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If I were granted 3 wishes, one would be to sit down with Jimi Hendrix, smoke em' peace pipe and pick his brain. Since that won't happen in this life, my next choice would be Dug Pinnick! And lucky me, my wish came true!

Texas Rockers King's X are back in the studio recording their upcoming 14th record, down on the farm, here in Nashville, TN with famed rock engineer producer Michael Wagener (Malice, Skid Row, Dokken).

It's a blistering cold Monday night as I visit with our hero (villain) staying at a modest extended stay motel that looks much like my first L.A. apartment. Except Dug's room is cleaner, and it doesn't have roaches (well, except the ones you roll your own). Upon entering, Dug is in full-on camp mode. He's sitting on the bed folding his laundry watchingly American Idol with the hiccups. He's surrounded by a Vegas hooker's kitchenette, an empty fridge with a few fresh oranges on top, and a small table littered with CD's, rock magazines, Movie DVD's, and his lap top computer with the infamous King's X logo decal in white on the cover. Just seeing the King's X band logo is a pretty friendly reminder of where you are!

King's X front man Dug Pinnick sits down this cold winter night and lights up with KNAC.COM to babble about faith, hope, love and the much anticipated new King's X Record!

KNAC.COM: Hi Dug, how are you?!?

PINNICK: I'm high!

KNAC.COM: Did you go to church today?

PINNICK: Nope. Somebody gave me some weed. (Laughs) So we just smoked out. We might as well be real. How am I doing? I'm high as a kite, I got the hiccups and we're making music in the studio.

KNAC.COM: What did you do last summer?

PINNICK: I don't know what the fuck I did last summer? I think I was home? I wrote a lot of music and cut a lot of grass. And I'm talking the yard!

(laughs)

Actually I wrote about 25 songs and I got 10 songs on the new King's X record, and I have 15 more songs for my solo record I'm getting ready to go home and do in Texas.

KNAC.COM: Will your solo project be called Poundhound?

PINNICK: I'll just call this project Dug Pinnick. On this record, I've decided I just want to sing. I'm thinking about getting some friends and forming sort of a band. I'm going to get Wally Farkas (Guitarist, Galactic Cowboys), and a few bass players I know like Rex (Brown) from Pantera. I want him to play bass on some of it. I'm hoping to get Jeff Ament (Bassist, Pearl Jam) to come down. Drummer-wise, Eric Tatuaka (Galactic Cowboys) who's amazing and Jimmy Hazel (24-7 Spyz). It's going to be a fun project! Then I'm planning to come out to California and hook up with my friend Hal Sparks (Guitarist, Zero 1) who is going to produce some it and play on a couple songs with his band. And I'm hoping Alan Johannes (Guitarist, Queens of the Stone Age) will come play on it. He's an awesome guitar player, and if Rex from Pantera would come play on that. God! Me, Rex, Alan and a drummer. That would be cool!

KNAC.COM: So what's new with King's X?

PINNICK: King's X. We're in the studio with Michael Wagener here in Nashville Tennessee.

KNAC.COM: Do you have a title for the new King's X record?

PINNICK: No, not yet. Usually titles come through the recording. Somebody will just say something in a conversation, and usually I'll just stop and go, "Whoa. Say that again. That's the name of the record."

KNAC.COM: How does it sound?

PINNICK: It's one of the best and heaviest records we've done since Dogman. And I don't say that about too much stuff we do. I'm really excited about this one!

KNAC.COM: How many songs?

PINNICK: We have 15 new songs. They're all shorter songs…under 5 minutes and over half of them are 3 minutes and under. The cool thing about it is, the way that ZZ Top used to write songs like Tres Hombres, where the songs are really short, but they're really packed, and they're really simple with haunting melodies where you go to sleep remembering them. That's what we're creating. But don't think ZZ Top when it comes to what we're playing. It's King's X! I'm real happy with it. I feel like I've gotten to a place in my life in song writing…I've been writing songs for 37 years…I do believe that I realize now, that if you write songs for that long, you gotta have a couple songs that are good. Just the odds. I feel like I've finally learned how to write songs that I like. I don't like anything I write because it's just doesn't meet the standard I have in my head for songs because my standards are so high. You can't reach them! I keep them there purposely, because if you keep your standards higher than you'll ever reach. You'll keep trying to get there, which you'll get if you challenge yourself. So I challenged myself on this record to make melodies, and syllables that rolled off your tongue that you remembered. The songs I wrote on this record I sat down and thought about a lot. All the songs on our new record are hits. Similar to the way the first Foreigner record was created. But much heavier, like Dogman!

KNAC.COM: How do you come up with new song titles?

PINNICK: Song titles will be there if the song has lyrics. If the song doesn't have lyrics, then will make up some working title until we think of something.

KNAC.COM: Is Ty (Tabor) doing a lot of guitar solos on this record?

PINNICK: There are not a lot of solos. It didn't feel like the songs needed them. But there's a lot of guitars all over this record. Ty's guitar sounds thick and unbelievable! We are doing a lot of vocals so it sounds more like Abbey Road. Ty and Jerry (Gaskill) came in to sing their parts and just blew me away with their wavering Beatles harmonies. What ever I say, it's going to lead you to another place. King's X fans are going to really love this new record.

KNAC.COM: What's it like working with Michael Wagener?

PINNICK: Michael is a real producer. You go in, and you let him do his thing. He loves King's X, and he understands us. He's a legend at what he does. It's two entities, the guy that's been producing for 25 years and we've been together 25 years. It's a real compliment of each other. We're real easy to work with and we trust him to do what he feels to do and know that he's going to make it sound good. It's just a real good marriage where there's no struggle, there's no hassle. What ever he says, do! We do it and we work together real well. I like Michael because he can help us see out strong points and our weak points. He will tell you we don't have any weak points, he says, "Everything is perfect, I just have to choose which one I like." He encourages us, and even if we suck he'll make us good. He's just a master.

KNAC.COM: The Beatles had Sir George Martin!

PINNICK: Yeah. I'll be singing a song, and I'll sing it 2 or 3 times. Michael will say let's do another one. And usually I'll get to the 3rd one and all of a sudden it will start to kick in for me. I'll start to figure out what I'm trying to feel and do here and I'll go into something, and he'll say, "OK now you're there." And I'll say, "OK thanks." He knows we've produced ourselves so he knows what we want to do, and what we want to hear. Michael knows how to reel us in from getting to picky and too personal. It's very important to trust each other and what comes out in the end we are going to like what we hear.

KNAC.COM: How did your King's X Fan Studio Workshop go?

PINNICK: (Laughs) That was funny! It was a workshop for fans and recording engineers to come watch Michael Wagener record a band and he teaches you how to do everything. How to mic things, and take care of stuff. So we go in thinking maybe we're going to do 2 songs. And he's going to teach the people about drum, vocal and guitar techniques. Well it was a 4-day deal. The first 2 days he taught them how to set the drums up. We all like to learn because he's a genius at what he does. It's unbelievable the theory he has in his mind. The understanding of cross-fading and where to put a mic, and tricks of how to find the right places. So he teaches them about studio set up and brings us all in to do a song. We tracked it so quick; he said, "Let's do another one." We ended up tracking all the band takes in 2 days while the rest of the guys we're at the seminar and watched. So basically they paid to hang with King's X pretty much. I kept looking over saying, "Are you guys having a great time?" And they said "Oh yeah, we're having a great time!" Because I'm sitting there thinking, "Man they want their money back." He's not showing them how to do anything, but at the same time he was teaching them.

KNAC.COM: That was an emotional Blog on My Space you wrote last summer responding to rumors of King's X breaking up.

PINNICK: I don't understand how people take things I say. People take things way way way deeper than I mean. What I said, I meant, but it was a response to a thread on the band message board. So I cleared up a bunch of things people were saying. And if you read all 40 threads of people, and you read mine it would make complete sense, because several people said certain things, and so I addressed them each one individually. But when you read my blog by itself without any understanding, it's just me complaining and crying. People will say "Why don't King's X do this?" Or, "Why don't they do that?" They think things are so easy, that all we gotta do is just go out there and say, "Hey, we're King's X, can we play at your club? Sure c'mon!" And they say, "Why don't King's X come here?" Because we can't get the promoters to bring us. They won't want us. Some promoters want us, and some don't. We can't come and just walk in the door. We have to get paid, and a lot of these places wont pay us enough. So we can't come. We can't live! So I was trying to explain to a person about why don't you just go play here, here, here, and the politics behind it. How the promoters, you know they're the ones that have to bring you to town. And that's just the way it is. There's no other way we can come, unless we pay for it ourselves and we can't do. They talked about why King's X is not successful and I came in and it's many reasons. And I started talking about many things that I feel I thought we did wrong, (stopping) us from getting to the place were we wanted to be. I talked about feeling like a loser, because you do sometimes. Some people say you're the greatest band in the world and other people don't give a fuck. Who do you believe, or should you believe anybody? Or do you have enough strength in yourself and confidence to believe in yourself and do it. I go through all that like anybody else would. So I explain those kinda things in the e-mail without answering one question. It was like me having a conversation with somebody. A moderator took my reply out, and put it on the front of the King's X website as "A Message from Dug." (As) soon as people read it, they posted it on their site. Next thing I knew it was all over the place. I was getting e-mails from a lot of people. It was good because it got things generated, and it got a lot of people saying, "Man, we're all going through this." Or other musicians saying, "Man, I'm going through this too, now I don't feel so bad." It was way taken out of context, and I didn't want people thinking I walk around hating myself feeling like I'm a loser. That's the way I felt at that second.

KNAC.COM: Do the same misinterpretations apply to your relationship with Sam Taylor? (Former King's Ex Manager/Producer).

PINNICK: I did a bass clinic where I answered questions from the people in the session. Somebody asked me some things about Sam, and I answered them. This guy said after he saw the clinic video, he didn't see or hear any animosity or anger in my voice when I talked about Sam. Maybe we misinterpreted all of this. In some ways that's true. Because when you read something that's written, you don't hear the person say it or see their facial expressions, so you can take it anyway you want to.

KNAC.COM: I saw your My Space page has 100,000 page views. That's pretty cool.

PINNICK: Yeah, but go over to the Deftones, Trent Rezner (NIN), or Howard Stern and they've got millions! I'm like OK. I was happy I have 12,000 friends on My Space. I went to the Deftones and they have like three million. I thinking "Damn I got a long way to go." But hey, the thing is... KNAC.COM: You'll take quality over quantity any day?

PINNICK: Well, you know I'll take quantity! Because for me personally, I'm a true from the heart believer in doing what you do and being what you be. I'm honest; I try to be the best I can. But I ain't gonna lie to you. If there's ways I can stretch things to make a living also, then I'll do it. So as much as I love having 12,000 die-hards, I would love to have 100,000 that don't care that much, but might buy one of those records, because that's the thing that pays my bills. I don't mind that. I used to not be that way until a few years ago when I found that paying bills we're becoming harder and harder because of the music industry's going down so bad. We made a decent living, we weren't rich but my bills we're always paid. Now I (go) literally from month to month, have to sit down and figure out OK, "Am I going to be able to pay next months bills?"

KNAC.COM: As Dave Chappelle would say, "That's show business!"

PINNICK: That's the romance and the love of what I do. Because me, Ty and Jerry always talk about wishing we were rich, and wishing we had those things that rock stars have. And then we look at each other and say, "You know, this has been an awesome adventure." And we always look at each other and think, "Who knows who we would be if we became super huge, rich rock stars 15 years ago?" But you know I'm kinda glad maybe it didn't. Because the wisdom, and the struggling, and the learning from the struggle, and gaining the wisdom that we have as who we are as this band, is more invaluable than being rich and being a rock star. Being one of those people with the rope syndrome; you know, opening that rope up and letting you through because your a VIP. I think every musician really deep down inside wants all that. I mean we're people, everybody wants to have their second for a day. Why would a musician not say that he doesn't want to have his either? I'm going to get killed for this. As far as I'm concerned any musician who says they're only doing it for the art is bullshit. Because one day they're going to wake up and say, "Well this art ain't paying the bills." "Let me figure out how to work this together so I get what I want, and I have my integrity but I can make a living at this." That's what you really need to be saying. "Oh no, I just do this for the art." Well then give it to me! Just hand it to me and walk away, and go figure out how to pay your bills, and then tell me you're doing it for just the art.

KNAC.COM: If King's X was mega famous, you'd probably be in a Burger King Commercial.

PINNICK: You know if Burger King came to me right now, and said "Can we use your song Over My Head in a TV Commercial?." I would say, "Here you go!" What the fuck is wrong with selling your music to something like that and letting them do it? Isn't that what you want? People to hear your music? What's that got to do with anything? I remember we played Woodstock 94, and every interview we did, someone would always say, "So how do you feel about having Pepsi all over the place?" (Because everybody was down on it.) And all three of us said, "We don't give a fuck what's being said. We're up there playing for 300,000 people." I said "They can put Pepsi behind it all they want, I don't care!" What's that got to do with anything? I mean it's just this political correctness in America has gotten to the point where it's bullshit. You know?

KNAC.COM: What was it like to play Woodstock 94?

PINNICK: Woodstock was un-fucking-believable! Dude, it was awesome.

KNAC.COM: Was that The Dogman Tour?

PINNICK: Yes! We played 6 songs. We started out with Dogman, then played Black Flag, It's Love, Manic Depression, Over My Head and we finished with Moan Jam and walked off the stage. And it was like "Bam!" It was great!

KNAC.COM: When are you going to put out some King's X DVD's?

PINNICK: We're working on a bunch of new stuff. We're going to make a big announcement soon as we get the rights and the real video. Not the bootleg stuff that's been going around. Look out for the new King's X at Woodstock 94 DVD soon!

KNAC.COM: I know everyone wants to see the vintage King's X footage like the Gretchen era. That's when I first saw King's X at the Country Club in Reseda. Bass player Mike Inez (Alice in Chains, Ozzy, Heart) turned me on to you guys.

PINNICK: Cool. I got to sing with Alice in Chains last summer with Mike Inez on stage. They came down and I sang Man in a Box.

KNAC.COM: King's X used to wear some cool stage clothes. Will you guys ever present yourselves in full stage regalia again?

PINNICK: You never can say never. Right now, I haven't found anything I feel like I look cool in. I love those old jackets, but if I continue to look that way up until now, it would be like a George Clinton or Bootsy (Collins) thing. It would just be my thing. I could live with that, but when I got in my 40s, I had a mid-life crisis. I dealt with it in an opposite way, like most men go out and buy a Corvette and divorce their wives and get a young girlfriend. I went and cut my hair off, and put all my jackets up and said, "This is me." I said, "Look, this is me. If you like my music then accept me for this." It was almost like a challenge just to say, "Who's going to run, because I ain't got the cool jacket on?" Everybody stayed in it, and it really helped me to like myself. Because I think I hid behind all that as an insecure person like a lot of us do to dress ourselves up for image. I had a real low self-esteem at the same time, which made what I look like very meticulous. I worked real hard at looking like that. It was a daily terror for me. You wake up in the morning, gotta play tonight, you have an interview…"Oh I gotta do my hair!" It was like a girl with a bad hair day if my Mohawk wasn't just perfect! You get in the car, you can't lay back, and you can't rest. You gotta hold you head up all fucking day or else you get that hole in there. But the thing was, I was younger, and when you're younger, you do that shit. I guess I just kinda grew up and said "Let the kids do it!" When I go see young bands all meticulously made up, and looking like rock stars with the paint on their faces, their swoop down hair across their eyes, and the little jackets and stuff I smile and think, "Have fun guys!"

KNAC.COM: Do you have a salon chick that styles your hair?

PINNICK: No, I've been doing my hair for years. (Laughs) I come from a long line of Beauticians. I'm serious.

KNAC.COM: (Laughs) Dug Pinnick's Stoner Rocker Beauty School!

PINNICK: Dude, I used to cut my friend's hair back when I was in my 20's.

KNAC.COM: Where do you want to play that you've never played?

PINNICK: I'd like to play South America, South Africa, and Australia. We played Japan. It was awesome. We've played all over Europe. I wouldn't mind playing in the Middle East somewhere. I know a friend who techs with a couple bands who said, "Dug, it was scary when we got there! But when they went to play for the kids, those kids are just like American kids. They love rock and they had a great time." I would love to go to Israel and the free countries like Syria. I think it would be awesome.

KNAC.COM: Would you like to live in L.A.?

PINNICK: I've always wanted to live in L.A. Me and Ty both said we could make a way much better living if we lived in L.A. It would be great to be plugged into the local L.A. rock scene. Our only problem is, there's no way we could live out there because we couldn't afford it. I don't know how people afford it out there? I work hard enough trying to live in a middle class neighborhood in Texas. If I move to L.A., I'd have some 2-room apartment in some shit hole some place. We just don't want to live like that. When I was in my 20's or 30's I'd think, "Yeah, I'd do that. I don't give a fuck." I actually now own a three bedroom house, with a living room, kitchen, a dining room table and a front and back yard, and it's in middle class suburbia. I'd much rather much stay in Texas. I have my own studio in my house, which I could never have in California.

KNAC.COM: How much was Sly Stone an influence on you?

PINNICK: He is a very dominant influence on me. I was going to say he's one of my biggest influences. I think he moved me more than anyone.

KNAC.COM: I was pretty impressed by the comments Ritchie Blackmore made about you on the VH1's top 100 rock bands. He doesn't like anybody.

PINNICK: Cool, most people that like King's X don't like nobody. (Laughs) I love it! You know!?! It's true. I ran into the legendary Leslie West (Guitarist, Mountain) at the NAMM Show and never met him before. I walked up to him to shake his hand to tell him how much I admired him, and before I could finish he saw my name tag and said "Are you part of King's X?" I replied, "I'm the bass player and singer." He stopped walking, and he grabbed me and said, "Let me tell you…I don't buy records! I don't buy music because all the bands suck these days! But, I heard you guys somewhere and I went to the store and bought your record. You guys are one of the greatest bands in the world! Let me shake your hand!" I was just standing there with my jaw on the ground going, "Dude, bless your heart!" Leslie West man, fucked me up!

KNAC.COM: You have a funny story about meeting Crosby, Stills, and Nash?

PINNICK: I met Crosby, Stills and Nash at Woodstock 94. Me and Jerry are standing there freaking out thinking, "There's Crosby, Stills and Nash." We didn't know what to say to them. They got done with their photo session, and we were next in line. They came into the dressing room, and so we shook each other's hands and Stephan Stills comes up to me and says, "We know who you guys are! We wanted you to be in our band, but you already got a band!" He looked at me and then laughed. And we looked at each other and thought, "Whoa."

KNAC.COM: I heard Robert Palmer gave King's X an honorable mention on TV.

PINNICK: Yes! Me and Jerry we're in a hotel room on tour and I remember Robert Palmer was on The Arsenio Hall Show. Arsenio asked Robert, "Are there any rock bands that you like these days?" And Robert said, "There's not too much out there I like, but there's this new band called King's X, and they got this song called "It's Love" and its one of the best songs I've ever heard!" And me and Jerry looked at each other with our jaws on the ground.

KNAC.COM: I bet you have a lot of rock star fan stories.

PINNICK: Me, Ty and Jerry could do this all day about how our peers just love us. The keyboard player from Lynard Skynard, Billy Powell was on the side of the stage crying…talking about how we moved him, and how he loved King's X. We're thinking, "Dude, it's almost too much!" And then on the other hand, (we) walk out the door and be nobody…and watch them walk out the door, and the world knows who they are. It's a weird thing.

KNAC.COM: Has Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company, Queen) ever heard you sing?

PINNICK: Paul Rodgers is one of my favorite singers in the world. I missed him at Woodstock 94. Someone told me he was in a room with Paul and mentioned my name and Paul stopped and said, "Dug Pinnick is one of the greatest rock singers in the world!" The guy called me up and told me that and I'm thinking, "Jesus!" You know, all I do is play Free and listen to them and with my jaw on the ground listening to Paul Rodgers. When he played with Queen, and watching him do that, I got chills watching that man sing! So what happens for me when we get those kinda compliments??? We're really happy that we get them. But we're laughing inside like, "They're joking, this has got to be a joke!" We look at each other just dumbfounded and walk away because we know who we are. We're just a bunch of shitheads who struggle, and make music like everyone else.

KNAC.COM: We're you born to be loved?

PINNICK: Um, (Pauses) I hope so! (Grins)

KNAC.COM: Will King's X ever play the David Letterman Show?

PINNICK: Paul Shaffer (CBS Late Show Orchestra) got on our bus one time after a show. He and a couple of his band members came down to see us play at a club in NY. I was changing, and one of my techs comes onto the bus and says, "Paul Shaffer and a bunch of people, his band I guess want to come on the bus and say hello!" My immediate reaction was, "Bring em on!" And they marched straight to the back of the bus and we hung out back there. Paul says to Ty, "So who does your samples?" Ty replied, "Samples? What samples?" Paul said, "Vocal samples." Ty said, "Nobody. We sing!" Paul said, "Hmmm?" Then he said, "So that last song you did that had all the starts and stops in it, what's the name of that song?" We said, "Born to be loved." He said, "We're gonna do that song!" Ty chuckled at him and he said, "No seriously, we're going to do that song on the CBS Late Show!"

(Now) Paul Shaffer plays "Born to be Loved" on Letterman all the time and we get paid for it! Dude, every 6 months we get a royalty check from them playing that. It's paid bills. It's like awesome! That's what I'm saying, those are the things that a musician wants to do in his life to stay around and make a living and do what he wants to do. Your music will pay for itself in the long run. And that's what I'm finding out. Even though they're small checks, we still get checks in the mail from Junior Gone Wild being played in France. It all adds up. If you have enough of it, you can make a living and continue to do what you do.

I heard that Ritchie Blackmore makes $50,000 a year from Smoke on the Water, because somewhere, somebody is playing that song. That's what you want. Somebody somewhere playing your music. That's all it takes!

KNAC.COM: What was your first Deep Purple Experience?

PINNICK: I remember the first Deep Purple record I bought was In Rock. It was really interesting because I had never heard that kind of metal except for maybe Black Sabbath. All the bands before that were British Invasion Blues Rock Bands like Led Zeppelin. Everyone had a groove to them. When I heard the album In Rock, I thought, "This is hard." That's the only thing I could feel. This is cold. It didn't feel warm, but I liked it. From that point on I was into Deep Purple.

KNAC.COM: Was Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover a big influence on you?

PINNICK: I learned how to play bass from their record Machine Head. I met Roger and I interviewed him in Houston about 10 or 15 years ago. One of the girls that worked at a local TV station did a local rock show, and she said, "Dug, I'm getting ready to interview Roger Glover." I said, "Can I do it?" I never interviewed nobody! I told her, "I can play Machine Head backwards!" She said, "That would be cool." So Roger Glover and I sat down in front of the cameras and I just asked him every question I knew of. Like you, you know them, their music has affected you. It was so cool because I would ask him a question, and he would say, "OK now I have to ask you a question about King's X." And we went back and forth and (it) was awesome! It was great, great, great meeting that guy.

KNAC.COM: Are you a big Glenn Hughes fan? (Singer-Bassist Trapeze, Deep Purple, Hughes-Thrall, Black Sabbath)

PINNICK: Dude! Me and Glenn communicate every now and then. I think Glenn is one of the greatest musicians in the world.

KNAC.COM: Do you collect albums?

PINNICK: I used to. I had about 5000 and sold a bunch of them. I have everything I want on CD now except Spooky Tooth You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw. Probably one of the greatest pop records I've ever heard in my life. Every song is just perfect and simple. And, I'm looking for Mothers Finest Iron Age.

KNAC.COM: I understand you like to paint?

PINNICK: I used to. I don't paint or draw anymore. I did in my 20's, but rock n roll took over. I'm still an artist at heart though because when I do my Poundhound stuff or solo stuff, I love to be in control of the art. You can tell when you look at my covers (as) opposed to King's X. I'm doing "It's me!" I like bright, stark, disturbing pictures and airbrush pictures that really strikes you in an emotional way like it does me. I remember when we we're looking for a cover for the 4th album King's X, and I first saw the picture, I said "That's the cover!" I pretty much gave a temper tantrum until we had that cover. I just thought that was the greatest, the girl under the table with the wine spill. I could not believe, how much thought you had to think when you looked at that picture. For me it was saying the audacity of affluence and religion.

KNAC.COM: The cover reminds me of Sabbath's Heaven and Hell album cover and there's wine all through the Bible.

PINNICK: Yeah, but I wanted it spilled. When I first saw the picture, the wine was standing up with the bread. And the girl was under the table and there we're crumbs. I said, "I want the wine spilled too." Because for me, like in the song lyrics "I ate the bread and I spilled the wine." What I'm saying is, people say, "The blood of Christ or the wine is your sacrament." And I spilled it. It's just a thought of sort of a sacrilegious but not. I'm trying to say something nice that, It's not the wine or Jesus, it's the way I feel about religion and the church to this day is that there's a whole lot of good there, but there's a whole lot of bullshit. In everything that I do I always have to put it out. I always said, "If I say Jesus in a song, I have to say Fuck." It's just going to be that way. I'm not going to say one or the other.

KNAC.COM: Would you ever think about writing a book?

PINNICK: I'm writing a book right now! I'm working with a writer from L.A. named John Sutherland. He came to Houston for New Years and spend 3 days with me and I gave him about 15 hours of tape. It's just about music, my life and everything I've gone through all tied into music. It's just kinda Dug babbling book about life.

KNAC.COM: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

PINNICK: (Sighs) I don't think we're going to be here. The Mayan Calendar ends in the year 2012. There's all these prophecies that say that everything is going to end in 2012. The meteor that's heading this way that's going to come closer to earth than the last one did. I really honestly believe we are at the end. I believe after watching TV shows like It Could Happen Tomorrow and all the catastrophes that are ready to happen, and that have happened. I just don't even think about anything other than do what I do, and enjoy it! Because it's going to be over tomorrow whether I get hit by a car and die or what ever. 10 years from now, I don't know what I'll be doing? We did this once, Sam Taylor made us do a 15 minute video when we first got signed, and said we were going to watch them back in 5 or 10 years. So I remember the time Sam said, "OK it's time, time to watch the videos." And it was amazing how much we changed in our way we felt about everything, and how we had changed after watching ourselves. Which was saying, "What do you think you'll be doing in 10 years?" I looked back and thought to myself "Wow, you were a real idiot! Wow, you were really insecure, you were just so naive." But that's who I was at the time, I believed everyone should love everybody, and everything will be OK. I'm still a hippie at heart. I believe love is the answer. Now I look around and say, "You know that's bullshit!" We are cavemen with a lot of technology and that's who we are and what we'll always be. You can go down the list on all the things that man is, and I realize if that's who we are, then embrace it. Accept it and deal with it! People ain't going to love each other, they're just going to have to fucking learn to live with each other. My message is, let's start realizing that everybody is bullshit. Your shit stinks, and my shit stinks. So, let's sit down and try to clean up our shit together.

KNAC.COM: Do you have any survival tips for wanna be Dug Pinnick fans out there?

PINNICK: Survival Tips? (Laughs) I'd say the Survival Tip of the Day is accept the world, and everything in it, as it is...and then go live your life the best you can! Dug Pinnick and King's X Band Links:

• King's X Website - http://www.King'sXonline.net/
• Dug Pinnick My Space - http://www.myspace.com/dugpinnickpoundhound
• King's X My Space - http://www.myspace.com/Kingsx
  
  
  Writer/Cartoonist Michael Fischer: Toons On-Ice - http://www.toonsonice.com

  
  

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