You've always had a country influence in your playing.
I can't help being in rock bands -- that's how it turned out. But I'd love to get involved with Nashville. I bet if I called Pete Anderson and Dwight Yoakam, they'd collaborate with me. I know people would. It's just a matter of doing it.

This reminds me of two words my editor wanted me to be say to you -- Grateful Dead.
Even they tried to collaborate with us. People don't know that, but I got a letter from their road manager around the time Forbidden Places came out, in '91. He was asking for five tapes for the band's "edification and approval." (Laughs)

He used those words in the letter?
Yeah. It was fuckin' hilarious. I still know people in the Grateful Dead organization. Saw 'em last month up in San Francisco. And they are some of the most out-there people. Just hangin' out with them reminds you of being on acid. And it reminds you of being at the Dead, and what a big spirit it was, and how real it could be.

Now with Phish on hiatus, what are all those people gonna do?
Those people are different people than were going to Dead shows, dude. They are not the same people. The real fucking mutants hit the hills. The people that Bob Weir was talking about when he said "Misfit Power," they don't go to fuckin' Phish concerts.

Okay, okay -- the "Touch of Grey" people then.
Dude -- Jerry is dead. I mean, ask your editor. I can't get into the whole Phish scene. Like Bill Graham said, "The Grateful Dead aren't the best at what they do, they're the only ones who do it." That remains true and always will be. They're as difficult to pigeonhole as Van Gogh.

Do you have a favorite boy band?
I like boy bands. I like Britney Spears better, though. Her music's not as depressing.

There's a line on your new record: "Blue wing bat vine cannibal" that made me think of a theory of mine -- that people have such a taste for pork because it taste like us.
I know that in New Guinea, some of the cannibalistic tribes, their name for humans is "Long Pig."

If you think of it -- we can use pig skin for skin grafts, our bodies accept their heart valves… We're compatible.
Yeah. Well, if we're not careful, human flesh is gonna be the only meat that's left around. So we're gonna have to get used to it.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Sean O'Neill is a natural born bonehead whose last-minute ramblings have been printed on the pages of New Times LA, Hits, Request, the late, lamented Musician, and a wide variety of other ill-fated publications.