Robert: Yeah, it’s recorded live and composed in the studio.

Doughnut: And you didn’t use any pro tools or anything?

Robert: No, no pro tools at all.

Coffee: Why’d you guys decide to do it that way?

Karl: We like the sound of tape better, for one thing, and it kinda makes you play together better. You’re not thinking, “Okay, we’re gonna go back and fix this or fix that,” and we also wanted to make it so we could fall in love with our own parts.

Coffee: Were you happy with how it turned out?

Karl: Yeah.

Robert: Oh yeah.

Doughnut: And y’all wrote it pretty much in studio, right? You didn’t bring anything to the table?

Robert: Yeah, we wrote it all together in the room.

Doughnut: Is that exhausting?

Robert: No, it’s really fun actually. You know, by the time you’ve recorded the tune, you’re not sick of it before you’re done. You still enjoy it when you’re done recording. Sometimes when you’ve been playing something on the road for six months, you go into the studio and you sweat it out and try to fix all the parts, and it takes forever – I can’t imagine spending months and months on a record.

Karl: Or if you come up with something that you’ve written at home, and you’re all stoked on it and then everybody’s like, “Well, it’s alright.”

Doughnut: Was it a pretty even distribution of songwriting and composing, would you say, between all the band members?

Robert: Well, I really made up almost everything. [laughs] No, no it’s pretty split between everybody.

Karl: We all brought in ideas, and everybody had their put in. The whole thing took about two hours.

Cereal: What was the process like? Would you write a song and then immediately record it? Or did you write everything and then record everything all at once?

Robert: Well we’d make up the songs in the morning and then arrange, and most of the time they were recorded by the end of the day.

Robert: Well, we don’t have anything on the books yet, but yeah, probably.

Doughnut: You guys should do Wakarusa.

Robert: Tell ‘em.

Coffee: How do the Texas crowds compare to other places?

Karl: Texas has been fun so far. We know Austin; Austin went pretty well. Dallas was a nice surprise.

Doughnut: Is it mostly from the new album that you guys have been playing?

Robert: No, we do a bunch of everything, and a bunch of other stuff that’s never been recorded. We change the sets every night.

Doughnut: What style of show is it? Real jam-oriented?

Robert: We’ve been moving towards a little bit less, like, long jams. Instead we’re trying to play some songs, but there is still a lot of stretching out.

Karl: We never really stopped playing together. From probably like ’98 to about 2000, we were not actively playing together, but it wasn’t like we were like, “Oh, we’ll never play together.” It was more like, Robert wanted to do his thing and Mike wanted to do his thing. We just kinda took time off. We did other things, but we always still considered ourselves a band.

Eggs: What brought DJ Greyboy back into the studio with you guys?

Karl: You know, he’s got good taste. He’s always good to have around to say what feels good.

Doughnut: Which tracks did he contribute to on the new album?

Elgin: He contributed to one we didn’t use. It was really more like a DJ cut, it just didn’t fit in. And then he contributed to “Give the Drummer Some More”, it had a thing on the end—

Robert: “Old School Cylons”.

Elgin: Yeah, he's on that as well.

Doughnut: Do you guys still include elements of his contributions in the live shows at all?

Elgin: No, we don’t.

Robert: It’s usually not a great idea—DJ and band—they’re so much their own world that I’d usually rather hear them on their own and vice versa.

Karl: We kind of expected him to be more of a part of the band, back in the ‘90s when we started this band, and he wasn’t really thinking like that. Right away we realized that he really wasn’t part of the band, and thought this is what it is.

Doughnut: Have you done stuff with DJ Logic, for example?

Robert: I’ve played with him quite a bit.

Doughnut: Is that kind of contribution different?

Robert: It’s cool, yeah, but it’s a little tricky to put those things together and make them work.

Doughnut: On his part, do you think?

Robert: No, he does a great job at it.

Karl: Just in terms of what it is—what the potential of having a DJ is, and what it actually usually is onstage.

Elgin: The thing that it breaks down to is that humans don’t play metronomically. And the DJ is stuck to something that has a specific pitch and tempo, so they’re, like, boxed. They’re on train tracks, and we’re on motorcycles. There’s no way to actually really get in sync other than going, “Yeah! Yeah!”, or dropping a “drank!!” You just have to play really metronomically.

Karl: Unless you have a DJ that’s really locked in, like where he’s a part of the rhythm section. He’s dropping beats, and you’re playing off the beats and all that kind of stuff.

Doughnut: Do you like your sound more in smaller,
intimate venues or do you like the bigger-size venues?

Karl: This size. This is gonna kill.

Robert: I think the smaller, the better.

Cereal: What’s your favorite venue you’ve ever played?

Karl: The Belly-Up in San Diego.

Robert: I like the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans. Everything’s broken, it’s fun for some reason.

Elgin: I think the Fillmore’s a pretty good venue.

Eggs: Denver or San Francisco?

Elgin: San Francisco.

Doughnut: Is that where the live album was recorded?

Robert: We’re not allowed to say that, but yeah.

Elgin: What’s the room in Boulder? The Fox—yeah, that’s a pretty cool room.

Robert: The old Zephyr in Salt Lake City was awesome.

Eggs: Do you get good crowds in Salt Lake City?

Robert: Yeah, the Zephyr was great. Since that closed, it’s not as fun to go there.

Eggs: Last but not least, what’s your favorite
breakfast item?

Robert: Oh, this is that breakfast thing!

Elgin: I eat breakfast all day long. Yesterday was bacon, eggs, cornmeal pancakes, coffee.

Robert: I’m big into eating not-breakfast food for breakfast. You know, pizza, leftover Chinese food.