hotel. We went to the hotel to drop off the disk and press kit and as we walked in one door, Al, Angie and their friends walked out the other door. When my manager got back, I was like come on, let’s go find them. I wanted to make the first impression in person. We were circling around trying to find him and we thought we lost them, but when we were driving back towards the art institute, I saw him walking on the side of the road. I slammed on the breaks in the middle of the road and got out of the car and ran over to talk to him. Busses and cars were honking their horns at me, (laughing) but I did make a good impression because he did take me on. He told me later on "You know, when I first met you, I thought you were some crazy psycho that was going to kill me!". (laughing) He was living in New York at the time and he set up a meeting the one of the labels he felt would give us the least amount of bullshit. Al went in to meet with the guy and wanted to show and tell the guy that he was clean now and wanted to produce a record. They told him to forget about Pound Of Flesh and do this other band. He told them to fuck off and says to me, "Ok, change of plans". He tells me that he is going to pick me up and we are going to move out to LA. “We will pick you up in Chicago and we will drive and start on the album in LA.” That was so bizarre but the road trip was cool. One of my friends at the time came with me and we drove Al’s pick up truck and he and his wife had the U-HAUL in front of us. (laughing) Al was like "My car isn’t legal, so dont speed!" He was driving ninety miles an hour and my friend at times couldn't look ahead because Al was on two wheels doing turns on some of the streets.
DDR: Then you went in the studio in 2012 for Pill and then recently you released Pills, was there a reason to go plural with the latest album and are they supposed to be related in any way?
Darrell: It’s called Pills because a couple songs off of Pill are on the new CD. We took songs off of Pill that we felt were the strongest and re-record them as a band.
DDR: One song that I really enjoyed off of PILLS was your cover of Army Of Me from Bjork. That was an incredible piece of work and you did that song justice. Did you have to get permission from Bjork or her management?
Darrell: I got permission. You don't really have to with cover tunes, but I still like to anyway. We made some changes to it, but the melody is still the same. Her manager actually got with me and asked me to send him a copy and he responded that he loved it and wanted me to send a hard copy that he will play for Bjork. I haven't heard back yet, but I hope she likes it! (laughing) It’s one that we wanted to cover for quite a while.
DDR: After doing a cover of Army of Me on Pills, do you think you will revisit doing covers on future albums?
Darrell: Some, it depends really. If
it’s something that can get me
somewhere, or that I can do it
justice, I definitely would. Some people that don’t know your stuff are open to hearing songs they
are familiar with and then
will be open to hearing other
things from that artist.
DDR: Another song off the album is called "Everybody" what was the influence behind the song?
Darrell: Umm, hatred for people! (Laughing) You know, it’s kind of funny, I am a pretty easy going guy and pretty respectable, but I have issues with disrespectful people. Unfortunately you have to deal with them all day and I had one day where I got cut off a couple times and then went to the grocery store and it was a complete nightmare with rude people. I came home and I was like "Fuck Those People, Fuck Everybody!", and then it all came out one, two, three. It’s one of those rare songs were it all came together at the same time. Sometimes, you will have lyrics, or you will have a melody and you have to work to get them together. That song, everything came together at the same time.
DDR: With all of your songs, is there a formula that you follow? Meaning is it melody first, or lyrics first?
Darrell: It all depends. Sometimes, I will be writing some music and I will have to step away from it because I have worked it too much. I had the problem in the past where I did too much and it was completely overdone.
Then I will be working on another song and think, yeah I have the melody for that song, and they may come together like that. Sometimes I have to listen to the music over and over again. I try and write the melody and the lyrics with the same type of feel to it.