When I first spotted Nashville punk rockers Diarrhea Planet on the Hangout Fest lineup last spring, all I could think was “I don’t care how good they are; that is a heinous band name.” I remain totally unmoved on that point. It’s a wretched name. But the six jovial young men that compose DP are anything but. Their crushing wall of sound (created in large part by an aurally dizzying quadruple guitar front) is punctuated with arm-flailing, head-lolling, circular-spinning joy. Seeing them live is just plain fun; Their on-stage energy and interactions are playful and free of even an ounce of pretension. I had the chance to speak with one quarter of that thundering guitar section, Emmett Miller, in advance of the band’s February 20th show at Siberia. During our chat, he completely missed a cultural reference that made me feel really old, made a pit stop to grab dinner—giving me an education on Nashville’s signature “hot chicken” (“It’s an art form, much like the sonnet or the one-act play”)— and filled me in on the challenges of coming up punk at a Christian university in the heart of Nashvegas.
So I hate to ask the obvious question, but I still haven’t found a satisfactory origin story for your band name. Are you guys just big fans of poop jokes? What’s the deal?
Emmett Miller: You know, that’s actually still under investigation. We’re looking into it and we’ll be releasing a statement as soon as we find out.
I bet you’re all really good at spelling diarrhea now, aren’t you? It’s actually sort of a difficult word for a lot of people.
Oh yeah, it just rolls off the fingertips now. I didn’t know how to spell it before I joined the band. A lot of people try to spell it with “o”s and such. If, at the end of the day, we can make the public a little better at spelling the word diarrhea, I think we will have done a good thing. But really, I think originally Jordan [Smith, singer/guitarist] thought Airplane Hatred was a hilarious name for a band, but everyone responded with “We’re not gonna name our band that, man.” So they looked up all the anagrams of those two words and Diarrhea Planet was the funniest one. I think we’ve come a long way on this bit. We’ve gotten a lot of mileage on this band name and it’s certainly been a focal point of our career. Actually, it’s sort of consumed us. [laughs] I can say that a solid third of our interviews or pieces written about our band include the word “scatalogical.”
You guys met while in school at Belmont University. What is the environment like there? What about that particular time and space coalesced to make Diarrhea Planet a reality?
It’s really interesting. Back in the day, from what I understand, Belmont had sort of a fire-and-brimstone Baptist thing going on. Now they’ve kind of eschewed that and seem to be going more for a Berklee College of Music thing and getting a bit more away from the hardline religious overtones. The Christian background is still there, but they’re marketing themselves as more non-denominational now.
So maybe not the biggest party school. I was wondering if it was and maybe that’s what got you guys going, as you are sort of a “super fun party times” band. But maybe it was the lack of that and a consequentially dry environment that lit the spark.
We found ourselves somewhat stuck in Nashville because at the time, there was a stigma that if you were a Belmont band, you were doing worship music or pop country or the quiet singer- songwriter thing. As a punk band, it was really hard to get shows. Even in Nashville proper, but especially around campus or through the school, as we were essentially a bunch of heathens in their eyes. I don’t know if things have changed at all since then, but I did hear that there is an 80-decibel limit placed on all productions on campus, which is pretty much a snare drum at 20 feet. [laughs]
You guys would fail that real hard.
Oh yeah, there’s no hope for us there anymore. Every year they have this big event called The Rock Showcase. All the students in the audio program put on this huge production and Belmont bands audition to participate. There was this band, No Regrets Coyote, who were a few years younger than us. When we dropped out, we felt like we were passing the torch on to them in a way. They made it through the pre-audition screening for the showcase because the judges liked their EP so much, so they got to do an in-person audition. They had a few big tube amps with them and there’s a threshold with those where it doesn’t make any noise at all really, and then once you get to about “1” on the volume knob, it jumps up and that’s just the minimum volume. They were there and the judges kept asking them to turn it down just a little bit. And of course they literally could not turn down. So they didn’t get into the showcase. And they probably would have won it. It’s a damn shame. So yeah, Belmont puts a little damper on the rock’n’roll.
So it’s pretty much the university equivalent of the town from Footloose?
[silence] …I’m not familiar with it.
Are you serious right now? You haven’t seen Footloose?! How old are you?
I’m 24. But I’m also culturally illiterate.
Let me help you out. A small conservative town bans dancing and rock music. The youths rise up in furious rebellion. Kevin Bacon is all “let’s dance!” You should watch it and stop making me feel so old. Also, I’m just making an association of how ridiculous it is for a university to keep such a tight reign on musical expression.
Maybe it’s the Baptist roots. I heard a good joke once. Why don’t Baptists have sex? It’s too much like dancing!
Are you guys all from the South originally? How did you land at Belmont?
We’re from all over. I was born in Nashville. Mike and Brent both moved there pretty young, but I think Brent was born in Dallas and lived in Canada for a while. Mike’s family is from Massachusetts. Jordan came from Indianapolis and Evan from Tacoma, Washington. We’ve got it all covered.
You were talking earlier about the difficulty of being a punk band in Nashville. The South at large is more well known for genres like blues, rap, and country. How do you make it work when maybe the support scene isn’t really as robust as you’d like it to be when you’re starting out?
Nashville, when we were at Belmont, was in the beginning of a real DIY rock boom. There was all the country stuff of course, but I think it all started with Be Your Own Pet and Infinity Cat Recordings. Right when Jeff the Brotherhood started to come up, there were these heady days with just a ton of rock bands—and there still are—but back then it was a little more fiercely DIY.
I had the great pleasure of catching Jeff the Brotherhood at Bonnaroo four or five years ago. They were literally the only band on the entire farm scheduled opposite Arcade Fire, so I figured they had to be worth checking out. I feel like their sound is so rare for a Nashville band, though. Who was your biggest ally in getting your music out to audiences? Who did you look up to?
We couldn’t have done it without Infinity Cat being a workhorse label of Nashville rock. When I was about 14, my dad gave me the Be Your Own Pet self-titled album and I had just gotten my first drum kit and I that’s how I learned to drum––trying to play along with Jamin [Orrall]. The first show I saw when I went to Belmont was a bill you could never see today unless it was a festival, because they’ve all gone on to tour nationally, but it was Denney and the Jets, Heavy Cream, Natural Child, Pujol, and Jeff the Brotherhood. It was at The End, this little dive with like 100 capacity. I didn’t know a single person there and I walked out covered in beer and sweat, feeling like I knew every one of them. I’ve only ever experienced that kind of soul bonding through music with New Orleans bounce. I saw Big Freedia, also at The End, and that’s probably the closest thing I’ve ever had to a religious experience. It’s almost like the music disappears and everybody’s in it together. It’s a beautiful thing.
I’m glad New Orleans was able to gift you some of that feeling by proxy. Sort of like bounce, you guys are seen as a “fun” act. It’s a word I see associated with you constantly, so I have to wonder if being the fun band ever puts restrictions on how you can experiment with your sound. Do you feel like it limits the complexity you’re allowed to pursue?
Jordan has spoken a lot about how many of the songs on our first record, Loose Jewels, were about partying, but that it was also very tongue-in-cheek. We’re self-aware about it. Physically, we used to run into problems of people just getting too drunk and spilling beer all over our fucking gear and stuff, but that’s died down a bit and everyone seems to be a bit more well behaved these days. I don’t think we’re afraid of branching out musically, though. We’re just going to keep pushing ourselves.
It’s gotta be somewhat easy now, with all of you in your early-mid 20s. It’s not uncommon for that vibe to permeate the soundtrack of those years. But what happens when you’re in your 40s? Will you still want to play the music you’re writing now? Do you want to be? Or do you even think that far down the road?
I always want us to be the band that makes you feel like you’re watching School of Rock for the first time. Tom Petty had a great interview once––I think it was on [NPR’s] Fresh Air with my girl Terry Gross––where he was asked how he balances being such a hit-writing machine with trying to tour behind new material. How do you get the new stuff out there without disappointing audiences, you know? He said it really eloquently, but he essentially said that he wouldn’t be where he was today without those songs and that if people were paying money for tickets and showing up to hear the hits, then hell yeah he was gonna play them and have a great time doing it. So we’re going to continue to grow as much as we can musically (and with four guitars, we still have a lot to learn). We get a little better at it each time, but hell yeah, we’ll keep playing these tunes, hopefully for a long, long time.
Was the four-guitar assault an organic thing ? Or had you always planned to try to melt the walls of every venue you played?
Well, originally we wanted five. But that was way too many. [laughs] That was the tipping point. Founding member and former guitarist Evan P. Donahue, along with Jordan and Brent were the three guitar players at the beginning. Jordan wanted to keep adding guitarists until it didn’t work, as kind of a joke. There was this one show at The Springwater—I always joke that you’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in Nashville. It’s this little dive by Centennial Park—this bar is pure evil. Anyway, Evan and I were roommates at the time at Belmont and he had actually just left DP to do some solo stuff, but Jordan asked us both to come play with the band for this one show. He said “Yeah, it’s going to be asinine, but here are some demos, just learn them and it will be wild.” Evan had this grand notion of trying to fuck the whole thing up by writing these epic hair metal leads over the top of everything. Our goal was to get kicked out after one show. So we wrote these ridiculous parts over the top of “Ice Age” and some other songs that ended up on Loose Jewels. The other dudes thought it was hilarious and everyone was like “We’re gonna do it; we’re gonna make four guitars work.” So the joke was on us, I guess.
So who is the primary songwriter?
Jordan for the most part. And then Brent has written a handful. Generally when someone writes a song, they’ll have lyrics and a skeletal version of the song and we’ve grown to anticipate the kinds of things the other members will play, so you can leave it to everyone else to fill out the sound.
Do you guys go into your shows with a pre-determined set list? Or do you prefer a more fly-by-the-pants approach?
Recently, we’ll play the same set for an entire tour. That way we get more and more comfortable with it over time. We don’t have to look at a set list every night and we all have the same setup on stage. We can load in and load out in our sleep. With that taken care of, we can be totally focused on the music and going wild.
So you’re rolling into town a few days after we wrap up Carnival season. Even the non-religious among us seem to find a sense of quiet in the days immediately following Fat Tuesday, so you’re going to need to bring an extra dose of the good times for a city that has literally just drowned itself in two- plus weeks of nonstop revelry.
Maybe we’ll have to throw our own parade, then. We’ll bring it right back around and set it off.
Maybe we can put you in touch with Big Freedia’s people.
Oh my God. I would cry.
Diarrhea Planet plays Siberia on Saturday, February 20th with Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, Yuppie Teeth and NEAT. For more info, check out diarrheaplanet.blogspot.com
