At what age did the power of rock'n'roll dawn on you?

My two older brothers got me into music at an early age. There was always music playing in the background. Actually, when I was really young, my favorite band was the The Beach Boys, which kind of makes sense when you're growing up in California. Songs about surfing and chicks. I remember my oldest brother Danny picking up a CD player for the first time, and bringing home Def Leppard's Hysteria. That was the first thing I really, really loved.

Is there a common denominator for some of the great bands you play in?

Well, Ashes Divide and A Perfect Circle is kind of a similar experience in the sense that it's the same drummer, Jeff Friedl, and Billy Howerdel. Also, they're all fun, but they are all so different.

What if you'd compare each of the bands you play in with a dish? Which would it be?

Oh man, no! I don't know (laughs)! I'll have to wait until I'm more hungry. I just had some classic egg-in-the-hole toast.

Oh, I love that! What do you use to punch a hole in them?

Just a knife.

I use a tall glass. Then pop out the perfect circle and fry that, too, with some honey.

Honey? You're blowing my mind right now! I'm going to use that to describe all of my bands, now.

How's life with the Analog Drive?

Oh, life is so different (laughs)! It's f***ing great. As a bass player, usually I don't have a ton of pedals. Especially when I'm singing, I don't like to have a big pedal board in front of me. I just try to keep it simple. To have so many options at my fingertips, I mean feet (I'm right-handed but left-footed), is great! Not just for drive. The mid expression is just f***ing great. I've never seen anyone have an expression just for the mids on a drive pedal. I think it's a great idea. You know, the mids, that's usually the part that's hard to dial in, whether guitar or bass, when it comes to a drive. With a bass, it's always that question when you kick in a drive, you know, are the lows being destroyed and just completely gone? But they're not, with the Analog Drive, whatsoever. Also, with the presets, it's great to be able to do all these shows and just bring one pedal. And it's all analog! Of course, you can do that kind of thing with a midi controller, an effects unit off stage, but I certainly prefer pedals. I prefer the sound of an analog signal. I have big feet, so I like the spacing of the buttons. For me, that's great. It takes up the space of a _Big Muff_ or something like that, it's obviously bigger than something like just one overdrive, but it's a lot smaller than having many, many drive pedals, which is basically what the thing is. It's very easy to control, and there's that little nook where the foot switches are, so that you're not accidentally hitting any of the other controls. There's no learning curve. I never even looked at the manual. Whenever you're trying to make it do something, you just f***k around with it and there it is! Yeah, it's great.

I personally think that cream colored thing will look great after ten years or so of use, when it gets stained and funky and you can really see the mileage.

Yeah (laughs)! Mine is still nice and new. I'm looking forward to f***ing destroying it!

Is the Drive your first bit of Elektron kit?

I've actually been using the Analog Keys a little bit, on The Beta Machine. I'm not very smart, but I've been able to figure that thing out (laughs)! It sounds great.

What musical duties does the Drive have, in the studio and live?

So much. I used a nice rack mount thing, a _SansAmp_, for Puscifer a few years ago. But you had to have a switcher thing. In the middle of a show, you had to have a midi controller sending a signal to it, and you couldn't tweak it on the fly, if you wanted to. It was a little noisy. The Analog Drive sounds way better, it's basically like that, but it's all in a pedal, you know? It's crazy. I use it on bass. A The Beta Machine live show, for example. It's amazingly quiet, I mean you don't get that "airplane hit" that you sometimes get when you plug a pedal in, that shrill, windy thing. It doesn't have that. I use it on guitar as well, but I haven't done that live yet. For studio stuff, I like to start from scratch, and program presets. I don't always want the same sound on everything, so I start from scratch and pretty quickly tweak it to what I want.

What's your favorite bass?

A classic _Fender P-Bass_ is like home to me, you know. That's what feels the best. I'm fortunate to have a few of those. They all feel great. I've also been playing the Yamaha _BB Bass_ recently, we actually tracked a bunch of stuff, we really liked how that sounded. The American Elite P-Bass has been f***ing great to play. It's cool. It's got the Deluxe bass kind of setup where there's P-Bass and Jazz pick-ups, and you can switch active on or off, which I like. There's a lot of basses that I love, some for sentimental reasons, like my first bass. A _Peavey Milestone 2._ It needs a bit of work now, though, because I've had it since I was a kid. Everything's original on it, and I kind of want to leave it that way, you know? I had a lot of stickers on it, then I took the stickers off with a knife and I f***ing destroyed the paint job. Sorry, mom! There's something with that bass that's cool and I like having it. I'll never get rid of it. I like playing a lot of things, but those are definitely the highlights.

Was that a DEVO T-shirt I saw you wearing on TV?

I don't really know the guys that well, but Jeff Friedl played drums with DEVO a bunch over the last years. He plays drums in A Perfect Circle, The Beta Machine, Ashes Divide, and Puscifer. When I joined Eagles of Death Metal, Jeff was the drummer. He'd been their drummer for half a year. When he left to play in Puscifer, I stayed on with Eagles. So I've played with him a lot. Anyway, he played with DEVO, and I think that's where I got that shirt!

Cool. You've seen the awesome Regular Show? Mark Mothersbaugh did the music for that, the first couple of seasons anyway.

The Regular Show? No, I haven't seen that. Half the time, when I see a movie or a TV-show and the credits roll, it's "music by Mark Mothersbaugh!" That guy is everywhere!

Yeah, or a documentary, or an art film, or a cartoon.

Or a Wes Anderson film, or The Lego Movie (laughs)!

What's next for you?

The Beta Machine, me and Jeff Friedl, just released the EP called All This Time. It's going to be on Spotify and iTunes and all that stuff. We just played a show here in LA, at The Satellite. It's the first thing I've ever done, well, that Jeff and I did together, the first time I put out a thing that's not with a band that I'm hired to play in, basically. It's something very close to me, you know, writing the lyrics, and singing. Every sound and every part is written by me and Jeff. We had a lot of help from Mat Mitchell (Nine Inch Nails, Katy Perry, TOOL and Puscifer producer) as well. So we're going through this tough, you know, birthing this thing into the world. To have that out into the world is really exciting! I'm also rehearsing with A Perfect Circle right now, to get ready for the tour. We're going to be out starting April 8th. We're touring for about a month. After that, I'm going to be working on some new music with A Perfect Circle for a new album. It's the first album since 2004, I think! Then I'm going to keep doing The Beta Machine stuff, getting the next release out, a full length album. Having an Analog Drive, it's going to be nice to have a few options when we make that album.

Are you always adequately prepared to rock?

I like the way that you phrase that (laughs)! Of course. At all times. Right now, I'm ready!

McJunkins, is that a Scottish name originally?

It is Scottish originally, and I don't know where or how, it was MacJunkins once, but someone f***ed someone, we lost the "a," and that's the lineage. Maybe we lost it when we got to the States. It was a long time ago, and I don't know (laughs)!

You play with people who have a background in Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and so on, and I can't help wondering how you got to meet all these great musicians in the first place. Was it by chance? Is it a matter of where you hang out in LA, I mean if you go to the Snake Pit for instance that would maybe a bad choice, but if you go to the Viper Room that would perhaps be a good choice?

I think that's kind of weird to, like, do that on purpose, you know? People do that, and I understand it, but it's like, if you're going to go out, go and have a drink with your friends, man. Maybe they have jam nights, maybe that's a great way to meet a bunch of musicians all at once, maybe some like-minded people, I don't know. For me, though, I got into the crowd that I hang out with now, and have been for the last couple of years, it started with Ashes Divide. Once I started playing with them, I started getting hired by those bands. That's when I really started first playing with Jeff Friedl. Jeff and I became really close friends, and coming up with stuff musically that made of realize we're kind of like-minded. It was important for us to have the shows be as good as they could be. Always be, as you said, adequately prepared to rock! You need to come in and be able to play with anybody. Show up prepared. You don't want to waste anyone's time. If you go in there, and you're already ready to go from day one, it's only going to get better from there. As opposed to, "yeah, I think I know this song" and if you don't know what you're doing, they have to spend that rehearsal time working on your shit. Then the whole thing kind of suffers. Any time with a band, there's always one person who's the weaker link. Anyway, Billy (Howerdel) recommended Jeff and I to Maynard (James Keenan), to play in Puscifer, at the end of the Ashes Divide tour. Maynard was looking for another rhythm section. In the beginning there were two rhythm sections. We would do multiple shows. Lots of different musicians, playing in lots of different things, every night sounds different, different versions of the same song. That led to us playing with Puscifer and touring more. As we were already playing with Ashes Divide and Puscifer, it kind of made sense to ask us to play in A Perfect Circle. Playing in all those bands, eventually, of course you get to meet a lot of people, and Jeff and I, once again, got recommended to play with Eagles of Death Metal, when they needed a rhythm section. It's kind of like a circle of friends, you know. I'm lucky to know a lot of great people, great musicians, you know. I grew up with records that they played on. That's how I got there. A shorter answer would be: it's through working my ass off, practicing and being prepared. When the time came to get at playing in a band, I was able to go in there and just be ready to go from day one. Stay up until five in the morning, transcribe the song note for note until I can play it perfectly. That kind of attention to detail. I just want it to be good. You're up on stage, or you're recording a record or whatever. Why even do it at all if it's not going to be as good as it possibly could be?

When did you first come across Elektron gear?

The Octatrack. Through Puscifer. Through Mat Mitchell. He has a collection of really great synths, I was always really envious of that! I saw him playing around with it, and I was just "man, I don't understand how you're getting that sound!" Just kind of f***ing destroying samples through the Octatrack. It's nuts! I thought it sounded really cool, and the quality of the sound was really pristine. That was it for me. Then I started checking out the Analog Keys. I needed to get my hands on that. I really needed to get a good f***ing analog synth for the The Beta Machine stuff. I think the Analog Keys has something that I don't hear in any other machine. I can do this for real and actually play stuff, rather than just program it. You push things differently when you actually have to play them, you know. The sounds are going to be different. So much fatter and more interesting. That's my first real analog synth that I have the pleasure of recording with and doing stuff with. The Beta Machine (McJunkins, Jeff Friedl, Claire Acey) rolled out their first EP recently. It's called All This Time. Check it out.

Interview by Daniel Sterner