INTERVIEW: Atom Ellis from Dieselhed
- Matthew Carlin
In theory, it sounds like a concerted effort to shun fame and fortune: make the first album for your new label a collection of older, mellower tunes that have been kicking around your set list for years. But for the members of Dieselhed it made perfect sense. Bong Load Records honchos Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf thought so too. And given their track record with once-obscure songwriting folks like Beck and Elliot Smith, their musical instincts are usually pretty good.
A couple days before crossing the pond to tour Europe opening for Cake and Fountains of Wayne, bassist Atom Ellis kindly felt like "telling the truth about this corrupt band once and for all." From his abode in San Francisco, with a beer in his hand, Atom described the humble--well, okay, drunken--origins of Dieselhed, which included an earlier, pre-Ellis incarnation actually called Dieselhed in which the band played "Hank Williams and Black Sabbath covers mostly" and some other Humboldt County bands with names like Eggly Bagel Face and Brent's TV. Despite several annoying music journalist-type questions, Atom was happy to answer everything, all the while exuding a true enthusiasm and love for music rarely seen in "the biz."
Consumable Online: So how did Dieselhed come to be?
Atom Ellis: One day, after I just got off a bad tour with a band I was in--it was an early romantic era band that was trying to introduce the French six chord way too early--I was drinking in a local bar to forget some old girlfriend. I saw a guy I used to go to high school with, Virgil [Shaw, guitarist/singer], who introduced me to Zac [Holtzman, guitarist/singer], and he asked me if I wanted to go back to his house later that night and play some music. Like a drunk guy I said "yes," but when I got back home and realized how dizzy I was I realized there was no way I was gonna drag my amp and shit up to his house. So I decided I'd just bring this washtub bass I had just built up there and have them laugh me out of the place. The funny part was they were waiting for me with home-made fretless banjos. So completely by accident we started a jug band called Hoof.
C.O. Every article about the band mentions some extended trip to Alaska, so where does that fit in?
A.E. After Hoof played a few art shows and breakfast places to like 17 people total, Virgil and Zac decided to make some real money in the fishing biz and split for Alaska for about 6 months or something. You'll have to ask them how they did cause they never told anyone. I still haven't figured out if they're embarrassed for not making anything or they just don't want me to try and borrow money from them. When they came back they found that Danny [Heifetz, drums] and Shon [McAlinn, guitar had moved back to the Bay Area and decided to give "Dieselhed" a second chance. They had another bass player named Rich Engle and I actually went to see them a couple times and thought they were funny. But it wasn't that funny, 'cause now with Hoof on the back burner and my solo career sputtering, all I could do was show up to their gigs and yell "You suck shit!" Eventually, my heckling must of got to Rich who took an extensive vacation to South America, and that's when I made my move.
C.O. How does the songwriting work?
A.E. Typically, Zac or Virgil will bring in anything between a vague idea to a pretty completed song and we build it up from there. Sometimes it's almost only lyrics and we get lots to work on. Other times practice is spent convincing Virgil that his song sounds great without me and Danny banging all over it. We've tried other formulas but I think that one works the best.
C.O. How was it touring with Link Wray?
A.E. Playing with Link has honestly been one of the most fun things I've done in music. Not because he's "LINK WRAY--GUITAR LEGEND," but because you can tell he still feels what he's doing. He loves to play. I told Link, after a tour or two, that I was scared before I first met him that he'd be a tired old fart that was just going through the motions for the money. I even thought about taking CPR before the tour. Man, was I wrong. I found myself just trying to keep up with the guy. He's punk as fuck. He just turns up his guitar as loud as it will go and rocks. He has 10 times the energy of most of the people I know in their 20s and rocks harder too.
C.O. It seems like you guys genuinely enjoy playing. Is it a conscious effort to keep it from becoming a job?
A.E. It's really simple. Basic physics--you don't need Francis Bacon around to explain--if you've been in a band as long as us and your making about as much money at it as us, you're doing it for fun.
C.O. So, do you like touring or do you prefer playing in the Bay area?
A.E. Playing at home is always fun cause there's usually more people at the shows, but you kinda get the feeling like you're just spinning your wheels unless you reach new audiences one way or another. Plus, I love the fucking road itself. Truck stops, national parks, thrift stores. Oh man. See, I'm getting excited. Dieselhed has always been a fun band to tour with 'cause everyone likes to play games too. We always have some baseball gloves and bats laying around the van and a soccer ball and a basketball. Touring rules.
C.O. What prompted the move to Bong Load? Are you still friends with (former label) Amarillo Records?
A.E. I will always love Amarillo Records. Gregg Turkington, the Amarillo prez, is a slimy crook, but he's nice about it. He'll steal all your money, double it at the craps table in Vegas, then laugh about it 4 years later and pay you back in pennies--out of the rolls. You have to admire that. I can't say we're friends, but I admire him. We did like 6 releases--3 LPs, I think--on Amarillo. For us moving to Bong Load meant mostly a change of scenery, to get our shit heard by a new audience. And a chance to work with Rob and Tom in the studio, which every band should get to do at least once in a perfect world.
C.O. What made you decide to make the first Bong Load album older, slower tunes, rather than more raucous new ones?
A.E. Those were just surplus slow songs that we had laying around. When we would go through the song selection process on previous recording projects we'd be sitting there with about 8 mid-tempo to fast numbers and about 15 slow ones and only half the slow ones would get on. The other ones--i.e. "Elephant Rest Home"--didn't seem weak to us or anything, but we were concerned with people falling asleep. That's kinda what the title was about, like all these songs went to rest together but they weren't exactly dead. It was making us sad to think that some of our favorite songs were getting left in the dust so we recorded them at a friend's studio. When Tom and Rob heard them as kind of a demo they said "We want to release that." Once I even got nervous about the idea of releasing the "sleepy" record and called Tom at like 2 A.M. asking him, "Man, are you sure we should do this as our first release with you guys? It's gonna give people the wrong idea... I mean, ah... errr... um..." And he'd be calming me down, "Relax, it's exactly the kinda Dieselhed album I'd want to release first." Turns out it's definitely the album I'm most proud of.
C.O. You've played a lot of shows with Cake, how has that been?
A.E. You know, lot's of people want to write Cake off as a "radio band." I know I did before really hearing them live. But if you do that, you just might miss out on something good. Maybe I'm just speaking like a guy locked in a closet, 'cause I kinda am--no cable, no MTV, and I don't work as a painter or carpenter so I don't listen to AOR radio all day. I just figured "Oh, Cake, they're that band with that pop song on the radio, right? They're probably not my thing." It was only after really listening to them play a few times that I thought to myself, "Hey, this fucker--later I found out his name was John--writes really good fucking songs!" And I can also watch Todd, their drummer, play all night. He's world class, man.
C.O. So how does the Cake crowd usually react to the wonder that is Dieselhed?
A.E. Their crowd is really young and actually listens. It's kinda neat. During the first shows we played with Cake I was just waiting for the crowd to boo us off the stage, cause I know our sound is not exactly mainstream or anything. But they didn't. Sometimes they're quiet during the first few songs like a hung jury, but they're listening and often they end up really liking it. That's all you can ever really hope for when you're an unknown band playing for a larger band's audience--is that the crowd listens. Then it's up to you, man. I must say younger crowds are, generally speaking, a lot more prone to listen to shit they're not used to than older crowds. And I can say that cause I'm an older guy, 33. Older crowds, generally speaking, seem to already know what they want to hear, and if you don't play it or something similar--that's it, you lost 'em.
C.O. I know Danny has various other musical projects; do you and the rest of the band play in any other bands or have any other things you do?
A.E. Most of us all do other projects. I think that's good for bands. I've been lucky to be able to only play music for a while now. It started off as an experiment and has lasted for about two-and-a-half years so far. Danny and I do the Link thing occasionally--we'll be going out on a West coast/Southwest thing three days after we get back from Europe. And the Bong Load guys have also been using us as a rhythm section for some recording projects--Carl Rux, Richard Thompson. But my main thing has been making music and SFX for video games in my room. It's also been a lot more fulfilling than I thought it might. All my Nino Rota/Ennio Morricone/Bernard Hermann/Lalo Schiffrin/Goblin fantasies come true. And it's kinda leading to other stuff as well--people asking about music for their indie films and stuff. Bunny Ranch Studios, I call it. My life makes things hell for my tax guy.
C.O. So, are you psyched about going to Europe?
A.E. Never even been over the pond, can't wait. I want to compare truck stops.
