Intro: In A Rut, Out of the Akron Area [00:00:00]

Brian Pritchard: ...from celluloid, and we're turning it into music and podcasts for you.

Nicky P: Welcome everyone, yet again, to another episode of We Came From Celluloid. I am Nicky P., here as always with my good friend and brother, Mr. Brian Pritchard. We are, however, joined this evening by In A Rut out of parts unknown. Where are you boys from?

In A Rut: The Akron area. We all live a little bit farther out, but that's where we play the most.

Nicky P: So you're all big Black Keys fans, right?

In A Rut: Eh. It's my favorite— No, I'm— ...band of all time.

Nicky P: I'm busting your balls, man. I'm busting your balls. I maybe have moved to the area because of the Black Keys, but I'm the only one that gets it.

In A Rut: Hey, it happens.

Nicky P: So we are actually gonna be sharing a stage here at the end of October with these boys. I'm pretty pumped to see the live thing. What I've listened to so far on the internet has been high quality to my ear holes. But Brian, you usually like to get things rolling, so what do you got for these guys today?

Tropic Thunder and the Headphones Clips [00:01:15]

Brian Pritchard: Well, I was curious for starters who made the couple of clips. With a lot of our theme in band, on the podcast, and in life being the intersection between film and music, I was quite tickled by the Instagram clips that showed the headphones being put on. It was the Zach Braff and Natalie Portman clip, the one where they're like, "Here, listen to this." You know what I mean? And then, what was the other clip that was right before it? It was the Tom Cruise dance. And it's funny, the intersection between imagery and music, collage style that way, where you're taking something that wasn't the intended musical number for the Tom Cruise dance, and yet the timing of the moves was so perfect for it, you know? So which one of you put together those couple of clips, for starters?

In A Rut: So that was me. But it was through our distribution software. They offer a couple options for that, and you just kinda mess with them. I wish we could take more credit, but they basically gave us some options and allowed us to enter music at the points that we wanted to make them line up. We're pretty proud of how they lined up with a lot of those, especially the Tom Cruise one. But yeah, I wish we were better at video editing to do that. I wish they were all original ideas, but I can't take full credit.

Nicky P: So what's the Tom Cruise dance? Are we talking Risky Business? Are we talking—

In A Rut: Tropic Thunder.

Brian Pritchard: Yeah, it was the Tropic Thunder one.

Horror on the Walls, Not in the Songs [00:03:00]

Brian Pritchard: But I see the Haddonfield poster above your head in the back. Saw the mask when we tilted the camera the other way. Whose domain are you guys sitting in?

In A Rut: It's mine. The horror, for the most part, yeah.

Brian Pritchard: Got it. Got it. So aside from that clearly being an area of interest, from the environment that you're in, I'll use that as good a jumping-off point as any. Is it part of what goes into the songwriting? Who are the songwriters among you? And does the love of horror factor into it? Tell me about what you guys are up to.

In A Rut: Well, I would say not for this project in particular, 'cause Chad writes, I'd say, 99.9% of the songs. He writes the guitar and vocals, and then we come in, and Chris puts down the drums, and I put down the bass, and then we collaborate on parts and figure things out from there. Piece it all together. But there's no real horror intersection with this band. For anything else that I've done, that's mostly been extreme metal; there's always an influence of that. Although we do have one song, I forget which one it is, but in the intro, we use a clip from Rob Zombie's Halloween II. But I don't think anybody would know that it's from that movie. It's not so horror focused. It's kind of comedy. It's comical at that point.

Brian Pritchard: Got it. Fair enough. So this is the practice space that you guys are in, correct?

In A Rut: Not today. Not regularly. Not the typical room. Every once in a while. We go usually to Chris' house. Usually it's at my house, and it's a little less decorated, a normal basement. Bit more bare.

Brian Pritchard: So are you moving a drum kit to different environments, or you have more than one station that you can inhabit?

In A Rut: I do actually have multiple kits, but today the kit here is Steve's, so we're just gonna use that. I brought stuff to make it workable for me. But we used to practice here, our old band, me and Steve's, practiced here for a while.

From Dilligaf to In A Rut [00:05:45]

Brian Pritchard: Okay, so you've all been in other bands before this one, correct? But some of you with each other, and some of you not with each other? Okay, got it.

In A Rut: Yeah, me and Chris were in Dilligaf for seven or eight years or something like that. It was together for almost a decade probably overall. And this band overlapped at the end with Dilligaf. Chris and Chad have been jamming since, I mean, for years upon years. Since high school. 2007 we started jamming, and formed a couple different bands. And then I started doing a bunch of bands all at once. I had, like, three bands going on, and they changed regularly until it ended up being just Dilligaf for a while.

Nicky P: That's not where I saw that sentence going. Somehow when he started it, I really thought it was gonna be, "And I started doing a lot of blow, and..."

In A Rut: And that easily could happen, too. You never know. It's slightly different. There was blow involved.

Brian Pritchard: It was blow-adjacent, at the very least.

In A Rut: Yes. That's right. Let's just say that.

Brian Pritchard: Well, so this particular act got together when? You guys have been jamming for years, but this version of the band's been together for what? Three or four years now?

In A Rut: More than that. I think we started in 2019. Chris and I were in a band that kinda fell apart, and we thought, "We need somebody to come in here and help us make it better. What can we do to actually put it together and get it going again?" Instead of making it better, they found me, so you know. Steve was the last one that answered our texts. They got tired of searching after that. He decided to pick up a bass this time, 'cause he wasn't a bassist before that.

Vocals, Gang Vocals, and Recording In-House [00:07:45]

Brian Pritchard: Well, I heard on the EP you guys have some cool vocal harmony stuff going on. Obviously, that can be studio magic to some degree, but are all three of you or just two people doing vocals? And is that live or just on the record?

In A Rut: It's just me and Steve doing vocals, except for gang vocals. He joins in when there's no tone involved. But a lot of it is studio, to be honest. We do what we can live. Some of these recordings we have 20, 30 voices overlapping, so without a choir, we'll struggle live. And my favorite choir's coming up on the new record. We have one coming out soon that'll have, I don't know what it ended up, maybe 50 different voices. I didn't even send it individually. I sent it as a group, 'cause it sounded just perfect together. We used to record everything in-house at his house. Now we do mostly guitar and some bass and most of the vocals there, and I'll record some bass at home and maybe some backing vocals and send it. We're able to actually network the stuff instead of having to commute. But this last time, the drums were done in a studio. I went to an outside studio so I didn't have to control the button and play the drums. And then once we're done, mix it. I was just like, "I just have to play? What is this?"

Pop Punk? Alt Rock? The Genre Problem [00:09:00]

Nicky P: So I'm curious, what kind of music do you guys classify yourselves as?

In A Rut: That's something we've always struggled with. Pop punk. Pop punk is what we come back to. Alternative. I mean, you go from one song to the next, and it might be a different genre based on what we're feeling that day. It's hard to decide. We used to be hard rock, kinda. Maybe a little softer rock.

Nicky P: It's just pop punk has become such a catch-all term over the past 20 years.

In A Rut: It is. And I mean, we do need a catch-all term for ours.

Nicky P: Back in the day, pop punk was The Descendents and Screeching Weasel and stuff like that for me. Occasionally getting into stuff like The Riverdales. And then all of a sudden pop punk was Four Year Strong and A Day To Remember, and you're like, okay, it's kinda similar, I think.

In A Rut: Barely. You get lost in the breakdown of all the genres pretty easily, if you actually analyze them. I'd say we span the gap of rock and roll pretty decently. There's definitely punk influences and pop punk influences, to radio rock, to hard rock, to even some Southern rock. There's a lot of influences, and if you pay attention, you can hear all of them if you're looking for it.

Nicky P: I keep trying to turn these boys on to Molly Hatchet. None of them have taken the dive quite yet.

Brian Pritchard: Well, it's funny, 'cause that question has come up for years and years. Even when you're releasing a record on CD Baby and stuff, and they're going, "Well, you have to tag this." And it's smart to do so. You want to make it easy for your audience to find you. But I'm also sitting there going, I don't know. On the one hand, the stuff that I listen to inevitably must be coming out in what I'm writing, because those are your influences. But I don't feel like I sound like my favorite bands, you know what I'm saying? I don't feel like our band sounds like the stuff that I listen to exactly. The categorization stuff is always a little hard. Nick's got a voice that, to me, we get so much of the Claudio from Coheed comparison that that's maybe the most obvious angle. You guys sounded to me more like a strong alternative rock band. I just saw The Toadies at Louder Than Life in Kentucky. It was cool, man. You guys felt more like a really good hard rock, alternative rock band than even pop punk to me. But that's the thing about genres and labels: what does that mean to the average listener? It's hard.

Nicky P: He's saying that also because he liked what you did, and he doesn't like punk, so he can't in his head grasp that thing.

In A Rut: Oh, okay. So in that case, we're not punk at all.

Brian Pritchard: Well, pop punk as a label would never get me excited to listen to something. That's true. And I like what you guys did. He's exactly right.

In A Rut: Okay. That's fair. Fair enough.

Nicky P: Which is super funny, 'cause I'm in a band with a guy who's always like, "No, punk doesn't do anything for me." I'm like, "I've got a Strung Out tattoo on my body."

Make It Faster, Add Punk, Shorten the Intro [00:13:30]

In A Rut: I think alt rock is probably a better label for us. We have a lot of punk and pop punk influences. So there is a lot of thought into making it more punk sometimes, or just that sound. Whenever we bring in a new song idea, the first notes are always "make it faster" and "can we add punk to it?" Or shorten the intro. That's literally almost every song. It comes in, "Oh, yeah, this is great. We like this. You know what? Let's chop the intro, and let's double-speed it, all right?" Now we have a song, but it's only two minutes long. So now we gotta figure out what to do with it.

Dave Grohl's Bumper-Sticker Formula [00:14:15]

Nicky P: I keep coming back to the Kyle Gass and Dave Grohl songwriting video, and I need to remember it more often. If you've never watched it—

In A Rut: I don't think I have. I think I have. I've seen it.

Nicky P: Dave Grohl teaching Kyle Gass how to write a hit song, and it's basically, first off, you gotta start with something. Start with a chorus, something simple. Just pick a bumper sticker. And then you move to another riff, that's your verse, and let this be the payoff for a second bumper sticker. And then you just keep bouncing back and forth the whole time. He literally is talking about Love in an Elevator. There's no lyrics or any parts to Love in an Elevator. It's just the one part over and over again. And to just sit back and think about it, there is surprisingly little to that song.

Brian Pritchard: It works.

In A Rut: It does. Some of the biggest hits have so little going on. And they're just pumping. I need to watch that video. I don't think I've seen that. That sounds great. I love Dave Grohl. You know, I heard a rumor about Dave Grohl. It's crazy. He looks just like the drummer that used to be in Nirvana, but nobody knows who that guy is, so it's pretty crazy. It's a secret.

Nicky P: Well, that's part of my big conspiracy with Dave Grohl, is that I do not think Dave Grohl is the aw-shucks guy he comes off as. I think he is an angry ball of fury that Foo Fighters will never be a more important band than Nirvana. Doesn't matter how many hit records he puts out, Nirvana will always have more cultural impact.

Garth Brooks and Chris Gaines [00:16:15]

In A Rut: That's true. But at least he doesn't have the Tim McGraw serial killer aspect, or the Garth Brooks serial killer thing going on for him. That might have shot him up there a little higher.

Brian Pritchard: Like the Chris Gaines album, where he went dark for a minute. That was exciting. That was his serial killer side, if anything, you know?

In A Rut: Have you guys heard that rumor?

Nicky P: I used to be a real big, what's-his-name fan. What's his name there? It was Tom Segura and his wife that started that whole bit.

In A Rut: Yeah, they did, and it kinda took off.

Nicky P: Well, and the deeper you dive, the weirder it gets, though, is kind of the thing.

In A Rut: If you go back like 20 years and you look at every large stadium tour that he's done, in that same town, on that same day, in that same timeframe, at least one girl goes missing. And then all those girls that have gone missing actually look very similar. So it started to become this big conspiracy out of a joke that Garth Brooks is a serial killer, and he's kidnapping and murdering all these girls.

Brian Pritchard: Even without ever hearing that, the Chris Gaines side project thing he did is so fucking fascinating, singularly unique in all of music history. What other example can you even point to that's like that? If they're not already discussing that as part of the conspiracy theory, then I'd throw that hat in the ring right away: not only is he guilty, but he's Chris Gaines who's doing it. It's not Garth, it's Chris.

In A Rut: That's right.

Nicky P: Here's the thing: he's actually more like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, because, if you've never read it, Chuck Klosterman actually has a really awesome essay in one of his books on Garth Brooks. In particular, talking about one of the reasons the Chris Gaines thing happened is because Garth Brooks is obsessed with units sold. That was his thing. If you go look at his records throughout the '80s and '90s, he has so many platinum records and just mountains and mountains of moved physical media. And Chris Gaines was kind of like, "I've done as much as I can with Garth Brooks. Nobody moves records like I do." So the best way to challenge himself was to go out and do this other completely different thing, and see how many units he could move on a second career, basically starting from scratch.

In A Rut: I don't even think that ever took off either, did it?

Nicky P: Oh, no. It went horribly.

Brian Pritchard: Fuck all that, dude. It's about the murder. It's about the way it makes him feel inside. You know what I mean? And how he had to let it all out.

In A Rut: He had to let the Nine Inch Nails out of the inside to the outside. That's what he looked like. It looked like country gone industrial, his look. It was like that magician, Criss Angel. He looked like he was trying to be Criss Angel.

The $100K Question [00:20:00]

Nicky P: Well, I'm always kind of fascinated. How seriously do you guys take what you're doing out there? Is music a career choice? Is it this crazy thing that you just can't seem to get out of your life? It's like heroin of a different variety. How does it work for you guys?

In A Rut: I don't wanna speak for you guys, but for me, it's fun. It would be great if it was a career choice. It'd be great if it could be a full-time thing, but for right now, it's a way to get the frustration out, to get out of the house and do something that's fun and time-consuming. A hobby, but more than a hobby, 'cause we put a lot more effort into this than anything else that I'm doing, at least.

Nicky P: Do you guys actively get out of the area at all? You do touring, anything like that?

In A Rut: Not at this time. We haven't yet. Think it would be fun. And I agree with Chad. It's an amazing creative outlet, and it would be awesome if it could be a nine-to-five. But we actually sat down and crunched the numbers, and we're like, "A label would have to be willing to pay us between $70 to $100,000 per person per year to make it sustainable." And that's probably never gonna happen. We wouldn't even get that as a unit. It'd be enough for one of us maybe to quit their job, and that would be it, but not all three of us.

Nicky P: You guys have kids, or you just single dudes?

In A Rut: We have kids. We're all married. Married homeowners. I got a 16 and a 14-year-old. And I have a three-year-old. And I have dogs. We also all have dogs.

Nicky P: Don't even try and pull that shit, man. You're the wrong audience for that.

In A Rut: I'm not saying that they're equivalent.

Nicky P: "Oh, I've got my little fur babies. It's kind of the same thing."

Never on the Same Trajectory [00:22:15]

Brian Pritchard: It's tough to find any group where people are truly on parallel tracks and all rowing in the same direction, right? One of my closest collaborators, there's another bald Brian in our band who plays lead guitar and will be at the show. He and I have made a lot of music together since I was, like, 12 years old. It's going on 30 years I've been working with him. But there'll be these big chunks of time where he went away to school for six years, and I didn't. So he suddenly lived five hours away, and we're still trying to collaborate. And then he moved back home, and we had a band for a while, but then his job transferred him to Chicago, and he was there for six, seven years. And then I get him back home to Cleveland, and the fucker goes and has fucking twins, you know? My kids are 17 and 21. I guess his kids are, what now, five or six years old. And you just reminded me of it when you talk about 14 and 16 and then three, and you go, "Yeah, dude, not the same trajectory all of a sudden." At the moment that I'm entering the empty nester phase, suddenly my asshole bass player has a four-year-old or something. Stupid, stupid children.

In A Rut: It's never gonna line up. Three years ago we were going real good. We just had an album come out, and then I was like, "By the way, I gotta take a few months off."

Brian Pritchard: Unbelievable. You're the guilty one there.

Can You Do It Twice? [00:24:15]

Nicky P: But hey, just so you know, you can go out and do interesting things. We went and spent a week on tour this past summer despite all of our places in life. We took, how many? Seven guys that we had out there, I think.

Brian Pritchard: We did. But when we came back and wanted to do it again six months later, right now it's just you and me figuring out how we put together an act for December. They couldn't do it twice. But sure, anybody can do anything once. Can you do it twice is the question.

In A Rut: Right. Chris and I did that once with Dilligaf. We packed the four band members and all of our gear into an old Chevy one-ton van and drove all the way down to Roanoke, Virginia. That was the farthest point. And we did three shows over a weekend. Either Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Thursday, Friday, Saturday. It was fun. It was a good time. I would love to get back on the road at some point. It'd be cool if we could all take time off work and do it randomly, sporadically here and there.

Nicky P: Do you guys work weekends?

In A Rut: Usually no. I work every other weekend. Sometimes. And we also have completely different career paths, so I'm always the odd man out.

The Day Jobs [00:25:45]

Nicky P: Okay, so I'm curious what you guys do outside of making punk rock or alternative rock.

In A Rut: Not punk rock. Not punk rock. Well, you guys go ahead. Oh, I'm a network administrator and engineer for a managed service provider.

Nicky P: That makes so much sense, looking at that fucking beard.

In A Rut: I know. I'm sure nobody understood any of those words.

Nicky P: That guy screams IT professional.

In A Rut: I mean, yeah, it's IT. It's IT for local businesses, small to mid-size businesses, that kind of stuff. I did the real tagline and not what made sense. But I also play drums for The Cavs on the side.

Nicky P: Hell yeah.

In A Rut: And I, this is gonna sound like I'm a drug dealer, but I sell chemicals. But they're legit chemicals, in rubber and plastics.

Nicky P: Drugs are legit chemicals.

Brian Pritchard: Like a DuPont situation. Got it.

In A Rut: Yes, exactly. You gotta lower the population. And I'm an industrial maintenance mechanic.

Brian Pritchard: So you fix machines. Okay. I've recruited people for all of those professions. That's the family business that I grew up in, staffing and recruiting, and we did a lot of manufacturing stuff. Currently I sell life insurance. That's what I've done for the last year and change. Nick and I both have done some marketing stuff together. I've been self-employed for going on 13 years at this point. How about you, Nick?

Nicky P: I started Iron Age, I think officially, in 2022. So it's been about four years doing that. But I also have a day job.

In A Rut: What is that?

Nicky P: Industrial mechanic. No, I very specifically work in the coin-op industry. I work on air pumps and vacuum cleaners at gas stations.

In A Rut: Oh, okay. I worked for a company that repaired the bill validators and coin mechanisms. Is that what you're talking about?

Nicky P: I mean, the whole nine yards. I'm the only guy in the company at this point, actually. I used to work in full coin-op, with jukeboxes and arcade games and everything under the sun, ATMs. And then I got sold to a bank, and then I ended up back at the same company that I got sold from, and then they sold off everything but the air pump division, and I do the air pumps now for the son of the guy who used to own the company. The reason I like it is my work-life balance. I'm the only guy in the company that got to take off for a week and a half to go on tour with my band, you know?

Keeping It Magical vs. Getting Paid to Sing [00:29:00]

Brian Pritchard: Well, I like that we get to keep it fucking magical, I'll put it that way, at risk of sounding corny. I've thought about it before. If music was my job, yes, granted, I go to concerts, I see guys on stage that look like they're having a lot of fun, and you go, "Damn, I wish I could do that." But there's this other side—

Nicky P: Yeah, we're gonna have words about this Danny Elfman shit too, by the way.

Brian Pritchard: Well, one minute. Just the idea that there's days where I don't wanna do anything when I wake up, and I don't wanna be forced to be a musician any more than I wanna be forced to be a recruiter or forced to sell life insurance. On days where I just want to be in charge of my own time and my own agenda. There's no perfect life for anybody. But I like the idea that music has gotten to hold this place where it is just a source of pleasure for me, you know what I mean? All these hours, all the money, all the time, all of it, it's a source of joy and pleasure, even when it's hard. I never feel reluctant when it's Friday night and it's time for practice, when it's showtime. I never have that sense of dread. And I wonder, if it was my job, wouldn't you inevitably end up having days where you're like, "Fuck, dude, I don't wanna be a drummer today," you know? I think it would be impossible to avoid.

Nicky P: Well, as a guy who has had it at least be a part of the job for decades, no, I love it. Every minute of being on stage is a joy for me. Even if I don't wanna do it, I still have fun, especially when you're getting paid to do it and you're like, "You know, I could be slaving away in a factory, sweating my balls off, hating my life right now, but I'm getting paid money to sing."

In A Rut: It definitely is better than other stuff. Better than the alternative, even if it sucks.

Cover Bands: Paid Guitar Practice [00:31:00]

Nicky P: All my buddies bitch and complain. I have a friend who used to say, "Dude, I could just never be in a cover band." I'm like, "Dude, it's paid guitar practice. How could you not?" And the pay is pretty good at that. I used to make more money doing that than any job in a factory I've ever had.

In A Rut: That would be great. But it's finding the right cover band. I don't know if you wanna go full tribute band or just a general, popular cover song band.

Nicky P: The two I've had the most success with: one was Big Love, and Big Love was me and another fat white guy. We did a lot of '90s country music and '80s and '90s R&B and hip-hop. Our bread and butter was '90s R&B and hip-hop. Lots of Ginuwine, Boyz II Men. And we did very well because it's our generation's fucking music and nobody's doing it out there. We actually had a full live band thing that was doing it, that did fairly well for a while. Couldn't quite keep it lined up together.

The Prog Tribute Saga [00:32:15]

Nicky P: The other thing that I did that was super fun and the most challenging thing I've ever done is I was in a '70s progressive rock tribute band. Just nothing but Genesis, Steely Dan, Rush, Yes.

Brian Pritchard: And not popular Genesis, you know what I mean? They were going into obscure shit.

Nicky P: Ultimately the reason that our drummer just up and moved to Florida one weekend is because I wanted to play like 15% more popular music in a set to keep women's titties shaking, and he literally just picked up and moved to Florida that weekend.

In A Rut: Nice. It's reasonable. "We only do '70s music. Deep tracks."

Nicky P: They appreciate King Crimson in Jacksonville.

In A Rut: "You wanna see more what? I'm out."

Nicky P: And dude, it wasn't even... It was like, "Let's play this cool, sweet song." Let's play '70s progressive music that's just not completely B-side.

Brian Pritchard: "Someone's heard this one."

Nicky P: At any rate, my big bitch was that he left me needing a drummer. And we had a gig down at Lakewood in the Park up here. I don't know if you guys know that. Basically, it's their big summer concert series, for Fox Channel up here. And we ended up playing to like 8,000 people at that gig. It was awesome. But I had to find, and then get a drummer up to speed on a set that was of that genre, in like two months.

In A Rut: You gotta either find a really good drummer or one that does a lot of really good drugs to be able to do that.

Nicky P: We had a very, very talented professional drummer, and he did good. But immediately, when he joins the band, my bass player quits on me. I gotta find a fucking bass player now. Eventually I ended up just quitting the band, because it's just too much work to keep replacing guys with this complicated-ass material.

In A Rut: That's the hard part with a band in general, man. That's what happened with Dilligaf. Guys left, and it was hard to replace them. The sound of that band was from the core members. Our original bassist, Jerry, had moved to Vermont. It took like a year to find the bassist who replaced him, and we got very lucky with him. And then he was in it for like a year, and then the guitarist, the only guitarist for the band, ended up quitting. And then that was like, well, we can't replicate that sound, so we're just not gonna do that. We lost the primary music writers in the project. It's like, I'm not interested anymore.

Leniency: 50 Voices and a Skate Park [00:35:30]

Brian Pritchard: Now, you guys mentioned that you're working on something newer. You talked about the 50 layered parts. It sounded like your Bohemian Rhapsody, but in three-minute form. We always like to, for these interviews, for those listening, give somebody a song to end the episode with. So we could go back to the 2024 EP release, or if you have something newer to share. We want you guys to send us something that we can use to play out the end of the episode, and use this opportunity for you guys to intro that song. So what's a song that you guys are willing to share with us and our audience, and what do you wanna say about that song?

In A Rut: Oh, man. I think the best one would be one that we just recorded a music video for. I think we were all thinking it. It's called Leniency. It's hopefully gonna be one of the best ones on the album, and it is the one with the 50 layers of vocals.

Nicky P: Salivating over here.

In A Rut: And I'm also learning how to video edit for that, 'cause I've never done that before. I'm in the process of putting the video together. I couldn't even give you a percentage on where I'm at. That's a whole other undertaking. Trying to do everything DIY. But yeah, Leniency would be it. The version that we'll send is early. It's in the mastering process. This might be V2, I think. So it's gonna be as close to the end result as it's gonna be right now.

Brian Pritchard: Love it. Badass. Did you guys do live action for the video? What's the video concept?

In A Rut: We are at a skate park. This guy had the idea and wanted to edit it, so we're letting him run with it. Mostly just taking shots around the park, recording people skating, riding, a mobility scooter. Just whatever we could get some footage of to mix in. Some roller blades. Have fun.

Nicky P: Do you guys remember the old skateboard videos back in the day? How important those things were to the music subculture?

In A Rut: Well, that was kind of the idea initially, but then I realized it's not gonna come close to those. We're not gonna have 50 or 100 people. So it really just shows our age. It's mostly just us in an empty skate park. So instead of a huge, "We have tons of friends, and it's so awesome," it's just three lonely dudes in a skate park with a few random people showing up.

Nicky P: Man, it fits. It fits.

Brian Pritchard: The skate park aesthetic immediately signals, at a certain age, it's gonna be on the right resonant frequency for the people that need to click with it. You know what I'm saying? It's gonna tap in.

In A Rut: That's the hope. No, it'll be fun. We'll see. I think it looks really cool. I think the way that we did it worked out really well. Once we get it all put together and go through 3,000 different versions of it, then we'll put it out. That's gonna take some time.

Building a Scene at the Maple Grove [00:39:15]

Brian Pritchard: Well, I'm excited. I'm always so grateful for Jeremy at Maple Grove. I always call him this matchmaker, right? When I used to book more shows, I would come to the venue, I would book a date, and then I would call bands that I was friends with to fill out the lineup. Jeremy seems to just put these interesting collections of people together. Maybe some of them are connected, but not everybody. And so I'm always really grateful for the opportunity to make connections. And what I'm always hoping comes from it is that we build a scene. That there's enough people from our fan base that catch your set and get excited about it, where if we then put together another show where Puma Thurman and In A Rut are on a lineup together, I want our fans to be like, "Well, yeah, Puma plays once a month, but they don't always play with In A Rut. I saw those guys play together and I liked that show." You know what I mean? I wanna build a world where that means something to people. Where these dream lineups can suddenly form. Because I've felt that way about local shows before, where it was like, these are some of my favorite bands to listen to. So it's happened, without my controlling it, at these Maple Grove shows. So anyway, without being super long-winded: it's fun to meet new bands. I'm excited to play with you guys in a couple weeks, and I hope we can build the scene together.

In A Rut: Yeah, agreed. Absolutely. 100%.

The Used, Bert McCracken, and Outro [00:41:15]

Nicky P: The way I look at it, every band is auditioning for one of the members to be my Bert McCracken, to get me addicted to a whole bunch of pills, and we'll spiral out together and create this cool music scene. And then we'll not be able to hang out anymore because we're horrible drug fiends, and we'll have to go our separate ways. And then eventually, in our 60s, we'll meet back up, like, "Oh, it's cool, guys."

In A Rut: But the music won't be as good then.

Nicky P: I will say this. The Used continues to surprise me with how consistent their music is. I haven't liked anything after Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, but The Used has very consistently put out solid records. Not great records, but there's always three or four fucking bangers on those records. They would not have been the band that I would've expected out of that scene to have any longevity, just 'cause Bert was such a mess. So for them to manage it and keep doing it, God bless you, boy. So amen.

In A Rut: Yeah, definitely.

Nicky P: So, well, thank you so much for coming on, gentlemen. Cannot wait to play this show. Hopefully more will come. Everybody else out there, from We Came From Celluloid: we came from celluloid, watching movies—

Brian Pritchard: And we're turning it into music and podcasts for you.

[Outro track: "Leniency" by In A Rut]