Explosive Fecal Assault

EXPLOSIVE FECAL ASSAULT A damnedcomic Interview

The Band

Ricky “Flush” Dalton

Lead vocals, primary songwriter, 22 The charismatic smartass who started the whole thing because he thought singing about shit would get him laid. Turns out he was right, just not in the way he expected. Writes almost every lyric in the band. Still can’t believe any of this is real.

Boone Harper

Lead guitar, 21 The quiet assassin. Speaks in short, devastating one-liners and then goes back to tuning. Technical player who can make a three-chord song sound expensive. The only member who practices more than he parties.

Tanner Lee

Bass, 20 The baby. Chaotic, soft-spoken until he isn’t, and somehow always the one who ends up naked in a hotel hallway. Plays with professional ease while looking like he just woke up from a nap.

Skeeter Brooks

Drums, 23 Oldest by a year and self-appointed “dad” of the group. The one who tries to keep them from getting deported or arrested. Usually fails. Hits the drums like they owe him money.

All four are from Homerville, Georgia (population: not many). They formed the band to meet girls. Eighteen months later they finished their first world tour and still can’t quite explain how any of it happened.

The Interview

damnedcomic: Let’s start at the beginning. Four guys from a small town in Georgia start a band called Explosive Fecal Assault. How does that conversation even happen?

Ricky: We were drunk in Boone’s garage. I said, “What if we made a band so stupid that girls would have to talk to us just to figure out if we were serious?” Tanner said, “What if the name was something with shit in it?” And that was pretty much the business plan.

Boone: I was just happy we finally had a name that wasn’t “Southern Discomfort” or “The Homerville Handjobs.” Those were real options.

Skeeter: I still like Southern Discomfort.

Tanner: You would.

damnedcomic: So the original goal was purely to pick up women?

Ricky: One hundred percent. We weren’t trying to change music. We were trying to get our dicks wet. The fact that people started showing up and singing along was a complete accident.

Boone: Best accident of our lives.

damnedcomic: When did you realize it was becoming something bigger?

Ricky: When a video of us playing “My Baby Thinks Her Shit Don’t Stink” in a dive bar in Jacksonville hit like three million views in a week. Suddenly every shitty club in the Southeast wanted us. Then some blog in England wrote about us like we were an art project. That was the moment I went, “Oh no.”

Tanner: I went, “Oh yes.”

Skeeter: I went and bought bigger condoms. Practical thinking.

damnedcomic: You just finished your first world tour. How does a band that sings about toilets handle Europe?

Ricky: Europe loved us in a way that felt slightly concerning. Like they thought we were being ironic and profound at the same time. We were just being gross.

Boone: In Berlin some girl told me our music was “a commentary on late-stage capitalism and the body.” I told her it was mostly about diarrhea and getting my dick sucked. She still slept with me. Europeans are resilient.

Tanner: Amsterdam was dangerous. Too many bikes and too many open-minded people. I lost a shoe in a canal and gained a story I can’t tell my mama.

Skeeter: Paris was elegant until it wasn’t. We played a tiny venue and the crowd started a chant of “Your band sounds like shit!” right on cue. Ricky stepped up and yelled “Thank you, we take that as a compliment!” and the place lost its mind. That became the nightly ritual after that.

damnedcomic: Speaking of that line—where did it come from?

Ricky: Some drunk guy in Athens, Georgia yelled it at us during our fifth show ever. I didn’t have a comeback ready so I just said the first thing that popped into my head. It stuck. Now if the crowd doesn’t yell it by the third song, Tanner plants someone to do it. We’re not above cheating.

Tanner: Art requires sacrifice. Sometimes that sacrifice is paying a guy twenty euros to scream “shit” at us.

damnedcomic: Let’s talk about the songs. Ricky, you write most of them. How does a twenty-two-year-old from Homerville end up writing “She Likes It in the Fecal Position”?

Ricky: Honestly? I was trying to make Boone laugh in the van. I said the title out loud and he almost wrecked. Once something makes Boone laugh that hard, you have to finish it. The rest of the lyrics just fell out. Same with most of them. If it makes the other three assholes crack up, it goes on the setlist.

Boone: “Rectum Damn Near Killed Him” was based on a real story about a guy we knew back home. We changed the name to protect the guilty. And because the real name was even worse.

Skeeter: That song gets the biggest cheer in every country. Something about near-death rectal trauma really unites people.

damnedcomic: The new album has a song called “Out of the Pink and into the Stink.” Care to explain?

Ricky: It’s about the moment you realize the nice girl from the bar is actually a lot more interesting once the lights are off. We’ve all been there. One minute you’re in the pink, next minute you’re somewhere else entirely and you’re not mad about it.

Tanner: It’s a love song. A filthy, sticky love song.

Boone: All our songs are love songs if you squint hard enough and ignore the fecal matter.

damnedcomic: You guys are surprisingly tight as players for a band that started as a joke.

Skeeter: That’s Boone’s fault. He wouldn’t let us be bad. Even when we were just trying to get laid, he’d make us rehearse like we had something to prove. Now we can play these stupid songs like they’re sacred texts.

Boone: If you’re gonna sing about shit, you should at least play it well. Otherwise you’re just four idiots with microphones. This way we’re four idiots with microphones who can actually lock in.

Ricky: He’s the reason we don’t sound like a complete train wreck. The rest of us are just riding his talent and hoping the jokes land.

damnedcomic: Tour life. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. How much of the cliché is real?

Ricky: Enough to make our mamas cry if they ever read this.

Tanner: Europe is different. The women over there don’t play the same games. They’re direct. You play a song about ass-to-mouth and instead of being offended they ask if you want to go back to their place and fact-check the lyrics. It’s refreshing.

Boone: I had a girl in Prague translate one of our songs into Czech while she was sitting on my face. I don’t know what she was saying but it sounded committed.

Skeeter: Drugs are around but we’re surprisingly boring about them. We learned early that if you do too much you forget the words to songs that already have the word “shit” in them twelve times. That’s a special kind of professional failure.

Ricky: Mostly it’s sex and bad decisions and trying not to miss flights. The rock and roll part is just the soundtrack.

damnedcomic: Any particularly unforgettable nights?

Tanner: Rome. After-show party in some apartment that overlooked a fountain. There were six of us and three Italian girls who thought our band name was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. One of them kept yelling “Fecal Position!” every time someone changed positions. It was like having a very enthusiastic sports commentator in the room.

Boone: Barcelona. I ended up on a rooftop with a girl who collected vinyl and had a tattoo of a toilet on her ribs. She said it was for us. I still don’t know if that was sweet or a warning.

Skeeter: London. We got kicked out of two pubs in one night for reasons that were entirely our fault. Then we found a third pub that let us stay because the bartender’s girlfriend loved “I Got the Runs for You.” She made us play it on a broken acoustic while people threw fries at us. Peak career moment.

Ricky: The night in Berlin when a girl asked me to sign her ass and then immediately sat on the signature so it would smudge. She said she wanted it “authentic.” I respected the commitment.

damnedcomic: Do you ever worry the joke will get old?

Ricky: Every single day. Then we play a show and three hundred people scream “Your band sounds like shit!” in unison and I remember that the joke is the whole point. We’re not trying to be the next big serious thing. We’re trying to be the band people remember when they’re drunk and happy and a little ashamed of themselves.

Boone: If the joke dies, we’ll just write worse songs. We’re not proud.

Tanner: Speak for yourself. I’m very proud of “Toilet Bowl Serenade.”

Skeeter: That one’s actually kind of pretty if you ignore the subject matter.

Ricky: That’s the secret. Make the music good enough that people forgive the words. Or at least dance to them while pretending they don’t know what they’re singing.

damnedcomic: What’s next?

Ricky: More songs. More shows. Probably more bad decisions in countries that speak better English than we do. We’re writing the next record already. Working title is This One Also Sounds Like Shit. We’re nothing if not consistent.

Boone: I’m trying to get a song called “I Fingered the Ring and Lost the Jewel” past Ricky. He’s resisting.

Ricky: I’m not resisting. I’m pacing ourselves. There’s only so much dignity we can set on fire in one calendar year.

Tanner: Dignity left the chat a long time ago, brother.

Skeeter: True. But we’re still standing. Somehow.

damnedcomic: Final question. If you could go back and tell those four idiots in the garage what was coming, would you?

Ricky: Hell no. They’d get nervous and try to make the songs better. And better would’ve ruined everything.

Boone: Agreed. The stupidity is load-bearing.

Tanner: I’d tell myself to pack more underwear. Tour is hard on the laundry situation.

Skeeter: I’d tell myself to enjoy it. Because this is the dumbest miracle any of us are ever going to get.

Ricky: Amen. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a very important appointment with a bottle of whiskey and the continued destruction of our reputations.

(The interview ends the way most Explosive Fecal Assault conversations end: with laughter, overlapping insults, and the faint sense that none of them can quite believe they’re allowed to do this for a living. Make sure to check out the live cut of their hit single on our latest audio page.)