The new CD Of Whales and Woe is out now and it’s looking like 2006 is gonna be a busy year for you. How did you find time between all of your projects to write and produce a new solo record?

I don’t have time. That’s a very good question. I think what has happened, is there are a handful of projects that I’ve been picking away at for a couple of years. Some of them several years. They all have just come together at once, as far as their release. The book, I’ve got a film that we’ve got in some film festivals right now and, of course, my record. The planets are aligning and something wretchedly horrible is happening! Damien is gonna come take power – 666! I’m gonna make a tin-foil hat and hide in a pyramid shaped tent.

Since you are involved in a lot of musical projects, how do you separate the material for each project? How do you know what works best with each project?

It’s not that difficult. It’s not like my world evolves around Primus anymore. Primus is something that we do once in a while now. For my stuff it’s fairly easy. I write things for me. This is the first official Les Claypool solo record. Everything else has had Frog Brigade on it or Holy Macarel. It’s always implied that there is some other element involved. This is me, nude before the world! When I did the Holy Macarel record I said those were tunes that I just would not inflict on the guys in Primus. With this record, these are definitive Les Claypool songs. It’s me playing drums on most of the songs, and bass and guitar and singing. Even my kids banged on some stuff on this record. This is a very self-indulgent record. This is probably the record the bass players have been wanting me to do. There’s a lot of in-your-face bass playing on this record – for good or ill.

How long did you spend putting this project together?

I sorta picked away at it for a couple of years. I’d go out to my studio. It’s just outside my door here. I’d got out to the studio and lay some stuff down. I slowly accumulated a bunch of tracks. I brought it people to finish it all up. It was over the course of a couple of years but more intensely over the end of this last year. That’s when I really hammered away and finished it all up.

With the CD will come plenty of touring, I’m sure. What’s your summer touring plans looking like?

That’s looking like me traveling around in a big, shiny box with some sweaty men and an asian woman! An asian woman with a sitar…

And the “happy endings”, right?

Nah – no happy endings! I’m doing the most extensive tour I’ve done in a few years. I’m doing a six week tour and I haven’t done one of those in a while. I spent most of my year last year working on this film. I think I only did three weeks total touring last year. There were a few shows here and there with Primus. This year promises to be me as the old road dog again.

I found it cool that you said you think it’s really important to spend time with your kids. How does it all fit into your touring schedule?

It’s not so much that I think it’s important that I spend time with my kids. I need to spend time with my kids. It’s a natural desire. They’re coming out on the road with me for a bit of it.

If you don’t mind me asking, how old are your kids?

My son just turned 10. My daughter is 8.

Do they realize the musical history of their dad or are you just “dad” to them?

I’m just dad. I think as they get older…I remember my daughter coming home from school one day saying, “Daddy, you’re a rock star!” No, I am not a rock star. Let’s get that straight. She was getting that from the kids in school.

I’ll admit that the first time I heard Primus was on Headbanger’s Ball. I’m sure any exposure is great, but how did you feel at the time by having your videos sandwiched between Slayer and Poison? Did it matter at all?

We were the band that wasn’t supposed to be on MTV or on the radio or any of that stuff. We never thought we were gonna get any of that stuff. We somehow got those things. The tide turned in the music industry. People were tired of – I don’t think anybody will ever get tired of Slayer – but they were tired of Poison and Cinderella and Guns N Roses and the hairy bands! Bands like us and Nirvana, Faith No More and the Chili Peppers sorta came along and were well received. It was sort of a surreal time. It was one of those things that wasn’t supposed to happen so it was kinda funny for us. We got asked to do this Daytona Beach MTV Spring Break thing. I was like, “Oh god, I don’t wanna do that thing! It’s so cheesy!” My manager suggested I do one of those things because I kept turning things like that down. We compromised and did this Daytona Beach thing. I remember being so pissed off that we were going. We were on tour with Anthrax and Public Enemy. On our way down from New York – or wherever the hell it was – down to sunny Florida, me and Larry decided to drop some acid! That’s the thing that people tell me they still see on MTV when they show past Spring Breaks on MTV, but there I am fried outta my mind! To us it was just a sort of ridiculous time. It was an amazing time but it was somewhat surreal.

One thing I didn’t know until recently is that you went to high school with Kirk Hammett from Metallica. Were you two as obsessed with music as it appears you are now?

I’m not really obsessed with music. I have a friend who’s an actor. We always talk about films. I’ll mention some really famous film that everybody should have seen and he’s never seen any of ‘em. We always laugh about that. I’m like that with music. There are certain things that I’m really into and most of them are pretty obscure. For the most part, when people rattle off “Have you heard of these guys and these guys and these guys”, I don’t know who the hell they’re talking about. Maybe that wasn’t the case when I was younger, but I was always the guy looking for things that nobody else was into. That’s just part of my personality. I liked the things that took a chance and were out of the ordinary. As far as my relationship with Kirk, I knew him in high school. I used to buy weed from him. I remember when he got his first Stratocaster, he was the guy that got me into playing music. In fact, I can attribute Kirk for getting me into Jimi Hendrix. He wanted me to sing for his band. This was when he first started playing. We were all pretty ragged. I’d always come into class singing Aerosmith songs or Zeppelin or whatever. He said, “Hey man, come sing for my band!” I was too nervous. I met this other guy who was the hot-shot guitar player from school and he needed a bass player. I talked my dad into loaning me money to buy this bass. I bought a bass and was instantly in a band. Nobody wanted to play bass back then. Everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen.

You mentioned the film, Electric Apricot: Quest For Festeroo. It’s already won a couple of awards. Care to tell me a little about it?

It’s a mockumentary about these four musicians who are in their mid to late 30s who have been kicking around Northern California for many years and they finally get a couple of breaks. It’s about this young UCLA grad student who makes this film about this band. It’s very dry. It’s inspired by the BBC Office stuff. It came off pretty damn well, actually. It was a huge pain in the ass making this thing. It’s been getting some attention. It will make you laugh. It’s not an overt comedy. It’s very subtle.

You said you worked most of last year on it, right?

I originally kicked the idea around when I was talking to Matt Stone a couple of years ago. He always told me that if I was going to make a film that it would be a year out of my life. I thought, “Whatever.” We decided to make this film and I thought we’d pull it together in three months. Of course, Murphy’s Law came in and kicked us in the nuts! On a daily basis! It got to be where it was a joke – what’s going to happen today? We had trips to the hospital, hit and runs, crew guys going nuts – you name it, it happened. We shot it most of last summer into the fall, here and there. We shot it within three months and editing took the remainder of the year.

How involved were you in the editing and the picking and choosing of what gets used?

I was very involved. I ended up buying a system and editing a lot of it myself. Our editor would lay it out and I would fine tune it. I was the final word!

You also mentioned your novel that comes out in July. You said it was based on a screenplay. How long has that been sitting around?

I wrote the screenplay almost 10 years ago. Nothing is ever finished until it’s packaged and out there in the world. I wrote a 60-page screenplay 10 years ago. It eventually became a 120-page screenplay and eventually a 180-page novel. The storyline is like Deliverance meets Old Man and the Sea. It’s about two brothers coming together after the death of their father for a fishing trip that goes awry.

Would any part of the book be autobiographical at all?

I think pretty much everything I write has some slice of an autobiographical element to it. That’s the way I write. You go by things that you’ve experienced or things that you experience secondhand. There are little slices of me in all these characters. They are also composites of many other people that I’ve come across in my life. Then they get amplified and exaggerated and get ficticious flavors added to them.

I heard there are some tapes floating back and forth – is there a new Primus record in the future?

There is. We don’t know when. We would make a record once a year or every 18 months and then go out and tour. We were mules. We were workhorses. It kind of killed it! It burned us out. We were getting other lives. When you’re young your whole life revolves around a band. It’s very exciting. When you get older and get a family it’s not like that anymore. Your life does not revolve around this thing…it’s something that revolves around your life. It was becoming more and more difficult to maintain a schedule like that and be happy. We went on hiatus because we were too cowardly to say we broke up! Nobody wanted to let it go. We ended up coming back a couple of years ago and had some great times. We definitely want to make another record at some point. It’s never going to be like it was. I look at friends of mine, like the guys in Tool. They make a record like every five years. That’s a pretty good schedule for my current state of existence.

Les, thanks for taking time for this, man. What would you like to say to your fans?

I don’t know. Don’t get pimples! I’ll just say HOWDY.