Rob on the album title and concept: We weren't thinking about baseball. I saw something on Animal Planet called 'Wild and Inside' and it made sense. Our original intention [was] to have two bands, but that probably lasted like a day. Then it was just one band. I don't think it's that strange, and I think all of the songs sound like us and I think it flows well from song to song. Some people have said it sounds like a good mix tape, that could be.
“Rob on “clean sound”:”
It was really about having better stuff to record with and we were able to not blow things out to make them sound good. Otherwise it's pretty much the same process, we just write songs and record them. Wild and Inside's two sides have different feels to them.
“Stick To The Formula”
It was supposed to be a sarcastic take on what it feels like when people are deserting you. It could be about a romantic relationship or a terrorist cell. I would rather not have too much of a presence in the song. I like the way Bob Dylan does it; I think if you get too selfish with a song, you run the risk of going straight to the bottom of life.
“Cooking A Way To Be Happy”
Rod (Meyer) slaves as a cook, but this song is about having food stamps and cooking for the people you care about. I was broke as a joke for a long time so when I got around to getting food stamps, I cooked for my friends to try to return the favor.
I actually just got laid off again. Apparently, Oregon has the second worst economy in the country after Michigan and someone told me it might take over as #1 and that seems strange, but I'm rooting for it. Rip City Uprise!
“You're With A Thing”
Regarding an instrument that sounds like an accordian: It's actually a Basque instrument called the Trikitixa. Scott (Simmons) plays it pretty good. Scott's been all over the place. He has a pyramid shaped room in his house full of different foreign instruments. I asked him how long he'd been playing that one and he answered by calling me “queer.” So I don't know.
“Nuke Mecca”
This song is about ignorance and despair and how different people might want to nuke Mecca. I always think that people can understand the lyrics, so don't do a lyric sheet but maybe they can't. It's straight forward: the first verse is about a Republican father, second is about a hippie father and third verse is about their children. Yes, the lyrics are sometimes humorous but it's gallows humor and I don't think it should be that hard to catch.
“Who's In Control?”
Yes this was recorded with a bunch of our friends. It was fun, we had a party where we pretended to be the Manson family. I think we did this one in the summer actually, so it was done before the rest of the songs.
“Killed By Rooms”
On recording in the attic and basement: In the summer time it gets hot up in the attic, but most of the time it's cold. It's not insulated and there are some small holes in the walls and ceiling. One of the cool things that happens in the spring and autumn is that i get all sorts of beetles crawling all over the windows up there.
We came up with a lot of the songs while looking at the beetles on the windows. “Killed by Rooms” was recorded in the basement where I used to live and we recorded most of Sick to Death, because it was an outtake from that album. There were spiders down there but I rarely saw beetles. They like to climb up the outside of the house.
“Surfing The Stairs”
Yes, I think many people have done this. Even if your house was only single story like mine was growing up, I had friends with stairs and we used to do this with sleeping bags and stuff.
“Dawn In The Face”
Karianne from the Whines sang on that. She's our drummer now too. Someone might think that in the solo there was a splice of two takes, but that was really a pedal malfunctioning.
“Oregon Dreaming”
[We made this the last song] because it has a string section, graciously provided by Fred Meyer. Mr. Fred Meyer runs Portland. I think he's Rod's evil twin brother. It's a dramatic song so that's why Fred arranged the strings on there.
It was meant to be the last song once we listened back to it. I think that Wild and Inside has a nice flow to it. I think [“Oregon Dreaming” is] a lead in back to the first song. Records should be flippable. It was easy to sequence. It's a suitably dramatic ending.
