A foundational member of beloved 1990s sludge metal band Acid Bath, Dax Riggs is no stranger to adoration. In 2006, his band Deadboy & the Elephantmen was flying high. They played on stages from Austin City Limits to Lollapalooza and more. The national press likened them to The White Stripes, and it felt like a spark was about to catch fire. As quickly as that spark kindled, though, the band vanished from the stage. For the next eight years, Riggs released records under his own name and toured smaller venues. Despite the positive reception to 2010’s Say Goodnight to the World, Riggs slowly went dark before seemingly sliding back into the murky swamp mists that he had emerged from 20 years earlier.
Ten years would pass with virtually no updates, no new releases, and no live shows. Fans wondered not-so-quietly what had become of him. A dark and swooning crooner with a cultish following, his devoted fans were left to wonder if they had heard the last of his lush and evocative songwriting. On October 14, 2024, it was announced that he would release a new album, 7 Songs For Spiders, on January 24. Just one day later, Acid Bath announced they would be reuniting for a festival performance in Las Vegas—a moment long begged for by fans, but seemingly out of reach following the tragic death of bassist Audie Pitre, who was killed by a drunk driver in 1997. We sat down with Riggs just before the album’s release to talk about the unexpected hiatus, how age has impacted his creative process, and why the time finally felt right for an Acid Bath reunion.
I have to start with the burning question on every fan’s mind—where the hell have you been, man?
I’ve been creating an environment and an outlet for my new music. It just took a lot longer than you’d think. I’ve always been working on music, but you know how life gets in the way. So it’s hard to explain what I’ve been doing, because it’s pretty much the same thing I’ve always been doing. About 10 years ago I was making my next record, and at that time I just felt like I needed to not do that and instead go back to the drawing board, in a sense, and just write. I felt compelled to put everything on hold and just try to write as many songs as I could. And that’s kinda what I was doing. Now I’m prepared to put them out into the world a couple at a time.
The tracks on 7 Songs For Spiders: Have some of those been around that long? Are they a decade old? And if so, have they been revisited and reworked significantly? Or are they still pretty much in the same form they originally were?
I think it morphed into the final form through a couple of years, but they’re all relatively new. I want to say within the last five years. Maybe a little bit longer—you know how time is. There was a time when I was stuck on things that I had written previously and trying to record them and just unhappy with what I had. So I took a certain amount of time to just write, and then at some point I had to turn that off because that’s also a place I can get lost in. And I’m very happy there—to just keep creating and keep writing songs. But at some point I have to stop that mechanism and start the mechanism of completing them, which is a different exercise for me.
I’m not sure how present you are on social media personally, but over the last decade or more, I’d see things pop up on your page advertising merch or albums and the comments section was always filled with fans pleading for new music and asking if anyone had even seen you. It was building itself up to be a real mythic thing—where IS Dax?! Were you aware of that? Did you see any of it?
Oh yeah, of course. [laughs] I’m like a deer frozen in the headlights of it all, really. In a way I feel like there is no comment I could make except, “Here’s a record.” I have nothing to say other than what my songs say, and that’s kind of what you want, in a way. They’re designed to reflect what you project onto the symbols in the songs.
You’re in Lafayette now, right? That is a pretty tight-knit scene. Were people there aware you were working on new material or did you keep it close to the chest?
Just our very closed circle knew that anything was happening. It felt like a secret operation in that way. We’re very isolated. The information wouldn’t get out through anyone I was working with. I kind of wanted to let people know, but I guess I’m just weird like that. I guess I said it for so long that I literally could not say the words anymore—”I’m working on new music”—because of course I was. But at some point I just thought, I can’t say it again. And I can’t play anymore until there’s something new. That’s a promise I made to myself that I was battling with. There were plenty of times when I wanted to go out and play some old songs and some covers like I had always done, but the weight of the time prohibited me from feeling like that would be OK.
Did you feel like people would want new material if you played live? And you weren’t ready to put it out there yet?
It’s not necessarily about what the people would want. I think they would have accepted that [old songs and covers] to a degree. But for me, I needed to draw that line so I could artistically move forward and hold myself to that promise. It just took a lot longer than anticipated.
Was it a conscious choice at that time to say, “I need a break from this,” or, “I am not artistically being fed by this and I need to hit pause on this for a minute”?
Yes! That’s exactly what was happening. I just couldn’t get a handle on new material while I was playing as much as I was. Some people can. Everybody’s different. But for me, it saps the energy that I have to create when I’m playing a lot. So I had to stop that and go inside. I was searching for my new sound or the new thing that I would be doing. Exploring what it is that I like about this and reconnecting with that feeling. And I have a real compulsion to do that. I felt like if I just had the time to sit down and write, I could write these really interesting songs. So that’s what I tried to do. And I feel like it worked.
It just took a bit longer than intended. When you hit pause, did you have a timeline in mind at all? Did you think, “I’m going to take two years off performing and really focus on songwriting,” or was it ever as structured as that?
I only had the goal. And when you said years just now, I never thought that I’d be taking years off. It just happened. One thing led to another. It’s hard to explain, but I never intended on taking that much time off. I thought, “Oh maybe a year”—if I even consciously thought about it. And then it just unfolded the way it did.
You moved to Houma as a teen and you’ve spent most of your adult life (minus a stint in Austin) living in Louisiana. How do you feel that the creative community here has factored into your work?
I guess it’s weirdly isolated and it’s a good place to do something completely different in the way that the scene here is mainly folk and Cajun music. It’s a weird place, but that’s why I like it. And all these guys could play Cajun music, but they also like psychedelic hard rock.
I think that’s a big part of why Acid Bath was so beloved, though. The sound was so singular and it was different from the rest of what was being done in the metal world at the time, because a lot of bands in the mainstream do tend to feed off one another and it can start to sound the same. But down here we’re in a weird vacuum so the things produced here don’t sound like anywhere else.
Yes. And it cultivates an “outsider” musical vibe. You could do just about anything and it may go well here. There’s always a possibility.
It’s mutable, right? You can pay your rent playing traditional music but still be fed artistically by playing sludgy, introspective—
Sludge pop. [laughs]
Exactly. Someone not from here would use this opportunity to make a gumbo analogy here, but ugh…
[Laughs, faux gags]
In that vein, it always irked me that when Deadboy & the Elephantmen was getting national attention and the lineup was you and Tess [Brunet, drums and backing vocals] that the only thing national writers could come up with was to dub you “the swamp pop White Stripes.” It felt like the only way they could make sense of you was to put you in the context of another band. Did that attention and exposure factor at all into your need for a creative break?
I’m not sure. I think it was mainly just a creative need to unplug from the commercial aspect of music and just be the person who tries to write a song every day and who is obsessed with the songs, versus the person who is coming to bring a product to your town. I needed to take a break and go inside. I had to shake the tree and see what would fall.
And by its nature, performing is a very external thing. It takes a lot to power that engine. I feel like I know the answer to this, but would you consider yourself an introvert?
I would. I think it’s not in my nature to want to be that person, but I’m compelled to do it by the songs. It’s so powerful and it moves me so much as a person who writes music. I get goosebumps when I’ve created something that I feel moves me. I truly feel it. It’s a tangible thing that has power and I can’t wait to express that to the wider world.
I think introverted-extroverts are a thing. One of the fan comments on the new single made mention of how much they loved the song, but how it was bad for their mental health. Do you feel like playing around in the darker side of life through art can give us a place to safely explore those feelings?
And some room to breathe and acknowledge them. We can have dark thoughts and we can share some of the same feelings with dark characters in our world without wanting to do the things they do or thinking it’s something you should do. I think we’re all capable of having some empathy for the criminality of people.
Did you come to music originally to address those kinds of feelings in yourself?
Oh yeah, and it remains to this day. It’s like a frustration. A sort of anger that could sometimes flare up in a wildfire, but this music helps me. It’s very therapeutic for me. It soothes my soul and I know that other people feel that way too, so I’m excited to share it with the people who can pick up that signal.
Was the announcement about the release of your new record and the Acid Bath reunion coordinated to hit at the same time or was that pure coincidence?
That was a total accident! My thing has been planned and in the works for a while and the Acid Bath reunion was a bombshell at a time when, for the first time, it seemed fun and doable.
From everything I’ve ever read about an Acid Bath reunion, you weren’t interested in doing it from an artistic standpoint after Audie died. Obviously they didn’t want to press on without Audie and without you. You said though that now it finally felt doable—what brought you to that place?
I guess time. It still has some painful elements to it, but I believe over time the pain that I used to feel in connection to it is almost gone. And so that just changes it for me.
And that’s mainly about the loss of your friend, right? Some bands make the hard decision to press on after a member dies—is that something y’all ever discussed? You were all so young too. It was such a tragic loss.
He was so important to us and such a dear friend. I know that it could have gone forward, and certain people halfheartedly thought that’s what we should do, but he was so important to getting the two sides of our band together. Some of us liked really heavy music and others not as much. I’m a bit that way too, but he was so important to bringing us together. He liked pop songs and he liked Cannibal Corpse. It’s hard to explain, but it just seemed unimaginable. And it was so full of pain, all I could do was just get away from it at the time. When it came up recently, it was the first time that I wasn’t under a contract or had a record out. I was free to have the time to entertain the idea. It was mentioned a lot through the years but never in a really serious fashion. And I was never completely opposed to it, but for a long time I just didn’t think it could happen.
Have you kept in touch with the guys throughout the years or was there a period of reconnection?
Two of the guys I’ve kept in contact with and we remained friends. Part of me always wanted to get back together with them but it’s hard to have a reason to do that when you’re “grown up,” you know? This reunion was a bridge to that. Between three people who are friends—a way for us to heal through our friendship and get some positivity out of all the things that have happened.
It’s a natural outgrowth of aging I think, looking back on the things that brought us joy and wondering if we can revisit them. And grief and healing aren’t linear, but like you said, it didn’t feel as spiky and the pain wasn’t as acute anymore, so maybe there’s something good that can come from it.
Yeah, and I guess it also coincided with my rebirth or more of an interest in hairier, heavier kinds of rock. It was always part of my world, but I just started to obsess over guitars and amplifiers. I had literal dreams about Telecasters, so it just seems like the stars aligned for things to work in the way that they’re working.
It was Christmas for the sad kids when you announced the album and a festival date for Acid Bath. That festival has since been canceled but you have four more festival dates on the books. Any plans for Acid Bath to tour beyond the festival circuit?
There’s no plans to do that.
So no other shows in the wings beyond those four. Are you open to more shows?
There are other one-off type shows in the works. Especially something for Louisiana.
I was about to say—no way fans here wait decades for a reunion and you only play four shows in Ohio.
[Laughs]
Any chance we get new material from Acid Bath out of this?
You know, if you ask different people, you’ll get different answers. For me, that was the thing I was mainly interested in. I’m always interested in creating new things. Maybe it won’t be called Acid Bath, but we’re really talking in a fantasy what-if world there. Put it this way: It’s not a “no” from me.
The theme of this whole thing seems to be that it has to feel right. The timing and the stars have to align. Maybe you’ll get out on the road and it will just feel good and it will lead to something new being born. But no concrete plans for a new album right now.
Exactly. Right now it’s about getting this bunch of songs in shape and seeing what we’re going to do with them now. I see how other bands do reunions and it’s cut-and-paste from exactly the way it was and I’m really opposed to that kind of thinking. For me, I want to get in there and tweak things.
And I know you can’t scream like you could in 1997
[Laughs] No way. It’ll definitely be different. It’ll be our reinterpretation of things we did then. I have stock in this artistically, so I’ll be pushing for what feels best.
You started writing as a young teen, and you’re in your 50s now. How has your approach to songwriting, process, subject matter, all of that changed or evolved in that time?
I think I used to just kind of puke up everything and go with that, you know? [laughs] Now it’s a lot more mental back-and-forth. I try to get more out of less. That’s the way I work now. But the topics are not that far from each other, in a sense.
Well you talked earlier about how music is a healthy way to address those darker corners of the mind, so the thematic elements having commonalities makes sense. Are you a fan of The Cure?
Oh yeah.
In reading a bit about their most recent release while reviewing it, I stumbled on an interview where Robert Smith mentioned looking back at things he wrote in his 20s and thinking, “What did you even have to be sad about, you idiot?” I know I personally cringe when looking back at journal entries from my youth too, and the kind of perspective shift that time and loss and grief give us can cause us to look back on the art of our youth a bit scornfully. When you look back at that stuff, do you still feel a connection to the work? Does it still feel genuine for you?
I would say it feels authentic, but just in some misguided ways. Which I was. I was just a boy, you know? The thing that sticks out to me is the not fully understanding. Like some of the hard drug stuff. I was around it, but I was yet to see its true face, its skull face, its death head. I didn’t see the true impact of it. I didn’t understand about getting illumination through certain means of opening your mind versus other ways that are dangerous and detrimental to your spirit. I was getting those things confused when I was a kid. And thinking that freedom is just your right to do whatever you want. And it is in some ways, but that doesn’t mean that’s all it is. I also think I was trying to express a certain kind of sexuality that was, for lack of a better word, just not grown up. At that age, it’s a certain childish imagining in your mind that you don’t really know anything about yet. You’re trying to find out what love is and you’re angry and maybe you have mother issues, stuff like that. It’s all in there.
Our society prioritizes and praises the art of young people. They flame out in their 20s because of those hard drugs and the things that surround them, but they write in beautiful hyperbole about things they maybe haven’t really lived yet. In music though, we often don’t put a lot of stock in the art of older people, despite the value of their lived experience. We talk about liking someone’s “early work” better.
Right? I think it’s true that we don’t value artists as they age. I’d also point out that Nick Lowe is an artist that conveyed some of his best songs in his latter days.
You have a young child, but you also have one who is a young adult now. Peak “doing dumb shit” phase, right? Do you see yourself at that age in them? How do you approach that from the viewpoint of a father?
I guess I was a very wild child. I was an agreeable person to be around, but just very wild in the sense that at a young age I moved away and lived on my own. So there’s not a lot that shocks me. I’m a pretty understanding person in that direction. Just don’t ask me what I did at your age. [Laughs]
Does your older kid listen to your music?
He’s aware of it. I guess growing up around music all the time, he’s sort of over it. To him it’s just funny and amusing. He thinks we were complete lunatics. Which we were/are. [Laughs]
Being a parent is so humbling, man. I imagine being a parent who is an artist is even more so.
It is. They don’t care about your art. [Laughs] And honestly, I like that. Getting into this at a young age, it was never something I thought about. “Oh, I’ll be a father.” But when you come to a place where you want to do it, it’s a trip. It’s humbling, but there’s something about it that teaches you how to be a person—a better person.
Right? And they don’t need Dax Riggs the musician, they need their dad.
And if you’ve attached yourself to a name like that for a long time and that’s all you are, it leaves a lot of empty space. And for me, yes I like to create and write, but I also like to work on my house and look after my kids. These “normal” things are not so normal and it’s really just a different chapter. A good chapter.
Considering the fact that you do have a young child, is touring behind your solo work on the radar?
I definitely want to play. For now we’re just going to be doing one-off shows on this side of the U.S. for the immediate future. But I’m interested in the future and getting us out to play. We’ll just have to see.
When will we see you in New Orleans? In case you haven’t noticed, people are rabid.
I have noticed. [laughs] And I’m excited too. We’re working on a show there in the next couple of months for sure. There were so many times after making that promise to myself that I wasn’t going to perform until I had new music that I almost flip-flopped. Just to go and play. But I felt like I had to hold my ground.
If you popped up and did a show, it would have been nuts. Everyone would be asking you to play their city. And how do you stop that once it starts? I can understand why you pulled back from that. Do you have any thoughts on the next few years? Are you thinking that way at all or just stepping with intention into what feels right?
The next thing is another recording. That’s the main focus for me, even above touring. At the same time, we’re ready to do that. I’m really dying to get out there and play. It’s just a matter of the landscape has changed and we need to see how we’re going to fall into everything and how we’re going to get along in this new world.
COVID really blew the wheels off the bus from a venue and booking standpoint. And fan bases are aging.
Gotta start the shows earlier. [laughs]
Yes! Please don’t start the show at 10 p.m. Babysitters are so expensive after midnight. We talked a bit earlier about how Deadboy really flirted with national recognition for a minute there. Is that something you’re interested in pursuing again?
You know, probably not. It’s too many hoops to jump through. I never actually intended to do anything like that.
The fire just kind of caught back in 2006.
Fat Possum had so much enthusiasm for that record and they’ve been good friends since we started working together. They’re distributing this new record for me, too. Back then, it was just like, “I like you guys, so whatever you think is possible, let’s try it.” It was always a “you guys do your thing” approach and they threw out all these opportunities. I’m not saying I wouldn’t do special things for my new project, but would I put myself out there like I did before? Probably not, because it’s not really my thing.
I mean, a CW show (iZombie) used “Stop, I’m Already Dead” as their theme—that’s wild.
I was into that because I was a fan of the comic books, so I was actually thrilled with that.
So maybe it’s really all just about alignment. Right opportunity at the right time.
At that time there was a team of people in conjunction with Fat Possum and that kind of thing is not really for me. I just want to make music and put it out. Everything else is secondary to that. I would rather just let the music speak for itself. And what it’s not saying is OK too. Everything doesn’t have to be explained.
For more info check out daxriggs.com and facebook.com/officialdaxriggs; and for Acid Bath: facebook.com/AcidBath.
Top illustration by Deanna Larmeu
All other images by Tara McKenzie, courtesy daxriggs.com
The print version includes Dax’s guest advice column from ANTIGRAVITY‘s December 2014 issue
