The Buddha Den: INTERVIEW: The Breeders (Part 5 of 5)

...if you've hung with us through the previous four parts of this interview, thank you. We know it's a lot of information and, quite frankly, not many of us have or take the time to digest something like this. For whatever it was worth, we hope you enjoyed this interview. We most certainly did. And now for the exciting conclusion of The Buddha Den Interview with The Breeders....

Kelly: Did you know about the video? We have a new video…

TBD: Yeah, I was gonna ask about that.

Kelly: It should be out today or tomorrow on Rollingstone.com. It’s cute. Oh my god, the girls are so adorable.

Kim: St. Louis…

Kelly: We went to St. Louis. I drove down from here and then Mondo, the bass player in the band, who’s actually a film guy…

Kim: He’s got a nice camera, Mondo does.

Kelly: Yeah, he’s got a nice camera and stuff. He flew out from L.A. and a friend did it, did the filming.

Kim: They went to a Skatetorium.

TBD: It’s not a skating rink anymore?

Kim: Apparently not.

Kelly: Skatium. No. Skatorium. It’s dingy. It’s a dive.

Kim: I wasn’t there. I was just thinking that we needed something visual because I tend to YouTube things, even if I just wanna hear a song, I YouTube it. And I was thinking if we give this away, how will people actually see it? How will people hear it? If it’s me, I would wanna YouTube it. So, it’s like we need something visual to throw up there.

TBD: So you guys know the girls in St. Louis? Is that what it was?

Kim: Yeah, she came up when she was like in her teens, she drove from St. Louis to I think Cleveland or Detroit to Lollapalooza and her mother didn’t know she was gone, she didn’t have any money, but she said hello to us and we introduced her to our parents. My mom and dad freaked out and gave her bus money and hotel money, too. Or gas money, something like that. And we just kept in touch with her all these years. She’s in a roller derby league and we ran into her and Kelly had the idea of not just….I was thinking if we wanna put it on YouTube it has to have some kind of visual aspect to it. Maybe we could just put a picture, I don’t know, we just need something, placeholder, it has to be visual. Kelly said that her and Amy Whited, the girl who’s in the roller derby, Arch Rivals, that’s what they’re called, that’s the team name because there’s the big St. Louis Arch, so that’s the Arch Rivals. So they talked, Kelly and this Amy girl talked and said that it would be really good to get them on skating. So I thought cool, Kelly went out there, I thought they would come back with some girls spinning around the rink, and that’s what you could YouTube, you know? I thought that would be great. But it turned out to be a real video. It looks really cool. They’re singing along to the song because they were given the information and they had they lyrics. There’s even shirts made with some of the lyrics on it. It’s done really well. It looks like a proper video.

TBD: Cool.

Kim: I know. I can’t believe it. But there’s no place to put it up. I mean I guess there might be an MTV still, but I don’t know if there is. It really doesn’t matter. It still looks cool.

TBD: I’ll put it up.

Kim: There you go. Exactly.

TBD: So you did all this yourself? All done in-house?

Kim: Yeah, Kelly did. And the bass player, Mondo. He has a friend named James Ford and he helped, too. Just them three.

TBD: So that’s coming up this week?

Kim: It should be out today. They’re putting it up somewhere. Rollingstone.com said that they wanted to show it, which is cool. I mean, I don’t know who goes [there]. It’s a good place. I don’t know how to put it up. So there you go.

TBD: Eh, it’s on YouTube.

Kim: Exactly.

TBD: People that wanna see it can find.

Kim: That’s how I would find it. Exactly.

TBD: So what’s next beyond all this?

Kim: We’re trying to get more shows for the summer. We’ve got some more songs on the 4-track. I don’t know. I think one of them sounds alright.

TBD: You have standards, and that’s OK.

Kim: The only standard is I have to sing it and it’s like, uh.

Kelly: Yeah, so in August we have a couple shows in England and then we’ll work out from there to get more shows around that.

TBD: Do you see more releases?

Kim: Oh yeah.

TBD: Do you think the model of doing it this way on your own is something you’re gonna keep working?

Kelly: Ask me in about a month. We’ll see how this one goes.

Kim: I don’t know how. It’s gonna end in tears. There is no record company anyway.

Kelly: Right. I think this actually makes a lot of sense to me. So far. I’ve really enjoyed the process. I think it’s very creative.

Kim: Yeah, it has been. It’s been really fun making the vinyl. It’s been really fun handscreening it.

Kelly: It’s weird, because we’ve always…Vaughn [?] from 4AD always did the artwork, we weren’t really involved. We were as involved as we wanted to be or could be at the time, but he was always really good about that. It doesn’t really feel like that much has changed.

Kim: Even when we did like shirts we used the guys from Dayton to the hand screening, you know Alien Workshop is from here, so there was always handscreening here in Dayton so it’s not like we were…

Kelly: We made t-shirts here. We recorded.

Kim: We used Refraze, we used Cro-Mag. Yeah, so. It’s like an EP, so it didn’t make sense to have a sit-down meeting with a record company for an EP. Quite frankly, we wouldn’t have been able to get it out in time for All Tomorrow’s Parties anyway because they take to long.

TBD: Yeah, there’s a schedule to it. It’s prohibitive.

Kim: It is.

Kelly: Prohibitive. Good word. I’m gonna use that word a lot.

Kim: Oh god.