Catching Up With... The Jesus Lizard

Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins

Ten years after retiring, the legendary rockers of the Jesus Lizard have decided to give it one more go, reuniting and hitting the road as Touch and Go reissues the band’s best material. Paste caught up with the entire band to answer the question, “Why now?” and to find out how it feels to be on the road again after such an extensive break.

Paste: From the first bash of “Puss” in Seattle in July, you sounded amazing, like time had barely passed. How does it feel?
Mac McNeilly [drummer]: It’s everything I had hoped it would be, on the positive side, and even more. One thing we didn’t want to do [was] to get up there and huff and chuff and be these old guys where people would go, “You know, they used to really be able to do it and they’re such nice guys but they just can’t do it any more… If we’re going to do this, let’s really give the songs the performances they deserve.
Duane Denison [guitar]: It almost feels better, because, I really haven’t had any time off in those 10 years, I’ve been playing continuously with different people, but to go back and play with these guys, it’s like stepping into a warm bath, in a manner of speaking.
David Yow [singer]: The biggest difference I can tell so far, I think due to the amount of space between when we played with Mac and now, the shows are more emotional. Whether it’s us, or people who’ve seen us in the past, or whatever. It’s not that different, I mean, I got tired then, I get tired now, you know?
David Wm. Sims [bassist]: I’ve had an awful lot of fun at these shows. In Nashville, we played kind of the classic punk-rock dive, 110 degrees in there, and that was pretty hard, but we managed to live through it and we had a lot of fun.
Yow: I was terrified before we played that show at ATP. The first one, last May. I really thought we couldn’t be any good. I was amazed. I was amazed by it, and that kinda shit doesn’t really happen. I think I even said at some point, “Jesus, I didn’t think we were going to be this good,” to the unsuspecting English people. Afterward, we were like, “What the holy shit?" It was just really weird, and it was really magical. It was really satisfying.

Paste: Walk me through the reunification.
Denison: The end of last year, All Tomorrows Parties in December that Mike Patton had curated. That’s what started the whole thing; [Patton] approached me and said….
McNeilly: “What would it take to get you guys over here and play a show?”
Sims: There wasn’t nearly enough lead time. But it started the conversation.
Yow: I know I wasn’t so much into the idea.

Paste: What changed your mind?
Yow: The fact that Mac was willing to do it. There have been times in the past when people offer us, “Hey you guys get together, and I’ll give you so much to do a show,” and I didn’t want to do it. Because for one thing, we didn’t exist any more, and as far as I recall Mac didn’t want to have anything to do with it. And I was not willing to play unless Mac was gonna do it.
Sims: ATP came back again this year. It seemed like a good idea. Something we thought we’d have a lot of fun doing. And we were right.
Denison: The first [rehearsal] was a little bit rough, a little rusty, but it started sounding good pretty quickly.The next time, I think we were, less, I wouldn’t say “inhibited,” but less nervous or tentative. It was like “It’s us again, let’s wallop these songs like we used to,” and we did, it fell right into place.
Sims: I gave my notice April 16.

Paste: And touring?
Sims: A lot like it used to be, except we’ll have laptops and cell phone. A huge bonus that this band has going for us is that we get along really well. And that kind of makes things like travelling around in a van, it makes them a lot easier.
Denison: When we were an active band, we’d play together every night for weeks, months at a time, you just get used to a certain level of doing things. There weren’t really any prima donnas, didn’t take forever at sound check, no fussing or excessive tweaking, no one was too obsessed about the peripherals, whether it was gear or this or that.
Yow: I just kind of wait to be told what to do and then I go where I’m pointed.

Paste: What’s most similar?
Denison: The personalities, the roles of everyone in the band. Someone of us are more straightforward, organized; others less so. Some are more opinionated and will go with an unpopular decision; others less so. That just doesn’t seem to have changed; if anything it’s become more and more rigid. But that’s fine, because it works. It works just fine.
Yow: Absolutely, yeah. The only difference is that we’re older, and Mac doesn’t drink or smoke. … And I don’t smoke. [laughs] Right.

Paste: Example?
Yow: Well in Paris, I got so drunk I don’t remember the end of the night, and we spent quite some time waiting for Mac to go to practice. This makes me think of another difference: David has really mellowed out a lot in his old age. He could very often be the grumpy one, unable to throw out rigorous small talk. Now he’s tremendously improved, he’s great to be around all the time, so I take it back about things being the same.
Sims: In 1989, Duane and David and I, we’d recorded the first record but were still looking for a drummer; we moved into a three bedroom apartment in Humboldt Park. And then we asked Mac to play drums with us, and he did, so he slept on the couch.
McNeilly: Which was fine, I didn’t really have anything but a sack of clothes and my drums with me.
Sims: He dealt with it pretty well. He probably didn’t get as much sleep as he would have liked a lot of the time. Eventually, David got a girlfriend and moved in with her, so Mac got David’s bedroom. You know, those three years we weren’t there much anyway, because we drove and drove and drove and played and played and played.
Yow: Goddamm, for several years I saw those guys more than I saw my wife.
McNeilly: We spent so much time together, I’m sure that contributed to the sense of closeness that we had, and we still do. You go through a whole lot together as a band, as a group of people, you’re going to become really close on a deep level.
Denison: Working on songs was almost always a communal thing. Someone would come up with a basic idea and then we would sit down and just work on it together, and somebody would add a part, add this and that and next thing you know, wham, there’s a song.
McNeilly: We’re not trying to pretend that we’re back at that time, that’s not what these shows are about. … It’s nice we get to play for some of the younger kids … and for the older people, the fans who were really into us, it’s great for them to be able to see it again and maybe have some of the same feeling, the same impact. And it’s kind of funny to look at all of us, because we’re older. What are these old guys doing on stage? Hopefully we can still bring it a bit.

Paste: Any stage antics from David?
Denison: More of the same. He’s been flying through the air with the greatest of ease. With reckless abandon. It’s pretty amazing, he worked out and got in shape. No, seriously! I guess we all kind of did. I guess there’s a certain amount of pride, or ego.

Paste: Are you in shape enough to drop the pants if the mood strikes?
Yow: Well, my darling, it depends on… That’s a nice thing to ask. No, I don’t think that’s necessary. Nobody wants to see an old, naked man, so no, that won’t be happening.
McNeilly: We won’t be playing [“Tight’N’Shiny”] so that leaves David without that section of time with less for him to do. … I think we laughed about that, ‘Why don’t we do this one again? [We have] many good memories of seeing people react to that. That was a good one. We did some shows with Jim Rose and that [circus] of his. He showed David a few penis tricks, things you could do with your various parts and the names you’d give a certain trick, and [Yow] would turn around and go, “This is the this! This is the this! Have you ever seen this?” He was really a good student of Jim. He learned a lot really quick.
Yow: It’s funny. In retrospect, it’s like if I was playing guitar or drums or bass, look up and there’s my buddy’s naked ass sticking out; I wouldn’t want to see it. Who the fuck did I think I was, thinking it’s OK to take all my clothes off. I don’t know. What the hell, I thought it was cool.

Paste: Duane, you haven’t stopped music as a career. What have the others been doing?
Denison: Varying things. David Yow has done computer graphics, and acting. David Sims has been doing accounting; he was always, he was an accountant. We had an accountant in the band. Very handy.
Sims: Public accounting. Mostly personal and corporate tax returns.

Paste: Did clients know about the band?
Sims: Nooo. No.

Paste: Did anybody ever…? Were they two worlds that just never…?
Sims: They were parallel universes: The good David and the evil David. Like that Star Trek episode. It never came up. I never brought it up. … I worked with all kinds of cool people, and I was always kinda of surprised that somebody didn’t stumble across something on the internet or something. But they never did.

Paste: Were you plain “David Sims”?
Sims: I actually even put “David Wm. Sims.” It’s on my CPA business cards.
Denison: And Mac has been raising a family, and he does some kind of computer stuff. I’m not exactly sure, it’s a mystery to me. … “Oh, Duane, why do you have a PC, you know, you should have a Mac, you can do much more music stuff on it.” What I like about music is that it doesn’t go into the computer.
McNeilly: I’m a Microsoft-certified professional, and I went back to school for a couple years to do that. … I really got a thing in me, really drawn to working with digital audio and making something I could use to record myself. … Some of it’s kind of electronic sounds, like you might expect when you’re working alone on a computer, and others more orchestral-type things using samples. I recently just built two computers: one that I use in my studio, I’ve got a little home studio where I can set up my drums and play and not really annoy the neighbors, almost soundproof. Then I have another upstairs room where I can mix and edit in.

Paste: Did you guys keep in touch?
Sims: I talked to Duane most, every few months or so. I guess because I saw him the most, since he was in other touring bands. David, every few months, but a little less than Duane. Mac, almost never. He was infamously difficult to get in touch with.
McNeilly: Not a whole lot, to be honest. I pretty much went into my own cave analyzing what I wanted to do, what I didn’t want to do, had to work on some personal things and give a lot of attention to my family. It isn’t so much that I didn’t want to be in touch with the other guys, but just from my perspective I needed to work on me for a bit and get clear and see what I wanted to do. I did talk to David a couple of times, he and I did a little bit of collaboration on some electronic stuff, some sequencer type of music he was doing. He’d send me a file and I’d send it back to him.

Paste: This is Dangerpuss?
Sims: Yeah, Mac and Duane both contributed to some of the Dangerpuss tracks posted on the blog. I try to put one Dangerpuss song a month on the blog and we’ll see if we can keep it up. That was another thing about [starting] the blog: I kind of had these songs lying around that I wanted to get out there somewhere.
McNeilly: Besides that, I’ve been a very hands-on dad and husband and just enjoying the domestic part of me. …. My daughter is 16, my oldest boy is 15 and my youngest boy is 9. And I still can’t believe it and I’m with them all the time.

Paste: What do they think of the music?
McNeilly: I think they were kind of surprised. The whole family came for the first shows [in England, Paris and Barcelona]. That was fun because they had never really seen me do it; it had been a long time ago, when they were much younger, like when the Lollapalooza thing came through Chicago. So I think they were sort of surprised: ‘Oh, look at Dad! We better listen to him the next time he says ‘stop something,’ or pay attention.” Oh I’m just kidding, I’m not like that.

Paste: When the shows wrap up around Thanksgiving, is that really the end?
Yow: As far as I know. I hope so. That’s the plan.
Sims: I’ve never said I was absolutely sure. You know, I don’t want to milk it or have it become something embarrassing. On the other hand I’m having a good time, and there are a lot of places we’re not able to hit.
Denison: To me, you can really only do it once. After that, people just aren’t going to believe you anymore. You’ve lost a certain amount of trustworthiness: ‘Reunion Tour 2, next summer!” You can’t do that.
McNeilly: Doing the band is awakening part of me that really is passionate about music… After this is done, at the end of this year, I’m sure I’ll be involved in something else. I don’t know what, if it’ll be a band thing or what but I will be playing more drums, it’s really got me fired up about that. For most people, I was kind of a hermit. I was doing my own quiet thing for a while. But now I’m ready to blast ‘em again.
Yow: Well, the Scratch Acid reuniting caused me to quit saying never. But the kind of music we do, you have to be in the same room. I just don’t see how we could do it. I live in Los Angeles, David’s all the way in Manhattan, and Mac and Duane are somewhere halfway in between. I’d be interested to hear some idea how we could possibly to do it. And being as I have no desire to do it, that makes it that much more difficult. We finished it over 10 years ago; I don’t see any point in revisiting it. If all four of us had the desperate urge to realize ideas that were festering in our brains, then OK. But I have none. I don’t have any desire to write another Jesus Lizard song.
McNeilly: Very few bands get a chance to go and rewrite their last chapter. For me especially, I get to finish it again and end it the right way. So it’s hard not to look at this as some form of gift.