Dyrgas Gate

Rock My Monkey interviews Scott Weinrich (The Hidden Hand, Spirit Caravan, The Obsessed, Saint Vitus). 

By Mark Carras

Listen to the interview here – mp3

Rock My Monkey: Hello, you are listening to the RockMyMonkey netcast on RockMyMonkey.com. Today we are speaking with Scott Wino of The Hidden Hand. How are you doing today, Scott?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: I’m doing good. How are you?

Rock My Monkey: I’m doing pretty good. Great weather outside in our area. Looks like I might be able to ride my bike to work which is pretty awesome.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: You’re getting snowed on today, aren’t you?

Rock My Monkey: Getting what, now?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Are you getting snowed on today, or are you on the West Coast?

Rock My Monkey: I’m on the West Coast. I’m right in between Seattle and Portland.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Okay. Gotcha.

Rock My Monkey: Whiskey Foote. I did my Google search. I did my Wikipedia search. I could not find any information. Is Whiskey Foote real?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Whiskey Foote is real to us. But we invented him, so that’s probably why you can’t find him. If you can’t find him yet, he’ll be in there. I mean, give the record a little bit longer. He’ll make his way into Wikipedia. But Whiskey Foote is basically kind of a mythical entity that the bass player, Bruce Falkinburg, kind of cooked up this whole story. We talked about it for a while. We laughed about it for a while. We were wondering whether it was really a solid concept, and we decided it was. Whiskey Foote is basically, he’s sort of like a combination of a rebel slave leader, Civil War general, combination of kind of like war hero, sort of historical and national hero figure, who basically makes spiritual returns from the dead to bestow knowledge. But you know, it’s not really-if I were to tell you that, and you were just to listen to the record all the way through, you might understand it in a different way. The songs themselves as the piece I think leave room for interpretation, you know? But providing a little background like I just did then I think will help guide you.

Rock My Monkey: Is this going to be something that might be continued through other albums, or DVDs?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: There’s no plans, there’s no plan for that right now. But we actually are already talking about our next record. There’s no plan for that now, but you never know.

Rock My Monkey: The Hidden Hand has always been more about the government doing things that most don’t want to open their eyes their eyes to. Why the change of message now?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Well, it’s very urgent times. I really do feel that this is kind of like a very, it’s a very fluid time right now. Time of change. I just think people that have – we’ve gained a small voice, we’ve gained a little foothold, and I think it’s important that we use it. We talked about it within the band. We realized that the things we talk about and the comments we make have to be pretty well thought out. We just basically kind of agree on that there’s a few things going on in the world right now that we need to change. Our comments are pretty veiled in the sense of like, I guess, really, A Travesty As Usual off of Mother Teacher Destroyer, That was probably my last real direct kind of stab. Dark Horizons off the new record is sort of along the same lines. They’re just kind of painting some pictures to stimulate thought.

Rock My Monkey: So you say that with this new album there still is that Hidden Hand philosophy within the story of Whiskey Foot?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Yeah, I think it’s a little, it’s metaphorical, and I think it’s a little veiled, but yeah, it’s lurking around in there somewhere. You could kind of look upon the times of the mass media on the record, as maybe you could equate those with the kind of tumultuous times of today.

Rock My Monkey: You were involved with the Probot project. You actually were involved in it more than a lot of the other people that did the album, because you actually did a couple live shows with them.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Right.

Rock My Monkey: Do you think being involved with Probot, did you get any reciprocal attention from that?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: It helped enormously. It helped my career enormously, I’m sure, because all of a sudden I became way high profile. It was also very artistically rewarding, too. The actual-the time, I played pretty much played to the tape for Lemmy song, which was fun. Basically I just beat a guitar and got to kind of jump around a lot, surrounded by a bunch of naked girls with Lemmy and Dave. So that was really cool. That was like a whole different vibe. But then when we actually played, when me and Greg Anderson guitar, and David played drums, and we did Eric Wagner’s song We actually got together for several hours the night before the taping and actually worked out an arrangement to the song, and played it live. That was a whole different animal. I thought that was very rewarding, because we got a chance to do our art, and it was a cool tune, it was a heavy tune, and David was playing drums, which was cool. He’s a great guitar player, but he was back behind the kit, kind of doing crap. Talking about the arrangements, and everything. It was a lot of fun. It was rewarding in a lot of ways. It boosted my career as far as like brought me up to a high profile. And it also was fun. Fun as hell.

Rock My Monkey: Do you think that The Hidden Hand is done with the Spinal Tap situation as far as your drum position is concerned?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Oh my god, yeah. We are, actually. We got the guy that I very first wanted when we first-when we had our first drummer, we always knew our first drummer would leave because he’s a really great guitar player in his own right, and he was basically playing drums to fill in for us. We knew that. We kind of sucked him into doing more and more stuff, because I already had my background, I was able to do stuff right away, like tour and stuff like that. He kind of got sucked into like, ‘well, how would you like to go to Europe for a tour?’ ‘Well, fuck, yeah, never been to Europe’. I think it was a fun ride. But we knew he wasn’t going to be there for the long haul, because his main love was not us, so that was cool. So then the guy that I wanted to get, this guy we have now, but he was already in a couple of bands at that time. So went with Evan. Bruce our engineer, he’s an engineer, so he has worked with quite a few musicians in our area, in the Washington D.C., Baltimore, Virginia area. He knew about a couple more people one of which was Evan. So Evan did Devoid of color, and the new record. I think he’s a phenomenal drummer. I think his drumming on Whiskey Foot is unbelievable. But he wasn’t meant to be He had too much on his plate, couldn’t commit to a few things, and we needed to keep rolling. Matt stepped up, and he played in, like I said, a couple other friends of ours bands in the day. Like very cool psychedelic band called Bison. He also played in a hardcore band we have in this area called Medic. He plays like really more of a rock solid-he can play all the technical stuff. He’s actually very jazzy, which is great. He loves to jam. He’s got all the elements, man. He likes to jam. That’s important.

Rock My Monkey: I came across – being a fan of yours for – like I said before we were recording-since in the early 90’s, I came across a fact in researching for this interview that I actually found a little shocking.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: What’s that?

Rock My Monkey: Is your first name Robert, or Scott?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: My first name’s Robert.

Rock My Monkey: It is. Interesting. I always thought your first name was Scott.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: We might want to keep that secret. (laughs)

Rock My Monkey: That’s what I’m warning you about. It’s totally out there already.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: I’m just kidding.

Rock My Monkey: I found this out by just surfing around a little bit.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Yeah. I’m probably Wicked out. You never know about them Wickopedians. But you know, even though my first name is Robert, my parents always for some reason called me by my middle name. I don’t really know why. So that was actually what I went by my whole life, was Scott. I was never a Rob, or a Bob, or a Bobby. It was always Scott. I don’t know why. I do know why! Because my father’s name is Robert, too, so I guess they didn’t want to have two Bobs, or something like that.

Rock My Monkey: Now that the album is out-you guys did a little bit of touring before the album came out, but now the album’s out, will the band be doing any more coast to coast U.S. tours in support of it?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Oh yeah, definitely. We’re definitely going to hit it pretty hard. We did our U.S. now. We just got done doing our U.S. coast to coast. We’re going to Europe. Our next show is actually in Tilburg Holland for the Roadburn Festival, which is going to be huge. So we’re going to do a full tour of Europe there, and then we’ll come back. Probably going to knuckle down, rehearse, and write in the summer, and come fall we’ll probably…I’m sure we will be back out. We actually might do a one off fly out type thing for California in July, actually, because there is actually talk of a Southern Lord, some type of Southern Lord showcase.

Rock My Monkey: With this being totally self-produced-as far as I as could read, this is a self-produced album.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Right.

Rock My Monkey: What would you say are the positives, and what are the negatives, of not having that outside ear of a producer?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Well, one of the negatives was one of the problems that we ran into actually when we were doing the recording of the record, and that is sometimes you get really burned out on your stuff. It’s nice to have a different set of ears, you know? And somebody also that comes that is maybe knows your band, is a friend of your band, and is kind of a fan, too, and then comes to the table-which is what we did with Resurrection, actually. Basically, after Resurrection was finished, or right when it was almost finished-we actually finished tracking, and went to mix it, we took it to Jay Robbins of Jawbox fame. He’s an ace engineer. We took it to him because it was the same kind of situation. We felt like during the mix time that we really had been working with these songs for so long and we were just so burned out on the process, that Bruce essentially felt that it would be nice for him to sit back in the control room for change and kind of listen, direct traffic, as opposed to being in charge of the knobs. Which was totally cool. We did that. Right in the middle of the session, Bruce got appendicitis, and they had to take him for major surgery. It was actually a little bit of a tumultuous recording process, it really was. There was like, like I said, Bruce had to go for major surgery in the mix, and the whole album got delayed being recorded because Evan had a death in the family, too. So it was, yeah, it was test. But you know, I don’t know if we’re going to do that again this time. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. I’m kind of the opinion now that maybe it’s better for Bruce to, instead of running around placing mikes, or sitting in the control room playing his bass, you know, himself sitting there in his chair. It sometimes might be nice to have someone do it. So you know, we’ll see. I mean, a lot of Southern Lord bands are recording with Steve Albini, so maybe the doors are open for something a little bit different.

Rock My Monkey: Well, one producer I’d love to hear you guys work with is a guy from my area. A guy named Jack Endino.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Jack Endino. Alright.

Rock My Monkey: You know who that is, right?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Yeah, I do know who that is.

Rock My Monkey: Yeah.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: We’ll kept that in mind. You know, the thing about a real big name producer is they are expensive. That is like one thing-we almost went out to do this recording at Dave Grohl and his buddy’s new studio. They got this compound of the land, and they built this state of the art studio. We were going to go out there. They have a place to stay, and do all that. And then it was just-it was doable, but we had to weigh whether we were going to have a massive advertising push, or do it at the plush studio with the producers. So we decided on this one we were going to do it ourselves one more time. That way we can really maximize. We can maximize the effort for a reasonable budget.

Rock My Monkey: I got to ask this question. Senator Dodd, Senator Clinton, or Senator Obama? Who do you think is the best choice, and who do you think has the best chance to win?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: I think the best choice would be Dennis Kucinich, but I already know he doesn’t have a chance to win. I don’t think Dodd’s in it at all. I think Obama is kind of leading the charge right now, but I think there’s always the possibility that what could happen to Obama is what happened to Howard Dean You know with Howard Dean. He was like a sure fire bet, and all of a sudden he imploded. I’m not saying Obama is going to implode, but he is pretty inexperienced. I don’t know what’s going-I’m not saying I wouldn’t vote for him. I’m a little bit scared of Hillary. It’s a tough one, dude. That’s a tough one. That’s a real tough question. (laughs)

Rock My Monkey: Honestly, I got to say as a left leaning person myself, I got to say that I’m extremely frustrated and disappointed in the choices of candidates for this round. It pretty much tells me-

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Right. Kucinich is the candidate. He’s the full on anti-war peace dude from the start. He’s the only guy that stood against the war every time. He’s fucking, he’s a hard scrabeled dude, he’s a vegan, he’s hacked his way out of nothing. But he’s so the underdog, it’s pathetic. I got to admit, I liked John Edwards the last time around. It’s not that I don’t like John Edwards still. I think John Edwards would be way better – I just think John Edwards would be better than Clinton. It’s not that I don’t like Hillary’s politics. But I think that she’s too fucking establishment. She already is, I think. I mean, I’m going to vote Democratic. I’m going to vote Democratic no matter what. I’m not afraid to say that right now, because anybody that we got is going to be better than their guy. I mean, I used to like John McCain a lot, actually. I was actually torn from McCain, because McCain almost beat Bush. He actually won one of the primaries, remember that?

Rock My Monkey: Right.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: I was like, fuckin’ A man, he’s going to fucking beat Bush, and I was really in his corner. But he has just turned into such a freaking hawk, and I just think it’s ridiculous.

Rock My Monkey: If we had to have a Republican in the office, I think McCain would be the man.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: You think he’d be the best one?

Rock My Monkey: Out of-if we have to have a Republican in the office, I think McCain would be the best.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Yeah, he’d be the best. I think he’s fair, and everything like that. But he’s like really, truly, still is one of these old guard conservatives just like my dad. They’re born and bred on Ronald Reagan, maybe he had some kind of military past. I don’t know. All I can say is it’s pretty dang scary right now. The one thing that’s really I think the worst thing out of all of this, the one thing that’s the worst byproduct of all this, is the fact that all the years of our really, really bad, and pretty much oppressive foreign policy have created the hatred that’s against us right now. And that’s like something you can’t just fucking undo overnight with a press campaign. You can’t fucking send, can’t fucking send what that one woman that took-she’s like the head of a some kind of public relations thing to repair relations with the Middle East. She’s friggin’ clueless.

Rock My Monkey: Are you talking Condoleezza Rice?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: No, I’m not talking Condoleezza Rice. She was in Bush’s cabinet for a while, and then she retired, and then she got rehired as the public affairs lady for – I think she’s State Department, actually, like for Middle East relations. Public relations. I’ll think of her name in a minute. She’s stayed with Bush her whole career. She’s a white lady, mom-oh, man, I’ll think of her in a minute. Once I say the name you’ll know who I’m talking about. But what I’m trying to say is that’s the one thing, the fact that you keep seeing people like Negroponte and people like that still around. When fucking Chávez calls Negroponte a fucking killer, he’s not fucking kidding. Them dudes, Negroponte and all those mother fuckers were all up in Central and South America when all that shit was going on, when we put those people in office that killed Mayan’s and fucking Guatemalan’s God damn. That’s like scary shit. When you look at what happen, I mean, did communism take a firm hold? Does it fucking matter? Who fucking cares? God damn.

Rock My Monkey: I got to say, the choices we have as liberals proves that the Democrats have not learned a damn thing about how to get somebody into office.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Well, I heard that there’s – I guess – I was just thinking about this, too. I was like, you know what, man, it’s about time for another fucking demonstration. Then I pick up the paper, and evidently there’s a demonstration here in Washington tomorrow. They’re actually marching to the Pentagon, and they’re following the same route of the historic march on the Pentagon in 1967. I read a whole bunch of history about it in the paper this morning about what happened. Back then the Secretary of Defense, evidently, they were always so beat up in Vietnam, the last thing they wanted to do was fucking have a big confrontation. But I read it was pretty ugly on both sides. Of course later on in the night, after, as soon as the night time came around, that’s when the federales came on out and starting busting heads, you know what I mean? Couldn’t do it in the daylight. They creep on out. Fucking crazy.

Rock My Monkey: I heard that you also had a DVD come out called Devoid of Color, and the first I heard about it was when doing research for this interview. So why don’t you fill me and the readers in on what they can find on that, and how they can get it, and all that?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Actually, that, Devoid of Color was a limited edition. Now, it’s a little bit complicated. Devoid of Color was a limited edition, and it was a CVD. What that is is on one side was a CD of like five brand new audio songs, and on the other side was a live DVD of a whole set that we shot totally pro, Pro Tools recording and everything like that. So that was the original package. That was a limited edition. That’s like out of print. But we reissued just the audio portion, just the five studio songs without the DVD part. That came out in another special edition of our new record, where it’s sandwiched with our new record, actually. That was like – Southern Lord likes to do these special edition kind of things, sometimes. That was one of those. If you call in-if somebody wants that – I did an interview on Sirius radio, on the internet last night, actually. It was on Heart Attack. It’s going to be rebroadcast. But they got some copies of those that they’re going to give away. All they got to do is call Sirius.

Rock My Monkey: That’s the DVD version?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: No, it’s not the DVD version. It’s limited edition. The DVD version is out of print.

Rock My Monkey: So people have to find that on Ebay then?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Yeah, Ebay, or wherever. I mean, the mom and pop stores somewhere might have got a couple. You never know. They’re definitely around. That’s just what the label wanted to do at the time. That’s kind of what we did. Who knows? I’m sure at some point it was probably reissue all that stuff.

Rock My Monkey: Okay. Now, to start tying up this interview, every band always likes to say that their most recent release is their best release. So what do you think makes The Resurrection of Whisky Foot the best Hidden Hand release ever done?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: I think it’s very comprehensive for the fans. I think that there’s something there for everybody, hopefully. I think that there’s definitely the slow doom for the Vitus fans. There’s the mid-tempo stuff, kind of Obsessed-ish And there’s also like a little Southern fried stuff going on, a little slide guitar and all that for the Lynyrd Skynyrd boys and girls. And then there’s definitely, I think there’s some Crimsonesque kind of stuff happening, too. Actually Burnt Dog. That song actually teetered on the precipice of being shit canned. But we eventually put it on there, and one of the main reasons is the Crimsonesque vibe in the middle. I think there’s some prog there for people, too. I just think that there’s something for everybody, and yeah, I guess that’s why.

Rock My Monkey: I do have one final question. Every year we try and make up one final question that I ask every artist that I speak with, basically just to kind of end every interview with a bang. So for 2007 I’m asking people to look into their crystal ball and predict what known celebrity, public figure, world leader, politician, musician, recording artist, anybody well known. You could choose a world leader if you want, or whatever. Who do you think we might lose this year? Who do you think will die this year?

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Will die? Oh, man, I’m not going to predict somebody’s death. That’s a crazy question. I can’t think of anybody right now that’s in that brittle of health. I mean, I wouldn’t predict anything like that, actually. Is that cool?

Rock My Monkey: Yeah, that’s fine.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: I don’t want to predict somebody’s death, because I just think that, if I pick up the newspaper tomorrow, and read they died I’m going to feel a little bit strange, you know what I mean?

Rock My Monkey: Half the purpose of this question is that at the end of the year we’re going to list everybody’s predictions, and see if anybody had a little bit of psychic powers, so to speak.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: You can just list me as demurring out of superstition, how about that? Demurred the question out of superstition. I think that would be perfect.

Rock My Monkey: I’ve actually had a couple of people this question as an opportunity to try and send a message to a friend that they were worried about, and saying to get the friend to clean up their life.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Oh, really. That’s actually very – I can see that being very useful. That’s cool. That’s cool. I hope that all that positive energy works, man, I really do. Thank you very much. I thought it was a great interview.

Rock My Monkey: Cool. I thank you for taking time.

Scott “Wino” Weinrich: Thank you, sir, and thanks a lot to everybody for listening, and everything like that. We’ll keep it coming.

[Source - Rock My Monkey]

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