By Keith Walsh
From their first release, 2015’s “flyzzz,” Mr. Phylzzz has delivered rock and roll from the outskirts of insanity. In part one of my conversation with singer/songwriter/guitarist Clinton Jacob and drummer/songwriter Danny Sein, I discover a work ethic and sober mindset at the root of Mr. Phylzzz’ manic, restlessly intelligent sound. We talk about the creation of their new album, Fat Chance and their ongoing tour with Melvins. (My review of ‘Fat Chance’ is here.)
Popular Culture Beat: You guys are locked in on this new album, Fat Chance — the rhythmic play between you guys is incredible. You guys been playing together for a couple years — what did it take to get to that point? Was it more improvised or was it more planned out?
Clinton Jacob : It’s a mix of both. I mean i it’s improvising and it’s also just like a lot of practice. When we got together, we both moved to Chicago. I was looking for a new drummer for the project and Danny was just constantly posting drum videos at the time. So when I showed him the stuff — he was working just as hard as I was. So it’s kind of that consistent hard work and also getting good at just doing things on the fly. So, yeah, I think a lot of it’s just that we both practice a lot. Even when we were writing the new record, we were just punishing the songs over and over and over, and then also playing them out live, just to test them, even if they weren’t finished. So that’s where that getting tight and improv kind of comes together, just to feel things out. It gets locked in just — in a room that’s like the size of a bathroom and you’re staring at each other all day in the practice room – it gets you pretty tight.
Popular Culture Beat: Danny, anything to add and how did Clinton and you meet?
Danny Sein: I mean I don’t really have too much to add to the first question, aside from I feel like being a two-piece, you’re kind of going to be locked in already because that’s, the instrumentation — guitar and drums. So I think we just accent each other well, in that way instrumentally and it makes the rhythm tight. But yeah, practicing relentlessly is really what makes the record sound like it does, I think. But yeah, I was playing in a band at the time before Clinton and I got together. It was called Corso, so it was more like a post-punk project I guess. So, yeah, I was just doing that. We had just finished an album and I would just like go to the practice room, a lot and just like record videos of myself playing and put them on Instagram and that’s kind of how Clinton came around to asking me to play on Cancel Culture Club,
Popular Culture Beat: Okay, since since I got you here on the screen — Clinton’s style is, like, kind of unique and like, it’s idiosyncratic, right? The rhythms are very peculiar and interesting, and I mean, it must be different than anything you’ve done before, does it challenge you differently?
Danny Sein: Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean Clinton’s s songwriting, it’s a bit more poppy than I’m used to in my other bands. You know. There’s a lot of hooks and he’s got an incredible voice and incredible range and really utilize that in Phylzzzz, I think. So yeah,
Popular Culture Beat: Alright cool. So getting back to Clinton — There’s melody going on Fat Chance.. You have a lot of dissonance, but melody and when you’re writing, do you think in terms of scales and modes or do you have a theoretical approach or do you just kind of do it intuitively?
Clinton Jacob: I do it intuitively. I really have no idea what I’m doing, 90% of the time. Like, I don’t have any lessons. I’ve never really been taught anything. My parents were Bluegrass players so I really just learned G, C and D and then kind of made everything up from there, so I don’t. Yeah, I don’t really have any sense of like musical like knowledge or anything. It’s just kind of like, what I think, sounds good and I feel like for a very long time, a lot of people thought that sounded wrong, and now people are coming around to thinking, it sounds good.
I think rules in music are really silly. I’ve always kind of stood by that sort of idea. Just I don’t like rules. I don’t have a lyrical boundary. I don’t have a musical boundary. Like I’ve said it multiple times now, the next record could be a country record for all I know. I think that’s the thing, that stunts a lot of bands, is they put so many rules and regulations and walls down for their music, and that doesn’t even matter — just do what you want to do.
Clinton Jacob of Mr. Phylzzz
Popular Culture Beat: Right? Nobody sounds like you and I love that and you know you you’re doing your thing. When you recorded the new album you said you used ‘good gear,’ decent gear. You used an Esteban amp last time. So what happened to that Esteban amp and then how did Taylor Hales bring it to another kind of dimension?
Clinton Jacob: I brought it to Electrical Audio and we used it for some stuff. Just some like extra ambient kind of noisy tracks, random tracks. But I mean when you’re in a place like Electrical Audio and they have microphones that are like twenty thousand dollars, it’s kind of like It’s kind of still fun to record on a five dollar amp, but at the same time, I mean, a lot of this record was basically doing the opposite of Cancel Culture Club. Cancel Culture Club was like very low-fi low-budget. See what we can do, see what we can experiment with. And this one was more just straightforward. Let’s use the, I mean, most of the guitar was like a 1956 Vibrolux amp a little bit of like a Fender Twin, but it was just like, okay, let’s let’s use this crazy expensive amp and see if we can make the sound with it.
Popular Culture Beat: I mean there is an aesthetic difference to Cancel Culture Club and Fat Chance, but neither one is less pleasing or more pleasing. On both, you get wild lyrically — is there anything off bounds of you won’t do? Like thematically or musically? Are there any limits that you have, or no?
Clinton Jacob: I think rules in music are really silly. I’ve always kind of stood by that sort of idea. Just I don’t like rules. I don’t have a lyrical boundary. I don’t have a musical boundary. Like I’ve said it multiple times now, the next record could be a country record for all I know. I think that’s the thing, that stunts a lot of bands, as they put so many rules and regulations and walls down for their music, and it’s that doesn’t even matter –just do what you want to do. Just ‘cause you make one record that’s rock and it does well doesn’t mean that your next seven have to be the exact copy of that record. I feel like you just do what feels good in the moment.
Popular Culture Beat: That’s cool. Yeah, I appreciate that you do that. So, Danny, as far as drums, do you have a preference, do you do a different drum set in the studio on the road or what do you use?
Danny Sein: So for the album I used DW acrylic kit, a three-piece with my Black Beauty snare and I honestly, I just kind of wanted to record in the studio, like, how we play live. I love that kit. It’s very punchy and loud, but it’s still pretty balanced and so, I don’t know, I just thought it’s versatile enough to use it in both places and I think it sounded pretty good.
Popular Culture Beat: Have you ever experimented with any of the electronic drum kits or do you just hate them?
Danny Sein: Oh, I’ve I had one back in the day when they were first starting to make electronic drum kits. And the action is a little weird for me, but at least back in the day but honestly they’ve come a long way and now they have like mesh heads and everything and I would definitely mess around with one for sure.
Popular Culture Beat: Clinton, what about effect pedals for the new album. Was most of the distortion driving the amp? You have crazy distortion going on there.
Clinton Jacob: A lot of it was. So the cool thing about like, the Vibrolux is, it’s small — I think it’s a 12 or no, I think it’s a ten, no it’s 12 and whatever — those cranked just break up. I feel like a lot of my favorite like old-school, like, punk rock tones and stuff like that were literally just a cranked amp blowing out a mic. So a lot of it’s that, but the main distortion that I use is a Death By Audio Fuzz War. It just sounds like a bomb going off and it’s just a really cool pedal. So a lot of the guitar tone is either the amp fully cranked or the Fuzz War or a combination of both.
Popular Culture Beat: Okay. And like when you said that earlier in a previous interview that the Esteban guitar amp had a broken speaker was it literally broken. And is it still broke when you use it on the new album?
Clinton Jacob: Yeah. It’s broke. It’s a, it’s like a four- inch or three-inch speaker. I mean, it’s lliterally like a tiny ass little amp. But yeah, that’s just one of those things that just have a sick tone. It just sounds like a chainsaw. And for this record, it felt at some point just because I like to service the record, it felt a little distracting and not in a good distracting way where it’s buried in the mix this time. It’s still there. But like Danny had said earlier you want to capture more of like how we are live. So I was leaning more towards that kind of sound this time.
Popular Culture Beat: I know you wanted to capture that but was there typically more than one guitar track on each song or is it mostly just one track?
Clinton Jacob: It’s more than one. I usually do a straight ahead, and then one that’s a little bit looser and then two that are just absolutely nuts. So that’s usually how I record guitar. Straight ahead, kind of loose and sloppy two that are just unhinged.
Popular Culture Beat: Do you ever sit down with acoustic guitar and just sing and play like undistorted, clean when you’re writing or anything like that?
Clinton Jacob: Yes, and no, actually, a lot of it, I’ll try it on acoustic first. If it’s like riffs, I’ll try to come up with riffs on acoustic first, but a lot of it too is just Danny and I and the practice-based kind of f#cking around and that’s where I get a lot of the — we get a lot of the ideas because if it’s something fun to play than it’s probably something fun to listen to.
Popular Culture Beat: Okay, so I noticed that on Cancel Culture Club like there’s more funky riffs going on. It seems like for Fat Chance, you went to like more of an all-out assault, though there’s still melody there and funk and rhythm. What influenced the approach this time, the hyper sense, you know?
Clinton Jacob: I think it’s just writing with Danny. This the last record was majority of me writing it by myself and this record is you know, Danny and I writing 50/50. So I think it’s just that it’s again it’s like it’s servicing that moment because I pride myself on trying not to replicate the past and I think because I don’t have any of the tools from the past of Cancel Culture Club, except myself. It’s a whole new challenge of writing with Danny, writing in a room together like us both combining pieces and parts to make songs, which I think turned out really great. I think it’s still very much Phylzzz but still a different beast.
Popular Culture Beat: So let me get Danny back, looping back in here. So did Clinton reach out to you? Is that how you guys met?
Danny Sein: I’m from Grand Rapids and I was in a band at that time, a two-piece and I played we played with the Phlyzzz Before I joined the band Clinton had another drummer also named Danny and we met at that show, that house show and just kind of kept in contact and then through Instagram and then we reconnected through tthe videos and stuff. He kind of just reached out and was like, ‘Yo, I’m like working on this new record and I’m looking for some live live drums to track if you’re interested. And yeah, I just went over, listened to Cancel Culture, Club and went from there.
Popular Culture Beat: So what’s life like on the road for you guys. So you going from city to city in a van, or are you flying or what?
Danny Sein: We’re going in a van. We rented a sprinter van.
Popular Culture Beat: You guys seem like you wouldn’t get in too much trouble. Like you know you can’t get drunk every night and play and have energy. Right?
Danny Sein: We’re both sober. We just want to play and go straight to bed. Basically, we don’t party or anything like that, you know, we’re just trying to work and play.
Clinton Jacob: I never drank alcohol ever in my life. Yeah. So it’s not for me. I mean, people can be whatever. In a working environment I prefer sober because I feel like I don’t need drugs or alcohol, I’m already crazy as it is. Sober working has gotten me a lot further. I have worked with people who have been drunk before — like drunk or drinking. They tend to like embarrass you or screw things up or, you know, I’ve never had good luck with somebody who is — I don’t care if people drink, but when we’re working, we’re working. It’s a James Brown mantra.
Popular Culture Beat: Caffeine energy is a lot more creative than drunk energy. But alcohol is an occupational hazard of the business. But you guys, obviously you’re protected from that, which is cool.
Clinton Jacob: Yeah, because I mean when you’re working with people, I feel like the last thing you want to do is like — we’re going on tour with The Melvin’s and Boris for like 40 days next week and the last thing we want to do is be the opening band that comes stumbling, annoying, into the green room and is like wasted and people don’t want to say anything — that’s the visual that I get all the time. I don’t ever want to be that band that people are like, ‘God, they’re drunk already and it’s 7:00.’ And I played with people like that and I’m the one being like ‘I’m sorry –I don’t want to do that.’
Popular Culture Beat: Maybe we can get into this a little bit about culture of music, because way back in the 80s, I was in a synth band and I knew people who knew members of (famous goth band from England), and they were notorious, I don’t want to call them out. I probably won’t, but there’s a lot of people who are held up as icons and stuff, but it’s nothing to respect the way they go about their lives.
Clinton Jacob: I mean, I don’t really, I don’t really know them. But I just feel like that just sounds stupid, regardless if they’re successful or not. It just sounds dumb to be like wasted and be – like you have to babysit somebody. I don’t care what somebody’s status is, if you can handle your liquor, that’s fine. But that’s rare. I mean, if somebody’s drinking and driving or drinking and touring all the time, they’re not just having a beer, they’re getting f@king drunk. That’s just how it is.
Popular Culture Beat: And also if you mute that anxiety, that’s a great songwriting inspiration, anxiety. Do you drink caffeine or no?
Clinton Jacob: No.
Popular Culture Beat: Oh, you don’t even do that. What are you Mormon? I’m kidding.
Clinton Jacob: (Laughter) Basically. No, I don’t drink anything like that.
Popular Culture Beat: You guys are going on with The Melvins, right? You’re friends with Buzz or whatever, I don’t know much about them.
Clinton Jacob: Yeah, Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover and Steve McDonald. [00:18:12] Yeah, we’re going with them. They’ve helped us a ton. They helped us with gigs last year that fell through. They throw us on shows. They’re really cool. Buzz is a super helpful person and a very kind person and I’m really happy that, you know, he hit me up and texted me and said, hey, what are you doing this Fall, and I was like, probably nothing , no big tours planned and then he was like, well, would you do this? I said ‘Of course.’
Popular Culture Beat: Does he ever talk about Kurt Cobain? Because I think they were friends.
Clinton Jacob: I mean, the, the majority of what we talk about is just books.
Popular Culture Beat: What do you read? Non fiction?
Clinton Jacob: I’m more into like Daniel Johnson, Sam Tallent has an amazing book right now called Running The Light, which is about a comedian’s last seven days alive. That’s a really good book. Then I’ve also just started reading — my partner got me Andy Kaufman, The Huey Williams Story which is Andy Kaufman’s book that he wrote about himself, that’s not real but real — it’s like reading a giant joke.
Popular Culture Beat: I remember him. That’s way back in the day, Taxi, stand-up. So are you also creative in another areas? Do you do painting or anything like that, or writing?
Clinton Jacob: A little bit. Yeah I do I do some weird paintings, writing not so much. I just stick to that with like music and stuff. I’ll do some abstract painting kind of things like that but for a majority of the time I’m just writing riffs and working on some songs and writing them in my head all day.
Popular Culture Beat: Who’s this Haze XXL that does your artwork and he also plays guitars on your stuff occasionally?
Clinton Jacob: That’s ol’ Tom Hazelmyer, he’s the creator and founder of Amphetamine Reptile Records. He basically just does our records and Melvin records at this point. Tom is very, very cool. He’s very helpful. Us and Melvins are pretty much his only band, so we get a lot of good attention and he’s honest and truthful.
Popular Culture Beat: Hey, let me talk to Danny for a bit here. So what do you do besides drumming? Do you do have any creative outlets besides that? Or what kind of media do you consume –books, movies, or?
Danny Sein: Yeah, books and movies. I’m kind of a Criterion head. So I get into the art film kind of world little bit. But yeah, I haven’t been reading so much the last couple of years. Like I will here and there, but mainly just music, you know.
(End of interview part one)
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