By Marc Finn
Nashville’s own Diarrhea Planet are one of AP’s favorite live acts, and have been for quite some time. The sextet just smoked the Sinclair along with fellow Infinity Cat labelmates JEFF The Brotherhood on Friday night, mixing their usual balls-out hair-metal-meets-extremely-effective-pop crowd favorites with some extremely promising new material. Their upcoming EP, Aliens in the Outfield will be released on Infinity Cat on November 17th.
We got the chance to chat with guitarist/singer Jordan Smith, guitarist Brent Toler, guitarist Emmett Miller, and drummer/singer Casey Weissbuch before the show, deep in the bowels of the Sinclair. After some initial banter as to which one of Brent’s nicknames was better (the finalists were “Buttocks” and “Bodekai”), we embarked on a near-45 minute interview touching on everything from the new songs to “Walmart crowds” to Little Miss Sunshine. And of course, some crazy road stories.
AP: So you guys have already released three tracks from the upcoming EP. What else can we expect?
Jordan: Four, actually! ‘Spooners’ is also on the EP.
AP: Oh, cool! New version?
Jordan: Yeah, much cleaner. Yeah there’s one more track that’ll be debuting Nov. 4, and then there may or may not be another surprise with someone’s dad on there.
AP: So out of the three tracks so far —
[At this point, we’re interrupted by an unknown man referred to as ‘Big Time’, specifically ‘Big Time Green,’ as well as a few others. Instagram accounts are discussed in great detail.]
AP: As for the tracks out so far, I’ve been listening to them a ton, and I love how just crazy fucking diverse they are. Heat Wave is an awesome, shredding track like —
Emmett: Yeah man, we killed it. [all laugh]
AP: Yeah, you guys did a great job. I loved the video for Platinum Girls, and Bamboo Curtain is so 90s, somebody — I think Stereogum — said Weezer, and [Casey's] singing on that is really cool. It’s just all so diverse for a six-track EP.
Jordan: The next track is completely different as well. There’s really no two tracks on the EP that sound the same — the next one is completely different from anything we’ve ever done.
AP: How so?
Casey: It sounds relatively similar to ‘Skeleton Head’
Jordan: Yeah, maybe. It’s slower, bigger. The difference though is it’s like —
[At this point, the door opens and we are interrupted again by a few people who all agree that the green room is tiny. A woman named Louisa — who will join the band on guitar during ‘Ghost With a Boner’ later that evening — doesn’t buy Jordan’s insistence that the “DP Fitness Program” is the reason why we’re all able to fit comfortably. Emmett chimes in with the line of the night: “Whatever, Louisa. We’re too busy hitting our macros to notice how small this green room is.”]
Jordan: But yeah, it’s different in that it’s much more open than any song we’ve done. It’s very big, a lot of space in it, and it’s kind of like Skeleton Head in that it’s an emotional topic, but it’s very different — I mean, it’s got quiet moments [Casey: It’s the closest thing we have.”] — it’s got a long intro. It was our first attempt to try to write a song that’s like a big radio song. It’s something that’s really accessible to like, somebody who would only buy our music at Walmart. But without making it totally stupid. Yeah, it’s different. One for the Walmart crowd.
AP: I didn’t know you guys had a Walmart crowd, but that’s pretty cool.
Jordan: I guess it was my attempt to write a commercially viable song, something that anybody could hear and say, “Oh, I like this.” And also people who like old DP and people who find us too abrasive, who [normally] would be turned off by our name —
Brent: Or that we’re too handsome. [Everyone laughs.]
Casey: Song’s still a bummer though. It’s really good.
AP: So, you guys tour a lot. Allston Pudding hosted your show about two months ago, and boom, now you’re back. Where do you think you rank in terms of number of tours, compared with other bands?
Jordan: Honestly, the only bands I know that tour as hard as we do are Kopecky Family Band, Natural Child and — [a minor argument amongst Brent and Casey resolves itself: "The So So Glos.”] — So So Glos, yeah. But outside of those four, I can’t really think of anyone else that’s out like us, where every couple of weeks we’re coming back through the same region.
Casey: Desert Noises tour a lot. But it’s really rare that bands tour that much, but we’re just like, “If we’re gonna do it, might as well really do it.” What’s the point?
Jordan: Part of it is that we don’t wanna work day jobs. So it’s like, you can not work day jobs and pay to have a life by just touring a little bit more. But it also shows in the turnouts of the shows too, because more and more people hear about you and they call their friends in different regions, and it’s building it, where it goes from less and less of the small markets — where nobody’s there — to where there’s a solid turnout in every town.
“Jordan just opened that with his belly button. That was amazing.” — Emmett Miller, guitarist
AP: So you’ve noticed the towns you hit again and again, the amount of fans grows, and you’re moving on to bigger venues and stuff like that?
Jordan: Yeah, totally.
Brent: Yeah, not Salt Lake City though.
Jordan: [laughs] Yeah, not SLC.
[At this point, another interruption by a friendly man who offers the band members a place to stay, and me a chair. I decline. He may be a band member or a show organizer, I can’t tell. I change my recorder’s batteries in the meantime. I find out that one member of DP is deathly allergic to cats. The Sinclair also has great showers, apparently]
AP: So you guys and Jeff The Brotherhood are obviously from Nashville, and every time I say that, people are skeptical because Nashville has such an entrenched, historical sound. Do you guys think that Infinity Cat is part of a growing style, so to speak, or are you guys really the only ones doing this?
Casey: No, there’s a ton.
Jordan: Yeah, it’s been there pretty much since I moved there in 2007 [The others agree.] It started finally getting national attention around 2009, 2010 when a lot of national media started covering it. And now it’s a spot where a lot of rock bands from all over the US are moving, because they want to be part of it. And it used to be very cheap to live there, but now with everybody moving, the prices are blowing up. Every two months you can go look at an apartment that’ll be one price, and then — hang on, man —
[At this point, Jordan nonchalantly opens a beer bottle with his teeth. Everyone else laughs and goes, “Damn.”]
Jordan: You guys have seen me do that like, a thousand times.
Emmett: [into the recorder] Jordan just opened that with his belly button. That was amazing.
[The guys laugh at how scared I look. Really, I’m just happy I saw that.]
AP: So what are some of the more homegrown bands, then?
Jordan: JEFF the Brotherhood, Natural Child, Pujol —
Emmett: Music Band! [Everyone agrees.] They’re about to come up.
[The guys explain to me that Music Band is a band, and that Emmett isn’t talking crazy.]
Brent: Music Band is like if Natural Child kept going in the direction of their first 7-inch [Jordan: “Totally.”] Really straight-ahead rock. Pure rock.
Casey: It’s three people, and they all sing. They set up in a line onstage — guitar, bass, drums.
Brent: Hilarious dudes, too. Hilarious stage presence.
Jordan: Probably some of the best stage banter ever.
Casey: Probably the best.
Emmett: I love their music, I love their band, but I can’t tell which I like more: the ambience or the decor, their banter or their…or their song. Both impeccable.
AP: That’s a hell of an endorsement.
Jordan: The country music kind of seeps into everything, and everyone has a huge respect for it. But the scene — I mean obviously it’s like a multimillion-dollar industry in Nashville — at the same time, our rock scene has grown so much and it’s so fresh, that from the standpoint of a person watching a show, there’s a noticeable difference in the level of skill and playing and songcraft.
And it’s been like that for a long time, but now people are starting to catch on, and everybody’s moving there. As a result, the cost of living is going up. Three months after an apartment goes up for sale, it’s up an extra $200. It’s been like that for awhile. So it’s probably not too much longer until Nashville’s no longer the “it” city, because the thing that drives people there won’t be there much longer. But it rocks, Nashville rocks. Literally and figuratively.
Casey: Have you ever seen Detroit Rock City?
[The guys explain to me that Rock City is not a KISS documentary, but an actual cave. This took way longer than it should have. We joke about how Dave Grohl should move the mixing board from Sound City into a cave.]
AP: Have you guys run into Dave Grohl? I feel like you all would get along.
“Most of the time, at least 90 percent of the time, I would rather have to win over a crowd than show up and already have them in our hands, because then it’s just like, you know what to expect. But that’s not as fun.” — Casey Weissbach, drummer
Jordan: We’ve hung out with Foo Fighters but not Dave. Taylor [Hawkins, drummer] and Nate [Mendel, bassist] are the only two I’ve hung out with. Taylor knows more about music than probably anyone I’ve ever met, and Nate is just the coolest, raddest dude. They’re both rad dudes.
Brent: It was funny, Nate came to our Chicago show, because they were working on their Sonic Highways thing, and Nate caught us in Nashville a few weeks later, because they were recording in Nashville.
Jordan: Yeah, I walked into a bar and they were eating dinner. [All laugh]. Like, “oh, cool.” So I ate with them for a couple hours. Cool dudes.
So the tour’s been going for about a week now, right?
Casey: Yeah. Honestly, every one of the shows has been different. I think it’s not just the shows themselves, the venues have all been totally different and weird, size-wise. I might have had — and this might have been different for me as the drummer — but last night in Portland, Maine wasn’t packed.
Jordan: It was probably the most poorly-attended show of the tour.
Casey: But it was really fun! Everyone had such a good time, and we got offstage at the end of the night, and everybody was just genuinely, generally psyched at how it went.
AP: That’s sick.
Casey: It was like, there were all these bros in the front going super hard the whole time. It was awesome.
Jordan: It was one of those shows where you kinda force the crowd to have fun. They start out sitting still, and by the end they’re —
Emmett: They have no choice.
AP: So what’s been the best crowd moment of this tour so far?
Jordan: I think the rowdiest crowd was probably Death by Audio in Brooklyn [The others agree.]
Brent: [They] pulled the ceiling fan off.
AP: Oh, shit.
Emmett: We crowd-surfed someone back out to put it back up. [laughs]
Casey: Most of the time, at least 90 percent of the time, I would rather have to win over a crowd than show up and already have them in our hands, because then it’s just like, you know what to expect. But that’s not as fun. I’d rather be the underdog and show up, and have everyone be like ‘wah’ but by the end of the show they’re super excited, and you know you’ve made a bunch of fans. I’d absolutely rather have that.
How difficult is it to keep track of where everybody in the band is before a show? [Everyone laughs before the question is even over.] Have you guys ever accidentally left someone behind, like Home Alone?
Brent: The closest was at SXSW this past year, because Evan [Bird, DP guitarist] was doing double duty with our friend’s band, No Regrets Coyote. So he had it all sorted out, schedule-wise. But they went over with their set, and we got bumped up. So he was on his skateboard with his guitar in a backpack, and I’m like, “Oh god, he’s not gonna make it.” Everyone was like, “Dude, you gotta text Evan right now,” and I’m like, “He’s probably coming!” I couldn’t get ahold of him. Like, we’re getting ready to start the set, and he rolls up on his skateboard, throws up a little bit and he’s like, “Alright, let’s do this.” [Everyone laughs.]
Emmett: My favorite was that he comes stomping in, and just throws the skateboard in some random direction and just keeps walking toward the stage. [laughs.] Just like, “whatever.”
Brent: He was on fire that day.
[We talk a little bit more about the SXSW festival, including this year’s plans, and the slow takeover of the fest by bigger corporations.]
AP: I guess the closest major festival to Nashville is Bonnaroo?
Casey: We almost had one this year, but yeah.
Jordan: There were two bigger festivals that they were gonna try to do in Nashville, but they both kinda fell through.
AP: That’s so weird. You’d think that Nashville proper would have something, right?
Jordan: Yeah.
Brent: They’ve got stuff like the Freakin’ Weekend. They did Music on the Riverfront, Nashville Dancin’ [Casey: “That was fun.”] Those are like smaller things, though.
Casey: Honestly man, I’m okay with not — oh there’s one at [Vanderbilt University] Rites of Spring, that’s a big one — but I’m okay with not having a giant one in Nashville.
Jordan: We already have bad enough drivers as it is.
AP: Any crazy shit that happened while driving recently?
Jordan: Our turbo went out so it took us ten minutes to get up to 60 miles per hour. [Laughs] And we felt like jerks, we just turned the music up so we couldn’t hear all the horns honking. Take the pressure off
Emmett: We had to put the alert lights on and like drive 20 miles per hour going up a bridge.
AP: What’s that one indie movie where they have to push the VW bus on the highway and the horn’s broken?
All: Little Miss Sunshine!
Casey: I was actually thinking about that when we were driving, like, “Man, I’m that asshole today.” But it’s all good now, we got it fixed. That van…money pit, dude.
You can catch Diarrhea Planet in Boston again on November 30 at Northeastern University. Their EP, “Aliens in the Outfield” will be out in November on Infinity Cat records.
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