A CONVERSATION WITH RONNIE BARNETT OF THE MUFFS!
The Muffs Bassist Discusses Their History, Their Newly Unearthed Live Album, and Roth vs. Hagar
Back in the 1990’s, many Americans could pay for their healthcare, rent, utilities, AND food, rather than allocating funds to two or three of those and crossing their fingers; and a substantial subset of those Americans could indulge in something we called “disposable income”. Without getting too byzantine about economic theory, it can loosely be defined as “extra money” to be used on something you “want.”
Perhaps I could have used my disposable income more wisely. Y’know, like with what financial experts term a “savings account.” Nope. With few exceptions, I burned it on music: seeing music live, buying equipment to make music, and—especially–buying music. I didn’t stay my hand and wait if none of my favorite acts released something on a given week, either; I’d roll the dice on bands based on the album cover or the label it was on. I justified it by thinking I was building a collection of physical media that would command a noble sum at some far-off point in the future. We all know how that went. Don’t play 4-D chess with just three pawns and a bishop, folks. It’s not gonna pan out.
A hopeful and heartfelt counterpoint: art enriches us more than money. Supporting evidence: the eponymous debut Muffs CD, which I bought used (sorry, Ronnie!) from a vendor in my university center in 1993 based merely on the band name and the graphics. I can’t think of a single blind purchase I’ve made in my 54 years that I cherish more.
A record so airtight, so perfect, so punchy, that an NME writer complained in his review of In Utero of the injustice of giving Nirvana so much space at the expense of The Muffs write-up that he really wanted to do. Punk-pop at its apotheosis, sneering and sweet by turns, often in the same line. No-fat, no-filler songwriting based around chords anyone can play belying a ‘60s-inspired sophistication under layers of distortion and feedback. And if you’ve ever been in a club when Kim Shattuck screamed, you know what music can do to your spine.
Kim succumbed to complications from ALS in 2019. I felt Tom Petty. I felt David Bowie. But losing Kim was a step beyond. It was like losing a cool older sister who’d shared her record collection with you. It was a loss.
This past Record Store Day, Omnivore Recordings released The Muffs’ first live LP, Live at Fort Apache. Now, they’re prepping it for wider release on all the formats. When David K floated the idea of my sitting down for a chat with bassist, co-founder and keeper-of-Muffs-legacy Ronnie Barnett, I was thrilled. We both like digressions, so buckle in!
Boog City: Alright, so, how you doing today?
Ronnie Barnett: I’m okay, I’m okay! Good to meet you. Thanks for wanting to talk about the record.
I’m so excited about it! Even though you sent me [the mp3s], I’m going to order the vinyl.
RB: I can try again to get you one—
I’m a musician, I get it! Every sale’s a sale my friend!
It’s not that! I wish I had one—anyway.
I need to talk to you about the most important thing though. You’re clearly David Lee Roth over Sammy Hagar…[based on Ronnie’s email address—TC]
(laughing) Look, I like Hagar too. Don’t get me started. In fact, I think Van Halen ruined—sorry, we’ll go off on many tangents, I’m sure, Todd, because that’s how it is—I think Van Halen ruined Sammy Hagar’s career to be honest. That was a hot live act. I’m sure I’m older than you.
A little bit, maybe.
I’m 61.
Okay, yeah, I’m 54.
In ’79, when I was 14, I saw Sammy Hagar. I mean, there is no hotter act.
Was that Montrose?
No no, that was solo. That was a hot act, and I’m not lying.
Well, the guy had voice.
They woulda sucked in the ‘80s, anyway, with Roth. It is what it is! Eddie Van Halen wrote all that shitty music, you know? Hagar takes the fall. But anyway, that’s my rant. Don’t get me started. And that video [“Rock Me Tonite,” llead single from Signs of Life] didn’t kill Billy Squier’s career—
No! It was a bad video though!
Sure, but he had videos where he was prancing around that before! He wasn’t wearing the pastels, but like—anyway. I did a TV show for AXS and they were like, it was “Music’s Greatest Mysteries”, and that was the subject—
Oh my god, I didn’t know about this. Is this available?
Yeah, they run ‘em. They still run ‘em. I can’t say it’s a great show but they tackle whatever.
Like, for people of a certain age with certain interests, the esoterica of such things—
Yes, yes.
–is worth pursuing and talking about for half-hour clips. I would love to watch that.
They’re not available on YouTube. I don’t know if you have AXS. Few people do. It was like a music channel that seemed kind of like, holding steady and now I don’t hear about it much anymore. I’ll send you one about Sid Vicious I did. But anyway. Let’s get into it.
Anyway. I’ve seen in interviews that you describe yourself as “retired. You’re not a musician per se anymore you don’t think. Even that you said at one point that you were not really a bass player in The Muffs, but that you were in The Muffs and you played bass. For folks who don’t really know the band, what is that distinction?
I mean, there is a distinction. Obviously, playing bass in The Muffs, it says “musician” on my taxes and everything. But I had played bass in high school bands and gave it up.
This was in Houston?
Yeah. So I thought I’d be a journalist. I met Kim, we became friends, and I moved to California, and basically, I ended up picking up the bass and playing in my girlfriend’s band. I know from knowing a lot of musicians, some band members don’t get along at all. We really were a true family. So my role in The Muffs was like “We should have this as intro music”. “We should do this for the cover.” Stuff that might not necessarily show up as a credit. And I don’t think of myself as, well, it’s not that The Muffs required Jaco Pastorus on bass or anything.
There’s a lot of root [not] playing, right?
I did my [work]. There’s a lot of people who write me and say I’m an inspiration. “I love your playing”, and you know.
I did see you play a McCartney bass line in 2014 [on a cover of “Rain” by the Muffs with the Bangles]. That makes you a bassist my friend!
(laughing) I know. I’m downplaying. Most musicians you know they’re a musician when they walk in a room. You know, they make it known. I’m not that guy. I’m sheepish. “Yeah, I was in this band.”
I find that with people who play punk, or punk-adjacent music, there’s almost a, like, people don’t like to talk about how often The Clash practiced.
Right, yeah.
The Clash played, man. Nirvana played, you know what I mean? These bands played a lot and practiced a lot. It’s almost like some bands want to distance themselves from that. So, what was The Muffs’ rehearsal ethic? On the spectrum from “once a week with a lot of booze involved” to “every day for hours and hours and dry,” where did you guys sit on that?
Well, first off, I can say our practices were 60% talking and joking, and I’m not exaggerating. Gossiping and all that kind of stuff. We weren’t on a “we practice every other day” [schedule] unless we were gearing up for an album or recording, then we might practice three times a week beforehand. We always played new songs, though, in our sets. And that was until our final days. We always had at least two or three new songs that we were playing, so we were usually ready by the time we were recording. I wouldn’t say we overpracticed at all. Maybe if we were about to have a show and we hadn’t played in a while, and that’s just conditioning. I don’t know if you ever saw us, but—
Multiple times.
For better or worse, we went for it every time.
Just being in a room with you guys, man. I saw you a few times at Maxwell’s [the sadly closed Hoboken venue].
Oh, great!
I always loved Maxwell’s because [the artists] always had to walk through the crowd to get to the stage. I was never the kind of guy who touched anybody. I didn’t even stand by the place you knew they were gonna walk. But I loved that. It just reminded me of the clubs me and my friends were playing. Just the feel of just being there with them.
Yeah, we had an emotional attachment to Maxwell’s that I can’t say that we even had with any clubs in L.A. We played there many times, we developed a close relationship with Todd [Abramson], the owner and booker. He would fly us out. That’s why we played there so much. We’d fly out and do Maxwell’s and say a show in Brooklyn many times. We played the last Thursday they were open. I was interviewed for the documentary [Maxwell’s Movie]. Maxwell’s was special to us. It’s funny you mention the getting on and off the stage. I took an injury there because they had a plastic crate like you see in the back of a grocery store. That was the step to get on and off the stage there. I imagine the crowd would have moved it to and from its spot.
Like a milk crate?
A milk crate! One of those hard plastic—
–What the fuck?
Thank you! So coming off the stage one night I slipped and my shin slid down the edge of that crate. It opened up my—I still have nerve damage! It went so deep it didn’t even bleed. It’s one of those. I told him that night, “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna sue you.” But after that, our last night, they did make a two-step [stair]. I’m posing with a step. There’s a photo of me. Somewhere. But Maxwell’s was special. The size, the sound, everything. We always fed off the crowd. Which is why we didn’t play a kid’s basement or y’know, Alabama. It was just bad for our crowd. We weren’t that kind of band.
So let’s go back to the beginning of The Muffs for perhaps a crew who doesn’t know you so much. I want to contextualize this record. So Kim left The Pandoras. Is that when you were dating her?
Yeah. The Pandoras were formed [in 1982] as kind of a ‘60s-influenced band. Really cool. Garage-y. A little poppy. Kim joined the band in like ’85. We met in ’86 on the road and my brother lived in Southern California. A month after that I came out for a month and that’s when we really became friends. We were just friends; it wasn’t romantic at that time. By 1989 The Pandoras had turned heavy metal.
That is bizarre to me.
Now The Pandoras were led by Paula Pierce and Paula, whatever she was influenced by, she was the singer-songwriter, y’know, leader of The Pandoras. That’s how it went. So they turned heavy metal at that point and both Kim and Melanie were not so into it. Melanie actually got kicked out of the band because they didn’t need keyboards, they added a second guitarist. Meanwhile, it should be said that their audience did not follow them down this path. So when they were heavy metal when I moved out there in ’89, they were playing to empty clubs, playing cleanup, playing to 10 people … they were still working a lot but the old audience had left them. So Melanie left the band and then a month later they were supposed to go to Europe and Paula pulled out and that was the final straw for Kim and she quit. Meanwhile, Kim had been writing songs. She had her own four-track recorder. The Pandoras didn’t want to use her songs, so she always wanted to have a band and play guitar. And when she quit—I’m always resistant to change—I was like, “Oh my god, you can’t quit!” She’s like, “No, we’ll have our own band.” And sure enough within a month since she already had songs, Melanie and her husband were our best friends and Melanie started playing guitar. We formed our band in August of 1990, played our first show by January of ’91 and had signed to Warner Brothers and had our first album by April of ’93. So very quick. That’s the thumbnail for ya. So the first album [The Muffs] came out, we were a four-piece and then between that album and the second album our original drummer quit. We got Roy McDonald who we knew from Redd Kross and then Melanie left the band right before the recording of our second record. We made the record [Blonder and Blonder] as a three-piece. We thought we would add a second guitarist but we got an offer to open for Green Day, who were blowing up at that point—that’s a whole other story—
–That’s the whole Rob Cavallo [Muffs and Green Day producer] thing—
–That’s a whole other thing tied to us. We’re in all the Green Day books, whatever. I should get a piece of that action is what I’m trying to say (laughing)…
Green Day is to you as Nirvana is to Pixies.
Yeah yeah yeah! Again, there’s a lot of nuances to all this. Anyway, we played this gig as a three-piece, we did a warm-up show the night before at a club just as a surprise. Not that we were too big to play this club.
Under the name Killing Grandma?
It was!
I have read this story [in Bob Bert’s old ‘90s zine, “BB Gun”].
Thanks, Todd! You know a lot of stuff, actually. So we played this gig as a three-piece and said, “This is actually fun. And it works! It’s kinda more rockin’ in a way.”
You were tighter, I felt like. I never saw you guys [live] as a four-piece even though I was a fan of you from the first album. I only saw you with Roy, and no Melanie. But based on the videos I’ve seen, I find you to have improved [as a three-piece].
We had to. Yeah. Besides us being in early band [days], and learning and all that stuff, the early Muffs pre-first album could be very messy, very noisy. Often the crowd would just stand there and we realized it’s because we’re so loud! It’s such a sonic attack that they’re stunned, they don’t know how to react. Or hear anything. That’s probably what it was. It was the grunge time. There was a lot of throwing around our instruments and feedback. We kept a lot of elements of that until the end.
And that’s welcome, I think.
Yeah, we got better. I mean, over 28 years I hope we got better. Now Blonder and Blonder was coming out, it was post-Dookie Green Day. So because we had the same A&R person, same producer, same management, same accountant, same booking agent—actually we had them all first—just to say that.
Get it out there.
Our first record’s the first record Rob Cavallo produced. The second one was Dookie. So anyway, Dookie blows up and so, Blonder and Blonder is gonna get a big push. That’s when we switched to Reprise from Warner Brothers so we could work with their radio people. I should note too, we have no bad major label experiences. None of that stuff you hear about. For better or worse, they let us do what we wanted. Besides there are things on the first record that sound a little dated but I don’t think any of the other stuff does. So Blonder was our big swing and we’re a three-piece all of a sudden. When it comes out we immediately go on a theater tour opening for Veruca Salt, which was a fantastic experience.
I was just listening to them today!
Still love them, they became lifelong best friends of ours. We all bonded. Kim started going out with Jim the drummer for a couple years after that. It became very incestuous, but that tour, it was so great to be in the middle of [Veruca Salt and] the opening band, Fig Dish, they were really great guys, too. Fig Dish had a couple records on I think Polydor. [Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt]’s boyfriend was in that band. It was sweet because we’re in the middle of this theater tour where Veruca Salt is blowing up. It’s a sweet spot because we’re second, the audience is there, we would go on—I can say this safely—we would kill every night, and then we got to hang out and watch Veruca Salt and eat and drink! When you headline, they’re kicking you out immediately. After that tour we’re still hitting it hard. Right before we went to Europe we did this trip to the East Coast, this was quite a week for us. Before that’s when we got the offer to record “Kids in America” for Clueless, which is our best-known song still to this day. It’s the opening song in the movie, it’s the first song on the soundtrack, I’ve got a platinum record. We’re on a lot of soundtracks where we’re in the middle of the soundtrack or the movie but that one’s big. That one gets played in ballparks. It still ends up on other TV shows. Thank God. I wish we’d written it! I wouldn’t be talking to you right now, Todd, if we did!
You have a couple of co-writes on the first record.
Yeah.
In general, Kim didn’t collaborate, right?
Look, Kim was always saying, “You should write songs!” I mean, you brought up punk but we were a pop band. We studied all those things. I’m proud of that because we could play a punk festival, we could play a power-pop festival, a garage festival, we could open for No Doubt, we could open for, y’know, Motley Crüe, for better or worse. It’s not like we’re embraced heavily by all that but we were able to do it. I helped arrange “I Need You” on the first record. I’m under no illusions as to the reason why I’m still talking about this band and why people remember us. It’s first and foremost, Kim’s songwriting. Besides her performances—
–her scream!—
Yeah, the scream. She was a great songwriter. I knew it at the time but as time goes on, I do realize how special it was. We didn’t jam or anything. She wrote songs. I was not a songwriter, and you’re welcome, World, for me not pushing my songs (laughs).
The world is not ready!
Could you imagine if someone had to skip my songs on our record? So anyway, that wasn’t like Kim laying down the law. Kim was always encouraging and I’d be like, “Kim, I can’t write songs.”
She comes in mostly with these albums written, then.
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. We’d work out the songs, there’s arrangement ideas that we would have, beginnings, endings, “this song needs a little this or that”; but not too much. Not to get off the subject but I always loved her demos. They got better and better.
I have the early [demos album, The Muffs Demos] but I don’t have the Really, Really Happy one.
That one is actually one that came out [on Omnivore Recordings]. The reason that we had that was that I was always technically inept and I didn’t want links to demos in the early computer age. Even now. I preferred having a burned CD so thank god I have those demos. You can see how fully fleshed out they were. The last record [No Holiday, released days after Kim’s death in October 2019] which we had to piece together off her demos, she didn’t do that on her final record. It would have been a lot easier if she did, but it’s the way things were at that point. Anyway, this week post-Blonder, we get the offer to do “Kids in America” for Clueless, we went to the East Coast to record that at Electric Lady Studios and we’re about to go to Europe. So we headline CBGB’s, we drove all night because we had to play on the radio the next morning at Fort Apache. And that’s this record.
I had some questions about that. You were the first people to do that for them?
We were!
I have [the This Is Fort Apache] compilation and you’re not on there. There’s all these great names—
Well, they were a recording studio, but they started this thing with—I’m forgetting the radio station—
–BNX or BXN or something like that—
Yeah. It wasn’t BCN. They started this thing, Live from Fort Apache, and like, Radiohead went on to do it and stuff. I’m not sure how long it lasted.
Tanya Donelly and Belly. Another one of my favorite bands. But she left Throwing Muses and they were almost better just like [Melanie left The Muffs].
I’m glad to hear you say that. I love Tanya, I love Belly, but it drives me nuts when I hear someone say, “Oh, Tanya was the secret weapon.” No. I’m a Throwing Muses guy.
Yeah, me too!
Limbo’s my favorite record.
Red Heaven.
And they’re criminally, not streaming, not in print. It’s shocking. So, Fort Apache is owned by Gary Smith who managed the Muses and Tanya and Belly. He’s a producer. [The Muffs Live at Fort Apache] went out on the radio so he produced it.
Expletives included?
Yeah. I was a little shocked at that. You might laugh at this but I have a hard time listening to our old stuff. It’s not for emotional reasons, it’s just I’m just gonna hear mistakes. I trust Roy. So when this came up—actually I’ll get to how this came up after I finish this but we played on the radio. Also that day Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren were at the studio, we got interviewed for MTV. They were doing a thing on Boston. And then we headlined the WBCN Rumble that night which was a big deal in Boston, so it was quite a little stretch for us, that couple days. So [Live at Fort Apache] went on the radio and I had a cassette of it and hearing it again, well, I’ll tell you how the record came to be. Now that Kim’s not with us, Omnivore Recordings has done deluxe reissues of basically mostly all our records. We have a good relationship, always looking for new stuff to do. There’s always talk of doing a live album. We started to listen to tapes of stuff that were recorded decently. It was hard to find a show that was [high quality] all the way through. We were a “you had to be there” kind of act.
This isn’t Live at Leeds.
Yeah yeah yeah. There were gonna be times where the guitar’s cutting out, where I make a mistake…Roy was pretty solid, generally. I hate to give him credit (laughing), I hate to give him credit.
Drummers are always solid.
So do we piece together one of those albums? Do we cover both lineups? Anyway, it got put on the back burner. Anyway, a friend of mine who’s a Muffs friend and collects us alerted me that there was a DAT tape of this Fort Apache thing on eBay. Now this is just like a year ago. It was very quick. And the price was, starting bid at ten bucks but it was a “buy it now” for a hundred bucks. I told Omnivore and they just went ahead and bought it. And the hope was, I mean, I’ve never seen a DAT that’s in bad condition. Because they never get played. Who’s playing DAT’s like a cassette, y’know? But like any recorded tape, they do depreciate over time. Was it going to transfer? Well, it transferred. They liked it. I didn’t listen but Roy was like, “Look, we sound a little shaky on the first song but—”
Yeah, there’s a little bit of itchiness and stuff.
And I get PTSD hearing Kim complaining about not hearing herself on the monitors, but she does and it gets worked out quickly. And you can actually hear that she can hear herself better.
Yeah, from song three on, you guys are a fucking locomotive.
Yeah. Yeah. We get better as it goes on, definitely. It just goes to show how tight and good we were at that point and, look, we’d only been a three-piece for a year. When I listen I think, “You know, we got a lot better!” Which we did, but it was a snapshot in time of where we were at that point. Kim was doing a lot of rhythm AND doing lead stuff. Later, she’d just do the lead stuff. You know, we got more comfortable being a three-piece.
I meant to ask you this question earlier. You were thrown into this gig opening for Green Day. There was almost no time to be daunted by the prospect of being a three-piece. You were looking for a second guitarist. Did that gig stop that [search]?
We did try out a friend of ours after that and we didn’t like it. That was enough for us to [decide] “let’s just be a three-piece”. It’s funny to look back now. There wasn’t a lot of overthinking about any of this. The record’s done and you got a few months but plans are being made. It’s not like you get on tour with Veruca Salt with a week’s notice, you know? If we’d overthought it—and that’s a mistake a lot of bands make! They overthink everything. There’s bands that would demand to hear this interview back, Todd, and then be like, “You know what, no, I reject this.” For whatever reason. It’s shocking to me. I’m involved with a lot of podcasts behind the scenes and there are people who do that! Bands who haven’t been around for 40 years [saying], “No, I don’t want this to go out.” I’ve always been on both sides of industry in that kind of way.
Because you were a journalist.
Yeah, and now I do a lot of interviews on these podcasts and stuff. But getting back to us, we didn’t overthink any of this stuff, we just went. It’s like a river, right? Okay, we’re gonna flow this way, and that way. They’re not with us anymore and we’ll tour. So luckily enough, this Fort Apache thing, it sounded good because it was mixed for the radio so it was mixed like a recording. Soundboard recordings are generally going to be drums and vocals because that’s what the sound man’s working with. So it was very cool to have this live artifact. And because it was a Record Store Day release last April, it had to be submitted at least six months in advance if not more. That’s how that stuff works.
Record Store Day’s become a monster.
It doesn’t have to be done but you have to have a title.
So what was the turnaround time on the physical product?
I’d say we bought the tape September [2025], they decided to submit it for Record Store Day by the end of September? That sounds about right. Could have been mid-September. All that stuff is way in advance. And then it’s “What’s the cover gonna be?” And Record Store Day, they have an exclusive and you can do it but it’s gotta have some buffer of a few months and it can’t be on colored vinyl. So this re-release, if you will, this wide release is on black vinyl and it’s got a different, cleaned-up cover.
[The original RSD release] had a washed out yellow, right?
Yes, it is. So the cover’s different and it’s on CD and all that stuff. The people that are vinyl only scare the shit out of me. You work all formats! You work CD, you work cassette, you work vinyl, you work Spotify.
I don’t do Spotify but that’s a principle thing. My band’s so small that by the new rules, I can’t make any money.
I’ve got several friends that think that way. I came around. You know what it was? That $300 Springsteen box set that came out last summer. I was like, “Oh, I can listen to this on Spotify.” I work it as well. But we could do a whole other article [about that]. Is a stream really a sale? It’s not. It’s like a play on the radio. I don’t know what people think they should be paid. We do okay streaming. I never saw money from record sales really. But that’s because we spent so much on our records making them that we’re forever recouping.
I am fascinated by Kim’s penchant for self-production. Yeah, Rob [produced] the first couple records but then you guys pretty much did it yourselves.
By the time of our next and last major label record, Happy Birthday to Me, Rob had gotten busy. He was our A&R guy and he produced us, then when Dookie happened, then he’s the big producer, right? And look, I’m proud of him, but at that point Rob’s busy. When we were making that record, Rob kind of oversaw it. I think he’s got a credit of some sorts on there. I think he was doing L7 at that point. I think that’s a big part of why everything changed after the first record. The first record was the four band members, two A&R guy producers in Rob and David Katznelson. Dave was great. Dave was the guy who found us. Rob was a heavy metal guy before our record. Rob had signed the Metal Blade label. Black Sabbath had just gotten back with Dio; he signed them to Reprise. There was the Dehumanizer record. The band he signed before us was called Sister Whiskey. So that’s where Rob was at [laughing]. Our management too, they had managed Testament before us. So all these guys started working with Green Day, and Green Day got big and they all invented punk rock all of a sudden, right? Our managers got their own label through MCA. Anyway, so many people had opinions on that first record. I think Kim was not gonna let that happen again. And I wasn’t hands-on then and I’m not [now]. I wasn’t the guy in there like “I can’t hear my bass.” Which is probably why there’s no bass on that first record! It got better. Kim realized we needed bass as we went on.
She didn’t double-track her vocals a lot.
No, she wasn’t into that. Kim for better or worse but mainly better, she wasn’t into a lot of crap like that.
Which is interesting, as a big self-avowed fan of ‘60s stuff that she was, you’d sort of expect it, but it doesn’t work with The Muffs.
No. And like the ‘60s stuff with her was early ‘60s. She didn’t like psychedelic Beatles. She cut off with The Kinks after Face to Face.
That’s so funny, because in the blurb before this article I was going to say she’s like Joan Jett mixed with The Bangles mixed with the Beatles and The Kinks, pre-Kinks Kontroversy.
Absolutely! She loved Herman’s Hermits and Freddy and the Dreamers. If you think about it, that’s what we were, revved up. That’s what our songwriting [was], y’know, you hear the bridges—
–The passing sevenths and minors; it’s always in major but there’s always a passing minor in there.
You’re above my head now, Todd,but I believe you. Yeah, there’s weird stuff in there. What you said reminded me—and I don’t know him—but the first time I met Gene Simmons was in ’96. We did a benefit. Like I said, we were always playing new songs and we were doing “Outer Space” [from 1997 album Happy Birthday to Me] then. I heard he was there and I just went up to him, expecting nothing. And he’s like, “You were in that band that just played. That song you did that went down from a G and modulated up”—y’know, talking like you just talked—‘cuz in “Outer Space” the solo modulates up and then it modulates back down again. It’s pretty great if I do say so myself. And I can because I didn’t write it. And Gene’s talking all this stuff, and he pokes me in the chest: “That song’s a hit. KROQ’s gonna be all over that song!” Now, he was wrong, but he was impressed!
That’s all that matters! You’re a big Kiss fan I take it. You’ve mentioned Peter and him.
Yeah! That’s true. People noticed. She was good.
Well, we’ve covered all the questions I wanted to ask, and this has been great, just talking to you. But how about this? Now that you’re not a quote-unquote musician, you’re not touring or anything, what is a day in the life of Ronnie Barnett?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The retired thing. You started with that. Now, I consider myself retired but I will play if Pat Benatar calls, or Loverboy or something (laughing), but I’d given it up. I wasn’t the guy scouring want ads and playing with people and all that. The Muffs was my band. And when my band’s over, that’s it. But you know, I played on a song for Paul Collins from The Beat. Me and Roy played a song with The Linda Lindas a year ago. These Wild Honey benefits, me and Roy will play in L.A., which is where we did The Beatles song. But a day in the life now? I moved to Sacramento. My wife, we’ve been together 10 years. She lived here, we had a long-distance relationship for eight years. I lived in the same house in Echo Park for 25 years. My landlady died suddenly at 61, which creepily enough is my age now. So I had to move, it was just time. So I started working in record stores again as well as being in the band probably around 2002. During the ‘90s, the major label years, I didn’t have to work, but I’ve been working in record stores my whole life except for that 10 years. I started when I was 14, sweeping up.
That was the best job I ever had.
It’s a different thing now. Now it’s like working at an antique shop. I work in a store here two days a week. I co-host a podcast about New Wave Theatre. I co-host two things that are off-shoots of the Revolutions Per Movie podcast. They’re on his Patreon, so you gotta pay around five bucks. The Paisley Stage, Raspberry & Rhyme podcast I co-host with those guys. I stay busy doing that and whatever. I do miss out on some events. I do miss L.A. But I visit. I house-sit. And being here in Sacramento, one of the advantages is you get on a guest list here, no problem. In L.A. you can’t because your friends don’t have room for you, but here, I’ve been on Cheap Trick’s guest list, and Dwight Yoakam’s, I’m going to Weird Al. My friends that come through, I’m able to see them and crash the party, spend quality time with them. Like the Lemon Twigs recently, we spent an hour backstage! You wouldn’t be able to do that in L.A.!
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