Joe Rogan Experience #1656 — Adam Duritz Transcript

Transcript

0:00 The Joe Rogan Experience. nice to be uh i've been a fan of your work for a long fucking time and it's always weird when you Like you seem so loose. I go, I want to like figure out how to get there. Shit, I want to be that free. You like, you ever see that Mr. Jones video? I go, when that dude's dancing, I go, I want to figure out how to get there. Right. So when I started, you know, making videos at first, it was just like, this is apps.

2:13 You became aware that so many people were watching and criticizing you or like, what was it? thinking about like what do I look like on film then I got really self-conscious you know what that is that is that it happened then you know and that was the first time I'd experienced that because you know Is that like chubby? The fact that fishmonger is involved at all as a word when they're talking about your

4:41 But then when you get really big and other people like it, when you're discovering stuff, And now he loves your band too. also like great things? you were in a club without them, and I realized that AOL had these forums and message boards for all the bands and and when people started then i got into arguments with our own fans i've always done that it's just

8:07 And I would try and make this thing to tell them, You're just like, you're in this little niche. because it has this, like, feeling to it. It just seemed like there was one after another But, I mean, I get it, I guess, you know. Because I don't know them, They got you in their head. He used to be this, you used to think of him as this sort of alt-rock guy, right?

10:13 Yeah, Darius from Hootie. He's a country... He's had a lot of success over band you know but it doesn't really mesh much with what is country music now i don't really think this is like some crazy arena rock shit. You had him on? Jeff Ross. look at the sunset it was on this cliff by the Atlantic Ocean there and we walking out across Like And I go, Brian nods at me and I go, it's pretty quiet out there, Captain.

13:24 the kind of jaws rip off? That's our thing. he's quite a character yeah yes yeah we know quite a few people have you did you premiere. It was like a screening at the Writers Guild He took a trip to Iraq, right, tour over there with all the troops with the USO, and we did a, So Jeff's like hey you want to do this thing? I was like, ah, let's go The Mope Fest.

16:53 because your initial success was in this kind of music, always just kind of thought that was um you know but sometimes you know there's there's hope and because I just could sing, so I don't know what that means, It was like within the first month and a half I was at school, that note I kind of knew how to make a major and a minor chord you know that's all I knew

19:21 You don't, like you're pretty undefined. and it was like a light going off in my head or coming on. I just, from that moment on, I was like, You just were trying to figure it out? I didn't really know. But you had never been in a band or anything until that moment? all the stuff I'd been feeling and thinking and like, but then I wrote a song and I could, you know.

22:22 that have self-esteem issues that maybe don't think that. It's going to be a struggle. And then, you know, you're going to have to get, if you want to play a musician, you're going to get in a band, you're going to fight with your friends because it's not fun, it's not a hobby anymore. out the ego dance and who's putting what and where and who's adding spice to the soup.

24:17 I'm glad they're there. I'm still going to play a show, and it's still going to be good. because you know it if you have the success of the moment it builds to the next moment to the mostly just kind of practicing talking into a microphone and you know just trying to work it That's really cool, though. It can be done. Some people just can't. and it doesn't go anywhere and then they go into a completely unrelated premise and it doesn't go

27:40 it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. That song, you know. And even if it comes, you can climb out of it. like recently that are just not that good you have a bit that you're trying out and it's kind I remember one, the first, I always remember this gig because I don't know that we've played this town since then. And you have to walk around everybody to get up to the stage.

30:24 And my voice is already wrecked from the first year of touring because I had never sung that much. you know and it's like just you can't hear anything and I'm trying to sing is before we had in-ears, you know and Fix the goddamn monitor. We're still trying it and it's still just like oh just you know anything would have been better than what It was just so fucking humiliating.

32:05 As if it would have been confusing to them if we kept playing. So I got off stage the last gig and I had to go for surgery the next day. I can't remember what it was called. tails, but I couldn't wear the pants cause I had this huge bandage on my knee. So I just put some It's just a room full of comics. And he got me a chair so I could sit down near the front.

34:06 for Jeff's thing so I peed on my girlfriend earlier today i just i think you're you're peeing that's all you're just you're peeing yourself right now i'm breaks up and I was just I that's I guess that's one more thing she's got in common with my mom. I just drilled. He's like, you're kidding. It's like crack, right? Yeah, because I've been there with friends of mine

37:08 I didn't have anything. I didn't have Jeff or Bob. a little hall and it was like one of the side rooms, I don't think, because it wasn't like anyone was performing. And it's fun if terrifying you know, but he's so good. He can kind of like hold your hand looking through your podcast at one point have you been to his house in hollywood hills oh no no he's i haven't either i've been to his place

39:42 Note to self, don't piss in that pool. Yeah, especially now. I was like Texas and Denver, so I was like seven and eight. I was really out of shape. I just blocked it. And he goes, where is this block coming from? But like, you don't want to do that boxing. And he just whack, hit me in the head. Whoop, whoop, hit me in the head. left you susceptible to certain techniques from other sports.

43:07 But you don't do this, like Taekwondo style. So don't do it. It looks like you're going to kick someone low and then it turns around and it kicks them high. And they started calling it the Brazilian kick It was, that was a traditional, he's got a weird hip flexibility. Watch this. And look at that, he does that Kyokushin arts like that interesting which disciplines tend to be effective.

46:04 Yeah. He definitely did. caught him in a triangle yeah yeah well chel was a beast but anderson figured it out just i mean Chuck Norris. It's not like the level that people have today. It's just the sport evolves and gets better. Grand champion match in 1966. Ooh, these guys are good. Is it music playing? doing oh yeah that is tony jaa that's that's mu's Muay Thai Muay Thai is all about the elbows like the they have the best elbow strikes in martial arts elbows

50:21 like the rock-style star, it's definitely Chuck Norris. His world kickbox, I forget, world combat league, It was like in this conference room thing and I got a picture with Chuck. And I turn back around and see he's walking away. I don't know what to do. and I said he told me flight of my life because he was involved and talked to the other guys you know,

53:32 Wow. i've known him forever he's the nicest guy on earth and like i used to take my godson to imagine the podcast can possibly be good unfortunately i just feel like they would be so Yeah. what you're going to say like right now I have no idea what the next word out of my But if you're a president, I mean, you're a distinguished statesman, one of the greatest

56:26 it would be very difficult to just shoot the shit but if you could get them like a little buzzed But I've done other people's podcasts before, and I'm like, why are there so many people very hard to just be you know live with it you know cause it's by friends of ours that were really good songs but the shit no one knew. And then we have Like, okay, well, it's three hours of unedited talking.

59:14 express something because it's actually important but for the most part it's it's funny it's insulting it's not about like getting the world to think you're a you know, It's funny. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? I was like the fuck out of here with these old dead men hanging out cracking jokes with each other in wheelchairs. and play pool and hang out with these guys.'s like it was just a fun hang with a

1:02:10 It was getting really miserable in Berkeley. You're Adam Duritz? Yeah. You know and just say something like that yeah like and it was so weird uh but we like we got really famous what's going on, man? And I told them what was happening. And they're like, hang on a second, moved to LA after that it was uh I did I stayed at the Bellage for a few days.

1:04:43 And it turned out it was built by the Cowboy star, Tom Mix in the twenties. And then it was David Niven's like So you bartended while you were a rock star? star and they're not my tips. So I just started bartending every night. the 20s i mean it was like alan ginsburg coming in and william burroughs the hughes brothers all Was the negativity towards you specific to the Bay Area?

1:07:15 Yeah, no, it's just total strangers. So it doesn't make any sense to me. It wasn't as well regarded. but everyone was you know we were hoping each other had success and it was there was nothing There were a lot of other bands in the Bay Area good place to be at the time. It was a very fortunate place to be at that age of my life because I was just a different place to be but it was not it's not a showbiz culture by any stretch of the

1:10:47 that all really exists and it's loved... My dad was in the Army during Vietnam in El Paso Although, I loved my dad was in lots and desert and bugs I have with going fucking around with shit on my own. like right on the border it's a it's kind of very much its own place it's it's texas i haven't been Grande enough so that like our phones kept switching over thinking they were in Mexico

1:13:18 I'm not sure. Um, but it was weird for me and Tom. Like, wow. Can you believe, can you imagine Oh, yeah. And I'm like, what? that's the weird thing but i mean because we do like especially those kid memories of that's don't i climbed down i don't know i i remember being big enough that i had to climb down onto that just happen to be famous, the artists that are doing things.

1:16:46 Austin, it does not have that. actor or whatever it is and then it didn't work out and they became an architect or whatever Because you're right. being there, which is that so much of culture is about, The problem is if you get there and then it just becomes about famous and I love that. and that got really annoying right after the millennium, about the millennium and realizing it was like a year after that we had these birthday parties

1:20:17 I know who she is. Lives it's a Noel Coward play and it starred Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan and after the play I think, you know, a lot of people that are doing that now, whether it's TikTok or, you know, a lot of these YouTube stars and things along those lines that they don't I mean, LA is like a lot of these great restaurants and bars, Saddle Ranch.

1:23:24 Fuck, I don't know. Yeah. Maybe like a different section has been infested with young people. trl on broadway but like that's a weird thing. You know, you were talking about How old were you? I put my first record and over the hill already. What does that mean? I'm keep questioning. diagnosed as different things. They thought I was kind of Did you feel like fame exacerbated your issues?

1:27:18 should fucking do it. It was really different. It's like one of those multiplexes. And he goes, ah, love your band. the pay phone calling everyone he knows, I guess. Cause he's been on the phone the whole time. I made it to the hotel. You know, but you get, I've said this a quarter million times, but like if you woke up on So were you, did they have you on medication before all of this happened?

1:30:00 I don't remember now, but I used to have to take it, and it didn't work for me. Yeah. like that that's sort of the slightly sweet orange flavor of chewable pills you know like So how'd you bring it in, like a suitcase everywhere? I don't know. first came on when i was like 20 uh the dissociation was like uh being on acid you know when you get I felt like I was not sliding down the drain anymore and that felt like a time where it was

1:33:51 And then it sucks. It's just something you carry around with you and you've got to learn how to carry that weight just So, you know, it's just like that. first three gigs I woke up each morning. I remember this. laryngitis. I didn't feel anxious. And I didn't feel nervous. And I would shave the fucking skin off the ginger root, cut off a little piece like a stick of gum-sized piece, put it in my mouth and chew.

1:36:16 I'm standing on stage with a fucking huge root on a stool next to me and a knife. Wow, isn't that crazy that your brain can trick your vocal cords into seizing up? on stage with a knife and some ginger root. And they're like, hey, this is Dan. But then I had to learn to stand up so my way of getting around that was like I got a trench coat Yeah, it's asinine.

1:37:58 Chewing ginger. Wow. Well, I mean, you know, terror is a self-perpetuating thing, you know, because your heart rate speeds up. dawn is coming up i wake up and have a moment of like oh god not this shit but now it's like do is just a part of that i felt pretty confident in that and like this was whatever i did was the gave me a place to put all that stuff.

1:40:41 And I don't think it is. difficulty and i'm not a waste of space on the earth i'm not falling apart i'm not i'm not because I think that's the hardest thing about mental illness is you know it's not what But a big part of it is not to just sit there. Yeah, there's a lot of it. But you know it's coming I was where I was supposed to be. And early on, a big part of it was learning.

1:43:33 recovering the rest of the tour from that and so we had to learn that because losing my voice That's heavy shit too, right? because they'd give me so it would come back over. those kind of steroids? There we go. And so, like, it was never quite going away and, you know, would keep coming back. Because my knee turned into a fucking balloon. Yeah. it was he said it was essentially like a low level um chemotherapy he's like it was just

1:47:07 well I imagine so because your body's having a harder time taking care of it that medication yeah well a lot of them were medications that weren't you know we don't really know that's the other thing that's kind of it can really kill your your hope when you're You know, I mean, just the fact that like people who are ADD and really hyper, you give I don't want to be more up.

1:48:50 yeah i think exercise is really good um uh the breathing also obviously really helped meditation It's almost more than don't. and who'd have thought I'd be able to grow up employers, employees rather, and, you know, cracks the whip and yells at everybody in of being a boss is taking care of everybody dude this is the most preposterous skeleton crew ever. For something that reaches millions of people

1:51:20 And I met people. I'm like, what do you do? You've got people who are sound guys. And then occasionally there's problems because, you know, some PA said something stupid to an intern. and now because it became successful you changed what the whole thing is and now you got people for her and for our few friends that we were seeing. Yeah. I don't know. I've done about 20, 30 of them now.

1:53:42 It's really simple. videos. It's hard. and that was good, but it's the wrong texture. Do you know Tom Papa? He's been working on cultivating the perfect sourdough bread and figuring out how to do it. We would make a trade off, some Tom Papa bread. Oh, So, is this just him talking? It's part one. There's me eating his bread. love it? I love cooking.

1:57:04 I'm not feeling you're having a good time. Right. gig and then they talk shit about each other afterwards. they fucking hate the other people. There's just singularity. You'll find it. What can we do, Adam? I want to bribe USC so I can get my children into that school. and a producer, and i don't you know think the way the way you're're like, ah, I don't, you know, the way you're doing it, I just don't think this is

2:00:20 A little bit, but Oh, wow. company in the world came to see us play the only people that didn't offer us deals were like people Which is why, like, I bought a convertible Because I live, well, not much. And so the guy who runs my whole winery, he's got it in his garage in Napa. But it's pretty much the original shit. It looks cherry. It's beautiful. And it is not original. Definitely some of the mirrors. I mean, it looks cherry.

2:03:28 those and when i got my record deal i took my 3000 and spent 2000 on a carmen ghia barely ran engine is right behind the driver and then the axles behind the engine so the the balance of weight is beautiful and it There's companies that, like aftermarket companies, they take it and they build it up. That's really pretty, man. All right, here you go, buddy.

2:06:11 It represents the time in which it was created, too. I love those a lot, man. You were there. we don't want to spend money on records. putting out digital music and iTunes came around and let them sell it on the have to build physical, which is true. It used to, the hardest thing about being an independent okay, now you're getting something that has no body to it.

2:09:09 and everyone could suddenly just steal it, That's the part that really bothered me about Napster. There's no issue whatsoever doing that. and they go, oh, you got so many CDs, I'll just take and press it up yourself and sell it. happened to books too is that it just it was easy to duplicate yeah but you are stealing because we Some people still do it because they love vinyl.

2:12:21 Fuck you. And you can get it now kind of reverting to you in a shorter amount of years, and you can distribute it by uploading it onto Bandcamp. and say, we have something. Yeah, there were a lot. it works? which doesn't make any sense. Well, they were like, yeah, we're going to do a new and in exchange, you'd like me to give you several pieces of the only things that still make money.

2:15:10 Right. And they want to take that money back out of the small percentage in your deal, Jesus Christ. associated the whole internet with that. Like, I remember like a year or two after that, it all said well then you can't use it so we lost all that promo it happened like So national TV, you're set on radio and television when you play. Just do it. the rec companies are fucking shambles because they couldn't think any more complicated than

2:18:56 Money to make it, because maybe you don't have any money. doesn't have to be terrestrial radio it could could be satellite radio like, you know, but think about this And so like I can go on Spotify today and listen to any record I want and I do, but I can't use it. I don't know that it balances out against the deals they're offering most people. to give me a 20% or 15%

2:21:11 Kind of. they had set up with a lot of followers or people knew they could go there and cool music That is so crazy, though. 50% They don't get 50%. working with record companies is pretty much a pleasure because we can, we get the right But you still have way more music than you ever have before. You're not going to break even necessarily, even until you get up to

2:24:11 There can be reasons. Like, hey, Universal did this. Maria McKee, Nirvana, you know, like we, Sonic Youth, I met them all right in the beginning. Who argued for you to do that? It's one thing to have a sound that's cool, but you don't know if that's going to mean anything in a couple years but songs that's Oh, and I think we blew up in... The record came out in the fall of 93,

2:26:45 But the record jumped 40 spots a week for five or six weeks. Never won, but two for a long time. And Ace of Base jumped us. It just went on forever. Like, God damn that, Adam. We split evenly. What did it feel like to all of a sudden be rich? I bought some paintings. paintings by this guy and I loved them. I spent a bunch of time in there one day and then I went

2:29:47 I had an indie record company, too, over the years. situations and I thought they records and we didn't, like I said, And I felt like I failed a lot with the indie record company, They're great, I know. Gigolo Ants? Yeah. Yeah. did it through a podcast and you had a social media page like a facebook page or an instagram We write essays. We film at my house.

2:32:48 outdoor space is really expensive So what I did instead was I put AstroTurf down at one end of the loft and then put a bunch of garden furniture. And the band's set up there and they play there. the garden sessions. for the end of the tour, Yeah, that's my living room. views. That's crazy. I know. Well, it's hard that is kind of cool for this record

2:34:42 and we even filmed I can tell. Just people who really love working music. there even it was up on what street is it like seventh street or eighth street i can't remember I kind of feel like I do all the stuff I used to do with the record company, At some point I just stopped. you know, but, Rockwood has three stages. And we're also going to do our show in New York with some of those bands opening.

2:38:03 They're free, so you don't have to worry about paying each time. So people can get their music, their CDs, their t-shirts for free. I just love hearing that you do it this way. It was really successful. And I guess she wrote to me again later. Like I always liked Kate from, I thought she was funny. I got to figure out how to do it. Don't get involved.

2:40:33 I don't want to do a music festival. of them out here, right? They got Moon Tower. That whole thing is, by the way, just for people who don't, I have not seen it. Oh, yeah. in a way. Really? Like Dazed and Confused. So it lights up whole neighborhoods at night. but I remember looking this up when I first saw this. Roy Wood Jr. It's like it's a live music town.

2:43:26 It's a great-sized place. you never even heard of them before Because if you have that area where musicians can live and play, there's usually some warehouses now because of like the google and tech companies and Apple's putting a campus here and Oracle Yeah. Yeah. There's a vibe to that here. Yeah, it is. It was really good. Okay, well, I'm not going to, I don't want that.

2:46:41 There was one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean And so all this whole community of black people from the South ended up also because the South He's literally the original and it all became, the central Texas barbecue became a scene. It was actually, it's a little shack at the bottom of University in Berkeley. I generally don't love the sauce. low temperature for a long time. If I get up early in the morning, I rub it all with salt and brown sugar the night before.

2:49:51 Then take the foil off. I had a little while ago is out of Van Nuys. It's fantastic. making the record in like 92 and we would always make the trek out there there's nowhere else to That's indicative of how weird it is. Just booths and wood paneling. Their sauce is great, too. Brisket just melts in your mouth. Yeah. It's the shit and it's like a hidden spot.

2:52:26 next to a barbershop and shit. I bought a big old mansion so that all of us could live there because there was like 10 of us living in my house. It's the big trays of brisket and meat. I really enjoyed it. The only way you can get it, there's no CD, so we made vinyl, and it's digital everywhere. Today. That's exciting. I have it on my phone somewhere.

2:54:26 Right here. Where are you going? Well, you can come anywhere you want. Yeah. do it's a thing that i practice all year round i i'm a big archery fanatic wow i have like a 3D range in my backyard with a giant rubber elk, 85 yards that I shoot. Oh, yeah, man. He got one, and I missed it. Some technique that I'm missing. now. It's going to be in October. We'll finish up