What are you up to today? I woke up to a phone call from my doctor telling me my wrist is broken. I still can play guitar. I did it playing soccer like an idiot a month ago.
That’s terrible! I read you sometimes play soccer with audience members who get to your shows early. Any chance we get a game going in the middle of the casino? If people are game, I’m game. That’s the nice thing with a wrist injury; it doesn’t slow down my playing.
Is your live show a mix of old and new songs? We play material from a lot of our albums. When I first started playing in this band, we would play a song 10 times [while recording] and then another 30 times on tour, and you’re like, Okay, I’m kind of sick of this song. I have to say over the years that feeling has completely left me. For me, it’s all exactly the same. Not that the material is the same, but the spirit of approaching it. Any material is just a blank slate. Every day I have an opportunity to see what the music shows you that day, or what the interaction with the audience is. Whatever situation you’re in, anything can happen, and you have to react. You can still find new things in it.
You’re releasing a new album, Fever 121614, in November. What was the process like this time around? This is a live album, so basically it wasn’t even our idea. We did a tour of Japan, which was at the end of last year, playing [last year’s La Isla Bonita]. Basically the people booking our shows put out Isla Bonita. They had the idea of recording the show and possibly making a live album out of it.
You went to Switzerland in August and improvised a set in front of the Large Hadron Collider for something called the Ex/Noise/CERN series. How did this idea come together? I first met this guy, James Beacham, when [Deerhoof drummer] Greg [Saunier’s] other band played a show in New York. There were like 15 people there, and one of them is this physicist, who was like, “It would be cool to have you guys play at the Hadron Collider.” The last time we played in Paris, he made the trip and came to our show, and he was much more serious about it, like, “Let’s plan this. Let’s make it happen.” It was his brainchild, and he went through all of the incredible red tape, as you might imagine at a place like that, to get that kind of thing to happen. It was not easy for him. It was the greatest, incredibly fun experience, so organized. Everyone was so professional. We were in and out in six hours. I’m really happy with the way it came out.
You only have a couple dates in November. How did Vegas end up on that list? Have you been here before as a band? No, never. Actually it’s possible. I kinda feel like Deerhoof played there long before I joined, in like ’96, but since I’ve been in the band—I joined in ’99—we’ve never played in Las Vegas. It just worked out. We kind of organized this tour around a festival in Tucson, Night of the Living Fest.
Deerhoof has been around since 1994. To what do you contribute that longevity? When I first started playing in the band there were 20 people coming to shows in San Francisco, and there was already a history there and a sense of it being a very special band. But in terms of the actual numbers of people coming, it’s been this very slow growth, and I think there was never this feeling that we peaked. I think, in a way, having a peak is a nice thing, but at the same time it also makes it hard for bands to recover.
You start off as good friends and you become more like family, which is more complicated. Like any very long-term relationship, all the relationships in the band are pretty complex. I think the fact that we live in different places now in some ways is a good thing. In some ways, it’s a bad thing. It makes it hard for us to practice, but allows everyone to go their separate ways when we’re not together. The main thing is when we get together we’re happy to see each other and we have a lot of fun.
Deerhoof with Cy Dune, The Anti-Job. November 5, 9 p.m., $12. The Sayers Club, 702-761-7618.
The Bunkhouse Series at the Sayers Club at SLS is sponsored by Southern Wine & Spirits, Live Nation, Downtown Container Park and Greenspun Media Group.
