E343 Riot Fest Interviews: GWAR, Teen Mortgage, and a First-Time Rioter!

Aaron: You're listening to The Itch. My name is Aaron, and this week we are scratching The Itch for another first. Not the first time I've done a solo episode—that has happened one time before. But the first time that The Itch has been on site at Riot Fest. as official media. I got to do that this past weekend, and you may have known about that if you follow us on the socials. As an aside, if you're not, please do. Facebook, Instagram, there's some great stuff going on over there right now. But I was on site, got to do some in-person interviews, which we have never done before on camera and everything, hence the social media follow plug there. We'll talk more about the specifics of that experience later on, but I wanted to strike while the iron was hot, and so we made the decision to put out the interviews that I recorded at Riot Fest this week and shuffle our schedule around a little bit. Dan and KC gave me their blessing to do this part solo, in part because they are both out at shows of their own tonight, and this is the only night we could record this intro. So more on where they're at in a future episode. So we'll also have a full recap episode of the Riot Fest experience, all the bands I got to see, All of the incredible sets and experiences and indeed the mud pit next week. But for now, let's talk about these interviews. They honestly couldn't have been any more different, the three conversations you're about to hear. One of them was one of the most down-to-earth bands that I know of, and that is the guys from Teen Mortgage, a band that I tragically didn't really start listening to until this year. If I had, I guarantee you their most recent album, Devil Ultrasonic Dream, would have been on my top 20 of last year. They're already releasing new music, very excited about it. Check that album out if you haven't heard it yet. On the flip side, down-to-earth band, I got to speak with someone who was literally otherworldly, and that was Sawborg Destructo, Enemy of GWAR. I cannot think of a crazier opportunity for The Itch's first ever in-person, on-site, live video interview than with GWAR, and yet it happened. And then third, in yet another completely different direction, I got to interview my friend Jessica, who was at Riot Fest for the very first time, and got to talk a little bit about her experience and how it compares to other festivals she's been at, and who she was there to see and why they were fantastic. Because, well, spoiler, they were. On that note, I want to thank the three different women who acted as my camerawoman for these different interviews: Jessica herself, Rachel Rosenberg, who recorded the Teen Mortgage interview, and the blonde woman whose name I did not actually get, who recorded GWAR. If you hear this or see yourself tagged on the socials, let me know. We'll shout you out. I want to make sure you get credit where credit is due. But for now, Let's head to outer space real quick for my conversation with Sawborg Destructo, Enemy of GWAR.

Aaron: All right, for the first time ever, this is Aaron from The Itch broadcasting from Riot Fest. And since this is a first time ever, we wanted to make sure that our initial guest was somebody very low-key, low-maintenance, normal basic guy. And so here we have—

Sawborg Destructo: That's right, Sawborg Destructo, enemy of GWAR.

Aaron: You cannot get much lower pressure than this.

Sawborg Destructo: That's right.

Aaron: There's a man with a chainsaw right here.

Sawborg Destructo: So give me some good questions, okay?

Aaron: My life is threatened immediately.

Sawborg Destructo: That's right.

Aaron: That's what I'm about here. Okay, well, I mean, speaking of which, I've got to ask a question. GWAR has been active for... 40 years now?

Sawborg Destructo: I mean, yeah, because we woke up about 40 years ago.

Aaron: Yeah.

Sawborg Destructo: But we've been on this planet for billions of years.

Aaron: And in that time, just in that time, you have decapitated people night after night on stage.

Sawborg Destructo: Yes.

Aaron: So I gotta ask, can a bloodlust ever truly be satisfied?

Sawborg Destructo: No! No. No, I mean, listen, you people experience all the time. You want to go to war, you fight with your fucking neighbors, road rage. You people are all bloodthirsty. You get it? You all are bloodthirsty.

Aaron: So we're your kind of people, really, is what you're saying?

Sawborg Destructo: Yes, well, because you spawned from our loins, so there's that. You're welcome, actually.

Aaron: And that brings another couple of questions here. So you guys, unfortunately, you know, we're banished from your home planet.

Sawborg Destructo: Yeah, we fucked up.

Aaron: You ended up here.

Sawborg Destructo: We'll own it.

Aaron: Ended up here, and you've been here for a while. I gotta ask, at this point, how do you like Earth?

Sawborg Destructo: It's a terrible, terrible place. There's so many better places out there. You know, the only reason that we're still here is because crack is still abundant and it's plentiful. And if you didn't know that, well, that's because we're hoarding all the crack.

Aaron: Fair enough.

Okay.

All right. And even more particularly, Riot Fest, there may be no band that has been on this bill more than—

Sawborg Destructo: Oh yeah, because they love us, rightfully so.

Aaron: By my count, 13 at least.

Sawborg Destructo: At least.

Aaron: To the point where if you are not on the bill, people wonder why.

Sawborg Destructo: Yeah, that's right. Well, I mean, I think COVID was the only reason. We were here. I don't know where all you people were.

Aaron: The thing is, I mean, it's you and Butter John Stamos.

Sawborg Destructo: Yes, Mr. Stamos.

Aaron: The identifying traits of Riot Fest.

Sawborg Destructo: Butter John, Butter Josh, John Josh, Josh Butter Stamos.

Aaron: It's a very complicated name, admittedly. So something I've always been curious about, I decided if I ever got a chance to speak with GWAR, I would 100% ask.

Sawborg Destructo: Oh, here we go. This is the good stuff. Pay attention now.

Aaron: This is hopefully what saves me from getting chainsawed. There are a lot of other scum dogs in the universe.

Sawborg Destructo: Sure.

Aaron: You've got Jabba the Hut. You've got your Guardians of the Galaxy. All kinds of things going on here.

Sawborg Destructo: Yes.

Aaron: If you were to add another alien hooligan to your crew, who would it be?

Sawborg Destructo: To our crew, who would we add? Hmm, that's a tough one. Maybe Invader Zim. He's got— he's got a lot of potential, you know, grandiose ideas, egotistical plans. He'd fit right in, I think.

Aaron: That is amazing. All right, what do you think he would play?

Sawborg Destructo: I don't know, maybe he'd play like tambourine or, I don't know, banjo. Maybe a banjo. Maybe we'll hook up a banjo.

Aaron: I like your direction there because my next question was if he was going to have to take one of you out in order to take your place.

Sawborg Destructo: No, no, no, we'll let him come in. Yeah, you know, community dip. He could just hang out, you know. He's totally incompetent. He's not gonna kill anybody.

Aaron: Well, there you go. On that note, let's keep going down that trail for a second here. Give me maybe a favorite three non-GWAR aliens. 

Sawborg Destructo: Oh, well, The Thing. First of all, The Thing. You gotta love The Thing because, I mean, it's awesome.

Aaron: The Thing is brutal.

Sawborg Destructo: It's just gonna come over and take over the planet. Plus, it lives in Antarctica where we are at. You know, we're buds. We hang out. We smoke pot with him. It's great.

Aaron: You guys are neighbors?

Sawborg Destructo: Yeah, yeah. He's right there. It's cool. Let's see, what else? I'd say, you know, Predators. Predators are cool.

You know, they hang out.

They hunt.

We like to get on a hunt with them. They're very serious about the hunt, so they're a little— they don't have a good sense of humor, those guys.

Aaron: Fair.

Sawborg Destructo: All right. Let's see, what else? Let's just throw in E.T. for shits and giggles, man. E.T., he's cool, right? Phone home and shit. 

Aaron: I don't want these guys to— I want these guys to form their own band now. This is your new opening act.

Sawborg Destructo: E.T., Predator, and the Thing.

Aaron: That is the band you just built. That sounds phenomenal. What a tour. I'm there every night. All right, in a slightly more serious— You guys have gotten in the habit of releasing a new album about every three to four years, right?

Sawborg Destructo: Yeah, that's right. We're lazy. I mean, we're busy.

Aaron: I mean, but do you even need new albums, for one thing?

Sawborg Destructo: Yeah, well, you people want crap every 10 seconds now.

Aaron: Short attention spans. So four years is a lifetime. So I gotta ask, is there new GWAR on the immediate horizon?

Sawborg Destructo: Yes! Yes! Get off of our backs! We're making new music. Shut up! Yes, we're gonna get you a new album, probably next year. God, you people!

Aaron: I'm sorry we're so unbearable.

Thank you for bearing with us for all of these years.

Sawborg Destructo: Demanding, demanding, demanding. So yes, we are, we're working on new music. Hopefully something at the— probably the end of 2027, you'll see some new GWAR stuff.

Aaron: Fantastic.

Well, thank you very much for your time.

Sawborg Destructo: Thank you. I will not kill you today. 

Aaron: I appreciate that. I look forward to seeing who you do kill later on this evening.

Sawborg Destructo: Excellent. Yes, we're gonna kill a lot of cool people, so come check out the show.

Aaron: Alright, so for one, I want to see that band that he put together exist. I was kind of thinking they might also double as his army in taking GWAR down, but that may be a lore-heavy matter for another day. In the meantime, moving on, Ed and James of Teen Mortgage were another fun conversation. I was very glad to get to speak with both of them. They put on a killer set to start Friday at the festival. And not only that, as you will discover in a moment here, James won the Shirt Alert before it even began. I didn't know it was a contest. It never really has been before. It's just been me listing shirts that I see that are entertaining. But right off the bat, I get in the gates of this festival and a half hour later somebody's already got the best one of the entire weekend. There are some more, and you can see those on our socials if you follow us there. Again, also, I'm not going to give you any context for this, but as you'll hear in the interview, The answer is Royal Blood. Here's my conversation with James and Ed of Teen Mortgage.

Aaron: So I kind of had this already planned out exactly what I wanted to do to open it, and then I saw you guys set this morning. So we do a segment on our podcast called the Shirt Alert where I go to a concert and identify the greatest and/or craziest shirts there. Come to Riot Fest this morning, first band that I see is you guys. We can't see it now, obviously, but James, can you tell us about what you were wearing?

Ed Barkauskas: Is it even on?

James Guile: Maybe it is on. I changed.

Aaron: He changed. What— can you at least— can you explain to us your shirt that you had on?

James Guile: Yeah, uh, shout out Meth Syndicate, Microwave Salad, making the shirt, the Tom Hanks pissing shirt. And it just references how many times Tom Hanks pisses in different movies. He like— There's several movies where he takes a piss. I don't know why he requested it. Who knows?

Ed Barkauskas: Because he's the best at it.

James Guile: He's really good at it. Yeah, he's—

Aaron: I've heard the thing of Brad Pitt always eating in movies. I had never heard about Tom Hanks urinating in movies.

Ed Barkauskas: Yeah, it's because Tom Hanks already took the pissing thing.

James Guile: Search it on YouTube, Tom Hanks pissing, and there's like a whole compilation of every piss.

Aaron: Fantastic.

Ed Barkauskas: You might find some other stuff first.

Aaron: I'm absolutely not searching for that. So I want to pay you guys a compliment. So in preparation for this festival, for deciding who I wanted to see, who I wanted to have a conversation with, I listened to literally every band on the lineup. So like 100 bands, and it became freaking tedious after a while. But every handful of bands when I was like, I'm so tired of going through a new artist again and again, something in my brain would be like, you could just go back to that Teen Mortgage album. listen to it again. And so I did, and I want to thank you guys for being a great relief whenever the work portion of this became overbearing.

James Guile: Oh, thank you very much.

Aaron: I'm actually sad that I didn't discover it until this year.

Ed Barkauskas: It's like we're like the audio equivalent of an ammonia salt, just like—

Aaron: Yeah, it worked perfect. It was perfect. You were, I don't know, the ginger or whatever, like the palate cleanse, whatever I'd been going back. I'm like, let's get something back to what we need here. So, and the other thing that I noticed about watching you guys that I thought was— I had a great time with was James is up there being a madman. You're raging against the machine, you're sweating, you've got all the pedals, you're doing— you've got your splitter, you're doing guitar and bass sounds at the same time. Ed is the most chill punk rock drummer I think I've ever seen.

You—

if you turn that whole thing on mute, I would swear you were playing like light jazz or something. Relaxed as possibly could be on stage.

James Guile: He's so zen.

Aaron: It was a great dynamic.

James Guile: He's very nonchalant.

Aaron: That's the word. That's the word. Nonchalant right there. I loved it.

Ed Barkauskas: Playing fast, you got to be locked in, you know?

Aaron: Yeah, I was like, I wonder what he's thinking about. Is he even thinking about the song? Because he's just, he's just got it all locked.

James Guile: So yeah, thank you.

Ed Barkauskas: No, yeah, he didn't say anything about the stick twirls either. That makes it look more nonchalant though.

Aaron: Yeah, a little casual finger flip there. Yeah. Another thing I learned about, actually learned about this from a different interview, is James, you are, I'm not going to say from, but have spent some time not far from here, from Frankfort, Illinois.

James Guile: Yeah, I spent a portion of my childhood living there. Yeah, so I have like a connection to Chicago in a way where like I took like, you know, my first guitar lessons here. And all those guys were really like blues-oriented. So like, definitely learned a lot. That was like the first stuff I learned. So I feel like Chicago taught me the blues, and I love the Blues Brothers. I love Alkaline Trio. Love Rise Against.

Aaron: Did you ever get to Riot growing up?

James Guile: No, never got to Riot growing up. Yeah, never.

Aaron: Glad you could make it here now.

James Guile: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it definitely feels like a milestone. to be able to do this.

Aaron: Something I've definitely appreciated in learning more about you guys is your DIY approach to things. And the funniest thing was somebody asked you why all of your, your printing, your album covers and whatnot is in black and white. And you said it's because it's cheaper to print.

I love that.

Ed Barkauskas: That's why it started. Then you just kind of, you lock into it.

Aaron: Yeah. And then also being a two-piece saves you a lot in personnel and whatnot. I'm very curious if you have any additional money-saving advice, penny-pinching advice for other bands as they start out.

James Guile: Um, oh shit.

Aaron: Those are two good ones already. Minimize your number of people, print stuff in black and white.

Ed Barkauskas: Don't have a bassist, and then—

Aaron: Don't have a bassist.

Ed Barkauskas: If you do have one, too bad.

Aaron: Make him do something else too. Make him be your tour manager or, I don't know, background vocalist or something as well. He's gotta multitask.

Ed Barkauskas: Don't be too quick to outsource your stuff if you can do it yourself. You know, at a certain point it makes sense to get other people to come in and help. If you got more than like two people in your band, you got more of an ex— less of an excuse than we did. So, you know, you have people that can do shit.

James Guile: Yeah, be a jack of all trades because then not only will it save you money, but you will be able to control the entire vision of the band.

Ed Barkauskas: And then when you do bring people in, you understand what they've done, so you appreciate it more. Like when I have people driving and helping and doing merch, I'm like, this is great. I remember exactly what that was like. Really glad we're not doing it now.

Aaron: All right, can we— if we can, I want to geek out about something for a minute. If there's three different types of bands that I find myself gravitating towards all the time over the years, it's British bands, girls who make grunge, and two-pieces. I know you guys obviously are a two-piece, also a fan of them yourselves. I know you guys have gone on record as being big fans of Death From Above, 1979, for one.

Ed Barkauskas: Fans and friends.

Aaron: Absolutely. I'm curious, and maybe you can collaborate if you want, I'm curious for a top five two-piece bands.

Ed Barkauskas: Wow. Yeah, Big Business, We'll say Death From Above.

James Guile: Jeff the Brotherhood. Bass Drum of Death.

Ed Barkauskas: Oh, you know White Stripes did, or like— No, uh, too obvious.

James Guile: Surf Curse, Clown Core.

Ed Barkauskas: We're going way over, but I don't know, Local H would be another sick one.

Aaron: I mean, Local H is hometown heroes, so you're never wrong to shout them out in Chicago.

James Guile: Yeah, shout out White Beast.

Ed Barkauskas: Lightning Bolt. I love this.

Aaron: So you guys got— you are— you have the whole Rolodex yourselves of two-piece bands. Is there like a club that you guys kind of like meet up in?

James Guile: Yeah, yeah, we meet up under the bridge every, uh, uh, sundown.

Ed Barkauskas: You have another list of ones we don't like? That'd be like—

Aaron: I can name a couple of those because I did my research, but we'll spare— we'll spare people. We'll just— we'll keep it on the positive here today.

Ed Barkauskas: That's for the Patreon.

Aaron: The exclusive, the bonus clip.

Ed Barkauskas: Yes, the bonus clip.

Aaron: I'll just spoil it myself later on. I'm like, here's who they don't like. Well, James, Ed, thank you guys very much. I appreciate your time.

James Guile: All right.

Aaron: Um, and my camera person here, Rachel.

Ed Barkauskas: Yes.

Aaron: So I guess I'm Aaron from The Itch. This is James and Ed from Teen Mortgage. And until next time, I don't wanan know.

Aaron: A little bonus about that one. There's a very real chance that I'm gonna see them again within a couple of weeks of this interview. Them and a couple of Chicago favorites coming through St. Louis, actually. I don't know if we'll run this conversation back or not, but either way, it'll be worth my time. And if you're available to see them on their tour with Rise Against and Alkaline Trio, I highly recommend you do that one too. My final interview, as I mentioned before, was with my longtime friend Jessica, who attended Sunday at Riot Fest with me, and hoo boy, was that an experience. I have never been in so much mud in my entire life. My shoes, as we speak, are still sitting outside on my porch, and I'm afraid to look at them because I don't know if they're recognizable. But as great as interviewing bands is, and as much as I definitely want us to do more of that in the future, It was cool to get the perspective of a first-time Riot attendee as well, and so I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Aaron: Alright, so my intention at this festival at some point was to do a man-on-the-street type of interview with a stranger out there on the grounds, but instead we're gonna do a friend-in-the-press-tent interview with somebody that I have known for upwards of 15 years. My friend Jessica, who is not a stranger to festivals, but is attending Riot for the first time. Not just this year, but today.

Jessica: Yeah.

Aaron: On the most absurd of days to be here. So I guess I'm kind of mostly curious what your impressions have been from being here all day.

Jessica: The size is great. The size, the size from being here in particular, I've got like two inches of mud on the boots.

Aaron: Caked, absolutely caked.

Jessica: Aaron was saying earlier how it was a good workout for our calves.

Aaron: I feel like I climbed a mountain even though we were just going through mud puddles.

Jessica: We didn't fall. Um, the rain was fine, nothing that I, that I'm not like used to being at festivals. But yeah, the size is cool, and so far the people people are cool. And yeah, the culture.

Aaron: I know you said that you mostly have gone to like electronic. Yeah, yeah, like crowd-wise, you did say that that one was mostly like teenagers.

Jessica: Oh yeah, Lollapalooza was teenagers. Yeah, Lollapalooza is a lot of teenagers. The crowd here is a lot of— it's an older, older crowd. Yeah, more respectable. Respect.

Aaron: I don't know, I've seen some If you've seen some of the shirts that I've seen, I don't know about respectful.

Jessica: We haven't gone to, to see ICP yet, right? So, I'll have to recalibrate.

Aaron: The rumor has it that the Juggalos are quite respectful people, so we'll find out.

Jessica: But, it's way cool and the stages are cool. Seeing it online, I, I thought that it was going to be a lot smaller. I didn't— I've only ever been to Douglass Park one other time when they had this festival called Heat Wave. I don't think that it's a thing any any longer, but it was a few years back and yeah, it's huge.

Aaron: So it normally isn't quite as hard as it was today to get around. The mud obviously makes it so much tougher, but it is a thing where like they put the stages as far apart as they can so that the sound bleed.

Jessica: Yeah, less sound bleed.

Aaron: So it's a little bit of a hike. I definitely get way more than my 10,000 steps every single day that I'm here.

Jessica: I do like— I like it. I like the walking. Yeah, I like the walking. I could do with a little less mud.

Aaron: Absolutely.

Big question: who did you come to see, and what was the verdict on that show?

Jessica: I came for Alanis.

Aaron: Yes.

Jessica: And it was so good. I saw her one time in Tinley a few years back, and this was way better. 'Cause I— we got pretty close. We got a pretty good spot for it.

Aaron: I was shocked at how close we were able to get, and that's not because it wasn't crowded up there. It's just because it helps to have somebody who's willing to push through the crowd and find a spot, which is you, where I'm just like, if I'm by myself, I'm just gonna chill in the back and look at the video screen. But this was like, oh, I can actually see her playing the harmonica.

Jessica: And her hair is so long, and she was just spinning up on stage. She's doing a million spins. Her voice is beautiful though.

Aaron: I'm amazed at anybody that sounds as good 30 years into their career as they did when they started. Her voice sounds fantastic up there.

Jessica: Yeah, she puts on a really great show and then she doesn't need a lot to do it. I mean, she's got— it's all pure, pure talent, right?

Aaron: She's definitely one of those people that I was thinking as the show was going on, like, this does matter. Like, the difference of seeing her performance live versus versus just listening to an album. Some bands, you know, it's kind of either way, or there's not really anything particularly different or special about their performance.

Jessica: But like, who was the one before, the Taking Back—

Aaron: Taking Back Sunday was before her. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica: I could have done the— just the radio on that one.

Aaron: Fair. Yeah. But Alanis, there's something about her vibe of just who she is as a person that you— that it really makes makes the music like that much stronger to actually see her, like you said, spinning in circles and just raging out in the middle of the song.

Jessica: And yeah, the energy.

Aaron: Yeah, still having the intensity. Yeah, on those songs that she did years ago.

Jessica: And I like the message that she— the, the pro-women message that she— not just women, but for, you know, people. Yeah, equality,

Aaron: Particularly gender equality.

Jessica: Yeah, that she puts out there. And I think that's important, so.

Aaron: And I think she did it without just like saying it and being preachy per se, but it was, you know, you had like the statistics on the background of the screen about basically how far we are away from gender equality and that kind of stuff. And it was just a very well done, I think, overall thing.

Jessica: It was sick. Good show. Two thumbs up.

Aaron: Would you return next year if there's some artists on here that are down your alley?

Jessica: I would, I would for a day, for a day, because it's, it was, it's so close by. Well, not too close by, it was like kind of like a 40-minute drive.

Aaron: Close enough.

Jessica: The parking was a little funny, but it is Douglass Park, so it's— you're gonna be walking for some, for some free [parking]. I'm cheap, we were talking about being cheap, so.

Aaron: Oh yeah, next year I'll give you more inside info on like how to navigate since I've done this enough years. I tried to give you what I could, but I think I forgot a couple of important points.

Jessica: No, it's okay.

Aaron: Nonetheless, well, thank you for joining me at the festival and for this little bit of bonus interview we get to do in the back of the Riot Fest press.

Jessica: Thanks for having me, Aaron.

Aaron: You're welcome. I was so excited. I was like, I need to sit in these chairs and talk to somebody. I didn't have any opportunities the other day, so— Well, bucket list checked off.

Jessica: Let's go see some clowns.

Aaron: Let's do it. Clown time. We'll see you later.

Aaron: Those were my conversations from Riot Fest. Again, stay tuned for next week's episode, which will be a full recap of the experience. Thank you for listening to The Itch. My name is Aaron, and until next time, you heard the lady, let's go see some clowns.

Aaron: If you enjoyed what you heard in this episode, please subscribe and tell a friend about The Itch.

KC: Check out the show notes for links about the episode as As well as our new music playlist and where you can hear us every Sunday night.

Dan: And you can interact with us at itchrocks.com or on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Gmail, all at Itchrocks. I-T-C-H-R-O-C-K-S.

Aaron: While she's still recording, can I get a liner from you guys? We do a radio show too, and we'll play you out sometime.

Ed Barkauskas: So you're listening to WMBC.

Aaron: Exactly.

Ed Barkauskas: Since you started doing these interviews, do you feel like it's, it's hard to look tough when you're holding like these little mics?

Aaron: Absolutely. There's nothing weirder than going out to people and being like, here, hold this little fuzzy square.

Ed Barkauskas: It's really hard to like have the tough guy kind of image when you're just like—

Aaron: I mean, the guy from Gwar did it, and again, he had a chainsaw in his hand, so— and then this in the other hand, so we can pull it off, I'm sure.

Ed Barkauskas: That'll do it.