My conversation with Chat Pile. They released their latest album ‘Cool World’ earlier in October.

Diya: Good afternoon Stin, Raygun, Luther, and Captain Ron, it’s lovely to see you all. How are you all doing on this fine October afternoon?

Stin: Doing good, and I think some of us might be a little under the weather, cold-wise perhaps.

Luther: I think I have a little bit of a cold as well, but hey–good now instead of in two weeks when we go on tour. So I’ll get the sickness out now. But yeah, doing all right though.

Diya: Let’s start from the beginning. I did some digging and learned that Chat Pile’s origin story stems from longtime friendship and a bad movie night that grew into a touring outfit. Can you each tell me a little bit more about your individual musical backgrounds and how they inform Chat Pile’s artistic philosophy to this point?

Raygun: We all come from a DIY background, you know? For a long time–I started doing stuff that’s very…Ween-inspired kind of stuff on a cassette 4 track and stuff and releasing my music. I know Stin and Ron have done the same thing. So in terms of our philosophy, what we’re doing now…What we’ve done in the past informs it for sure, you know?

Stin: Yeah. I mean, we’re all from Oklahoma and have been part of the DIY and various counterculture scenes here through the last 20 years or so. And all that’s informed it as well, like, we’re definitely participants in that kind of thing. And then, yeah, kind of like you mentioned–we’ve all been friends for a really long time and have played in bands together of different types, and have recorded music together and all that kind of stuff. And so Chat Pile is just sort of the logical conclusion of all those years of working together, you know?

Diya: Yeah.

Luther: You know, I think the four of us all have pretty different influences too, and like different stuff. And yeah, the DIY aspect is a thing that kind of connects us rather than, [having] bands we all share and like…There’s not very many that all four of us can agree on…You know what I mean? So I think each of us brings kind of a different little flavor because of all the different stuff we’re into. I think it works to make us sound kind of unique, I hope.

Diya: Yeah, from Korn to Cat Power as I have learned. (Luther: Sure, yeah!) So much of Chat Pile’s music is filled with artfully grotesque imagery, growling guitars, and a permeating sense of decay. I do notice a bit more haziness on this album with tracks like “Camcorder” and sounds that are almost melodic on tracks like “Masc”. Can you tell me about your creative process on this album, along with its sonic and emotional landscapes, and how they show up through some of your songwriting, vocal, lyrical, and instrumental choices?

Stin: Yeah. So with this album, first and foremost I think the goal–at least for Luther and myself–was to try to make something a little more direct, kind of more in the vein of, like, our earlier EPS. Because God’s Country had a tendency to be a little sprawling and kind of all over the map in a way that we like. But we really just wanted to make a really concise rock record in a way. So I think that was kind of hovering over all the decisions we were making sort of throughout the process. But that said, the way we write music is pretty free-form. Like, we have a tendency to just bring in a couple riffs and then jam on them together until it becomes a song. And because that’s sort of the process, the results are kind of like an “anything goes” sort of thing, in a way. It’s like, you might come in thinking like, “oh, hey, I wrote this riff” and it’s like a thrash metal thing. Well, before you know it, it’s a mid tempo indie rock song or something.

Luther: That happens a lot specifically. Or it’s like, either one of us specifically will have an idea for something. I remember the song “Cut” sticks out on the split that we did with Nerver where that [song] definitely started as one of the heavier, thrashier-sounding songs. And then it just turns into–that one kind of foreshadowed some of how Cool World would sound, honestly. It was a little more of the melodic side of stuff. But yeah, I don’t know. We usually are good about indulging stuff, you know? And if someone has an idea, let’s try it out and see if it sounds cool. That’s how the song “Tape” on this record–like the end of it gets to this kind of, like, funky part and that’s definitely just us jamming and then trying something out that sounded kind of funny and being like “that is kind of a ridiculous part, does that work?” And you know–just saying yes and trying stuff you just find…

Stin: That happens all the time with us too, where it’s just sort of like, “oh, hey, let’s try this riff out.” You start playing on it and all of a sudden someone’s doing some weird thing and you’re like, “Wait, what are you doing right there? Keep doing that. Let’s actually make that, like, a focal point of this song.” And it’s like something that you never in a million years would have thought of on your own, you know? So that part of it–like I said, it’s a good combination of intent versus just kind of the magic and surprise of improving and collaborating with people, you know. But hopefully the reason I think like the album maybe sounds cohesive is because we’re writing all these sort of at the same time. You tend to be in a very specific frame of mind when you’re writing a bunch of songs all at the same time. And so they do tend to have similarities to them or elements that tie them all together. Even if you never thought like, “song 2 is going to sound like this or song 3 is going to be like this”, it’s just kind of a process of making all that at the same time.

Diya: Yeah, definitely. And with each of your backgrounds in music, and a titan of a previous album, God’s Country, you’ve taken the conceptual horrors of local dystopian mundanity and sonically dialed them up to a more global scale in Cool World. And with that, how would you say the music on Cool World is influenced by your past work and that musical DIY background?

Stin: I feel like part of that is because we had already tackled the hyper-locality and we knew that going into this–we didn’t want to just completely repeat ourselves in that way. In some ways we want to carry elements of the previous album that we like and that other people like, but we don’t want to just make like an identical record, you know? And I think the natural step for that was to kind of blow it up…The focus of it lyrically or whatever. But part of that is just what’s happening in the world right now. When God’s Country was going on, we felt very insular and surrounded, or trapped by our surroundings. COVID was happening, all that kind of stuff. And now, for the last year, all we’ve been seeing is death and genocide and war happening in front of us. And so I think it was just…I don’t even know if we would have had a choice to do anything else in terms of that being the focus, you know?

Raygun: Yeah, no, that’s perfectly put. And I’ll just add that this just kind of happened that way. I mean, that narrative that we’ve said–about how we’ve exploited it globally on this album, we kind of came up with that after we had done it. We kind of have to just make the thing ..The spirit guides you however it will and then you look at it and then figure out what you’ve done, you know? And like Stin was saying, as per God’s Country, COVID was happening, so of course we were…I didn’t want to look inward anymore really. Like I felt like we did that a little too much on God’s Country and then the earlier stuff and I wanted to get out there a little more so…

Stin: Yeah. I think what we’re learning through this conversation is that there’s only like a small percentage of what we do that’s, like, super intentional. A lot of it is kind of like, “well, we made this thing” and then you look at it and you go, “oh, I guess this is what this is about now.”

Luther: Yeah, you just find the songs that are going together and stuff, and at least with writing guitars and melodic parts, I start doing a specific type of thing and…Maybe a similar shape on another song or something. It’s like finding ways to connect it and have it be cohesive and stuff. And yeah, I don’t know.

Stin: You find it while you’re in it, you know?

Luther: Exactly. It’s just like, there is stuff that you pre-plan because–I know, like, Ray, you’ll have some stuff that you know, maybe some topics you want to hit on and stuff, but then you just got to be in the moment with writing stuff. Or at least for us, that’s just how it kind of works.

Raygun: Yeah, for instance, the “Camcorder” and “Tape” thing is a total coincidence, just an accident. (Luther: Worked out well though.) A beautiful disaster, a beautiful accident. Not to show too much how the sausage’s made, but that kind of just worked out how it did, you know? It’s not like, “we’re going to do side one, we’ll end with this song…” So it’s like it just kind of worked out. Like, “Oh, this one song called “Camcorder”, this other song called “Tape”…It’s like, “Oh, perfect.”

Luther: They kind of fit thematically and honestly, the way we arranged the tracks on the record, it is coincidence, but it’s also, you know, they do mirror each other. The first song and the last song, the second song and the second to last song, those pairings all have some similar themes going on, which maybe wasn’t initially intentional, but the sequencing of the record was extremely intentional. We talked about that at length, trying to make sure the sequencing is correct and all that kind of stuff.

Raygun: We ended up with cohesive material. So we could have sequenced it almost any way. I mean, I’m happy the way we did it, but what we created was all thematically cohesive.

Stin: To that note too, I do think, like, if we would have sat back and had a song that just didn’t make sense in there, we’d probably pull it out and save it for later, you know?

Diya: Yeah. You want to add anything, Ron?

Ron: [Laughs] I think they’ve covered it pretty well.

Diya: Alright, alright. With sludgy, abrasive guitar tones, rumbling bass, guttural vocals, and thrashing, violent drums, Cool World and Chat Pile, moreover, have a visceral, unsettling musical presence–that I personally really appreciate–through obscure film references and literary sensibilities such as those of Voltaire, for example. I’d like to know–what were some of the main inspirations for Cool World thematically? And this could be other music, media, literature, film, spiritual occurrences, religious epiphanies, the pain of being alive in the 21st century, et cetera.

Raygun: Well, all that for sure. I’ve published–and by published I mean put on my Instagram and shown people–this list I did make of a bunch of stuff. I’ll just read it off real fast. For movies, I’ve got Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer, Pulse, Frownland, Beatrice at Dinner, Shame (the Bergman one), Palindromes, Bash, Latter Day Plays, A Midnight Clear, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and August Underground. And then books and just lit I guess–The Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot, Cold in July by Joe R. Lansdale, Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal by Thomas Harris, After the Ball by Leo Tolstoy, Candide by Voltaire, Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, Macbeth by William Shakespeare and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien who has a new book out, I discovered at the bookstore last night which is crazy.

Luther: Yeah, I mean with instrumentals and stuff, a lot of the time it’s not like there’s a specific thing where I want to do “this band” type of song. I know at the time when we were writing this, I was listening to a lot of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and this band Shudder To Think. I was just kind of going through a period with both of those. And so I don’t know if there’s really a ton of that on the record, but that is kind of some of the melodic sensibilities, and some of that stuff, I think, comes through on this record a little bit. And I know Stin is a huge Sleepytime fan as well. And we went and saw ‘em together while we were making this record, actually.

Stin: This is always, like, a hard question for me to answer because…I never feel like I’m chasing a specific inspiration. It’s always like this kind of lifetime accumulation of vacuuming in art and culture and stuff. And like, kind of what I make is just a result of that, you know? But I can say I’m always reading super trashy, like, noir novels from the 40s and 50s. And so the kind of mood and tone of that really seeps into subconsciously, like, any type of mood I’m ever trying to create. I mean, not to be like–it’s hard to do, “oh, yeah, I read a book and it inspired a bassline” or whatever, but I still think that there’s kind of maybe a tonality or a mood that can translate into that. And then something that I was doing a lot during the entire process of making the record is I would go to thrift stores and look for bizarre VHS tapes and audio cassette tapes, and kind of combing through all that material–there’s sort of this found footage or media from a lost era, you know? The mood that invokes was really, like, top of mind. There’s some samples in the new record that are taken from these found cassette tapes that I’ve manipulated and stuff and chopped up, like the beginning of “I Am Dog Now”. There’s some of it in the intro of “Frownland”. At the end of “Shame” there’s just a bunch of stuff kind of hidden in there, and to the point where, like, between me messing around with all that tape manipulation and then, there were sessions where different combinations of the band members and even some friends got together and we would do like these improv noise sessions and drone sessions and there’s hours of that type of material too. So that all kind of seeped into it as well. And in fact–here’s a hot tip. We haven’t told many people this, but we’re about to create our own tape label imprint so that we can start putting out that material, you know, because–not that we don’t stand behind the cool improv that we do–but it doesn’t necessitate being printed on vinyl and being–

Luther: Put on Spotify or anything…It’s just going to be for true goblins who want to listen to three hours of uncut, weird improv.

Stin: Indulgent experimental music, yes, but we are planning–I think the flagship release on this imprint will be the set [of] all those sessions. So if people are interested in hearing that stuff, it’ll be available. Hopefully, you know, we’ll see. Time is not on our side right now with anything but, but hopefully sooner than later we’ll have that out.

Diya: That’s fantastic to know. Awesome. I will definitely be tapping into that as a noise fan and a tape freak. But yeah, good to know. I’m interested in the album artwork for Cool World. I’d love to know the story behind the photo and why it was chosen to represent this album.

Stin: So–you know, I took that photo. Something else I was doing during the making of the record is just kind of driving around Oklahoma City and trying to find images that represented what we were working on. And most of what I took actually ends up in the physical release in some form or another. But we chose the cross just because it just felt really indicative of kind of, I don’t know–it’s not like a direct correlation. It’s not like there’s, like, religious themes in the album. But I think it has to do more with just the irony of living in what is supposed to be this Christian state or country or whatever. And we do these things that are so horrific and unhelpful for people. And in Oklahoma City in particular, or the state of Oklahoma even, we’re just so inundated with this like theocratic, conservative mindset. There’s churches everywhere.

Luther: It’s a headline right now too, that Ryan Walters is trying to put Bibles in schools right now and mandate Bible teaching to all in public schools. So yeah, it’s, you know–

Stin: It’s inescapable. And like we felt like that image was really representative of that because that cross is enormous. And you know, the other irony of it is that it’s not like it looms out of this beautiful countryside. It’s gross highway with big box stores and chain restaurants and stuff. And it’s literally in the parking lot of a mega church–like one of the OG mega churches, in fact. And so, yeah, you just think about how these huge mega churches around corporations don’t pay taxes or help anybody other than their own people that are involved or whatever. And I don’t know, it just really seemed to evoke kind of the feeling that we have, you know? But yeah, I mean, it’s not like there’s songs about the church on the record or anything like that. It’s just kind of more the bigger picture of the way those things are connected, and you know, it looks cool too.

Luther: Yeah, usually the title and the–you know, we don’t really do like title tracks or anything and stuff like that. And even God’s Country–just like the image and stuff, the art itself is its own thing. It works all together as a package, as an album with the music. All the art together is supposed to invoke whatever comes to you as well. All the stuff is subjective and how people…What they get out of it…

Stin: It’s like, another important decision we had to make too was, like, what color to make the frame because the template that we use–we just always have a different color. And we decided to burn black on this one because it’s sort of the gothiest record. And that’s another reason why I think we were pro-cross is because it just felt like gothic imagery. And this album has a very gothic feel to it, you know?

Raygun: It’s also a huge piece of garbage, you know? It’s like…I mean, I don’t know. It’s great. It’s layered, you know? The image for sure…

Luther: It’s in the dead grass–and I think if you really magnify, you can see, like, a Buffalo Wild Wings off in the distance or something. It’s just like, yeah, I don’t know. I’ve seen a lot of people online, even Okies or people from here being like, “Oh, I know exactly where that’s at.” I like it to all be thematically consistent with the music, but it’s all just supposed to evoke a feeling and the image and the words are supposed to have [their] own thing as well. I think Stin did a good job with the photography on this one. We joked around about how it’s easier to write the music…It’s more stressful to figure out the art and the title of the thing rather than even writing the songs.

Stin: The songs figure themselves out, the artwork you got to sit and labor over, you know, so…

Diya: Yeah. I absolutely get what you mean. Even personally, when I make music I find that I spend more time stressing over my work’s art than I do the actual art of the sound. I totally get that. I am also interested in the music videos for Cool World. The video for “I Am Dog Now” is surreal and disorienting with religious imagery spun into a cult-like hellscape. The video for “Masc” features absurd caricatures of masculinity, and the video for “Funny Man” features a series of liminal domestic spaces. Across the Cool World music videos, I noticed common themes of domestic absurdism, religious anguish, and dubious animalistic motifs. Can you tell me a little bit more about the choices to include these visuals in your music videos and how they function in tandem with Cool World‘s themes?

Stin: Well, I have to give credit for that to the people who directed those videos because we pretty much gave them full control over it. So I mean–of course we had to sign off on their ideas and everything–but you know, we didn’t specifically come to anybody with like, “hey, you know, make a video about this” or “do that”. It was like, “Hey, here’s, here’s the song, here’s kind of loosely what it is about. Can you just make something for us?” And that was the case. So I don’t think that we could really take credit for that. It’s more in the hands of the individual artists and directors who did that stuff. But I will say, I think all three of those are so strong. I love those videos so much. And I think the variety that came out–they really do represent three different important sides of the record and what we were trying to accomplish. So it’s just, again, more happy accidents that happened in our world all the time where we were able to trust these people to make these really great videos. And like, I guess maybe if I’ll give ourselves credit, it’s that maybe the songs that we wrote get the message [clearly enough] that you could hand it off to somebody else and they would be able to tell the story of that song without us really intervening, so credit to them.

Raygun: The difference between these videos for this album and maybe some in the past or whatever, is that I feel like [in the past] we didn’t spend time with these directors and stuff and actually make sure that we would enjoy personally what we were seeing in the videos and stuff. I think that really paid off–by being a little more hands on than we have [been] in the past perhaps, you know?

Luther: Yeah, ‘cause a lot of times some people would just make a video and say, “Hey, I’ve already made a video, do you like this?” So we’d be like, “yeah, sure, we can put that up” or whatever. So this time it was definitely [us] reaching out to some people, and a couple people reached out to us. But it is also just cool to see, even if they don’t 100%–’cause, like, I think “I Am Dog Now” is probably the farthest away from the actual meaning of the song. But it’s still a cool interpretation–our friend Will Mecca made that video.

Raygun: That one I really put the least input on, to be honest, because Will’s just–

Luther: Yeah, he just had the idea.

Raygun: Will, you just do what you want to do. I think Will did an excellent job. I’m extremely proud of all the videos.

Stin: Yeah, me too.

Raygun: From this album. Big credit to the directors. They did truly–I mean, it was just input from us, but nobody told them what to do, you know?

Stin: They just presented…Maybe we gave them a little instruction ahead of time, but when they gave us the video, we were just like, “Yep, that’s the video.” Like, we didn’t be like, “change this” or “change that”.

Raygun: Never. Yeah.

Luther: I just like that style of–I don’t know, it’s a cool way to collaborate. It’s one of the only–we don’t do a ton of collaboration, you know? We don’t have features on our records and stuff. So videos are one of the few chances you get to do stuff like that with people. I think it’s a cool format. It’s always interesting to get to see a director do their spin on someone’s music and stuff. I’ve always just dug music videos.

Diya: Absolutely. I think it’s also really great to get out of your own head when you see someone else put that spin on your music. You see the music stand on its own, outside the vacuum of your creative mind–or creative hive mind as a band. Absolutely.

Luther: All three of these–when you watch the video, I think it kind of elevates the song a little bit, you know?

Diya: Definitely. You guys are about to be touring, so what are some of the venues and locations you each look forward to playing at the most?

Stin: Ah, great question, [Laughs] You know, there are a lot of really great venues that we’re playing, a lot of new ones this time. But I’ll say…I’m excited to play at LPR New York, like we always have a really good time there. The Sinclair in Cambridge (Luther: Love that place.) is a super cool venue. Man, I’m trying to think of some of the other ones that we’re revisiting but those two come to mind. And then going over to the West Coast, we’re not playing The Crocodile this time. I keep forgetting, but Crocodile is one of my favorite venues in the whole country.

Luther: I’ve been told the place that we’re playing in Seattle this time is very cool. Is it Neumos or something? Yeah, Neumos. I’ve been told it’s very awesome. I’m excited this time. We’ve never played Detroit or Cleveland, which both are kind of like Rust Belt cities, but we have fans there and we’ve never been able to make it out there. And so that that’ll be cool, and then we’re going to get to go to–it’s kind of funny to mention these cities, but I’m excited to go to Calgary and Edmonton as well on the West Coast tour because it’s, like, I don’t know, just places we just wouldn’t normally tour. And so I’m excited to go see some of those places because we’re always going to hit New York City and Philly and Boston or LA and San Francisco. So it’s cool to sometimes get to more Midwest or, you know, central Canada. That’s going to be cool to see how those shows go.

Stin: Oh, the Great American Music Hall.

Raygun: Yeah, absolutely, it’s very cool.

Luther: That one has a lot of history too. Some, like, legendary Grateful Dead stuff there, right?

Ron: Recorded one from the vault!

Luther: Yes, that place is cool, though. That’s still the only time we’ve played in San Francisco. We played there last year and that was a really, really good show.

Stin: I just got an e-mail saying that Boston has sold out too, so there you go.

Luther: Nice…On that date, one of the openers–Traindodge, cuz we’re taking a collection of bands out with us–they’re going to be opening that show and they’re from Oklahoma City as well. And they’re so cool and they sound so good. Even when you see them in a DIY space, they sound better than everyone else. And I can’t wait to hear them at the Sinclair in Cambridge…It’s just a very nice and professional venue and I’m just very excited to see them and Mamaleek both on a really good sound system with a packed crowd. That’s gonna be awesome. Yeah.

Raygun: Hey, we forgot the Baltimore venue or maybe you guys mentioned it but–

Luther: We played Autobar last time, but this is a new one that we’re going to, a different one.

Raygun: There’s like a secret door and then the floors backstage and stuff.

Luther: But Autobar is awesome. I had a great time at Baltimore last time we were there.

Raygun: I’m looking forward to being back in Baltimore, for sure.

Diya: That’s great. I love that you guys have venues that you like certain features of. I feel like, when you go around playing so much, it’s easy to lose track. But you know–that’s really cool, yeah.

Luther: We’re not playing there this time, but I’ll say–shout out to the Saturn in Birmingham, AL, which that is maybe…I don’t know, it’s kind of crazy because it’s in Alabama, but it’s maybe the best venue in the United States. I don’t know, that place is awesome.

Stin: For the musician? I think it is the best venue in the United States, probably, yeah.

Luther: I know they do it on purpose there too. They want you to come there because I mean–I relate, living in Oklahoma City, it’s not the most desirable place to come. I wish Oklahoma City would do something like that. Maybe it’ll be up to us down the road or something. I think it’s the guy from Man or Astro-man? who runs that place. But it’s just awesome. Yeah. So..Want to shout them out.

Diya: For sure, I’ll have to check that out sometime. Let’s talk gear. What would you say is the most essential piece of gear to the particular sound of Cool World?

Stin: Oh wow, honestly the piece of gear would be a laptop probably.

Luther: I’m actually gonna say the e-drums that Ron plays.

Ron: E-kit for sure.

Luther: Even though with the live show, we play acoustic drums, it’s just…I feel like the e-kit has such a specific sound that I mean…It’s part of our sound in general. But I mean, yeah, if that changed on a recording, I think it would be the most drastic sonic change you could possibly make, probably.

Stin: Absolutely. It’s kind of like…If people feel like we have a sound, it’s because of the e-drums for sure, but the other stuff that we use–it’s funny because we’ve been talking gear a lot more this round of media, which I love. I’m into it. But part of what’s fun about that is that we get to brag about how simple our setups are because we don’t use a lot of flashy gear at all. It’s just like–I play Peavy T-40 basses and I run ‘em through an old Sunn Coliseum Slave amp and then for the guitars, we used an Ampeg V4 and a Super Six Fender and that’s it. And that’s basically the tone that you’re hearing on the record. It’s pretty straightforward. It’s ironic because the drums are the only DI thing on the whole record. Like we use cab mics for the bass and the guitar stuff. So there’s no, there’s no bass DI, nothing like that. It’s all room tone on the guitars and the bass.

Diya: Room tone on the bass is wild. That’s really cool. I’ve never tried doing that.

Luther: We track live too, so there’s lots of cross noise. Whenever you’re hearing a Chat Pile song, you are hearing the three instrumentalists. We have played it all in one take with no stitching or anything like that because that’s just how we do it. But since we record it in the same room, if you isolated the bass track, you would hear guitar and the drum track, you know? So it’s the same with guitar…Because you know, the e-drums are going through speakers in the room as well. So yeah, there’s a lot of bleed going on as well. So there’s reasons why our sound sometimes has a wash to it, or that lo-fi quality, just because we’re just recording it in the room, playing it together and that’s just how it is.

Stin: There’s a ton of phasing happening because of all the bleed that’s going on, but that’s just kind of how it is with Chat Pile.

Diya: It’s artistic too. I remember listening to Cool World and noticing that washiness, and I feel like it adds to the music–the phasing issues and whatnot. Yeah, absolutely. And lastly, if you were each stranded on a desert island, could only take three pieces of gear with you, what would they be and why?

Stin: Can I clarify–is this music gear or like survival gear?

Diya: Music gear. It can double as survival gear, you know.

Stin: Well, music gear–it’s funny, I pretty much only play through three pieces, so it’s easy for me. I need a Peavey T40, I need a rusty box pedal, and then I just need an amplifier. Any will do, really.

Luther: Yeah, I guess any Fender amp with a reverb channel built in. I need that. I’ve used the same distortion pedal since, like, 2010, which is–there’s a brand called Suhr, they have this purple pedal called the Riot, which is just a high gain distortion. So that and just some other random reverb. That’s really all I need. You know, clean amp that takes pedals and some reverb and then yeah, I guess it’s just like…Do I have to pick a guitar as one of the three–

Stin: Yeah, you’re going to need that

Diya: You could, ideally.

Luther: Yeah. I love this Music Man that I have, I’m a big Ernie Ball guy, so…

Stin: I’d like to add that the Peavy T40 is so heavy, I probably could sail it back home from the desert island. So that serves two purposes.

Luther: Yeah, you could use it as an axe to chop wood too, because it weighs a thousand pounds and is indestructible.

Ron: So I’d go with an 8 by 14 snare. Don’t really have too much of a preference on brand or anything or even material, but just as long as it’s 8 inches deep. A good direct drive pedal–once again, Speed King is probably the best one that I’ve come across, but they’re chintzy and fall apart really easily. But someone could make the perfect Speed King. That’d be what I’d take. And then the third piece I guess would just be a Yamaha e-kit.

Luther: Yeah, even the first Chat Pile recordings were this really cheap and old Yamaha kit that Ron had. And we even played that live a couple times. There’s a house show, I think, that’s still even on YouTube. Not that I want to advertise our early shows on YouTube, but there’s some footage out there of some e-kit action happening live, still on one of those old Yamahas.

Stin: Raygun, any for you? Oh, I’ll bring my portable kettle, throat coat tea, and honey. My Chat Pile gear that I would need.

Diya: That makes perfect sense.

Luther: I know we’ve ordered this kind of vocal steamer thing that we saw a friend use.

Stin: It came in already!

Luther: It already delivered?! You ordered that this morning.

Stin: It literally delivered already. We ordered it this morning and it came in.

Luther: Shout out to the evil Amazon warehouse in South Oklahoma City, I guess.

Diya: You said a vocal steamer?

Luther: It’s kind of like a humidifier almost–

Raygun: You put a mask thing, you like, hold it… [Gestures]

Diya: Alright, thank you all so much for chatting with me. It’s been amazing to chat with Chat Pile. So yeah, thank you so much…And I feel like I’ve learned a really great deal about Cool World‘s process and, overall, the band’s process.

Stin: Yeah, thanks for having us! (Luther: Yeah!) It’s been super fun.

Raygun: Yeah, we appreciate it.

Ron: Yeah, thank you.