KYLE GASS plays guitar for the greatest band in the world. According to Tenacious D’s résumé, delivered musically in their theme “The History of Tenacious D,” they ride with kings on mighty steeds across the devil’s plain. They’ve walked with Jesus and his cross, he did not die in vain. They’ve run with wolves, they’ve climbed K2, even stopped a moving train. They travel through space and time to rock each house again.
So who could possibly intimidate him? Pretty much anyone.
“I was just at a restaurant the other night,” says Gass, “and there was this guy playing, and I was going ‘Wow, that guy’s really good.’ He was just, like, a restaurant guitar guy, and I was like, ‘He could play circles around me.'”
Yet Gass, who brings his D side project Trainwreck to the Blank Club this week, has a reputation as a guitar whiz, the musical backbone that holds up his partner Jack Black’s comedic bluster.
“I think people think I’m much better than I am,” admits Gass. “I’m acting like I’m really good. People respond to your commitment to it.”
Double Team
That right there might be the secret to what makes rock-comedy work, and why Tenacious D may be not the greatest but the funniest band of all time. Whether it’s Spinal Tap, Flight of the Conchords or the D, the best comedy acts in rock have a few things in common: (1) they care as much about the quality of the music as the jokes; (2) they have a unique perspective that comes across in their music, just like any great band; (3) they have a stylized, exaggerated delivery that punctuates their humor, just like any great comedian; (4) they poke fun at the clichés of a genre (or multiple genres, in the case of the Conchords) that they love, while at the same time embracing them full-on.
And the last thing they have in common: not everybody gets the joke. Written off by the mainstream as too funny for rock or too rockin’ for comedy, even the greatest such bands usually enjoy a cult fandom at best.
“People aren’t used to the funny in music,” agrees Gass.
Gass discovered this for himself when they released their debut film Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny in 2006. After the D’s rise from Los Angeles “it” band in the mid-’90s to a brief stint on HBO in 1999 (first on Mr. Show Trainwreck, then in their own series) to their successful self-titled, Dust-Brothers-produced 2001 album, the band seemed to be at the height of their powers. Their act had started with the premise of two ridiculously goofy heavy-metal acoustic guitarists dreaming of rock stardom, and now they had a taste of it.
Still, some critics and fans mistakenly believed the D’s shtick required them to be losers who always, as Paul Westerberg once put it, “Take one step and miss the whole first rung” on the ladder of success. They didn’t quite grasp that the joke was not that the D sucked, the joke was that the D were so committed to nonstop rocking that they would lay siege to an open-mic crowd the same way they would (theoretically) rock the socks off an arena. This camp was put off by the big rock sound of the first record (“who doesn’t like a big rock sound?” muses Gass now). A backlash may have already been brewing.
Rock Fail
Much-discussed and, if the Internet was to be believed, long-awaited by fans, the combination movie-album Pick of Destiny release was expected to be the D’s greatest triumph. But it tanked at the box office. Worse yet, the exact moment of fail was captured for a documentary called D Tour that was supposed to be chronicling the band’s victory march.
Instead, it showed how unfunny the business of making funny music can be. In one scene, Gass expresses his reservations about the epic size of the D’s support tour for the film, while Black counters that they really have no choice. In the film’s most notorious scene, the D is invited to be on Letterman, but at the last minute, the producers say they only want Black, whose movie celebrity seems to overshadow Gass and the band at every turn. Gass loses it, Black says he won’t do the spot alone, and in the end, things work out. Briefly. Later, they read the opening box office numbers in stunned silence, while Black wonders aloud if the world is sick of looking at him. It goes downhill from there.
“The first time I watched it, I was alone,” says Gass of the finished documentary. “It was really painful. I was devastated. It was kind of a testament to ‘be careful what you wish for.’ We had never really failed like that before, and to have it all documented, it was just really painful.”
A lot of bands might have put the kibosh on a movie that turned out like that, but Gass is proud they released it.
“Those are the documentaries I like, the ones that are really truthful,” he says. “We wanted it to be that way, warts and all.”
There was even a tacked-on ending that put a positive spin on the situation, suggesting that things had settled for the band before they really had.
“We added that on, it was late. Jack and I weren’t really seeing each other that much. So it kind of seemed contrived to me,” admits Gass. “But seeing it now, I think it really did work.”
That may be partly because now things really are better, and the D is preparing to work on a new album. At this point, Gass can look back with a philosophical bent.
“The friction,” he says, “is where the heat comes from.”
Saved by a Trainwreck
When Gass is at his lowest moment in D Tour, he seems to find salvation in his side band, Trainwreck.
“The D is really fun, but at that moment, that was the release,” says Gass.
It may be why, when the question of whether to release the movie came up, it was obvious where his Trainwreck bandmates stood.
“They loved it,” says Gass. “But I was like, ‘Wait, do you love it just ’cause you’re in a movie?'”
In truth, they had a lot more invested than that, since almost all of the members of Trainwreck now are in or are associated with Tenacious D. Lead singer Jason Reed is better known to D fans as Lee, the guy who was reverse-stalked by Black and Gass in an episode of their TV show, and is forever memorialized thusly in the D song “Lee”: “Skinny dippin’ in a sea of Lee / I’d propose on bended knee / To Lee Lee Lee Lee, Lee Lee Lee, Lee Lee.” Trainwreck guitarist John Konesky and bassist John Spiker have been touring members of Tenacious D for the better part of the decade.
Gass says the band really did get him through the most difficult times: “They’re super positive guys. They talked me off the ledge.”
Forming in 2002 and releasing a live album in 2004, Trainwreck sound not unlike Tenacious D with more of a straight-ahead (and sometimes rootsy) rock sound rather than a metal bent. Gass says there’s a think line between the two bands.
“It doesn’t really feel that different,” he says. “The thing that feels different is Jack, he’s just an entertaining guy.”
Trainwreck has even followed in the mold of Tenacious D, trying to jump-start a TV show, which hasn’t materialized thus far.
“We pitched it around pretty heavy last year, and I really thought it was gonna go,” says Gass. “I’d still like to shoot a pilot. The HBO thing launched [Tenacious D] to a whole new level. The power of television is amazing.”
In case that show ever does materialize, Trainwreck’s new album, The Wreckoning, opens with “TV Theme,” featuring the chorus “It’s a Trainwreck/ Oh yeah/ Wrong way down a one-way track/ To the Trainwreck/ Oh yeah/ I wanna get with you, girl/ I wanna get with you.” Reed’s Jack-Black-like hollering of “I want to hop on you girl, I want to hop on you1” at the end of the song underlines the crossover between the two bands. Meanwhile, in “Brodeo,” the band walks that classic comic-rock line between satirizing frat-rock and blowing its clichés up to epic proportions.
Of course, another big difference between the two bands is the size of the fan base.
“No one wants to see John Oates,” says Gass, in typically self-deprecating fashion.
But he’s happy to see the bands co-existing in calmer times.
“It’s incestuous, but it’s fun. It’s nice to have the family together.”
TRAINWRECK
Wednesday, May 19 at 9pm
Blank Club; $10/$12
