INTERVIEW: Mike Muir and the Infectious Grooves

Interview by Bec Harbour

Mike Muir is a person who is always on the go. He has barely finished his Australian tour with Suicidal Tendencies and he is coming back out with what could now certainly be described as the other ‘super group’ he fronts, Infectious Grooves. 

In the lead up to the tour two big announcements have been made – OG member Robert Trujillo would be doing bass duties AND ex-Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg would be thumping the tubs. 

I switch my Zoom on and there is nothing for a bit. About ten minutes in Mike pops up on the video and apologises for being late…”the other interview ran over as I can talk a bit…”

I laugh and let him know it’s fine, he’s here and I am ready to talk too. We exchange pleasantries and jump right in.

I ask how his day has been, and boy does he pack a lot in his day (night?), “Yeah, I finished practice around 4-4.30, I got up again at six, I’ve been to the dentist and done a couple of other interviews, dealt with some embassy issues with Japan which we are supposed to be flying to on Monday morning, and yeah, it’s a day!”

Muir’s day makes me feel exhausted just listening to it, but he is full of beans, choosing to stand for the video feed, moving in that famously restless way he moves on stage, you can’t help but smile at his enthusiasm even though he potentially has had only 2 hours sleep from my calculation. His enthusiasm is infectious.

We jump right into the questions and with growing up around skaters and music loving people the area Muir grew up in – Venice Beach – is my first question.

Bec – I am of an age where I can remember Infectious Grooves featuring on Rage, our version of I guess MTV, how did Infectious Grooves come about, considering the music scene in Venice – you would have all been falling over each other in that scene?

Mike Muir – It started when Robert got into Suicidal, before he came in, we auditioned a bunch of people, I didn’t know him, and we tried out these people and we were like hmm, ha, hmmm, what’s wrong with these other people… and someone said just try him out, he’s really good, and then [when I met him] this is the nicest dude I ever met!

He is an amazing bass player and long story short, it was because some of the music that he had played previously, and I was trying to get Robert to let me hear some of the stuff he’d done previously, on the first tour with Suicidal, I was like “let me hear some of the music that you did”. He was like no, no, no. 

The bass playing was AMAZING! But some of the other instruments and the singing was not stuff that I could listen to. I was like “Robert man, strip it down, take it all away and listen to just the bass, this is gnarly”.

A lot of rock, punk, metal is written around the guitar, let’s write it around the bass. But let’s have some of that heaviness, you know, and let the bass take its spot, and have the guitars accentuate it depending on the mood of the bass. That was basically a hotel room conversation. 

We called a friend who had an 8 track, yes, an 8 track, it was actually two 4 tracks. So, we went and started writing songs and demoing them. That was the start. 

B – I grew up with skaters around (my brother and his friends) so I know a bit about your connection to Venice Beach and what your brother did for the surf and skate scene [ Jim Muir through Dogtown]. It seemed like Venice Beach was a melting pot of music, art and all that kind of stuff when you were growing up there, is it still the same or has gentrification come in and changed everything? How did that scene drive Suicidal Tendencies and Infectious Grooves, is it still like that?

MM – Oh no, it’s some of the most expensive property. You could probably do some classes in economy on it and what decisions people make that they think are right and how it only changes things more. That’s a whole other subject. 

Where my brother lives, in the alley, I used to take people down there, you go down the alley and there are all these garages down there, they look like they are drive-up windows. But it was to get crack and stuff. We lived in the hood in Venice, and murder per capita, if it had been a city…

Then you had all the residual hippies, then the punks started coming in with their anti-hippie thing, there was a lot of artists, a lot of drugs, a lot of different elements, there were a lot of different racial make-ups – as my brother said, it was home.

When you don’t know anything else, that’s all you know. Would I want my kids to grow up there, go back in time? Hell no! People talk about police and blah blah blah, I can go well I’m not afraid of the police. When you have been beat down a bunch of times – I’m not really scared, they have cameras now, they didn’t have cameras when I lived there, I have had my nose broken, my ribs broken by police, and they could do that! Handcuffed and do that stuff because it wasn’t on camera. They can’t do that stuff anymore!

B – Certainly not get away with it!     

MM – Yeah! And when people tell me I don’t know about this stuff, I have to say don’t tell me what I know. People say it happens all the time, and I do ask them how many times it has happened to you? I know that side of it.

Now it’s a super expensive, where we lived, my dad taught at Venice High School, and one of the janitors was trying to give away the house there, because the bank wouldn’t give loans for the area, now those properties are worth five million, just for a lot. It used to be London, New York, Paris [for expensive property], now it’s Venice, it’s definitely a lot different….

B – To Infectious Grooves and the upcoming tour, last night I spent a bit of time refamiliarizing myself with the music and I completely forgot that you guys were in Encino Man!

MM – That was my acting debut! It was infinitely an unforgettable moment! We were the prom band. 

B – It looked like great fun.

MM – It was fun because it was a little bit different to when Suicidal was on Miami Vice. We had the producer dude saying maybe you should do this and that, I was just like staring at him! We did our thing and he was like I was kinda hoping you’d do that. I was okay, I bet that was what you were hoping hahaha! But yeah, it was great.

B – Was it recorded live?

MM – They only did a couple of takes, and that was mostly to take close ups of all the prom dancing and all that stuff, but it was quite the experience. It’s funny that you say you forgot about it, when we say that we were in it, a lot of people go, you were in it?! Oh yeah, were we? Oh yeah, we were!

I forget about it, I guess I didn’t make the impression that I thought I was going to! 

B – It’s the crazy stuff that happened in the 90’s right? And I caught you guys last year for the Suicidal Australian tour, I photographed the show at the Triffid, I know that the live act for Infectious Grooves is different to Suicidal, you do comedy skits and your lovely friend Sarsippius (reptilian mascot type character) – will this be making an appearance on the upcoming tour?

MM – We definitely have several things that we’re planning on doing to try to make it very unique. People always talk about the word “event”. We want it to be an event. Getting this thing together, and Robert only had a certain amount of time, my first choice was let’s go to Australia! As most people know, I was a permanent resident there and my three boys were all born there. Usually to set up something like this takes a lot more time – we were just there and I was sure that we could do it. I got on the phone with a bunch of people and they just jumped in. 

We talked to Brookes, our drummer to check Avenged Sevenfold dates, and he was like, I’m going to be on tour man. I can’t do, so we didn’t have a drummer. 

I said we’ll figure it out. And long story short, my son Tyson said “Who you gonna get?”. I said Robert will make a list and I’ll make a list and try to figure it out. He said, “are you gonna ask Jay (Weinberg)?”

I hadn’t even thought about it, he’d just had surgery and was posting at the start of the year that he was just walking again. My son was like “You should call Jay! Give Jay a call!” 

I was like, that would be a great place to start. Now Jay has taken over in Suicidal also. He’s super excited, my family are sure excited, my younger sons are coming with us. It’ll be the first time they are back in Australia. Jay was like, hey we should play some Suicidal songs!

When Suicidal opened for Metallica last year in Phoenix, Robert got up and played the song with Tye, who’s his son. We can have Robert play a few Suicidal songs – we are aiming to make a whole night of it!

There are definite differences between the two bands, the one thing we are very aware of is that when people are getting together from different bands, they are like hey, we’re just having fun! They are laughing and smiling but they act like they don’t really care. We want to make it that five years from now, 10 years from now, people are talking about it saying dude that was fucking great! People remember the first time Suicidal came out to Australia with Alice in Chains and saw us – I want those sort of memories.

B – I think the word you are looking for might be authenticity?

MM – I think authenticity, that word, I always think when someone says that is who I am, no, that’s what you’re lying to yourself about haha!

You have to come from a place of conviction and love what you do – the first practice we had with Jay, whoa! That’s the definition of a high when you just jump in and you’re like man, I don’t ever want this to end!

You just want to share it with the world, you know like when you hear music when you’re younger and before Spotify and all that and you are like “dude you gotta hear this song!” That’s the power of music and it’s that excitement that I want to be able to bring. 

A lot of people don’t know who Infectious Grooves are, we never had the chance to put as much time in as everyone was in different bands, this is an opportunity to say this is something we love and we want to share it.

B – I love that, it’s awesome. Last night we were trying to work out if Infectious Grooves had actually toured Australia before – Google was not being very friendly…

MM – DON’T BELIEVE GOOGLE! Haha! We did in 19……90…2, 91? Maybe? No no no, that’s wrong, first time with Suicidal was 93. So it would have been 95. I think.

B – So let’s touch on your time in Australia, I found out that you had been living here at the Suicidal’s gig at the Triffid up on the Sunshine Coast. What was the decision behind coming to live in Australia? Was it for the kids?

MM – It was the kids thing, obviously there’s a lot of great things and also some not great things about living there, for me being away from my family was hard, and it’s not like New York where you can get a red eye commute you’re there. It’s way more difficult to go places. It would be a great place to retire, and a great place to vacation, to try to commute to or from, yeah, it was very difficult. 

B – I can understand that, when everyone else is a 12 -15-hour journey away. What do you miss the most?

MM – There’s a lot of things. Now I would officially say that I am a Gold Coast person. It’s interesting because when I was on the Sunshine Coast, a lot of the people I met I really liked but a lot of them came from other areas. And not to say anything bad, they left so they had no issues. They made the decision that they needed to get away, it was not for them. The Gold Coast, the beaches, you know, the surfers, the action sports, and generally people on the Gold Coast don’t bother you. 

It’s like the old California beach vibe, 25-30-years ago but a fraction of the people. The beaches, I get there and I feel at home. When I was young, travelling with my dad, we were poor so we didn’t really travel but you got in a car. Dad said when you start travelling with the band, you won’t act like you’re at home, but when people make you feel like you’re at home. That’s when it’s great.

B – Let’s talk about Bluesfest – how did you end up on the line-up and did you go while you were here?

MM – Hahaha! That’s something that everyone has asked HOW?!?! For me that is something that I go, this is GREAT! My kids are going early, they’re going to see Jack Johnson. As a dad, I totally approve of that. We were just in Hawaii, we played the surf championship in Hawaii in February. My brother was saying that Jack Johnson is a great person, he does so much for his community. It’s behind the scenes, people love him there. I love hearing about that, especially because my brother doesn’t say much nice stuff about people haha! The truth is the priority and he doesn’t sugar coat anything!

I think they said that Iggy Pop has done it [Bluesfest] and few others but we are definitely not the traditional band there. A lot of people I know from Queensland go down there and they are like I can’t believe you are doing it! I think people will love it.

B – And you know what, every year they do chuck in a few new acts because they are broadening the festivals horizons. And your funk aesthetic does shoehorn into the acts that are not just blues and roots. 

MM – You have to give people credit too. The 30 years that they have been doing it, is it 30 years? Sometimes when you are successful, the box gets smaller. No one wants to rock the boat. And in 5-10-years we want people to say hey, remember when Infectious Grooves played?

It’s the Metallica bass player and the Slipknot drummer and people might go, I’ll go check that out! People might be tapping their toes more than they realise. Haha!

B – Speaking of which, how did you manage to fit Robert in around Metallica’s relentless tour schedule?

MM – Robert was like – I have a two-week period where nothing is going to happen. In 2019 we had headlined a festival in Brazil, it was so much fun and then there were a couple of festivals we were going to do in 2020 and Metallica wasn’t doing anything, so great let’s do it. Then Covid happened and it got cancelled, then we were going to do it the next year, then the next, then Metallica were back touring. 

Rob is always doing something, even when not on tour and we are aware that something might happen that affects our thing. So it’s not really fair to set something up. But yeah we’d like to do something, it’s short notice…

He said maybe we should go to France. We have done a lot of touring over there, I was like well we could go back to Australia? 

I put in for Australia and he knows that it’s important to me. He asked if we could pull it off? I called the people [from the Suicidal tour] and asked. Rob asked can we wait a few months? Nope. We’re doing it. Everyone came through for us. There were a few challenges with Brookes unable to do it but you move some things around and open other doors as some close.

B – that brings me to the next question with Jay joining, what do you think he’ll bring?

MM – The first touring Slipknot did, Suicidal did some dates with them. I was familiar with them and I knew he was a really good drummer. I went to the soundcheck and I thought this guy is so versatile, he’s really good. It always stuck with me and it wasn’t until now, and you know I love drums and I love bass and in Slipknot he beats the hell out of those drums. He has a lot of intricacies that get lost because of the music. When we had the first practice, I was like there is this just this intensity and ferocity and technique and tension and power!

You start breaking it down with the little things that he adds, that a lot of people don’t notice and its just wow, that’s insane! You know he went through his thing, it was a kick in the guts but he is such a great person, he hasn’t talked shit about anyone, he is just getting on with it. He’s super positive. 

B – I cannot wait to see this line-up. We are running out of time and I have one last question – any new music coming up from Infectious Grooves?

MM – While we were practicing with Jay, I said to Robert, we have to do a song. Rob was like oh no, my schedule, my schedule! He is also trying to finish up a short film for Infectious Grooves, he is trying to do a lot. Then he said, there’s always a way to make things happen. That’s classic Robert, he’s always trying to make things happen. 

Right so I booked the studio, we went to Tim Armstrong’s Studio [from Rancid/Operation Ivy], I spoke with our engineer from Canada and he could only be there certain days, studio wasn’t available but they switched some stuff around for us. We went in there and recorded a song and I’m so excited about it. 

While we were there, Rob goes you know we could do a record haha! [Bec – he is such a positive person!] yeah, he is, he is! My kids love Robert. Robert is one of those people, you don’t know who he is, and I say that on a lot of different level, but you meet him and you think, I like that guy! And he is in arguable one of the biggest bands in the world and you’d never know it, what him?!

He is like how I’d want to be in that position but I would be punching people you know haha, muthafuckers! 

Infectious Grooves are touring late March ….