43 Years On, X’s BANG! as Big as Ever

July ‘81. I’m 19. Super skinny, spiky black hair, all-black garb. The new President sucks, but I’m glorying in the Summer of American Punk Rock: The Cramps’ Psychedelic Jungle; Romeo Void’s debut It’s a Condition; Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation; the B-52s’ Wild Planet (with the kinetic “Give Me Back My Man”); & here in Milwaukee, on a 45 bought in the Starship Club’s “snake pit”: the Oil Tasters’ “What's in Your Mouth?” B/W “Get Out of the Bathroom.”

Next I drop the needle on Side 1 of album #2 from a four-year-old, single-letter, supposed-genius punk band outta L.A.: three guys who call themselves “Zoom” & “Bonebrake” & “John Doe” plus some chick named—sounds like a cleaning product—“Exene.”

Scratch … pop …

BANG!

Half an hour later, I re-drop the needle on the same spot, thinking:

What the fuck was that—& can I please listen to it forever?!

Nearly four decades on, Wild Gift remains my favorite album. But like its gritty predecessor Los Angeles (‘80; henceforth L.A.), the heartbreaking Under the Big Black Sun (‘82; Under) & rollicking More Fun in the New World ('83; More Fun), X's brand-new Alphabetland (Fat Possum Records)—their eighth studio album, first in 27 years, & first with the original lineup in 3-1/2 decades—gives Wild Gift a run for its money. (Fat Possum recently re-issued all four of these early thrash-terpieces on CD & LP.)

For “the others”—Ain’t Love Grand? (‘85; Ain’t), See How We Are (‘87; See How) & the pun-titled Hey Zeus ('93)—I have great affection. But Alphabetland is the long longed-for return.

On More Fun’s “Make the Music Go Bang,” John & Exene described both L.A. punk rock & X’s sound: “Brilliant, shining & nasty / Let me hear a guitar sound like a train.” Alphabetland is a brilliant, shining, occasionally nasty ride on the X Express, & its BANG! is as big as ever.

Granted: about X—along to whose super-smart, freeing songs I've sung, & run (lately: jogged), & slam-danced for 39 years—I'm anything but objective. (Or maybe I'm so subjective that I've come back ‘round to objectivity? More on that at the end.) But so what? The Theory of Intentional Fallacy holds that art eclipses its creator’s intentions—which are unknowable anyway, even if the artist tells you—so, a reviewer/critic can & should bring personal experience to bear. I’ll do so here in hopes that Dear Reader will do the same.

To the matter at hand: Alphabetland. Sure, it’s an album & a title song. But it’s also both a place—figurative, yet real—& a journey: trip & destination at once. And it’s a sort-of story: a rip-roarin’ road movie, like the ‘91 Doe feature Roadside Prophets, in 11 tracks/scenes, scripted not in prose but in jagged, freewheeling, Prophet-ic punk poetry.

Scribe, social critic & sojourner John Steinbeck, for whom X & I share a profound admiration, wrote in Travels with Charley: In Search of America (‘62): “People don’t take trips; trips take people.” A trip to Alphabetland will take ya, all right. And it may never let go.

This particular road movie’s reunited cast still conjures the sound I described this way in my coming-of-age-in-early-‘80s-Milwaukee novel Planet of the Dates (‘08): “Buzzsaw guitar + knife in the gut bass + Gatling gun drums all yanking jagged verse outta a fevered punk couple scream-singing in eerie off-kilter harmony REALLYFUCKINGLOUD.”

I’ll stick with that recipe. But let’s credit each ingredient:

For my money, X’s D.J. Bonebrake is tied with Janet Weiss—late of my second-favorite band, riot-grrrl pioneers Sleater-Kinney—as rock’s most explosive drummer. Weiss’ drum hits are depth charges; D.J.’s, strings of firecrackers. His seldom displayed cool-cat vibraphone skills aren’t on hand—they’d have fit in well on the jazzy final track—but this is Alphabetland, not ‘95’s acoustic X Unclogged (Leave it to Doe & Co. to cleverly tweak that era’s “Name-of-Band  Unplugged” live-album-title default). No: here, it’s ALL drums & cymbals, ALL the time.

Band elder Billy Zoom developed the six-string sound I call “tarnation guitar” in his pre-punk years backing up rockabilly royalty: Gene “Be Bop A-Lula” Vincent. In concert, Billy no longer stands with feet planted 50” apart; he perches on a high stool—appropriate for the high-on-life smile that remains from days of yore, along with the roving/flirty audience eye contact & the blistering, razor-sharp licks of the fastest & best rockabilly guitarist alive.

High-Alto Oracle

On stage, the riveting presence of Exene Cervenka—high-alto oracle, dire declaimer, poet-predictor & (per Doe’s glorious glass-shard of a valentine on More Fun) “Devil Doll”—still runs the gamut from loa-possessed trance-dancer to been-there cowgirl. She remains a singular singer of underrated range in terms not of octaves-spread—she’s on the narrow side—but of intonation: she rock-belts, murmurs, speak-sings, simmers, folk-twangs, spell-casts, “sangs real perty” & more—sometimes, all in one song. Her Alphabet-ical vocals are as strong ever. Maybe stronger.

And then—file this whole paragraph under that earlier “I’m anything but objective” part—there’s John Doe: the main instigator (with Oil Tasters’ Richard LaValliere a strong second), via his boundless, neck-spanning fretwork & growling subterranean power chords, of my late-teens commitment to a life on bass guitar. J.D.’s rich, outlaw-cowboy-inflected tenor, dipping down into soulful high baritone, is audio silk & a perfect match for his clever, bared-soul, world-weary words. Doe imho is the best male singer-songwriter of his generation.

See how they are? For 43 years: the thinking-person’s—& the feeling & the slamming-person’s—punk band. But can three 60-somethings & a septuagenarian still play like punks?

Fuck yeah! What could be more badass than still bringin’ it at their age? So:

Four old punks walk into a bar, maybe the Bar Nothing of Under’s “The Have Nots,” toting Wayne White’s wicked-cool cover art, which drops to the sticky floor as our heroes are yanked back into the title track’s “electric non-fiction”: their early-‘80s jalapeño-salad days. Recalls Exene in a borderline-bratty nyeah-nyeah vocal over straight-on high-velocity rock: “I watched you pour white gasoline / To cover up your scent” amid “torn-up sidewalks … atom bomb bruises, cold war flu … molten river riding high like a fever.” It’s not the last fever she & John will invoke, ‘cause this whole “trip” hits ya like a fever dream: David Lynch on speed. “No more words for you,” she commands, “Alphabet mine!” During chaos, the very building blocks of language are shaky, so put your trust in someone whose lyrical M.O. has long incorporated a dash of anarchy. Plus, Exene was there; all four of ‘em were. It’s X that should tour-guide us back to a Reagan Era lately exhumed & made ghastlier still.

Fists Raised High

For the feminist cri de coeur “Free,” Exene hands the lead-vocal baton over to John who, “fists raised,” sprints it down to darkness—“The church is burning / The bullets are flying / You hurt my sister / She didn't do nothin'”—before setting out, female friends-fam-&-fans flanking him, for a “promised land.” Empathy-driven images of hate- & misogyny-born havoc multiply & edge into the apocalyptic: “The sky is fire / The rocks are sighing / It’s all so quiet at the end” —that last line repeated twice for emphasis. Again: though recorded pre-COVID-19, many of the album's lyrics sound crazy-clairvoyant: 2019 compositions with both 20/20 & 2020 vision. Like a quartet of latter-day Steinbecks, X has long chronicled the contemporaneous struggles of “The Have-Nots”: see See How's title track, Hey Zeus’ “Country at War” & many more; there's plenty of precedent. But this crystal-ball business? That's new.

Several months ago, a 45 now in my jukebox—two re-done X'ers-of-old—teased the album's release; the official first single, though, is Track 3 here, the irresistible “Water & Wine.” Musically, it’s a sort of sped-up “Hothouse” (from More) soaringly sung by Exene. Billy’s guitar hosts a hollering hillbilly hoedown, & his sizzlin’ solo gets ya smiling even broader than its famously grinnin’ player. Locked-tight into John’s jump-around bass line, D.J.’s trademark speed-demon 2-1-2-1 drummin’ drives the locomotive: never off the rails, but exhilaratingly close.

The way Exene wink-sings “There’s a heaven & a hell / And there’s an ‘Oh, well’” suggests that heaven, hell & Alphabetland itself are all located right here on our mortal coil. Her caustic, rhetorical “Who gets passed to the head of the line? / Who gets water & who gets wine?” targets the offensive “sheeps vs. goats” sinners/saints dualism preached by deluded dogmatists & cruel corporatists alike. She assures those of us in Wild Gift's “Universal Corner” that, degree (or lack) of privilege regardless, we're all on the same shit ship in the end: “There's a heaven & there’s a never / There’s no tomorrow, only forever”—that last line resonating with the day-to-day psycho-spiritual decay of a painful, if needed, long-term lockdown. We’re sinking fast, Exene says … but post-hell “There’s a live to tell,” so who knows? Maybe we can salvage something, together.

Even while Zoom-ing forward, X neXt sneaks a peek back at the “Strange Life” they’ve led on stage & off. A guitar lead-in from Under’s “Blue Spark” ignites a muscular stop-&-go rocker wherein John & Exene boast of their 40-plus years on the edge: “I’m goin’ where you didn't go / Where you couldn’t or wouldn’t go / All that you would never know.” Never has their punk milieu/profession, whose ethos their fans share, been better summed up than by six words here: “That's me falling / That’s my calling.” As for the sing-along chorus: infectious? It's pandemic.

As for “I Gotta Fever,” I gotta feeling it’s a lyrical rewrite of the true-crime “Heater,” a low-tech ‘78 recording of which X included on its ‘97 Beyond & Back anthology. I’ve always dug that blazin’ barn-burner of an original; even better is this urgent punk-on-punk seduction: “You’re good tonight / You’re cool & white / You ask me inside / Cuz I got no place to hide … Your skin is smooth as molten lead … This is the way we had planned / I got a fever in my hands.” The choruses’ rapid-fire chord changes are epic—especially now in, at last, high fidelity. Amid today’s American carnage, it’s bracing to stumble upon a torrid 13:69 A.M. romance. Fever—not the viral but the sweaty-sexy-passionate, life-affirming, Peggy Lee/X kind—just may be our best hope in this hate-laden, death-dealing Trump/Pence/COVID Era. This song is sex as a rebel yell.

Alphabetland accelerates to peak speed on the middle track. “Delta 88 Nightmare,” another redone ‘78 throwback, still clocks in at just over 90 seconds, matching the MPH of hardest-core (hardcorest?) X thrashers “I’m Coming Over” & “We’re Desperate” (both from Wild Gift). Here, the Steinbeck tie-in is explicit: in a beat-up ‘40s Olds convertible, John & Exene head to the author's beloved Cannery Row (title locale of his ‘45 Monterey, Calif.-set novel)—“We’re gonna flop at No Hotel / We're gonna get as drunk as hell”—only to find “the bums all gone” ‘cause the Row’s now “a cute resort with dads & moms / Staring at us & making fun / Nothing to do on Cannery Row / Nowhere to go…”

X has decried gentrification & displacement since long before that critique became—A little good news, here—commonplace; hell, they helped make that happen. Plus, this time at least there's a happy ending, of sorts: “Down an alley, a doorway sign / Dancing pages they can’t find / The book’s still true / Hey look, Steinbeck!—the bums are back!” (The music video, shot on location & featuring Exene’s son [who directs] & niece, is a light-speed hoot.)

The propulsive “Star Chambered” alternates between roads-not-taken & bullets dodged—“I could’ve been star chambered / On the tree of rock ‘n’ roll life”—& “Strange Life”-ish tales from the front. “I’m sure that I dodged a knife,” sings John, “I’ve been buried once or twice.” It all started “a million years ago” (see the It's About Time TV-theme nod in More Fun's “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts”), when four young artists “took a chance.” It turned out OK: “I bet on odd till I broke even.” No: better-than-even—or so Billy's triumphal take-no-prisoners solo attests.

Bonebreak-ing Gallop

Still, the sad shadow of less-fortunate folks, some of them deceased, falls smack-dab over the Chamber roof. After a clever travelin’-band rewrite of Tennessee Ernie Ford—“I played 16 bars & what did I get? / Another town over & covered in sweat”—John & Exene turn away from the old roads & set off, in bittersweet harmony & at a Bonebrake-ing gallop, down a new one: “Now I’m running, running late … Dearly departed, I’m just getting started.” Quite a claim from a 43-year-old band, but the delectable new Come-along! chorus proves it beyond a doubt.

Speaking of roads, Exene’s “Angel on the Road” has the arcane distinction of being second only to Doe’s “Lyin' in the Road” (from Unclogged) as my favorite X road song—& this long-touring band has plenty o’ those. In ghostly fashion, the singer-poet drifts back to the years, now so “cold & young ago” (great turn of phrase), that she spent bumming rides from town to town, lamenting “I wish I was someone else / Someone I don't even know / I wish I was somewhere else / Making angels in the snow.” Truck driver Duane pulls over, “the door steams open” & the singer climbs in; when he “asks me where I'm going,” Exene winsomely shares, “I point to the sky. / ‘Lead the way, angel,’ / Duane says as the radio sings.” This is the second straight song to reference angels & their wings; no denying the intimations of mortality. That said, wherever this road is taking our lonely angel / latter-day haint, she & her band barrel down it with no regrets.

The tongue-in-cheek also-ran's-lament “Cyrano de Berger's Back” stood out in its solid if Zoom-less See How version. Now, it's less vocal showcase for John than booty-shakin’ R&B full-band grand slam—as well as the Alphabetland track you wanna hear on the dance floor (as opposed to in the mosh pit, where nearly the whole album oughta work great). As if to compensate for his absence from the ‘86 version, Billy is here twice: laying down slick funk-rock guitar and grabbing his sax for a set of snappy post-chorus fills & a tasty eight-bar solo.

John having always been, deep down, a punk mensch (that's no oxymoron; see also the late Oil Tasters front man, Richard LaValliere), it’s no stretch to picture Monsieur Doe as selfless homme d’honeur De Bergerac. “I’ll talk for you / Under the balcony in blue,” he offers to “all you strong & silent types / Who don’t talk to the girls they love [when] the words won't come.” Then again, Cyra-Doe's amorous pleas to Roxanne—“I should be the rouge & the color on your cheeks … I got ten arms for you / Ten hearts all beating blue”—may very well reach her directly; after all, nothing happens “behind Cyrano de Berger’s back.” The track’s a funky-fun side trip as well as a celebration: of a stellar song that didn’t receive its due 1/3-century ago, & of writing, art & word play—each of them all the more precious here & now, in worst-of-times Alphabetland.

Co-Poets Laureate

Another word on word play: ersatz-punk Cong. Beto O-Rourke (D-Tex.) wasn’t my Prez pick, but if he ever gets to the Oval, he’d damn well better name John & Exene America’s co-Poets Laureate. They’re surely our Punks Laureate, having written that genre’s cleverest, most heartfelt lyrics (Second Prize: the U.K.’s Gang of Four) & many of the best in rock-writ-large.

The album ends with a 1-2 punch of near-opposites that fit together hand-in-latex-glove, or maybe face-in-N95-mask, to remind us again of X’s range. First comes the lightning-fast, 136-second “Goodbye Year Goodbye,” written this past February. It’s a tad ironic for this band to decry, at a gazillion BPM, “beats [that] keep beating my brains in.” Then again, these are the folks who noted (in “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts”) that “Woody Guthrie sang about B-E-E-T-S / Not B-E-A-T-S.” Fair enough, for X still comes by its b-e-a-t-s the old-fashioned D.J. way, with sticks & drums—the b-e-e-t-s of percussion—not with machines or loops or apps/programs.

“Goodbye Year Goodbye” gets me reflecting on 2019, our third straight year as a shit-hole nation. But it’s striking how well the song also details the 2020 Plague Days that descended upon us within a month of its composition. On a “silent night spent guzzling tequila,” John & Exene harmonize, “one lover died but another is hopin’ / Chimes are chiming for hearts that are broken.” The song’s speed-blurred dystopian vision also invokes Sam-Shepard-ian family dysfunction (“Brother & sister pretend to be lovers / Everyone’s so careful not to let on”) that leaves us “less than empty.” As for our means: “My bank account is down & out & overdrawn / I could go on & on & on.” There's a compulsion to “stop & pull away from the crowd”—a chilling line now, as we steer clear of each other just to stay alive.

“Goodbye year, goodbye!” the duo all but commands, “Please don’t make us cry / So long year, so long! / We’ll sing you out with a song.” Would that it were so easy, 2020.

Were Alphabetland to end here on Track 10, the album would already be a masterwork. As usual though, X—like This Is Spinal Tap’s guitar-amp volume knob—“goes to 11” … this time, to where an X track has never gone before: a late-night jazz dive.

But before we go there: you’d be within your rights to ask, “Can any of the preceding 2,975-word ‘criticism’ be considered even remotely objective?”

True: X is my favorite band, & Doe my fave male singer-songwriter (& bassist). He’s been a role model since ‘81, & for 20 years a friend; I broke the ice by handing him a small metal instructional plate that I—gotta be careful here—may have pried off an ATM machine, telling him “I think this belongs to you, John; the bank card in the graphic has your name on it.”

Eyeing my Wild Gift, he sideways-grinned: “What means the most to me is how you got it.”

I'm hardly objective about Exene, either: at every X concert I attend, I make my way to the front of the stage & hand her a bouquet of cloth roses spray-painted black. (Audience: “Awwww!”) Here’s hoping at least a petal or two wound up at some point—or will!— atop one of her knick-knack-laden altar-shrines.

Still more objectivity-preventing history: Two of my own early-‘80s punk bands, The Daves & Parental Discretion, between them covered “Los Angeles,” “We're Desperate,” “Because I Do” & “Poor Girl”—one song each from the Big First Four. The still-kickin’ Daves still cover those first two. There's also a “stealth cover”: in ‘84, I inverted “Hothouse’s” verse chords for my own “Haunted Breakfast.” Currently, Megan Corse & I cover “Delta 88,” slowed down to mid-tempo rockabilly, in our benefit/tribute  show John Steinbeck: Scribe of Social Conscience (go to www.steinbeckshow.com). And …

Per “Goodbye Year Goodbye: “And on, & on, & on …”

Whatever Deserves Negating

Which brings me to “X” itself, by which I mean the name; the letter. I guess I've always seen it as a negation of, well, everything that deserves negating. It's like that meta-punk line in 1955's Rebel Without a Cause: when an adult asks him “What are you rebelling against?”, teenaged Jim Stark (James Dean) replies: “What've you got?”

But given the band’s, & especially John’s, impact on the past 2/3 of my life, for me “X” doesn’t just negate & tear down (bullying & bullshit; privilege & prejudice); “X” marks the spot, too. “X” fills in the blank. “X” is the “You Are Here” mark. “X” is a big part of “How I Learned My Lesson” (Under, Track 10) & learn it still, 'cause “X” is also the math quiz's unknown quantity: an answer of sorts, but one that forever poses new questions.

That’s why I just may be “so subjective that I've come back 'round to objectivity”: given all of the above, few folks had higher hopes nor loftier expectations than I for the much-ballyhooed (once more, y’all:) “eighth studio album, first in 27 years, & first with the original lineup in 3-1/2 decades.” My dreams for X ReduX could've been crushed—or, more likely, met partway.

Those dreams were exceeded. Alphabetland is close enough to Wild Gift for an elbow bump; from this fan, ain’t no higher praise. And while this record’s very much in the early-‘80s spirit, there's a new theme present, too. The songs are often retrospective, comprising a kind of parallel-universe Greatest Hits. Paradoxically, that look back (in anger, and much more)—the overlay of wistfulness, the poignant patina of dueling pride & regret, the sense of a mighty Once-More-With-Feeling / Last Hurrah (No! More new music—please!)—is, for X, a first.

But now, “Back to the Base” (a killer Wild Gift slammer)—way, way back to the moment of X’s ‘79 “discovery” by Ray Manzarek. The Doors' keyboardist got ‘em into the studio & produced their first four albums; 40 years later, the Doors/X bond is renewed at this trip’s final destination, “All the Time in the World.” Here Robby Krieger, the late Ray's long-ago bandmate, coaxes from his guitar a menagerie of moody warbles alongside Billy's laid-back boogie-woogie piano, as Exene recites a pithy poem: “Hearts are breaking for hearts that are broken”—that near-repetition of a “Goodbye” lyric serving as an underline—“So eat, drink & be merry / For tomorrow, we die… / Or maybe next Tuesday.” (A hilarious qualifier, imo.)

The pandemic overtones continue: “We have all the time in the world / Until the limitless possibilities / Of youthful infinity / Turn into mortality.” As in “Star Chambered,” she alludes without judgment to fallen comrades: “Some failed to live up to life … Some wailed & cried out to God / To no avail / And some got impaled by speeding metal / And infected needles.”

Then comes an epitaph for X’s, & our own, iffy era: “To dust we shall return / Me & you / But it was fun while it lasted / All the time in the world / Turns out / Not to be that much.”

How to spend the time that remains? The answer brings me full circle:

May 2020. I’m (Yikes!) 58. Not-so-skinny, some black garb, still-spiky hair now blood red ‘cause, during social distancing, why the fuck not? The President’s an unmitigated, irredeemable, blustering orange disaster. Like everyone, I’m doing my best to make it through what we'll come to call Hell Year—likely just the first in a series. God only knows, right about now some decent new music is in order, but 90-plus percent of the releases are more pablum than album.

I download & play the latest from the 43-year-old, single-letter genius punk band outta L.A.: our beloved Billy, D.J., John & (sounds like heaven) Exene. No scratch. No pop. Just:

BANG!

Half an hour later, Exene wraps it up:

“I’m here / And you’re here / And why do we still care enough / Or even too much / To write or make words?”

I’ll tell ya why, Devil Doll. Because if we’re looking, right now, for something to hold onto, those words of yours & John’s are just about the best things we’ve got.

Dialogue with Doe:

One-of-a-Kind Everyman for All Seasons

May 11, 2020

The day after Little Richard's death. As I click on “Admit” to connect with a still  rock-'n'-rollin' legend-for-my-generation, it hits me: how un-X-pected to reach Doe via… Zoom.

PM: Hey, John.

JD: Hey, Paul. How's it going?

PM: Pretty well, now that I've figured out how to host a Zoom meeting—sort of. How are you?

JD: I'm doing all right.

PM: Good. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

JD: Sure … You have a fresh color there.

PM: (laughs) My hair, yeah. The dye said “Vampire Red.” [My wife] Heather gave herself purple streaks, and she's not even punk, & I don't have many bosses right now, so…

JD: I haven't gotten there yet.

PM: No need; ya look fine. Very nice job by the way on last week's Facebook Live gig. That was fun. I hope you saw all the nice comments. And the little hearts floating up into the corner.

JD: I saw some bubbles and shit. I think when I do that again, I’m gonna turn the camera around, ‘cause it’s disquieting to have a little picture of yourself right in front of you while you’re trying to concentrate; it’s better to look at nothing. But, yeah, it was good. I made some money, and I think I’m gonna donate 25% or more to somebody I know who needs it.

PM: Fantastic. Seems like all the people in music I respect and admire most are doing these [online gigs] and using them in part to support others: you, Lissie, Shawn Colvin, Sheryl Crow. The concerts are also a big help to those of us in “fan world” in times like these.

JD: Well, you do what you can. It’s disarming because you don't know what's coming up next. It's hard for everyone.

PM: You capture that feeling on the new album, almost wall to wall, in ways that are weirdly prescient. I’m assuming that, in the absence of a time machine, you didn't do the recording this coming summer and then bring it back—?

JD: (laughs) Nope. The subject matter of the lyrics is nothing new for us, but if something major happens in your life, and in the world, art takes on a different meaning, it has a different impact. You can relate it to yourself or to the new situation.

I think it’s good that people have this record to make ‘em jump around the house. I’m really glad we didn’t do any slow, dirge-y songs. I was trying to find one somewhere out there in the ether; I’m glad we didn’t. Yeah, there are lots of lyrics that are now pretty poignant and timely. I think that was part of what Fat Possum [Records] was grabbing onto [in its release campaign].

PM: Good label. Lissie used to be on it, and I checked out their roster: a few artists I know and like and a few whose work I'm glad to know now. They did your re-issues—the “Big First Four.”

JD: Yeah. Once we got our masters back, that gave us the opportunity to put ‘em out again.

PM: When you were mixing Alphabetland, were we into the COVID-19 crisis, or not yet?

JD: Oh yeah, absolutely. We had one last session while [producer] Rob Schnapf was mixing, and the label asked us if we’d all get together in the studio to do some press and photos and wrap things up. That was on March 12. I was planning on staying in L.A. till the 17th, but I left [for home: Austin, Tex.] on the 14th. Then, it got mastered in April—I think it was finished on the 10th—and released on the 23rd.

PM: So, you were right in the midst of it. In terms of writing, I see in the press kit that “Goodbye Year Goodbye” is the most recently written song: just this past February. Even then, though, there wasn’t yet much awareness out there of what was coming, or at least of how severe it was going to be. On one level, the song seems like a kiss-off to what was a really sucky year here in Trumpmerica; then, it becomes even more relevant when 2020 rolls around.

JD: Yes and no. I see it as more wistful; you get a different feeling when you come to the end of one thing and you're going into another. It's all those feelings. It's about taking stock of who's hoping and who's passed, and about how certain people have this sense of entitlement to act like a fool. But you can apply it to any era or time, as well. We had to work on making the song not sound like “Your Phone's on the Hook [But You're Not].” [from X’s 1980 debut album Los Angeles] I wasn’t even thinking about that during the writing. Then, we rehearsed it, and right after we recorded the beginning, I thought: Oh, fuck. So, we added a different chord there.

PM: I think your beats-per-minute are about the same in those two songs. But that's a popular BPM in the X canon.

JD: If you’ve done that homework (laughs), good for you, ’cause I can't get that detailed.

PM: Well, to my ear, anyway.

JD: Well, yeah. But y’know, on this whole record, we’re trying to play to our strengths. It's a variation on a theme rather than reinventing the wheel. So in that way, it’s giving our fans what they want, and it's something where, once we play these things live, it’ll hopefully flow, and Billy can figure out how to distill all these [multi-tracked] guitar parts (laughs) into something to play on stage. Maybe he'll let Craig [Packham of The Palominos, who tours with X] play a little more. Maybe he'll let Craig get a Telecaster, get up there and rock out!

PM: You had Robby Krieger [The Doors’ guitarist] sit in on a track, right?

JD: Yes. He called me—by mistake! He and Exene and [Doors drummer] John Densmore and I have stayed in touch a little bit; we got to be part of some Doors [anniversary] celebrations. Anyway, he called and left this long message that obviously wasn't intended for me! I called him back, and he asked me what we were doin'. I said, “We’re finishing up a record.” He goes, “Oh, what if I came down and played slide?” I said, “That’d be great!” So, he came in toward the end of the album sessions, probably around the first week of March when we were re-doing some of the vocals and fixing other things here and there. I immediately thought of Exene’s “All the Time in the World” [Alphabetland’s closer]. I'd played bass on that, and it sounded bad, so we took that off. Then Billy played piano under it, and it sounded great. So, when Robbie called, I thought immediately of [his sound on The Doors’ album] American Prayer, and we got him in there—then sent it off (laughs) into “track heaven.”

PM: Where’re you on that track? A co-write, or—?

JD: No, I’m nowhere! I did nothing on that track.

PM: Kicked back with a tequila and watched? So, that's an Exene poem [recited to the music]?

JD: Yes, top to bottom.

PM: Was the part you yanked out walking-bass?

JD: More of a repetitive R&B/Motown bass.

PM: By the way: great new R&B version of [your] “Cyrano [deBerger’s Back].” You had your cake and ate it too, 'cause the choruses still rock, but the verses have that funk-guitar.

JD: Yeah. I can’t say that’s my favorite track, but Billy really loved it and wanted to play sax on it, and I didn’t really like the version on See How We Are ['86], so …

PM: So, you got a re-do. Speaking of which: what happened to [the ‘78 X song] “Heater”—how did it become “I Gotta Fever”?

JD: Because I didn’t relate to the [old] lyrics. When I wrote “Heater,” it was a tribute to film noir and Los Angeles of the time; I made up a story about someone looking to escape or looking for sanctuary, but it involved breaking into somebody's home with a gun, and I didn't relate to that. So, I changed “heater” to “fever”—and then (laughs): “Whoopsie!”

PM: COVID, yeah—Oops!

JD: Yeah; no thanks. Don’t come in here if you’ve “got a fever in your hands”—Jesus!

PM: (laughs) I heard it as more of a Peggy Lee fever.

JD: Yeah.

PM: We need that carnality right now! If we’re lucky enough not to be living alone—or, hell, even if we are. There’s actually quite a bit of “fever” in this album's lyrics; it's referenced three times. Angel wings, too: mortality. It’s interesting for me, on the outside, to notice words and themes that pop up throughout. (waves out the window) “On the outside” right now is our heroic postal carrier, Muriel. That's why I’m waving.

JD: “Hello, Muriel!”

PM: Yes, “and thank you!” Seriously, Muriel’s the best. So, there’s this whole promotional angle: “First X album in 27 years; first with the whole original lineup in 35.” Does it feel like that long?

JD: Hell, I don't know. It did take us a while, maybe because we were too much in our heads, thinking “Oh God, what’s it gonna sound like?” or “Is it gonna be any good?” Billy said a few times that he didn't think the chemistry would be the same, so it was unlikely that we would record. I’m not sure exactly why it happened. Maybe because Exene had been trying to get us to commit to rehearsing and recording for the prior seven years or so. We didn’t want to put all the time and effort into writing songs if we weren’t gonna then rehearse and record. Sure, we rehearse [old material] before tours, but for just four or five hours, then: boom—there we go. And that's only if we’ve had two or three months off. We’ve pretty much been doing tours back to back, and then there’s no reason to rehearse. We'll run through a song or two if we want to put something new into the lineup, but otherwise: no need.

So, I give Exene a lot of credit for getting us into the studio. I was willing; I like going into the studio. It's a safe haven where you can be free and vulnerable. [Though] it can also be difficult, challenging. So, we had Fat Possum behind us, and Rob Schnapf, who’d mixed our Live in Latin America ('16) album. You start checking off those boxes: you have a producer, you have a record company. First, we recorded [new versions of] some older songs: “I Gotta Fever,” “Cyrano,” “Delta 88 [Nightmare ('78)].” And a new one, “Angel on the Road.” And “Angel” was good, and it sounded like us—'cause we weren’t trying too hard.

I was writing songs on bass and showing them to Billy, so he had latitude on guitar. We recorded the first ones in February 2019. It took us a few months to mix, because Rob was still trying to figure out how to get some space within all of (laughs) the many notes that we play! Once that was done and we put out the single [“Cyrano” B/W “Delta 88” in March ‘19], and people really responded to it, we said, “OK, now we have all these things in place.” By April of 2019, Exene and I were busy writing and talking, going back and forth about how to do it.

PM: I imagine y’all getting back on stage with Billy some years ago must have been at least a partial impetus for recording.

JD: Yeah, but we [resumed] touring with Billy [who'd left X in 1986] back in 2000 or 2001, not too long after that Elektra [Records] anthology [‘97's Beyond & Back). That's been 20 fucking years. And y’know, it never gets old, no matter how many times you play a song, because you have to kind of reinvent it every time you do it. It’s like acting: you gotta start from zero, from the beginning, each time; you can’t start as if you've done it 50 or 500 or 5,000 times. Anyway, [having Billy on board] was part of it. I think going to South America and Europe [to play] with Pearl Jam was, too: we would walk into these big arenas where, after sound check, you couldn't go back to the hotel. We were stuck, four to six of us, in a room—that was it. You could walk around the arena a little bit, but there was nothing to see. We were there for hours and hours and  hours. At that point, I think you start getting rid of bad feelings you might’ve had in the past. Getting over yourself, getting over your ego—at least, from my point of view.

PM: I think decent people figure out a way to make things work. Did any new songs not work—anything end up on the cutting-room floor?

JD: We did a version of “True Love” [the original of which, along with “True Love Pt. #2,” appeared on More Fun in the New World ('83)] that's more like the current [live] version we do, a little more rockabilly-style, but D.J. [Bonebrake, X’s drummer] didn't like the feel of it, so …

PM: Was it gonna be called “True Love Pt. #3”?

JD: Yes.

Clattering sounds from outside JD’s home.

JD: Hold on a second, Paul. [He gets up, turns away.] They're starting construction next door …

PM: Yeah, I hear “percussion.”

JD closes a door, then returns.

JD: I heard some pounding, and then I heard some electric drills, and we don't need that.

PM: Nope. You were saying you wrote the new songs on bass, which makes sense, since that’s what you play in X. [Solo, John mostly plays acoustic guitar.] Do you always, or almost always, write for X on bass, and for solo work and side projects on six-string? Or, how does that work?

JD: Yeah, just like that. I wrote a few X songs for More Fun in the New World on guitar, and  Billy just didn't like it, because he felt a little constrained. On the other hand (laughs), it seemed to work out, because the two I remember writing that way are “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” and “The New World.” He has an incredible guitar part on “I Must Not,” and the signature [guitar riff] of “New World” is pretty cool.

PM: It's a fuckin’ semi-truck. (laughs) Y’all have nothing to worry about there.

JD: Yeah, he didn’t have much to complain about! (laughs) But it’s OK; I respect where he's coming from. I know that after you hear something for a first time, you're gonna be really influenced by the way you heard it. I didn't really have a guitar when Exene and I were writing the songs for Los Angeles (1980) or Wild Gift (1981) or Under the Big Black Sun (1982). But, like I say: [this time] we played to our strengths.

PM: Does musical genre also impact which instrument you write on? I know that if I’m going for a funk or a jazzy “lounge sound,” I write on bass; for something in a rock or Western vein, though, I usually write on six-string, even though it’s only my secondary instrument.

JD: Yeah. Well, for me, writing on bass is appropriate for X, and it also makes things more “economical” and more primitive. And that's a good thing for us.

PM: You chord your bass a lot too, so you’re getting toward guitar, even if Billy's part is different. Apropos of nothing: you and Richard LaValliere [bassist-frontman-songwriter for Milwaukee’s famed Oil Tasters], in that order, are the reasons why I became a bass player in my late teens. Y’know, he died a few years ago. Cause of death: the lack of a U.S. healthcare system.

JD: Mm, yeah.

PM: One of the many casualties. A big one here in Milwaukee. You allude in some of the Alphabetland lyrics to friends from the old scene who are gone, and certainly we find their stories in your two books [2016's Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk and last year's More Fun in the New World: The Unmaking & Legacy of L.A. Punk (both from Random House and co-authored by Tom DeSavia)]. Especially the second one.

JD: Yeah. (dark, pensive laugh) Yeah …

PM: They’re very much present on Alphabetland. I'm guessing, by the way, that y’all didn't know from the start that that was going to be the album's title song and its lead-off track.

JD: The title of that song was “Mercury,” but Billy kept referring to it, when we were rehearsing, as “Alphabetland.” On the sort-of-chorus—“Blue you wear like martyr blue / Atom bomb bruises, cold war flu”—the chord changes were twice as fast as on the final version, and we were singing the lyrics twice as fast; they were almost unintelligible, but we could do it. Then, before we started recording, Exene said, “What if we slow this down? What if we spend twice as long on each chord?” So we said, “OK: when we get to the end, we're gonna go back to those slower changes—the verse changes.” In rehearsal, Billy forgot and went to the quick chorus changes, but somehow, it fit: me playing the bass notes that correspond to the verse chords while he’s playing the chorus chords. Then, we go to the bridge together.

Billy wrote the music to the bridge—he said, “What if we do this over “Mercury, you should skate…”? That's why he and D.J. share songwriting credits [with John and Exene] on this album.

PM: Which is new.

JD: Yeah. Because even though Exene and I may have had the initial idea [for a song], what they added is important. It also, y’know, brings us a certain unity: they’re sharing in the [writing] royalties now, so they showed up. Which isn't to say they hadn’t before; they always did. But even more so now; they were more present. They really had their thinking caps on.

Anyway, Billy kept referring to the song as “Alphabetland,” and Exene kept saying, “No, it’s called 'Mercury'.” And then she said, “OK, what if we call it 'Alphabet Wrecked' [a line from the lyrics]?” That lasted for one rehearsal, ‘cause he continued to call it “Alphabetland.” So finally, we just said “OK, it’s called 'Alphabetland'!” And we realized that might be a good album title.

Then, well, Exene has known Wayne White for about 10 years—she has a painting of his in her house that I always remark on, and I've seen a bunch of his other pieces—so, once we had  Alphabetland as the name of the album, I realized that it would be perfect for Wayne to do the cover as one of what he calls his “word paintings.”

PM: Its collage-y vibe takes me back to the Wild Gift cover. Also to some of the altar-top shrine-y stuff, the “sacred tchotchkes” and assembly art Exene has done for liner notes and packaging—

JD: Yeah, yeah.

PM: —and her amazing notebooks. Anyway, when you name it Alphabetland, that causes me to start looking at the whole thing in terms of: “What is this place? Where is this record? Is it a place and a journey-there?” That's when the sequencing becomes intriguing.

JD: I'm just trying to stay away from (laughs) repeating the same rhythm and the same key!

PM: Yeah, there’s that! I do that too: put the song titles or the short story titles or whatever on index cards, one title on each, and slide ‘em around on the floor, saying “We can’t have these two in a row; they’re too similar. So, let's push the second one back five slots.”

JD: (grins) I don't use index cards; I just use strips of paper. Like, y’know, the beatniks with their cut-out poems.

PM: Torn strips; yeah, that's much more punk! So, yeah, we do that, but there are still happy accidents. That tempo thing you mentioned on the title track; how that came about. Things that emerge as part of, I’d say, unconscious creation. We make art not just with our left-brain planner but with our right-brain dreamer too. I've gotta think that's where a lot of Exene’s raw material comes from, and then her right brain comes in for the word play. So, you may—while sequencing songs to ensure variety—wind up conjuring something for the subjective listener that's a journey and a destination; a place and a trip down the road.

JD: Right.

PM: So, John, I reviewed the album as a kind of trip. I mean: no, it’s not [The Who's rock opera] Tommy—thank God! It's not a “concept album.” But I believe that if listeners bring themselves to Alphabetland with the idea of a trip and/or a place in mind, things'll start to pop up.

JD: Sure. I wouldn't deny that. But no, we don’t work in high concept. Each song is, yes, a part of a landscape, and after we settled on the title Alphabetland, we realized that it's 40 years since Los Angeles, and it's like: from L.A. to A.L. Y’know?

PM: Oh, I like that. [I start to mention the band lineup’s “J.D. / D.J.”, but John continues:]

JD: So, sure: they’re both “places,” and you can find all kinds of coincidences-slash-non-coincidences.

PM: A lot of roads are referenced, too. Not just here, but in your whole body of work: the journeyman and -woman life of a touring band.

JD: Yeah, there are a lot of trips happening. “Strange Life” has highway references; obviously, there's “Angel on the Road.” It’s metaphorical, I guess, but it’s also because (laughs) we're touring musicians, as you say; we spend a lot of time on the road, so that's gonna influence the images that we relate to.

I find that with almost all the solo records I’ve done, I end up repeating words [in multiple songs]. I'm not sure exactly why. I really try to stay away from that left-brain planning. The best thing you can do in making a record is to be intuitive, ‘cause if something feels right, then it probably is right. And if it feels wrong, then it probably is. You can convince yourself of why you want to do it that way—why you wanna put this part in the song, and do all these other things to it—but if it feels wrong or, let's say, if it feels too loud in the mix, then it probably is, and you should listen to that voice and accept it. If you’re, y’know, “going out of the house,” then you can't be afraid. It can’t be fear that leads you; it has to be intuition, true intuition. If you pay attention and are present, if you're in the moment, then you'll have greater success.

PM: While you're writing, you mean. And when you’re mixing or recording.

JD: Yeah. And the hardest thing about recording is that you're working seven to eight hours a day. Anything beyond eight [consecutive] hours I think is a waste of time, ‘cause you're just wearing yourself out. And the hard part is to stay, that whole time, in that state: to keep yourself in that state of “intuitive knowing.” And that’s a lot of what was going on with this record.

Again, I’ll give Billy, and also Rob Schnapf, a lot of credit for not adding flourishes. If it was my record, if I was producing it, I probably would've added more “stuff.” Like, a little thing here on the chorus, or a little connective countermelody on something else, or whatever.

PM: There are still some nice change-ups, stop/starts—

JD: But any more than we did probably would've cluttered it, and it wouldn't have been as economical and as true to what we do, y’know? So I give ‘em credit for that.

PM: Makes sense. ‘Cause there are X records, and them there are John Doe records, and they have definite overlaps—but each of the two also goes places the other does not.

JD: Yeah.

PM: I couldn't agree more about intuition's role in art. The most valuable thing I learned in film school wasn't technical; it was “intentional fallacy”: the notion that we shouldn't focus on the artist's conscious intention. Even if they tell you, they may be influenced by reviews they've read or what their friends have said. Artists should draw material from their right-brain / unconscious intentions. Then, use the left brain to structure it: in your case: “What's the best sequence for these songs?”—songs that themselves emerged more intuitively. So, it becomes that nice collaboration, the one within—for each of you four, on your own—and then, with your band mates, the collaboration without. Everything working, and all boats rising—

JD: Together, yeah.

PM: I really like your vocals on the album, especially your lead on “Free.” It's got a lot of heart. As your singing (laughs) generally does—but I found your singing on “Free” especially moving.

JD: Well, thanks. I wish someone like Pussy Riot or Skating Polly could've sung that song, 'cause it was written for all of my female compadres and cohorts and colleagues about all the bullshit that they have to put up with simply for being women.

PM: “You hurt my sister / She didn't do nothing”—that could mean any number of things, any number of hurts. Y'know, nothing's to stop a riot-grrrl band from covering it. Let's hope they do!

JD: (laughs) Yeah, well the funny thing is that I had sung what we'd thought was gonna be the lead vocal on it—and it was not. We switched chords on the verse a couple of times. It had a different pattern, and the way we first recorded it, the chord pattern just didn't have the tension, and the vocal didn't either, so the song didn't have the tension. And when it came to the chorus, I thought, “Well, this just sounds too pop,” 'cause it was sort of sing-songy; I really didn't like that part. I was ready to leave it off the record.

It goes to show you: sometimes, you have to just get over yourself and say, “Well, that doesn't work, so what do I want to do? Do I wanna continue down a path that's not successful? Or, do I wanna get over my ego and find something that does work?” Find something that matches what you have in mind, what you desire, what the message or the feeling is, or whatever it may be. Just fucking figure it out! Don't be stubborn; don't think “Well, I wrote it, and that's the way it is; I'll write a different song if I want to do something else.” No. If you have a sentiment or a message or a particular melody, you can change all kinds of things around within it. Why not?

PM: You have to kill your darlings, kill your babies.

JD: Yeah, ya do.

PM: I just taught a workshop [via Milwaukee's Woodland Pattern Book Center] in what I call IGSC: Intergenerational Self-Collaboration: returning to something you made 30, 40 years ago and bringing to its “naïve energy” an older, wizened-yet-wiser perspective. My students were doing it, so I thought I should too: I'd turn a punk-pop song I wrote in '83 [“The Coin Cafe”] into something my jazzy/Western band Badlands Lounge could play. I've always loved playing that song's bass line, but it didn't work as jazz till I took half the bass notes out. Sometimes it's the white space, the “negative shapes,” that ya need: remove something, and now it works.

JD: Yeah: pare it down.

PM: But to do so, I had to, yeah, “get over myself” and realize: “Shit, our sax player [Milwaukee sax king Scott Summers] could play the crap outta that former bass part.” Which he will.

“Electric nonfiction” [from the title song]—I love that turn of phrase. Takes me to your “History of L.A. Punk” books. By the way, John, I like the second one [More Fun…] even more  than the first [Under...]. There's inherently more dramatic tension when, as Chinua Achebe wrote, Things Fall Apart. Like in “Year One” [Wild Gift's anarchic 79-second punkabilly closer]: it's all comin' down. Also, I really enjoyed your interviews, particularly the one with Fishbone. It cracked me up! And it took me back to their music for the first time in ages, which I appreciated.  No one sounds like Fishbone. No one says, “Well, (blank) sounds like Fishbone.” I can say I hear the Oil Tasters in Morphine, and some bands try to sound like X—God knows, at times I've tried!—but no one really does. Only X sounds like X; only Fishbone sounds like Fishbone.

JD: Yeah, and they're still out there, still kickin' ass.

PM: You both are. So, you've got “It's all so quiet in the end” [from “Free”], and “All the time in the world / Turns out / Not to be that much” [from “All the Time in the World”], and I could list a dozen more lines that have an extra layer of meaning now because of the pandemic. It makes the album even more effective, even more potent and pithy. From “Water & Wine”: “There's no tomorrow / Only forever.” By the way, I think you were wise to choose that song as the first single. It's a great single. I hear a little “Hothouse” [from More Fun] in there, sped up. Talk to me a bit, if you would, about “Water & Wine.”

JD: Exene sent me a piece of writing that obviously was a song but that didn't have an obvious chorus. The sentiment was dear to my heart. I mean, yeah, I like a little extra something now and then; I like going backstage at a festival, 'cause (laughs) it's a little more comfortable there. But it really pisses me off that money and access—by rule of law now, apparently—seem to trump, no pun intended, everything else. As Exene wrote: “Who gets passed to the head of the line? / Who gets water and who gets wine?” I just knew that I had to do something with that. Then I went to see a big rock show. Shannon and The Clams were opening; they're a band that I'd seen in San Francisco several years ago and liked. They have a really quirky male songwriter and a woman bass player who's a terrific singer, and there's this surf-rock element to what they do.

PM: I know what band I'm checking out next.

JD: Yeah. Do!

[NOTE: I bought their Sleep Talk ('11), which sounds like a haunted sock-hop from the ocean depths. Think: Lesley Gore meets The Cramps in hell. I dig it.  - PM]

JD: Shannon and The Clams are great. Shannon has a solo record as well. Anyway, listening to them, their sound, I started thinking, “Maybe this 'Water & Wine' song is similar to 'Year One.'” So, I started putting those things together, and the bass line came through, and I realized, “Oh, it can be a song that just has a tag line, something really short; it doesn't have to have a whole second part, a chorus.” Then, as we were recording it, just screwin' around with that “Who gets water and who gets wine?” riff at the end, we realized: that's a fun outro. Billy got to play piano and saxophone, which makes him happy, and it also gives the song a kind of a crazy rave-up end.

On our last day together [pre-social-distancing]—March 11 or 12—[the label's camera crew was] doing a lot of filming [as we made final touches], and they said, “What if we shoot a song—do a music video? What if we just, like, fake a song?” We're not crazy about lip-syncing, but we thought, “What the hell,” y'know? In my mind, I already thought that “Water & Wine” should be the first single, 'cause it's accessible, yet it has a really clear message.

PM: And a great sing-along part, too.

JD: Yeah, I guess. You'd be a better judge than me, Paul.

PM: It's a catchy hook. That ear wig in the brain—that “brain wig.”

JD: Yeah. And it has some great images, yet the music is somewhat lighthearted. And, y'know, (laughs) “I give it an 87, 'cause you can dance to it.”

PM: (laughs) Dick Clark, yeah.

JD: So, they filmed with a couple cameras, these guys the label had hired, and I had 'em send the footage to our friend Bill Morgan, who [made the '86 X rockumentary] The Unheard Music.

[NOTE: Fine form-follows-function filmmaking, with a foot in effective experimentalism.  - PM]

JD: He used a lot of footage [for “Water & Wine”] from a Russian film, Ivan the Terrible [1944].

PM: By Sergei Eisenstein, yeah; we studied that [in film school].

JD: Cool. So, you know it has those great images of gold coins being poured over one guy's head, and rich people raising giant goblets; so, it has an element of humor in it.

[NOTE: The video ends with a lovely, vintage grace note: a few seconds of a smiling John and Exene—looking all of 18, but probably in their mid-20s—dancing in each other's arms.  - PM]

PM: The other theme I get out of that song is the notion of “the sheeps and the goats.” It feels like a critique not just of late capitalism, the “haves” depriving the “have-nots,” but also of judgment. And they go hand in hand, 'cause you have this “prosperity gospel” shit out there saying, “You're doing well [financially] because you're a hard worker and a good person,” while saying to someone who's struggling, “Well, you're just lazy.” That's in there, too.

JD: Yeah, for sure. But like you say, it's coming from an intuitive place, and it's coming from word play, rather than: “I'm gonna write a manifesto.”

PM: X has never sounded like a manifesto. I mean, when you sing “It was better before / Before they voted for What's-his-name” (in More Fun's “The New World”), I know what that meant for me in the Reagan years, but it's open enough that it works today, it worked at times in between and it works in other countries, too; it'll always work, everywhere. William Golding said that [his '54 novel] Lord of the Flies isn't about “original sin”; it's about how a society's ethics depend not on which “-ism” is in practice, but on the values and morality of the people at the top.

JD: (nods) Hmm.

PM: You can trade in the good kid, the kind kid “Ralph,” for the bully “Jack,” as we did three years ago, and sure, America's still America—a capitalist democracy with socialist elements, mostly for the rich—but it's also a whole different place 'cause of who's in charge. There is hope, though, in “Water & Wine”: when Exene sings “There's a live-to-tell,” she's (laughs) not talking about my favorite Madonna song. After the hell, there's a live-to-tell. That's good to remember.

JD: Yeah, it is.

PM: On “Star Chambered,” you two sing, “Could've been” this, “could've been” that: it's not so much a look back as a look at those alternate histories, the road not taken. That's what I get.

JD: I think it's also about being true to yourself. We certainly have “bet on odd till we broke even” (laughs). A lot of it was word play on Exene's part. This record was different in that we were changing words and changing music right up to the point when we recorded it. That's another song that had different chord changes and a different pattern to the verse, and it didn't work [initially]; it was clunky. I had intended it to be much more on-the-beat, those three [descending] chords, and then Billy turned them into “Fortune Teller” [by Allen Toussaint, popularized by the Rolling Stones]. And I thought, “Great! If someone knows 'Fortune Teller,' they'll bust us immediately.” But I don't care; it's a tribute, if anything.

PM: I know the song, but I (laughs) didn't notice till you just told me. Yeah.

JD: Well, it is.

PM: Yeah, but the chorus riff, the chord changes there—that's what makes the song.

JD: Then, Exene had this great line: “You play 16 bars, and what do you get?”

PM: A la “Tennessee” Ernie Ford—

JD: “Sixteen Tons,” yeah. Up to the very end, we didn't have the next line, “Another town over and covered in sweat”; it was, “Another town over, 'blank'.” Not having it pushed us to get the song done: “Holy fuck, we better fill that in!” Then, it came. That's exciting.

PM: And it led you into another great couplet: “Almost run over / With another hangover and drunker in debt.” By that point, you've definitely got Ernie smiling somewhere up there.

JD: Yeah, but all those other lines, she already had; it was just the one little piece that had to be added on. The song—it is about being true to yourself. Like I've said a couple of times: play to your strengths. It's sometimes hard to figure out what those elements are: what makes up, y'know, whatever band? What makes them special, unique? “What are your 10 favorite songs in the world?” Fuck, I don't know. “What are the three things you do best?” Uh … uh … I don't know! I just do 'em sometimes, and sometimes I don't. That's how you get out of your own head and try to move forward, try to trust the other people. You don't have to do it all yourself.

PM: That's the great thing about being in a band, right? And even in your solo work, God, you're bringing in my favorite singers and musicians: Neko Case, Aimee Mann, Corin Tucker, Jill Sobule, your daughter [Kathleen Edwards]. Great voices; great choices. And the producers and engineers you work with, too. It's all collaboration, at the end of the day.

JD: That's true. It is.

PM: As we wrap up, I wanna toss out an observation. We mentioned Ernie Ford. With him and John Steinbeck and Sam Shepard and Joyce Carol Oates and John-Doe-slash-X, there are commonalities, overlap. There's a real populism—not the fake MAGA shit—that informs your work and theirs, from “Sixteen Tons” to [Steinbeck's '39 novel] The Grapes of Wrath to [Shepard's '78 play] Curse of the Starving Class to [Oates' '04 novel] The Falls to [X's] “The Have Nots.” I read [Steinbeck's '37 novel] Of Mice and Men as a kid, before X even X-isted; that kind of empathetic populism has always struck a chord. I'm grateful that, both in X and out, it's such a big part of your work. It's one reason why your work inspires and motivates me in mine.

JD: Well, good!

PM: Related to that, John: it was you, through [Merle Haggard's] “Silver Wings” and [X spinoff band] The Knitters and the rootsy side of X itself that got me into Western music. Well, along with Rank and File and Lone Justice. Quick story: four years ago, Heather and I attended your gig at City Winery Chicago. Jesse Dayton opened, and after his first song he looked out and said, “I recognize a lotta familiar faces tonight. Good to see y'all have signed up for the punk-rock retirement plan: transitioning into outlaw-cowboy music.” (laughs) And Heather points across the table at me in my collar tips and bolo, my Stetson's on my knee, and she's like, “Nailed ya.”

JD: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, he did!

PM: (laughs) But we're glad to have that retirement plan! I can't think of a better one. Thanks for helping us get there. John, you have any final thoughts? Anything we haven't touched on?

JD: I think we pretty much did what we came here to do, Paul. We've talked about the big stuff and the little stuff and everything between it and around it. Now, I gotta get to the next interview.

PM: Well, thanks so much, John! It's been great. You take care.

JD: All right, man! Talk to ya soon.