Melvins guitarist/singer Buzz Osborne has learned quite a bit about touring in his 40-plus years with the sludge metal pioneers.
Before touring, Osborne sits down with a map and a calendar, plotting a route that will, mostly, hit the bigger cities on weekdays and the smaller markets on weekends.
“Chicago on a Friday is kind of silly. Sometimes you have to do that,” Osborne said in a recent phone call. “There’s just no way around it. But you want your Friday in Indianapolis and your Saturday in Grand Rapids, then play Thursday night in Chicago. Friday night in Milwaukee, that makes much more sense, Saturday night in Madison, Wisconsin. But nobody ever takes that kind of stuff into consideration when they’re routing stuff.”
If there’s a day pegged for long travel, he shoots for a Sunday since there will usually be less traffic.
“I think that makes it to where we can tour for longer periods of time than lots of people,” Osborne said. “You’re not in the van eight hours a day.”
Or, for example, the Philadelphia-to-Pittsburgh trek, “driving across that (expletive) state takes you all day,” he said with a laugh. Although this time, Melvins will be traveling from Boston to Pittsburgh — with a day off in between — when the Savage Imperial Death March Part II tour hits Mr. Smalls Theatre on May 10. The tour, with co-headliners Napalm Death and Melvins, also features Titan to Tachyons and Dark Sky Burial.
The current Melvins touring lineup includes Osborne, bassist Steven McDonald and a pair drummers: Coady Willis (Big Business) and Dale Crover, who is back after having emergency spinal surgery in 2023. Their most recent release, “Thunderball,” came from their Melvins 1983 iteration, which features Osborne and original drummer Mike Dillard, with contributions from guest electronic artists Void Manes and Ni Maîtres.
Osborne, who praised PNC Park and pondered great quarterbacks from the Pittsburgh region, said the Andy Warhol Museum is one of his favorite destinations in Pittsburgh.
In a call from Tucson, Arizona, Osborne also discussed Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown, Melvins 1983, “Honey Bucket” and the Black Sabbath farewell show:
I wouldn’t have pegged you for such a big sports fan.
I don’t really like football, but I do admire Hall of Fame people on that level. You can usually learn something from them. Probably not a lot of things, but I was really good friends with Jim Brown, the football player who died. I golfed with him a lot, and I would get to ask him questions, and it’s really interesting to hear the kind of stuff that he said.
From people working at an elite level?
The highest level, especially somebody like him, a Hall of Famer who in some circles would be considered the greatest football player of all time.
A good actor, too…
Yeah, he had a really funny quote. I go, ‘Why did you only play nine years?’ He goes, ‘I accomplished everything I wanted to do,and then I started making movies with Raquel Welch.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, you made the right choice.’ (laughs)
When it comes to touring, what’s the most important thing about going on the road with bands. Are there red flags you look out for? Are there bands that you don’t want to tour with?
Well, plenty. I don’t want to go out with a bunch of violent people. I don’t go out with a bunch of drugged-out idiots. I don’t want to go out with somebody who’s a prima donna (expletive). Just rock star-ish behavior of any sort, I don’t have much tolerance for. I don’t behave that way myself. I expect other people not to as well. But I knew the guys from Napalm Death, and we’d played with them before. We toured with them in 2016, I had no problem with that. I knew that was going to be fine, so I know this one’s going to be fine too.
This tour is going to have the double drummer experience, so what do you think that adds to the show?
I’m really excited about it. We did six warm-up shows here in California already and that worked out really great. And so it’s a little bit different. We did it for a long time, then we haven’t done it for a long time. So I think it’ll be a good thing. People will be excited to see it.
Did the idea for that really originate when Melvins were opening for Nirvana?
Double drumming? Kind of, Dave (Grohl) would come out and play with us sometimes. We were supposed to do stuff with him on the “Stoner Witch” record, but we could never really get a hold of him at the time, so we just did the record without him. I’m not going to wait. But things are very strange in those camps. Once you get a lot of 10 percenters or managers and people like that involved, it tends to make things more complicated than they need to be.
In regards to “Thunderball,” how do you know when it’s time for a Melvins 1983 album?
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I planned it a long time ago, and it seemed like it had been time enough. I had some songs that I wrote ‘cause I have to write stuff that Mike can specifically play. He’s not massively good at the super off-time stuff. So I have to write things that are good, that he can handle. So that’s always fun. So I’ve done three albums like that now. It was just time to do another one. I don’t know when we’ll do another one after this, but maybe never. I don’t know.
How do you differentiate these songs between songs that you’d play with Dale?
Well, these ones I would specifically write with the idea that I’m not going to put a lot of odd hiccups in it, which is my normal way of doing things. So I have to put the brakes on a lot of my wacky ideas. There’s really nothing I can’t play or write that Coady or Dale couldn’t play. But with Mike, I’m more limited, but I still think it came out good. I still write stuff that’s not complicated for the regular Melvins as well. And for this one, I have to just make sure I don’t get too crazy with it.
How did the electronic artists take this album into sort of a new territory?
I’ve been wanting to work with them for a long time. So what I did was, I had them record a bunch of stuff. They sent it to me, and then I added it in and mixed that song, “Vomit of Clarity.” I put that together out of the stuff they sent me and then utilized their stuff anywhere I could on the record.
With something like this, does this push you outside of your comfort zone, adding the electronic stuff?
No, I think it’s really great to add it. I’ve done 30-plus records. It’s nice to do something different. I’m a big fan of things like that. We’ve always thought we could fit Throbbing Gristle and things like that into our music fairly easily. We always have, but I thought Melvins 1983, combined with these two guys, I think it would be great.
What else do you think has held this band together over the 40-plus years?
Keeping it simple, as far as business-wise and how many moving parts there are. Not taking yourself too seriously in the rock star department. I don’t have much faith in those kinds of things. Keeping your head on straight, realizing that, don’t believe everything you read about how great you are. (laughs) Probably a bad idea. With reviews, what you should probably do is throw out all the really good ones and all the really bad ones. And then you probably have something more realistic.
Do you think having a “hit song” would have changed the band at all?
Well, it would have given us more money, but I don’t know. I don’t know what people want. I have no idea. I think all of our records should sell millions. They just don’t.
Looking back, is it hard to believe that this band had a major-label deal?
Well, nobody was more surprised than me. I thought they’d do the one record and that would be it. We did end up doing three albums. If I had that deal in front of me right now, I’d sign it. I didn’t have any problem doing it. I knew it was going to be the beginning or end of our band, that’s for sure. But at the time, the big wheel band on the label was Stone Temple Pilots. They were selling a ton of records, and we weren’t really fitting into that. And I didn’t have much interest in fitting into it. So I just beavered away making records that I really liked. And they’re some of our best records. I was really happy to do it. It was a great, fun experience.
One of the songs from that time is “Honey Bucket.” That’s still a crushing song and a live staple.
Well, I wasn’t really thinking much when I wrote that. I wrote very quickly in San Francisco in my bedroom, which is pretty much where I wrote all my songs then. And I remember writing it and I came up with the main riff of the song first. (hums riff) I go, that’s really cool. And so then I wrote the rest of the song around it. Probably took me about 20 minutes.
Sometimes when you don’t overthink it, that’s when the best stuff happens.
Well, sometimes you have something that’s really good and you just can’t finish it. Sometimes. And that’s happened to me I don’t know how many times. It’s just like some song, you finally finish it and you wrote it 20 years before that. But people think it’s new. (laughs)
What they don’t know doesn’t hurt them, right?
It’s new to them.
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Since you’re a big fan of Black Sabbath, I was wondering what your thoughts were on the Back to the Beginning farewell show that they’re doing later this year?
Well, I think this is about Ozzy (Osbourne)’s 16th farewell show. Is that right? I’m not sure. He did a farewell show in about ‘95. I thought it was weird that they announced it. They have this giant stacked bill, that’s fine, whatever. And it’s a picture of the whole band, the original band. They announce it, final show. And so then they sell all the tickets, some stadium. Then after it sold out and always announcing them on a Sunday night when there’s the least amount of traffic: Ozzy’s in a wheelchair. OK, fine, everybody can accept that. He’s got Parkinson’s or something, but he’s in a wheelchair. Everybody can accept that.
Then they announced Ozzy will sing, but they’re not gonna do a whole set. OK… Then they announced that they’re not gonna do whole songs. They’re just gonna do parts of songs. So then you sit there going, oh, what the (expletive) is this? I mean, (drummer) Bill Ward couldn’t even play in the last tour and somebody else did it. So what would make anyone think that he could play this show? So I don’t know what the (expletive) they’re doing. I have no idea. Now Ozzy, in and of itself, and the rest of the Sabbath guys, whatever.
I don’t like the powers that be that are around Ozzy. We did an OzzFest with Tool. Tool really wanted us to do it in ‘98. And I thought them and their operation, the powers that be in (the Ozzfest) operation, were a bunch of (expletive) (expletives). I hated every minute of it. So I have no interest or love for the people that are running the show for Ozzy. But Ozzy’s in really super bad shape and has been since he was in his 30s and 40s. I kind of feel sorry for him, but it’s sort of like when they ran (Motörhead’s) Lemmy (Kilmister) into the ground on tour right before he died. It’s like, I don’t know if this is the best thing. It just seems like, well, good on ya. If you can make that much money, but it seems weird to me. I wouldn’t go, even if I had a ticket.
I guess there’s no plans for a show like this for Melvins whenever you decide to wrap it up?
Well, we’re not gonna sell out a stadium, that’s for sure. You quit either because nobody cares if you do it or you don’t want to do it. To me, that’s why you quit, right? So I don’t know. I can’t afford to go on tour and lose a bunch of money. I can’t afford to make records that don’t make any money. I can’t. If I can’t make records work, then I won’t make records. If I can’t make live work, then I won’t play live.
It seems like it’s still working for you now.
Still working OK, so take it from there. That’s all we can do.