PATRICK OGLE: Say your name and the band name.

TOD A: Oh. We’re shooting now?

PATRICK OGLE: Yeah.

TOD A: Okay. Okay, I'm Tod A from Firewater. Let's see, my first guitar was stolen in college and then I traded a leather jacket for the bass and then that's how I became a bass player. I stole my first amplifier. Oh, it's an Ampeg SVT. I was working at this club now defunct called [PH] "The World" in New York and sweeping up four in the morning and, you know, the guys were all cokeheads, they didn't pay me, so I saw this amplifier sitting in the closet gathering dust, and I decided to put it in garbage bags and I took it out with the trash and then didn't come into work the next day, and so that's how I got my first amp, but that kind of wound up being cursed.

PATRICK OGLE: Did it catch on fire?

TOD A: I think yes it caught on fire shortly thereafter on stage so there was probably a reason it was sitting in a closet, although I'm still a big fan of the SVT's. It's kind of a, you know, they sound the best but they're definitely heavy as hell and, you know, little temperamental.

I decided on this record that there's so many better bass players that I know than myself that I'd let somebody else do it. I wanted to, you know, it's a bit like walking and chewing gum. I've always felt like I had to think too much rather thank concentrating on my singing. Guitar, I can just kind of strum chords without really thinking too much. Bass, the lines and trying to keep the groove solid, it's a bit too much. It's a bit too much like thinking, you know. It's not enough like just letting loose, so on some songs on this record I don't play anything. Other songs, I'm just hitting, you know, simple chords. I just don't have to think as much and I feel like I can, you know, think about the words a bit more and trying to hit the notes.

I have a genuine Givson, G-I-V-S-O-N, which I picked up in India, in Calcutta, for 60 bucks, and it is. It's a genuine Givson.

PATRICK OGLE: Givson.

TOD A: Yeah. That's like looks a bit like a Gibson semi --

PATRICK OGLE: [INDISCERNIBLE]?

TOD A: It's a semi-acoustic, hollow-body, and then I put a pickup in it, vintage pickup that I found somewhere. It sounds halfway between an acoustic. Am I allowed to drink on the street by the way?

PATRICK OGLE: You're not.

TOD A: Oh okay. Since there's a cop over there, I think I'll put this back in my pocket. It sounds a bit like a -- sounds halfway between an acoustic and an electric but since the -- a lot of the record, the last record was acoustic guitars through distortion, it seemed like it's going to fit the bill for this tour.

Well, I didn't actually play any guitar. I played some banjo on this record but that's about it, and I'm just playing guitar live because there's nobody else to do it.

I found a couple of mics that I guess are sort of more flattering than others and generally tube mics are, you know, I wish I can tell you which ones but the old, I think Neumann maybe like the big -- they look like the big lozenge, the U this, the U something. Those ones tend to be more flattering like they're more kind of old school. They capture -- they kind of get the baritone a bit better. It's a bit more like, you know, something Sinatra would use.

Yeah. Also I think we used a 57 on some of the --

PATRICK OGLE: [INDISCERNIBLE]

TOD A: We recorded pretty much live in the studio, and then some of the vocal takes were good. We wanted to try and get all of them but usually I'd screw something up so, but some of the ones we got on the 57 had sounded pretty good, so.