In the court of Queens of the Stone Age

Desert rock titans Queens of The Stone Age are heading down under for the first time since 2018, hitting Red Hill Auditorium on Saturday, February 10. Formed by Joshua Homme against a backdrop of 1990s Palm Desert, California, QOTSA have continue to win fans across the world with eight studio albums over 25 years, including their latest record In Times New Roman. KAREN LOWE spoke to multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita about the upcoming tour, Tropical Gothclub, performing in salt mines and more.

You guys are about to tour Australia for the new album and will be playing in a few different venues this time around. Are you looking forward to the shows? And will you, Troy and Mikey be doing any DJ shows like last time?

We are very much looking forward to the shows. We ended the Villains tour in Perth last time. It feels like a very long time since we’ve been there, and we always love going there so much.

I don’t think there are many DJ sets coming up, but you know the show will be enough for us. Something might come up at the last minute. Those are always good to get us out of the hotel room, anyway.

In Times New Roman is quintessential Queens and yet so different from previous records in tone. How do you guys manage to keep that essential sound while keeping each record fresh?

I think that is the quintessential Queens thing, you know. We don’t feel like we’re really being true to ourselves if we’re not taking some type of risk. We kind of went into this with very limited ideas of what it was going to be, but the one thing we knew for certain was that we wanted the tone of the record to be pretty aggressive.

We just let the songs dictate themselves, but I think a big part of the consistency is that this line-up has been together now for over 10 years. Mikey and I have been in the band for 16 or 17 years; that’s a long time. We know each other very well.

For me, one of the most exciting things about this band is that everyone’s so committed to the end goal and what they bring to it personally. Even when we’re not together, everybody is always thinking about and working towards making the next Queens’ record better than the last one. I think that it’s just us being us and operating the only way we know how to.

Do you have a favourite song from the new album?

It rotates all the time. You know, recently, I really enjoy playing Paper Machete. That song was very difficult at first for us to play live for the first few shows, and we came away saying, “Fuck! That’s really difficult!” but it’s been really enjoyable lately. One thing that was consistently nice was Straight Jacket Fitting and Time & Place. Those two songs were meant to be on Like Clockwork. We tried them again on Villains, but we never really found the right combination of things to make those work and fit into the other songs that were on the record. To have those finally come to life was really fun.

What’s your favourite QOTSA song to play live? Whether from this album or from previous albums? And what song do you wish you guys played more live?

That’s a tough one; again, it rotates. One of the things we really love doing is changing our set from night to night. So, with that in mind, we’re always looking for something we haven’t played in a while, and we set up a little chat room before shows, saying, “Oh, we haven’t played Mexicola in forever,” and then we get that one back in the set. Right now, I don’t know if I can answer my favourite one to play, but I’m a huge fan of the first record. Any one of those songs we can get in the set is always fun for me.

You guys played Leg of Lamb for me last time in Adelaide. Any chance of you guys playing You’ve Got a Killer Scene There, Man?

You know, I was thinking about that song the other day. Somebody asked me about that and The Blood Is Love, and we played both of those songs in a salt mine in Germany on the Clockwork tour, and I think maybe those were the only times that we played those two songs, and I think they would be really great. Oh! You know what? I’m going to backtrack a second because you reminded me that we’ve been playing God Is In The Radio a bunch, and I wanted to do that this whole time, but that was one we just never did until this tour, so that one is always a good one for me.

You guys have dealt with a lot of loss over the last few years, and it would be easy to slip into darkness. How do you keep the joy alive and the darkness at bay?

I think accepting the darkness as part of the whole. We talk about it a lot because there were so many things and setbacks on multiple levels that made this record take longer than we anticipated, and I think just accepting all of it—the good and the bad—made it easier.

We find a lot of joy in each other’s company and making music. Music has been our escape and way out our whole lives, and to be able to still have that as an option when things are difficult—we know how lucky we are to be in that position. So yeah, to be able to look around the room and enjoy each other’s company and know we are just trying to get out alive, you know.

You play in several different bands, including The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, and of course, your own project, Tropical Gothclub. Do you find the writing process changes between each band?

It definitely does. The Tropical Gothclub record was totally unintentional, by the way. I had just built a little studio in my backyard, and we had gotten off the road with The Raconteurs in December of 2019. Then, in early 2020, Alison (Mosshart) sent me a few demos that she had, and after that, I had a conversation with Josh about the record and how long this pandemic thing would last, so I just demoed a bunch of stuff.

I spent no time thinking about what it was, but I just had to get these ideas out just in case this could go there or this could go here, and ultimately, plans changed. It felt like I had a cohesive group of songs. Jack hassled me (laughs) and asked me if I wanted to put it out on Third Man Records. I said, I guess so.

Each thing has a different character, right? I can’t necessarily do that on my own. It’s usually triggered by the people that are in the room with me, so any idea at all could transform completely in the presence of the other people there.

Speaking of Tropical Gothclub, will you take that on tour once Queens have finished touring In Times New Roman, or are there any Dead Weather/Raconteur plans?

There is never any plan. We just kind of end up in the same room, and it’s, “Oh, we’re all off for a year? Should we do something now? Now would be a good time. To be honest, we are really, really enjoying this record because it has been so long between records unintentionally that we feel there is a lot of work to do. There were a lot of songs left over too, so I just don’t know what is going to be.

Over the years, you guys have played in many different venues, including the salt mines, Slane Castle in the Republic of Ireland, and Cardiff Castle in Wales. What have been some of the best venues that you played in, and what have been some of the worst?

I honestly don’t remember the worst ones. You would think that they would be front and centre in my brain, but I don’t remember hating anything that much.

Any time anything is off-centre or unusual, like playing the museum in Hobart (MONA) was wonderful and a delight. The salt mine was an incredible experience. It’s anything that breaks the repetition and makes it feel… you know immediately that it’s special, and you respond to it and play differently, and again, like we were talking about earlier, you play different songs for those moments. We all love it so much that I think that might be something we try to do more of in the future too—looking for venues where we shouldn’t be allowed in.

As a fan, it’s often quite hard to go up to your idols and say hello for fear of being turned away or for fear of seizing up and sounding like an idiot. As a musician, how do you go at meeting your idols? Have you ever gone to speak to someone and just seized up?

Yeah, cautiously, you know? I’ve been fortunate. I don’t think I have had any bad experiences with people that I have really looked up to, and I have found that they have been really wonderful to talk to. I think I am overly cautious and don’t push it too hard.

When I was younger, on the first tour we did with The Raconteurs in 2006, we opened for Bob Dylan, and that was a little overwhelming. I couldn’t imagine speaking to him, but we did talk almost daily at soundchecks for a few days in a row. I thought, “Don’t say anything that will make him not talk to you ever again.”

Just to be able to be around him and to watch him—someone you wouldn’t expect to have that experience with.

What bands do you currently have on rotation in your CD player? And are there any bands that you just didn’t get until you saw them live?

There are definitely things that I didn’t totally understand until I saw them live. Right now? What am I listening to? I’ve been listening to a lot of Viagra Boys; we just toured with those guys, and while we were with them, we ran into this band called Broncho, so I have been going back and listening to their records again.

During the last few years, and this is usually the case when we make records, I don’t listen to a whole lot because we just get into our room and we don’t want a lot of outside influence there, but prior to that, I was obsessed with a lot of 70s Nigerian rock music. I found the guitar playing really interesting in a lot of the songs. Also, a lot of Trojan Records and ZZ compilations. Maybe that was just cheerful enough for me to not think about the fact that I couldn’t leave my house for a while.