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BRAD ROBERTS Of CRASH TEST DUMMIES Talks Of Their Return To Australia And Band Legacy · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'm Brad Rhberts from Crash as Nummies, brilliant.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It's been so long since you've
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: played here, especially since your last show in ninety ninety two.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: What's it like returning to Australia after all these years.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm very much looking forward to it. When we
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: played our first tour in Australia, we were promoting our
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: very first record ever, which was called The Ghost It
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Haunt Me, and we had a big hit on that record,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: but only in Canada. So when we went to Australia,
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  Speaker 1: we played a bunch of shows, but they were very
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  Speaker 1: poorly attended because hardly anybody knew who the hell we were.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: But now that we're going, we're coming back after having
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: had a hit there, I imagine the scene will be
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a little different.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And yeah, God Shuffled His Feet is
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: such a beloved album. How does it feel to say
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: that album still holds such a personal a special place
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: in people's hearts after thirty years.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Well that means a great deal to me, of course,
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  Speaker 1: And I'm also very fortunate that I like the record
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: these many years later, because I don't like all of
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: my records in retrospect, so that I was known for
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: one that I'm particularly proud of is pretty long.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Ye oh. And what was it like gaining such success
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: early on in your musical career.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Well, you know it was it was early on in
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: my music career in that I didn't really spend a
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: lot of time at music until I graduated from the
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: University of Winnipeg and then I started writing songs. Yes,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the success on the second record was definitely almost overwhelming.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: It was. It just became so big, and you know,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: we were getting invited to play on Saturday Live and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: David Letterman, and you know, gigs of the nature of
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: which I had never suspected wouldver fall my way, you.
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  Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, I can only imagine. And the ringunion of
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  Speaker 2: the original lineup in twenty seventeen must have been quite
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: meaningful for you. How did it feel to come back
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: together after so many years apart?
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  Speaker 1: It felt really good because we decided we had a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: sufficiently good time that we wanted to keep doing it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: And I'm not tired of it yet. I still love touring,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I still love playing.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, we love to hear it. And your music
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: has been featured in movies and TV shows, over the years.
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  Speaker 2: How does it feel knowing your songs have become part
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: of iconic scenes or moments in pop culture.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it's hard for me to even reckon with that,
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  Speaker 1: to be honest with you. I mean, I know that
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: for me, when I think of the music of my
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: childhood and my early teens, I have a very you know, sentimental,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: nostalgic feeling towards that. But you know, and you know
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  Speaker 1: what I don't do enough of is listen to recently
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  Speaker 1: recorded music. Yeah, I don't even know where to begin
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  Speaker 1: because there's so many options and so many formats, and
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  Speaker 1: it's a completely different industry than what I entered many
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: years ago.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So what do you find yourself listening
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  Speaker 2: to today?
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  Speaker 1: You know, I've actually rather conservatively turned to classical music
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: in my old age, and I've been studying Bach and
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: a bunch of others as well, But yeah, Bach is
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: one of the main ones. And I have a composition teacher,
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  Speaker 1: believe it or not. But because although I can write
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: songs with no troubles whatsoever, I can't write instrumental music
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  Speaker 1: and I would love to know how that's done. So
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  Speaker 1: I hired a guy to teach me how to write
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: and what's called counterpoint, which is a method of writing
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  Speaker 1: that originated from originated as vocal singing, but then when
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Bok got a hold of it.
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  Speaker 2: Interesting, very interesting. Yeah, And can you tell us a
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: little bit about how the band's dynamic has changed since
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: the reunion in twenty seventeen.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Uh, you know, not much has changed since the reunion.
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  Speaker 1: I would say, I think we all I think we
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: all feel better about touring nowadays because we're not under
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: such pressure. Back then it was like do or die,
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  Speaker 1: And now we've established ourselves and we can kind of
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: take it at a pace that we know we're comfortable with. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And out of all the tracks from God Shuffled
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  Speaker 2: His Fate, is there one that's especially meaningful to you?
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  Speaker 1: Uh? I think the title track on that record is
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: one of the best songs I've ever written. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, I like it even better than.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you've been playing hits like Superman Song and
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead for decades. Do you ever
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  Speaker 2: discover new layers or interpretations of these songs when you
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: perform them?
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  Speaker 1: Ah? You know, back when first came out, I used
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: to sing an alternative verse to the one that was
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: on the record, just to screw with people's minds, and
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: and fans made a big deal out of that. I
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: was I was kind of surprised. I didn't even know
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: if they would notice.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah they did. Did they interpret it well? Did
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  Speaker 2: they receive it? Well?
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah very much.
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  Speaker 2: That's good. And what are some of your hobbies outside
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  Speaker 2: of music?
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  Speaker 1: Hobby? Sorry, that was my bad. Well, see, my hobby
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: is counterpoints and that's music, so it's not really a
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  Speaker 1: hobby outside of music. I read a lot. I read
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  Speaker 1: reading a book from now called Irreducible by a guy
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: named Federico Fagen, and it's about consciousness and the history
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: of quantum physics and how how how to live in
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  Speaker 1: a well. Now, I won't try and paraphis the whole
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: book because that would not do it justice, but it's
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  Speaker 1: it's a fantastic book. How consciousness works has always been
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  Speaker 1: interesting to me. And when I was in the University
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: of Winnipeg, I studied Descartes, the famous duellist who proposed
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  Speaker 1: that there was two kinds of substances in the universe,
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  Speaker 1: physical and mental, and I always wondered how the physical
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: side could talk to the mental side, because if there
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: are two different substances and where would they meet. And
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  Speaker 1: that got me wondering about idealism versus empiricism. And that's
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: a road you can go down quite far. It's a
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  Speaker 1: rabbit hole.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: It sounds like, that's really interesting. That's awesome. And how
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: did your musical journey start?
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  Speaker 1: My musical journey started with my mom singing me songs
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: before I went to sleep. And my mom had a
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  Speaker 1: gorgeous singing voice, and she would sing lullabies from old
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: musicals like the Mary Poppins soundtrack was one of her favorites.
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  Speaker 1: So she was singing stay Awake to Me, which is
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  Speaker 1: a lullaby, and there was another one, Feed the Birds.
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  Speaker 1: That's that's that's a song that I knew all the
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  Speaker 1: words to by the time I was like four years old.
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  Speaker 1: And it's a long time, yeah, but she she really
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: drilled it into my head with her lullaby singing.
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  Speaker 2: That's amazing. And when did you first sort of learn
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: that you could sing?
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  Speaker 1: Ah, it took a long time. I when I first
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: started crashing some means, I looked for a singer because
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I just assumed my voice was too low. And then
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: we put our record out, and everybody talked about how
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: great it was that I had this low voice. So
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I really didn't get any affirmation with my voice at
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: all until we had a record out.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow, that's great. I'm so glad that you decided
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  Speaker 2: to stick with it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, I tried to get people to
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  Speaker 1: sing the songs that I wrote, but they would sing
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: them but just without the right inflection, without the right tone.
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  Speaker 1: And I wanted to hear them sung the way I
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  Speaker 1: heard it in my head. And I figured the only
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  Speaker 1: way I was going to get that is if I
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  Speaker 1: sang song. Yeah, so I went and I took a
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: couple of vocal lessons, but just a few, not very many,
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  Speaker 1: but enough that I was able to sort out my
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  Speaker 1: head tone and my chest tone and use my diaphragm
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  Speaker 1: more effectively, all that good stuff.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you ever think, because you do have such
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  Speaker 2: a unique voice, did you ever think of doing voice
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  Speaker 2: acting at all?
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  Speaker 1: I did, and in fact, I joined a voiceover company
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  Speaker 1: in New York City, where I was living at the time.
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  Speaker 1: I don't live there now, but I lived there for
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: about twenty years. Anyways, Yeah, I failed miserably at voiceovers.
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  Speaker 1: A bunch of orations for like a year, and nobody
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  Speaker 1: wanted anything to do with me.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: They're lost, Yeah, I guess, Oh dear, is there any
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: new music on the horizon for you guys?
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  Speaker 1: Well, we just put out a song last year called
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Sacred Alphabet, which I'm very pleased with, in which we
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: will play live. But other than that, well, there's and
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I did record another one as well, but that hasn't
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: been released yet. And I'll come out on our double
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: album Best of Precious on his record. Yeah, but I'm
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  Speaker 1: never planning on writing any albums, mainly because well, for
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: one thing, I can't really afford to make albums. They
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: don't paste for themselves very easily. And and oh what
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  Speaker 1: was the second reason? I was going to say? I
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  Speaker 1: can't remember. It'll come back to me.
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  Speaker 2: It's all right, that's so good. It was a long question.
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  Speaker 2: Looking back on the thirty year since God shuffled his feet,
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  Speaker 2: how would you say the experience of making and touring
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: the album has shaped who you are today?
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  Speaker 1: Ah, well, you've got big questions today. How has my
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: career shaped my life? Basically?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well I became much more world and that I traveled,
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: I got to travel extensively, and I'm still very grateful
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  Speaker 3: for that.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I can picture the skylines of many a
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  Speaker 1: European capital in my mind's eye. I feel pretty lucky
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  Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, and you know, it gave me confidence
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  Speaker 1: in myself that I probably wouldn't have otherwise had, although
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  Speaker 1: I did have a lot of confidence to begin with.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, you have to have a lot of confidence
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to get into this business. Eaten Alive.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. And do you have any particular memories of
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: your time down on the win you toured?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, I do. I remember having to learn the language
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  Speaker 1: of coffee m h tall, tall, black, short, white. I forget,
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  Speaker 1: I forget what the combinations of colors and tastes are. Ye,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: there's a I I remember having to learn that, the
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  Speaker 1: coffee language. I also I stayed in Australia for a
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  Speaker 1: couple of weeks after we were finished touring and just
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and went up north near the equator there and toured around,
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  Speaker 1: tried to see as much of the natural world as
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  Speaker 1: I could.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that's good. Good on you. You've say more
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  Speaker 2: of it than me. It sounds like, oh, Brad, we're
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: so looking forward to the tour. Thank you so much
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: for your time today.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. And I'm really sorry about not seeing
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: you at a great time today.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's so fine. Things happen, okay, no worries.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: You take care Okay, you too, Thank you. I'm good
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: you too.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Bye.