Empire Extreme got to sit down and talk to singer/songwriter/keyboardist Richard T Bear aka T Bear.

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Ron

Ron has keen eye for new talent, a love for the underground, and a tremendous passion for music of any genera. You’ll probably bump into him at a horror convention or some seedy club checking out the next need-to-know band.

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We talk Games, Touring, and Toxic Crusaders at a Gaming Convention outside of Pittsburgh, PA.

It’s a late summer weekend, and I have a mountain of chores that need to be completed and a to-do list that is a mile long. The air is crisp, and the warm sunlight is bathing the leaves as they begin their Autumn transformation ritual. What better time to be reluctantly dragged to a gaming convention by your teenager?

I am by no stretch of the imagination a gamer and have almost zero interest in the culture and merchandising that surround the industry; however, I was resigned to partaking in a day of gawking at Pokemon merchandise, games I didn’t understand, and mountains of characters about whom I had no knowledge.
We paid our entrance fee and were making our way through the rows and rows of booths as I was half check-out when I noticed a second large convention hall full of video games. It was chalked full of everything from vintage PacMan and Centipede games to the latest console games and even a large section of pinball machines. As I wandered, I heard a blast of noise come from a room off to the side. It was the distinctive sound of a live band. I quickly made my way into the room, where the sound that has been my lifeblood for decades was emanating.

As I stood watching the band play and absorbing the few moments of personal pleasure, I noticed a row of merchandise tables off to the side of the venue. As I pursued the band’s wares with my eyes from a distance, I saw what I thought was the Psychostick logo. I did a double take and realized that yes, in fact, there was a Pychostick merch. table. What? I thought to myself. They must be playing here today! As I examined the scene, I saw what I was pretty sure was Matty J “Moose”, the bass player extraordinaire of Pychostick, standing behind the table. I had to go talk to him. After all, he is the notorious moose antler-wearing bassist from the enigmatic, comedic, and all-around badass band Psychostick.

This is our conversation:

This is a different setting for you, playing at a gaming convention. How different is that from your usual club setting with people looking in and going, “What the hell is that?”
Well, I think most people say, “What is that!?” But we have been doing conventions for almost 10 years.
So you’re all gamers and comic nerds?
All of us except our drummer We forced him to play a video game with us not so long ago. He admittedly had fun. I have played games my whole life, and the other two guys [in the band] are the same in that respect.
So when one of these type of events comes up, you are like, “Sign us up?”
Oh yeah, years ago, we had an offer to play at the Dallas Gaming Expo. It was its first year, and any expo or convention has its growing pains. We had a blast. Unfortunately, they are not still around. From there, we told our booking agent, “Look for more of these things.” People keep hiring us, and it is really cool that we get to do a few of these every year. This is actually the second of three video game conventions that we are doing this year.
You have the TORG Gaming Expo in Columbus coming up.
Yeah, in a few weeks (November 11th), we will be at TORG, and we just did Too Many Games in Philadelphia. That is a yearly thing for us.

Are you guys based on the East Coast?
We are based out of Chicago now. I grew up in New York; our guitar player Josh and our singer Rawrb are from West Texas. Alex, our drummer, is originally from Arizona, and we all live in Chicago for some reason.

It is really fun doing these conventions, considering our last show was a death metal festival. Then we come to these gaming things, and its, well, you know, different.

Well, you guys can fit in most anywhere with a lot of different genres. You can squeeze in here and there.
Oh yeah, it is fun, and I love that we have the demographics that we do. We can captivate and grab them, at least for a little while. Then they get it and realize that, yeah, these guys are funny.  I get it now.

Speaking of the diverse audiences, you got to actually play at Blue Ridge a few weeks ago.
Yeah! That was a rough weekend for a lot of people. Luckily we played at just the right time. We had an AWESOME day at Blue Ridge. I feel really bad for everything that went wrong. We had a fuckin’ blast.

You kind of mentioned it, but to backtrack, can you explain the reaction of strangers seeing you for the first time? Does it mean more to you for somebody to laugh or to start head banging?
That’s like two of my favorite things. That’s why I love being a part of this band. Making people rock out and making people smile are two things that don’t necessarily go together, but we have the honor of being able to do both. That is the best thing somebody could do at a Psychostick show: headbang and giggle. It makes me so happy, and it is a dream come true.

What next for the band—any new material or projects?
If you remember the Toxic Crusaders, they are rebooting the franchise with a feature-length movie. A company called Retroware hired us to do the video game theme song. When they heard it, they liked it and then hired us to do the whole soundtrack. So we are working diligently on that and cranking out a lot of songs for it. It’s kind of weird for us since the style is a bit different for us.

Is it full 3-minute songs or more background music pieces?
The majority are two-minute loops with no vocals, which is quite different for us. The vocals have always been our creative constraint. Most of the songs we do are done vocals first. Well, lyrics first, then we craft the music around the vocal. This has been fun for us to get out of our comfort zone. There have been a couple songs that started with drum riffs. A couple that started with bass riffs and a couple that started with a guitar part. There is a lot of electronic programming going into this. Which is very different for Pychostick to have synth in our metal. It’s kind of cool and really exciting. I’m really excited for people to hear it and for people to play the game. We got to play it, and there is a playable demo on Steam right now. I think it lets you play one or two levels. That’s actually the game we forced our drummer to play. We did a four-player co-op, and it was a blast. I’m so excited that the game doesn’t suck.

What’s the time line for the release of the game?
2024 is all I can say now.

Is the soundtrack going to be a separate release from the game?
I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say, so take it all with a grain of salt. From what I understand, there is a good chance of the soundtrack being released as a disk. That would be through Retroware. So think of the video game developer as our record company. They are funding it.

We haven’t been on a label in a long time. We were really fortunate in the early days to be with Rock Ridge Records, and they really worked with us. There are so many horror stories about how people get fucked in the music industry. Tom, who was the head of our record label, gave us back our rights and our masters. Really a solid company. We have been independent for a really long time, so it was weird going back into a situation where somebody is paying us to do the music and taking a percentage of it. So, I don’t know; we will see. It’s really fun, and we are doing it to get our foot in the door. Hopefully, we can do more. It’s been a blast. I have nothing negative to say about the process. I’m excited.
It’s one of those situations where you find yourself falling ass-backwards into something.
There was a bit of apprehension within the camp, but I think we all agreed that it would be a good thing for us in the long run, especially since we have worked with this company before. We sort of know some of the guys and gals that work for the company. Ya just gotta go with your gut sometimes. It seemed like a really good move for us. Please, if you read this, go on Steam and wishlist the game. It is called Toxic Crusaders.

Aside from the game, what’s coming down the pipe? Any tour plans?
We haven’t been doing “tours” per se. We have done it for so long and grinded for so long. We have families now, and we are middle-aged or older. Touring is hard. It’s a young man’s game. We did 13 years on the road. That’s a long time. We have been really happy doing these weekend shows. That’s it. We drove out yesterday to Pittsburgh and go back tomorrow and hopefully have some change in our pockets.

The band that was just on stage said something about their van breaking down, and you shouted “You’re a real band now” at them. How much is that a reality for Psychostick?
We are on our third trailer, our second van, and our fifth bass player.

I’ve been in several bands and have done the whole club tour thing. We spend the weekend towing a trailer around the country side, sleeping in bar parking lots, and living off the McDonald’s Dollar menu.
I’ve eaten a lot of dollar menu food and slept on the floors of people I met that night. I slept in the Walmart parking lots. I’ve been sick, sleeping in a sleeping bag with seven guys in a freezing van with frost on the windows.

Speaking of being sick, one of our shows, on the way there, my tooth started killing me. By show time, I was dying. I took a handful of Advil just to get through the set, and then I sat in the truck and let the other guy load all the equipment. I was so over the whole touring and live music thing at that moment.
Our guitar play had the same thing. We have a song called “The Root of All Evil” which is about getting dental work done and how fun it is. We were actually on tour, and he had, I think, an abscessed tooth. He had to get a root canal and all this stuff done. We were on tour, and he just kept putting it off and putting it off. We had a few days off, and we stopped where our drummer was living at the time. He recommended a dentist. He went to the dentist, and she told him, You need to get this fixed today. She said that if you wait any longer, you are going to need to go to the emergency room. It was brutal getting that all done on tour. He had a root canal and extractions; it’s all in the song, so check it out. A true story, and he wrote the bulk of it while going through that shit.

These are some of things that people don’t understand about being out on the road and touring. Simple things like a doctor or dentist
Yeah. I’m going to say the only other guys that have it worse than tour musicians are maybe military guys. I give them a lot of credit. I think, man, I could be in a tank in Afghanistan right now. This show sucks and our van broke down, but at least I’m not in Iraq. I give them a lot of credit. Shout out to the armed forces.

Oh yes. There are such highs and lows too. One night you’re playing to hundreds or thousands of people, and the next night you’re playing to ten people and the bar tenders.
I remember a long time ago when we played this festival. At the time, it was the biggest show we ever played. Then the next show was, like you said, twelve people. But that’s how it goes. You gotta rock just as hard for those twelve people.
I know you go from playing something like the Gathering to playing to nobody.
We had the privilege of playing The Gathering a couple of times. Whoop, Whoop! (He pulled up his sleeve to show me his Hatchetman tattoo.)
There are highs and lows. You get there, and the show is canceled or something.
That is touring, man. I know you can’t see it reading this, but he did this hand motion. His hand was up here at eye level and then all the way down here. That sums up touring. As a road band and the grind, that pretty much sums it up.
Yes. And you drive for hours or days and spend hours unloading and setting up equipment for your 45 minutes or an hour of playing, only to do it all again tomorrow.
We are a glorified t-shirt sales company that specializes in moving and happens to play music for roughly an hour per night.
I was just having a conversation about venues keeping a percentage of merchandise sales.
Oh, that’s a big source of contention in the music industry. I talk to bands about it all the time, everywhere we go. About how it originated and why they are still around. It basically comes down to shitty promoters. Promoters need to do their job. There is a difference between buying a show and promoting a show. Too often, guys who put on shows call themselves promoters because it sounds better than being a buyer. In reality, a lot of guys buy a show and don’t promote it. Fuck those guys. If you reading this and you do this, fuck you. Promote your show. Don’t put all the work on the artist. That’s just bullshit. Especially now, people just make a Facebook post and think they promoted the show.
And that is the scenario where you have 400 people interested and forty show up.
Exactly! People click “I’m going”. That doesn’t mean anything. How many tickets did you sell?
In my bands, if we could, we always tried to print tickets for shows that we had any control over or say over. We would sell the tickets because once somebody lays a few dollars on the line and has a physical ticket in hand, they are a hundred times more likely to show up.
That is great, especially for bands like us. I like seeing local bands who give a shit. It’s really a good thing for local bands to do when you get on a bigger show. And a good promoter will figure out a bill with bands that are just a little different [from the headliner] and help bring in a little bit of a different crowd. That way, you have boots on the ground. That is what old-school street teams used to do.
The musical landscape has changed. This band started in 2000. So the band is 23 years old. We have seen a lot of changes in how things are done between record labels, touring, promoting, and selling merchandise.

We started back with a Myspace page.
Yes, Myspace and radio—that’s how I found Psychostick. There are two things that I really don’t have my hands in anymore. I have satellite radio now, but I listen to WDCB Jazz college radio in the Chicagoland area. Shout out to them.

That’s all the question I have for you now. Anything you want to throw out there for all our readers?
Go to Steam and wishlist the Toxic Crusader game. Go to Pyshcostick.com to find out when we are coming around. Go to Pyshcostick.com/showalerts and put your info in we will email and/or text you whenever we come to your area. It’s all zip code based so you won’t get spammed with a thousand shows. New music and merch. coming.
I love the pseudo-cookie monster shirt.
Haha, that’s the “So Heavy” shirt. Yeah, so check us out. Spotify, or YouTube, we have a shit-ton of videos on the way. We have been working on some… puppetry. You heard it here first. That’s all I can say.

About Author

Josh Drespling

Josh is the Publisher and creator of Empire Extreme and it’s sister publication Kingdom Extreme Magazine. He is an accomplished writer, photographer and graphic designer. He is always conjuring up new ideas and has a amazing passion for the music industry and all the things that surround it.

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Empire Extreme got to talk to Blues Rock Guitarist Lance Lopez whose latest Album “Trouble is Good” is out now. Check out the interview and check out Lance at https://www.lancelopez.net/music

About Author

Ron

Ron has keen eye for new talent, a love for the underground, and a tremendous passion for music of any genera. You’ll probably bump into him at a horror convention or some seedy club checking out the next need-to-know band.

See author's posts