Away from the blazing sun of Amplifried Matt, Josh, Rob, and Alex of Psychostick bared all to Devolution. Well, not all, but they did tell tall stories of Anatidaephobia, falling off stage, and their love of happy mosh pits.
Describe your song writing process when writing an album.
A “It depends on the song and depends on the album but usually we take something that either pisses us off and we want to vent about it or we think something’s weird enough to qualify as being a song and then write the lyrics first and then make music that fits the lyrics.”
M “If somebody has an idea and it makes all of us laugh, we proceed. If somebody has an idea and everyone just kind of looks at each other, it’s probably not going to be a song.”
What’s the dumbest thing anyone has ever done on stage?
J “Dumbest thing anyone has ever done on stage?”
M “I’ll take that one. Once I decided that I was really, really thirsty and I was rather drunk, so I took a handle of Jameson on stage instead of water and our fans counted me falling down eleven times on stage, I fell off the stage twice, and I still have the scar to prove it. That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done on stage.”
J “We’ll go with his answer.”
Do you have a main songwriter or is it all collaboration?
M “Everyone comes up with different ideas, but it usually always goes through Josh as he’s our producer also.”
J “In the beginning, like the first couple of albums, I did most of the song writing, but it’s become more collaborative over time. But I usually have a big hand in like demoing it out or something. I have a couple on the new one where I didn’t do shit and I love it.”
Do you guys have a favourite episode of the Twilight Zone?
J “Yes, The Number 12 Looks Like You”
A “I’m more of an X-Files kid than I am Twilight Zone kid. I respect it, I appreciate it, but I’m more an X-Files guy.”
What are you going to tonight?
J “We ruin metal. We like to play heavy stuff that’s fun and makes us laugh and we do really ridiculous shit on stage.”
M “I want to see people head banging and giggling in the pit. That’s what I like to see, I like to see laughter and smiles, and my favourite thing is when there’s that one guy that’s like ‘they wear hats, I don’t like this’ and by the end of the set he’s like ‘okay’. That’s what we go for.”
You can have absolutely anything on your band rider, what is it?
J “Anything?”
A “The show to go on time, that’s what I fucking want. Chop chop.”
J “I was going to say a Tesla.”
R “I’ll work with that, sounds good to me. A Tesla.”
J “Each of us gets a Tesla.”
R “With a Super Nintendo in it.”
A “A Tesla bus.”
M “I demand an extra six hours a day and two days a week in my rider. Change time.”
How do you guys relax on tour?
J “How do we relax? What do you mean relax on tour? I don’t understand.”
R “We don’t typically have a tour bus so it’s a bit of a challenge, but hotels…”
J “A day off in a hotel is really the best…”
R “A hot tub.”
J “If they have a hot tub at the hotel. And we have time to actually get in it because it’s not closed by the time we get back to the hotel, which it usually is. So the answer is we really, you don’t go on tour to relax.”
A “I know how we relax, we cancel shows.”
(Laughter)
J “You’re a dick.”
You’re God for the day, what do you do?
A “You don’t exist.”
R “Cocaine, heroin, hookers.”
The God of cocaine and hookers.
R “Yeah, all of that, sure,”
A “Netflix, that’s what he meant to say.”
R “Yeah, Netflix.”
M “I am the God of WiFi.”
If you could be endorsed by anyone who would it be and why?
A “My endorsements are Zildjian, Evans, I love you guys, and Orange County.”
J “I’ve been trying to get on Engl for a while, they’re a German amp company, I love their stuff. But they’re kind of wishy washy about their endorsement thing. That.”
M “I’d be endorsed by whoever makes digestives. Dark chocolate.”
You’re currently endorsed by somebody who makes dark coffee.
M “Yeah, Mötley Br?w guy. Mötley Br?w’s tasty. I guess we’re endorsing them now.”
Who’s done the best practical joke on tour?
R “I think Alex pulled the best prank, not on tour. Tell them the story.”
A “It’s your story.”
R “It’s your story, you’re the one who pulled it.”
A “Here’s what I did. I thought it would be funny if we had a song about Rob being afraid of ducks since he’s the singer. He’s our front man. We had a song about Anatidaephobia, being terrified of ducks. It would be really amusing to me because people would assume that he wrote it and not me, so they would go to him and ‘are you really afraid of ducks?’ and get all excited and give him duck things and send him messages.”
M “So anybody sees anything scary duck related, they immediately send to Rob who’s not scared of ducks at all. It’s just a joke.”
R “As a social experiment, people are assholes. They’ll send me all the duck photos ‘he’s scared of ducks let’s really make him uncomfortable’.”
A “So I did.”
R “Of course I’m not at all.”
J “Rob ended up not scared, just really, really annoyed.”
A “Yeah, I wrote this song and we finished it, and recorded it and about six month later, I don’t remember the timeline exactly, but months later I confessed to him ‘yeah, I wrote that to fuck with you’.”
If you have a message for anyone out there who hasn’t heard of you guys yet, what is it?
M “Brush your teeth. Call your mom, brush your teeth.”
J “Check us out on Spotify. And YouTube”
A “You need to sleep enough. It’s important.”
R “We’re on Twitch. Come say hi.”
Interview and photo by Mark Bestford