It is hard to come up with a quick, easy way to describe Houston, TX rockers KING’s X. Heavy? Yes. Metal? Nah. Bassist/vocalist Doug “Dug” Pinnick probably sums it up best in this interview: “somewhere between the Beatles and Black Sabbath and anything else you can imagine in between, with some kind of gospel vocals…” That’s a start.

But what makes them so great and unique has been both a blessing and a curse: no one else sounds like King’s X. Soaring, Beatles-esque harmonies, gut-rumbling bass from Dug, incredible soloing from guitarist Ty Tabor, and jaw-droppingly killer drumming from Jerry Gaskill. All three of these men are amazing vocalists. Fantastic songs aplenty. And impossible to categorize, which has made them amongst one of the most beloved cult bands ever, regularly hailed and venerated by fellow musicians, but never with that big radio hit or those gold/platinum record sales, a baffling paradox. Sometimes the best bands don’t become arena-filling huge.

The band – and the lineup has never changed in over 40 years – formed in Missouri circa 1979, and underwent various name changes (The Edge, Sneak Preview) before relocating to Houston, TX and signing with legendary NJ underground metal label Megaforce Records (Metallica, Anthrax, Raven, Overkill, etc.), then in association with Atlantic Records, and released the astoundingly good Out of the Silent Planet in 1988. Solid success followed with albums such as Gretchen Goes to Nebraska (1989), Faith Hope Love (1990), a self-titled record in 1992 and the amazing Dogman in 1994 (by which time the band were signed to Atlantic only), tours with everyone from AC/DC to Billy Squier to Pearl Jam, and some minor hit singles with “Over my Head”, “It’s Love”, “Black Flag” and “Dogman”. The band have developed into beloved cult heroes over the decades, releasing a string of records on Metal Blade Records in the late 90s and moving to InsideOut Music in more recent years. The most recent album is Three Sides of One (2022), and the band will be hitting the road and playing a string of Northeast dates in late August/early September 2026, including New York gigs in Brooklyn and Saratoga Springs.

The reason we’re talking here today is because you guys have announced some New York shows for the beginning of September. A show in Saratoga Springs at Putnam Place on September 4, and a show in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Bowl on September 6. The Saratoga Springs show is the first time you guys have been back to the Albany/Capital Region area since 2001!

Dug Pinnick: It’s been a while, I do remember. Wow.

So I guess my first question is, what took you so long?

Dug Pinnick: Well … that all has to do with booking and attendance. And can they pay? You know, bottom line is, if you don’t have enough people coming to see you, the promoter’s not gonna bring you. So, I mean, that is the only reason why we’re not on tour all the time. Not to say it’s something that I complain about, because doing one weekend a month is perfect. I get to go home and live my life and just do what I want to, and then I get a weekend to do what I love to do. And not be overwhelmed with it and then go home! In fact, it’s almost like perfect, you know, you’re not getting rich, but you’re paying your bills. And what more do we want?

But yeah, that’s why we haven’t been back to Saratoga Winners [where King’s X played several times 1989-96], or … what was the other place called?

Northern Lights [Clifton Park, NY, where King’s X played numerous shows in the late 90s/early 2000s] – which is long-gone now. That place has been closed for a few years. Both clubs have.

Dug Pinnick: The Northern Lights! Ah, that kind of figures. But, I mean, a lot of people don’t understand that. They just think you can just get in your van and just roll up and play somewhere. It doesn’t work that way at all.

So [for example], to let people know, you just can’t get up and go to Seattle. We want to go. It’s been 20 years, probably, since we’ve played there, but there’s just not a venue that can pay for the gas to get there.

But the good thing is when you don’t go somewhere for a long time, the true believers, they’ll come out, you know?

So is this still considered the Three Sides of One [2022’s most recent King’s X album] tour? And are you guys still doing a lot of that record in the set?

Dug Pinnick: I never thought it was the Three Sides of One tour. Basically, whenever we do a record, we’ll just do a bunch of songs from the record – we used to do almost the whole record back in the day, but now we only do, like, three or four songs from it.

InsideOut Music is the label that you guys are releasing records on now, and they did a great job with the physical copy [of Three Sides of One]. Do you guys plan on sticking with that label?

Dug Pinnick: I think the next record’s gonna be on that label. I’m not sure but I think it is. Put it this way, no one said that we’re not on the label!

The other upcoming New York show you have is that you’re doing the Brooklyn Bowl in Brooklyn. Is that a place you’ve played before?

Dug Pinnick: Yeah…it’s an awesome place. It’s a really cool club.

Speaking of Brooklyn, the only time I saw you there was many years ago, and of course, that was at the legendary L’Amour club, which was the place to play in Brooklyn back in the day.

Dug Pinnick: God, those shows were so good back in the day. Everybody would show up!

Wasn’t your first-ever New York show the Cat Club in Manhattan?

Dug Pinnick: Yeah. Cat Club was sort of like…CBGBs. It was really, really small. We opened for Jim Dandy from Black Oak Arkansas, and we had been flown in by Megaforce Records, who flew us in to play for them and some of their record executives. And that’s how we got signed.

This was before Out of the Silent Planet [1988 debut King’s X record]?

Dug Pinnick: Oh, yeah. And Joey Ramone was the only guy that stood on the floor and watched us. And then he left. Never met him, but I remember playing for nobody but a bunch of people sitting in seats.

And, you know, in the middle of New York City, it was crazy. But, yeah, that did happen. And we got signed that night.

An early King’s X New York show that I remember was at the Ritz in New York City. This would have been 1988, around the time of Out of the Silent Planet: the Megaforce Records fifth anniversary party. It was mostly thrash metal bands from the Megaforce roster – SOD, Anthrax, Overkill, MOD, Testament – and somehow, at the start of the night, King’s X. And I remember seeing Joey Ramone there too!

Dug Pinnick: Oh, wow, cool.

Do you remember that show?

Dug Pinnick: I remember that show. Yeah, I always used to worry because all those thrash metal bands, [because] we weren’t like them, and I used to always just feel weird, like, why are we here? But yet, they loved us, don’t get me wrong. But it was just weird when it came to the genre, [that] we were a part of that world, even though we weren’t a metal band.

Yet, you were on Megaforce, a classic metal label and that’s where a lot of those thrash bands came from, you know?

Dug Pinnick: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I remember Kings X went down great that night.

Dug Pinnick: Oh, yeah. I mean, we always do live. We’re heavy as fuck live. And the only thing about Kings X back then is since there was three of us, we could give you heavy sound rather than the real fast, you know, speed metal at the time, we didn’t take away from the power. It’s like if kids just want to fucking bang their heads, we can bang your head. But, we had that other thing going on, so I always wondered, it always just made me think. And then I realized also that, you know, most people who like music, they don’t care what it is as long as they like it. And so, you know, back in the day I used to, you know, compare, we don’t sound like that, we’re not this and that. Nowadays I realize, you know that’s what makes you who you are.

You also toured with Anthrax. You guys opened for them in England, right?

Dug Pinnick: Oh yeah, a couple tours, actually, in Europe, and we did a lot of shows with them.

England was kind of an early stronghold for Kings X right?

Dug Pinnick: Yes, it was.

One of the things I wanted to show you this if you can see, is I found this old magazine: a Kerrang! magazine from February 1988 [UK metal zine King’s X were on the cover of, Kerrang! #75, February 20, 1988]. Do you remember this?

Dug Pinnick: Yeah, that’s one of the greatest moments of my life, being on the front cover, and nobody even knew us yet. We didn’t have a record out [KX debut album Out of the Silent Panet dropped in March 1988], and this company puts us on the front cover! Nobody does that, you know?

And it was scary, too, for someone to come out and go, this is the next biggest thing, they’re gonna usher in a new age of heavy metal. And you go, they haven’t heard us yet. Okay, now what? I mean, it was terrifying for us, really.

The music press was so powerful in England at the time. Do you think that’s one of the reasons you guys broke so big in England so quickly?

Dug Pinnick: Exactly. You know, Kerrang! was the magazine at the time. I mean, every week, I read it, I got it, I always got it shipped to me in Texas, you know? And things there spread like wildfire. You know, England isn’t no bigger than Mississippi, but you know, every city’s got a million people in it, it’s a highly concentrated place, and it’s a great place to go.

I mean, there are bands playing Wembley Arena that don’t sell any records outside of England, you know? So that’s how many people are there. And when we got there, it was ready. I mean, we had a packed crowd as soon as we hit the stage. They knew all the words, and our record had been out for a week. It was really, really, really cool. It really was.

Do you think that magazine cover helped you to a certain extent in America? Because as a college kid, I bought that magazine, and then I bought the record, because I’m like, hmm, who are these guys? I’ve got to check them out, you know?

Dug Pinnick: I think it helped. But it was a rougher time in America, pushing through, because the U.S. is so big.

An early U.S. tour you guys did, which came to Clifton Park, New York around the time of [second record] Gretchen Goes to Nebraska was when you guys opened for Billy Squier and Blue Murder in late 1989. What are your memories of that tour?

Dug Pinnick: I remember Billy would do a sound check up to the doors would go open, and the people would start coming in, and then Blue Murder would set their stuff up, while our crew would set our stuff up in front of them. Nobody got a sound check. And wherever there was room, you put your shit. And I remember standing with four [cabinets] behind me, and my mic stand was almost touching the cabinets. And my monitors were, like, at the edge of the stage. And that’s how we played every night. I remember that.

I remember hanging out with Carmine [Appice, then Blue Murder drummer] and all the guys in the band, but Carmine, for Jerry [Gaskill, KX drummer] and I, is one of our favorite drummers from one of our favorite bands called Cactus. And so we got to hang out with Carmine the whole time. And Carmine’s a Kings X fan, so we just kind of became fans and friends of each other. To this day, we still do stuff together and record with each other. So those were some good times. I remember Billy Squier one time said “hey man, you know, the only reason you guys don’t have a hit is ’cause you don’t write hit songs. He says, can I write a song for you?” And I remember Ty [Tabor, KX guitarist] looked at him and said, “nah, it’s okay.” And we laughed because I’m going, here’s this guy, sold millions, you know, had hit after hit, and he offered to write a song for us. And we looked at each other and went, “nah”. It might have been the biggest hit of our life, you know, but the way we were, [and] we’ve always been this way is, you know, we do what we do and we’re very resistant to anyone else’s ideas when it comes to our band.

Another guy on that tour was [Blue Murder guitarist/singer] John Sykes [who was also in Tygers of Pan Tang, Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake], who we recently lost. I have to ask you about a rumor from back in those days, after Blue Murder broke up, Sykes got back together with Thin Lizzy, with Scott Gorham, and they did a version of Thin Lizzy. And the rumor going around at that time is because obviously their singer and bass player [Phil Lynott] was gone is that “Doug Pinnick might be doing it”.

Dug Pinnick: And he did ask me! And I said yes! And then he never, then he never … nothing happened.

So the rumor is true?

Dug Pinnick: Oh yeah, he did ask me, and I did say yeah. I said, I’ll go for that. It would’ve been fun. I can do Thin Lizzy. I could’ve learned ’em. I can do basically “Jailbreak” and “Boys are Back in Town”. You can’t tell the difference if you close your eyes. ‘Cause him and Jimi Hendrix have the same type of voice that I have. We all come from whatever the ethnic… whatever it is, we got that kind of gene. And so, the way all three of us sing, we can mimic each other, I think, because I can sure do those two guys real well. [So] it is true, I forget about that. Every now and then, someone brings that up every, like, decade.

Around that time, too, on the Faith Hope Love tour [1990-91], you guys toured for almost an entire year with AC/DC in America and Europe, too. What was that tour like for you?

Dug Pinnick: It was like riding in the Rolls Royce, man.

Was that amongst the biggest tours you guys did?

Dug Pinnick: That was the biggest. And it was everything you dreamed, if you were a brand new band and wanting to experience what it’s like…not playing for that many people! Because when an unknown band opens for a band, no matter how big they are, most people aren’t in the stadium.

And when we opened for AC/DC, I mean, there’s 15,000, 20,000 seat stadiums, and there would be 1,000 people in there, maybe. Maybe 2,000, and most of them are talking, they’re just kind of hanging out. You know, and there’d be, like, 20 Kings X fans screaming up on the balcony, you know … because nobody knew who we were.

And then as soon as we get done playing. within 15 minutes, AC/DC would be on, the place is full. I used to just kind of go, wow. It’s like, it’s really bullshit that bands [think], if they get to open for a huge band, all of a sudden, everybody’s gonna love you. They’re not. I think that was the first realization in our band when we first started that, okay, this is not as easy as we thought it would be, like everybody said it would be. And it’s more like you get your hopes up, everybody tells you that you’re gonna be the next big thing, and then you go out there and everybody goes, oh, whatever. And then you chase it for a while, and you listen to what everybody says, and then one day you wake up and realize, no.

My path is this path. And when we woke up one day around Dogman era [landmark 1994 KX album], we realized, no, we’re not gonna be the second coming of the Beatles. And so, you know, fuck all these people who are telling us we need to do this, we need to do this video, get this producer, get that guy, get this on the radio, and we said, just forget it all, we’re gonna go just be us. And that’s what we did, and I think that’s when we found our heart, you know? Musically, also, you know? Because I think, before Dogman, we were still trying to write music for [other] people…but now it’s like, all of a sudden, I get it. Everything is kind of crazy, and everything is bullshit, so let’s be real. And I think that’s what happened, if that makes any sense. I felt like I was looking for something in a place I thought was real …let’s drop those chains and run. And that’s it.

Dogman was a darker album but of the catalog one of the most beloved King’s X albums now after all these years – people love it.

Dug Pinnick: I know. I know. I know. I love that record. I do.

But you guys did play some really big shows on that tour: going back to New York State, I think it was the Dogman tour you guys did the Woodstock Festival in ’94, right?

Dug Pinnick: Yes, we did. 94.

And what are your memories of that show? That was in Saugerties, just a few miles south of Albany.

Dug Pinnick: Yeah, here’s the story. Same old story. Maybe I’ll find a new story later, but it’s like…you know, 200,000 people, 250, maybe it was 300,000. The whole weekend. But it’s still, that’s a fucking lot of people. We had the perfect spot when the sun went down, the lights came on. We did “Over My Head” and fucking slayed them. I did the speech, everything.

And, you know, we sold about 250 records in the New York State area after that, and the record tanked [and] Atlantic said, go back in and do another record. And that was the day we realized, dude, you know, I mean, [even] after you do those kind of tours, you know, when you open for people who are humongous [and still it didn’t translate to big record sales].

I’ve never played on a stage that big and getting to experience that was a chance of a lifetime, you know, sonically and everything. I mean, when you got 60 speakers on each side of you, and the volume is, like, unbelievable, it’s nice, it’s like, it’s like you’re inside a little room with your headphones on. It’s that loud and clear … it’s like heaven. And we didn’t get to do a sound check or a line check. It was like you just went on and played. Every band did that. And the turntable came around, and the guy introduced us and we hit the first note and I walked up through the mic and it was all there. It was like everything was right there. I could hear it and it was like I was shocked and I felt like, man, this could be a lot of fun playing places this big.

I always like to say I got to experience a little bit of all of it. You know, sometimes all you need is a little bit of sugar on top of that cake.

That Dogman tour alone, though, you guys open for such a variety of bands: Scorpions, Pearl Jam, Motely Crue, all across the spectrum of those times.

Dug Pinnick: Oh yeah, [Scorpions] was a good time.

You opened for Pearl Jam [that tour] at the height of Pearl Jam mania.

Dug Pinnick: Those were great nights, Pearl Jam. We hung out, well, they’re friends, and so we hung out all day and watched each other’s shows at night and fucking did everything. It was so much fun. And Jerry’s son was his tech at the time, he was 16, and him and Eddie [Vedder] used to skateboard every day, which is so cool.

Yeah, those guys are wonderful guys. Man, it’s just been so long ago. When I run into these people now, I barely recognize them, because we’ve all just grown, we’ve all, I mean, got grandkids and stuff, you know, it’s crazy.

And the same tour you open for Pearl Jam, then you’re opening for Motley Crue, while, you know, when Pearl Jam’s the biggest band in the world, Motley Crue were [at the time] on their way down.

Dug Pinnick: Yes. That was crazy. We went out with them with 3 tractor trailers, and by the time we got to Albuquerque, New Mexico from LA, they were down to 1 tractor trailer, and next thing you know, we were doing sheds for, like, you know, 2,000 people.

It was the craziest, because [Vince Neil’s replacement John] Corabi got in the band, and all of a sudden, everybody just: the fans abandoned them. It was nuts. But it was still a fun tour, especially with Type O Negative. It was us, Type O Negative, and Motley Crue, and the guys in Type O … Peter Steele was just so cool and we had some of the greatest talks and stuff, so those were some really, really good times. And Tommy [Lee, Crue drummer], I remember one night we were playing “Moanjam”, and Tommy ran up onto the stage and grabbed my mic and started screaming at the crowd, yelling how great we were. It was weird, but it was funny. It was cool at the same time.

You guys also headlined Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan on that Dogman tour, right?

Dug Pinnick: Oh, yeah. That was a good one. I’ve seen a video of that. Somebody videoed it from the back. Probably one of the peaks of our career as a band.

Because that’s not a small room.

Dug Pinnick: No, we were just at the brink of almost hitting all those kind of places, and then all of a sudden it just died out.

Well, I wanted to ask about the next album, because I just realized Ear Candy, which is the album after Dogman, it turns 30 years old this year.

Dug Pinnick: Yeah. Dang.

Ear Candy [the band’s last record for Atlantic Records in 1996] was sort of a slightly different album than Dogman, you know, Dogman was lyrically darker, heavier, and Ear Candy seemed to have more of a kind of uplifting, almost melodic edge to it. Was that intentional, or is that just something that happened organically?

Dug Pinnick: Well, all our records are intentional when it comes to [what is] bleeding onto the record. Wherever we’re at, whatever we’re going through, that’s what we sing about. So the Dogman record, we had just lost our manager [Sam Taylor, band manager and producer for the first four King’s X records 1988 – 1992], who we had found out that pretty much did a lot of things that we would not have approved of, and there was a lot of anger, and when he left, he had control of everything but our name. So, when he quit he took everything but our name and sued us.

So we were very, very angry to be played by someone who had convinced us that everyone else that we met was playing us, and that we should only trust this person. And you know, everybody gets that betrayal in their life sooner or later, and they wake up. So, it woke us up, and the other thing was…when Kings X came out, you know, we were just kind of different, and some of the bands that we know kind of took on some of the ways that we played, and turned them into a whole sound. And it kind of bummed me out, and I realized that our records weren’t as heavy as [those] records that I was hearing. And that’s one of the reasons why we got Brendan [O’Brien, Dogman producer] to do the record, because Brendan said, so what do you want out of this record? I go, I want this record to sound like we do live. I said, I go to see all these bands that I love that are just coming out, and they’re heavy, but we’re heavier than that. And I said, but nobody knows that because our records are so little.

You know, the Kings X first four records, for the time they sounded great, but they didn’t pound you like Dogman. And, you know, you’ve seen this from the beginning. Our records didn’t sound nothing like us live. Live, we fucking plowed you down. Sonically, and it was the heaviest shit you ever heard, and it wasn’t metal. And then all of a sudden, in the 90s, bands are sounding like that sonically. And I’m thinking wait a minute now, what’s going on here? And that’s one another reason why that record was like that. And we were angry. And Ty and I wrote so many of those songs that were just, like, fucking in your face, angry.

And then, what happened after that was, you know, the Woodstock thing happened, the whole “go back into the studio, make another record”, well…for me personally, I said, okay, one more attempt. So every song I think I wrote on Ear Candy, was designed to be played on the radio. “Looking for Love”, “Run”, “Sometimes” … I mean, you can go down the list, everything was just laced with melody and sing-along, and… yeah, “A Box”, oh my god, I thought that could be the hit, just because people could relate to that, you know? But, and I just heard this a couple weeks ago, and I did not know this, but I guess they wanted to put “Mississippi Moon” out as a single, and I was told that the other guys in the band, and I don’t remember us talking about it, but they didn’t want to put it out, because Ty was the lead singer of it.

And “It’s Love” [from Faith Hope Love in 1990], he was the lead singer of that, and that was one of our biggest songs at the time… well, it is our biggest song. So they didn’t want to confuse the crowd with Ty and me [both] being the lead singer. So they didn’t do that, and…that whole record, even Ty’s [songs], “Mississippi Moon” and “The Train” … my God, I think that whole record was our pop record.

Anyway, and then we just said, fuck it, and we left Atlantic, and I rented out this gutted-out studio. And, I started making my solo records and, you know, just recording stuff there, and we made Tape Head [Metal Blade Records, 1998] there.

Did you know you were leaving Atlantic Records when you made Ear Candy?

Dug Pinnick: No. Well, yes. Well, they had a new CEO, and we knew the new CEO was firing bands right and left, and we thought, let’s just get off the label and move on, rather than them just giving us another record and then not doing anything. So they said, give us one more record, and we said, okay, and we gave them Ear Candy, and the greatest hits [King’s X Greatest Hits, Atlantic Records 1997]. And then they let us go scot-free, pretty much: a couple million dollars that we owed them, and they wrote it off, which was like a miracle.

I remember thinking when I first heard Ear Candy, the first song is “The Train”, and the lyric is, “last time aboard the train that goes around the world”. I thought maybe you guys were going to end after that.

Dug Pinnick: Well, we thought we were. We thought it might be the end. And when we put it on the record, I thought, you know, should I really say this? Because people are gonna think we were gonna break up, and I go, well…just do it anyway.

I love it, I love that song, it’s so much fun to play, too. And so, you know, when, so when we got to Tape Head, we did everything ourselves. We produced it, recorded it, mixed it, everything. That was the first time. I think can look back at that record and love every bit of it because there was nobody else involved in it, and we literally did what we wanted to do. Nobody even brought songs into that record. We all just wrote it together, which was a new beginning for us in a really, really cool way.

I don’t know, being in this band for four decades, I guess, four and a half, we’ve gone through years and years of changes and of learning who we are and finding ourselves and going through family things and divorces and kids growing up and all that, and growing spiritually and non-spiritually, to the point where, you know, it’s all coming out in our music now in a way that…we’re different now. We’re older. Hopefully wiser, and still, you know, looking for the reckless side that drove us to do what we do.

Tape Head opened with one of your all-time classics, “Groove Machine”.

Dug Pinnick: Yep. I love that song and it grew so much. I remember when we wrote that whole album. Usually Ty writes songs, and he writes the lyrics for his songs, and I write lyrics for my songs, and Jerry for his.

But this time, for some reason, and I got mad, but then I was flattered at the same time. As soon as we got done with making all the songs up, Jerry and Ty got up and said, “okay, do your magic”. And they walked out the door and said, let us know when you got vocals done. And so for the next three weeks, I went in that studio by myself and just made up everything. And they came in and did their harmonies and they did all kinds of stuff. But so even that, and so when I made up the words for “Groove Machine”, I thought to myself, if I put these lyrics on this we’re never gonna be able to play this unless it’s the first song of the show. I mean, you can’t do it in the middle, and you can’t do it at the end.

It’s the band’s classic show-opener.

Dug Pinnick: Yeah. Yep. And so we’ll probably always do it.

Tape Head was the first record for Metal Blade Records and you were on Metal Blade for a few years after that. Was that a good experience? I mean, you put out a lot of albums for them.

Dug Pinnick: Yeah, it was. They were just a great bunch of people, they really, really loved King’s X, from even back in the day. We’ve always been in contact, Brian Slagel [Metal Blade chief], is a good man. He really, really is. We stay in contact all the time. I love that guy.

You know, I’d go out to Metal Blade, they’d give me metal records and stuff, even before we even became a part of the label, and they’re like family to me. We got to be on the label, and, you know, we knew that we weren’t a metal band, and that was gonna be even harder for them to sell us in their market. But they gave us a budget, we got to make records, and at that point, we just said, let’s just put records out for our friends and just do what we do. The record advance would get us through to the next record. You felt like you were living your life, living your dream, doing what you want to do and you’re getting paid for it. And they were so good to us about never telling us what they wanted, never saying, well, you’re not selling enough. I think we still owe them money for all the records. I mean, I think when we get royalty checks in, it still says “unrecouped”.

You know, even my solo records with them, I don’t think they’re recouping anything yet. So, it’s like, I always say that they believed in us, and they loved us, and they kept us alive for a good while.

Was there a reason for leaving Metal Blade and going to InsideOut Music?

Dug Pinnick: I have no idea. I don’t know, management kind of goes in there and they start working things out. Who knows, maybe we owed him so much money they couldn’t do it again. You know, it’s probably what it all boiled down to. But you just keep doing what you do.

You did a couple records upon starting on InsideOut [Ogre Tones, InsideOut 2005 and XV, InsideOut 2009] with Michael Wagener, kind of a legendary producer. How was it working with Michael? I mean, he’s done everything under the sun, you know?

Dug Pinnick: We had a fucking great time with him, story after story. And he’s just great at what he does. He’s old school when it comes to recording. You know, he does it slow and easy and no pressure, no cutting and pasting, and, you know he’s old school. And we really worked. It was a lot of fun just going and doing both records, actually. And it was out in the middle of nowhere about 10 miles outside of Nashville and is at a studio and there’s a one lane road at least for a mile to the house. If there was a car coming, you’d have to just ride off in the dirt and then let them around you or hopefully there wasn’t a tree there.

And just lots of cool stories that he told. I had no idea that he did so many people. He told us what a big fan he was of ours, and we said, well, why didn’t you produce us back then? And he goes, well, I thought you didn’t like me because I produced all those hair metal bands. And I go, what do you mean? And he said, as soon as the hair metal band thing died, and the grunge thing came, and he said he couldn’t get a gig.

One song I wanted to ask about [from Ogre Tones, 2005, produced by Wagener], just because I love it, is “Bebop”. Do you guys ever do that one live?

Dug Pinnick: You know, we used to, wow, about 20 years ago, we did.

I don’t think I can sing it now, because it’s just a little too high, but I thought about pulling it back out. Back in the day when I wrote it, then we did it in the studio, so we did it on tour, so it was fresh in our mind. And we, we pulled it off. I remember writing that song, Ty came over to listen to it and just kind of looked at me and said “think we can do that live?” I’m going, “we can try”. And we went in the studio and did it. It’s one of my favorite songs I ever wrote. And I don’t have very many favorite songs, but just because mathematically it was just like a jigsaw puzzle having fun with it.

We talked about the 30th anniversary of Ear Candy but in a year or two, coming up, is the 40th anniversary of the first record, Out of the Silent Planet.

Dug Pinnick: God, yeah – Jesus….

So the question is, a lot of people do these box sets when you hit a big anniversary. Has there been any talk of doing anything like that with Out of the Silent Planet, or Gretchen, or Faith, Hope, Love, or any of those, when the 40^th anniversary comes up for those?

Dug Pinnick: I don’t know, but I’m gonna bring it up because we finally got all of our rights back from Atlantic. We own everything now, so we can start doing stuff like that. And I have an archive of live bootleg things of Kings X, 16-track board tapes, and just a lot of stuff that we’re gonna go through, then we can put all this stuff out. I’ve been still trying to locate Woodstock, and it’s just been a nightmare trying to find out who owns it, and how we can get it back, and how much they want for it. I think they want, like, 100 grand to get the rights for it so we can put it out, so… you know, it’s all nuts. [But] oh yeah, we got stuff.

What about future plans? You’ve got dates going into September on your website, but I remember an interview about a year ago where you talked about a new record at some point coming up. Is that in the works?

Dug Pinnick: Yeah. It’s still in conversation. We decided we’re gonna do it. We’ve almost deciding where we’re going to do it. We’ve almost decided how we’re going to do it. But the cool thing is we’ve written songs for it. I’ve got 10 new songs, and if we can get to 7 of them, I’d be happy. And Ty’s got some tunes, I know, and Jerry’s got some tunes. Jerry’s working on a solo record right now.

And my next solo record will be out in about 3 months.

You’re kind of answering my questions before I’m asking them, but it’s been a couple years since Thingamajigger [Dug’s last solo record, Rat Pak Records 2024].

Dug Pinnick: Yeah, it has been almost two years. I got a new one coming out on Rat Pak. Campaign will start in a couple weeks actually. I got the cover and I signed them all and we took pictures and all that kind of stuff. I’m not supposed to say [the title] yet.

While we’re on solo records, one I wanted to ask about is Supershine [Metal Blade Records 2000], that great album you did with Bruce Franklin from Trouble. Is there ever going to be another record by that project?

Dug Pinnick: Oh, Supershine!

You know, I wish we could… I don’t know how to make it happen, but I wish we could. I mean, I love Bruce, and there’s nothing wrong, I mean, there’s not a problem, it’s just that somehow the universe has just not allowed us to get into a place where we can do it.

So, two last questions. NYSMusic covers wide variety of music. So people reading this may not all be people who necessarily know Kings X. If you were to point a new listener to a particular album and say, check this one out, this is what King’s X is, what album or albums would you tell someone who’s brand new to the band to go check out?

Dug Pinnick: That would be very hard, because…you know, I think I’d first try to find out what kind of music they like. What do they lean towards? And then I would find the record that leaned towards that. Because, I mean, King’s X kind of covers every spectrum in rock and roll, if you want to go there. You know, I mean, you could put a song like “Go To Hell” up next to “Black the Sky”, and you go, they’re not the same band. Or “Mississippi Moon” next to “In the New Age”. So, it’s very, very difficult to do that. But instead, what I usually tell people is that, well, we’re somewhere between the Beatles and Black Sabbath and anything else you can imagine in between, with some kind of gospel vocals. Now, if that doesn’t make any sense, just find some King’s X and just listen to things, but don’t judge the band by one song.

Well, that was my next question: you know, we live in this short-attention-span culture now, as opposed to back in the day when people bought albums and spent money on them, spent time listening to them. Now, you know, people are shouting out for a single song on their phone or on a smart speaker or something like that. So if you had to tell people, here’s 2 or 3 songs to go check out King’s X if you want to see what we sound like? What would a handful of songs be that you’d recommend someone pick out on the smart speaker to check the band out with?

Dug Pinnick: Okay, here’s what I do, because I’ve seen it work when people have done this. Like, nowadays when I go out and, and somebody says, oh, that’s Dug from Kings X. They someone goes, I never heard of your band. And they’ll go “are you on Spotify or iTunes?” And immediately they’ll go, oh, is this you? And I go, yeah.

The first five songs [that come up] are our most played songs, right? So I have seen people – like even an Uber driver recently did this – they put the first song on and listen and go, oh, I like that. I think it was “It’s Love”. Then the second song was “Over my Head”, and they go, oh! And then after that was “Summerland”, and then after that there was “Dogman”, and then “Goldilox”. So it’s like every song was drastically different from the other. But every song the person went, oh, I like this. And by the time they get to the end, they got this look in their eyes like, I’m going to have to go find this out, you know? So, I think that’s the best thing I could say to do.

Thanks Dug, September 4, I’ll definitely be seeing you.

Dug Pinnick: It’ll be the day after my birthday. All right. Thank you. Take care.

King’s X play the following New York State shows in early September:

Friday, September 4 – Putnam Place, Saratoga Springs, NY

Sunday, September 6, Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn, NY

For more info, visit.