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JOHN DWYER WRITES SONGS, TRIMS WEED, AND LIKES SAN FRANCISCO A WHOLE BUNCH

INTERVIEW BY ELLIS JONES

Photo: Archie McKay

Bob Merrill got it wrong. Love doesn’t make the world go round. Tacos do. They are one of the only foods that are constructed like a house except they’re filled with warm and delicious stuff instead of drywall and insulation. And people in California, like John Dwyer, love them. He’s lived in San Francisco for over ten years and been in a ton of great bands like Coachwhips, Pink and Brown, and his current outfit, Thee Oh Sees. He took a break from trimming weed into smaller pieces of weed to talk to us for a minute about his music and the city that runs on smiles.


VICE: You moved to San Francisco all the way from Rhode Island? Why?
John Dwyer: There was a bunch of music people I wanted to meet out here. I basically just ran the gamut in Rhode Island.

What bands did you want to play with once you got here?
Actually, most if it, I guess, was Greg from Deerhoof. I saw him play drums and it was just inspiring. I didn’t really know anybody out here except one dude who I ended up playing with in Pink and Brown. But my favorite band is this one that used to play around here in the 90s called the Icky Boyfriends. The Sic Alps are out here. Mayyors are great. It’s a smaller scene than New York, I think, so there’s more inbreeding going on as far as people working together.

Does that mean it’s more stagnant too?
It’s kind of weird here. There’s some real minor lags and lulls, but for the most part it’s pretty consistent. There’s always new shit starting. It’s always pretty interesting. In Providence, depending on the crop of students out there—because it was such a school-oriented town—there’d be these great bands and then just four years of dogshit and then all of a sudden good stuff again.

What are some of your favorite things about San Francisco?
My favorite place to play is this gay bar—they kind of cater to everybody. It’s called the SF Eagle Tavern. It’s a leather-daddy bar. It’s really fucking fun. They only do shows one night a week so it never gets boring. There’s another spot called El Rincon. That joint’s pretty hot. You can play at any other fucking club out here but they’re all boring, black, personalityless rooms. These spots are cool. And you can’t beat the tacos. They’re three bucks anywhere you go. You’d be hard-pressed to find a shitty taco.

People from California and the South would marry tacos if they could. It’s a little insane.
It’s kind of disgusting, but yeah, it’s totally true.

In New York you can’t find any good burritos. People think that Chipotle shit is good. They need to be locked up.
It’s getting better, man! By the Lorimer stop there’s a place called Mexico 2000. I know it’s the most retarded name. But it’s like a bodega with one little Latino lady working there. There are only three tables, and you can never get a seat. It’s the shit.

Is there anything about San Francisco that bums you out?
Right now the art scene is crushingly bad. There are so many great painters out here and nobody can sell anything. Since the economic meltdown, nobody wants to buy anything. I trim weed for a living in Oakland. So I see all these beautiful old-ass houses that are just boarded up. It’s kind of crazy. Everything’s shutting down.

Wait. You weed gardens?
I trim weed and I do carpentry. The weed job is kind of new but I really like marijuana, so it turned out nicely.

Oh. That weed.
Yeah. I literally mean pot—cutting it down to a smokeable chunk. Marijuana’s pretty much legal. It’s not too hard to get a doctor here to say your insomnia would be helped by marijuana.

I totally imagined you outside in the middle of summer furiously hacking at a never-ending field of crabgrass and dandelions.
Out in the woods with a machete with sandals on? No. I sit on a couch. It’s not a bad job. I was too hung over to work the other day and I was laughing because all it requires me to do is sit on a leather couch and cut marijuana and watch horror movies all day, and I couldn’t even do that. That was a pretty blistering hangover.

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Comments

Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2009 wrote: best interview ive ever read
Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: No one buying anything doesn’t equal bad art. It means people are broke as hell right now and only spend money on necessities.
	aahhhhB, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: your talking to John Dwyer and you assumed he meant dandelions and not marijuana? come on now
Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: "people are out numbed by the good drugs out here" well thats it. Im moving!
Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: I think its pretty cool that his favorite place to play is a gay bar... right on!
Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: heh. the coachwhips were great in their much-too-short existence.
Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote: what’s up with the streets in san fran?
Anonymous, on Aug 9, 2009 wrote: how sad your life must be, unable to enjoy the coachwhips
Anonymous, on Aug 9, 2009 wrote: john dwyer is an annoying piece of shit
Anonymous, on Aug 8, 2009 wrote: john dwyer is inspirational.