Buzzo’s new voice(s)

Recalling previous trips to San Diego with his long-running, ever-heavier band the Melvins, Buzz Osborne, coming to the Casbah on June 10, tells the Reader that he remembers “lots of [gigs] over the years but mostly at the Casbah. We love the Casbah.” The Melvins went through “The old Casbah, some dump in downtown San Diego, two different clubs near the beach, the House of everything except Blues, some anonymous gym with Tool, and some club called the Brick something or other just to name a few.... San Diego has always been nothing but supportive of us for more than two decades. I love that!”

Osborne took to acoustic guitar for his new solo album, This Machine Kills Artists, but don’t expect Unplugged. “This acoustic thing for me doesn’t seem like it would work on paper,” Osborne muses, but it kind of does. “Thankfully. Ha!”

As far as what to expect at the Casbah, the Melvins leader explains: “I do a combo of songs from the album and other Melvins songs live. No big deal, really, seeing as I wrote almost all of them anyway. Live is always a trip and with solo acoustic I don’t have the drums to hide behind.”

For the new album, Osborne and engineer Toshi Kasai went for “No effects at all on the acoustic but a wide variety on the vocals. I figured as long as the acoustic was unaffected then anything goes on the vocals. It’s a real acoustic record in the sense that we only miked the guitar and never ran it through a direct box or an amp of any kind. We did a huge amount of weird recording techniques on the acoustic, though, and Toshi and I had a blast doing it. Can’t wait for the next one!

The Melvins songs did require rearranging for solo acoustic, but that wasn’t much of a problem.

“We always rearrange Melvins songs to play live,” he explains, “because we never feel married to any particular arrangement in the first place. It’s better that way because songs tend to grow live and we’re very flexible with things of that nature. Does that mean it’s better? Hopefully...”

He tells longtime Melvins fans to stay tuned: “We have a new Melvins album planned to be released in early October. It’s a doozie!”