Living Large

It’s hard to guess where the next band to jump into the spotlight will come from. For those of us with one ear in the industry and another in the scene, it’s still baffling to discover where the newest signer to a juicy major label contract came from. With the new medium of Internet exposure combined with the old tried-and-true method of playing small clubs until people recognize can your name like it was Coca-Cola, there has been a new wave of bands springing out of otherwise infertile-sounding places.

Papa Roach continues the trend by marching out of a town more famous for being "The Onion Capital of the World" than for being a birthplace for new agro-rock. Their major label debut, Infest (Dreamworks), hits shelves April 25^th and it promises to be more visceral, pure rock fury along the lines of historical debut successes like Deftones’ Adrenaline and Korn’s self titled debut. I caught up with frontman, Coby Dick, and chatted with him about all the grand happenings in the P-Roach world and how he hopes Infest will really get under your skin.

Oh fuck dude, [pauses for reflection] we signed our deal [with Dreamworks] in October of last year, but before that we were just banging it independent-style, fuckin’ it up, playing mad shows and working that avenue. We were just having fun and then we hemmed up the deal and went and did the record and that was fuckin’ dope. We had a good time, ate some good food, drank some good booze, and recorded a dope-ass record — had fun doing that. It was just a really good experience. And then after that we just started hitting the road again.

Yeah, we’re not going to stop either. We’re touring forever, pretty much, and I ain’t mad about that.

Just a fuckin’ bangin’-ass, big, fat, loud recording of Papa Roach. And then just us out playing mad shows to support it.

Hell yeah. I’ll take that. I wouldn’t be mad if people said that about us.

Well yeah, you know…Steven Spielberg gives me blow-jobs every once in awhile. No. Strike that, I’m just kidding. We get some free movies and stuff, get some free CDs, but that’s pretty much how it is at any label. But the fact that they give us priority, like they don’t have a butt-load of bands, they don’t have three or four hundred acts, they have like 40 acts — to us that’s the best thing.

We got Powerman 5000, Buckcherry, Long Beach Dub All-Stars, The Eels, Elliott Smith, DefSquad (that’s like hip-hop, Redman, Eric Sermon). So it’s a cool label. It’s kind of smaller but it’s got crazy backing and the guys who run it are old-school, they know what’s up. They’re all about being artist-friendly. They give us the freedom to maintain our own image. Like, we didn’t have them go [imitating an anal-retentive label guy] "This is what you need to do for your image, and this is what you need to sound like…" None of that went down. They were like "What do you guys want to do?" and we told them and they were down. So they just back us on a large scale, what we want to do, and that’s just be out… be four regular people just out playing shows and relating music from the heart.

Naw, none of that. We’ve just done it in our own natural progression.

For about seven years, since ’93. I’ve gotten used to interviews as time has gone on, doing more and more of them… but nothing like Backstreet Boys’ style. Nothing like that.

Fuck that. Fuck Brittany Spears. Fuck all that shit. That shit’s pre-fabricated crap for all the people in America to go "Oh yeah," [in nasal-sounding nerd voice] "What a bright shiny, happy day!"

No, we’re from Vacaville. The rock scene is definitely more hitting in Sacramento than in Vacaville but we’ve got to represent where we’re from, where we started. Sacramento is like a second home but Vacaville is ultimately where we’re from. But to tell you the truth, the entire northern part of California is like our home because this is where we’ve been doing it, you know? But as far as where my heart is, that’s Vacaville.

Yeah, we’re on like 25 dates of it.

You know what? I actually think we’ll stick out like a sore thumb on the tour.

Yeah, a very good thing. We’re not punk rock, per se, like the rest of the people there are — Green Day, NOFX, Suicide Machines. But it’s going to be cool also because they’re going to have a couple hip-hop acts. Also the Long Beach Dub All-Stars will be there, so there will be all sorts of different styles, but I think it will be a really good tour for us. We did two dates last year on the local stage, but this year we’re going to be on the main stage. Oh yeah, and Snapcase is going to be there too, which we’re hyped about.

Oh man. You ever heard of the bar-code theory?

Well, if you look at a can of food, or like a box of food, and check out the back where the bar-code is, look at the six. There’s a fat bar and a skinny bar, and that’s for the number six. And if you look across the bar-code, on the end there’s a six and in the middle there’s a six that sticks down, and on the other end there’s one too.

Yeah. Well in pretty much 85 percent of all the stuff out there. Check it out.

It’s kind of strange, huh? It’s like everything is all evil. Corruption. [launches into lyric, singing in deep voice] "Corruption rules my soul…" just like Iggy Pop said.

Aw dude, you haven’t heard his new song yet?

"Corruption…" [starts to sing and then trails off] It’s his new song, his new hit.

Oh yeah. Mostly they’re about the van breaking down, but this one time we were in Oregon and we were sitting in this gas station and these guys pull up in this car…wait, lemme back up for a second. We were driving over an overpass and we had put chains on, but the chains weren’t working and they fell off and popped one of our tires. So we pulled off the road and got to this gas station — it’s like three in the morning — and we call to have someone bring us a new tire because the spare we had was no good. So we were sitting there and these kids pulled up in this car and there’s blood all over the side of it. I’m like "What the fuck?" They look like gang-banger kids, so we were in the van and Jeff, our merch guy, he was, like, taking down a description of these guys and we’re thinking, ‘Dude, should we call the cops or something?’ Because they came in and got the windshield wiper — that squeegee thing you wash the windshield with — and they took it and were wiping down the blood all over the side of the car and on the inside. Remember in the movie Pulp Fiction?

It was kind of like that, but it wasn’t that bloody. It was crazy like that. So we took down the descriptions and couldn’t decide if we should call someone because we thought if we did we’d have to come back up to Oregon and be in some hearing. Well, right as they pull out, a cop pulls up and pulls them over.

And lastly, all I gotta’ say is, dude, the bitches in Kansas get pretty crazy…

They had a bikini contest.

Yeah, at the show. All I gotta’ say is the bikini contest got kind of, um, out of hand. It was crazy. [laughing] There were no bikinis involved, actually. Backwoods. I’m telling you dude, backwoods motherfuckers get crazy.

Yeah, we weren’t mad. It was right before we played, and we were sitting backstage watching this shit go down. And we were like "What the fuck is going on?"

Yeah, I wasn’t mad about that at all.

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