Interview with Trey Spruance of Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, Secret Chiefs 3

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Today on the Culture Creature podcast, listen to an interview with guitarist and composer Trey Spruance of Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, Secret Chiefs 3, Faxed Head, and more. Listen above or in iTunes. Aside from his groundbreaking work with the aforementioned bands, the innovative musician runs the label Web of Mimicry and was recently invited to compose a piece for the Kronos Quartet.

In this wide-ranging interview, Trey discusses the making of Faith No More’s King For a Day, Fool for a Lifetime (“there was a perseverance through the dread, which was an amazing thing to be a part of”), the time that Mr. Bungle considered literally delivering an album of static to Warner Bros., and much more. Trey also drops a scoop about a new project that Mike Patton is working on, saying that Patton “has a new hardcore band, sounds interesting” (update: Trey was referring to Dead Cross).

Trey Spruance Interview Highlights

Trey Spruance on Mr. Bungle’s relationship with Warner Brothers records: “We could’ve delivered them static, literally. We thought about it. We almost did it, we were thinking about doing that. Then we realized – actually it doesn’t matter to them; that would seem like a big statement but they would just shrug. They don’t care about that shit (laughter).”

Trey Spruance on sharing ideas with Mike Patton in the nineties: “It was amazing. Sometimes as much as a year or months would go by when he was gone on tour. When we would all re-converge, we all would have our heads really deeply into different things that we had all discovered. We would kind of pool all of that. When Mike came back, we called it ‘show and tell.’ He’d show us all of the records that he’d bring back and all of the things he discovered, and we’d bring him up to date on our discoveries. San Francisco was pretty interesting at the time. It was a really fruitful reconvening. We’d take these long breaks and then have an explosion of creative energy.”