SLO BURN | StonerRock.com Interviews John Garcia

StonerRock.com Interviews John Garcia

John Garcia is a man with a unique voice. His throaty rasp is instantly recognizable to any Kyuss fan. When Kyuss broke up in October of 1995, people that enjoyed listening to his vocals were suddenly S.O.L.

Now that's about to change. Slo-Burn, John's current band, is releasing a four song EP on Malicious Vinyl. If the Slo-Burn demo tape that's been circulated is any indication, fans of not only John's vocal style but also of the Kyuss sound have something to look forward to in an otherwise bleak world of alterna-bands, rap, and r&b.

I recently had the opportunity to interview John Garcia and ask him his thoughts about Slo-Burn, about their sound, their plans for the future and some more general questions about what makes him tick. John's candor during the interview surprised me. I didn't feel like he sugar-coated anything or held back his opinion because it wouldn't be "politcally-correct". That's refreshing in a world of cowering spineless wimps who won't ever say what they really believe in.

Well enough of the intro, let's get on with the interview.

Let's start off with some basic stuff: who founded Slo-Burn and who's in it?

Slo-Burn was formed by pretty much all four of us. Three original band members Chris Hale (guitar), Damon Garrison (bass), Brady Houghton (drums). They played in this band "Wolf". It wasn't really a band, they just jammed together. After Kyuss broke up, I was looking around for just anybody to play with, just to fuck around. I didn't expect anything to come out of any of the bands I was playing with. I was just jamming with several bands and I still am. But Slo-Burn seems to be the one that, I don't know, I want to jam with. Something weird happened, an intentional mistake if you will. Almost this weird type of magic happened. We kept on playing together and things progressed and progressed and we just kept fucking around and went in the studio and kept fucking around, then we sent around a few tapes, just to see what would happen. And a lot of things came out it. I'm just kind of fucking around with them now and trying get things up and off.

It doesn't happen that often when the right people come together and the magic happens.

No it doesn't. At all.

So you're pretty happy with things then?

Well, right now this isn't my only one solid project. I have two other projects that I'm working on. One of them, this other band called 13, is a bunch of desert local boys down here too. We've been jamming and hopefully we'll get in the studio in the next month. And this other band, I don't know if you're familiar with, a band called Trouble.

Oh you mean the guys from Chicago? I thought they broke up?

Yeah they did but the bass player and guitar player and I are hooking up. Hopefully I'll be going in the studio with them pretty soon. I haven't heard too much of the new material, but from what I understand it's right up my alley.

I also have this other band that I'm messing around with. It's just that I'm really trying to stay busy with music right now. It's not going as quickly and as promptly as I want it to. It's still fun for me to be able to play and I need my fix... whether I'm singing in front of 5 people or 500, it's something that I need to do.

What's up with Karma to Burn? [note: I had heard a long time ago that John sang with Karma To Burn but never heard more]

Well, Karma to Burn was something that happened when I was in Kyuss. They had asked me to come out and sing on one song of theirs. I wound up doing it. Elektra let me do it and Roadrunner let me do it. I went out there and did one song for them. As time went on, they wanted me full time. They pretty much wanted me to quit Kyuss and come to sing for them full time. That was something that at the time I couldn't do. I was singing in Kyuss and that's my main love and that will always be my one true love: Kyuss, and Josh and Scott and Alfredo and Brandt and Nick and Chris Cockrell. Those guys... they devirginized me... I love them, all of them, like my brothers. I couldn't leave. They called me and said they wanted me. I said there's no reason I can't be in two bands, it's been done before. I went out there and sang on 8 of their songs. We never recorded anything. We went on a short little tour down south and played Kentucky, West Virginia and all these states down south. They wanted twelve songs and Elektra would only let me do eight. So I told them, let's do eight. There's no rule that says there has to be vocals on every song. Ya know, there could be 3 instrumental songs. Look at Kyuss, it's a prime example of having something instrumental. They [Karma-To-Burn] were really really a great band, a fucking awesome instrumental band. After they found that I couldn't do the twelve songs that they wanted, we parted and went our separate ways and it just didn't happen. After Kyuss broke up they came out to SF and I hooked up with them up there and just the whole record company thing and they were on a different level than I was. They had just moved out from W. Va. and were like let's just see what happens. I needed more than that, I needed more of a commitment. I'm not talking bad about those guys, I love 'em and I just talked to Rich today. Hopefully Karma To Burn and Slo-Burn, the two "burns", are going to go to Europe at the end of April and do a month long tour. It should be pretty cool, we're trying to hook it all up. We've got 9 shows in Germany and 6 in Italy another 6 in england and belgium, a few festivals, a few tv shows. Hopefully it will all work.

So what's the name of the new Slo-Burn EP?

The name of it is "Amusing the Amazing". It's coming out on CD and Vinyl only. It's 4 songs: Pilot the Dune, Muezli, July and Prize Fighter.

What happened to Positiva? [note: Positiva was a song on the Slo-Burn demo tape that has circulated]

Positiva didn't make it this time around. We've taken that song out of retirement and worked it around some and added a few parts and it's a much better song now. It will probably be on the full length album.

Getting back to something that's important to me because I'm a collector: the vinyl. The cd will have a different cover than the actual record. The record has a totally different cover, it's being released on clear bright orange vinyl, per my request. Unlike Kyuss, the only way you can find out these lyrics is by buying the record. You can't get the lyrics on the CD. So all the collectors out there will be able to pop off the lyrics if they want to.

I've always been into vinyl and all my stuff will always be released on vinyl - from this point out. Everything will always be released on colored vinyl. I'm really stoked about that. That's one thing I'm very very very happy about.

It's interesting that you're going to release lyrics. In the past that didn't seem to be the main focus, it seemed to be to let people interpret the songs themselves....

Well, I think it goes along the same lines... if you were to listen to Green Machine or Odyssey or even Thong Song, some songs you can actually figure out the lyrics and you can write them down. Some of them made sense and some of them didn't -- the majority of them didn't make any sense -- at least to the average listener whether it be a 14 year old kid that listens to the Kyuss tape in mom's bmw on the way to school or whether it's the 45 year old speed freak who cooks speed out in Sky Valley. In that sense it's like, whatever, you have the lyrics. All of my lyrics, they're pretty much along the same lines. You can read them, you can sing along and whatever they mean to you, they mean to you. Don't try to sit there and try to decipher my poetry. Here it is, and now you can sing along and you can know what the fuck I'm singing for once.

And coming from a collector's point of view, because I collect vinyl, if I were to get a Monster Magnet limited edition print in Italy, only in Italy, with lyrics included on purple vinyl.... I'm all over that shit. It's only for the collectors. For people like myself that love vinyl. People that love turning on the turntable, throwing on a piece of plastic, and jamming out. You know, listening to it crackle after a 100 times you play it.

Vinyl does have a certain sound...

You gotta have vinyl. If fuckin' 8-tracks were still being made I'd be putting those mother fuckers out too. I still collect 8-tracks. I have an 8-track player in my car, a 1980 Chrysler Cordoba. Right now I have Lou Rawls in the son-of-a-bitch and it's nice to throw on an 8-track every now and then.

I grew up on that shit. I always used to put in my older brother's 8-tracks: Earth, Wind and Fire, Listening to September and Phillip Baily and Maurice White and just jam out. Shit like that I'm into. I'm not trying to get all 70's retro but I grew up on that shit and I want it released on that type of stuff.

So who handled production duties on the EP?

Production, everything has been pretty much all me. I've been the acting manager for this band. The girls that I play with, I call 'em "the girls", they're all kind of young. None of them are 21, they're 19 and 20 the three of them. They're just really stoked about being signed, although we're not signed yet. They want to get new equipment and they want to get signed. I'm more... I like the new equipment and stuff but I want to know about what kind of tours are going on, what kind of promotion, what is being done for this band. I'm 26 and I'm not going to do this one more time and get fucked around like I have in the past and release something and after one month be put on a back burner and have Keith Sweat take the place of me. I don't want to talk bad about Keith Sweat but I think the music I play deserves to be heard. I don't mean "deserves to be heard" like it's the most fucking awesome music in the world. But for those who wanna feel what I'm feeling when I'm singing and playing and listening to it, it's there. And I want to make sure it's there for those people.

Yeah, I understand: you're an artist and you want your work distributed.

Right. I go back and forth a lot. Sometimes I go "fuck it no one needs to hear my shit" I'm fine doing what I want to do and I really am. Or else I'll be popping off some other shit, it's not that important to me. But if I am going to sign with a label, their job is to push the fuck out of it, down everybody's throat whether they like it or not. To have somebody kiss my ass and tell me "we got you on the Ozz Fest" to shut me up so they can say we shut him up for a while so they go on and do their Toni Braxton type of shit. That's not what I want. I want commitment. I want to know they're going to do their job right because I know I'm doing my job right, at least the way I want it to be done. Nothing or nobody is going to get in my way. If they do so, they pay the consequences, whatever that may be. That may very well be a Danzig-esque attitude but ya know, hats off to that mother fucker because he's doing it. He's had 10 million managers, 10 million record labels, 10 million booking agents and all the past ones hate him. But yet he's still doing what he likes to do and he'll still be touring and he'll still be singing, getting it out to the old Misfits fans. Hats off to him. That's somewhat the attitude that I carry on these days. It's something that's a little frustrating sometimes to me. Life isn't easy and no one ever said it was.

You have to have that attitude or else the world will just eat you alive.

You fucking have to be -- no matter what. No one is going to get anything for you, anything! You have to do it yourself. It's like that old saying, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. That takes a lot of hard work and that's something I'm into. I'm into staying busy and making sure my shit pops off.

I get really emotional about this, I get real frustrated because sometimes things don't work out my way. I just got to keep pushing and keep my head straight and keep talking off the town.

If you don't, it will just die and that's no fun.

Not only will the music die, but so will I. I'll just crumble into pieces. So I gotta keep my head straight and make sure it pops off. It's all good. Like I said, anybody that fucks with me does so at their own peril.

I know that there's a lot of people out there that support what you're doing. I know I'd hate to see it whither away.

It's not that I have this fucking huge attitude and I hate everybody. I just get so frustrated sometimes. Kyuss was such a great band and we didn't get the recognition in my eyse that we deserved. Whether we sold 5 records of 5 million I didn't care, but it wasn't there... it wasn't properly pushed, it wasn't available to all ears. It frustrated me that I was signed with the major label and nothing happened. It was one of the reasons why Kyuss broke up -- pure frustration. Me and Josh were trying so hard. That guy, that guy... he taught me everything I know. Everything I know. Everything that I learned, knew, that I sung, sang, everything. He's my teacher. Hats off to him. He's got me on the right track. I talk to him pretty much every chance I get. We're still very close. I still talk to Scott Reeder almost every day. He's up in the studio now doing work with a lot of movies and stuff. Josh just got off the road with Screaming Trees and he's trying to do a lot of producing right now. I was in the studio at Chris Goss's, this studio called Monkey. And Josh came over and we hung out and drank a couple of beers and smoked a joint, like we do. Like you know, Kyuss wasn't a drug band. We liked having an occasional beer or an occasional joint when we got off stage but it wasn't a major thing for us. We hung out again, and I go over there or he comes over here and we eat lunch or whatever... one day, mark my fucking words, something's going to pop off with me and Josh. I can promise that. One day something will be released in the next 10 years. If he were to walk in the room right now I would give him the shirt off my back and offer him a beer. I love him like my brother. He's got something up his sleeve and when it does come out to the public it's going to be fucking major.

Speaking of Josh, I heard you sang backround vocals on one of the Gamma Ray songs?

He flew me and Goss up, he was living up in Seattle going to school. I sang backround vocals on Born To Hula. But he did all the singing. Throughout all the Kyuss session he was on the other side of the glass when I was in the studio singing. This time I was at the board and he was on the other side of the glass. I laughed my ass off because I gave him such a hard time like he gave me [laughs]... I was like "See what it's like, see what you put me through". It was cool to hear to him sing, he has a great voice. A lot of people trip out on his vocals because they're like "wow, that's josh". As you know Josh wrote most of the Kyuss songs and he used to sing to me how the songs should be and some of the melodies and I'd come in and put in my two cents. So it's weird because people hear Gamma Ray and they go "it's a trip hearing him sing" but I've heard him sing all along since he was like 14. And it's kind of refreshing to hear him sing. I actually think he has a great voice. I always wondered throughout the entire Kyuss years why he even needed me.

But your voice adds a certain something. I listened to the Gamma Ray demo tape and I like it but it's not the same.

Yeah, it's definitely not the same but Josh just flew me up there to hang out, ya know, hang out with an old friend and I just wound up putting some vocals down for him. Those songs were, from what I understand, he told me in a strange sort of way, those were the next group of Kyuss songs before I got to them or Scott got to them, Brant or Alfredo got to them. It was pretty much Josh and he popped it off himself and those were going to be the next group of Kyuss songs just without the original boys. It's all good.

How would you describe the sound you're trying to get with Slo-Burn?

A lot of the stuff we've done is very Kyuss-esque of course. One, because I was the singer for Kyuss it's automatically going to have that vocal tone. And two, Chris, Brady and Damon loved Kyuss. They liked their sound. It's not something that when you ask Chris or Brady, "so you're playing an Ovation guitar and you're playing out of a Mos-Valve and a Marshall you're not playing out of a bass cabinet but you are playing out of two Marshall half stacks", whatever, and it's not something that they get offended at. They're very proud of what they like and who influenced them. It's not something that they're ashamed of. It just happened. We're [Slo-Burn] are in the same vein as Kyuss. We don't have a lot of the long jams like Kyuss. There are no instrumentals. This is not Josh's vocals and Josh's melodies. These are mine and this is my baby. We play the music we want to hear.

What do you think is the most important part of the sound, what part makes you say "yeah, this is it"?

The emotion. The feeling. Some songs are a lot like Kyuss songs, they make you want to go out and kill somebody and other times they make you want to go out and cry to an old girlfriend or cry to an old dog you had. It's all pretty emotional.

When you're making music, what's the emphasis on? Is it about putting together a cool song structure or is it just playing something and saying "yeah that's it"?

We mess around with song structure a lot but the majority of the time when we work on something that long it doesn't work out. We'll put that song into retirement and six months down the line we'll take it out of retirment and it'll kick ass over every other song we have. The majority of our songs come out, boom boom boom and we're done. For lack of better words, I don't want to say "magic", but they just happen. I'm always one not to be able to explain things in so many words. I could sit here for 12 hours trying to let you know what Muezli meant to me or how we went about structuring it and after 12 hours of explaining it, I don't think you or anybody could understand what was going on in our heads when we wrote that song.

What does it mean for Slo-Burn to be sucessful? What would make you happy?

Hmmm, what would it take to make me happy? It would make me happy if those guys would stop bitching at me and stop fucking around and just trust me when I say trust me. They have little attitudes on their heads as well as I do. That's the beauty of this band that all 4 of us are individuals. It's not that all of us are best friends; we're great friends but obviously the music has brought us together. What would make me happy is if I could come out with.... this is my dream... if I could come out with gate-fold vinyl. Two full length LP's, gate fold. All of our artwork. One record being swirled clear, purple and maroon. Each record totally original, none of them the same as far as the swirling goes. One of the LP's live and the other studio. To have that go out and to have people be able to listen to that. Ultimately that's my dream to have something like that come out.

Sure I want to sell a million records and you know what? I'm just as money hungry as the next son-of-a-bitch because this time we're living in, I wasn't fucking born and raised in any country club, I still drive around in my 1989 Plymouth Horizon that gets me around and my 1980 Chrysler Cordoba that's got a tranny that's about to blow out. I'd would like to be able to make a living doing my music. I have. I have had it all, I had a new car, a new house and everything and I lost it all and I don't have anything, I'm not trying to make some kind of sob story but sometimes you lose track and you lose it all. Once again I would like to have, for lack of better words, the American dream. I would like to have my beautiful wife, 5 great danes, my cats, a truck, with a bass boat in my garage and be able to restore a '56 Chevy from scratch. That's something that all comes along with money and if I can make a living like that from doing music, I'll do my best. But it's not something that's going to stop me from working with my animals, I'm in surgery 5 hours a day at a vet clinic and I make a pretty good living, I still have a few things. I'd just like to have that again, a good house with a backyard and be able to go out to the American canal next to the Salton sea and dip my pole in the water and catch catfish all night with a good friend of mine. Nothing extravagant... sure I'd like have a house in Rotterdamn to be able to smoke the crip every now and again but right now all that's just a day dream to my ass it doesn't look like it's going to happen in the next two weeks. It just something I strive for. I want to make a living doing this. A lot of people would disagree with me, including some of my band members, some of Kyuss's band members. In my eyes there's nothing wrong with trying to make a living from having your heart cut out of your chest and put on a CD.

Would you like it if your music took over MTV and there was the "MTV Weekend Jam with Slo-Burn"?

I don't know... people can shut me down, they can supress me, supress the music. They can do anything they want to do. I'm doing what I like and no one can stop me doing it. MTV.... I'm going to make videos... I'd like to have Frank Kozik do something, I want him to do our fist video. If it gets aired, it gets aired. If it just so happens that Slo-Burn "breaks", whatever that word means, I'll leave that up to you, if it breaks and we sell some records and we're on the MTV video music awards, I'm not going to say "I'll oblige them and play". Fuck yeah I'll go out there and play. I don't give a fuck. Set me up with a hotel room and I'm there. We got this offer to play this biker festival in Amboy. It's a town in the middle of nowhere, I mean absolutely in the middle of fucking shitville. There's like 2 hotels and 3 gas stations and 2 general stores and every year they have this big biker festival and 10,000 bikers come there. We got offered to play and I was talking to the promoter last night and she was like "we want all these bands to play but they want money". I'm like, give me a break. There's bands that want a $4,000 guarantee even when it's a benefit AIDS show. Give me a break. All I want is someone that will understand our sound and will get our sound across, a good soundman and maybe a 12 pack of beer. I'll go sleep in a tent, that's all I want. She was like "That's totally cool. If you do decide to do this I'll give you gas money, set you up in a hotel room, give you some food and some beer". And I'm like, how perfect is that? Give me a break, I'm not asking for $4,000 to go up there and play. It's more my style to play a biker fest, a bunch of fucking Harley Davidson outback mother fuckers, that's more my style, more my taste. Shit like that trips me out... big fucking bands... just go out and have a good time. That kind of shit is so far gone.

Do you think the music industry is getting kind of stagnant? It's seems like it's been a while since there's been any good bands doing full on rock-n-roll?

Ya know, it's weird... I'm totally out of that scene. I was in this one interview with... I don't even know why I'm going to bring this name up... with the bass player for Motley Crue, Nikki Stixx, he started talking about the rock industry and the scene that's going on right now. I'm so neutral and so far gone from all that scene. I throw on MTV every once in a while and I get sick and tired of seeing No Doubt every time I turn on the boob tube... or Bush... if I wanted to talk shit about bands, I have before in the past, but my hat's off to them. I mean look at Bush or Pearl Jam... I personally do not like their music. But hat's off to them for cutting their hearts out and doing the best that they can to do something like this. I don't even know the music scene right now. I'm so isolated, surrounded by the San Jacinto mountains, still living in the same exact place. I move around from small city to small whether it's Palm Spring, or Indio or Rancho Mirage or La Quinta, but I'm here. I'm surrounded by the Coachella Valley by mountains and the music scene here is so limited that I don't know what the music scene is like elsewhere. I do know one thing though, it's lacking something like. It's lacking bands like Kyuss, Slo-Burn, Masters of Reality, the Melvins... it's lacking. There's a big void that needs to be filled and it will be filled by either a band like Masters, or Kyuss or Slo-Burn or the Melvins or the Foo Fighters or something like that. It's going to be filled and it's going to be filled in a big way. I'm not going to say "there's going to be a huge musical revolution" because who the fuck knows? I don't even really have a comment on the whole music scene. It's weird, I just stay out of it and do my own thing.

Well that sort of is a comment in and of itself, right?

That is in a weird sort of a way an answer to your question: I don't know. What I have in my 8-track right now is Lou Rawls and I've got Bozz Scaggs on my turntable. So I'm way back and occasionally I'll throw own the Dwarves or Blag Dhalia and I also listen to a lot of Soundgarden. I'm a huge Soundgarden fan, I love Cornell, he's a genius in my eyes.

Which album of theirs do you like the best? Louder than Love?

Ya know what? I never liked Soundgarden until Badmotorfinger. I never liked Louder than Love, I never liked any of their past shit. In my eyes, the best record they ever made, the past two have been great, but I think Badmotorofinger is the one that really caught my ear. I was in Foundations Forum, how lame is that -- some schmooze fest for Kyuss, and Badmotorfinger came on 95.5 KLOS and I was blown away. Rusty Cage came on and I was blown away. I like those guys alot. I'm very proud to say, very proud to say that our last tour as Kyuss was with Soundgarden, over in Europe. And to me that was the best, finally we get to open up for a band that's cool. We've opened up for other bands that are cool but that was fucking awesome. I have to say thank you to Glen Danzig for taking 4 guys from nowhere on tour and having us open up for him because he dug the music.

We just got picked up for the Ozz Fest in June and I think Danzig is going to be playing that. Slo-Burn is going to be playing that with Pantera, Ozzy of course, and Marilyn Manson for some of the shows. Hopefully I'll be on tour with Glen again.

Wow, that should be an interesting show.

Yeah, it should be pretty cool. I'm just trying to stay calm and take baby steps with Slo-Burn and trying to make all the right decisions and trying to very business oriented, trying to make it all work. Only time will tell.

So let's ask some not-so-music related questions. What do you think of the re-release of Star Wars?

Awww mannnn, you know what? I haven't seen it but I grew up on Star Wars. That's right up my alley. I'm not all into space and I don't sing about space as much as Dave Wyndorf and Monster Magnet but I'm into that. I'm going to go puff on one and watch it before it ends on the screen.

Speaking of Dave Wyndorf, he made a comment once "when you're high all the time, not being stoned is kind of cool too". What do you think about that?

[ laughs ]

I think it's pretty funny. Coming from Dave Wyndorf I would expect something like that coming out of his mouth. I've never met him, I've never talked to him...

Didn't Kyuss play with him?

No. Just before Kyuss broke up, I had an itinerary on my kitchen table and I was getting ready to go on the road with them for about a month and it never happened because Kyuss broke up.

But a statement like that coming from Wyndorf... first of all I'm probably not as high as him because he's probably high 24-7 I would assume. That's not a fact, I don't know but... coming from him when he comes off being high it's a totally different experience for him too. Just being straight would be a totally different high.

I dig that guy. Like I said, never met him, never talked to him but his music is... phew... amazing. I love Monster Magnet. They're one of my favorite bands.

I hear they're in the studio now. It should be interesting to hear what they do.

Yeah. Everything that Dave Wyndorf does there's always like 4 songs that are just fucking nuts.

If you weren't a musician, what would you be?

I'd be a doctor of veterinary medicine. I've worked with animals my entire life. When Kyuss broke up I started going to school and I stopped to pursue the musical career but that's what I'd be doing if I wasn't doing music.

If you had to change your name, would you prefer Hugh Jorgans or Dick Hertz?