What was the genesis of this project?
Lennon: My other band, the GOASTT
[the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger], had
been touring for about two years. We
wanted to finish touring because we
needed a break, but then we got this
call that Primus wanted us to come out.
We were, like, “Man, we’ve got to go
out for this.” Even though it felt like
we were done, we were such big Primus
fans. We wound up hanging out with
Les and his band and becoming friends.
It was one of those tours where we
became friends really quickly. I jammed
on “Southbound Pachyderm” at one of
their shows, and I think Les liked what
I played, because we wound up writing
songs together. The genesis was really
on tour.
How did your songwriting
collaboration work?
58 PREMIER GUITAR SEPTEMBER 2016
Lennon: We discussed topics before.
We’d been texting each other links to
articles and cool stuff that might be cool
topical ideas, but we didn’t have a lot of
pre-written stuff. I went out to Sonoma
and every day we would see if we could
come up with something. We’d have
something fleshed out from the night
before—one of us would come in with
some chord changes or some lyrics—then
we would work it. We did a song every
day or two for about two weeks and we
were done. It happened really fast.
Claypool: He showed up and we started
throwing ideas around. I think the first
thing we worked on was a song called
“Captain Lariat,” which I had roughed.
I had the lyrics and together we fleshed
the thing out. That was basically how we
got up and running. He came in with
something and I massaged it a bit and
then I would come in with something.
Usually, he would show up a little later in
the day, so I would already be working in
the studio.
What instruments did you play on
the album?
Claypool: I played drums on one track,
which is odd, because usually when I do
one of these projects of mine I’m playing
most of the percussion and the drums.
But Sean had a certain feel that I thought
lent itself to what we were going for,
which was the more sort of throwback
retro-psychedelic thing. I played some
keys and he played some keys, but
basically he played guitar and I did bass.
We both did vocals and he played most
of the drums.
What did Sean bring to the table? What
are his strengths as a guitarist and
collaborator?
Photo by Douglas Mason
“My own son
was a bass
player,” says
Claypool, “and
he switched
from bass to
banjo because
he got tired of
people saying,
'Oh you’re Les
Claypool’s son,
hmmm….' And
that’s on a very
small scale
compared to
what Sean has to
deal with.”
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