For the Dirty Heads, who grew up in Southern California with one ear tuned to the underground hip-hop scene and the other to Sublime and other genre-benders, a summer tour with Slightly Stoopid is a dream come true. “After Sublime there was Slightly Stoopid,” says Dirty Heads frontman Jared Watson, honored to be joining Stoopid for a 34-date tour which kicked off in Simsbury, CT on July 8. There was a time when the Dirty Heads made just one foolproof setlist for an entire tour, but when they began seeing the same faces at multiple shows, the band added some spice to its set. We chatted with Watson by phone last week to discuss the state of the Dirty Heads, as they ready for one of their most anticipated tours.
You guys are playing some shows with Slightly Stoopid. You guys have played with them before, right? I think I’ve seen you on a bill with them before.
Well, the thing is, we’ve only played a handful of shows with Slightly Stoopid, but we’re doing a whole summer tour with them and that’s what’s really exciting, because everybody’s like “Yo, obviously you guys have toured with Slightly Stoopid before,” and we’re like “No, we actually haven’t.” So, with the Dirty Heads and Slightly Stoopid joining up, it’s actually really cool for us. We looked up to those guys for a really long time. After Sublime there was Slightly Stoopid, so we’re stoked to be a part of it.
What was it like working with them in the past?
We didn’t know them that much. Just mutual friends through other bands, things like that. And, finally over the years, we played a show in Tuscon, Arizona and we met them. Yeah, and we clicked, they were really good guys, really cool. Like I said, we looked up to them for a long time. So, after that, it was like…behind the scenes when it comes to touring…I don’t want to be a dick, but people are assholes sometimes – big-headed and egotistical and yada yada. Really, at the end of the day, if I’m going to go spend two months on the road with this band, you kind of want to know if they’re good people, if they’re cool dudes. We met Slightly Stoopid and they were like the nicest fucking dudes ever. It just clicked and they were super nice guys, and I kind of feel like they’ve been doing this for so long, they can pick and choose who they want to come out with them, you know? They kind of made their name, so for them to be like, “Oh you guys are cool guys, do you want to come on tour with us?” -just for them to even ask us was kind of an honor for us.
So, what have you guys been up to recently?
I’ve actually been recording some solo hip-hop stuff that I’m going to come out with. I’m going to do a solo project separate from the Dirty Heads. So I’ve been working on that. But on top of that, that got me really excited – I think we kind of figured out where the Dirty Heads are going to go on this next album. So, we’ve just been writing. And it’s festival season, so literally every weekend, we’ve been touring and playing festivals, so that’s what we’ve been up to. We’re going to wait until probably this winter to start recording the new Dirty Heads stuff.
You mentioned that you figured out a direction for the next Dirty Heads album. What would that direction be? What kind of revelations did you have?
We went from a very mellow acoustic album…I felt like we all wanted to do something more up-tempo, more live . Just bigger for our live show. We leaned onto more of the alternative hip-hop side of the Dirty Heads. So I think this new album that we’re going to do is probably going to be more just strictly reggae hip-hop. I think we might go down to Miami or the Keys or Hawaii. We’ve never just like jumped 100% into the reggae hip hop realm. We’ve always kind of bounced around from alternative to reggae to acoustic. We’ve never really stuck to one thing and been like “Yo, we’re just going to do reggae, we’re just going do hip hop, we’re just going to do alternative…” Everyone’s like, “Yo, let’s just do this strictly kind of Dirty Heads reggae hip hop thing.” However many songs, don’t vary…we’re just going to do all like 12 songs that fit very nicely together.
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