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Gojira have come a long way to be here.  They hopped the Atlantic Ocean, breaded their bus, and are smoking across our country, leaving thick wafts of death metal perfume wherever they go.

Fortunately for us, drummer Mario Duplantier and guitarist Christian Andreu surrendered an interview with downPICK before their first headlining tour Thursday night at Slim’s!  We discussed food, the French, why European metal fans are boring, and Gojira’s plans for world domination.

J’aime San Francisco au mois de Mai…

Enjoy!

Well first off, welcome to San Francisco!

Christian – We went to a very nice place today, the hippie place.

Haight Ashbury?

C – Yeah I think so, I don’t know.

Did you make it to Amoeba, the big record store?

C – No, just to take coffee, to stay in the sun, and walk around.

Mario – We took a coffee and came back.  We don’t have enough time to visit.   It’s very frustrating for us each time on tour.  We just have one day and the day afterwards is another city.  San Francisco is an amazing city.  We know from France, everybody talks of San Francisco.  It’s very famous.

We were upstairs and looking at your merch table, and you had lots of pamphlets for PETA, the whales, and vegetarianism.  Are you Vegetarians?

C – Joe is vegetarian.  The rest of the band is not, but we just eat meat sometimes.  It’s very important to be careful, but we are not Vegi.

M – We feel concerned.   Christian is very concerned.  He has garden, and works on his own vegetables.

What do you grow?

C – Everything, tomato, eggplant, squash, and, uhhh… concombre?  How do you say…

Cucumber?

C- Cucumber!

Who’s looking after your garden on tour?

C – Mum! (laughs) and my brother too.

Is it hard though, when you’re on the road?  It’s a lot of fast food, especially in the United States.

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Sleepytime Gorilla Museum have a penchant for the otherwise.  No two records – or tours for that matter – have ever fallen to uniformity, and that’s just the way they like it.  Their roisterous show last night at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall featured a rambling mustached Italian, apocalyptic dances, and a 20-piece marching band bazaar.   And did it ever rock.

It’s been just under two years since SGM’s last record, In Glorious Times was released, and the band has just wrapped up their latest spring tour, finishing up with this hometown show.  For a band whose live show can only be described as a ’spectacle,’ this show was truly an extravaganza amongst spectacles, pulling out all the stops and playing at the top of their game.

Fortunately for the 6 and a half billion not in attendance, the evening was documented on film as the first official video evidence of the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum live experience.  But as the Museum regularly updates it’s collection, the next tour will likely be an entirely different exhibition of natural history.

Museum curators Michael Mellender [guitar, percussion, stuff], Dan Rathburn [bass, slide piano log, things], and Carla Kihlstedt [violin, stroh horn, trappings] gave up some of their precious pre-show preparation to chat with me about their musical philosophies, songwriting processes, listening habits, and plans for the next record and forthcoming film.

dP: You guys are really great at bringing out artists that most people haven’t really heard.  Last time here you brought along accordion extraordinaire Jason Webley and bass clarinet quartet Edmund Welles.

Michael: Ah Edmund Welles, we played with them on this tour.  Occasionally we’ll do an entire tour with one band, but that is not the norm.

How do you find these guys?

The goal ultimately is to play with bands we know and love and want to be on the road with.  There was one tour where we did a string of shows with Cheer-Accident from Chicago, our favorite band in the whole world.  And also we went out with Secret Chiefs 3, they’re incredible.  This time we went out with Dub Trio, we did a week of shows with them.  We try to line it up when we can, but it’s usually at the discretion of the venue or the promoter.  They really know what’s going on locally; we don’t really know the bands in Doylestown, PA.

I’m excited to see Fred Frith.  I was talking to Nils earlier, he used to the term mentor.

Yeah, mentor, influence, man about town.

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