CBS SF talks to Mr. Bungle bassist and jazz experimentalist Trevor Dunn (Part I)
SAN FRANCISCO -- A rare musician equally comfortable in the realms of both avant-garde jazz and experimental rock, bassist Trevor Dunn has had a colorful and prolific career ever since first emerging in the mid-to-late 1980s as a member of iconoclastic outfit Mr. Bungle.
One of the most influential groups to emerge from the fertile Bay Area scene in the late '80s, Mr. Bungle had its roots deep in the weird firmament of Humboldt County earlier in the decade.
Started in 1985 in Eureka when founding members Spruance, singer Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Jed Watts were still in their teens, Mr. Bungle initially created crafted an anarchic style of thrash/death metal that incorporated elements of ska and funk, but their music would evolve dramatically to introduce elements of avant-garde jazz, soundtrack music and punk.
Their first self-produced and released demo, The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny in 1986 found the band just starting to develop a death-metal-meets-ska sound heavily influenced by the early efforts of Slayer, Anthrax and the legendary Anthrax side project Stormtroopers of Death.
Bungle would release two more demos, eventually relocating to Ukiah for a time (members attended and studied music at Humboldt State) before moving to San Francisco when Patton was hired as the lead singer to similarly genre-smashing SF rock band Faith No More.
That group was launched to international fame with their first album with Patton, The Real Thing, in 1989. With sales fueled largely by the MTV hit "Epic" that matched the singer's rapped vocals to a soaring chorus and headbanging metal riff, the success of the album led to a record deal for Mr. Bungle, who recorded their self-titled experimental funk-metal debut with NYC punk-jazz maverick John Zorn.
While the group could have played up Patton's matinee idol looks, Mr. Bungle instead matched the dark carnival soundtrack of their music with an equally disturbing visual sense that featured the members in Halloween costumes and clown or bondage masks while playing live onstage. The band also built a massive catalog of cover songs, mixing everything from '70s television themes, pop hits, soundtrack obscurities (Henry Mancini and Ennio Morricone were composers of choice) and punk/metal favorites into setlists during the controlled chaos of their concerts.
Mr. Bungle produced two more albums over the course of the '90s -- the wildly avant-garde effort Disco Volante in 1995 and the more pop-minded but still strange California in 1999 -- but went on an extended hiatus in 2000. Patton, Spruance and Dunn have collaborated on a variety of projects, including Patton's bands Fantômas (which includes Patton and Dunn along with former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne), Tomahawk and Mondo Cane, recordings and performances with Spruance's longtime avant-rock project Secret Chiefs 3 and Patton singing with Lombardo's band Dead Cross.
In the summer of 2019, Mr. Bungle fans were shocked by a surprise announcement that Spruance, Patton and Dunn would reunite under the moniker to revisit the band's Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny demo for a series of concerts in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, augmented by Lombardo on drums and Anthrax/SOD guitarist Scott Ian.
While some might have been disappointed that the group didn't play any material from Bungle's three classic albums, sold-out crowds were treated to an absolutely blistering display by the five musicians. The band delivered brutal versions of the demo's songs along with three previously unrecorded tunes from the era that sounded like a long lost '80s thrash masterpiece. The group also unleashed a slew of mostly hardcore covers by bands like Corrosion of Conformity, Cro-Mags, Stormtroopers of Death, 7 Seconds, the Exploited and, in typically perverse Bungle fashion, soft-rock legends Seals & Croft. Those live shows served as intensive rehearsals for the re-recording of The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo, which was released on Patton's Ipecac Recordings imprint in the fall of 2020, the day before the band reconvened for a Halloween livestream performance staged at the Humboldt Public Library that included a blistering take on Van Halen's rock anthem "Loss of Control."
While the new album and subsequent release of a recording taken from the livestream were widely praised, the group was unable to capitalize on the return to the stage after Patton put all touring plans for both Faith No More and Mr. Bungle on hold the following year as he dealt with what he described as "mental health issues" that were "exacerbated by the pandemic." He would later clarify that he began suffering from the anxiety disorder agoraphobia and wasn't comfortable being around people, much less delivering the kind of intense live performances he is known for in front of thousands.
Happily, Patton has since begun performing again, playing a number of dates with Mr. Bungle in South America last December. 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 later this month.
Note: This interview was edited for clarity.
CBS SF: I have interviewed you before, but it was like ten or twelve years ago, I think, in connection with a Tomahawk or Melvins Lite tour. I talked to Trey about the Bungle reunion more recently, right before the album release and Halloween livestream. He mentioned that it was really your idea to revisit the Raging Wrath demo. It was really the first time we talked about Mr. Bungle in depth. In the past, there was no Mr. Bungle discussion other than asking if the band might reunite since you and him and Patton were working together on other projects.
Generally, you were both kind of blasé about it. Actually, I remember what you said about the idea of Mr. Bungle getting back together when we talked, because it stuck in my head. You compared it to making out with an old girlfriend or an ex-wife. To a non musician, that makes a lot of sense...
Trevor Dunn: [Laughs] I think I stand by the fact that that's the way I felt at that time. In the 20 years that we weren't playing, a lot of people would always ask about it. You know, "Are you guys ever going to play again?" As a band, we'd never talked about it, so it wasn't really a definite no. But I kind of liked to say that it was a definite no, just to shut people up, essentially [laughs]. Because I didn't know.
I mean, I had this idea for the Raging Wrath thing years ago, quite a while before I brought it up to the other guys, because I didn't know how they were going to respond. They might just laugh and be like, "That's a ridiculous idea." But everyone was down immediately, so it was cool.
CBS SF: That actually was what my first proper question was going to be. How long had you been contemplating it before springing it on them. I think Trey said that when you brought it up at a Dead Cross show in Brooklyn, you were saying, "This doesn't even necessarily have to be Mr. Bungle. We can just do the Raging Wrath thing."
Trevor Dunn: Trey and Mike and I have always had kind of a soft spot in our hearts for that first demo. And over the years, we we would bust out parts of it and no one would had any idea what the f--k we were doing because no one heard it or could tell what it was because the original [recording] was so degenerated. The YouTube videos that you can find from those multi-duped tapes that were used...
CBS SF: Like sixth or seventh generation dubs?
Trevor Dunn: Yeah, exactly. That's the word I was looking for. When Mr. Bungle toured in Europe in the 90s, we would play parts of "Sudden Death" or whatever, and people just thought we were playing some obscure metal. Which we were [laughs], but we were covering ourselves essentially. Me and Trey and Mike were the ones involved in that with our original drummer. And then I think somewhere around the time, I don't remember exactly, but when Fantômas was active, I came to know Dave [Lombardo], and he became a friend and a colleague as opposed to just the drummer from Slayer.
It was like, "Man, we wrote this music with him in mind, essentially. So what if we did this?" And everyone was like, "Oh, my God! That's amazing!" So it just felt like a fun thing to do. It's a reboot, but it's also polishing it off and making it better. It was kind of this...well, not unfinished, but this unrefined thing and there are ideas we still believe in on that recording, so why not present it in the right way? The way we imagined it in our heads when we were too young and naive and not experienced enough to realize the time.
CBS SF: Was Scott Ian the first person you thought of as far as a second guitar player? It seems pretty clear he'd be a great candidate. I've described it to people as an alternate universe mid-to-late '80s thrash classic. There is a timeline where that actually came out as a record at that time...
Trevor Dunn: Mike and I graduated high school in '86. Trey was like, a year later; maybe actually two years. So we grew up riding the wave of '80s metal. Every Slayer record was getting heavier and heavier, and then finally Reign in Blood came out. [Metallica's] Ride the Lightning was a big record, because of the tempos. We were like, "The faster the better!"
Originally, I thought it would just be a quartet record the way the demo was. And then Mike had the idea of bringing in Scott. I had met Scott several times over the years, touring. I met him at a festival or something. And he was always cool. Actually I think it must have been when Fantômas was playing somewhere in Europe, and we ran into Anthrax. They were playing on another stage. I remember talking to [Anthrax drummer] Charlie Benante and Scott and we were kind of shooting the s--t about New York and the avant-garde scene and John Zorn and stuff like that. And I was like, "Holy s--t, you guys know about that kind of stuff? You're the most open-minded metal guys I've ever met in my life!"
So yeah, Mike had this idea and my first thought was like, "Ah, we don't want to have a second guitar player! Trey can do this." But then Trey was down with the idea too. Because Trey's solos on that original demo are kind of the the icing on the cake. They're so amazing. When we were in the studio a couple years ago working on this the record, we made sure: "Man, you've got to do this solo as close as possible [to the demo]! Like that weird that weird harmonic thing? You've got to do that." Because we always loved those. We always called them his video game solos.
So Scott was the first choice and he made the most sense, actually. Of course, not having played with him before, we didn't know what it was gonna be like. And then he showed up with the first rehearsal more prepared than anybody. He's like, "No, it goes to this section now." And aside from that, he's a lot like Dave. He's a machine. The guy's a real rhythm guitar player, which is kind of an underrated skill, I think. He's great.
CBS SF: I definitely would put his right hand up against anybody's, including Hetfield's.
Trevor Dunn: Yeah, he's about the best.
CBS SF: I apologize that I'm going to keep referring back to the chat with Trey, just because it did provide a good launching point for these questions. He talked about how he actually recorded the new demos that he sent to Dave and Scott in the same house in Eureka where he'd recorded the original as a teenager. I think it was really just happenstance, but it sounded like almost the musical equivalent of method acting as far as helping him get back kind of into that teenage mindset and the different approach he had to guitar. How did you approach revisiting the work of your teenage self? Were you trying to stay faithful to what you did originally and not really mess with it, despite all the experience and knowledge that you've gained since the time that you recorded the original demo?
Trevor Dunn: Well, I made a couple new demos too, because there are a couple of songs that weren't on the original demo, but they were written after we did the original demo with the idea in mind that the we'd keep going with that kind of music. And that was the point when we started to branch out musically and never learned those songs. They only existed on on cassette. So I had to make these new demos with drum ideas so that Dave could hear it. The funny thing is, I still have the same Les Paul that I've had for 35 years or something. This is the same guitar that I wrote all that music on. So it was a similar thing. I mean, I was doing in New York, but I was making these demos and playing the guitar parts on the same guitar.
But man, one thing I realized was my age difference. Because all those songs are really fast. They're really up there, tempo wise. All of them, you know? I mean, there's a few parts here and there where we go into half time or whatever, but in general, there's not a huge range in tempos. I think it's essentially because we were hormone-riddled teenagers. So when I was making the demos here at home, I was like, "Oh, my God, I can't pick this fast anymore [laughs]! My right hand was giving out! Thank God for being able to edit in [recording software] Logic so I can just do this a few bars at a time [laughs]. Musically, I really wanted to stay true to the songs. There were some mistakes on the demo, because we did one take or whatever. Most of those bothered me. Like, "We've got to fix this. This transition needs to go this way." But I really wanted to stay true to the idea.
CBS SF: It sounds like the approach was close to what Trey talked about. It was very much, "This is the window that we're talking about. This is the window that we're recapturing. It's Mr. Bungle circa 1985-86." So there's no ska, there's no funk, there's none of the avant-garde aspect that everyone is familiar with from your later music. Was it hard, especially given that a good deal of your work during the intervening years was more in the arena of improv and avant-garde jazz, to divorce yourself from that part of your musical experience?
Trevor Dunn: Yeah, it's pretty easy. I guess you'd call that compartmentalizing. And I have to do that a lot actually, because obviously I play a lot of different kinds of music. I play upright bass. Sometimes I need to read music. Sometimes it's important to not read music. I play with musicians who don't know how to read music, and I play with other musicians who can read in circles around me, you know? They're way more advanced than me.
So depending on the band and what the situation is, I always focus on that at that given time. If I'm playing in someone else's band and they have a style of music that they're after and have certain things they want me to do as the bass player, I'm going to try to realize their vision. I'm not going to be like, "Well, that's not how I do it in this other band." If I can pat myself on the back for anything, it's being able to do that. I feel like that may be one strength that I have that not a lot of other musicians have; to be able to kind of reel back when I need to and push it forward when I need to and adapt. It's really just a matter of adapting to the situation.
That was the thing when Fantômas first started. When I first met Dave and Buzz, I didn't know anything about what they knew about music. Mike doesn't read or write music, so he just made demos for all of us to learn orally. When we got in the first practice, I kind of assumed that Buzz was like a theory genius or something, just based on the Melvin's record Ozma [laughs]. And then we got in there and he was like, "Well, this song has a hiccup." He was speaking a different language and it wasn't my language, and I'm like, "Oh s-t!" And Dave reads a little bit, but not a ton. I transcribed all the bass stuff from Mike's demos and I had charts in front of me, and that's how I learned it. Which is kind of how I learn anything. It helps me memorize it, it helps me to understand it, as opposed to just doing it by ear. But, eventually I have to get off the page. I have to internalize it and then rely on my ear. But in that situation, I kind of had to do that right off the bat. No one speaks my language here, so I have to adapt. That was a huge kind of learning curve for me, actually. It opened me up in a lot of ways, I think.
CBS SF: I was lucky and got to see a lot of the San Francisco Fantômas gigs. The fact that so much of what sounds like pure chaos is completely orchestrated still kind of blows my mind. It's sort of like with some of Zorn's music. There's so much intention happening in what still sounds like a quartet falling down a flight of stairs.
Trevor Dunn: I was surprised when people came up to us afterwards and thought it was improvised. I'm like, "Are you kidding me? If I could improvise like that, I'd be rich." I did a gig just last week here in New York with some guys who are younger than me and great improvisers and we played for 50 minutes straight. Two of the guys I'd never met before. There was zero talk about what to play musically. Basically the bandleader was like, "Let's just play for 50 minutes." And that's what we did and it was great. Everyone was listening, so there were a lot of amazing moments that you might think were composed. From an audience perspective, I've had comments about both angles, like "Was that all improvised?" Or "Was that all composed?" And sometimes it's like the opposite of what you would think.
It just kind of kind of goes to show that improvisation is...another term that people use for it is "spontaneous composition." When I talk to students about composition and improvisation, to me that the real difference is time. One, you have an idea and you can go back and rewrite it, like you're writing a book. The other one is in the immediate moment, like you're having a conversation. I'm not the greatest public speaker. In this interview, if I could go back and rewrite my answers, they would be much clearer. But occasionally some wisdom comes out when I'm speaking spontaneously [laughs].
The second part of this interview discussing Dunn's work with Buzz Osborne and Melvins Lite as well as possible surprises on the upcoming Geek Show Tour has been published ahead of the upcoming shows at the Fox Theater in Oakland.
