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Pujol Interviews Diarrhea Planet: Nashville Rockers Unite! (Call and Response)

Emily Quirk | 230 Publicity

Pujol and Diarrhea Planet are two of the best bands in Nashville's talent-stacked rock 'n' roll scene. In a double-down dose of awesome, Pujol mastermind Daniel Pujol (pictured at left) took time out of his schedule to conduct this interview with Diarrhea Planet singer/guitarist Jordan Smith. Check out their conversation and watch DP's new video for "Warm Ridin'" below, then run really fast to a record store and pick up their albums.

Let's do this. Tell the Internet who is in the band.

Diarrhea Planet is Jordan, Mike, Brent, Casey, Emmett, and Evan.

You've said you discovered the name "Diarrhea Planet" in class at Belmont while joking about the "most irritating band name" that you could think of. I live in Nashville and Belmont students naming a punk band "Diarrhea Planet" makes sense to me in both context and intent. How did attending Belmont University influence your creative decisions?

To be honest, Belmont's influence was not so much a direct creative influence in terms of sound or style. If anything it simply inspired me to be more comfortable with myself and also with my own style of writing. I just did not really find myself getting into a lot of the music that was coming out of Belmont.

Were any of these creative decisions reactions against your exposure to "the music industry" at Belmont?

Well, I guess you could argue that most of the encounters with the "industry" we had at Belmont left us with a funny taste in our mouths. Instead of stressing about that stuff we just decided to have as much fun as possible in everything we do without worrying too much about what the suits think.

Watch Diarrhea Planet's "Warm Ridin'" Video


Download "Warm Ridin'" for Free!

Off the top of my head, you guys are the most active and well-known band out of Belmont I can think of right now. Do you feel like having an "unmarketable" band name actually makes Diarrhea Planet "more marketable"?

It really is split down the middle. Some people think that our name is great and can get behind it. Others do not want to have anything to do with us the moment someone says our name. In general though, concertgoers seem much more receptive to the idea of a band called Diarrhea Planet than industry people do.

Belmont is a private, Christian-leaning university in Tennessee. Religion and theology are a hot topic at the coffee shops surrounding the campus. Did this environment provide the social vocabulary for lyrics such as "Well I know Judas very well," in "Warm Ridin'?"

Yeah, unfortunately whoever posted those lyrics was completely wrong. That is not even close to the last line of "Warm Ridin'" at all. Actually, almost every attempt at successfully deciphering our lyrics has failed for the most part. It has been really entertaining reading what people think I am saying though. Sometimes people make up lyrics that I like better than my own. I like the line about Judas, but unfortunately I did not write that.

Sexy. Now tell me a little bit about "Warm Ridin'" and its video.

I wrote "Warm Ridin'" in the shower in about 10 minutes so that I would have a song to record for a buddy of mine who needed something to record for a project at Belmont. It's about an old woman battling rush hour traffic in a power chair. The video was loosely based on the style that you see in a lot of old Beastie Boys videos, because they are the coolest.

One thing I've noticed about Diarrhea Planet is that punks attending Belmont didn't just result in an anti-Belmont Satanic black metal band. It is as if you snuck out the side door like The Cowabunga Dinosaur who skateboards while eating pizza. Does Diarrhea Planet exist in such a manic state of hyperbolic celebration?

I have no idea what that means.

I remember playing a basement show at your old house and we talked about Japanese folklore and mythology. I've noticed Diarrhea Planet incorporates these ideas, images and topics into their work.

Japanese folklore just has much more interesting ideas about good and evil. A lot of their monsters sort of exist as physical manifestations of internal human emotions. I like that. I feel like it's an easy thing for anyone to grasp.

What is the ecstasy of Diarrhea Planet? Is it cut with anything?

Really big amps, really slick guitars, really big stages, and supermodels.

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