We are still a little blurry. He's the front man of Puddle of Mud. He helped launch one of the biggest rock bands of the early 2000s. He's from Kansas City. He's back. Multi platinum artists. He's got new music and meaning. The new album is called Kiss the Machine. Let's welcome in West Scantlin. Everybody. What's up West? We are chilling in Las Vegas. Beautiful. Yeah, you were telling me you were shooting some craps, but you don't like to be the shooter. I love grabbing the dice. Even even if you crap out, man, it's all about that energy. Oh man, when you like shoot the dice wrong and everybody loses, man, it's like your whole heart sinks for everybody at the table, man. And you're like, and I just, I just kind of back up slowly and stuff. But then, you know, I wanted to let you know that there's a guy who's like wasted. You fell over and right in front of me and my manager and my dog. And then this other guy, he like picks the dude up and they allow him to continue playing. And this other dude that picked him up had like blow fall out of his pocket or something. I didn't even know these people. We didn't know who these people even were. And the guy kicked the blow into the table. It was freaky and there's like these these like these Asian like bookers were there. And it was just really surreal, man. But yeah. And then I don't know I just I got my chips and I was like, man, okay, let's get out of here, man. We got a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow. That's what I love about Vegas is you just never know what you're going to get. I'm actually flying out to Vegas next week and I'm going to the sphere. Have you been to a show at the sphere yet? I have not. But my manager got and everybody's going to hate this, but she got two tickets to Metallica at the sphere for $30 a ticket and everybody else is paying like eight eight hundred bucks. Yeah, I can't wait to see that venue. I actually got to see you and still I'm not bullshitting you man. One of the greatest rock shows I've ever went to in my life. And I want to know if you remember this one. There's so many of them you probably don't. But we're talking 2002 livestock, Florida. It was Rob Zombie. It was Stone Temple Pilots. It was Kid Rock. It was seven. Yeah, it was Chevelle and it was Puddle of Mud man. And you guys fucking rock, man. What a rock show that was in a lineup. I remember that one, man. I was in the middle of like the field, right? Yes, it was. It was like out in a cow pasture. Yeah, dude, we did rock out. We had a good time, man, for real. What do you remember about touring with guys like Rob Zombie and Kid Rock and any stories with those two artists? Did you do a lot of shows with them? Yeah, we were on tour with Kid Rock for a long time, actually. And that was really, really fun, man. We had a great time, maybe too good of a time. But we all, I think all of us are still okay at this point. Yeah, I thought Kid Rock very talented guy. You know, he DJs, he plays the bass, he gets behind the drums, he wraps rocks. So I'm a fan of kid. Yeah, man. That dude is seriously talented, man. I'm telling you, man, I jammed with him. He's played piano right in front of my face. And we've got some fun, like over, you know, the wee hours of the morning and he can, he can sit there and jam on the piano like nobody's business, man. He's super, super talented, man. It's incredible. And he's just a wonderful guy, man. And you're one of those guys that's super talented as well. I'm interested to learn to write a great song. I know you got to be out there soaking up life. So what's been hitting you lately? What's been inspiring you to make this new music and this new album, Kiss the Machine? Well, you know, the pandemic hit and it was like it was unfortunate, but, you know, for artists and people that like to be creative, there was definitely a lot of creative stuff going on during those, those kind of bummed out times, but a lot of people found, you know, a way to just channel the time that we got, you know, at that point and now that music, you know, is on the album, Kiss the Machine. I got a bunch of other songs that didn't even make it onto the record, but they're still, they're still in my cloud. Is that what it is? They're still in the cloud. So, I got a bunch of other songs. I'll release all this stuff anyway, because, you know, everybody deserves to hear it. So we'll continue to just release music and be creative when we're doing a movie and me and my brother are writing a book and about just a whole, you know, Puddle Mudd from like 1992, man. So, we got plenty and plenty of war stories, that's for sure. We're talking with Wes Gatlin from Puddle of Mudd. The new album is Kiss the Machine, brand new single called Free is out now. You can stream it wherever you get your music. And if you want to grab tickets to some upcoming shows, go to puddleofmud.com. I love the name of the band. We actually have a country station here at the studio at the compound called Muddy Country. I know those rednecks, they love four wheel and they love getting on their dirt bikes and going through the mud. You got a little country in you. I mean, the name of the band has mud in it. Isn't that a little country? That's the thing I did was ride dirt bikes in the woods and have, you know, bottle rocket wars and go fishing and getting to, I had my little S10 Chevy pickup. Oh yeah. Yeah, we have like, we'd make a bunch of flyers at Kinko's and we just go down North Oak and just hand out flyers that like stop lights and stuff and just give them to girls and give them to, give them other guys and just give them to anybody and tell them to come to the shows and you know, we used to go to this place called the gravel pit and that's where we all like had our little we had like parties at the gravel pit, you know, there's just, but just none of the gravel mountains. Yeah, ours was at the power lines, you know, let's go party in the woods. You follow the power lines. We had a kegger, you know, big bond fire. So, so I could Yeah, dude. Heck yeah. I see you you live in that country life, but where did the name of the band, puddle of mud? Where did that actually come from? Yeah, it was like a, well, there was a flood, man. It like rained for like three weeks in Kansas City and we had a rehearsal space down there and they said there was 92. We had basically like the the water was coming over the levee, man, and we were to have to like hopefully our cars wouldn't get like drowned in the flood and we had on the second floor of this building and we, so fortunately we made it. There's just a humongous puddle of mud just right in the front of the building. So we had to pull through just to get the rehearsal. And then you guys were like let's just call the name of the band, puddle of mud. I like it. Very nice. Yeah, that's basically how that went. I've been playing guitar now for a while, probably too long to be this bad at guitar and I know it's not a very easy instrument, but I really do enjoy playing, but how did you actually learn to play way before YouTube tutorials and you know, pretty much now there's an app now that will teach you how to play the guitar. What was it like and what songs were you learning at that time and how did you learn the guitar? I got in a classical guitar my mom bought me and then I went to this instructor, guitar instructor named Jeff Sheets and this guy was like noodle just, you know, noodle master and I walked in with like some sheet music and it was Eddie Van Halen I think it was Spanish Fly and there was another one too and he couldn't even play it, man so and I was trying to like really really hard to learn how to do this these because he did all these like little solo things and records and one of them was Spanish Fly so I tried to learn Spanish Fly but I couldn't play it because I wasn't that good and then my mom was just like, you know, you kind of suck at trying to do Eddie so here, write your own songs, man because you're sucking at Eddie Van Halen right now dude. Write your own music, man. Did you learn theory or like, you know, Mixolydian? That's what these guys are trying to teach me. Oh, you got to learn these shapes and you got to learn. Did you learn all that stuff? Yeah, I did. I learned all that stuff too. I didn't attain it and absorb it enough but you know, once I heard Nirvana and all kinds of different bands and just you get to do power chords and just, just write melodies and be, you know, just, you know, write lyrics and melodies and have a nice beat and off you go and there you go. And how much are you into tuning because I know some guys like, I like to play in Drop D I like to play in E flat I like to play in standard or do you have like multiple guitars on stage with different tunings for different songs? Yeah, I'm a tuning freakazoid. Thank you, Jimmy Page. I got a couple of lessons from Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin and yeah, all this open tuning stuff. Chris Gornel God rest his soul. He also did the same kind of thing and Jimmy Page was like he had showed me how to how to just kind of it's just an open tuning thing. You can tune the guitar any way you want to tune it but it's fun to do you can create your own tunings. That was on the last record too. I couldn't even figure out what the guitar tuning was in because I didn't set it and I didn't remember what the tuning was but we figured it out eventually and I don't know, it's usually, you know, it's weird. I'm sitting here looking at this ovation the Statistic Ovation guitar. I've been writing on these ovation since I was a little tiny kid and yeah man, I like ovation and any guitar I don't care but I tune them in different tunings all kinds of different tunings, you know it's cool though it's really easy man, anybody can play the guitar on these open tunings. When you say that Jimmy Page gave you a little lesson like what was that exchange what did he tell you? He was like hi mate, hi Darren, okay and I had a guitar where Frank Bird is like hey, whizly, whizly and I'm like okay look, you can tune it any way you want to brother you can tune it any way you want okay, you just find the notes and match them up and then you can use one finger so I'm like that's cool and you can make up your own tunings, it's totally cool man. When you write a song that's like blurry, do you know right away that that's a special song or did it hit you later cause so many people say the songs you don't expect are the ones that hit with that particular song what was the feeling after you wrote it and recorded it like you knew it right away? Absolutely, yeah, when that when that hit yeah, when that song used to be called Electron Moon and then after a while when I got the deal from Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit, God, I love those guys yeah so me and the other guys that were rehearsing and stuff my bass player had written the blurry harmonic part on a bass and then I walked in the rehearsal and I was like hold on a second and then I just got a piece of paper and some pencil and I went back out to the car and I just wrote all the lyrics to Blurry and I kind of jacked a couple of the lines from Electron Moon so I just pieced those two together and then that would be blurry and then I missed my family and my kid and you know I just went through some kind of like I went through a breakup with this girl and I didn't really know anybody in Los Angeles and I was kind of a little bit like sad and disoriented and I didn't know what was going to happen and that's all the lyrics are about is just missing people that you love and you know and you want to see them and but you got a job to do so I mean many many people in this world that actually have that happen and stuff and you know you missed your loved ones man so that's basically just about missing people that you love well we've been missing new music from West Gantlen and Puddle of Mud has some new music it's called Kiss the Machine go out and stream that new single called Free you can also pick up tickets to some upcoming shows go to puddleofmud.com you've been through so much in your journey West what have those experiences taught you about yourself no man keep God first place and you know keep straight straighten there oh man and hopefully you get through the barriers of all the craziness that happens to this in this life you know you can tower through it and you can survive and come out on top and just be healthy you know be very stay healthy and you know you learn and if you make it there's struggles and challenges and stuff like that but you know you can get through it and through all these challenges in life and you can come out on the other side you know bright and shiny and I'll leave you with this I'd like to ask because I love going to Kansas City but best barbecue in KC Kansas City Masterpiece that's the spot KC Masterpiece is the main spot that's my favorite one all right there you have it West Gantlin our guest from puddleofmud the new album kiss the machine go rock it out check out the new single free and stream it wherever you get your music go to puddleofmud.com make sure you follow west on his socials and yeah man good luck out there in Vegas go check out the sphere man I'm checking it out Gentry all right when big money brother good catching up with you man peace out I really thank you for your time bro thank you man
