fact, one of the things that people say about you is that, to see your live show is to really see who Radkey is. From all your years and time on stage, do you have a good live performance tip?

Isaiah: Yeah, cut loose. Use the time on stage to be, like, your true self. For me, it’s like being silly and just going nuts. People think it’s cool. It doesn’t feel cool, it feels crazy. But just cut loose and go nuts! Do what feels good to you, even if it’s weird, you know?

Dee: Don’t turn your back to the crowd for too long.

Isaiah: Yeah, yeah, you have a very short time. You can spin!

Dee: You can spin! Also don’t take too long between songs. Have your set list prepared. Have songs that go into other songs, you know? Transitions are good. Transitions are really good!

Solomon: Man, I don’t have too many great tips. I’m always just so focused on making sure I’m playing good throughout the entire set.

Nightswimming: Just execute. That’s the tip!

Solomon: Yeah, totally!

Dee: If you see someone in the crowd that’s kind of like straight-faced, like maybe they look like they’re not enjoying the set, don’t let that get to you. I’ve had cases where I thought that they were not enjoying the show and then after the set, they’re like, “Whoa!”. They’re all, like, super animated. They had the best time.

Solomon: They could look mad, even.

Dee: They could look mad! And it turns out they love what we did. Don’t even think about it.

Solomon: Don’t awkwardly call them out.

Dee: ‘Cause then you potentially lost a fan that was really enjoying it in their head, but they couldn’t control their face.

Nightswimming: I’m the biggest culprit of that. I will be arms crossed, frowning. But it’s because I’m really trying to take everything in!

Isaiah: I’m the same way!

Nightswimming: I want to talk about the economy of a rock band and of being a working musician.

One thing that Nightswimming is big on is buying physical media and going out to support live music. What do you think is the importance of supporting live music and buying things?

Isaiah: It’s huge, especially if you want the band to keep going. These days, the way bands make money is live shows and merch. If you take that extra step to grab a record or a t-shirt, that’s huge. That’s dinner, that’s gas, that’s everything right now. Hotel rooms. Being a band is pretty freaking hard right now.

Solomon: There’s so much entertainment people can have these days inside the house, so it means a lot someone leaving their house to come to our show.

Nightswimming: They might have to get a babysitter, take off work.

Isaiah: That was a scary part of becoming a headliner, for sure. You have to deliver because people are here and you’re the final thing.

Nightswimming: So on the physical media tip, you regularly reference your dad’s record collection. What was your introduction to that? How was that part of the upbringing?

Isaiah: It was a lot of driving around in the car, like the music that he would listen to. He also had this huge CD collection and we would be like, “Can I listen to this CD?”

And, like, “if you’re old enough”, sometimes yes, sometimes no. I remember Stone Temple Pilots’ Greatest Hits had boobs on it. I’ll never forget that CD. I’ll also never forget Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model from his collection.

Solomon: Yep, and in the car he had this big CD pouch. That had some of the heavy rotation stuff. Weezer’s Maladroit, for instance, that was always in there.

Dee: The Colour and the Shape [by Foo Fighters].

Solomon: Yeah, he just had a bunch of stuff we loved early on.

Isaiah: Motörhead. Fuckin’… Pixies.

Dee: Also boobs on that one.

Isaiah: Oh yeah, boobs on Surfer Rosa.

Nightswimming: So formative!

Nightswimming: You talk about being old enough—was it the art, or was he trying to shield you from some lyrics as well?

Dee: It was probably mostly lyrics.

Isaiah: I mean, I grabbed the Green Day Dookie album and I just started listening to it. It’s got the Parental Advisory sticker for sure. I remember mom asking, like, “Did you ask dad if you can listen to that?”, I was like “Yeah!”

Nightswimming: The Parental Advisory sticker thing had the opposite effect that they intended—the PMRC or whoever put it on there. Because as kids we would see that and be like, “That’s the one I want.”

Isaiah: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Like, that just made it cooler…

Nightswimming: I remember going to a friend’s house to stay the night and he wanted to watch Eurotrip.

Isaiah: There we go!

Nightswimming: And I had never seen boobs before.

Isaiah: Right.

Nightswimming: And I remember being anxious about it, and his mom didn’t care, and she was like, “Well, would your mom let you watch it?”

And I was freaking out like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” That’s the type of kid I was.

Isaiah: I think my first boobs were probably in Coming to America.

Dee: Coming to America, definitely.

Nightswimming: Oh, yeah, “the Royal Penis is clean, Your Highness”.

Isaiah: I’m like, “What does this mean?”

Nightswimming: I mean, my mom was pretty cool. She would show me the good shit, Billy Madison, stuff like that. I remember her muting the TV at times.

Solomon: Superbad was one we really went out of our way to get. To sneak and watch at, like, a sleepover.

Isaiah: We had to, everyone saw Superbad. We had to see Superbad.

Solomon: You just had to have that one person in your group whose parents would buy the DVDs for them…

Nightswimming: It really does inform your music. I think Bedroom Sand has probably the most direct references to the media that raised you guys.

Isaiah: Absolutely.

Nightswimming: Do you think that’s a product of being homeschooled, like, being raised on TV?

Isaiah: Yeah. Yep. That was our whole lives. “Deep dive on Pokemon” [from the single “Ready to Burn”] was almost “Deep dive on Ed, Edd ’n Eddy”. It just doesn’t quite fit, as far as the syllables.

But, staying up, watching cartoons and playing video games, that raised us. Led Zeppelin wrote so many songs about Lord of the Rings. So you just write about the shit you love, you know?

Nightswimming: I’m interested in the role that identity plays in your music. There is this trope in media of, like, the “black nerd”. Childish Gambino and Tyler the Creator made careers out of it, in their own ways. Anime, Dragonball Z etc. are huge in parts of black communities. How has that influenced how you reference media in your music?

Isaiah: Dude, in a huge way. Anime, not only is it, like, a way to live your life as some of the characters, but, like…

For instance, our song “Romance Dawn”, that’s fully just a One Piece reference. We fucking love One Piece. We’re hoping to become a part of one of these next seasons of the live-action Netflix one.

Dude, yeah, we’re obsessed with anime. Another thing besides being in a band that’s kind of our life. Dragonball Z, Hunter x Hunter, One Piece, fuckin’ Cowboy Bebop…

Solomon: Fullmetal Alchemist.

Dee: Gurren Lagann.

Isaiah: The “black nerds” thing, that’s a really good description of us.

Like you were saying, this is the most out front we’ve been about those references. We’re usually more vague, but now we’re just like, “should we mention Pillars of Eternity??”

Nightswimming: I think there’s a lot of depth to that. I think it’s also more recently become more acceptable and less “uncool” to be into certain things. You know, the things you “have to like” to fit into a certain community are becoming less important. I think there’s a lot of depth to blazing your own trail and just being unapologetic about what you like.

Isaiah: Totally!

Nightswimming: In music, everybody wants to make their comparisons. You guys hear comparisons to Bad Brains all the time. Living Colour all the time. Many of those folks you’ve now met and formed friendships with.

And some of that comes from a good place, I think. People like to say, “Hey, if you like these bands, you’ll like these guys.” But then it also can be reductive in a lot of ways.

Isaiah: We learned about Bad Brains from people comparing us to Bad Brains.

Dee: Right. We didn’t learn about them growing up. We were like, “oh, these guys are awesome. We don’t think we sound like them…”

Nightswimming: They just see black guys in a rock band and they go lizard brain.

Dee: That’s exactly what it is. I once had someone come up to me after a set and say, “Oh, I see you guys are playing that white people music.” And I’m like, “Okay, what?”

Isaiah: I mean…

Dee: What?

Isaiah: We’ll give you a few lessons.

Dee: Exactly.

Isaiah: It’s crazy.

Dee: I was like, “Sit down, please.”

Isaiah: It’s almost dystopian. We’re in this reality where it’s like, “This is so novel that you guys are playing rock music.” It’s like, not if you really, truly know rock music! Because then you would know this is very obvious, actually.

Nightswimming: The people are not doing their research.

Nightswimming: I wanna talk about the video for “Glore”, which was on Adult Swim at some point?

Isaiah: Yeah, it was! It was on Off The Air. And they added the sound effects, like all the sticky sounds.

Nightswimming: What are some of your favorite music videos, from growing up or just things that you like. When you think of a great music video, what do you think of?

Isaiah: “Peaches” by Presidents of the United States of America.

Dee: I really like the [Weezer] “Say It Ain’t So” video.

Solomon: I like the second [Weezer] “Island in the Sun” video, with the animals.

Isaiah: And “Hot for Teacher”, Van Halen. I would love to do a video where there’s kid versions of us!

Nightswimming: That’s a classic.

I want to talk about the song “Strays”. Like a lot of the songs on Bedroom Sand, there’s this miscommunication in love sort of thing. We want each other, we don’t, I’m embarrassing you in front of your friends. But then also obviously there’s a connection to cats. At one point you guys had several cats.

Isaiah: Dude.

Nightswimming: You still have several cats?

Isaiah: Between two houses, how many do we have? I have five. You have fi-

Solomon: I have four.

Isaiah: Yeah, right. So those are all the Radkey cats. There’s a lot.

Nightswimming: That’s an army of cats.

Isaiah: Dude, right. Yeah. And we’ve always had a lot of cats. I mean, even just at my house in Independence, there’s a stray Mama cat who’s got, like, three kittens and, like, a husband cat. She’s been pregnant a couple times. We need to get her taken care of. We gotta catch her, and our neighbor’s trying to. But we feed them, and they’re the strays.

Nightswimming: Did you guys have cats growing up?

Isaiah: Yeah, cats have always been in our lives. They’re a huge inspiration sometimes! As a musician you’re gonna be fuckin’ depressed all the time, and the cats can feed on that. They know to be around you and bug you and all that. Keep you alive!

Nightswimming: We just listened to “Take Control” from Weezer’s Maladroit. Off-recording, we talked about Patrick Wilson’s drumming being a secret weapon of Weezer in a lot of ways. Solomon, you picked this one specifically as an inspiration for Bedroom Sand. Can you talk about the drums on this album?

Solomon: Yeah, it [Patrick Wilson’s drumming] was an inspiration for Bedroom Sand, and pretty much every album we’ve made. Something about the way he uses the crash cymbals on this record. The open hi-hat. I’ve based so much of my drumming around this album—it’s always a top pick for me. Pretty much any album we make, I’m listening to this one to prepare.

Isaiah: Lyrically too. I love Rivers Cuomo’s lyrics. He and Stephen Malkmus [from Pavement]. I definitely lean on their style a lot.

Dee: Yeah, and those guitar tones are, of course, just freaking awesome.

Nightswimming: Weezer has been making really strong, unique music for so many decades. I think the new one’s gonna be really cool!

Isaiah: I’ve been listening to the singles a lot! Is it The Gold Album?

Nightswimming: Yeah.

Isaiah: I always think about being on tour, there’s almost always a new Weezer record that you’re analyzing when you’re on the road.

We were really getting started around the time of Everything Will Be Alright in the End, and then their White Album and, uh, what was the one with “Happy Hour”?

Dee: Oh, Pacific Daydream?

Isaiah: Pacific Daydream. Pacific Daydream. We’re such big Weezer fans, we listen to every fuckin’ record. The new ones are always inspirational.

Nightswimming: Those guys, also, are very upfront about their media diet and what inspired them, in a nerdy way.

Nightswimming: We just listened to “Monkey Wrench” from the The Colour and The Shape by Foo Fighters.

Isaiah: “Monkey Wrench” was a huge inspiration on “Falling Out of Grace”.

And also Hüsker Dü. But I mean- Hüsker Dü and Bob Mould have been a huge influence on everything we make, pretty much.

Dee: The production on this album is just so great.

Nightswimming: I always find it crazy that Dave Grohl had those type of songs in him. Playing with Nirvana and playing heavy stuff earlier in the Seattle scene with the Melvins. But Foo Fighters showed he had really melodic ideas. Dee, you were talking about the harmonies on that song.

Dee: Yeah, they’re so cool!

Nightswimming: Talk to me about that album from an inspiration standpoint and then, can you even describe being in stadiums opening for the Foo Fighters??

Isaiah: Dude. You know what’s crazy?

When we started this band in our little green room in St. Joseph, Missouri, one of our goals was to play with the Foo Fighters and to become a band like that.

Do you know about Dave’s movie What Drives Us? That was why we ended up going on tour with Foo Fighters, all because we did that interview

Solomon: We were just in a McDonald’s when we got the call.

Isaiah: Yeah, we were on our shitty little tour, in a McDonald’s having breakfast. Dad [Matt Radke, or Dadkey, who manages the band] answered the phone and it was Jennifer Finch from L7. We had become friends, and she was like, “Are you guys on tour right now? Dave Grohl’s doing this movie.”

Nightswimming: You’re never prepared. It’s like in Joe Dirt where he’s like, “My mom always says, ‘Is this where you wanna be when Jesus comes back?’” Like, “Is this where you wanna be when Dave Grohl calls?”

Isaiah: “Things are gonna happen for me! I’m Joe Dirt!”

Then Dad hangs up the phone and he tells us what it was.

Dee: It’s like, “What???”

Nightswimming: Dee, that was one of your picks. Is that from a guitar standpoint? Is that vocally?

Dee: Vocals, guitar, even the freaking pauses on that album. We were doing some big pauses in some of our other songs too.

The melody of “Falling Out of Grace”, you hear that in the beginning of “Monkey Wrench”, that influence.

Isaiah: I remember in the Foo Fighters documentary Back and Forth, he was talking about how they wanted a perfect opening set song. That idea is what our song “Victory” is based on.

Dee: We also love “Enough Space”. The screaming Dave does on that is really crazy.

Nightswimming: “Everlong”, I mean…

Isaiah: How do you even write a song like that?

Nightswimming: We’re about to put on “Immigrant Song” from Led Zeppelin III.

Isaiah: So, obviously we’re big Lord of the Rings fans, but then also School of Rock.

Nightswimming: Yeah.

Isaiah: That was a big influence on us being like, “We kinda wanna be a band.” So School of Rock has “Immigrant Song”—

Nightswimming: Where he’s driving the van.

Isaiah: Exactly. Yeah, iconic. And then, that’s also the album starter. And like, is there any better album starter…than that fuckin’ shit?

Nightswimming: I can’t imagine—that came out in 1970? I can’t imagine being a teenager in 1970 and dropping your needle on that. You would think, like, someone was coming to hurt you!

Isaiah: Right! “I wasn’t warned about this!” So, like I said we were on a quest to have the ultimate opening song. That’s how we came up with “Victory”. I mean, I’m not gonna compare that to “Immigrant Song”.

[Robert Plant is just screaming, like he does]

Isaiah: Ooh! Hear that? Kinda squeaky!

Dee: That’s cool though!

[Plant starts moaning, like he does]

Dee: Imagine recording the vocals for this.

Nightswimming: Robert Plant is just down the hall, freaking his shit in another room.

Isaiah: “Immigrant Song” is all time, and then also “Out on the Tiles” is awesome.

Nightswimming: “Since I’ve Been Loving You”, “Tangerine”. “Tangerine” was like the first time they really got folky with it.

It’s crazy to think that those four guys met and made that music together.

Isaiah: Dude, when you learn those basslines, they make you a better bassist.

Nightswimming: John Paul Jones! And then he went on to produce so much stuff after that. He just has that kind of brain.

Isaiah: Right.

Nightswimming: Have you guys heard of Truth & Janey?

Dee: No!

Nightswimming: This is a trio from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Only made one album.

Dee: Wow.

Nightswimming: And this is a reissue of that album that, I think, Permanent Records in Los Angeles did. They repress a lot of like, they’ll find a band that had one or two albums and repress them.

But Truth & Janey is heavy psych, early hard rock. Very much inspired by Black Sabbath and Cream.

Isaiah: Oh, love Cream. Love Sabbath.

[Truth & Janey’s “Down The Road I Go” plays]

Isaiah: Yeah, it’s definitely a little Bedroom Sand-y. This is the exact type of shit we love to listen to!

Nightswimming: I thought about this record when I heard Bedroom Sand, and then I remembered that they’re a trio. I’m wondering about playing in a trio specifically and relying on a smaller group of people.

Isaiah: It’s something we ignore on recordings for sure. We layer guitars like crazy. But playing live, it is definitely something. We’re always thinking, how are we gonna sound big, you know? And part of that is like, for instance, we keep the basslines pretty simple. So, like, I’m always hitting kind of what Dee’s playing on guitar, just to get the wall of sound as big as possible.

Solomon: We can’t have thin-sounding sections, so, we’re always trying to find ways for it to stay full-sounding.

Isaiah: We’ve heard a lot of three-pieces in our time where you hear everything on the other side and it’s got holes.

Nightswimming: It’s that Rush thing. Geddy’s playing bass, AND synth, AND his voice is his voice. Everyone’s going all-in.

Isaiah: Oh, yeah. We love Rush!

Nightswimming: Last one I brought is Nuggets. Do you guys know about Nuggets? Nuggets is this compilation put together by Lenny Kaye, who was in Patti Smith’s band. It is a two-disc compilation of garage bands from the ‘60s, like, first psychedelic era. Chocolate Watchband, The Standells, The Seeds, Electric Prunes—all these types of psych garage bands that were just kinda scrappy and DIY. They’d go to, like, the recording studio on Main Street and put together some shitty, DIY two-and-a-half-minute single.

So this is a compilation of a bunch of those. But I thought about this with Bedroom Sand because of kinda the DIY nature of being in a scrappy band. If you want, put the needle down on track 2, a song called “Dirty Water” by The Standells.

Isaiah: It’s making me think of Jack White, some of his new music.

Dee: Catch that reverb on his vocal!

Solomon: And the harmonica.

Isaiah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. How good does it feel to rip a harmonica on stage with the, holding the microphone?

Nightswimming: Oh, man. I think about John Popper from Blues Traveler who had the Chewbacca bandoliers full of harmonicas.

Dee: Nice tambourine in here, too!

Nightswimming: Pretty much all of these songs have that quality of DIY. You can tell it’s kinda just guys fuckin’ around. But to me that makes it feel more authentic! So I wonder if you guys can speak to the importance of authenticity in the studio.

Isaiah: We wanted to use our time efficiently this time, but our manager also pushed us to experiment. So we really did mess around a lot. This was the most we’ve ever experimented on a record, really.

Usually we have it pretty ironed down. But we enjoy a challenge, so we’re like, “All right, we’ll go in there and experiment in this tiny amount of time, but also still make the record”. I honestly am shocked. We had no time. We loved the songs, but, we were like, “Are we gonna be able to pull this off?”

Solomon: The DIY thing’s definitely important because when we were briefly on a label we had them constantly trying to get us to use songwriters, like ghost-writers. And we just refused.

Isaiah: Now, here’s an amazing story about being on Sony: We have a song called “Not Smart”. And there was this big debate on why the label thought the song should be called “Dumb” instead.

The chorus is, “Dumb- Mm-hmm, Dumb- Mm-hmm, da, da, da, da, Dumb.” ‘Cause we’re homeschooled, so it’s about how stupid we are. So, they were like, “The song has to be called ‘Dumb’.” We were like, “Well, there’s already a Nirvana song called ‘Dumb’. The song has to be called ‘Not Smart’.”

But then they’re like, “But you don’t say ‘Not Smart’.” We go, “We say it once.”

Solomon: We say it once!

Isaiah: I think it may have affected our relationship.

Solomon: It was the start of it going down the hole.

Isaiah: It was the start of a bad relationship.

But we’re just such weirdos. We’re like, “No, it’s gotta be called ‘Not Smart’, like it’s funnier that way.”

Nightswimming: I think sometimes those label people feel like to earn their keep they have to give a note. Even if they have nothing to say. So they can go home and be like, “Honey, I gave a note today”.

Isaiah: Right. That exactly it. But that’s one of our problems, we’re—I don’t know if it’s, like, hipster or whatever—but we’re like, “We gotta be weird about it.”

Solomon: How about we just get people to write you guys music and you just perform it.

Nightswimming: Then it’s Milli Vanilli.

Nightswimming: Do you have any funny stories about tour? Funniest thing that happened on tour?

Isaiah: I remember one time...I mean, I don’t know if we need to tell this story, but I was like 19. I remember there’s this woman, and she took me into a bathroom.

Dee: Oh, yeah…

Isaiah: And she was like, “We’re forbidden lovers” or whatever, basically. And then she, like, started…taking a piss? and I was like, “What the fuck’s going on?”

Solomon: One of our old, old publicists from way back when told us to stop telling this story about New Orleans…

Dee: Yeah, yeah, right! Oh, yeah, we were in New Orleans, and we had this show, and we get up on stage and we’re like, two songs in. I’m making eye contact with this guy who has—

Isaiah: There’s seven people at this show—

Dee: —Yeah, there’s several people, but—

Isaiah: Seven.

Dee: Yeah, yeah, like I said, several people. And this guy is clearly drunk. He’s kinda swaying back and forth, and all of a sudden he pulls out a knife, like a pocket knife I think.

He’s still swaying around, and at one point he throws it at me! And, you know, I kept playing. I just flipped him off. Kept the song going. Later on I see in the background, the band we were touring with, a few of the members and our dad, were taking the guy out with the promoter. Somebody gave him his knife back!

And then the promoter gave us, what, like $5 or something?

Isaiah: The sound guy found $10 on the floor.

Dee: On the ground!

Isaiah: And he was like, “I think I might be able to give this to you.”

Solomon: He said he might be able to break it for us. So he was like, “I’m still gonna keep some of this.”

Isaiah: He was like, “You guys wanna be a rock band? Do it.”

Nightswimming: It’s Louisiana law, to give a man his pocket knife back.

Dee: I couldn’t believe it! They gave him the knife back that he just threw at the freakin’ band!

Isaiah: We were recording No Strange Cats [the 2019 EP] with Bill Stevenson from Descendents, who produced it. His wife and kids were out of town on vacation. We stayed at his house to eat Domino’s Pizza and drink fuckin’ whiskey and IPAs.

I didn’t even think about how we were in Colorado. So the altitude—we were getting fucked up.

I black out. Apparently I slammed my head on his kitchen island and I knocked my tooth out. So I wake up the next morning, I’m like, “Ow…” I ask Sol, I was like, “Is my tooth chipped?”

And Sol’s like, “It’s a little chipped.” I look in the mirror and my tooth is completely halved. It is halved.

Descendents are practicing in the basement in his studio, and I’m running through his house, checking different doors looking for my dad, who was our tour manager, and I’m, like, opening awesome, empty bedrooms. I finally open the door to dad. I’m like, “What happened?” And dad’s got my tooth in his wallet.

Dee: There’s a reference in Bedroom Sand, right?

Isaiah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. In “Falling Out of Grace”, the part where it’s like, “I don’t wanna play no more. Leave me on the kitchen floor. Wake up, open all the doors ‘cause I don’t wanna know.” It’s just all about my tooth.

Dee: I remember being at a show, I think it was when we played with Flogging Molly. There was this guy who came up to us, and he was like, “You know, I was raised to hate black people, but I really like your music” And he was, like, really touchy and a little pushy.

Isaiah: He wanted a hug. Like, he was conflicted. He wanted a hug, but then I started hugging him back and he’s like, “Don’t touch me.” I was like-

Dee: Yeah, “Don’t touch me.”

Isaiah: That dude was weird...

Dee: It was bizarre. You could tell he was, like, heavily conflicted by being raised the way he was, but also loving our music.

Isaiah: The “don’t touch me” was crazy.

Dee: Yeah, that was crazy.

Isaiah: I don’t know if it was, like, an anti-gay thing or an anti-black thing—

Dee: —Racist thing for sure.

Isaiah: It was probably all those things. People are crazy, man.

Nightswimming: Is there anything else you guys wanted to talk about?

Isaiah: I know One Piece is a long fuckin’ anime, but I say just go ahead and start it. Take our advice. It’ll be worth it. It’ll probably help you in life. Don’t even be scared. It’s thousands of episodes. Just go ahead and get started.

Dee: Get into the live action.

Isaiah: Yeah, watch the Netflix version!

Nightswimming: And whoever is making the new season at Netflix, if you need, like, three pirate brothers playing sea shanties…

Isaiah: 100%. 100%. We will play anyone. You can fucking incinerate us. We don’t even care.

Nightswimming: Honestly, probably preferable if they incinerate you.

Isaiah: Right, right. Yeah! If we gotta go that way. Please incinerate us.

Nightswimming: The McElroy brothers got into Trolls 2 by just talking about it on their podcast. We can get you into One Piece.