| Bukkake Moms Session | |
| Violitionist Sessions |
Session Date: April 24, 2013
Posting Date: June 24, 2013
Artist Hometown: Denton, TX
Links: Facebook, Bandcamp
Recorded by: Michael Briggs @ Civil
3 QUESTIONS
ONE: Can you tell me about Problem Dogg?
Kenny Failes: Rick and I thought that Bill and Reece had too many side projects, so we decided to make one, and it started as him and I, and then we decided to play a show and all of his roommates got in on it, and then…it got going from there.
Beth Dodds: And then we ended up joining anyway, and it expanded to the nine-piece Colossus…but it’s also not always nine people. There’s a Problem Dogg album that’s just three of us…We release all of our practices and live shows as albums, so we have eight albums already.
MB: Are there any particular songs that you like the most?
Rick Eye: ‘Penny Pincher!’
Beth: ‘Penny Pincher’…
Rick: ‘I Can’t Hang Out With Problem Dogg Anymore’…
Beth: The song is called ‘My Dad Says I Can’t Hang Out With Problem Dogg Anymore Because They’re Too Young and Virile.’ We actually played that one…’Penny Pincher’ goes into ‘My Dad Says…’ with the blast beats…
Beth Dodds: And then we ended up joining anyway, and it expanded to the nine-piece Colossus…but it’s also not always nine people. There’s a Problem Dogg album that’s just three of us…We release all of our practices and live shows as albums, so we have eight albums already.
MB: Are there any particular songs that you like the most?
Rick Eye: ‘Penny Pincher!’
Beth: ‘Penny Pincher’…
Rick: ‘I Can’t Hang Out With Problem Dogg Anymore’…
Beth: The song is called ‘My Dad Says I Can’t Hang Out With Problem Dogg Anymore Because They’re Too Young and Virile.’ We actually played that one…’Penny Pincher’ goes into ‘My Dad Says…’ with the blast beats…
TWO: How did Bukkake Moms form?
Reece McLean: Back in late late 2009, I just started writing songs. I had an old project, and I wanted to make this new project called Bukkake Moms, which is a name that I stole from an Internet forum and I can’t find that post anymore, so…sorry to whoever came up with that. I wanted this new project, so I started writing some songs for that, and I…I came up with this idea that was supposed to be a trio— drums, synth, and then me playing guitar and singing, and then I eventually recorded the first album by myself, and then Kenny joined in on the second album—
Kenny: Also the first show, too.
Reece: Yeah. We played the first show as just the two of us, the laptop, and that was…a little bit of a disaster, but it was fun. Then right after that, Bill and Andrew—
Kenny: How did that happen again?
Beth: I found the Bukkake Moms MySpace. MySpace was kind of dead already, but I didn’t find another way to contact them. Their MySpace profile said, and I think it was sort of facetious, but it said ‘If you want to be in the band, contact this MySpace.’ So I just said, ‘Hey! Me and my friend Andrew,’ who was our old, other bass player, ‘we want to join the band!’ Eventually, Reece did see it…around Christmas 2010. Which, it was December 2010 when I sent it. It wasn’t like a whole year went by or anything. It was just a couple of weeks. So, Andrew and I joined at the very end of 2010, and we started really playing shows the fall of the next year. We recorded our first album of that four piece— me, Reece, Kenny and Andrew the first time we ever played together. It was a little EP called ‘Not Your Boner Bro.’ We still play a couple of them sometimes, but it’s kind of hard to because they’re not really structured. So, we really started playing out in Fall 2011, started writing for our— well, we recorded Hoping for Murder. That was our third album, and our first as a four-piece, although a lot of it ended up being just Reece, that was recorded like…when did that get released?
Reece: That was April 21st 2011. We did it in one day. On 4/20. Dude, that’s two years old now! That’s weird!
Beth: That is fucked up! But Hoping for Murder was Spring 2011, and we started playing those songs mostly in September, because…I met Nevada Hill around that time, and he got us our first couple of shows, and then Shea Brooks got us some shows. That was our introduction to the Denton scene. I still lived in McKinney and Andrew still lived in McKinney at the time. We were still like 17 and in high school. By the end of my senior year, we had written pretty much everything for our fourth album, Philosophical Perversion, that summer, and we still play a lot of songs off that, and then just a few months ago in January, we saw Bitch Teeth twice and we were like, ‘We need that guitarist in our band!’ So, that’s when— because we had lost Andrew. He moved away to go to school.
Kenny: Then there was a brief period where we would switch—
Beth: Yeah, that’s right. There was a period where me and Kenny played bass and Reece played drums, and that was very short lived. We wrote eight songs during that time, but we play one of them now. We rearranged one of them. It’s one note and it wasn’t that hard to re-learn. So, we play one of those songs…After that, we were like, ‘Let’s go back to the original formation. It’s empty as a three-piece. We need a fourth guy.’ So, we saw Bitch Teeth and were like, ‘Whoa, Rick’s great!’ and brought him in. We just asked him if he wanted to be in Bukkake Moms and he said, ‘Yeah.’ So, we’ve been working on our fifth album, Big Cum. The three songs we played today are going to be on there. ‘Penny Pincher’ is going to be on there, but that’s a secret.
Rick: If you rewind the first track, you’ll hear it.
Beth: Big Cum is only coming out— well, you can download it, but physically it’s only coming out as a double cassingle. Not kidding. Only double cassingle.
Kenny: I thought it was going to be a triple cassingle.
Beth: No, we don’t have enough songs. Double cassingle. Four six-minute sides of cassette tape…it’s a long story about why it’s coming out that way, but it is, and we’ve recorded seven songs for that so far. They’re sounding good. We’re going to do four more in June and finish out the album.
Reece: Five, six more, eighteen more…
Beth: Yeah, of course. And Guerilla Toss, if you’re reading this, we’re going to do a split with you after that. We realized that this band from Boston called Guerilla Toss was basically us, but better, so…we’ll just be on the B-side of whatever split that is.
Kenny: Also the first show, too.
Reece: Yeah. We played the first show as just the two of us, the laptop, and that was…a little bit of a disaster, but it was fun. Then right after that, Bill and Andrew—
Kenny: How did that happen again?
Beth: I found the Bukkake Moms MySpace. MySpace was kind of dead already, but I didn’t find another way to contact them. Their MySpace profile said, and I think it was sort of facetious, but it said ‘If you want to be in the band, contact this MySpace.’ So I just said, ‘Hey! Me and my friend Andrew,’ who was our old, other bass player, ‘we want to join the band!’ Eventually, Reece did see it…around Christmas 2010. Which, it was December 2010 when I sent it. It wasn’t like a whole year went by or anything. It was just a couple of weeks. So, Andrew and I joined at the very end of 2010, and we started really playing shows the fall of the next year. We recorded our first album of that four piece— me, Reece, Kenny and Andrew the first time we ever played together. It was a little EP called ‘Not Your Boner Bro.’ We still play a couple of them sometimes, but it’s kind of hard to because they’re not really structured. So, we really started playing out in Fall 2011, started writing for our— well, we recorded Hoping for Murder. That was our third album, and our first as a four-piece, although a lot of it ended up being just Reece, that was recorded like…when did that get released?
Reece: That was April 21st 2011. We did it in one day. On 4/20. Dude, that’s two years old now! That’s weird!
Beth: That is fucked up! But Hoping for Murder was Spring 2011, and we started playing those songs mostly in September, because…I met Nevada Hill around that time, and he got us our first couple of shows, and then Shea Brooks got us some shows. That was our introduction to the Denton scene. I still lived in McKinney and Andrew still lived in McKinney at the time. We were still like 17 and in high school. By the end of my senior year, we had written pretty much everything for our fourth album, Philosophical Perversion, that summer, and we still play a lot of songs off that, and then just a few months ago in January, we saw Bitch Teeth twice and we were like, ‘We need that guitarist in our band!’ So, that’s when— because we had lost Andrew. He moved away to go to school.
Kenny: Then there was a brief period where we would switch—
Beth: Yeah, that’s right. There was a period where me and Kenny played bass and Reece played drums, and that was very short lived. We wrote eight songs during that time, but we play one of them now. We rearranged one of them. It’s one note and it wasn’t that hard to re-learn. So, we play one of those songs…After that, we were like, ‘Let’s go back to the original formation. It’s empty as a three-piece. We need a fourth guy.’ So, we saw Bitch Teeth and were like, ‘Whoa, Rick’s great!’ and brought him in. We just asked him if he wanted to be in Bukkake Moms and he said, ‘Yeah.’ So, we’ve been working on our fifth album, Big Cum. The three songs we played today are going to be on there. ‘Penny Pincher’ is going to be on there, but that’s a secret.
Rick: If you rewind the first track, you’ll hear it.
Beth: Big Cum is only coming out— well, you can download it, but physically it’s only coming out as a double cassingle. Not kidding. Only double cassingle.
Kenny: I thought it was going to be a triple cassingle.
Beth: No, we don’t have enough songs. Double cassingle. Four six-minute sides of cassette tape…it’s a long story about why it’s coming out that way, but it is, and we’ve recorded seven songs for that so far. They’re sounding good. We’re going to do four more in June and finish out the album.
Reece: Five, six more, eighteen more…
Beth: Yeah, of course. And Guerilla Toss, if you’re reading this, we’re going to do a split with you after that. We realized that this band from Boston called Guerilla Toss was basically us, but better, so…we’ll just be on the B-side of whatever split that is.
THREE: What do you think about the Denton music scene?
Beth: Not enough weird. I feel like the four of us have to make most of the weird happen. We have to kick people in the ass. And there’s not…there’s some good drummers here, but there’s not enough.
Rick: There’s some really fucking good drummers here.
Beth: There’s like six or seven that I can think of, but there’s so many like, weak, and they don’t hit hard enough, and it’s just lame.
Rick: I think there’s like, maybe ten really good bands here.
Beth: I don’t know, I’d say it’s closer to like six.
Kenny: Well, that’s an opinion.
Beth: I don’t know. Reece was saying something about this the other day, that I feel like I’ve seen every good band in Denton a lot of times. Maybe there are more of them, but I think I’ve seen pretty much all of them.
Reece: There’s nothing to discover.
Beth: There’s this disturbing trend of nice-boy cardigan bands, with just clean guitar, and it’s not really like math rock, it’s not indie, it’s not jazz, it’s some bland, beige mixture of all three of those pieces. Like UNT jazz kids who are like, ‘Let’s write some pop songs!’ and they suck. They’re terrible. They’re terrible!
Reece: These are your opinions. I’m not saying I disagree with you, but when it comes down to the heat—
Rick: The nice-boy cardigan bands are going to come after us!
Reece: I’m really sick of garage rock bands. I’m really sick of that.
Beth: Yeah. If you’re going to play three chords in a song, make them weird at least! Play dissonant chords. Don’t play C, G and D.
Rick: I’m really tired of D right now.
Beth: Yeah, D chords, uh-uh. There are so many songs in the key of E and the key of D. Just, gross. And we don’t use keys, really.
Kenny: Nope!
Reece: It’s definitely a fact. We don’t.
Kenny: We’ve been playing with rhythms more.
Beth: Yeah, I’d say we’re a rhythm band. We play a lot of things where everybody’s kind of playing a different…it’s different tonality but it’s the same rhythm. A lot of bands—
Rick: We’re all in a different tuning and everything.
Kenny: I’m in standard, Reece has his own tuning, Rick has his own tuning—
Rick: I’m in a fucked up open C tuning.
Beth: You’re tuning’s like an inverted F chord with a 7th in it, right?
Rick: I have an A#.
Beth: A#. So it’s like a…
Rick: C F F A# D.
Beth: Oh, okay. So that’s like a…that’s a…
Rick: Wait, I’m missing one of mine.
Beth: That’s weird. It’s actually like an inverted B minor. That’s fucking weird.
Reece: To get back to the rhythm thing, I think that every time Rick is trying to learn a song and I’m trying to teach him it, I always get back to like, ‘Then notes don’t really matter.’ They really don’t.
Beth: We just play tight. We’re trying to play tight. And we use weird rhythms. We have a song where part of it is in 23 now.
Kenny: I have a really fun bass line on that song.
Beth: We’re writing a new song that’s in a really fucked up 10/8, and stuff like that. We have fun with rhythms. And that’s another thing. If you’re going to kind of hammer out a simple rhythm, make it a weird rhythm. Make it five or seven beats or something. That’s just like the C, G, and D thing. You can have one or two rhythms that are really simple in a song, but 4/4…We’ve had fifty years of that. We don’t need more of that.
Rick: There’s some really fucking good drummers here.
Beth: There’s like six or seven that I can think of, but there’s so many like, weak, and they don’t hit hard enough, and it’s just lame.
Rick: I think there’s like, maybe ten really good bands here.
Beth: I don’t know, I’d say it’s closer to like six.
Kenny: Well, that’s an opinion.
Beth: I don’t know. Reece was saying something about this the other day, that I feel like I’ve seen every good band in Denton a lot of times. Maybe there are more of them, but I think I’ve seen pretty much all of them.
Reece: There’s nothing to discover.
Beth: There’s this disturbing trend of nice-boy cardigan bands, with just clean guitar, and it’s not really like math rock, it’s not indie, it’s not jazz, it’s some bland, beige mixture of all three of those pieces. Like UNT jazz kids who are like, ‘Let’s write some pop songs!’ and they suck. They’re terrible. They’re terrible!
Reece: These are your opinions. I’m not saying I disagree with you, but when it comes down to the heat—
Rick: The nice-boy cardigan bands are going to come after us!
Reece: I’m really sick of garage rock bands. I’m really sick of that.
Beth: Yeah. If you’re going to play three chords in a song, make them weird at least! Play dissonant chords. Don’t play C, G and D.
Rick: I’m really tired of D right now.
Beth: Yeah, D chords, uh-uh. There are so many songs in the key of E and the key of D. Just, gross. And we don’t use keys, really.
Kenny: Nope!
Reece: It’s definitely a fact. We don’t.
Kenny: We’ve been playing with rhythms more.
Beth: Yeah, I’d say we’re a rhythm band. We play a lot of things where everybody’s kind of playing a different…it’s different tonality but it’s the same rhythm. A lot of bands—
Rick: We’re all in a different tuning and everything.
Kenny: I’m in standard, Reece has his own tuning, Rick has his own tuning—
Rick: I’m in a fucked up open C tuning.
Beth: You’re tuning’s like an inverted F chord with a 7th in it, right?
Rick: I have an A#.
Beth: A#. So it’s like a…
Rick: C F F A# D.
Beth: Oh, okay. So that’s like a…that’s a…
Rick: Wait, I’m missing one of mine.
Beth: That’s weird. It’s actually like an inverted B minor. That’s fucking weird.
Reece: To get back to the rhythm thing, I think that every time Rick is trying to learn a song and I’m trying to teach him it, I always get back to like, ‘Then notes don’t really matter.’ They really don’t.
Beth: We just play tight. We’re trying to play tight. And we use weird rhythms. We have a song where part of it is in 23 now.
Kenny: I have a really fun bass line on that song.
Beth: We’re writing a new song that’s in a really fucked up 10/8, and stuff like that. We have fun with rhythms. And that’s another thing. If you’re going to kind of hammer out a simple rhythm, make it a weird rhythm. Make it five or seven beats or something. That’s just like the C, G, and D thing. You can have one or two rhythms that are really simple in a song, but 4/4…We’ve had fifty years of that. We don’t need more of that.
– Interview by Michael Briggs, transcription by Dale Jones.