Maylene & The Sons of Disaster Return: Louder Than Life, Reunions, and Festival Insights

0:04 Hey, you're listening to The Adventure of Spider-Man on W4CY Radio. This is Spider-Man here on The Adventure of Spider-Man W4CY Radio and I'm here with. Brad, Josh, and Dallas from Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. How are you here at Louder Than Life? We're warm, but we're having a great time. I know. I renamed the festival, by the way. It's now hotter than life. Oh, my God. I live in South Florida, and I can't wait to go home to cool off. What the fuck? Whoever says that.

0:47 He's an Ocala boy. You're an Ocala boy? Yeah. And where are you from? St. Pete. There you go. How about you? I'm from Birmingham, Alabama. Well, that's North Florida. Exactly. My daughter lives near Navarre. And, like, everybody calls that South Alabama. Oh, yeah. Because you're right there, and it really isn't Florida. Like, when you get there, it's no longer really Florida. Right. And it's funny, too, because I have to fly to see her, even though it's in the same state. I have other kids in North Carolina. I can drive there quicker than I can drive to her place. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's wild. You know, but you're here now in Louisville, Kentucky.

1:33 With 150 degree weather, 200% humidity, and having to perform. Mad respect. Like, I am not worthy. You guys performing in this shit. Okay? I don't even know how you do it. I don't even know how you live through it. But, I'm glad you're here. Thank you. We're happy to be here. So, tell us a little bit about the road to laddering life. I know I've talked to you before at other Danny Wimmer festivals. Is this your first time at Louder, or have you played this before? I believe this is our first time doing Louder Than Life. Yeah, we've done some other Wimmer ones, and they've been great. And that brings me. This is on par with all the other ones. It's really well put together.

2:15 And that brings me to one of my most important questions. How does Danny Wimmer treat you guys as an artist? He's great, yeah. Yeah, I mean, as far as from the advancing, for all the information they give you ahead of time and, like, opportunities that they make available for the artists, it's for that many bands to be able to make sure everyone's taken care of, it's pretty rare. Like, to have that many artists of different sizes and kind of giving everyone the same sort of respect and time is pretty cool. And really the whole process, too, like, the people here know what they're doing, which is. Wow, what a concept, right?

2:55 Yeah, I mean, you would think, well, duh, but yeah, I mean, you would be surprised at some of the others. It's like everything from the stage manager to stage liaison to hospitality, everyone is like, they're on top of it, so it's great. See, I love hearing all that, and I've been doing the Wimmer Festivals, all of them, since the beginning, and I've never heard an artist say anything bad about about how they're treated at these festivals. I can't say that for most of the other festivals, okay? 100%. And that's why I ask that question, because I think people don't realize what you guys as artists have to go through to do a festival. It's not like even doing your own show. You don't have your own sound people. You don't know what's up. You don't know the lay of the land. You just show up, and you've got hope and pray that loading is stress-free, soundcheck's stress-free, There's no issues. Because, listen, if you guys have no stress, we have fun because you're having fun. You know? And so I always love hearing that. It doesn't matter who the artist is. They all get treated like they're the headliner here. And that's pretty cool. Yeah.

4:14 It's nice for us to be able to do the chaos on stage and there's no chaos backstage of Where is water? Where are survival tools of playing in festivals like this? How do you get from this here to the stage? I've done other festivals with other artists and stuff where you're waiting so long that you're like, okay, now I need to walk a mile in the heat to get to where I need to be. Right. And then it's really rough to do the set. Yeah. You know? Always. Say it again oh the transpo you know just they are so on and like there's it's yeah it's uh it's surprisingly how fast they're on and with.

5:01 Uh helping but you could tell that they were whatever city they come into they're they're not calling the day labor company to come in and just i need a body to do this these are all people that have been handpicked to do what they do. Your transpo person's like, I'm doing this and only these festivals this month. That's what they do. They're transpo people. And the same thing with the liaisons and stuff. They're like, yeah, this isn't my first rodeo. Even for me as press, it's so organized because there's like festivals. There was one recently, I won't say which one, that I got the publicist list and 90% of it was wrong. So now I'm trying to schedule interviews and they're like, no, I don't handle that band anymore. Oh, no, I never handled that band. And 10 million other things like that where even with the media, the people that run media here are so organized and so on it.

5:58 It makes my job so much easier and it makes it easier for me to promote bands. I can't promote bands if I can't contact them. Well, the fact that this interview is happening says something to you and the festival because... You know, we've done other things where, you know, the publicists are pretty ambitious before it. And then while it's happening, we're like, okay, we're here for our interview. And they're like, oh, yeah, about that. We're going to scratch that to do something else. Or I completely forgot. We'll get you next time sort of thing. Wow. Like we set a time. Here we are. Like it's happening. And then like Mike, who you were talking to, like I come in here like super early. You know, I'm like the first one usually in the media tent. And I go up with him and I coordinate with his schedule to make sure all the times are right. We have the same times because that could happen too. It's like I have one dime and they have another time.

6:47 And I give them instructions like with your band. I'm like, they're supposed to be coming at this time. Tell them this is where I am. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, it just makes everything flow easier. You know? there are times I do festivals that I lose a lot of interviews because of that disorganization like you're talking about. That never happens at a women's festival. It's like, and I had like, almost 50 interviews scheduled for this weekend. None of them missed. Except one when we got evacuated. But like, because of weather. Those are great numbers.

7:27 But, when does that happen? Yeah. Like, Even with you, when you have interviews, and let's say you have 10 lined up hypothetically, how many times do you get to do all 10? No, it's always, you know, if something falls through, whatever. And to corral all the cats to get them in one place is hard enough. Right. When you're like, oh, it's not happening, then people start going, well, press may or may not be happening. And honestly, I was just telling my fiance, I was like, I don't know, this is... I don't know if this is going to happen or not. And then sure enough, I was like, oh, it's a Wimmer Festival. There you go. They'll figure it out. And I'll have to tell you where Wimmer's smart, too. It's doing this media artist lounge thing. Yeah. Because you guarantee that the artists are coming over to media because they're here for the drip bar and the open bar. And then artist lounge is right behind us.

8:19 They don't have to go too far. Conveniently located. Yeah. Yeah. Like even yesterday, I, in all the years, I never really seen Maria bring from in this moment, come into the media area. It's like, if you have an interview, you have to go to her, which is normal. She came out here the other day. Like artists don't like to come to media because they have to hike through it, find it. It's a pain in the ass. They just want to be in the comfort of their own area, or they don't want to be bothered by a bunch of stuff. So that's where Danny's smart, too. He made it to where artists do want to come to media, and that helps all of us, for sure. So what else is going on the rest of the year for you guys that we want to let people know about?

9:09 Yeah, so next up we've got the Orlando Warped Tour, which is in mid-November. We're playing on that Saturday and then we're going to do a few shows, I believe in toward Christmas time. So still kind of working that out. But yeah, um, I don't know. I don't know where. Working on music right now too. Nice. So what's it like creating music now compared to when you first started? Well, it's awesome because, um, The original guys had taken a break and went to, you know, do life and all that. Well, they've come back, so it's like picking up where it ended right then. So it's exciting.

10:00 To it's like an old shoe. There's a revamp yeah where it's everyone's excited and it feels. New dad left to get cigarettes and finally came back what do you. Think oh my god that was great that was gone for a minute. Oh man yeah so it's it's been great to like you know, the guys who chiseled out the sound to be back into the game is like, there's not a lot of questioning of like, is this the Maylene sound? It's kind of like they were there when the sacred scrolls were written. So you don't, Challenge that. Right. Maybe a little bit, but yeah. You know, and it's like, I think when you do that, you come back with a different perspective.

10:43 Yeah. You know, whatever was going on then is long gone, but also you may have realized that maybe it wasn't what you thought it was when you were in the thick of it type of thing. One, when you're young and aspiring and hungry and You know, all the things, the commission-based employees in your life will say that, or people who have a financial stake will push you in certain directions and tell you what you need to X, Y, Z. And now we're at the point where no one's really going to, you know, we know what we want to do. We don't want to sound like, you know, we're... Basically shut up.

11:27 I mean, you know. No one's going to have us wearing gold-plated shoes. No one's going to tell us that you need a tour eight months out of the year. We're like, yeah, let's find some kids to convince to do that. Right. We tried that for a very long time. It doesn't work. It never works. You just get arthritis. Yeah, and for many reasons. Like, listen, in order for me to be at your set and enjoy myself, you need to be enjoying yourself. 100%. When you go through all that shit, you ain't enjoying yourself anymore. No. And when you've been in a band for a while, it gets to the point where it starts wearing you down and it becomes a job. And that's natural. So for this to be happening now, it feels like something new again. And that's something that doesn't happen a lot of times with bands.

12:27 Far into their career. Yeah. We're very blessed to have it how we have it now with the old guys back. It's all a different vibe. We all keep just texting each other going, we can't wait just to hang out, you know, and be around each other. And that's, before it was kind of like, when can we get away from you? Yeah. The people, you know, it's just the right people are all in the mix right now. I mean, it's a weird time in music, I mean, right now with everything that's happening, and it's nice to be able to, like, revert back to how things were as far as, like, get a bunch of dudes in a room, start throwing some ideas together.

13:10 And actually play instruments instead of push a button, you mean? You know, nothing against button pushing, but, you know, kind of the fun of it is. Playing! The good, the bad, and the ugly of wrestling with your instrument to get something down that you feel proud about. It's just like in podcasting. Listen, they have software that you can create a podcast without doing shit. I'm not fucking doing that. How is that going to be me? That's not me, and that's no fun. Listen, doing my radio show, doing these interviews, it's the fun part of the job. Now you're going to take that away from me and the way you got left. The shit. Same with the music industry. If you're not creating music, you're not playing it live, what else is good in the industry?

14:03 That's the best part. Yeah, you don't want to, you know, other people have said it before that you don't want to, like, automate everything, including the art, so then you have more time. The art is supposed to be the fun part or the expression part, so you don't want to remove that from it, because then what are we even doing. At this point? Exactly. Remove the bullshit. When you're young, you have this innocence where nothing can be wrong. It's all exciting, and so it's just fun. You're getting to do something that, like, whoa, he wrote a song. That's something we didn't know we could do. And then the longer you go on, you start just overthinking everything where nothing's ever good because you're like, well, that could be better or that. And, like, you end up just having a stalemate. So now it's back to, like, it's just fun. Like, I feel like you get a second chance to be almost like a kid again.

15:04 And have fun. Yeah, totally. And it should be that way. If you're going to be in music... You better be having fun or it's the wrong industry. Yeah, there's plenty. Go be a venture capitalist or. Exactly. Exactly. Is there anything else you want to let the listeners know about that we haven't covered already? Just keep an eye out. Yeah, we're working on a lot of stuff and... But we're excited to be playing and creating and even booking concerts again more. It's exciting.

15:49 And I think that makes other people excited. Like you said, if you're not excited about what you're doing, people aren't going to be excited. So, yeah, just be on the lookout. Well, I'm excited about you guys being excited and that you're here at Lowrider Than Life. So thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man on W4CY radio.