Chicago – Over the last several years, Nashville’s music scene has been reborn. The city that was once known as a Country Mecca has now become the new hub for modern music, from punk and garage rock to indie and pop. It’s become the home for big dogs like Kings of Leon, Jack White, and The Black Keys, but it’s also birthed some amazingly talented up-and-coming bands like The Apache Relay, Daniel Ellsworth & The Great Lakes, Moon Taxi, JEFF the Brotherhood, and Bully. One Nashville band that truly stands out from the rest is six-piece Diarrhea Planet. Yes, there’s the name, but with four guitars and a mix of rock and roll, heavy metal, punk, and plenty of other genres, Diarrhea Planet delivers a sweet dose of ear candy and an even better visual fix with their crazy, mind-blowing live performance.
Best New Bands caught up with the members of Diarrhea Planet before their recent show at Chicago’s Lincoln Hall. We sat down with guitarists Jordan Smith, Brent Toler, Emmett Miller, and Evan Bird, bassist Mike Boyle, and drummer Ian Bush for a serious talk about their latest music, how their friend Ben Todd helped make the Nashville scene noteworthy, and the current state of the music industry.
Last year you released the EP Aliens in the Outfield. I assume you’re working on a full-length?
Jordan Smith: Correct!
Can you talk about it or is it top secret? (Laughs)
JS: Yeah! It’s very much right now a work in progress. (laughs) But I guess for me, at least, my mentality with the whole thing is kind of jumping back into where we left off from I’m Rich [Beyond Your Wildest Dreams], where’s there’s a little bit more exploration in that. There’s a little more adult [material]– at least on my end of things, I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I was trying things out – and I think at least the only thing I can say for the stuff that I’ve been working on is it’s a lot more purposeful. There’s more of an idea for creating a world and bringing somebody into it, listening to it, and doing that intentionally as opposed to stumbling upon happy songwriting accidents. Saying like, “This is what I want to do, I want this song to be exactly this, and then doing that,” as opposed to, “I have no idea where this riff came from, I’m just going to turn it into something and make it work.”
Brent Toler: I definitely agree that I’m Rich was a happy accident. We went from demos to rough mixes in two weeks or something like that. This time, we’re taking our time, like Jordan said, and trying to make something a little more coherent and intentional.
JS: I think part of it too, is like, I know if you go back and listen to our previous two records, I really love Loose Jewels. I’m Rich I love too, but it felt like Loose Jewels is more true to us and more true to what we do. So I know one of the things we talked about is taking more of the hard-hitting form we used in that record, like the more punk and shred-y stuff, you know ‘cause that’s what I think we excel at. We can do mid-tempo songs, too, but when we’re playing live, that explosive energy manifests itself most successful when we’re playing music like that. So it’s like trying to make a return to form and have a more mature expansion of that idea.
Let’s talk about some of the songs on Aliens in the Outfield. What is “Spooners” about?
JS: “Spooners” is actually an old song that I wrote when I was like 18 or 19. “Spooners” is essentially about just not fitting in at Belmont University, about how they wanted to come in and say this is how it is, this is how you do it, this is the only way, and coming from a background that was completely different from what they were preaching, I felt like they just didn’t understand where I was coming from. That song is kind of about being thrust into that world and not fitting in. That huge commercial, music giant, you know, forever changing, just a bunch of bullshit.
Okay, with “Heat Wave,” I picture you guys locked up in a sweltering apartment, with the sound of a cheap box fan inspiring a beat, which led to a jam session. This is probably not the case. (laughs)
JS: I completely love that. I absolutely love that! (laughs)
SH: (laughs) But what actually inspired “Heat Wave?”
JS: “Heat Wave” was about a friend in college who…umm…“Heat Wave” is about two things. First off, it’s about one of my best friends in college, who I used to take to punk shows. She grew up never really listening to punk, and the first part of that song is about the first time I pushed her to crowd surf at a house show at this really amazing punk house we used to have called Glenn Danzig’s in Nashville.
Emmett Miller: Glenn Danzig’s was a magical place where you’d get a couple good [shows] a month, oftentimes on weeknights, with great touring bands. Our buddy Ben Todd, who worked there, was instrumental in building up the Nashville underground rock scene, that bands like Jacuzzi Boys, and ugh, didn’t the Black Lips play there?
JS: No, no, the joke about Black Lips playing there was that the only way that Ben said they’d play at Glenn Danzig’s House was if they agreed to build a gigantic cage around the stage, the “Rage Cage,” so that people couldn’t mess with them. (laughs)
BT: Yeah, Ben really laid the framework for [Nashville] bands to go on and tour nationally because he made so many connections, all around the country, bringing bands through, and bringing the spotlight to Nashville.
JS: And weirdly enough, leading into the second half of that song, it’s actually about Ben, and Ben died a couple of years ago – he was a really good friend of all of ours – he died while we were out on the road. We never really got to talk to him before he died because we had been out for a long time, and so the second half, the more serious quiet verse, you know, the quiet part, was basically me wanting to apologize and say I’m sorry that I wasn’t there, and that I really wish there were a lot of things that I could have said to him before he died. In the end of that song, the instrumental part was written the way that it was sort of to be the ultimate crowd surfing experience because that was such a huge part of Ben’s presence and personality at shows, his crowd surfing. He was the master! All and all, that song is a homage to Glenn Danzig’s House, and my memories there.
I found out about you guys because I’m a music photographer, so I follow fellow music photographers, including Pooneh Ghana. I saw photos of you on her instagram, which were so awesome, they made me want to one, check out your music, two, see your live show, and three, photograph you! Which then made me think about how much the internet has changed the way we access and discover music now as opposed to say when I was growing up, when we depended more on record stores, friends who were in the know, and checking out live shows. Not that these still aren’t factors, but with instagram, Twitter, Spotify, etc. a band can almost instantly grow a following. What are your feelings about how the internet has changed the music industry and the DIY scene?
JS: I honestly really love the Internet as a resource for DIY musicians to get their music out there, and young bands that don’t have a publicist, who don’t have a label, they don’t have anyone working for them except for themselves. I absolutely love that aspect of the Internet. What I absolutely loathe about the Internet, and this sort of thing, is that it has completely perpetuated a throwaway culture. Like, everything about music is just so throwaway now. There’s just a new whatever, every second, and it makes having a career in music so much harder because there’s so much static. And I’m not saying that everybody doesn’t deserve a chance, because everybody does, but there’s so much static and chatter and so many changing trends now, that it’s impossible to keep up with. And it’s almost impossible to become something lasting because everything comes out and immediately two months later, it’s thrown away. And I think it’s completely ridiculous too how with this sort of culture has come this horrible habit of people just immediately throwing a label on a band as soon as they come out, saying this band is the next this, when that band has only one record out and has no track record. You don’t even know where they’re going! It’s just kind of a bunch of crap! It’s been wonderful, but it’s made a mess, too. I feel like the aspect of paying your dues in a band and the excitement of growing into yourselves as a musicians and learning to say what you really want to say have gone by the wayside with the throwaway culture and instant gratification. You don’t place values on records anymore because we just download them. I’m just as guilty, too. I download records all the time.
I think part of that has to do with the economy, too. So many people want music, but can’t afford to pay for music.
JS: Well, I’m all for free music because number one, it’s impossible to make money from record sales anymore because there’s only one percent of artists who are selling enough records to make substantial money that they can call income… The other thing that’s driving me crazy is – I’m seeing this all over the place right now with our friends and we’ve had this on our heads – with all these changing trends constantly blowing up and something different every second, you have to choose: do I want to be successful or do I want to make something that lasts that’s important, and there are all these voices whispering in your ears. Majors can’t even figure it out anymore, They’re constantly telling their artists to change, and they’ll change an artist, change an artist, and change an artist. Keep shelving record after record after record and then they just drop an artist and totally burn these people out because of this culture. Nobody can commit to anything anymore.
BT: One thing I struggle with, is I feel like we’re losing the ability to hear things in their own context or in their purest form, when you can cross-reference them to a million other things that are at your fingertips, and this goes for songs or like I’m guilty of: pieces of musical equipment, like if you want to hear an amp or something, you can go on YouTube and reference it to a million others, without really hearing it. Or like a song, you’re not just hearing a song, you’re hearing a song in the context of all those in history. You can pull it up on Spotify immediately, where before you would reference it to something in your own music library.
Evan Bird: Just going with what Jordan was saying, it’s bittersweet because on one hand, a band like us might not be able to exist in this day and age without the kick start that something like MySpace, or facebook or Soundcloud or anything like that would’ve given us. Even to this day – I’m sure I’ll say this later tonight – somebody will say, “I don’t have enough money for your record, but I think you guys are really cool!” I usually say, “If you want it that bad, go steal it and keep coming to the shows. I’d rather build a relationship with you as a fan than worry about selling you something.” That being said, I can’t eat if I keep giving my music away for free. I can’t sustain the band using a business model that requires that much sacrifice and that kind of expectation from a listener or even from me. I’m curious to see what my answer will be to this question in ten years. I think right now, maybe it’s too early to call. We, and most of our peers, are at a level where it’s us versus major labels. It’s us versus the Internet. It’s us versus piracy or whatever. I don’t think it’s always going to be that way. I’m not sure this model can sustain on its own.
I feel like in general, the arts are so devalued in our culture that nobody wants to pay for any type of art.
EB: Well, nobody wants to pay for anything!
Nobody has any money to spend.
EB: It’s not that people don’t want to pay for music. People don’t have enough money to pay for anything. If I don’t have enough money to go eat at the restaurant I want to eat at, why on earth would I buy a record! I don’t want to pay to go see a movie if it’s going to be 12 bucks. I don’t necessary want to spend any money, if I don’t have to, so how can I cheat? I don’t think you can blame people for that. And I don’t think you can put a whole lot of credence in artists being surprised when that happens.
You’ve grown a lot in popularity over the last two years, partially because of the internet. Has the increased attention affected you guys and your ambitions as a band?
Mike Boyle: We are treading on really thin ice. The pressure has just been unbelievable. I’m sure you can tell. (everyone laughs)
EM: I don’t know what we’ve become, we’re a shadow of our former selves. (laughs)
I read that when you started out, you didn’t take things too seriously and people didn’t take you too seriously, but now that’s clearly starting to change.
JS: I’d say one thing I’ve noticed, there’s a clear pattern where every time we release something and grow a little bit, there’s an increased amount of chatter that you have to deal with, a lot of static, whether it’s pressure you put on yourself or it’s like you read things online. It’s easy to let those things get in and rattle your head. There’s a period of time, in between each record, after we put it out, where you just feel kind of lost, looking for direction. One of the biggest traps too, that I’ve thought a lot about this last year, is that it’s really easy once you start experiencing some success, to shift your focus from creating what is good art, something that is important to you, and pushing forward with a mission. Your shift focuses from that to simply sustaining your success and increasing your success, so instead of staying true to what you know you want to do, you start playing these mind games. You hear a lot of bands talking, “Yeah, we’re just trying to write something more commercial or something more poppy, something for the radio.” We’ve totally talked about that before, and you go through a period of time where that’s a conversation. I feel like for me, I always come back to the same place, where that pressure increases to the point where I’m writing material that is just shit. Then I realize I got to ditch it and get back to the zone and start writing what I love, what I want to write, and what I know that these dudes can totally destroy playing. As opposed to saying, “How the hell can we get this radio station to play us or these people to listen to us?” You know, it’s just like keep truckin’ and staying true to ourselves. I think of this really awesome quote by Ian MacKaye. He said something like you think of major label aspirations because you want the money. You want to be comfortable. You get tired of sleeping in a basement. You get tired of sleeping in a van. You get tired of not having a car and having clothes that are worn out. He said something amazing: Somebody was talking about an “us versus them” mentality, and he was like, “It’s not us versus the majors. I do my work despite them.”
Diarrhea Planet are still working hard, despite it all. They’re currently on tour. Head over to the band’s facebook page for a list of dates, including scheduled performances at Sasquatch Festival and Free Press Summer Fest.
Press photo of Diarrhea Planet by Wrenne Evans – Live photo of Diarrhea Planet by Sarah Hess
Sarah Hess
After attending The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Sarah went on to study education at Dominican University, earning a degree in history. When not teaching, writing, or taking in a show, she is most likely to be found with a camera to her eye or hanging out in a darkroom.
You can follow Sarah Hess on twitter at @Sarahhasanh and view her music photography on her website: smhimaging.com.
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