Comes with a Smile # interviews


an interview with Jennifer Herrema by Matt Thorne / pictures by Paul Heartfield

RTX by Paul Heartfield(excerpt)

'Transmaniacon' is a very guitar-driven album.
I'm all about the guitar.  That's why I picked Jamio... that's his natural inclination as well.  Whereas Neil could totally execute like that it's not really what he's into... I mean, he could do it, but he'd probably become quite bored with that.  With Jamio, it's like pure athletics for him.

Royal Trux had a trilogy of concept albums, each record for a different decade ('Thank You' being the '60s record, 'Sweet Sixteen' the '70s, and 'Accelerator' the '80s.)  Does this album have a concept?
No concept.  The only thing was the sound of it, the way it needed to sound.  There was a bunch of tracks and a bunch of songs that we had started... and you just whittle it down.

Do you feel vindicated now metal has become more mainstream, and bands you've talked about in the past like the Grateful Dead are more acceptable?
Yeah, there's always been a bunch of idiot knuckleheads totally unwilling to appreciate stuff.  I've never thought of Royal Trux as being as any genre other than rock.  Rock being the raping and pillaging of all things past and reconfigured into something new.  That to me has always been the definition of rock, but there's all these sub-genres that kept being bandied about and I always felt that Royal Trux - and the same goes for RTX - was totally inclusive.  There's nothing that I can't appreciate for what it is.  Since I was fifteen I've read interviews with other bands that felt so exclusive and it was really pathetic thinking to me. Being exclusive it could never really be rock, because rock is inclusive.


CWAS #16 - Autumn 2004