Don't call it a comeback _ mid-'90s favorite Dishwalla is making a tour stop in Boston this week with Ben Folds. Earlier this week, the Daily was able to catch up with the band's drummer Pete Maloney.
TD: Can you give your life story in 50 words or less?
PM: [Laughs] You want my life story? Not Dishwalla's? Well, ok. Jersey to LA to Santa Barbara to Dishwalla.
TD: What was high school like for you?
PM: I went to high school in New Jersey, public school. It was great. It was traumatic, like it was for a lot of people. Things that weren't big in retrospect were big back then, you know small town equals big dramas. Played drums in my basement, jamming with friends, with a blue light on that we got from Kmart. And I figured out rock was what I wanted to do with my life.
TD: How did you get in to playing drums , and not guitar like everyone else in the world?
PM: I started playing trumpet. There used to be a show in the '70s called FTroop. At the end they played this thing (describe a revelry). I loved that and asked my mom to get me a trumpet. Well,I learned that and played the trumpet for four years. I hated it. Then my brother showed my how to play a snare drum. I was about 11 at the time but I've been hooked ever since.
TD: How did you hook up with Dishwalla?
PM: I was touring with an artist named Josh Clayton Felt. He was in a band called School of Fish _ he recently died, tragically. We were touring with him to support hi solo album. We were opening up for Dishwalla then. A year later I ran into J.R.9the group lead singer) at a club and he asked me if I could fill in for their drummer who was injured. You have to remember that then the song , "Counting Blue Cars" was everywhere, not jus ton the radio but in Kmart_ even I was getting sick of the song.
When I met them a year earlier it was the first time they weren't playing for their friends. The y was like "40 people came, and we didn't know any of them." But then, when I saw them again the song was huge. So I ended up as sort of a pinch hitter for George[the group's former drummer].I would play half a show and he would come in and play the other half_ it was kind of strange.
TD: So do you get sick of playing it now?
PM: You get sick of anything repetitive. What do you like to do? Name something that you enjoy.[I give the example of ballroom dance] Ok say you had to dance to the same song every night for three years. Human beings want to change but as performer you have to play what the people want. The reaction form the audience is really worth it. Every time it amazing. I get more tired of playing the song that doesn't connect.
TD: It makes you wonder how musical theater performer do it, lik the people in Cats, imagine singing the same songs and doing the same choreography for ten years.
PM: There's something that makes you want to top the performance before. I think in Broadway a lot of performers have that mentality because they've reached that level in their field. You have to take risks too, be spontaneous_ otherwise you just turn into a jukebox.
TD: What has been your favorite performing experience?
PM: My favorite performing experience[pauses] after 9/11 we played St. Paul's Cathedral. It's the church across from ground zero, one of the oldest churches in America_ George Washington went there, and that's how old it is. Well it was left untouched no scratches from debris or anything. It was turned into a triage ward, like in an old battlefield. Cops and volunteers could get coffee and sleep. Our string arranger ,Ralph ,asked if we wanted to come with him to play for the volunteers. We went down there with just a couple of acoustic guitars and a string quartet and played. No pomp and circumstance. Some people wondered why we were there , but I think we helped some people. We met a couple of firefighters. One guy's brother was killed, he was a firefighter, and his whole company was killed. He said that we helped him. That's my favorite musical performance in terms of what music is supposed to do.
TD: Who would you say are your musical influences?
PM: I'm the musical encyclopedia of the group, I'm the musicologist. Someone said to me " you can tell a lot about a person from they're music collection." Well from my collection you would think I'm schizophrenic. I go from the obvious like the Beatles to the kind of obscure like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline , Louis Armstrong.
>TD: What's in your CD player right now?
PM: Some jazz: Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Sara Vaughn and a new band called Maroon 5. Have you heard of them [the answer is negative]? They're just some soulful funky white boys. It's nice to see some young band with actual writing talent. Right now they are unfortunately few and far between. Oh and Hank Williams. And Bing Crosby, I have some Bing Crosby in there too.
TD: And now onto what some call "the random questions." If you were a tree what kind of tree would you be and why?
PM: I'd be an oak tree because it's the strongest tree. Anything made of wood is good and oak makes it last the longest.
TD: What's your favorite color?
PM: I'd say my favorite color is blue[laughs] nothing fancy.
TD: What was your favorite cartoon growing up?
PM: Popeye, Popeye the sailor. Between that and Hong Kong Fooey.
TD: What's the best or worst lie you ever told?
PM: Best Lie: Saying I was 21 when I was 15, there was a woman involved.
Worst lie: Dinging my mom's Trans am I Jersey and telling her I hadn't driven it _ when I had, tall day before at 11 mph.
TD: And now, the Glen Phillips Challenge: Can you describe your creative process in Haiku?
PM: I've never done a haiku before so you have to tell me if I'm wrong.[gets rules for haiku creation]
Adversely Crazy
Melodic Energy in
One tiny expanse
That' basically us, the band trying to create a song for months on end. In the same four walls, staring at each other. You know the Sartre play No Exit? Like that.
Dishwalla will be playing at the WXRV Christmas show with Ben folds on Dec. 5 at Avalon.
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