This is the full video that I made for "I Want A Clone." It was fun to make because I play all the instruments on my albums. I chopped it up into segments that were approx. 20 seconds long (verse, chorus, solo, etc.) for TikTok and Instagram, but I wanted to post the whole thing like a classic MTV music video. Because most social media is vertical, I had to plan it and shoot it that way, but I tried to recreate more of a traditional full screen view here.

I got the idea for the structure of this song from “New Values” by Iggy Pop. I’d heard people slide chords up from one fret to the next as an accent, like Johnny Ramone in “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker,” but “New Values” was the first time I’d heard a whole song based on that fret-sliding. Of course The Sonics and George Romero were also huge influences on this one.

This is one of my favorites - short and catchy. I believe I originally recorded the song with vocals and everything around ‘96, but I never brought it to The Phoebes because I was unsure about the lyrics. The original lyrics had “baby baby” instead of “Katie Katie.” I don’t think twice when people like Otis Redding, James Brown and Prince say baby in their songs, but it just felt goofy coming from me. So when I was going through old songs to finish for “So How Ya Like Me Now?” in 2023, I changed the “baby baby”s to “Katie Katie”s, but the rest is pretty much exactly how it was in ‘96.

We all forgot how to end this one because it fades out on the album 😂. Oh well. With us all living in different cities, the only practice we had together was the morning before the show. I still think it sounds alright (alright). This was the song where I first felt my voice going. Of course, my first time playing and singing my songs since 1998 and I start feeling a cold come on as I’m driving to Alabama for the show. There was only one song towards the end where it completely went out. Fortunately, that one was not videoed, and I was able to kinda rally for the rest of the set.

This one was influenced by countless hours spent listening to Coast To Coast AM with Art Bell. What a great show! Fascinating conversations about aliens, Sasquatch, ghosts, chupacabra, shadow men, astral projection, and so much more. This song is saying I believe in all that, but I can’t believe in this one deceitful person (not based on an actual person). “Wild card line, you’re on the air!”

I wrote this one when I was 16, so the lyrics are kind of goofy, but it's a pretty honest representation of an angsty teenager in the '90s. I’ve always liked the chords to it, and I even put a bridge and an outro in it before I totally understood what those were.

Another that I wrote when I was 16, so the teenage angst continues. The lyrics are pretty dumb but I didn’t change them when I re-recorded it for the version of the Surly album that I put out in 2024 because they are a true representation of the crap that was in my head at the time. It's pretty funny playing this song now because I’ve been happily married for more than twenty years 😂.

Another song that I wrote when I was 16. Very repetitive lyrics, but it matches the repetitiveness of Craig and I driving around Montgomery, Alabama for hours and hours because there was nothing else to do. Then punk rock changed our lives. Me and Craig Gates just playing these guitars.

I wrote this one when I was 15 about the woman that delivered the mail to our house every day - I had a huge crush on her. The music was influenced by ‘60s garage punk compilations like Trans-World Punk Rave-Up and Back from the Grave.

Probably my favorite lyrics that I’ve ever written. It started as a nerdy song about having a clone, but when lines like “Another thing is my clone would always be there to help, but I bet I’d hate myself,” and “If I had a clone I’d be happier you see, but you’d pick the clone over me” came out, it unintentionally turned into a song about loneliness and low self-esteem. We played this one a little in the later days of The Phoebes, but I could never remember all of the words 😂. It was a struggle re-learning them for this show.

I wrote the music to this song in 1999. It started with me trying to do something like what Bun E. Carlos plays at the beginning of “Hello There.” I added guitar to it, but did nothing else with it until 2023 when I was going through my box of tapes to find songs for “Good To Go… Straight To Hell.” I changed the guitar part and added a bass part, going for a Devo sound with both. Then I took Prince’s riff from “Computer Blue,” but shifted the key and changed it up a bit so I wouldn’t get sued. That’s also where I got the name for this song. I got the idea for the story from Weird Science, but it is more of a love story than a geeky sci-fi bodacious babe fantasy. Well, maybe a little bit of that. 😂 Unfortunately, my cold started getting the best of me on this song - my voice totally went out two songs later.

This is a song that I wrote when I was 17 or 18. Craig and I played it a ton in The Smears. Later, I brought the song with me to The Phoebes, and I believe it was a part of every show. So this was a great first song to play with Elliott at the show - kind of a blend of The Smears with Craig, and The Phoebes with Mike and Elliott. Sadly, we’ll never get to do a true Phoebes reunion since we lost Ben Barfoot (we miss you, Ben).

Man, oh man, did I love Milwaukee’s Best back in the '90s when I wrote this! I mean, let’s be real - it being ridiculously cheap was a big factor, but since I didn’t have a discriminating palate, I thought it tasted just as good as other beers, so why pay more? Now that I’ve been sober for more than 10 years, I wish that I had tried some fancier stuff back then instead of always going for the cheapest, but I had some of the best times with “The Beast.”

I think this has to be my favorite thing that I’ve ever written. I believe I wrote it in 1996. I wrote the chords for the chorus first and the verse part was added later, almost like something I had to add to get to the chorus, but I think the verse ended up being the best part of the song. At the show, I was thrilled to hear people singing “my pow-er - rocket pow-er” as we were playing it - that song hadn’t been played live in about 27 years! This is the last video from the show. Not sure if we’ll play again since we are all in different cities, but I don’t think I’d want to do it with anyone else. They are a great group of guys that I’ve known for more than 30 years (many more with John 😂). Huge thanks to them for wanting to play my songs and for being so awesome.

A fun little promo video I made for the show.