CBS SF talks to Mr. Bungle bassist and jazz experimentalist Trevor Dunn (Part II)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Prolific bass player Trevor Dunn made his name as a member of the iconoclastic Northern California band Mr. Bungle, but he has gone on to establish himself as a versatile player capable of a wide range of musical styles as well as a noted member of New York City's avant-garde jazz scene,
Mr. Bungle initially created crafted an anarchic style of thrash/death metal that would grow to incorporate elements of ska and funk, but the band's music would evolve dramatically to introduce elements of experimental jazz, modern classical, soundtrack music and punk. Dunn's career has been equally broad and omnivorous, with the bassist participating in a pair of groups involving fellow Bungle founder and singer Mike Patton (Fantômas and Tomahawk), playing bass in a stripped-down version of the Melvins as well as a myriad of jazz ensembles connected to NYC composer/saxophonist John Zorn, collaborations with other players and his own Trio Convulsant.
ALSO READ: CBS SF talks to Mr. Bungle bassist and jazz experimentalist Trevor Dunn (Part I)
CBS San Francisco recently spoke with bassist Dunn about the genesis of the band's Raging Wrath line-up, plans for the upcoming Geek Show Tour with longtime friends the Melvins and his own busy recording and touring schedule. The Geek Show comes to the Fox Theater for two nights next week.
Note: This interview was edited for clarity.
CBS SF: I love the way the new and improved Raging Wrath came out and I also love the live stream version the band put out. I was wondering if you have any preference between how the two sound?
Trevor Dunn: For the album recording, we used a different engineer to mix it than who recorded it, Jay. Ruston mixed it remotely. He was in LA and we were all in our separate homes during the pandemic, and he would send a mix and we'd comment on it and stuff. And we were so happy with what he did on that, we had him do the live stream mix. I think we I think we rehearsed a little bit and then we basically ran the whole show [for the live stream]. The original idea was we were gonna run the show twice and then edit the best stuff together. In the end, once we rehearsed a little bit and did the whole show, we were exhausted. That was it! We were done. But there was a tiny bit of editing in that -- because it was recorded in a multitrack studio, we wanted it to feel and look like a live show, which it was -- but there were a couple of flubs that we were felt we needed to fix. But, yeah, I'm super happy with the way that came out.
Bungle proper as I call it, the Warner Brothers-era Bungle, our live shows, I would say were...questionable maybe [laughs]? They weren't always the tightest, probably because we were trying to do too much and there was a lot of chaos. But I never thought we would put out a live record. As a live experience, we were hopefully a fun band to see, but nothing that needed to be recorded. This was different. This was a different thing, especially with the video. It was kind of a big deal at that time [late October of 2020, during the height of the pandemic] to come out with this live show when no one was able to see music. It was really important. It felt good to be able to do that.
CBS SF: Yeah, the streams that were out there certainly provided a lot of entertainment and needed release for lots of people. With this new tour, I was wondering how you might be mixing up the material performed? I am guessing that the Warner Brothers Bungle might still be off the table, but are there new covers? That version of "Loss of Control" from the stream is probably the greatest Van Halen cover I've ever heard...
Trevor Dunn: That's funny. That's a song that Patton has been wanting to cover for years. He wanted to with Fantômas but it just wasn't the right band for it, you know? Finally, with this [version of Bungle], we were able to do it. It's a blast. That whole Women and Children First album is my favorite Van Halen record by far. But yeah, there's a couple. We've figured since we've already played LA with this book of music. It's the only repeat city, I guess, though we're playing Oakland.
So there are a couple new things we're going to do, which I probably shouldn't expose. I just want to keep it a surprise. In the spirit of Mr. Bungle always doing stuff you didn't expect, there may be something that you didn't expect. I don't really want to give it away. I guess we'll probably still do that Van Halen song because we've only done that on the live stream. We basically learned it for that. And then we went to South America in December, and we played it down there. So we'll probably do it for for this set, as well as a couple of other things.
CBS SF: Given the history between the various players on the Geek Show tour -- you with Buzz and Dale in Melvins Lite and you doing the acoustic duo with Buzz, and everybody from Fantômas -- could fans see some unexpected combinations of musicians onstage? I mean, if Fantômas was going to play a surprise mini set, I wouldn't expect you to tell me. But here I am, asking anyway...
Trevor Dunn: That's interesting. To be honest, I personally hadn't thought about it. But I can tell you, right off the bat: over the past 10 years if I'm not mistaken, all the Fantômas shows we've done have all been The Director's Cut, It's the most popular record and it's the easiest for us to relearn whenever we have to get together for rehearsal. All that other stuff, oh my God, it took so long to get together that I think we're all just terrified of it now. To go back and have to relearn that stuff, we'd need weeks of rehearsal. And that's not going to happen. I'm flying out to LA right before our first show and we have two days rehearsal [laughs].
CBS SF: I'll just hope that everybody being in the same room a lot on the road together will maybe engender future projects. If I recall correctly, you and Buzz were going to tour as a duo in the Spring of 2020 when the Gift of Sacrifice album came out that also was a casualty of the pandemic...
Trevor Dunn: We've been talking about doing that ever since. He's got to work around touring -- obviously Melvins are road dogs. He's also waiting for Redd Kross to finish their record, so that when they go on tour, me and Buzz can do our own thing. So we're kind of talking about next year doing a full tour of the States as a duo, and then also going to Europe. It remains to be seen. Right now, it's just talk, but it would be great. We've never played that stuff live yet. We might even record some more. But yeah, that's a really fun thing to do. It's super weird.
CBS SF: It's definitely unique. How often you get to hear Buzz like playing acoustic guitar with bowed stand-up bass?
Trevor Dunn: He put out that the solo record and Gift of Sacrifice was originally going to be his second solo record. Then he was like, "Hey, why don't you play on a couple songs?" I went out to LA and ended up playing on almost everything. That's when he was like, "Okay, I'm gonna call this King Buzzo with Trevor Dunn." And then we got together after that and recorded a bunch of songs and released two separate four-song EPs. One of them is on Amphetamine Reptile, and then we put out on four different songs on my label [Riverworm Records] that I started during the pandemic, which is a very, super DIY thing. But we only made 200 of those and they sold out immediately. But I think you can...actually, you know what? No, I don't think you can get it digitally. I don't know what's going on with my own label [laughs]. But we kind of did that on purpose.
The cool thing about those is that there we got together and we basically wrote and recorded a record in like two days. We just kind of like threw out ideas, and while one guy was recording his parts, the other guy was writing lyrics. It was super fun to do and really easy to because that's the thing about Buzz: he's super open minded. He'll just be like, "Yeah, whatever you want to do. I don't care. Whatever." Even when he showed me Melvins songs. "You don't have to play with the other guy played. Play something else!" Those are the people I like to play with.
CBS SF: I also wanted to touch on the Kevin Rutmanis collaboration that came out earlier this year. It's another unexpected project two different Melvins bassists working together. How did you connect with him for it? Sounds like it was more of a file sharing sort of scenario rather than being in the same room writing together.
Trevor Dunn: Yeah, totally. That's what it was. Basically, we've always been in touch and he asked me to play on one thing that he'd kind of made at home. He wanted some upright bass on it. So I did that and then we're like, "Hey, why don't we do some more?" We started just throwing ideas at each other. It's almost more like sound collage, I think. I get to do a lot of weird stuff that I would not normally do like incorporate samples and play different instruments. There's no limits to what we're going to do here. It doesn't doesn't have to be in tune, it doesn't have to have any form. I think of it almost more as sound art than songs, really.
CBS SF: I was thinking back on the more underground jazz and improv scene in the Bay Area during the late '80s and early '90s and all the great players I used to see, including a number of people you've worked with at various points. I was curious if you get much opportunity to either reconnect personally or actually play with people like Graham Connah, Scott Amendola, or John Schott?
Trevor Dunn: Well, Graham hasn't really been playing in a long time. I do see him occasionally. John Schott I haven't played with in years. I know he's still busy. But Scott, I've played with a few times. He's a great hustler and he's always thinking of stuff to do. Sometimes when I go out to the West Coast, we'll throw together a little tour. We did a trio thing with [clarinet player] Ben Goldberg a few years ago, probably 2017 or something like that. We just did a little run up through California to Seattle. We just all brought some tunes, had a quick rehearsal and did some gigs. It was super fun to be in the van with those guys.
A lot of musicians from out there moved to New York. I guess more work. But I would say Scott is the main one I still play with. And, of course, Phillip Greenleaf. Phillip and I just put out a new duo record on my label a couple years ago. We made a duo record almost 30 years ago, and this is our second one. Actually, the name of the record is 27, because it was 27 years since our first record [laughs].
CBS SF: I guess the the last thing was like I was gonna ask about what work you've been doing with John Zorn lately. The last time I saw you actually playing with him here goes back ages, I think it was a Dreamers show at the Yoshi's in San Francisco, which has long since closed. That was in 2010. Is the Dreamers still and active project? Or do you have other things you've been doing with Zorn or anything coming up?
Trevor Dunn: Dreamers hasn't been active in a while. Zorn kind of goes through phases with his bands. He'll have a band for a certain amount of years and then just move on to another project. So Dreamers hasn't done anything in a while, but I was actually just at the Big Ears Festival down in Knoxville with Zorn and did a couple things with him. We did a Cobra [one of Zorn's improvisational game pieces] and he's got this whole this book of Bagatelles he calls them.
They're kind of like Masada tunes, except it's a different harmonic language. It's not based on like Yiddish scales or anything like that. Some of it's atonal, some of it's more groove oriented. But he's got all these different bands and I did two of those: a piano trio with Brian Marsella and then this trio with [guitarist] Mark Ribot.
So that's all Zorn's music. Then actually while we were down there, Zorn was going to do this version of Painkiller that originally was going to be with Bill Laswell and Lombardo. And then Laswell got sick, so it was going to be with Christian McBride, which would have been a super oddball trio [laughs]. And then he got sick, so I got the gig. So I did a trio gig with Zorn and Lombardo that was all improv. That was a blast. It was super fun.
Mr. Bungle, Melvins and Spotlights bring the Geek Show Tour to the Fox Theater in Oakland for two nights starting Tuesday, May 23.