"So, what's this story going to be about?" asks Segall, partly out of curiosity, partly just to make friendly conversation.
On tour is a good place to get a sense of Segall, though, because other than a few breaks, that's where he's spent his adult life. Each of these nuisances arise at least once during the three tour stops- in Buffalo, Toronto, and Detroit- that I spend traveling with Segall and his band. Or when a guy with a robot skull mounted on the dashboard of his pickup truck decides he wants to clobber your guitarist. Or when the best and cheapest place to crash is a friend's underwater ashtray of a sofa. And it's rad, but you gotta be in that zone every night." Segall's public persona, in so much as he presents one, is ebullient and surfer-ish- he's "stoked," things are generally "rad," and his band "shreds." This relaxed-fit demeanor can be tough to maintain, especially on the nights when the sound guy is an existentially bummed-out gearhead. "We're a fucking loud, gnarly, screaming, emotional band. "We're not a folk band or a dance band," he says. Watching Segall on stage, where he shouts and hollers with enough violence to put nodules on his vocal chords, the fatigue is understandable. There's a whiff of marijuana in the air, but it seems to have drifted over from down the hall, where Thee Oh Sees are quartered. Instead, Epstein is leading Segall through some pre-show stretches. The time to go crazy backstage has come and gone. The singer and his band mates- Moothart, bassist Mikal Cronin, and drummer Emily Rose Epstein- are two weeks into a three-week trek, their third tour of the year. One night earlier, in Buffalo, Segall is looking faded. Not every Ty Segall gig ends with a bruise or a trip to the dentist's office, but they do seem pretty strenuous, especially when stacked up one after another. Last time he played in town, somebody pushed the microphone into his face and knocked out his tooth. Later, while we sit in Segall's tour ride- a scuffed-up but soccer mom-friendly Toyota Land Cruiser with a U-Haul trailer hitched to the back bumper- he explains that even with all the moshing, diving, and pushing, tonight's show wasn't even his most physically abusive Toronto gig.
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(On YouTube, there's a startling video of Dwyer ending a 2004 Toronto show by smashing a guitar over a promoter's head- tonight's bouncer probably hasn't seen it, though.) Luckily, the bar staff quickly appears with a tray full of complimentary shots and beers. Segall's guitarist, Charlie Moothart, and John Dwyer, frontman for headliners Thee Oh Sees, rush over to help him out and, for a second, it looks like things might get violent. As outros go, it's definitely a step up from the usual "we've got some CDs in the back" routine. All three tumble into a mass of sweaty, pogo-ing kids. So as the show draws to a frenzied close, the 25-year-old garage-rock shredder- who is not a beefcake- decides to have a go at him.Īfter the muscle-head shoves a leather jacket-clad goofball back into the crowd, Ty shoves the bouncer, who loses his balance, but flips around in time to bring the singer down with him. Throughout the night, one of the security beefcakes at The Hoxton in Toronto has been getting progressively more aggressive about giving stage divers the heave-ho. At the end of his set, the audience gets a glimpse of Ty Segall's ape self.
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