Thursday, November 4, 2010

cKy Q&A with drummer, Jess Margera



cKy is playing the Clearwater Theater (96 W Main St. West Dundee, IL)
Thursday, November 4 with Lionize, HourCast and Flames of Icarus.
Doors are at 6:30 p.m. Show's at 7. Admission is $18. The band's most
recent single, "The Afterworld," was featured on the Jackass 3-D
soundtrack this year.

Q&A with Jess Margera, drummer of cKy

Squid Pro Quo: So cKy's on tour. Will you guys be releasing a new album soon?

Jess Margera: "We put one out last year, but we did just release a new
single on the Jackass 3-D soundtrack. It's been doing awesome. Movie
made $50 million its first weekend, it's crazy. Our new single, "The
Afterworld," plays as soon as the credits roll. Epitaph Records
released the soundtrack. There's also an iTunes single with a b-side."

SPQ: Have you ever played the Clearwater Theater before?

JM: "I think the closest we've done was Freeport, IL. I think it's near
Iowa maybe. Everyone says Clearwater is cool and small. We played the
House of Blues in Chicago last year. Today we're playing Flint, MI
kind of near Detroit. This place is awesome. The venue we're playing
is called The Machine Shop. There's all these motorcycles in the
place. It's fuckin' cool. The Clutch guys told me about this place.
I'm a huge fan of them. I started a band with singer (of Clutch) and a
guy from Fu-Manchu. We did a record last year. Those guys have been
touring since 1990 or something, so they know every good spot in
America. Whenever I'm playing a tour, I always ask them for tips. So
for years, they said this Flint, MI machine shop was fucking good.
It's my first time here."

SPQ: When you play your songs live, are they pretty true to the
recordings or do you guys venture out a bit?

JM: "I have friends say, 'I love cKy records' but you don't understand
cKy till you've seen us play live. It's a little more raw, a little
more crazy. Our fans appreciate the polished sound of album but live
is where it's at. So that's the best compliment I could get. That's
when you know you're a true live band. I can't stand all the bands
that play the tracks exactly and have all those drunk triggers. That's
whats wrong with rock. When we go on tour with bands, I'm not going to
name names but like, you'll catch their set and be like, 'this is
awesome,' and then they tell the same stories and same jokes. I guess
it works cause each town thinks they have their own witty jokes. But
on tour, it's like, 'ah shut the fuck up,' you know? We did Warped
Tour and Ice-T was on that. He kept saying, 'I'm no longer Ice-T. I'm
Ice-Motha-Fuckin-T, bitch.' The first few times it's awesome, but it
was like, 'if he tells that joke one more time, I'm gonna strangle him.'
He's a repetitive joke-telling dude, but he's cool as hell."

SPQ: I heard you guys have your own studio?

JM: "Chad (I. Ginsburg, guitarist) does. We put out an album last year
("Carver City," 2009) through Roadrunner Records that we recorded at
his place. It's called Studio CIG in Pennsylvania. It's on the
Delaware River. The last few records we did before "Carver City" we did
at random studios in L.A. and Hawaii and shit but there, you're on the
clock and you gotta watch your money and shit like that. When we're at
our studio, we don't have to worry about that. We can experiment like
crazy. If it takes six hours to get the right sound, then it takes six
hours. It's a pretty cool thing."

SPQ: Will there be a music video accompanying "The Afterworld?"

JM: "As soon as we get back from this tour, we're going to do that. All
I heard is that there was going to be girls and Bam (Margera) might be
the devil and it's going to be set in hell. Everybody's gonna be
raging in hell. It sounds like it's going to be fun. Hot girls and
hell."

SPQ: I read you filmed part of Jackass 3-D.

JM: "I filmed a couple of the days, but it's typical that they just cut
it out. I did a skit before where me and my brother were in this
shady-ass, murderer-looking van and we put Ryan Dunn in a plastic bag
with fake blood in it and we beat the hell out of him with rubber crow
bars and threw him in a dumpster and peeled out. The other cameramen
got people's reactions by the dumpster. It was so fuckin' funny. One
of the best skits of film but the test audiences thought it was too
real so that got cut out. I did some other stuff for Jackass 2 and
that got cut out. You can see me for like 2 seconds. They got me with
that invisible man thing. Wee Man dressed in camo. Whatever the
background is, they painted him like the background. My dad was in his
office and he has this weird-looking wall, so they painted Wee Man to
look like his wall. My dad's like, 'Jess, come here, I need you to
sign some paperwork.' I'm going down the stairs and Wee Man grabs me.
It's a fucked up thing when an invisible man grabs you, when you're
not paying attention. I do that every fucking day, you know. But that
day, I feel this midget grab me. My reaction was crazy. They'll use
that later I guess. But the movie's really good. We're stoked to be a
part of it. We've been friends with those guys for ages and they went
3-D on the new one. Now I realize those movies were basically made to
be 3-D. There's nothing like seeing someone get pissed on in 3-D."

SPQ: Your video idea reminds me of a video I saw on Beavis and
Butthead. What if cKy made it to Beavis and Butthead? I heard Mike
Judge is bringing it back.

JM: "I used to watch that show as a teenager and actually heard of a
lot of bands I'm into now because of that show."

SPQ: What if they trash talked your video?

JM: "As long as they're watching it and talking about it, that's great.
I saw them ditch a Ween video and then praise a different one. I dig
that video, and I checked out their record after that."

SPQ: You guys toured New Zealand and Australia in August. What was the
response like and how was the tour?

JM: "We flew from England to Hong Kong then to Auckland, New Zealand.
It was the most brutal flight ever. The entire trip was completely
around the Earth so it was close to 30,000 miles of flying. When I got
home, I had no idea what day it was; no idea what was going on. I
slept for two days straight. Pure jet lag. The shows were awesome,
man. It's worth the flight once you get there. If I didn't see another
airport for 10 years, I'd be totally fine with that. I just want to
stick to the continent and drive. I don't care if I have to get to
Alaska, I'll fucking figure it out. But I had such a great time. The
crowds are amazing. It's just cool because not to diss rap or country,
but it's just all rock there man. Purely rock n' roll. There's hardly
any rap or hip-hop, just rock. And you know, when you go into clubs
and there's that dance shit. But I'll take that over a lot of country
and rap. All of that stuff is terrible in my opinion. There's good
country and good rap. But there's a lot of bad country and bad rap. I
dig the early Wu-Tang shit. Old school."

SPQ: cKy the band and cKy the skateboard videos came out roughly the
same time. Which came first?

JM: "We did the first album ('cKy: Volume 1') then the skateboard videos.
They came out at the same time and were both called cKy. That guy
Spike Jonze saw it and wanted to put cKy stuff with this other company
called Big Brother. That's what Jackass is; cKy and Big Brother people
doing their thing. With Spike Jonze behind the camera, you can do no
wrong. I haven't see 'Where the Wild Things Are' yet. I heard it was
good."

SPQ: I read you're going to release a box set in the future.

JM: "That's the plan because we're lucky enough that Chad has a studio
pretty much at our disposal. It's been 15 years, so we just have a
massive amount of stuff built up from radio sessions to demo versions,
b-sides and all kinds of stuff floating around that's pretty rad and I
think now's the time to get it out there. We have so many concerts
recorded from Japan, England and Holland too. We're sitting on this
massive amount of stuff that needs to see the light of day. I'm
excited about it, man."

SPQ: Do you guys have a label in mind set to release that?

JM: "There are so many options nowadays. It's pretty cool. You can kind
of just work with a distributor. When you're a band like us that's
self-sufficient and you don't need tour support money, there's almost
no reason to have a label anymore. If you know what you're doing, you
just get a distributor, a public relations person, press and there you
go."

2010 cKy Tour Dates


11/1: Flint, MI @ The Machine Shop
11/2: Cleveland, OH @ Peabody’s
11/4: West Dundee, IL @ Clearwater Theater
11/5: Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave II
11/6: Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock
11/7: Iowa City, IA @ The Blue Moose Tap House
11/8: Louisville, KY @ Headliners Music Hall
11/10: Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre
11/11: Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
11/12: Poughkeepsie, NY @ The Chance
11/13: Towson, MD @ Recher Theatre

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