RAW & UNCENSORED INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRTY HEADS
Just like its music, a Dirty Heads interview is always going to be honest, fun and well... dirty... especially when the interview is with vocalist/trouble-maker Jared "Dirty J" Watson. In one of The Pier's most explicit interviews Jared stops by to drop the latest on the band's upcoming album release, tour plans and giving Matthew McConaughey piggy-back rides! WTF???
The Pier: Firstly, I got to ask how is Duddy? Is everything ok with him? (Duddy recently had surgery)
Jared: He is 110% cool. He has had everything taken care of and he feels better. It is all good for the band, besides all the STDs Jon Jon has of course.
The Pier: So you must be finally relieved to get a full-length album (Any Port in a Storm) out?
Jared: Philip, that is a fucking understatement. Dude, it has been four years of ups and downs and bullshit. We have gone through every cliché shitty thing that can happen to a band. Yet we are still standing, still smiling and still trying to have a good time. We are stoked it is coming out, but I just want to get our next full-length album out. I think we are so much better now and so are our new songs.
The Pier: Was it difficult to keep a positive attitude over that frustrating period?
Jared: It was but we knew what we were getting into. All our other friends that are in bands that have already kind of "made it" were telling us the music industry is one of the hardest things to be successful in and that it can be really shitty. As long as you have good people around you that will help pick you up when things get down then it is going to be alright. Getting along with your band helps – they’re my boys.
The Pier: You have known Duddy and Jon Jon for a while then?
Jared: I have known Jon Jon since third grade and Duddy since I was 13 or 14. We have known each other for the longest time.
The Pier: Must be kind of mind-blowing getting to rock a stage with them, like at Red Rocks in front of thousands of people? Must be kind of surreal in some ways?
Jared: Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s like, ‘what the fuck are we doing here?’ It’s funny you say that. So here’s a story, we were on that 311/Matisyahu tour and it was raining in Indiana and Matisyahu was like, ‘Let’s stop the rain’ and as soon as he said that the rain stopped. Then we were at Red Rocks and it was raining right before we were going on. We were like, ‘Oh fuck, the show is going to get pushed back and guess who gets fucking cut? Us.' So Matishyahu walks by and says, ‘Don’t worry I am praying for you guys, don’t worry the rain will stop.’ A couple of minutes after he said that the rain stopped. We couldn’t fuck believe it. Jon Jon and I were like, 'Matisyahu just walked by us, stopped the rain and now we can play Red Rocks. That’s insane.'
The Pier: Back to the new album, Any Port in Storm, what is the inspiration behind the title? What exactly does it mean?
Jared: I had to even ask when it came out. Jon Jon was the one who said it. So we were in a pickle and were trying to work out where we were going with the band and as a joke Jon Jon says, ‘Any port in a fucking storm dude.’ I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ He replied, ‘When you are in a shit storm you have to take any available port – anything you can get.’ Now we don’t necessarily agree with that in terms of what our band wants, but at the time it was so fucking perfect.
He told us that’s what you tell your buddies if you are taking an ugly girl home at night, at two o’clock in the morning, you are drunk and your buddies are questioning what the hell are you doing with that fat chick. That’s what you say, “Dudes, I am drunk and any port in a storm will do.” So thinking that was one of the best things I had ever heard in my life we agreed to name the album after that. Plus it goes along really well with our Sails to the Wind EP theme and where we were as a band. In the end, it is a perfect name for our album - it has a meaning for the band and it also can mean you are drunk and you are going to fuck a fat girl (haha).
The Pier: Tell us about some of the folks you worked with on this album and how those hook-ups came about?
Jared: We worked with Josh Freese the drummer from The Vandals and he just got off a tour with Sting. We love The Police and that sound and he invited us out to watch some Vandal shows. He was a really cool guy, not just some dude that would play on your track then bail, but he liked our music and wanted to hang. He is also one of the best drummers in the world.
We also got Billy Preston on there, he has played with The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and the Chili Peppers. He is a legend. He liked our stuff and while a lot of kids will be like, ‘Who the fuck is Billy Preston?’ If you are a fan of the Stones or The Beatles, any keys you hear then it is probably Billy Preston. Him working with us was also right before he died, so that was pretty legit.
The Pier: So Josh Freese plays on the new track Knows That I. You also got new tracks on the album I hadn’t heard before like Shine and Believe. Tell us about those.
Jared: Those are my three favorite songs now. It is probably because they are new, I understand that. I have been playing the other songs for so long, but even if they were not new they are still so much more like us and they sound like the Dirty Heads know exactly who we are. Like the song Believe is taking a step towards more like who we are, not a step back but more towards this raw acoustic shit. For us it’s all about that with some good singing and catchy raps, not this over produced shit. That is what I also guarantee you can expect more from us in the future.
The Pier: I always thought it would be cool for you to take those way-produced songs and also record stripped down versions of them? Offer fans both versions.
Jared: That’s kind of fucking amazing you said that. Are you a mind reader? We are actually in the process of writing an acoustic album. We are going to do some of the songs from this album acoustically along with some new ones. We are planning on putting out this acoustic 10 track EP soon. We are going to break down four or five songs off this album and do them acoustically.
This album to be honest we almost did do a double album of "Night" and "Day." We were gooing to have the banging live band stuff on the "Night" disc and the acoustic "Day" time stuff on another disc perfect for the beach. I would hope this acoustic album will be out by the end of this year, as it is not going to take us long to do. Writing acoustic shit and doing those shows is one of my favorite things about being in this band.
The Pier: The double album would have been cool. I personally like both those sides to the band. I love driving around listening to Hip Hop Misfits. That song bangs so hard.
Jared: Ok, cause I don’t know how people are going to feel about that song, cause it is pretty Hip Hop. It’s also probably the furthest and out there the Dirty Heads will do - that and Morning Light. But you know, we were just having fun. Fuck it, I don’t give a shit what people think and I don’t want to write the same song over and over. I remember when we finished Hip Hop Misfits, I was thinking some people are really going to fucking hate this song, so I don’t know how many more of those type of songs we are going to do (haha).
The Pier: Well I really dig it, it still has that raw Dirty Heads attitude. Another Hip Hop type jam on the album, Check the Level has a very strong positivity theme about overcoming odds. Are the two stories in the song based on real people or were inspired by other personal events?
Jared: The girl Lilly is actually based on a girl I used to go to high school with. I was kinda cool to her but she was also kinda beat, kind a bigger girl and not that attractive so people would fuck with her. I am guilty, I would also fuck with her too, but I was also cool to her as well as she was in a lot of my classes. I grew up and then always had her back you know? She did leave high school, grew into herself and became this smoking hot fucking chick and now she is a model for women’s health type shit and is super successful. The dude in the song is a combination of buddies of mine and a bit of myself and maybe what I would like to be – "with millions of people screaming my songs."
The Pier: Stand Tall, the album's first single, was also featured in the movie Surfs Up. Tell us about the inspiration behind that song?
Jared: I was going through a really shitty relationship that I was stuck in. One that was always on and then off. That’s what I wrote my verse about and it is something that everybody can pretty much relate to. At the time we wrote it, it was what I was going through and was pretty much the first thing that came to my mind. You have to ask Duddy what his verse is about, I don’t want to fuck it up and have him get mad at me (haha).
The Pier: You just shot a music video for Stand Tall. What can we expect to see from the video and how was the shoot?
Jared: It was rad. We came up this idea for the video based on the album name and this fucking row boat that has been stored behind The Katin Surf Shop near where I grew up. So my friend Cameron who did all the album artwork and I each painted a half of this boat. So in the album art we have this boat and we are stuck in the middle of this desert. In the video we start in this garage and we are trying to get this boat, our little buddy, to the beach but we keep getting shutdown and have to go back to garage and try over again like it is this Groundhog’s Day kind of thing.
It was the first video we have shot, it was fun and it looks killer. Before we painted the boat, my friends and I would do skating tricks off it. So we took the boat into LA and invited some of my cool skating friends to shred off it in the video. The shoot itself was more guerilla style, but the fucking thing is... we had to carry this boat above our heads all day for two days. This thing is heavy as shit, we were so fucking sore by the end of the shoot. It didn’t help that management kept hiding the beer from us during the shoot as they were worried we would get all fucked up and look all hagged on screen. We had to keep looking for this booze which is kind of fucked up… and in the end we weren’t that bad.
The Pier: Speaking of videos, there was your recent cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida and Stand Tall from Raw Sessions posted online. Can we expect any more songs from that video session to leak eventually?
Jared: I think there is one more song that we did. Just to let everybody know when we got the Raw Sessions offer they said they would film us doing an acoustic version of one of our original acoustic songs and us doing a cover song. BUT it had to be a Top 40 cover song. We were like, ‘Fuck... Top 40?’ So we were looking and there was Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Katy Perry and then there was Coldplay. So we thought let’s try Coldplay cause there is the Easy Dub Allstars that do Radiohead in the reggae style. So we did it and we thought people were going to hate us, cause here we are trying to do a cover song of probably the biggest band in the world right now – we have to do it good and we have to do it different and we can’t just go sing it half-assed. We apologize to any Coldplay fans that think we murdered it and if you like it... thanks.
The Pier: I actually remember watching the video for the song for the first time thinking ‘holy shit’ Jared can actually sing really well. No offence dude (haha).
Jared: Haha, I even thought to myself, as I am not known as a singer… I am the rapper. I didn’t really start singing in the band till we did Stand Tall, which is maybe three years ago. That was the first time I ever sang and so I have definitely been working on my vocals. In my mind I thought we were going to grow as a band where Duddy was going to be the singer and I was going to the rapper. But the more I play music, the more I want to sing and so I have been working on it. So for people to tell me my voice is getting better it means a lot because I have been working on it a lot.
Especially when you go on tour with bands like The Expendables and Geoff has got an amazing voice. And touring with Nick Hexum and SA from 311 and Matisyahu, with these bands it’s like, "Fuck! They can just crush you vocally." It’s like skating with a really good skater or playing basketball with Michael Jordan – I got to really practice and bust my balls to get as good as you. It makes you want to get better which is cool.
The Pier: So the song Hip Hop Misfits is also going to be in the new Matthew McConaughey movie Surfer Dude? How did that come about?
Jared: I am not sure exactly how it came about, but we submit our songs to be in movies, cause soundtracks really help bands out. I heard that Matthew McConaughey picked the song out or something. I have seen the trailer too (haha). I hope it’s good… Matthew McConaughey is bad ass though. Reign of Fire that fucking dragon movie is awesome and he is the shit in that movie Dazed and Confused. Any movie he is in, we are down cause he is the shit.
I just had this one interview with this girl where all she wamted to talk about was Matthew McConaughey, she didn’t talk to me about the Dirty Heads at all. So I told her we were friends with him and we are the reason why he plays naked bongos because of Jon Jon and that he has a good body cause I get on his back and piggy-back as he runs up sand tunes and stuff. We work out with him all the time (haha). That was so fucking good.
The Pier: She bought that? Haha, so you also got to go and play in Japan recently. Even though it was a brief stop-over what was that like?
Jared: It’s the best place on the face of the planet. Though I haven’t really been anywhere else outside the USA. Japan is amazing it was so much fucking fun. The food was amazing, the people were super-cool and you can drink beer anywhere you want. You can buy it in vending machines next to Red Bulls. How do you not like a place that has beer in a vending machine on the side of a street?
We went to some temples, we got to go to the restaurant out of Kill Bill with the Crazy 88. That was cool. I also put an $800 hole in the wall of the hotel. I tried to throw bidet (a low-mounted plumbing fixture or type of sink intended for washing the genitalia, inner buttocks, and anus) water on Matt and he tried to wipe poop on me and we ended up putting a hole in the wall.
The Pier: Finally, what’s the Dirty Heads touring plans for the rest of the year?
Jared: We were just talking about it. We are going to get on the road and not get off it for as long as we possibly can. Go to the East Coast – go to Canada, try to get to Europe, Australia and back to Japan. We want to get to the places the kids are asking us to come. It sucks, we get shit from all these kids cause we haven’t toured where they live or been able to get back there. It’s heart-breaking for us and we want to get back. I also just wanted to say I hope everyone likes the album and come out to the shows. Thanks to everyone that support us.
The Pier would like to thank Jared for an honest and really cool interview. Also thanks to IrieAZ Photo for the wicked live pic.
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