S2E11: Dub FX

Episode Transcript:

WEBSTER: Are we good?
EVY: Yeah.
WEBSTER: Are we good?
DUB FX: Are we good?
EVY: Are we good, or…
BLESZ: Yeah, yeah.
DUB FX: You tell me…

EVY: How do we refer to you?
DUB FX: Call me whatever you like. You can call me Ben, Benjamin, Dub, DubFX, Benji-man…
WEBSTER: Benji-man.
DUB FX: Dickhead, whatever gets my attention.

EVY: Hello, and welcome to Word Up Podcast. I’m Evy…
WEBSTER: And I’m Webster
EVY: And today we are here with Benjamin, a.k.a., Dub FX. Hello. We’re here in Melkweg today, you are ready for your concert tonight?
DUB FX: Very ready. I’m actually pretty tired now, but I’m usually just like reserving my energy until it comes to like an hour or so before the show and then that’s when I sort of perk up a bit, sort of get all energetic.
WEBSTER: ‘Cause you’ve been on a tour, right?
DUB FX: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I’ve been touring for fourteen years straight, pretty much.
WEBSTER: Fourteen years.
DUB FX: I mean, I have—I’ve never had more than a three month break…
WEBSTER: At one go…
DUB FX: Without a show, at least one show…between…so when I have that downtime, it’s really awesome. But yeah, I’m just constantly touring basically, at least—at least six months a year I’m on the road.
WEBSTER: That’s really crazy. How do you manage your, your life, whilst being on the road so much?
DUB FX: Luckily I have an amazing wife…
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: Who is extremely supportive, and she really—she understands that she always wanted to be with a musician, like that’s like what she—she obviously had lots of bad experiences with lots of musicians, but we’ve had something really harmonious, and she’s…it really inspires her, and she inspires me, so, yeah. I mean, I’ve got two kids now as well, so, I don’t really like being on tour as much as I used to. It used to be just part of who I was, and it still is part of who I am. But now I feel like, being a dad has become, like, my main priority, so being away from them is like, you know...being a dad, number one, and being a musician, number two, it’s a big flip. It’s only just started, so I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes.
WEBSTER: Right, right.
EVY: And how did the journey begin? You’re from Australia, right?
DUB FX: So I yeah, I’m from Australia, so I started—well, me and Cade actually, we met in high school when we were fifteen, my manager who’s over there. He’s a big part of the story, actually. We started, we met when we were fifteen years old, and he played the drums, and I played the guitar, and no one else at our high school was really into music. Actually, it was a small high school. And we started jamming, and we were like, “Hey, we should find…go to another school…” There was this other school which had loads more musicians and better music programs, so we decided to go there. And that was for the last two years of high school, year Eleven and Twelve, the more important years of high school. And we met loads of musicians, we started lots of bands, and we got really interested in the music industry, and as years went on we kind of were in lots of different bands together, and not together. Cade’s always been amazing at doing, you know, web design, at designing flyers, at doing managerial things. I was more of just a songwriter, and you know that was sort of, and he’s also an amazing rapper and turntablist and stuff. So, you know, we did a lot of things together and not together, and then I went off and decided to go to Europe for three years by myself, well actually first it was just one year I went by myself, and in that time, that’s when I came up with the idea for Dub FX, where I was looping my voice and beatboxing and stuff. After a couple years of doing that, I called Cade up, and I was like, “Hey, I need you on my team again,” and, and yeah, we’ve been—he’s been managing me ever since. And that was…so he’s been managing me for over ten years now. But, um, yeah, it all started just from street performing, and trying something brand new. And just using the street as a way of understanding what was possible with the technology I was using, with the ideas I had in my head…
EVY: Right.
DUB FX: And, uh, it was like, you know, if people didn’t stop and listen to something, and were not enjoying it then I would just say okay, move on, next thing, try something else. And so I became good at reading the crowd, at pushing…I kind of learned what it was that connected to audiences, and that’s basically what Dub FX is.
EVY: Right, it’s a very immediate loop of feedback.
DUB FX: Exactly, literally.
EVY: Right.
WEBSTER: I remember being in school, and my friends would be passing around little videos, and I remember one was—a few, actually—they said, “Hey man, have you seen this guy Dub FX, you know, he’s doing all this stuff,” and I was like, “Let’s check it out.” We got the video and it was like, “Whoa, this is dope!” And so it got passed around a school of, you know, like 300 kids. I remember that being such a big moment. When did you know that, “I’m doing something right,” you know, like, “I’m doing something that people really resonate with.”
DUB FX: Well, it was, it’s interesting, like, the videos came a little bit after. I already kind of worked it out. So the first year, 2006, I was, I had no idea what I was really doing, um, and that was like the guinea pig years, of just trying, just to see what happens. And, um, like I said, I would notice when people would stop, and I noticed when people would buy my CD, and I kind of became, I got into this kind of pattern where I realized, “All right, what’s—what’s making people stop and buy my CD? It’s basically making their jaws drop, making them so, you know, entertained, but also so inspired, that they’re like, “Gimme your music” type thing. And so, I was using all the effects, so like…making a beat on the street, like straight up beatbox with a nice big, you know, sound system, already turns people’s heads. That draws them in. And then looping that, and then adding like this bass line with my voice, people were like, “Whoa, how do you do that?” And I’d lay in some harmonies, and it’s such a transparent thing, to watch someone build up a loop, just with their vocals, just with their microphone, no drum machines on stage, there’s no guitars, it’s just, couple guitar pedals and a mike, you know? So like you watch someone build it up like that. Then I started like singing like lyrics that were not kind of just stupid lyrics, but like, conscious lyrics. Like, that was the thing I noticed, people were more attracted to, when I sang songs that weren’t necessarily conscious lyrics, people weren’t interested, they’d walk away. Especially in the U.K. When it was stuff that was more kind of like self-empowering or stuff that was a bit more, I don’t know, you know, yeah, just literally conscious lyrics, people would get more into it. And then on top of that I also used this pitch shifter on my voice to pitch my voice lower and higher, and rap in two different voices, and then go back to singing, and that kind of people would be like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!”
EVY: (Laughs.)
DUB FX: “Take my money.” So I was like, that was it. And so, I kind of… and the other thing that I realized, I was making, I was selling like, I don’t know, when I first started, like, I’d sell, like, maybe thirty, forty CDs in a day, and I’d be like, “That’s really good,” but then by the end we were selling like, you know, three hundred CDs—no, not three hundred CDs. We’d sell like about a hundred CDs a day, would be like a good day, but for like ten euros each. And we could do that three times a week, especially in Amsterdam, we were like killing it. And that was long before YouTube and Facebook even existed.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: So we were all like, “Man, in one day I’m making more money than I used to make in a week. I could do this forever.”
WEBSTER: Wow.
DUB FX: And then people started filming it, putting it up on YouTube, and then it just exploded. And I think because of all the street performing I’d done around the world—at that point, I’d done the east coast of Australia, lots of Western Europe—my videos just exploded because people were like, “Ah, that’s that guy I saw on the street. Man, I want to show you,” and here it is, and then they got passed around because I guess it was a bit unique for the times.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: Boom, that was what happened.
WEBSTER: Oof.
EVY: Intense.
DUB FX: It’s a very slow, long, and steady rise, I guess you could say.
EVY: It is heavy work, I think.
DUB FX: Lot of work.
EVY: Yeah.
DUB FX: I spent a lot of time street performing. On the street at least like three, four days a week, for like three, four hours at a time.
EVY: Wow.
WEBSTER: Did the boom in, like, digital media change your process, or the type of music you put out in any way, or did you stay true to what you were doing on the streets?
DUB FX: It didn’t change my—the music I was putting out. I changed the music I was putting out. Because of me, not because of the media. It was more just like, “I like this music, so I’m going to do this music.” Because I didn’t, I wasn’t signed to a record label or an agency or anything, like I was completely doing it completely independently, and you know the social media was my publicist, it was my record label, it was all of those things. It was my radio. I wasn’t getting played on the radio, but people could check it on YouTube. You know, I wasn’t…people found out about me through Facebook. It was—I had total control, and then obviously having people like Cade around me, who could help me, you know, with certain things as well, it was just a matter of like—this is what I feel like doing, I’m gonna do this. And I felt that’s what resonated—and that’s what I was doing on the street anyway. And ‘cause I knew already that that’s what people respond to on the street, surely they’re going to respond to that on their computers as well, you know what I mean? So I think a lot of people have this idea, “Oh people are stupid, you need to water things down, you need to make a simple product.”
EVY: Yeah.
DUB FX: And that’s what—that’s what’s going to be a big hit. And in America that might work, but in Europe that’s not necessarily the case. People, you know, have an intelligence when it comes to—everyone’s a critic, everyone’s a professional when it comes to what they like. You know what I mean?
EVY: Yeah.
DUB FX: So I kind of go with the fact that, you know, people are interested in intelligent music, into conscious music, and it’s—that doesn’t make it uncool.
EVY: Right.
DUB FX: It doesn’t make it unsellable. Because look at me, I’m selling, so…
EVY: Yeah.
DUB FX: You know what I mean? That was basically my attitude, and I’ve just kept at it.
EVY: Nice.
WEBSTER: Keep it up, man.
DUB FX: Sorry, I’m getting very long winded.
EVY: No, it’s great.
WEBSTER: No, I love it, love it, love it.
EVY: Where do you seek for inspiration?
DUB FX: Oh, everyday life…
EVY: Or does it find you?
DUB FX: Everyday life. I don’t know. I’ve got a really, um, my brain is like, super crazy, like, I’m always getting ideas. I would never, I could never run out of ideas in my head, yeah. For songs, for lyrics, for melodies, for stories…It’s just always there. It’s like, I can’t turn it off, to be honest.
EVY: Sounds busy.
DUB FX: It’s very busy all around, yeah.
WEBSTER: And are you a writer, or are you someone who kind of works it out as you go, you know, onstage or when you perform? How…what does that look like?
DUB FX: I definitely love improvising, and that’s a muscle I don’t get to work as much as I used to. That is one of—I’d say definitely something that I have, I have in me that I’m good at. But because over the years I’ve written so many songs, now I’m almost doing those songs more than anything.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: But you know, sometimes I’ve got on stage and just freestyled like for an hour, and I could still do it, I just have to prime myself, get myself in the right mood.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: ‘Cause I haven’t worked that muscle for a while.
WEBSTER: Yeah. Serious flow.
DUB FX: Yeah. But I can, you know, I could get there again, if I want to.
WEBSTER: Cool.
EVY: I’m also wondering, since you’re traveling so much, how do you ground yourself? Like, how do you find some balance between all the crazy life on the road?
DUB FX: I don’t drink alcohol, at all. Well, when I say “at all,” like, I can count the amount of times I’ve drunk alcohol in the last two years on one or two hands, you know what I mean? Like maybe when I’m celebrating, I might have something, you know, but other than that, I don’t drink alcohol. Um, I try to eat clean food, I don’t really eat shit food, I never eat fast food. And I just…yeah. I do Wim Hof exercises, you’ve heard of Wim Hof? ‘Cause he’s…
EVY: Yeah
WEBSTER: Great exercises, yeah.
DUB FX: He’s the Iceman.
WEBSTER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DUB FX: So he does breathing, I do those breathing exercises, I have cold showers every morning. Um, and yeah, I don’t know. I just—it’s because I’ve been doing it for so long, and it’s part of who I am, it’s not like something I have to think about. It’s just, it’s just who I am, it’s just what I do.
EVY: Mmm.
WEBSTER: That’s so fascinating to me. If I talk to my friends and be like, “Do you know Dub FX and what would you imagine he’s like as a guy in person?” I think I’d have the total opposite, I’d be like you’re a party guy.
DUB FX: Right.
WEBSTER: I don’t know, I don’t know why I have that image in my head, but it’s fascinating hearing you say, you know, you’re like quite grounded, you don’t drink a lot, uh, you do breathing exercises.
DUB FX: Yeah.
WEBSTER: Is that part of, like you know, your creativity? Like, have you found that affects you in any way, or…
DUB FX: Well, I’ve never been a huge party guy, there’s definitely been a time when I took loads more substances, all kinds of drugs, and…
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: And I still—I’m not—I wouldn’t stop myself from taking them, unless I’ve got shit to do, which is most of the time these days.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: If I don’t have anything to do, and I’m in the situation where we can all take drugs and party, then I’ll do it, I’ve not got a problem with it. But if it’s like, you know, I’ve got a gig tomorrow night, I’m definitely not going to do drugs.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: You know what I mean?
WEBSTER: Yeah.
DUB FX: It’s one of those things, and, um, I just gotta look after myself, because my body is my instrument, and my instrument is what pays the bills, so I just have to look after it. And I guess I got good at it on the street, you know, when I was street performing, it was much easier to get dragged to people’s houses and parties…
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: And, “Hey, drink with me, do this, do that.” And, you know, you have to put boundaries up and learn how to have boundaries.
WEBSTER: Yeah.
DUB FX: So that you can street perform the next day, you know.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: Because the tomorrow or the next day might be raining, and you might not be able to make money for a couple of days.
EVY: Right.
WEBSTER: Yeah.
DUB FX: And you’re living hand to mouth, so you’ve got to always be prepared. So…you know, it’s one of those things. I…yeah. I’m not really a party guy. But I have a good rock up to parties. I just won’t drink, I won’t take drugs…
WEBSTER: Right.
EVY: Right.
DUB FX: I’ll just listen to everybody’s crazy shit that they’re saying…
EVY: Speaking of, what’s the weirdest thing that happened to you on the stage, or in the street?
DUB FX: Ah, man, that’s a question that pops up all the time, and I never…you know, that kind of stuff—so many crazy things happen, that I tend to forget. Other people always have a little better memory of the things. One time when I was in, um, in the U.K., I was in Camden, um, I had…there was this, there were these two police officers, and I went up to them and I was like, “Hey, can I street perform?” And they were like, “No, you need a permit.” I’m like, “Ah. You sure I need a permit?” They’re like, “Yeah, you need a permit, you can’t street perform here…” So I called the council, and I’m like, “So do I need a permit to busk in Camden?” They’re like, “Oh, there’s no permits for busking in Camden.” I’m like, “So does that mean that I’m…so I don’t, I don’t—there are no permits to get.” He’s like, “Yeah, no.” I’m like, “So does that mean I can’t street perform?” “Well, if a police officer tells you to move on, you have to move on, but otherwise, there’s no law against it.” I’m like, huh. Sweet. So I like, I set my gear up, I started street performing, and after like twenty minutes, I looked up, and I—‘cause, like, I normally close my eyes while performing, for like twenty minutes at a time, I’ll just be like, out of it. And I open my eyes, and the police officer was there, and she was dancing in the crowd.
WEBSTER: No way.
DUB FX: And she was loving it. She was like, proper boom dancing. I’ve never seen a police officer dance before, you know what I mean?
WEBSTER: That’s hilarious.
DUB FX: Yeah, so that was a funny one.
WEBSTER: That’s Camden for you.
DUB FX: Yes it is. Manchester’s one of the coolest places to street perform in, ‘cause like everyone’s a poet, everyone’s an MC, everyone wants to get on the microphone and do it, do something, and it’s always really real, and they’re just uninhibited, and I don’t know. I can’t think of any good stories to be honest, so many crazy things…I’ve got into all kinds of fights, lots of negative things happen. But as far as funny things, no, not really.
WEBSTER: What’s it like with other street performers when you’re starting out? Is it like a collaborative kind of thing, like this is my street, my corner, I handle this? Like, what’s that relationship like? I’m just curious.
DUB FX: Well, I think a lot has changed a lot over the years.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: I haven’t really relied on street performing for six, seven years now. Like, I did it, I lived in a van, and street performed for six years straight. And in those years, in a lot of those years, I basically would find places along the road which were easy to street perform in and make me a lot of money. That was kind of…once I found, like, Amsterdam was the best.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: It was, ah, because the music, the people—it’s a constant, just constant people. Right. And if you can get a permit, which I managed to somehow get, I don’t know how we did it, but they—we weren’t supposed to get a permit for doing music, but I somehow convinced them I’m a dancer, and I need a bit of music in my show. And they were like, “Ah, sweet, no worries.” So I just did music and I never got bothered. And yeah, you got people from all over the world coming in every day of the week, all throughout the year, and it was almost like a, you know, like a distribution company for me. Because people would get high, they’re here to party, and they see me in the Dam square, or they hear you on Leidseplein, and I’d be just doing my thing, and people would buy my CD, because they’re on holiday, and um, I’d sell hundreds and hundreds of CDs, you know it’s like three, four hundred a week, easy, then spend the rest of the time just smoking weed and hanging out in cafes…
WEBSTER: Nice.
DUB FX: Just having a good time, and we’d do that all the time. So we’d find a spot that was good, and we’d put the van at Camping Zeeburg or another place called Gasperplace, and just have the van there in these campsites, and we’d just roll in with a trolley, do our thing, then go back and chill, and yeah, that was…as far as like getting into altercations with other buskers or the way it worked, it used to be that you would just line up, you would just wait your turn. But a lot of them would finish at four, five o’clock and go home, and there’d be no one there.
EVY: Oh.
DUB FX:…from five to, like, the next day.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: So at 5pm, I’d usually rock up, wait for the last circle act, it was like doing juggling or something, and disappear, and then I’d street perform for like four hours straight, and it would just get darker and darker, and people would still be there.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: And I kind of did that a lot. I’ve never really—I usually would rock up to a city that I’d never been to before, guerilla it, just try, and if I got shut down…but I’d be able to see straightaway the response from the people, if loads of people are buying, if cops say you need a permit, then I’ll just go to the council and look for a permit.
WEBSTER: Ah.
DUB FX: Otherwise I’d just go to places and they wouldn’t ask, and I’d just solo the cities and it’d all be fine. ‘Cause I was also doing something positive, I wasn’t holding my dick and saying…bullshit. And nobody had a problem with it. And the cops were always pretty impressed with what I was doing.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: So…
WEBSTER: Don’t lose it.
DUB FX: Yeah, I…I guess I had a really easy run. But I think since I came along, more people with big sound systems and beatboxing and basslines and stuff have started street performing, and I think I might be one of the reasons that happened.
WEBSTER: Oh, yeah.
DUB FX: Um, and so now I’m sure it would be a lot harder, because everyone’s trying to do the same thing, so now it wouldn’t be as impressive, if everyone’s seen a beatboxer, if everyone’s seen a looping artist. So I don’t know what it’s like anymore. Luckily, I just get to play sick stages and festivals.
WEBSTER: Boom. Right there.
EVY: Wow. Do you seek inspiration from other artists? Or writers, or poets…
DUB FX: Totally. I’m always listening to new music, old music, you know. Yeah. But like I said, for me it’s more like, I’ll pick up an instrument, like a guitar, and I’ll play some chords, and I’ll be like, “Ah, that sounds really nice.” And ‘cause I’m not an amazing guitarist, or musically trained, I’m just going with feel and vibe, you know. I don’t think about, what’s this next chord’s supposed to be, I’m just like, “Ah, that sounds cool,” you know what I mean? I do have an understanding of theory, but not like a deep one, so I can just like noodle about, find something that sounds good to me, loop that, and then write a melody over the top of it and just go from there. But um, yeah, it might come from listening to Erykah Badu, like I’ll get into an artist and I’ll listen to all their music. And then I’ll go on to the next artist and I’ll kind of do that, you know?
EVY: So who are you on now?
DUB FX: Who am I on now? I’d have to look into my phone, to be honest.
WEBSTER: Get that Spotify out.
DUB FX: Yeah, Spotify does change things, but like for example, I’ll listen to anything, man. Like, um, I really like this guy called Michael Kiwanuka.
EVY: Oh, yeah.
WEBSTER: He’s so good, man.
DUB FX: He’s amazing. He’s one of my…yeah. He’s amazing. So that’s one of the artists, I’m going through all the albums and listening to it all. You know, I might come across an artist, listen to a couple of tunes and then nyah, and then move on.
EVY: Right.
DUB FX: But he’s one of those ones that every song seems to be really good.
WEBSTER: Yeah.
DUB FX: So.
WEBSTER: Do you have any dream collaborators that you would really love to work with in 2020?
DUB FX: Bob Marley?
WEBSTER: Me too.
DUB FX: Frank Sinatra…
WEBSTER: Right, right.
DUB FX: Nina Simone?
WEBSTER: Nina Simone, nice.
EVY: My turn to be difficult with this.
DUB FX: No, I don’t know if there’s…Not really, I mean, whatever comes my way, comes my way.
EVY: Right.
WEBSTER: I like it. And your latest album, Roots, is out right now.
DUB FX: Uh huh.
WEBSTER: And can you tell us a little bit about that…was, what, why?
DUB FX: Yeah, so, I basically went in the studio without any kind of, usually there’s always like, “All right, you gotta make an album, you got three months, now do it.” And that’s how I’ve done it. And I’ve never been happy with the results. It’s just something that I threw together, and let go of it like because I had to go on tour again, and I wasn’t going to get enough, like another three months off or six months off to come home, and by that point it’s like, “Ucch, how do I start this up again?” Um, but because I actually did have—I did have about a six month break. There were a couple of little shows in between, where I’d fly to Melbourne, or I’d fly to New Zealand for a weekend and come back, so, but I was generally in Australia for about six months while my wife was pregnant with our first child. And, um, I was just making music, not thinking about an album, just whatever came out of my brain. And I had about, I don’t know, sixteen or seventeen songs, and then I was like, “How do these…they don’t really fit together, these ones.” I’m like, “Well, these ones are more rootsy-sounding, and these ones are a bit more electronic sounding,” and I’m like, “Well, why don’t we have a roots album, and call it Roots, and then we’ll have all the other stuff, and we’ll call that Branches.”
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: And so that’s the next bunch of tracks that I’m going to be releasing, so I thought—and also, it’s kind of, it’s indicative of what—the Roots album, that sound, that’s indicative of where I come from, is where me and Cade used to jam on, what we used to listen to. You know, the old school reggae dub stuff, the samba stuff, jazzy stuff. I used to jam with a lot of jazz musicians back in the day, and Woodnote was a jazz musician, um, people like him. So, yeah, I just put those ones together and we call that one Roots, and then the next stuff is more me branching out into different genres. Um, there’s some stuff I never tried before, like there’s an acoustic ballad in there, there’s like a house track in there. Lot of drum and bass in there. And uh, yeah. So that’s gonna come out soon as well.
WEBSTER: Nice. So the next album’s a bit more experimental.
DUB FX: Yeah, a bit more. Well, less rootsy and more electronic and a bit more experimental for sure. And I also wrote a comic book to go with Roots, as well.
EVY: Oh, wow.
WEBSTER: What?
DUB FX: Yeah.
WEBSTER: Tell us!
DUB FX: So that one, I’ll give you guys a copy. It’s, um, I originally had, because I’m a comic book nerd, I have been for years and years, and I’ve always wanted to write one, but I never really knew how, had the time or even knew how to do it. And then I had this idea of writing a comic book that went for, say, twelve chapters, and then each—‘cause normally you have a twenty-two page comic that comes out each month, you know, in the general sense. And I was thinking, what if you did like a twenty-two page comic that comes out each month, and it also comes out with a song? After a year, you’ve got twelve songs…
EVY: Wow.
DUB FX: And you’ve got this nice graphic novel to go along with it. That was always in my brain, my idea. And then when I finished Roots, I kind of had all this free time, and I was like, “Oh, we have to make videos,” and I’m like, “I don’t want to make more videos again,” you know, videos are so forever, and getting other people involved, and it costs a lot of money. I’m like, “What if I wrote a comic book for each song on the album, as a video, like a glorified lyric booklet, like I’ll just use the lyrics from the song as captions. And um, that’s it. And then some story to go with it, to sort of paint a different picture. So sort of like a storyboard for a music video type thing. And that was the idea, and then it kind of turned into this thing, and so now each song on the album has its own chapter of a short story, that they all kind of fit together in this one sort of graphic novel. And it comes free if you buy the CD or the vinyl. So we’re not selling it, I just figured, I don’t think people would trust that my first comic attempt would be worthy to buy.
WEBSTER: Who’s this guy selling comics…
DUB FX: That’s kind of the attitude. And it’s me testing out this new medium, basically.
WEBSTER: Sounds like a good deal.
DUB FX: Yeah, it’s real, it was a lot of fun. I’m actually going to write my—a full graphic novel after this, at some point.
WEBSTER: Nice.
DUB FX: Sure, now that I know how to do it, you know?
WEBSTER: Yeah. I like that you’ve got loads of ideas swirling around, like…
DUB FX: Constantly.
WEBSTER: Get some done, like comic book-musician combination, it’s pretty cool to me.
DUB FX: Totally. Yeah.
WEBSTER: So tell us what’s, ah, what’s in the future for you? What are you looking forward to, what are you excited about?
DUB FX: Musically speaking? ‘Cause the main thing in my brain is being home with my daughters and my wife, actually, more than anything.
WEBSTER: Right.
DUB FX: But as far as music is concerned, yeah, I was going to write this graphic novel one day. That’s not really music concerned, to be honest. But I will just—I’m gonna keep tinkering away and making music, and, ah, touring, you know. And I don’t think this train’s going to stop moving for a while, to be honest, unless we all die of some disease.
WEBSTER: Something like corona.
DUB FX: Exactly. Then we’re all stuck at home. Other than that, I’m just gonna keep making music, trying to put smiles on people’s faces, and put music out that hopefully people connect with, is my plan.
EVY: Sounds exciting. Thank you so much for having time for us. And uh…
WEBSTER: Yeah.
DUB FX: You’re welcome, thanks for having me.
WEBSTER: And for our audience listening, where can we find you—where can they find you online?
DUB FX: Well, the easiest way to get access to all my stuff is dubfx.com. You can get all my Instagram and Facebook and YouTube links there, otherwise just Google it, and uh, yeah. And Bandcamp is where you can get a lot of stuff from as well.
WEBSTER: Brilliant.
EVY: Thank you so much
WEBSTER: Thank you very much.
DUB FX: Thank you.
WEBSTER: And for our audience listening, that was Dub FX, we’re at Melkweg, and if you want to find the podcast you can find us at www.worduppodcast.com, where you’ll find past episodes and any information about our guests. Thank you.
EVY: Thank you. Doei!




Transcript by Janice Erlbaum