MAN CAVE: Q&A with Primus guitarist Ler Lalonde

"I'm hoping there are more albums. Over the last ten years we've done some touring, but I think the focus now is to try to move forward making records, not just go out and tour."

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MAN CAVE: Q&A with Primus guitarist Ler Lalonde

POSTED: Monday, October 3, 2011, 12:00 PM

Filed Under: Interview | Music | Man Cave

At Tower Theatre on Saturday, Primus played a two-hour-plus show featuring two sets and an encore. The first set was comprised of early-era songs, almost entirely from their first three albums. And the second was their new album, Green Naugahyde, in its entirety, followed by a two-song encore of "Here Come The Bastards" and "Pudding Time."

I caught up with guitarist Ler Lalonde for a brief chat.

CP: What does the future have in store for Primus?

LL: I’m hoping there are more albums. Over the last ten years we’ve done some touring, but I think the focus now is to try to move forward making records, not just go out and tour.

CP: How has the transition to Jay Lane on drums been for you guys?

LL: The transition to Jay Lane has been awesome. I consider it a very lucky type of thing. He’s a super cool guy, a great player and he’s really great to write with. You couldn’t ask for better aspects.

CP: How have your fans reacted to Green Naugahyde?

LL: It seems, oddly enough, every Primus record comes out and I think 'Oh, boy this is the one that nobody’s gonna get,' and sometimes it’s half-and-half. This is the first one that it seems everybody is able to grab on to. People seem to get it for some reason.

CP: This may be more of a question for Les, but is Jimmy MacDonagal and other characters in your songs based on real people, or are they completely conjured?

LL: To some extent, everything is based on some kind of real character or real incident, like "Bob," for example. The names are usually changed to protect the innocent.

CP: You were trained by Joe Satriani. Does he approve of all the odd sirens and other effects you get out of your guitar?

LL: I took lessons from Satriani for like three years. The thing about Joe is that he’s really good at setting all his students up with the tools to come up with their own styles. He taught a lot of technique and theory. One thing people don’t really know is that he was good at coming up with a lot of sounds. He had a big influence on teaching me that this is just a big piece of wood with strings on it.

CP: I know this isn't your department, but what's the story with the drumming production on Brown Album?

LL: We were definitely going for lo-fi, big-room sound, like Zeppelin. Instead of [putting a mic on] each drum, we would set one up over the whole kit. Those sessions were really experimental, like "Return of Sathington Willoughby", which got started with us playing along to something and then became its own thing.

CP: Word association time. South Park? Bonnaroo? World tour?

LL: The South Park [theme song] thing turned out to be amazing. When I first saw it, I was like, 'There’s no way this is getting on TV.' When the Bonnarroo-type jam scene came around it was based on the people that were still excited about seeing live bands. This last year we went to a lot of crazy places we hadn't been to yet: Poland, Prague and South America. This year we're going to be playing with Jane's Addiction in Hawaii. We're also excited to be playing Royal Albert Hall in London; it's a pretty iconic venue.

CP: Any thoughts about where we're headed as a society in general?

LL: It definitely seems like times are changing, you hope that people stay focused on what’s important and not get wrapped up in things like gay marriage instead of what’s important.

(ryan.carey@citypaper.net) (@slackerdiytoday)

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