PipemanRadio Interviews The Ataris at Aftershock 2025

0:04 Hi, you have done too, Yes, that's true. W W forre you you. This is a pipe man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio and I'm here with. Mike from the Atari's Nice Here after Shock we are that's right. Have you ever played after Shock? I can't remember. No, this is our first after Shock. Yeah. Yeah, so we feel very honored to have done it. So we're pretty stoked. We're coming hot off a riot Fest in Chicago. Yeah, so I wanted to talk about that because it's funny.

0:46 I normally cover riot Fest, but this year, for some reason, it was the same weekend as Loward than Life. It was so I ended up at Loward in Life and I heard there was some epic shit that it was rant. It is my now. I love Aftershock. This is my first foray into it. But riot Fest is we call you. We do festivals all over the world and it is like premiere. And the twentieth anniversary was just crazy. I mean, Green Day, Blink, Weezer, Bad Religion, it was just one after another. It was insane. And what do you like as an artist about Riotfest compared to other festivals? I like the album place we played, We played our classic album, So Long Astoria.

1:28 A lot of bands did that, Weezer did the Blue Album. I really think album plays are super cool thing for fans, and it gives you time. Like today, our set was like thirty minutes and thirty minutes we're just kind of getting warmed up when we killed it. But it's not that many songs for us, and so I do like playing a whole record. It's really awesome. Yeah, that is pretty cool, and I think the fans really dig it too, because I just think back to the old days where you bought an album and you sat down and you listened to it over and over and over again, read all the lyrics, looked at all the artwork, and it's just an experience that you just fall into exactly. Yeah. I'm an old school album guy too, and we actually put together our records. We're not these bands like that's thrown out singles. We put together albums. It's a big deal for us. Artwork still everything. So vinyl is super important to us and that's how we grew up. Right, So to play play a record side A, side B, that's really cool.

2:27 Right, And I love that you mentioned artwork because that's the only way you bought an album. You couldn't hear what it sounds, right, They're like, oh that looks cool. Yeah, you know. I used to go to the record store as a kid. I grew up in a little town called Santa Maria and we had a record store called Cheap Thrills. And I used to go to Cheap. Thrills and just thumb through the albums and I got turned onto bands like Which Finder General because I love the album cover, you know what I mean, stuff like that. They're a great band, but people have no idea, but the album covers what sold. Me, right, So totally. I have the same experience in La I used to go to this little record store called OZ Records in the valley, and every time I walked in there, the record store clerk would say, hey, check this band out.

3:10 That's hey, check this turns out was Brian Slagel. Oh yeah, that's when he was starting Metal Blade. Wow. Okay, it was like I told him a few years ago. I'm like, that was some genius marketing. It's like I was just a record store clerk, but it was brillianta We would listen to him. Yeah, where'd you grow up in the Valley. I lived in a Goura and Westlake. Okay, all right, I live in North Hollywood now nice. Yeah. So I lived in Agora before they called it a Goora Hill. Wow, when it was like nothing. Nobody lived there and all we did was get in trouble. Yeah. Now it's big. Yeah, right, it's crazy. I wish they had was it. I can't believe I'm drawing a blank. The club there, the Canyon Club, I wish they had that while I was a teenager. I wouldn't.

3:54 I had to go to La all the time. Believe it or not. Our management is a Regime entertainment group and they do US and Sublime and House of Pain and Everlast and War and all these great bands. And they're complex. They have this big complex is in Agora Hills. Nice. It's right off the freeway. I'm like, wow, this is crazy, it's wild. Yeah, they do. They have a studio there, they have screen printing facilities, they do all everything's in house at Regime, and so it's really super cool. I love it. And so if you were to pick one story, good or bad in your whole musical journey, what would it be? One story? Oh, it's a hard one, right, Yeah, that one's insane because we've been a band twenty nine years Halloween, but I would say, yeah, it's a long time. But I have lots of stories I could pick, but off the top of my head, I like stories of we were driving through Texas on our way to play show with the Vandals and lag Wagon and somebody crossed. In Texas, they don't have dividers, they have these ditches in between, and somebody swerved to miss an armadillo and came on the other side and caused a.

4:59 Thirteen car pile. We were in our RV and we were like going to cancel the tour, and then as we're sitting on the side of the road, we thought, okay, well maybe we'll just cancel a couple shows and try to get back after it. And then after a couple more hours passed, we thought. I wonder if we could make the show. So we hitched a ride on this flatbed truck and we made it to the club in Dallas and we played probably the show of our lives because we almost lost our lives in that crash. So wow, that was a. Really cool one. And let me ask you, speaking about old days, what do you miss about the old days when you were broke in the road and playing gigs and like not do having anything. I do like the closeness of the band back then.

5:41 Now all four of us live in different parts of the country. Literally we don't rehearse. We know our stuff enough. We rehearse at home on our own and we come together and we play rock shows and it's super cool. We all have wives, kids now, that kind of thing. But you know, one of us loves in Phoenix once I'm in North Hollywood, the other ones in San Francisco, the other one's in New York. So it's really that kind of camaraderie us in the van for three months. It doesn't exist anymore. We're still friends and we lived through those times. Yeah, I love that. He that. Yeah, Yeah, we're still friends and we lived through those times. But that was four kids, like against the world, right right, So yeah, it was cool. It is a vibe. Yeah, And you either have people like you that are still friends or people that go on that same journey and hate each other.

6:29 It's funny. I played forgot what it was called, but it was a big touring festival in Australia and Lincoln Park was on that and we were tripped out because Lincoln Park would show up each guy in a different like like the SUV suburban, right, different black suburban. They don't talk to each other. They were friends. It was when Chester was still live, but I always thought, man, that's kind of a bummer way to live, you know. So I think it portrays on stage too. It does. You can tell who has chemistry and who's just up there doing their. At that time, you could definitely tell. I think now that maybe that they've lost Chester and all of those things happened. I think maybe now that they've kind of got some of that back. It's a different chemistry obviously, but I think that they're trying to obtain that again. But at that time, its twenty fourteen, and yeah, I thought it was really strange because it's one thing to live apart.

7:21 But we all joke and hang out and stuff like that. So yeah, we're friend, We're all friend. We do stuff right best. We're all running to see Jawbreaker on the side of the stage or bad Religion on the side of the stage. Nice. Yeah, So is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you want to let the listeners know definitely. Our first new single, number fifty one on the Alternative Charts this week is called car Song. It's like hung around. It's not ever shot to the top, but for five months it's hung in the forties and fifties, so it's like one radio station will pick it up, another another one will go through it. So car Song is out there, stream it, download it, check it out it up. The new album comes out early.

8:01 Next year and it is a badass song. Thank you, and I love when artists doing this this man of yours can still come out with something fresh. Thanks, I appreciate it well, we. Appreciate you being here at Aftershock and thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man. Nice to meet you now to stay your intencent belongs Dear, Hey, this is Mike from the Ataris and you're listening to pipe Man on W four c Y Radio. As thank you For listening to the Adventures of pipe Man on W for CUI Radio.