Live on Mars: An interview with Rob Zombie bassist Piggy D.

August 20, 2010

Bassist, guitarist, songwriter, artist. Matt “Piggy D.” Montgomery is a man of many talents, and those skills led him in 2006 to becoming the bassist for Rob Zombie. With him onboard, along with guitarist John 5 and Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison, Zombie now has arguably the best band he’s ever had behind him. After soldiering through the summer heat as a co-headliner of the Rockstar Mayhem Festival, Zombie and his band are looking to the special-edition release of Hellbilly Deluxe II in September and an October run, the Halloween Hootenanny Tour, with Alice Cooper. When the Mayhem Festival came to Bristow, Va., Greg Maki and Jeff Maki of Live-Metal.net sat down with Piggy to discuss both versions of the latest album, the upcoming tour and more.

Greg Maki: Well, the Mayhem tour is kind of winding down now. How has it been for you?

Piggy D.: It’s been so great I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to go home. It’s like summer camp, a bunch of freaks. It’s rad.

Greg: I went to the show up in Camden, New Jersey, a couple weeks ago, and I was down there shooting your set. I couldn’t believe how hot it was down there when you guys were onstage with all the flames and everything. How do you guys do it?

I’ve called it the Rob Zombie summer weight-loss program because I think I started this tour 50 pounds heavier. [laughter] We’re just used to it, really, all the costumes and the fire and everything. It is what it is. Gotta do it. We’re not a cargo shorts and flip flops kind of band.

Greg: I saw you earlier today checking out Winds of Plague over on the side stage. Have you been doing a lot of that?

A little bit, yeah. There’s so many great bands on this tour, and the schedule doesn’t allow for a lot of time. I’m trying to catch everybody.

Greg: Anybody that you hadn’t seen before that’s really impressed you?

I’ve now seen Winds of Plague several times, actually. They’re really good. I knew a little bit about them before the tour. They have a lot of energy, cool songs. The riffs are just massive. So it’s neat. It’s cool. It’s neat to see stuff that wasn’t totally on your radar.

Greg: Yeah, they’re not a band that Zombie would normally be out on the road with.

No. None of these bands are. So it’s cool. We’re kind of the odd man out in a way. Hopefully it’s working for us. [laughter]

Greg: You’ve got the special edition of Hellbilly Deluxe II coming out in the fall. You went and recorded some new songs with Joey. I’ve heard those songs described as some of the heaviest Zombie has done.

Definitely. I think they’re some of the coolest Zombie songs to come out in a long time. They’re so cool, in fact, that the record has actually been re-sequenced with those songs in the record. So they’re not bonus tracks; they’re album tracks. The whole thing is kind of weird. The version of the record that’s coming out now is the final Hellbilly Deluxe. This is what it is supposed to be, which makes the one on the market now more of a collector’s item because the album art is completely different. The photos are completely different. Like I said, the track listing is different. There’s some song edits that are different now. This the definitive version of the record.

Jeff Maki: Was it a matter of the first version being rushed with the switching of labels?

Yeah. The record was supposed to come out last November. We were in Japan, and we got this feeling that maybe Geffen wasn’t the right home for the record. So we moved to Roadrunner. The tour was booked. Everything was rolling. The video was shot. Had to get the record out. So we put it out, and kind of went, “Wait a minute. Maybe there’s more to this story.” We completed what we thought was the thought and there was more to it, so let’s do it again. So here we are, doing it again. [laughter]

Greg: What is it like working with Zombie in the studio? Obviously, he knows what he wants, so how much input do you have?

This was my first studio record with them. We did a live record a few years ago. We kind of went in and started from scratch. Every tour I had done prior to starting the record, we recorded every soundcheck that we ever did, at least two songs a day in soundcheck, complete pretty much—just without vocals. So we got back from, I think it was the Ozzy tour at that point, and went, “Oh my god, we have 60 songs.” So we started recording the record, and then we kind of shelved it and started over. We started writing. Everybody got in a room together, 9 to 5 every day. If we were overdubbing a cymbal, everybody was there. It was really cool. It was organic. We tracked everything together. We would work out the riffs right there and put it down. Whereas, the first Hellbilly was very—He had it kind of mapped out and was like, “OK, I’m gonna get this guy and this guy”—all these different musicians.

Greg: Yeah, it wasn’t like a real band at that point.

No, it wasn’t. I think that’s why the record sounds so different. And now with Joey in the band, it’s the next level.

Greg: You’ve got the big tour in the fall with Alice Cooper and Murderdolls. You did a couple weeks of shows with Alice back in the spring. How did that go?

That was amazing. Talk about a show that—It wasn’t really a rock concert. It really was an event. You had kids showing up in Alice makeup and kids showing up with X’s in their heads and Zombie makeup. It was kind of like a high school dance. [laughter] It was like, “I’ll wait for them to make the first move.” By the end of the night, we’re playing Alice Cooper songs and it was retardedly fun. So much fun. So now we’ve got the Murderdolls, which makes it even more of a horror spectacular.

Greg: I can’t imagine a better Halloween tour.

It’s so fun. ‘Cause everybody’s into the same stuff.

Greg: And you’ve got all these ties, like Joey playing in both and you’ve played with Wednesday. Will we see any kind of group jam or anything?

You know, maybe. Maybe, yeah.

Jeff: A little “School’s Out” closing or something.

We’ve joked around about it, yeah.

Greg: I’ve seen you guys rocking “School’s Out” lately.

Yeah. We’re really tight with Alice. I do a lot of work with Alice, too, when I’m off the road.

Greg: You did the Halloween song last year.

I did the Halloween song. I’ve done some videos for him, his album art. I do all his costumes for the show. His merch. We’re really hands-on with his camp, too, so it is kind of a weird family reunion for me.

Greg: Talking about the artwork, is there anything you’ve done recently that’s gonna be coming out? Any album covers or anything like that?

The new Zombie rerelease was the first time—I’ve taken a lot of photos for the band. This was the first time that Rob didn’t take the photos and just do the art by himself. He actually involved me and my partner in the process. So the art’s really nuts. It’s really cool. So that was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work because for the last two months we’ve been working on it. That’s the latest thing I’ve done.

Jeff: The Zombie sound, it’s decidedly shifted from more of an industrial-type thing back in the day to more of a real, organic thing. Is that a product of just having a real band? Also, his movies, too, they’re grittier and more real than House of 1,000 Corpses and stuff like that. Do you know what I’m getting at? Was that just his mindset or a group effort to make it more real?

Probably a combination of a few things. He’s always about realism. He loves things that are honest. I can only speak for him to a point, but the band, I think, did have a lot to do with it because it was the same guys. Up until Joey came into the band, it was the same guys for almost four years. They started with an Ozzfest show where they were just wearing jeans and T-shirts playing a half-hour set, and now it’s kind of gotten back to the circus. It took a while for everybody to kind of get on the same page. I think, for sure. As an artist, he’s always evolving. I think every artist should. So his films and his music is constantly becoming something, another extension of himself.

Greg: With that big circus, all that stuff going on onstage, I’m sure there’s all kinds of things that can go wrong. Have there been any really crazy things that have happened?

John broke his foot last week, so we got a broken wing onstage now. Poor guy. He is like a rabid monkey onstage, so to see him planted somewhere is weird for all of us.

Greg: He’s usually always running around in circles.

Yeah, yeah. The first show we did it, I was like, “What’s up, dude? Hey.” [laughter] It was just really awkward. But you know, we’ll get through it.

Jeff: It wasn’t his hand, at least.

Yeah. Thank god he doesn’t play guitar with his feet, then we’d be fucked! [laughter] Totally fucked.

Greg: What was it like when you joined the band? It was in the middle of touring. Was that tough to get up to speed? You probably didn’t have a whole lot of time, did you?

I had no time. The Educated Horses record had come out, I think, barely a month prior to me joining the band. I got a call on like a Sunday. I was in Boston tracking a record. Blasko, who was their bass player, called me and was like, “Hey, I’ve got to split. Rob’s gonna call you. Do you want to do this?” I’m like, “I’m not a bass player. I’m a guitar player.” He was like, “It’s fine. You can do it.” I was like, “I don’t have a bass.” He was like, “Don’t worry about it.” Rob called me and he was like, “Hey, do you like Family Guy?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Can you be here Tuesday?” I was like, “Yeah.” He was like, “Cool.” [laughter] “We’ve got David Letterman next week, so learn this song.” That was it. No audition, no nothing. Just a plane ticket and Family Guy. If it was only always that easy.

Greg: You’ve done some of your own solo music in the past. Are you going to keep doing that? I know your schedule’s pretty full at that moment.

It is, yeah. There’s so much stuff recorded. I recorded so much music right after the first record I put out. It’s been three years now. I do a lot of writing for other artists, so that occupies a lot of time, too, and I’m working on some collaboration projects now, actually some country stuff. I’ve just got to find some time to put it out. Once this machine fired up, it hasn’t stopped and it’s not stopping for a while. So one of these days. One of these days I’ll get it out there.

Jeff: What’s next, looking into next year?

Well, we started going overseas last November. We went to Japan for the first time since White Zombie. So that was a long stretch, and it was really good. So now that we’ve started thinking, maybe we should get back over and go to some other places. So we’re going to Australia in February, and that’s probably going to turn into something else, which will turn into something else. Before you know it, we’re live on Mars. [laughter]