Bo: The Supersuckers have been around since most college-aged kids have been alive…since 1988. What does it feel like now to still be doing shows in 2011? Did you ever think you guys would still be existing today?

DB: Well, that’s one thing that we regret choosing the name Supersuckers. We had no idea that we were gonna be around for twenty years. If there’s anything I could have done differently, it would have been to come up with a little bit better name than that.

Bo: Like what?

DB: I don’t know. Anything. Monkey Wrench would have been better. Just the fact that we picked Supersuckers on a coin toss with no insight that we were gonna be a band for twenty years.

Bo: Speaking of coin tosses, in your press release you say that you used a coin toss to determine between going to Seattle or New Orleans when you were first starting out. Do you think that you could have had the same amount of success if you went to New Orleans?

DB: (Laughs) No, I’m glad that it landed on heads for Seattle ‘cause we had a lot of friends up there already in bands and working with Sub-Pop Records at the time. New Orleans, I think we would have just gone there and gotten into a lot of trouble and probably not been a band much longer after that.

Bo: Speaking of Sub Pop Records, you guys have gone through a few label changes. You were on Sub-Pop for a while and you had your own label, Mid-Fi Recordings. Recently, [the lead singer] Eddie Spaghetti signed with Bloodshot records for his solo career. The band itself is still putting out records underneath Mid-Fi?

DB: We’re actually looking for a new label to jump on board with. We’re under new management. We’re trying to take our back catalogue and go to another label and have people do it for us versus us doing it ourselves because we’re just too damn lazy to keep coming up with a record every year.

Bo: So those are your immediate plans, where do you see The Supersuckers five years from now? Are you still going to be playing shows?

DB: I hope so. I definitely have five to seven more years in me to keep doing what I’m doing. No matter how good it gets, it can always get better.

Bo: You guys have played with tons of artists: Eddie Vedder, Steve Earle, Willie Nelson, Kelley Deal of The Breeders. You guys have played big festivals like Reading/Leeds and Woodstock. What’s your favorite moment looking back…what time or who were you playing with where you thought, “I could never have imagined this happening but it’s happening.”

DB: I think it was the last European tour opening up for Thin Lizzy. That was a pretty good gig. Vivian Campbell was playing guitar in the band at that time. That was a lot of fun.

Bo: Just the whole experience or one particular night or venue?

DB: It was the whole experience. The fact that a band, Thin Lizzy, being back together even though it was without Phil Lynott. Being back together and being as good as they are. It was something magical. It was definitely a moving experience to see something survive. It gave me a lot of faith in my own band. With the right people, you can overcome a lot of problems.

Bo: A lot of bands don’t last because they have interpersonnel strife. You guys seem to have your share of that. How do you guys get through it?

DB: We all have our separate personalities, but the one thing is we definitely know what we want to do and that is to put on a good show. But what happens before the show or after the show with everyone’s personal lives and everybody’s got their own problems and in regards to whatever it is. But when you’re up on stage and you’re rockin’ out and playing the same songs with everybody else in the band, I can’t describe the feeling of that. That’s just an awesome feeling to have when you’re up there and you know you’re kickin’ ass. There’s a big difference between being in a rehearsal room rehearsing a song and then being on stage in front of an audience and playing it like you’ve never played it before.

Bo: You guys are the self-proclaimed “Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in the World.”

DB: Damn straight.

Bo: You’ve released alternative country albums. I read that you’re from Tucson, Arizona and you’ve heard it your whole life but why the country excursions as a band?

DB: It doesn’t matter what genre of music it is, if it’s a good song it rocks. You know, you take any Johnny Cash song…you could take that song and you could make a reggae song out of it, you could make a rock song out of it. Whatever. If the song is good, you could do anything with that song. It’s just basically good music, regardless of what kind of genre it is.

Bo: So you wanted to do a couple of country records just to get a chance to record certain songs?

DB: No, that’s how we learned to play songs is learning country songs. You could take a Ramones song and you could make it a country song. When we work on songs, it’s not like I just pick up the guitar and have the whole song mapped out and written out. I pick up an acoustic song, I come across a riff, I come across a lyric that I like. It turns out to be you do more work with an acoustic guitar. Then you bring it to the band. Then the band takes it and turns it into something else and then they turn it into a Supersuckers song. So the construction of the song always starts out with a very basic formula and that’s usually an acoustic guitar. That’s just how music is created. That’s just a couple of ways of writing songs. We never were anti-country. We used to do a thing called The Junkyard Dogs where we play out on the street for spare change and raise enough money to have a barbeque and buy a keg. It wasn’t anything that was a stretch for us to do. It’s as natural as playing any Supersuckers song.

Bo: Does every band member who’s been with you have been required to have an interesting nickname?

DB: It just makes it easier.

Bo: I like the then drummer’s name of Mike “Murderburger” Musburger.

DB: Murderburger was a great guy. A good guy.

Bo: For your upcoming tour, how long has it been since you’ve been on the road?

DB: Too long. It feels like a year.

Bo: I’m a guitar player myself. What kind of setup do you have right now?

DB: I have two vintage, original-spec Les Paul gold tops that I take on the road with me. I have a 100 watt [Marshall] Super Lead. Bottom cabinet with Greenback Celestions in it. I have a 50 watt Mark 2 Master Volume Marshall head that I bring as a backup. [For pedals] it’s just a tuner and a wah-wah pedal. The wah-wah pedal is the Dunlop Jimi Hendrix model which is very nice. They didn’t use cast iron. It’s super light and I really like it. Even Vivian Campbell uses one.

Bo: I see that you guys play for different causes over the years like Farm Aid and other charitable causes. Is there any particular favorite cause of yours?

DB: The one I like the best was a long time ago we did Boarding for Breast Cancer where I actually snowboarded right to the back of the stage and took my board off and put on a guitar and played for an hour and a half. I took off my guitar and put my snowboard back on and went down the rest of the way.

Bo: A good rock and roll entrance and exit. I’m looking forward to your show on Tuesday, October 4th at The Filling Station here in beautiful Bozeman, Montana. I look forward to hearing you guys rock out. Is there anything you’d like to add for our Bozeman readers?

DB: Wear clean underwear because we’re gonna rock the pants off of ya. Come down to the show. We’re gonna rock the house out.

Bo hosts a jazz show on KGLT, plays guitar with earnest, and can probably be seen at the next show with his trusty camera documenting the music scene in beautiful Bozeman, Montana. He can be reached at bocephusbrown@gmail.com.