SpiritWorld at Welcome to Rockville 2026 - PipemanRadio Interview

0:04 Hi, you love done to censure? Wow for you. Young, It's the Pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio and I'm here with. Stu Folsome from Spare World. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Rockville. Dude hot, that was gonna be my first question, okay, because you guys, you know, put on such a great performance and have very hot clothes on when it's like that, how do you even perform up there in this humidity and heat and not want to die?

1:02 You definitely want to die, but uh no, like our suits, everything backstage right now is just soaking wet, so we just put fans on them and then but yeah, it's a scorcher. Yeah. And I always talk about with ours, even like off the mic. It's like I get it too, Like you go into the zone when you get on stage that you kind of tell your brain I can't feel like shit no matter what it is until the sets over and then I'm allowed to die. Yeah, especially stuff like this. I think we had twenty five minutes, so I mean you just power through anything for twenty five. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, we had to do like a full hour up there today.

1:42 Oh it would have been rough. I would have been brutal. But the one thing that's great about these Dandy Wimmer festivals and here Welcome to Rockville is no different is that it doesn't matter what time of the day you're playing, you're gonna have a huge crowd. It blows my mind. Yeah, we were on the Inferno stage and everybody's they were walking in, like gates were open. We just sound flooding into our stage. So it's cool. So tell everybody what that feels like when you're like early in the day at a festival. It's not even the weekend yet, because there's it's still Friday, and you see that coming. Yeah. I mean we're at rock and roll band, so we're used to playing at night. You know, we don't even come alive till the sun comes down. So when I think we had to load in at U nine thirty ten o'clock this morning, So then by the time you're playing this early at twelve thirty, it's like it feels like nobody should be moving. But like halfway through our first song, we have a huge circle pit and people are just tearing it up.

2:43 It's cool, man. Yeah, And then I guess the good part about it for you the artist too, is now you can go catch sets, you know what, Like it's like, does it feel like when you're playing it's early. Like wow, we have a lot of day today. Like yeah, and you're just done, you have no stress. Yeah, and it's cool like a bunch of our friends bands that we've toured with or playing today, like Creator and Carcass and like it's cool. A lot of friends here, so we get to pop around and go catch up with some homies. You know. I was really bummed because I'm a total thresh metal head. But Creator was playing a pop up thing at the Blue Garage over there, and I had to be here, and I was like damn, because that would that would have been like an old school show, like when I would go to the thrash shows in the eighties and have that little like yeah, yeah, oh my god.

3:37 Did you get you probably were playing? Well? They yeah, I messed it. But Melly and Fred we just ate lunch together in the catering. So they were just telling me about it, like twenty minutes ago. Was it badass or yeah? They said they did like four songs, just no sound check, just get up there and rip. They said it was cool. See that that would to me, like, and you could understand this doing all all the festivals seeing bands ten million times, that's what I get excited about right there, Like that's a once in a lifetime opportunity. Yeah, that's cool, man, you should do one. Yeah, I'm down with kerrang hit me up anytime. Yeah, place get them in there. Yeah, that would be cool as hell. Yeah. What would you do different if you were playing like in that garage little thing, then what you do on stage?

4:27 I have no idea, man, I figured out. Yeah, we shoot from the hip over here at Spirit World. I don't know. See that's good too, Like to me, that's a true musician because I think as an artist you kind of have to experiment and just go where your vibe goes, not like by some exact structure that you can't bounce off of. Yeah, and we're we're a band that we do a lot of big tours in clubs, in theaters with big metal dance. But then we're also rooted in like the hardcore punk scene, So we'll do VFW halls where there's not even a stage or monitors and we're playing on the floor to kids and the lights are on so like our tours, like when we play Atlanta and Nashville, we're playing like a pinball spot that only holds like a hundred people. I love, like a friend of mine just booked it, so like it's cool.

5:17 Like when we do I guess we just do a lot of. Punk rock stuff. Still, you know, we're still we're still pretty wild like like that. Well it's like funny too because my photographer that didn't come this time but comes a lot of times, she sent me a flyer that last night Silly Goose was gonna be at BUCkies after the festival, So I'm like, I gotta go to that. I even told him, I'm like, I don't care if you're tired, we gotta go to. They weren't there probably BUCkies was like it's gonna be too busy because it was a madhouse there. But I love that old school thing, you know, like we're just talking about this morning, like the.

5:59 Old school hardcore shows. It was just like in an Elks lodge or a Freemason lodge, and it's. It's still like the hardcore scene is still there, you know. That's what we were talking about. Vegas, Like some of my homies I put on shows at a Junkyard for like ten years, and I mean, like all the kids that came out to my Junkyard shows now put out all the VFW Hall hardcore shows in Vegas, So like there's a I don't know, it's cool, you know, I like I like doing everything. I like playing festivals like this on one end of the spectrum. But then I also like when you play a floor show and there's fifty kids in some little town you never heard of, right, that's also magical.

6:41 You know. I think it's super magical. And I think it's super magical for you as an artist, like when you have gotten to a point where you're playing arenas and you're playing you know, festivals like this. In some ways you don't, but a lot of ways you probably miss the days of when you were just playing in the small venues because it's so much more intimate, and your fans that go to those they're just die. Hards, you know. Yeah, we've been doing a lot of club shows on the way out here. We took out this band does Madre from la and Doomsday from Oakland, and so we've been playing like three hundred cap little clubs because we haven't seen each other since the Avatar tour we did in December, so we did like ten shows on the way out here just to kind of.

7:28 Get some rep warm up. Yeah, and so we've been just like you said, every night there's like just packed at the front of some little bar, like all these diehard SPA world fans that like, we just haven't played very many bars, like this band's blessed. When we started touring, it was like Obituary took us out, and then Sepultura took us out, and then. Creator took us out. Wow. So it's been like a I mean, it's crazy to me. You could never imagine that when you started the band. Like when I wrote the first record, like I had no idea what was going to happen, you know. But because of that, it's like we're sort of we've played most of our shows in like big, nice theaters, like two thousand cat rooms, so it's nice when we play little bars and I I have a lot of people come up after the set too, that like they've just been dying to see us play a headlining set and a little spot because you know, we've just been doing huge support tours, you know, It's.

8:23 So much fun that way too. Like even so right before Rockville, like literally the day before, last minute, they want to be a cover in Alice Cooper's show that was in Fort Myers. So I lived near West Palm, So the night before Rockville, I drove three hours to Fort Myers, hour and a half show back, and then drove up to Daytona. But what was cool is Alice is playing here at Welcome to Rockville, and I was like, I want to go to that show more because I want to be in that little It was in a theater on. The college Oh nice, like and so. I'm like I can't turn that down. Watching Alice Cooper in a theater on college campus. In twenty twenty six, Yeah, hell yeah.

9:12 I had tickets for the Rob Zombie Alice Cooper one. They did one in Vegas at one of the hotels in a theater, but then they canceled the show like the day before, like I think Rob like lost his voice and. They canceled the whole thing. But it was like, uh, I guess it was a couple of years ago, but yeah, I'm dying to see Alice Cooper. We saw the band he does with Johnny. Depp a couple of years ago, though, that one I went to Hollywood Vampires. Yeah, I want to see that. It's fun. I would love to interview Johnny Depp for that not you know, it's like I like doing. Like I interviewed somebody yesterday that was a NASCAR driver. I've never interviewed a NASCAR driver. Are there drivers here? There was one, and you know, it was wild because it was so much fun to me. And you could understand this because when you're used to interviewing a certain type all the time and then you get one that's out of the box, it's like, oh, this is kind of exciting. It's new, you know. Hell yeah, So what else do you have going on? Twenty twenty six?

10:14 We're gonna play some more shows, go do Sonic Temple, and then I got back to Nashville. When we get home and finish our new record, I'm not sure what. Like, we got a new new label, new everything, So I got about ninety percent of this new album done nice, So we're kind of gonna do these shows and just start gearing up for putting out a record early next year. I love it. B Yeah, what would you say? Might be a little different about what you wrote now and have in the past. Definitely pushing more of the like all country roots music stuff in like I split it up and worked with Mark Lewis. He's done a lot of great metal records, like all the Whitechapel stuff, some Cannibal Corpse records, so like the heavy stuff I did with him in his studio in Nashville, and then Ted Hutt produced the stuff that's.

11:07 More Americana and like country music. Yeah, and he's done like all the Dropkick Murphy's records, nat Lyight, Anthem, Floggy, Molly Lucero, a bunch of stuff. So it's a little non typical, but what we were able to get done having like two really like good producers that understand the vision that I have, it's definitely rat. It's kind of like having two parents pouring into a funnel to make the kid. You know. It's like two perspectives, two different people, and I think that creates a uniqueness in your music. Yeah, it'll be cool too, because like we tried really hard to like dial the drums for both sounds in the same room so that there's some continuity.

11:56 Because like we have really like the heaviest. Songs we've ever done, and then like we have a bunch of pedal steel and keyboard and like acoustic guitars and like there's a really big a lot of crazy shit that like bands don't typically do. I love it, so yeah, it'll be cool. Man, you need to do a tour with Social D. Dude, sign me up. Their new record came out yesterday, I think. Yeah, see like perfect Social D guy. Yeah, Mike, Mike, you need to make this tour happen. Hell yeah, cause I remember once I covered a festival that was headlined by uh, what's his name, Brantley the country like Gilbert, Gilbert Gilbert Yeah, and uh it was all country but Social D. Yeah, and it was like so cool because it's like I'm a big Social D fan, but it was cool to see them in that environment too.

12:53 Yeah for sure. And Spirit World's a type of band that we've been able to play with like. Like we're not really in a box. Yeah, we're so scared that we fit in everywhere, and this record will push that even further where we can do other stuff. You know, I want to play some shows at. Mariachihl Bronx, maybe play our country stuff and like, you know, just do some cool stuff like that. You know, I love it. And so. What what would be your favorite country. Artists to do a tour with. I don't know to tour with, but or play with. I really like over the last ten years, probably turn Pike Troubadours from Oklahoma probably my favorite country band.

13:37 They're nice, incredible. See. I love that you're blending all these genres because I think nowadays, I say this a lot, the genres are so specific that everybody sounds the same, and I think you need the blending of the genres to make uniqueness. I think so too, and I I'm in a blessed place. I just do what I want with this band's so we like it took off because. I was doing my own weird thing. And so just from the gate, like, there's no we don't we're not following anybody. We're not a part of a scene. You know, we're sort of a part of multiple scenes, but we're not really that's that's just wait, there's no expectations for us to like wave a flag for anybody.

14:23 You know. I love it. We're kind of like in our own little orbit. And I love that you're here. Welcome, to Rockville. Yeah, and uh, who you're going to go see for the rest of the day. I got a bunch of interviews and then uh, I think Creators playing at six o'clock. I'll be there on the Inferno stage. Can you go get some of that. I want to watch Turnstile. I always like them. I haven't seen him this year. Shit, I don't know. Well that's good enough. Yeah, Well, thanks for being on the Adventures of pate Man. Hell yeah, thank you, Pipeman, thank you for listening to the Adventures of pate Man. I'm W four c U I Radio MHM