Austinist: Fun Fun Fun Fest Artist Interview: Dead Milkmen's Dean Clean
Saturday, November 8
Waterloo Park (403 E. 15th)
Stage Three | 8:45 p.m. - 9:45 p.m.
[info] | [tickets]
This is the first time you've played since the memorial show held for Dave Schulthise in 2004. Was it a hard decision to make to play again? What made you decide to come to Fun Fun Fest particularly?
Graham [Williams] was persistent and relentless about getting us to play. We love Austin and haven't been here in at least 12-15 years....Looking forward to the great food, music and seeing our friends in Glass Eye -- Brian [Beattie] produced three of our records in Austin.
Do you have anything in particular you like to do or see in Austin? Are you going to have time to poke around the city at all?
We'll have a little time to hang - maybe check out some after parties. And looking forward to the food - Is the Magnolia Cafe still around? Do they still serve good breakfasts?
Magnolia is definitely still around, and they're still making breakfast. We're big fans of the cornmeal pancakes, personally...
Related to the above, are there any bands playing Fun Fun Fun Fest that you definitely want to see?
Oh yeah -- there are a ton for great bands - we played some early shows in our career with Killdozer, ALL and DOA so it will be great to see those guys. I'm looking forward to checking out Deerhoof and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and I'd like to see St. Vincent and the Annuals too. I'm sure I'll catch a bunch of great bands...
Dead Milkmen always traded in humor. What keeps your songs from being novelty songs? And, what do you think the role of humor in punk can or should be?
We also included some attempts at social commentary and poking fun at popular culture never goes out of style.
What's the weirdest place you've ever heard your own music?
A year or two ago I was out running errands and saw that Old Navy was having a sale and I wandered in for the first time looking for jeans or whatever and as I walked through the door I thought I recognized the voice of the singer on the music playing in the store. It took me a moment to realize it was Joe singing “Punk Rock Girl.” Very weird. I think they get music on CDs every month to play and we happened to be in the mix that month. I didn't try to get a discount by saying to the checkout person "Hey! that's my band you're hearing!"
As a Philadelphia band that was always very strongly associated with that city, how did you find that the city influenced your work? Are there any current Philadelphia bands that you're a fan of or would recommend?
I'm a fan of Philly's Capitol Years who in fact recently backed up Daniel Johnston when he did some shows here on the East Coast. I also like the Spinto Band who are playing the Fest -- I've seen them once before and they were great.
Early in your career, the Dead Milkmen self-released a lot of work on cassette, a format that allowed a lot of bands to put out their music cheaply and was a huge shift from vinyl and the other formats available previously. What do you all think of the shift toward digitization and what it's allowing bands to do? Are there things that you'd like to see happen with the band's catalog that haven't been done yet?
I think we actually make more royalty money now on digital downloads than CDs -- not that we're getting rich or anything! The shift to digital is great on another level too in that now bands can get some pretty reasonable recording gear and actually DIY record a lot easier that we could back then.
It would be cool to get a song in a "major motion picture" - we've had a few in some smaller movies but even writing a new song would be interesting...
Is punk still culturally and politically relevant? And, if so, what would you say is the project of punk at this point in time?
I still think its relevant related to the DIY scene and bands recording and releasing there own stuff makes more and more sense. It also offers an alternative to the corporate crap still being spewed out.
Given the dog loyal commitment of your fans, and the amount of excitement generated by a reunion show, how do you feel about the legacy of Dead Milkmen?
Its great to see the fans still support us and hear of younger fans - fans who weren't around during our active period still discovering us and liking our music.
