For people who might not be familiar with you and who you are, what you do, and how you got into all this stuff, can you give us that background?

Sure.

I'm California born and raised.

I grew up in Sacramento.

And my story probably parallels a lot of people.

I got into, you know...

Let's see, how far back do we want to go here? The first music that probably really registered with me was the Beatles.

So what goes through your mind when it comes to selecting effects in a mix and making sure that you're picking something that really serves the song?

How do you feel right now?

Very, you know, content and excited.

Happy for people to get to hear it as a collection.

Both records, we released several singles leading up to it.

We have fun when a song's done.

We feel like, let's put it out, right? And you can now.

It used to be you would have to go into a real studio, make your record, maybe go to a different studio, mix your record, hand it off to a record label.

Just

How was that Deftones tour? And like, how did you find the music translated to that size venue?

It was such a pinch-me moment that doesn't even seem real now.

You know, enough time passes.

And time passes so quickly now that you look back on that and it's just fully a blur.

Yeah.

But the beautiful thing about it is, you know, as everyone knows, Deftones is at the peak of their game right now.

They've had such a resurgence.

Like what leads you, I mean, was there any talk about maybe looking for a label home or someone to help with the release of this, this time around?

at least with this band, because I know you've done it in the past.

Yeah, so, you know, I got my start as a 15-year-old kid trying to play music, right, before anything studio-related, you know, was a possibility.

So the earliest days were, you know, on the guitar player or bass player side.

But, yeah, for the past 22 years, I was strictly a producer, engineer, mixer, that sort of thing.

And...

But, you know, my... as it as years went by my main occupation was all things a wall nation so i had worked with aaron when he was very young we kind of drifted apart came back together when he formed a wall and i've had a part in every studio setting you know that that project's been involved with so the uh the genesis of barbarians came from the fact that at some point over the years i thought well maybe you know i'll do a little more guitar playing and writing and probably no one will ever hear it but uh so before or after a wall sessions i'd come in early or stay late and you know squirrel away a few parts here and there thinking maybe maybe that's all it would ever be and aaron caught me a couple times and he had some suspicions that i was compiling you know some music and so i finally It's a nerve-wracking experience and, you know, kind of putting yourself out there with something that no one in the world has heard.

So I finally played it for him and it caught a spark of interest.

opening for Guns N' Roses? Obviously you do, but how do you compare that to headlining your own show? Do you get the same kind of butterflies or the same mindsets? Do you approach every show differently or is there a different plan of attack?

So if Sinatra was part of the soundtrack, what was the rest? And then what was it that changed everything for you?

Okay, boy, there's so many.

I'll do the abbreviated answer because that's a deep question.

It's a really good question, but you could go so many ways with it.

And also, everything enters your life one way or another, right? Like the cool friend that's a couple years older, your neighbor kid.

So I had a neighbor friend whose dad had every Beatles record.

And this would have been early.

So talk to me, especially as a punk guy, about the push and pull of having the ability to make things perfect, but not wanting to lose the soul of what you're working on because that's the debate, right? Yeah.