Redd Kross‘ Jeff McDonald recently took time to answer a few questions about the band’s forthcoming album. The effort will be their first release since 1997’s Show World. It will feature the legendary Neurotica lineup (Jeff McDonald: Vocals & Guitar, Steven McDonald: Bass, Roy McDonald: Drums, and Robert Hecker: Guitar).

Jeff and his daughter Astrid will also be our first podcast guests this Friday, so make a point of stopping by the site to check that out!

Photo (Spain 2007): David Jimenez

How’s the new album coming along?!
The album’s coming along great! We started it last summer…did all of the basics and lead vocals very quickly, then throughout the winter we’ve been having a hard time scratching the time to do the overdubs. We’re doing it very slowly, everyone has other projects they’re working on. We have to actually start cramming. It’s the middle of May and we have some mix sessions booked, so hopefully we’ll get going on it soon and finish it.

Tell us what it’s sounding like.
I would say the record does encompass pretty much the whole scope of who we are. Just being fans of rock n roll music, rock history and music history it all ends up in our albums. Our albums have all been kind of conceptual in a sense that they are just this kind of collection of what goes on in our minds. I never really pay attention to what’s going on in any kind of movement or scene. I’m never really part of that kind of stuff when I’m writing…if it does happen, it’s an accident. I think there’s some total over-the-top pop moments, there’s some extremely garagey moments, there’s some pure pop moments (I hope). It’ll be really interesting to hear how it sounds all pieced together.

The majority of it I wrote and I wrote it very quickly just in a fit of inspiration. There are a couple of songs that we’ve had since the late 90s (there’s like two of them), I’m not going to say which ones they are…you’ll just have to guess.

Who’s behind the controls for the recording?
Well, actually Steven is. Steven’s been working a lot as a producer and engineer for the past few years. He’s made a lot of records. I’ve produced a couple of records, but he’s taken it very seriously and works all the time. So, he’s much more involved in the actual twiddling of the knobs. We really work very well together as far as taste and what’s right, what’s not right, and making decisions. If one person gets hung up on something the other one can usually knock it down or encourage it, whatever may be required. We work better together now than we ever have, so I think it’s pretty exciting.

Explain the writing process for the album.
It’s always across the board. I’m always surprised when I look at who wrote what when I look at our old records, because Neurotica and Third Eye I wrote pretty much by myself. The later records I wrote the majority of, but I did collaborate. On this record, I pretty much wrote the whole thing…that’s because it was my job (chuckles). We just kind of go for whatever organic process seems to happen at the time and everyone’s off doing their own thing so my job was to write the songs.

I’ll do these fits where I’ll just sit down with the guitar and sing a melody into a tape recorder. I’ll just do a bunch of them. I always have my iPod on shuffle and listen to it in my car all the time. All of a sudden, this song will pop up with garbled lyrics, but it’ll be almost a completed song and it’d be me running through something for the very first time and I’d think “wow, that’s great” and I’ll just finish it. A lot of it happened that way, so I guess this record was kind of made via Magic 8 Ball iPod.

Any plans to tour after the album is released?!
Well, of course. It’s been about a year since we started performing live again and everything we do feels like a tour (chuckles). Every time we play now it’s in some other country or state, so we’re always on tour. But as far as like this international, long, rung out…I don’t know about that, we’ll see.

What other projects are you guys involved with at the moment?!
Well, Roy still plays with The Muffs and I know that they’re planning on getting together and doing some recording. Steven just produced Be Your Own Pet’s second album and he’s working on a few other records. I’m just kind of getting back into writing and just hanging out and playing guitar. I’m really getting obsessed with my guitar again, which is kind of fun. So, I don’t know…maybe another Malibu Kids record? That could always be fun, we talk about it. But, Anna and Charlotte are extremely busy and Astrid being a teenager now (she’s 13), she’s pretty uptight (said lovingly)… so, we’ll have to see about that.

Tell us something about yourself (or the band) that we couldn’t find on Google?!
I don’t know, that’s a loaded question. If I was sitting here talking to you in person, I could think of lots of things about myself that you couldn’t find on Google. I don’t know. I know that…um…geez…I sound like a stoner. I don’t know, you’ll have to wait for the book. I think when I sit down and write the book it will all come out. A lot of the stuff on Google is wrong anyway. So, I don’t know. I can’t answer that question entirely.

Download: Redd Kross - “Switchblade Sister”