Dominic Davi is best known as the bassist for Tsunami Bomb. However, he also hosts three podcasts, 3 Gigs, Monster Candy, and Alternative Tentacles Batcast. While we swore that this interview would not be about Tsunami Bomb, over the course of our conversation we realized that Tsunami Bomb is such a huge part of Dominic’s life that it’s impossible to ignore. Of Dominic’s three podcasts, 3 Gigs and the Batcast center around musicians and their careers, so naturally his experiences as a musician come up in conversation. His third podcast, Monster Candy, embraces Dominic’s love of horror, monsters, and sci-fi. This interview focuses on 3 Gigs and The Batcast.
Tell us about your podcasts in your own words.
Dominic Davi: I have the 3 Gigs podcast where I talk to different performers, mostly musicians, because I’m a musician, but it’s really supposed to be any performer and I talk to them about their first, best, and worst performances of all time. The point of the podcast is to hear them talk because we see the shows as fans, but as performers they have a different experience. I thought that would be a really fun show to discuss what made you want to do this. What it’s like when everything goes right and it’s like “Oh my god, this is why I do this, why I wanted to do this, why I live this life.” And then what it’s like when you’re like “Oh my god, why am I doing this? I want to go home. This is the worst day ever.” I thought that would tell a lot about people.
My friend Glen Rubenstein helped me come up with the theme and I really loved it. That’s the show I think I’m most known for, but it fluctuates sometimes with how popular it is. Sometimes it’s really popular and then sometimes it’s not so popular. I feel like it’s that Emmy Award winning show that not as many people listen to it as should. I feel like there are so many music podcasts, it’s hard to be heard with that one. I always think maybe I should stop doing this one. Other times I look at it and it’s definitely the one I’m most proud of. It’s the most me of all the podcasts I do. It’s definitely a labor of love. I’m very proud of all the episodes and all the stories.
On 3 Gigs, you interviewed your bandmate Oobliette Sparks about her 3 Gigs: first, best, and worst. One of her worst gigs was when she was in the audience watching Tsunami Bomb.
Dominic Davi: That was hard. It was a hard interview to do. I knew it was going to be. With 3 Gigs, I don’t know if they consider them interviews or more like conversations. I am asking questions- or at least we have three topics. We discuss three different topics or three different shows. I try to approach it from the perspective that we’re having this conversation between two performers and I want people to be able to listen in. I want it to feel like you’re listening to something that would happen on tour after the show when you would be able to hear.
This one was probably the most intimate and personal episode that I’ve done where I was directly involved in the first, best, worst shows, but it wasn’t me talking. It was me listening. She has a better memory than I do, but I knew that I had a timeline in my head about how the band came to be and she corrected it. I realized she was correct in the order of how curtained things happened. When she described her first show, it was really hard. I remember how I felt with her leaving and how upset I was. I was sort of angry at that time, mad at her for leaving. Her and I have always had a very sibling relationship and I felt very betrayed at the time by her and when she came back I was so angry at her at that show- not that she showed up, that didn’t bother me. It bothered me that she wasn’t in the band. We weren’t talking, but she was being such a jerk. I was being a jerk.
Tsunami Bomb for me was so structurally founded on her and my relationship, which is as close as siblings can be without actually being blood siblings. I could love her any more if she was actually my blood sister. She is my little sister. We’ve known each other for so long, but I was so mad at her and then to hear how hurt she was- ‘cause she’s really good as not coming off as hurt at the time, but it was like two middle fingers in the air while she was there. In real life and talking to her, hearing how you participated in hurting someone you care about that was a very tough conversation. I knew it was going to be and I needed it.
Having that conversation like that, we had never sat down and talked about it. When you’re listening to that episode of 3 Gigs, you’re really hearing our honest discussion. That was the first time we discussed it. We hadn’t even discussed it when we made up and started speaking again. We didn’t talk about it when we started Tsunami Bomb together, so that episode of the podcast was very much real. I’ll say this about Oobliette. I think that sometimes people listen to Tsunami Bomb from the early days and think of Emily (Whitehurst/Agent M) as our Jello Biafra to an extent, an irreplaceable force of a member. I’m not saying that Emily is not amazing. She was. Kate’s (Jacobi) amazing. They’re both fantastic. I mean this. I’m honored to have worked with both of them, but the real Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys of Tsunami Bomb isn’t me. It isn’t Emily. It isn’t any of the other four members. It’s Oobliette. When she left in the first place, that’s when the band suffered. People didn’t realize it. Then to have her back is a huge impact. It’s everything. It wouldn’t work without her at all. She’s more important than I think people realize.
I think, especially after Trust No One, which was a compilation release of your early EPs and then following that up with The Spine That Binds, that those have a lot more in common than The Ultimate Escape, which Oobliette wrote parts of before she left, and The Definitive Act.
Dominic Davi: The Spine That Binds was really challenging. In the sense that we were trying to create an album, when I approached this with Oobliette her and I were most concerned about this. We were trying to create an album that plugged into The Definitive Act, plugged into The Ultimate Escape, but also really drew upon Trust No One. It had to do all of that at once while also moving forward. I think it’s successful. I do feel a little more free going forward and I’m really excited about what we’re doing. It was definitely an intention to reset the direction of Tsunami Bomb without it sounding too completely off.
I haven’t listened to all of your podcasts. You have so many things going on it’s hard for me to keep up.
Dominic Davi: It’s hard for me to keep up, actually.
The other interview that stood out to me was The World/Inferno Friendship Society Batcast interview because you know you’re never going to get the truth out of them.
Dominic Davi: No, they lied about everything. They were surprisingly candid. So it’s funny, when I sat down with World/Inferno for the Alternative Tentacles interview, I kind of let them talk about how they came together and kind of disarm them and get them at ease. Then, I also slipped in 3 Gigs questions and turned that section of the conversation, which is relatively short, into a podcast for 3 Gigs. It worked because by the time we got to the 3 Gigs questions, they were a little more at ease. Definitely during the AT part of the podcast, they’re kind of being World/Inferno and evasive and silly. By the time the conversation about 3 Gigs, I felt like they were a little bit more honest. They’re hilarious. They’ve lied to me and the label a few times. I don’t care. Most of the time, we’re like whatever.
It’s what [World/Inferno] does. We all know it.
Dominic Davi: Just tell me who I need to send a royalty check to and when you’re going to finish it. Okay, we’ll go from there. I had someone warn me at AT when we signed World/Inferno and I told them this, so if they read this they’ll find it funny, but somebody was like “Whatever you do don’t loan them money. They’ll never pay it back.” I was like, “Yeah we’re not doing that.” We’re just going to put out the record. They gotta turn in the music. They send it off to get made. We buy them. I’m not chasing them down, but then they’re like “If you need to track down Jack, here’s a couple bars that he will drink at.” And I’m like, “No, I’m not. I’m never gonna hunt him down. Never gonna happen. I don’t care. If he doesn’t call me back, then whatever. And it has actually worked. Put no expectations on them whatsoever and let them be them and they are hilarious.
He is completely Jack to you.
Dominic Davi: Yeah, he’s great. I love that guy. I don’t get myself into a position where I am beholden to anything. Other than you guys turning in the music, I’ll put out the record. I have so much fun with them. I love that group of mercenaries. They’re hilarious. They are pirates and they’re a joy to work with for me, but waiting on them, it’s too chaotic for that. You just gotta enjoy the chaos. Having them at the Batcave for a podcast, that was so much fun. It was hilarious. My cheeks hurt by the end of that. I was laughing so hard.
[Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted prior to Jack Terricloth’s passing].
Going back to 3 Gigs, what was your favorite episode?
Dominic Davi: Honestly, I’ve loved every episode. I know that’s such a political answer. Every conversation, even those I’ve had to edit to fix, like they were clearly stoned because there were so many pauses between their words and sentences and I had to sync it up so it sounds like they make sense. That happened.
I’ve learned something every episode but the ones that were really funny like my conversation with Ray from Teenage Bottlerocket because he’s a fan of the show.
There’s this friend of mine from Stockton, California, and it’s amazing to me that he’s not big time. His band’s have all been incredible and have all drawn huge crowds, but right before the band’s go national they tend to fall apart. There’s a couple reasons for it, but he’s spectacularly talented. It’s funny because I know people will scan episodes and potentially skip one’s they don’t know and go to the ones they know. The thing I tell people is it doesn’t matter how famous you are for 3 Gigs. Everybody has a story. Some of the best stories aren’t from the people who are the most famous.
Each episode has a gem that makes it worth it. Talking about this podcast makes me want to keep working on it. It’s hard for me to pinpoint something and tell people to go to this episode. This is my favorite.
I think it’s worth listening to when I talk to two porn actresses and they shared. That was a very different kind of interaction. They were very honest. Their worst performances were one’s where their partners for a film weren’t listening to them and hurt them, which was a different kind of discussion than I ever handled. They were incredible with what they revealed. I’m trying to get other types of performers on the show. I really want to get a ballet dancer on the show. I don’t want it to just be musicians, but musicians are the easiest for me to find.
Don’t stop at the famous names. Once you’ve listened to the one’s you’ve heard of, listen to the ones you haven’t heard of. There’s some great stories. You’ll love it.
Sorry, that was a very long answer to a short question.
No. It’s perfect because it reframes 3 Gigs. I was reading about the episode with the porn actresses and I was thinking how did you end up there. I’m so used to thinking of it as a music podcast for performers because that’s the space you operate in and that’s how I know you, but it’s really a podcast that has people tell their story and it’s more of a framework to allow people to tell their stories than a podcast specifically about music. It’s about people.
Dominic Davi: I spoke to a film director, two journalists, two different DJs, a drag queen performer, two porn actresses, and I want to keep going with that. I will always still talk to musicians. There’s so many different types of performers out there. I’d love to talk to a stage actor, a movie actor, and anything that has a performance capacity that I can allow someone to reveal another side.
We watch and enjoy their content, but we don’t actually know what they’re going through.
