A true living legend, Wino might be one of the most influential musicians of the Doom Metal scene. If it wasn’t for his work in seminal bands The Obsessed and Saint Vitus, as well as Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand and all-star band Shrinebuilder, the genre very well might be quite different. Traces of his guitar playing and raspy, yet melodic vocals can be found in just about any “heavy and slow” band that followed his footsteps. Now in the 4th decade of his career, the lifer remains as active as ever and recently released his latest solo album, Forever Gone, out on Ripple Music. Here we find Wino at the top of his game, delivering some of the heaviest guitar/vocals acoustic music known to man. Long live the king!
What have you been listening to the most lately?
I’ve been listening to some TYPE O NEGATIVE, some ROKY ERICKSON…I always have my go-to records that I always listen to, depending on my mood. Blue Garden by MASTERS OF REALITY, the first RAGING SLAB record. I like some older Clutch. I love listening to live HUMBLE PIE, the original recording Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore, with I don’t need to doctor, Stone cold fever, stuff like that. I’m always up for some HENDRIX. A lot of Hendrix is coming out now that has been sort of stored away in the can for a while. New Hendrix is always pretty interesting.
So you’re always digging these new, uncovered songs from Hendrix?
Sometimes. I mean, I’ve been trying to learn the intro to I Don’t live today for 20 years. Anytime you see live Hendrix, they’re so high on speed, they’re playing it so fast, it’s hard to keep up with it, you know? But yeah, I listen mostly to older stuff. I always draw a blank when somebody ask me what new stuff I’m listening to but as we go along, I might think of it. I really liked GOV’T MULE, when the bass player was still alive. BLUE ÖYSTER CULT too. I’m kind of stuck in the groove with some old music because really, there’s not that much new music that really does it for me, you know?
You mentioned some live records. Do you usually go for the live records? Are you more of a studio recording type of person?
Well, it really depends. I mean, back in the day, for example, HUMBLE PIE’s Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore, that shit was recorded pretty good. And I must say, the live BLUE ÖYSTER CULT record, On Your Feet or on Your Knees, is pretty fantastic. I hadn’t listened to that record in like, 20 years and then a couple years ago, I put it on and I was in my car and I was blown away by how good it sounded. It has to be produced good. If anything sounds thin, it sounds thin, you know?
What are some of the most memorable shows that you’ve seen in your life?
I’ve seen some memorable shows. I mean, I guess when I saw SABBATH on the Masters Of Reality tour. I could still tell you what Ozzy was wearing even. He was wearing red velvet bloomers, black thigh-high boots and a red and black dashiki. *Haha* That was my third concert. In my young mind, I thought they were gonna destroy their instruments, they were playing so ferociously. I thought there was no way that they would be able to keep playing like that. My very first concert was the JAMES GANG. Joe Walsh was already out of the band and they had this guitar player Dominic Troiano playing. The record they were touring on was called Straight Shooter. Pretty good. A couple of songs on there I really like. Dominic Troiano was a Canadian dude actually, who later went on to play with Jan Hammer and I think they did the Miami Vice theme song, maybe? Some shit like that. Then I saw ALICE COOPER on the Killer tour when he was still hanging himself. That was being supported by MITCH RYDER AND THE DETROIT WHEELS. Then I saw BLUE ÖYSTER CULT for Secret Treaties, being supported by NAZARETH on the Razamanaz tour. So I would say that I was very lucky!
That is quite a list! Is there anything though that slipped through? A band you really wish you would have seen while they were still active but never got a chance to see them?
Yeah, never got a chance see GRAND FUNK RAILROAD. Believe it or not, I never got to see the original band. I had a chance to because they reformed and my company was bringing the amplifiers and stuff to the concert but I was so tired from working all day, once I took my boots off, I didn’t want to put them back on. *Haha* So I never saw Grand Funk Railroad with Mark Farner. Although I’ve seen DEEP PURPLE, and I played with Deep Purple -we actually supported them-, it was never with Richie Blackmore, which is a shame too. I must say, I think Tommy Bolin was really overrated.
Speaking of playing with a band like this, what’s the band that you’ve toured with that impressed you the most? The one that you had to watch their set night after night.
MELVINS, on the Houdini tour. We played some big shows. I’ll tell you a funny story, when we played in Seattle, we played and of course Melvins are headlining, right? So here comes all these limousines while The Melvins are playing and it’s PEARL JAM. They send their manager in while The Melvins are playing and what they were trying to do is, it’s a big show and they just suddenly felt like playing so they were gonna try to see if they could muscle their way onto the stage and jam on The Melvins’ gear. Be the spoilers, whatever. And The Melvins, always so great, what they said is, “We’ll let you do that if we can do that the next time you play somewhere and we’re in town!” *Hahaha* So Pearl Jam declined!
I really, really like TOOL too. I say them some years ago when I was in Hollywood and they were amazing but RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE and Tool, I saw when they were first starting out and they were playing to very small crowds. Their crowds were small but they’re intense and they grew so quickly. Rage Against The Machine was interesting to see, how they rose so fast and Tool also. Tool had a plan: 10 shows and then signed! I mean, that’s what they did, it was pretty amazing.
Do you remember the first time music had an impact on you?
I’ve always, always liked music. I think that I must have been hard wired to play guitar or to be in the music because I can’t remember ever not liking it. When I started playing guitar, it did take me a little while before it sort of worked, I remember being very frustrated, because I was taking lessons for like, six months and it just wasn’t happening. I just wasn’t feeling it and one day I told myself, “Well, I’m gonna pick this up right now and if I don’t feel it this time, then I’m giving it up.” Somehow miraculously, it just kind of clicked and fell into place. I also had a run of good luck because my neighbour, this woman seven years older than me, my parents had paid her to tutor me in math. But she was kind of wild and she had this beautiful Martin 12 string and she would go to Folk festivals and win awards and stuff, she could sing like an angel. So instead of doing the math we’d get into her parents liquor cabinet and drink. She was really influential in turning me to music. She could tune a guitar open. She could learn JONI MITCHELL songs by ear, it was pretty amazing actually. She turned me on to the knowledge that acoustic music could be heavy. Heaviness wasn’t necessarily just an electronic thing, you know?
Is there any music that you didn’t like at first but you learned to appreciate over, to become a favorite of yours?
Well, not really, if I didn’t like it at first, there’s a good chance I don’t like it now. I mean, as far as poppy stuff goes, the poppiest band I like right now is ROYAL BLOOD. It’s just two dudes, one guy’s playing bass guitar, but he’s making all these cool guitar sounds. I think their songs are real hooky, drummer’s great. Amazing to do that with just two people, to get all the guitars sounds and to do it all live. Of course, his pedal board is the best kept secret, it’s fucking guarded closely, but I’ll tell you, they’re really good. I like them a lot. I like some of the FOO FIGHTERS stuff, not everything but a little bit and that’s about as poppy as i go, man.
Is there something that you missed out when you when you first came up and discovered way later? Something that you couldn’t believe you’d been sleeping on for that long?
Maybe Quaaludes? Oh, you’re talking about music! *Hahaha* I like the ROYAL GUARDSMAN. A lot of records will do that actually, they will creep up on you. It really is your state of mind. I’ve listened to my own records sometimes and not been in the proper state of mind and thought I didn’t like this or that but you can also have what I call ear fatigue. If you’re in the studio for five days straight and you listen to mixes, your ears really get fatigued and sometimes, it’s really a good idea to take a day or two off because you don’t hear the same, you get bombarded.
Some Country music grew on me for sure, like TOWNES VAN ZANDT definitely. I don’t like everything he does, but that’s cool. This new guy I really like, TYLER CHILDERS but he didn’t really grow on me. I mean, some of these artists, I only like two or three songs. I always like the dark stuff. Something about the dark, melancholy stuff always was what I was into. I must say, I don’t really like that song that Lemmy wrote for Ozzy, Mama, I’m Coming Home, I was really stunned but that. I figured that Lemmy was needing to make money to live on but in a way, just a tiny, tiny way, you could almost say the two words that I better not say…selling out…but not really…yeah, I guess it was but I’m not gonna hold it against him because he’s a demigod, you know? *Haha*
Do you have any kind of hidden jam that you really love, either a song, an album or an artist, that you think should have been way more popular than it is?
Yeah, there’s this one guy that I think definitely should have had a bit more popularity and his name’s Wino. *Hahaha*
We agree. We agree. *Haha*
Thank you very much. I don’t know man. You know, I guess TOWNES VAN ZANDT ended up being pretty popular in the public eye. ROKY ERICKSON, he started to make it towards the end, it was pretty cool. People like ARTHUR LEE, he got thrown in jail in his prime, that really was a drag. I really thought GOV’T MULE were something else when Allen Woody was still alive. These dudes had telepathy, I swear to God. I saw these two dudes come out one time, Warren Haynes and Allen Woody, they were both playing matching white Gibson guitars, Haynes had a Firebird and Allen woody had the Thunderbird, they came out playing an instrumental version of a Pygmy Twylyte by FRANK ZAPPA. That blew my mind. I don’t know. That’s a tricky one. Let me think that over for a minute. Maybe CHARLIE FEATHERS. Man, you gotta dig into some Charlie Feathers. He’s this weird Country guy, one of the first to sing in kind of a Rockabilly style, but all the songs are about murder and shit. It’s pretty crazy.
Do you have any unpopular music opinion that you’d like to defend? Stuff that you truly love and yet, can hardly find anyone to agree with you?
Well, I really like the RESIDENTS. They can be a little bit tricky to some people. I’ve put on an ULTRA BIDÉ record before and cleared the house. These are bands that I like a couple songs from. A chick I used to date, I used to say that The Residents’ Constantinople was our song because it would literally drive her up the wall so I would play that whenever I could. The BUOYS did a cool song. It was a studio band that was put together but they had this hit called Timothy. Here’s the thing, when I was younger, I was still in elementary school, there used to be this pretty cool AM radio station and I remember sitting on the school bus and hearing BLOODROCK D.O.A. and then hearing Timothy. Timothy was about these three miners that got stuck in a mine and didn’t have any food to eat or any water and this one guy was kind of sadistic and basically, he decided they’re gonna eat Timothy so the whole song is about cannibalism. *singing*”Timothy, Timothy, Joe was looking at you” *Haha* Crazy song. You got to dig into that song, it will fucking rock your world for a little while at least. I kind of wish that song would make a comeback.
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