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Just wrapping up a successful run with Skinny Puppy, we had a chance to meet up with Tweaker mastermind Chris Vrenna in the lovely alley behind Washington DC ‘s 930 Club. Over the course of a half hour we tackled anything from how it is to be out on the road for the first time in eight years, his new album “2 A.M. Wake Up Call”, his Skinny Puppy run-ins of the past, to his Nine Inch Nails days.
Chris Vrenna: Yeah, we did that co-headlining thing with Bowie in 96 and that was my last time so yeah what is that, about eight years? It has been a long time, and tonight is our eight show, we try count them every night. [Counts on fingers] Seattle, Portland, two Chicago, Boston, yeah tonight is our ninth show.
Oh, its been fucking awesome.
Yeah, I’m such a huge fan, and they intercepted my life and this is the third time in a weird way they’ve done that. The first time I was at college in Kent State and Trent was already in Cleveland playing in a local band there called Exotic Birds, which is a synth-pop band thing, and their drummer had quit and we were friends from PA [Pennsylvania]. So he had called me up at Kent. Kent State is 30 minutes out from Cleveland, so he called me up, “Hey you should come up, our drummer just quit, you should come up and do this...” whatever, so I come up and jam with them and they are like “Well fuck, guess you are our new drummer”. And this was 86', it was awesome, “Lets go out, get some dinner, catch this band down at the Peabody. Their name is Skinny Puppy” I’m like who the...? What? It was on the Perpetual Intercourse tour. So we went down. It was the first time I’ve seen Puppy live, or even heard of them. So already there is that thing in my head with that memory with me. Then cut two years later to 88. We were negotiating with Nettwerk, because Trent wanted to sign with Nettwerk, which was where Puppy was signed. It was the first time Nails have put together any live band at all and we joined up with these guys and we played with the last six shows with them. We did Pittsburgh and Irving Plaza with them in New York, which was just where we played two nights ago. We played here, we played here, Trenton, New Jersey. I think we played here.
I believe we did, one of the last stops, it may of been the old 930 or something.
Yeah, I love it. So here we are 14 years later I am putting Tweaker together live for the first time, to do what, open for Puppy, just like we did for nails. Don’t think Puppy doesn’t let me forget that every day. Its been pretty cool.
Our label, iMusic and BMG, they were all like, you should really go do this stuff live. Because my whole history is being a drummer, and Nails was always considered a pretty good live band. They were like, “Yeah Tweaker, some bizarre studio project”.
[Fancy voice] No we’re very sophisticated, very sedate, hence the suits. Every one is like, the way to win fans is to get out and play live. Thats what I’ve been doing. We started in March actually. Went through SEVERAL trial and errors about how to do it. Technologically speaking and personnel wise, all sorts of stupid shit. It took us a couple months how to put it together. And after this tour, right now we have no other tours booked. They want us to come back in maybe a month and do a club thing.
Yeah, it is. Last time I toured, I can’t remember whether I had a girlfriend at the time or not, but I know I didn’t have a home. I didn’t own anything except a TV set and a couch, it was in storage. Now I have a house, and a wife, and a cat. My studio is in a house. It is definitely different as you get older. It’s been fun. With a studio in my house Clint and I are in there 24/7 in the studio, which is in the back of my house. So this tour has actually been fun for me, because it actually gets me out of the house for awhile. I haven’t left the house in a long time.
They are all cool.
He was? He just performed with us. Four nights ago when we were in Boston they were in town because they are doing this whole New England thing...
Yeah, they were at the venue, they were going on an hour after we did. So he came over to our show, jumped on stage, sang “Worse Then Yesterday”, then jumped on stage and rushed over to his show. Was fucking really cool. We had the whole thing on video tape, took pictures, that whole thing. All the people that we work with are people we are fans of, and now, can say friends of for the most part. That’s the other thing, you get to make some really cool friends doing all this stuff. So as far as that goes, its been really cool.
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