Les is More

The new album is called "Of Fungi and Foe." So, which are you: A shittaki, white button or perhaps a more obscure mushroom species type guy?
 
Porcini. Yes, we find the big porcini's here in the wild (of Northern California).

We understand the new record started out as a soundtrack for a video game and a horror film. Intriguing. Tell us more.
 
I was commissioned to do some music for this sci-fi interactive game called "Mushroom Men," and commissioned to do a score for a film called "Pig Hunt," about a 3,000-pound wild boar that terrorizes the pot fields of northern California, and I did all this music and had all this music lying around and I said, 'Wow, I'd like to use it for something else,' so I rearranged some of it and put lyrics to it and it became about two-thirds of this record. And then with some stuff I did with Eugene Hutch of Gogol Bordello in a drunken haze, and some random things I had lying around in the studio ... I (finished) the record.

You have a role in "Pig Hunt," that of a demented preacher. How was that experience?
 
It went good, besides breaking my pinky on the first day of shooting. Very first scene, very first day, I grabbed this guy by the shirt (in a scene)... and it just twisted wrong. It's called a "Jersey Break."
 
You're such a unique individual and musician, but everyone has influences. What were your influences when you were growing up?
 
Many people influenced me. As early as "Underdog," up to Terry Gilliam (who) I saw at a hotel the other day in L.A., and that was very exciting. Musically, you know early on it was the Monkees, moving on to the Beatles and into Larry Graham (Sly and the Family Stone), Geddy Lee (Rush), old Peter Gabriel up to Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart.
 
You had incredible success with Primus and it was on your terms. Was this surprising?
 
I'm still surprised to this day. You know, we weren't the guys who were going to be on MTV or the radio. I just never thought it was going to happen. We figured maybe we'd get some college radio, but it went way beyond what we ever thought it would.
 
Tell us about your experience in the super group Oysterhead, which included yourself, Stuart Copeland of the Police and Trey Anastasio of Phish?
 
It went fantastic. To be honest with you, I didn't really know that Trey was that big. I knew of Phish and he was my friend ... I just never realized how popular they (Phish) were. It was all very casual on the Oysterhead project. It was spectacular and me and Stewart have become close friends.
 
Copeland is known as being somewhat prickly personality-wise. Did you find this to be true?
 
He's actually not prickly, he's very opinionated and he's like the loud guy in the room (laughs). He's actually a big, happy guy ... like a big Labrador retreiver.
 
How did your involvement with the theme from "South Park" come about. In retrospect, was it a blessing or a curse?
 
I definitely see it as a blessing, because Matt (Stone) and Trey (Parker, creators of "South Park") are such very good friends of mine, and I wouldn't have had that relationship had we not done that project. They were big fans, and at the time they were working on the pilot had bee listening to this record I had just done called "Highball with the Devil," and they asked me to do the theme song ... at the time, we had just gotten a new drummer in Primus, and I said 'Well, let's have Primus do it.' We didn't even think it was going to get on television, let alone become this huge thing.
 
Tell us about Claypool Cellars. You made some wine?
 
Bascially, I live in the ... pinot noir capital of California ... and me and some buddies just decided to make some wine and we made a lot of it (laughs), and we're selling some off. It actually came out great, it's really, really good. It'll start going out to restaurants in Northern California in the next couple of weeks.

Your tour will be taking you to Orlando next week. Now, you don't have a guitarist in the band. Why is that?
 
Yeah, I haven't had a guitarist in my band for about four years. I had a (sitar player) for a while, and last year it was just saxophone, and this year it's the cello. I'm just changing it up. I really love the cello ... I think it's a great contrast between what I'm doing.