Joe DeNardo: Tricycles are easier to balance.
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I wear earplugs because on our first tour I started getting bad migraines. But I also have tinnitus, so I don't know how much good they do. I spent too much time as a youngster with my head against the speakers.Sometimes you guys sit down when you play live, is it just too tiring standing up for a whole show?
I used to sit down so I could use both feet simultaneously on the effects pedals. What a nerd, huh?You also seem to use crazy amounts of pedals. Have you ever triggered the wrong pedal by mistake and had the drone interrupted by something unlikely, like a duck quack or something that you had field recorded when you were stoned?
Nobody can ever tell.That reassuringly leads me to my next question: how much of a Growing live show is made up on the spot and how much do you stick to the playbook?
There's a pretty strict playbook, lots of Xs and Os, but in the transitions we have more flexibility, like a run-and-gun offense in basketball. We're well conditioned.You were both in Black Man White Man Dead Man a few years back. That name is pretty exciting. How did you go from that to plain old Growing?
BMWMDM is the name of an old pulp novel from the 60s. It was a bad hardcore band name, but lots of fun times to look back on. When we first switched to Growing we were still a very vicious-sounding band so it maybe meant something else?
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Not too many, I hope. He's got to protect his precious pipes, that golden swooner.A while back we did a little piece in the mag with you guys where Kevin did DMT and you cooked a nice meal. Your records do make great listening when stoned. Do you ascribe to that whole "taking drugs to make music to take drugs to" thing or is the tripping compatibility a happy coincidence?
I get high on brown booze. Do what feels good.In almost every piece you read on you guys the concept of "nature" is mentioned, and yet you live in NYC. Is all the nature-filled droning an attempt to escape the modernity of the city or something?I don't know why they mention nature so much. Seems to me our music contains references to all sorts of different things, musical and non-musical.Is it true that you guys lived with Joe Preston for a while in your Olympia days? What did he used to get up to? Good housemate?
Joe and his cats were wonderful housemates. Back then we would get up to some serious Tony Hawk's Pro Skater sessions.I've heard you talk before about trying to replicate drones or hums that you overhear in the day-to-day within the context of Growing. What naturally occurring drones and hums have you been trying to nail lately?
The ringing in my ears.JAMES KNIGHT
