Lets get the cliche questions out of the way first. Your new album Three Sides of One comes out Sept 2. To me it sound like a bit of a stripped down sound, with no big studio tricks. I might even dare to say I hear a hint of some grunge era sound in there. What say you?
We went back to the 70s. That’s were we come from and we just went home with it. We did what was totally comfortable with us, it’s what we love do and how we love to do it.

The opening track “Let It Rain”, I let me 16 year old kid listen to it in the car the other day and he said it sounding like it was the soundtrack for the scene in a movie when the cool kid pulls up in his vintage sports car with the dust flying and the low camera angle shows his boot stepping out onto the ground with the school or wherever he is going out of focus in the background. I thought that was an awesome description.
It is! Love that reaction. I’m 72 years old and I don’t fell like anybody under 50 listens to us. I’ve been finding a lot of young kids who listen to us, which surprises me.

Yeah, its like the whole Metallica thing with the show Stranger Things. I’m sure your aware of that. You now have 15 years old kids wearing Master of Puppet shirts.
[Laughing] Yeah, Yeah. You know kids are always discovering or rediscovering things and make it their own.

There are some lyrics on the new album, and I don’t know if you wrote them or if was Ty or Jerry, but they go “Everybody wants their rights, everybody wants to fight”.  Is that a commentary on your own life or is that more of a broad stroke?
That is a WIDE, WIIIIDE, WIDE stroke. Its like I’m sitting down talking to a friend and we look at the state of the world or the news is on. I go you know what we need is a flood. Then everybody chuckles and you keep going. But that’s all it is. I’m making light of a dire situation. Sometimes there is noting we can do, but look at it. Go to work the next day and pick up our kids from school.

You mentioned the flood, and knowing your background, I hear a bunch of those key or buzz words from the evangelical or religious world.
I love using those words. It confuses people.
I pick up on those. I grew up in a non-denominational church and when I’m listening to you and think “What did he just say?” I know what that means.
I look at it this way. There is all this wisdom in the writings that you find. People say “Well what did Confucius say or other scholars say?” Well what did Jesus say? I just throw it out there as part of the conversion as what I see as a writing or wise saying. And then the funny thing is, if I do a Jesus quote all of a sudden I’m a Christian. I can do a quote from everybody and nobody says a word. And that’s why I do it, because they don’t understand. They don’t get it. It’s not about religion, it’s not about politics. Its about why can’t we let each other live our lives and to come together to stop this world from falling apart.

I believe I heard you say in a recent interview that you thought the pandemic was kind of a reset. It made people stop and look at things differently.
It seemed that way around a lot of people I know. I mean I hang out with mostly musicians. We all had to sit around at home and think “What the fuck am I doing?” I think it was a good thing for a lot of people. People got closer together, people got to know their kids, and well, some got divorced. There was all kinds of good and bad stuff. I mean, people were killing each other, drinking too much, and doing drugs. But… What I’m saying is it stopped everybody in their tracks. Like I say, “this runaway train ain’t slowing down.” It literally stopped everybody for a second.  We needed a reset. I don’t know how good the reset was [laughing] but it was a gear change.

Me personally, I’m at home all the time anyway. I’m always writing. I’ve been doing this most of my life. I don’t have a day gig. I haven’t had one since I was in my 20s. So what I do, I can pay my bills with. So I just stay home hang out and write music. I do what I want to. The pandemic didn’t really do anything to me, but make me realize that I do like being alone. And do like not going out [laughing].
You have an excuse now.
Yeah!  People go “come on over and hang out.” I’m like “Nah…. I’m just enjoying begin with me.” I don’t have to worry about other people’s emotions. Maybe its selfish. I don’t know. You know you share you life with people for so long that every once in a while you just gotta stop and take care of yourself and refill. That’s what it did for me. It helped me fill back up, so I can spew it back out again.

In your answer you touched on several other questions I was going to ask you. One was about day jobs. What jobs did you have growing up and what were they like?
Oh, man. I remember when I was seventeen, I got a job. It was a summer job. I was an office runner. Basically, I sat at a desk and every now and then I took papers to someone somewhere else. It was one of those thing for the poor kids who needed jobs. You know, the poor black kids. So I got that and it lasted for the summer.

The next job I got was at a factory. They has these sheets of insulation for cars and came out of this roller. They would be stamped and you would have to punch out the stamped holes where the knobs for the car would be. You just stood there for eight hours. I did that for three weeks and quit. It was an assembly line and was just horrible.

I got another job they had me putting tops on aerosol cans. So this thing would go by and I would just keep putting them on. I remember sleeping at night and doing it in my sleep. That also lasted about three months.

I’ll tell you, back in the 60s when I grew up, there was a lot of prejudice. Underlying prejudice. One thing that was always said was that a black person can’t keep a job for any longer than a year. It was a way of saying we were lazy. In my community it was a goal of ours to keep a job at least a year. So I got a job in shipping receiving at this place when I was 27. I kept it for a year, and then quit. I have never had a job since [laughing].

Oh, I did have one other job, I worked at a daycare. I cooked for these kids. I loved these kids. They wanted me to be their dad. It was so sad. There mom or dad would drop them off and some of them would cry cause they parents were getting a divorce. They would go “will you be my daddy?” They would break my heart, On my God I loved them,bu tit was just terrible for me to hear.

But anyway, after that I never done [that again]. Its either do or die. If I only made fifteen bucks, I bough/made spaghetti dinner for everybody and slept on the floor.

You mentioned you cooked at the daycare.  I was going to ask you what was the best meal you have ever had?
You will just have to come to a Pinnick family reunion. You will have some food that you have never tasted and it’ss amazing. What my family can cook is the best cooking ever, as far as I’m concerned. At least five times in the career of King’s X we were in the Chicago area when there was a family reunion, or we had a day off and we could go to my mom’s house. We would roll up the bus to my mom’s house and she would cook a Thanksgiving dinner for the everybody. The road crew, the opening band, everybody. They will tell you, it was the best food they had ever eaten.
I think she kind of planned it. She knew you tour schedule.
No. I never planned it. Maybe somebody in the tour did it. I guess I need to thank him… Oh, I’m so full of myself.  I never thought of that. I just thought it was a coincidence. Daaarrr, Unbelievable, I am. On my God.

I know your friends with Charlie Benante of Anthrax and as you know he is sitting in for the late Vinnie Paul for Pantera reunion or tribute. Do you have any thoughts on that?
No. Everybody asks me that, and everybody is talking about it. Here is my take. It’s nobody’s fucking business what anybody thinks. They should do what they want. I wasn’t in the meeting when they talked about it. I haven’t talked to any of the guys from any of those camps about it and they are all my friends. As far as I’m concerned, when they come to L.A. I will go. I would love to see them, they are my friends. Other than that, no comment, because I feel like I have no right to say anything.

Aside from tour, I understand that you were also friends with Dime and that you were one of many lucky ones that would get 3am phone calls from him. Can you share some of those?
Yeaaaah. Oh My God.  The phone would ring and it’s like four in the morning. I would here “This is dUg, leave a message.” [In drunken slurred voice] “Dug this is Dime, and we drunk as fuck… and we riddin’ down the highway.  We wanna sing a song for ya. Everybody!  Listen to us dUg!”  Then you hear the whole bus going “…can’t be bought better..”  they could never get past better. Then they would all start howling like wolfs. Just WAAOOOO,  WAAAAOOOOOO! Just yellin’  Then he would hang up. Then in a few minutes call back. “dUg, dUg. We got it… we gonna do it. We got it right this time.” And they would try, but they never could finish it. I would not answer the phone just to hear that.

That’s just one of the many, many stories of Dime that all of us could tell. He was just one of those characters.

I know one thing for sure there a lot of young one in like their twenties that are going to get to experience at least a millisecond or a piece of what we all lived through. They just don’t know yet.

Just a few nights ago, I covered the Anthrax show with Black Label and Hatebreed. I was there doing photography. But at the end of their set Anthrax does part of the Pantera song “Domination”. It was kind of surreal as Scott hits that first cord the place got quite for a second and there was a crazy energy. It insane to think that is going to be happening all over the country in a few months.
I’ve heard. That’s going to be a big deal. I haven’t really talked to anybody from that camp in a while. I’m curious, but that just because I’m a friend and I love them.  I mean, I’ve watched those guys go through everything. I’ve talked to them when they weren’t speaking to each other.  They were like “What he say about me?” “What did they say about me?” [laughing] And I’m just like “nah. nah, nah.” I would plead the fifth.

I look back and kinda wish I could have maybe been a mediator way back in those low points. But I didn’t know any better either.

Looking back and having guys like Dime and many other praising your early albums like Gretchen, Faith Hope, Love, and even Out of the Silent Planet, how does it make you feel that those works are so respected three and four decades later?
For me, it’s still a surprise even thought it shouldn’t be. I should stop being surprised by it. Does that make any sense? You know I’ve watch people cry when I sing my whole life, so when someone says, “What is it like now”. You know, it still kinda baffles me that these things happen and I’m still kinda surprised. You know, my whole life has been that way. I have had a great life. The ups and the downs. It has been a great adventure and I look forward to the rest of it. In a way it has grounded me and it helps me accept the things I can’t change and see the things that I have accomplished.

Basically, We hate ourselves, don’t we? I have learned to love myself in some capacity, were I’m OK now. I’ve stopped beating myself up 24 hours a day. Maybe it’s an hour a day now. Periodically I’ll go on a binge and hate myself all day. But I’m at the point where I can go “You’re not that bad.” You kinda want to believe these good things [about yourself]. Its things you always wanted to hear, so listen and be happy about it. Stop trying to discredit yourself when somebody gives you all the credit. So, it’s a battle. A 24 hour battle of look what you’ve accomplished verses what you haven’t. It’s like having a mom who says “You are the greatest thing since sliced bread.” And having a dad that goes “Whatever.”

Keeping the same vein of looking back, I’ve heard rumblings a while back that you are working on a retrospective documentary about the band.
Yeeeeeaahh!  OOOh My God. Its almost done. Roy Turner actually showed us a tiny clip and it made me cry.  It was only a minute. This guy had an uncanny ability to bring your into something emotionally with lights and cameras and the way people talk. He is really good. I can’t wait to see it all and how it all turns out. He basically wants people to see what we have done through our whole career. From where we started to where we are at and that we are still here. He wants people to understand the depth of the three of us. Not only as what we produce, but as real people. He has got a lot of people in there that get to share their opinion. Which is really, really cool. I like that. I think it’s going to be pretty cool.

The camera work is really good. There is this one scene, he took a drone and flew it up this mountain, all the way down into the studio all the way to the sound board.  It was just so cool and as it goes the music get louder and louder. That is the kind of stuff [he is doing].  It’s going to be fun.

I don’t know if he is going to use that scene or not, but if so, I’ve just blown it.

I cant wait to see it.

I have some more silly kind of questions for you.
Ok. Sure.

Do you have any pets, and if so what?
No. No, I can’t deal with pets.  Because I feel things to much. Animals…ummm… I can’t stop the energy that I feel from them, so I can concentrate on myself. I am one of those very sensitive people. Sometimes it drives me crazy. If a dog is in the next room, I’ll have to go see if it’s OK. It will look at me and all of a sudden I’m think, “What are you thinking, what do you want, whats wrong?” Then I start to just focus on the dog and I can’t get anything done. I’m like that with everything. My plants are the same way. I go and talk to them, I tell them I’m sorry when I don’t water them. I hug my tree. I walk barefoot on the ground. I can feel the difference on the ground between Los Angeles, Chicago, and Texas. When I take my shoes off I can feel the vibration is slightly different. All that shit I go through.

For me being alone is good because the only noise I have is made by me. On the other hand, I like going out among the world. It’s just overwhelming sometimes, because I can feel so much.

Its truly nice to be able to turn it off or do your own thing when you want to or need to.
Well, the pandemic taught me that also. I didn’t know I could turn it off, I didn’t know I could leave and stop for a while and give myself a break. I would just drain myself and drain myself, cause I wanted to be there give my attention to whoever was there and needed it. I would pout it [out] and pour it [out]. I was always exhausted, and tired, and frustrated too, especially.  There are people who will just drain you, just to drain you. You’re not really helping them. They just need your attention. The pandemic has really shown me all the traps that have trapped me most of my life. Even with my mother passing away, and some of the things I felt in that. It’s all what it is. I put it into music. Wrote a song. Wanna hear it? Here goes. [laughing]

I can totally relate for where you are coming from. For years I did tons of freelance design work, along with a full time job, ran this website and magazine, did other music stuff, had a band and also was a single dad.  And..
Geeeze.. I just have to interrupt… SINGLE dad. On My God. You know something? I just have to say one thing. I have to give you 100% credit. I admire you. It’s hard enough for two people to raise a kid, but to do it as a dad… Bless you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Through all those things, I have taught myself to say no to people. It’s nothing personal or anything like that, its just I already have 49 things going on, so it just has to be a no.
Exactly, Exactly.

I did want to ask you before we wrap up is about an upcoming tour. I see you have a handful of dates scheduled in Texas and I think Tenseness. Is there any plans for more dates after the release or in the new year?
Yeah, well what you see is what we have now. We are just beginning to figure it our. When we are gonna do it, and how we are gonna do it.

US Tour Dates

28 July – Gramercy Theatre, NYC, NY, USA
29 July – Sellersville Theatre, Sellersville, PA, USA
30 July – Spyglass Ridge Winery, Sunbury, PA, USA
19 October ・ Amos・ Southend, Charlotte, NC, USA
20 October ・ The Concourse, Knoxville, TN, USA
21 October ・ The Forum, Hazard, KY, USA
23 October ・ Brooklyn Bowl, Nashville, TN, USA
25 October ・ The Howlin・ Wolf, New Orleans, LA, USA
23 November ・ Trees, Dallas, TX, USA
25 November ・ Come and Take It Live, Austin, TX, USA
26 November ・ Warehouse Live, Houston, TX, USA

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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