Celebrating Pond's recently released new album, 'Terrestrials', and the one-year anniversary of Djo's 'The Crux Deluxe' this month, it felt like perfect timing to catch up with Jay Watson and Joe Keery for an updated meeting of minds - following their original 2016 joint interview for Coup De Main.
We called up Keery and Watson during the final days of their summer together on Tame Impala's Deadbeat Tour, with Djo supporting, and Pond opening at headline Djo shows. This is their reflection on the past decade...
DJO - JOE KEERY: What's up?
COUP DE MAIN: Have you guys seen Vanity Fair's series of annual interviews with Billie Eilish?
POND - JAY WATSON: Oh yeah.
JOE: No, what is it?
CDM: On the same day each year, since the start of her career, Vanity Fair films an interview with Billie where they ask her the same questions. This chat today is 10 years on from when you first interviewed each other for Coup De Main, so this feels like our equivalent... It's time for your 10-year reflection.
JOE: <to Jay> I remember talking to you the first time in my parents' attic. I was calling from home, and I was really worried about the service connecting because I think you were probably...
JAY: I think I was in America on tour.
JOE: Somewhere.
JAY: I was on tour somewhere.
CDM: I think you were on tour in Australia, maybe Gizzfest?
JAY: Oh, maybe it was Gizzfest - yeah, that's right.
CDM: You're now on the road together as part of Tame Impala's 'Deadbeat' Tour, and Pond have also opened for Djo at some recent headline shows. I'm interested to hear if you have different or similar perspectives on touring, as people who have very opposite experiences. Joe, although you've lived out of a suitcase a lot for work, this is the first time you've toured an album extensively, and Jay, you have toured many an album extensively.
JOE: We were just talking about this yesterday; we were in the sauna talking.
JAY: That's right.
CDM: You practised? I'm going to grade your answers now.
JOE: Not intentionally, but we sort of practised. Touring's hard.
JAY: Yeah, we were talking about it yesterday. I, personally, was so excited at the start of touring a lot, and then I went through a few years of being a bit exhausted and jaded about it. And then COVID happened, and it was so much time off that I sort of had an epiphany about how lucky I was to do it - play shows. That's sort of been my arc with it.
JOE: This is kind of my second year of traditional touring. I had done a little bit in Chicago, but not a ton, so last year was really the first big chunk of touring, and it's definitely different than working in the film industry, where you're on the road like you said, a lot, but there is a different sort of thing going on when you're living in a bus. It's the whole bus element of the thing.
JAY: Are you in the same spot when you go to film something?
JOE: Yeah, you're not moving every day, and you're also not with your pals, and that's very different as well.
JAY: But it's similar in that, if you have a partner or something, you're away from them. And after a month or so, you're ready to go home. That sort of thing?
JOE: Yeah, definitely, but your experience makes a lot of sense to me. I can see that you could definitely burn out on it if you just are doing it a ton.
JAY: I think so.
JOE: You guys just toured so much.
JAY: We did it a lot, yeah.
JOE: Do you know how many total shows you've played?
JAY: Someone worked it out once. Kea, our tour manager, worked it out for us. Kevin [Parker] asked once. It's like, thousands.
JOE: Yeah, starting from when, I wonder, would they calculate?
JAY: I think you can go back on Setlist FM.
JOE: You guys opening for MGMT or something.
JAY: All that stuff! I'll ask them again. They worked it out; it was a lot, but yeah, for me, there's two challenges with it. One is that as much as you want to try and be creative, you're just tired, or you either want to sleep or go to the gym, or go do something other than be creative, and it takes a lot of work to be making music every day on tour, or writing. And the other thing is just your relationships with people at home. I've got kids now, but even before then, with my girlfriend, it was always this struggle between trying to promote the band, or bands, and not have my relationship fall apart because of it. That's the really tough thing, I think.
CDM: I interviewed Kevin last year about how isolating it can feel on-tour, and he said about being a touring artist: "You develop a way of seeing the world and seeing life, that people who haven't experienced find hard to understand. In the years that I was touring constantly, the more you tour, the harder it is to sort of hang out with people who don't tour because [it's a singular experience]". Is that a sentiment that either of you have related to?
JOE: I think you can inherently connect to people who do similar things to you, but I don't think it's a totally exclusive thing necessarily. But you do sort of end up... on this tour, we basically just hung out. Our crews are just hanging out, so that does ring true in that sense. But it's always refreshing, I think, like you're saying, to go home. You are pals with all your friends that you're playing with, but it is nice to take a break and kind of get outside of the community for a second; it gives you some perspective and some appreciation for it.
JAY: Definitely, yeah. You can be a bit... it can mess with your head a bit in that if you're not careful, you're either only talking to your bandmates and crew, or sort of just nodding at people in hotels.
JOE: Yeah!
JAY: Or restaurants. Or you don't actually have a proper conversation with anyone. And then once a day, you get cheered at. It can turn you a little bit sort of Larry David-y, I reckon. Soon as I go home, I'm mowing the lawn and I'm chatting to the neighbour, or I'm at the supermarket and I have to chat to someone in order to get... you know what I mean? You just don't experience that on tour. You can go full sort of bubble boy if you want. In fact, it's kind of easier to do that sometimes.
JOE: It is. You have to kind of work to... It's good to do little day trips, like we saw my grandmother's friend on this tour. And when we played Portland, Maine, that's kind of close to where I'm from, so I took some of the guys back to my family's house and hung out for the day. So if you do that...
JAY: Keeping that stuff going is important. It stops if you're lazy with it.
JOE: It's hard though because especially if you're tired and you just want to hang out, it's very easy to do that.
JAY: Doing stuff like that, and you guys going on runs together and stuff... I feel like we used to do more extra... but you slowly descend into just lying in your bed.
JOE: Definitely.
JAY: And sleeping and playing.
JOE: Do you suffer from FOMO? I have it big time. When people are doing stuff, I'm like, 'Oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead.' Probably to a fault. I'm like, 'Oh, I gotta go to this random shop with you guys or whatever.'
JAY: No, I don't think I'm a FOMO guy.
JOE: Oh man, I've got to learn.
JAY: Some of the guys are, for sure. Like, Nick [Allbrook] from Pond and Cam [Avery]. If something's happening, they'll want to be involved. I mean, most people are. It might have been after having kids, that sleep suddenly became... it went from 'I'll sleep when I'm dead' to being super precious.
JOE: Yeah, the people that you mentioned don't have kids.
JAY: Just the greatest, greatest fun is sleeping willy-nilly. But all that stuff, like going for runs with your bandmates or going out somewhere together, or visiting someone, that's a really good way to keep it like real life and not your own little bubble.
CDM: Joe, now that you have toured both Australia and New Zealand... please tell me why New Zealand is better than Australia.
JOE: That's a fantastic question and perfect to answer right now. We were there for rehearsal before Laneway [Festival] in Auckland for a few, I don't know, it was like five days. So we got to actually do a fair amount of stuff. You know, I really couldn't say which one's better. Now, also, I'm a converted [Fremantle] Dockers fan, so I can't even begin to get into... now that I've learned the theme song that Kevin wrote.
CDM: When we did our Tame Impala zine last year, Kevin asked for his custom postage stamp to be the Dockers logo, so I had to contact the Dockers and ask if we could make a New Zealand postage stamp with their logo.
JAY: Did they say yes?
CDM: Yes! They were really nice about it all.
JAY: We've done stuff like that-- even before the band was super big or anything, and as long as you're not trying to make heaps of money off it, they let you. They're pretty cool... I think, on average, a New Zealand person, I like more than an Australian.
JOE: You think?
JAY: Australia and New Zealand is a bit America and Canada. It's like how Canada has this rep of being really polite and nice, and America's the arrogant cousin.
CDM: That's so funny you say that because Americans and British people are always telling me that I need to stop apologising for everything.
JOE: We love to say that in America. Everyone's like, 'Just stop saying that!'
JAY: The Kiwis I know are just sweeter and quirkier - like a quirkier sense of humour, and less loud, and just less Australian. As soon as you cross that little bit of water, it gets louder and more obnoxious. But it's cool that we both get to live in each country. I was thinking about that the other day. Unlike the U.S. and Canada, I can retire in New Zealand, which is pretty amazing, and you can move to Melbourne whenever you want.
JOE: I did not know that, wow.
JAY: It's pretty cool that we have that.
CDM: I've never really thought about that, but you're so right. It's quite special.
JAY: Yeah, it's cool to have this entire country you could just go and live in whenever you want.
CDM: Jay, earlier this year you were photographed in the studio with members of Geese, Pond, King Gizzard and Kevin Parker. Will we ever get to hear any music from that studio session?
JAY: There's a couple of things... like that thing that went a bit viral, or whatever, that was a one-off jam that went like an hour, but I had done some recording for a couple of days prior with a couple of the Geese guys for something that I'm working on.
CDM: That's exciting!
JAY: Yeah, it's really good. They're amazing players and really fun people.
CDM: Emily [Green] is an amazing guitarist.
JAY: Emily, for one of the days, and then the other two days, it was Max [Bassin] and Sam [Revaz] the keyboard player. Just them.
JOE: Who posted the photo?
JAY: Sam, the keyboard player. He was a Tame fan growing up, and Pond, I guess. So, the jam: Nick came and then they were like, 'You should get Kevin to come,' so I got Kevin to come and play guitar, and then Joe [Ryan] from Pond, came from work. Joe came in high-vis, covered in bits of concrete and stuff; it was really funny, and Joe, he was upset that he didn't make it into the mentions on Stereogum and all that. Everyone got mentioned except Joe. It's really funny.
CDM: Justice for Joe.
JOE: Justice for Joe!
JAY: It was one of those things where it's slightly annoying that it became such a big thing for me, but then also, I'll take whatever press I can get.
CDM: You might have gotten 10 more followers on Instagram.
JAY: Right. I reckon, at least! Yeah, that's right. Some good stuff came of it. I've just got to sift through it, but yeah, we did some really fun long recordings.
CDM: This year, it's the 30th anniversary of Pokémon - thirty years since the Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green games were first released in Japan. During your past conversation for Coup De Main, you both spoke about your mutual fondness for Pokémon, so I was wondering if there's a Pokémon that you feel best represents yourself currently?
JAY: Yeah, I was obsessed with Pokémon.
JOE: Oh, we were just talking about this. We were saying that Wes [Toledo] is a Mankey.
CDM: He is! That's so accurate.
JAY: <laughs> I like that one.
CDM: Does he get angry like a Mankey, though? I can't imagine him angry.
JOE: No, but he's a little fighter.
JAY: If we're going off looks, I would be Dragonite.
JOE: Dragonite! That's a good one.
JAY: I'm sort of long and orange, and at times, have a bit of a beer belly. <laughs>
JOE: One of my favourites was always Golduck. I always loved that Pokémon.
JAY: That's a good one.
JOE: That one's cool. I also... Man, based off of looks though, probably, Pidgeotto.
JAY: <laughs> Yeah, I like that.
JOE: With a pompadour.
JAY: I like that - with your old hair.
JOE: Yeah, exactly.
JAY: That's great. Pidgeotto and Dragonite. I think that's spot on.
JOE: I think that's pretty good.
CDM: That's a dynamic duo. I'm here for it.
JOE: Both flying!
JAY: Well, I'm half Dutch, so that's where I'm getting the orange thing from; it's funny.
CDM: Jay, about 'In Life' on the new Gum album, you have said, "This song is about a fork in the road, a sliding doors moment where your life could have been completely different based on one decision," which reminded me of similar themes that Joe covers in his song, 'End Of Beginning' - especially when you, Joe, sing "another version of me, I was in it". In an alternate reality where you both made different life decisions, what do you think alternate-reality Jay and Joe are doing with their lives?
JOE: Oh man...
JAY: We were talking about this in the sauna, sort of.
CDM: I'm just going to stop asking questions; you guys don't need me.
JAY: No! It was sort of slightly different. It's crazy how minor some moments are that just completely skew your life off in another direction. I don't know what I was going to be. I was going to be a music teacher. That's what I was going to do at uni[versity] / college.
JOE: You'd be a great music teacher.
JAY: Thanks. But actually, if I had the time to put effort in, I reckon I would have maybe done graphic design, like posters and T-shirts and record covers. The more I do music and the more albums we make, the more that's kind of my favourite part of it. I mean, I love making music, but that's the bit I get excited for - the design stuff.
JOE: The whole thing.
JAY: Just more like purely aesthetically. Maybe I would have been sitting on my Photoshop.
JOE: Probably, a teacher as well. My mom is a teacher, and two of my sisters are teachers. I went to drama school, so if that hadn't worked out, probably teaching something. I really like young people too. It's really fun to be around young people.
JAY: I think it's a very noble job. That's another thing, like I wouldn't be doing music if it wasn't for one or two teachers I had; specific music teachers.
JOE: Of course, and one great teacher is what you need to get excited about something. Similarly, one bad teacher can really turn you off of things as well. But yeah, I think you're right. It is quite a noble profession.
JAY: It's a big societal influence without necessarily getting paid as much money as they should - in Australia, anyway.
JOE: Especially now, America's horrible! I feel like the system is really in a bad place, and it's an under-appreciated, undervalued job.
JAY: My partner's studying to be a teacher at the moment - little kids, like two or three [years old].
JOE: Oh yeah, great.
CDM: I feel like children are easier? One of my friends is a high school teacher, and she finds it so tough. The teenagers just bully her.
JOE: Yes, but the little kids also are quite... My sister is a Pre-K teacher and kindergarten teacher: tough!
JAY: I think they're hard, but they're probably harder to get upset with because they're little and they don't know any better. Whereas, a 14-year-old being rude to me, it's like, 'You know better.'
JOE: That's brutal.
JAY: A six-year-old, you're like, 'I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.'
JOE: With high school, you're constantly confronted with, 'Oh man, I'm getting old.'
JAY: Apparently high school kids roast you hard too, like, they roast your clothes!
CDM: Joe, if you were to make a playlist for your fans of your favourite songs from Jay's entire musical back-catalogue, what are your top tracks that you're including?
JOE: Man, well, it's funny. I was talking to... I think I mentioned this to you as well, but meeting the Post Animal guys, like two of those dudes, I worked with this guy Matt [Williams], who's in Post Animal, and then Jake [Hirshland] and Dalton [Allison] were these two other guys that I had heard about but didn't know, and the first time I met them was at a Pond show. It was when you guys were touring with Temples, so I forget which record this would have been. 2012, I think it was. No, 2014, maybe?
JAY: We didn't tour with them, maybe a festival, or something?
JOE: No, it was. You guys were playing at Lincoln Hall. Maybe it wasn't with Temples. You guys were definitely playing at Lincoln Hall, and Cam was playing drums.
JAY: With Pond?
JOE: With Pond.
JAY: I wonder who we were playing with. I remember playing Lincoln Hall.
JOE: I forget which album that would have been, though. That wasn't 'Giant Tortoise', was it?
JAY: Maybe. Maybe 'Beard, Wives, Denim'.
JOE: Or 'Hobo Rocket'? That was a huge brain explosion moment for me.
JAY: That's so funny.
JOE: And kind of set us guys off on a journey to try to just uncover the best riffs that we can do. It's so fundamental to your group.
JAY: Yeah, totally. We went off the riffs for a while, and recently, we've come back to the riffs a little bit. We were allergic to rock for about 10 years there, like as soon as it started to sound a bit 'guitar', like classic rock-y, we wrapped it. But now, on the last record or two, it goes in waves. That's funny because that one we did really quick, and then I remember it got a bad review on Pitchfork, and then so we just decided... Remember when Pitchfork was so influential back then?
JOE: Of course.
JAY: So kind of overnight, we decided that it wasn't very good.
JOE: Probably that. That was the biggest influence, and obviously your stuff with Tame [Impala] too. But also, 'Beards, Wives, Denim'. That, for me, holds a special place. That is an amazing, amazing record.
JAY: Oh, thank you. It's a shame we don't get to enjoy that one as much as we should because me and Nick find a bunch of our lyrics really shitty or kind of cringey.
JOE: I feel like everybody finds that at some point.
JAY: Everyone does, yeah, but the vibe of that one is kind of the best.
JOE: The vibe of that one! Like 'Leisure Pony', right?
JAY: Ah, yeah!
JOE: That song is so good!
JAY: That's funny. That was one of mine. That's because I lived in a share house with Joe and Nick and Kev, and they would all go to work and stuff, and I would just lay on the couch in my underwear and watch DVDs.
JOE: That was you!
JAY: That was what they called me. That's what Joe and Nick called me, The Leisure Pony. That might be a 'The Mighty Boosh' word; you know that show? I think that might be from that show.
JOE: That whole album is so scruffy, and the art is also amazing, too. Who did your art for that?
JAY: It's a polaroid of Joe and Nick. No, Joe and Kevin, because Joe's Irish, he has those hurling sticks and they were waving them at these cows. It was on this farm, and they had a demountable building, like not a house, and we were with a toilet, and we were set up in there. And then whenever we would play...
JOE: That's where you recorded it?
JAY: Yeah, and whenever we would play, the cows would come up because the whole concept for the album was like, the band; The Band - it was all like you move into the country and start a commune and grow beards and play folk music, but it didn't really end up sounding like that. But that was the aesthetic of it, and then the title is pretty funny.
JOE: So good.
JAY: Thanks.
JOE: That one's so good. My pal who I worked with, Matt, introduced me to you guys through that record.
CDM: So, there would be no Post Animal without Pond?
JOE: No, for sure not. I remember when I worked at this restaurant [in Chicago], Matt, he was a food runner and I was a waiter, and at the end of your shift you get a shift beer and you sit at the bar and hang out, and we connected over: 'Oh, you like psychedelic rock music?' / 'Sure, yeah!' / 'You heard of Tame Impala?' / 'Have you heard of Pond?' / 'Oh, no way!' / 'Have you heard of...?'
JAY: Amazing!
JOE: So then you have this shared thing, and so, definitely, for sure. We probably would have been friends, but who knows... it's one of those things where you never really know.
CDM: Everything in the universe is linked.
JOE: It's true, and it's cool how, I also feel like this tour too, is huge [full circle] for all of us guys on our side too. We're like, 'What the hell?! This is weird. This is... it's so crazy.'
JAY: Not that we're not big fans of you guys, but I know the feeling of when you were younger.
JOE: Of course!
JAY: Because like you said before, we did one opening for MGMT, and then we did one for The Flaming Lips around the similar time.
JOE: Yes!
JAY: And both of those were like... Well, The Flaming Lips were like this band...
JOE: Yeah, Joe was talking to me about them.
JAY: Oh Joe, they were his favourite band!
JOE: Yeah, we were talking about this last night.
JAY: And that was really surreal because we'd hung out in our share house and listened to The Flaming Lips for years and watched their movie or whatever, and then suddenly, like...
JOE: You're hanging!
JAY: Wayne Coyne is getting a Red Bull from your fridge, or whatever. That was really surreal, that one.
JOE: Is that when he's rolling around in the ball too, onto the audience?
JAY: I think so, I think they were doing that then, yeah. Oh they had all that; they had confetti cannons. I've got to say, a lot of the Tame shows were influenced by going on tour with them. Just the scale, like the grandness of it.
JOE: And those moments of ecstasy. Yeah, very positive, big, huge moments. You're totally right.
JAY: And then the MGMT one was crazy because they were just these real chill, nice, down-to-earth guys that liked the same stuff we did, but happened to have like three songs in the top 10. But they weren't popstars. That was really bizarre too because they were these sort of overnight celebrities that were just like psychedelic, rocker, share house guys. So that was a really... like, you go get a taxi to the venue, and it'd be playing in the taxi on the way to the venue, like three at once.
JOE: That's so crazy.
CDM: And Jay, what songs would you put on a Djo playlist for your fans?
JAY: I like the first two off 'Decide'... 'Runner' and 'Gloom'. I like that riff in 'Gloom', that post-punky sort of riff, and some of the 'Runner' melodies remind me a bit of Kev[in Parker] style melodies, I think.
JOE: Yeah, definitely.
JAY: They're really good melodies. And then I listened to 'The Crux' the other day walking around Richmond[, Virginia]. That was great. I was talking to Joe in the sauna about it. <laughs>
JOE: It's always hard to figure out how to do things live, don't you think? How to pull them off? Or different ways to--
JAY: Depending on how much you want to cheat, or not.
JOE: Yes, exactly!
JAY: And just play it back. What are you thinking about?
JOE: Well, just 'Runner', we tried to play it.
JAY: Oh, I was wondering why you weren't doing that.
JOE: Yeah, it never worked that way. But maybe...
JAY: It's more electronic.
JOE: It would be such a nice way to open.
JAY: Yeah, it's epic.
JOE: A little more epic. I feel like with 'The Crux' stuff, it was finally getting away from that, but now...
JAY: A bit more classic.
JOE: Yeah, just a little more classic. But now that we sort of did that, I'm like, 'Ahhh!' I feel the same way that you were saying that you feel about ['Beards, Wives, Denim]'-- I'm kind of like, 'Okayyy...' <waves hand in a dismissive gesture>
JAY: That was like the latest Pond one, when we made a really back-to-basics [album], like more basic than we'd ever even done before, than 'Hobo Rocket' and stuff. It was supposed to be like a band playing in a bar or something, and to record it to tape. Of course, you're just really excited about it the whole time, then as soon as it's done, you're like, 'I want to make music that sounds like The Prodigy.' And you react the other way.
CDM: Joe, when are you going to play 'Mr. Mountebank' and 'Purgatory Silverstar' live. The people demand it. What's your defence?
JOE: Here's my defence: it's really hard, and also, again, trying not to cheat and trying not to just play tracks--
JAY: Karaoke-style.
JOE: Yeah, it's really hard to figure it out, and it takes a lot of time. A huge part of this business and the job of being a musician is always upgrading your systems - I don't know if you find this, but half the battle is that you're upgrading all the systems to be able to support your ideas, and then by the time you do that, you barely have any time to rehearse. So, there's never enough time. We'd love to do all these things, and we'd love to totally revamp it, but we kind of have to do it in the right order, I guess. Like, being organised and having your systems in place. If you're upgrading your guitar rigs or your keyboard, you're changing this and that, and just trying to figure out the best way to streamline it all. It's really tough. It makes me look at y'all's show, like, 'How the hell?!'
JAY: Oh, same! The Tame stuff, lots of the things we do... we try and refresh it, but lots of the things have been in place, incrementally changing for 15 years.
JOE: Yeah, we don't have that time.
JAY: Like 'Elephant' or 'Let It Happen'. Yeah, there's new bits added and little changes, but some of the stuff I'm doing, I've been doing forever and slightly improving every tour in pre-production or whatever. Yeah, you can't--
JOE: You can't rush it!
JAY: It would be crazy to think you could have a week and then it just pops up like your dream show.
JOE: Absolutely, and we definitely have... not skipped a few steps, but we're definitely playing bigger rooms sooner than I thought we'd be playing, so we're trying to just get as good as we can, as quick as we can. You can't replace the experience of actually doing it.
JAY: Do you find that you will learn a song, and every now and then you learn a song that's hard to get going, or from an older album, and then you do it once or twice, and you hear it back, and you're like, 'All right, we're not doing that!' Like, it gets scrapped.
JOE: Absolutely!
JAY: I hate that feeling. It's happened a few times in Tame, but it happens in Pond a lot where we bring something back, then hear one recording before it even gets a chance to get to the chorus, and we're like, 'Well, we're not doing that again!' Scratch.
JOE: We've done that a couple of times.
JAY: Sometimes all it takes to not want to do a song live is one line, for Kevin, or Nick, or one bit of the riff, that someone thinks is a bit corny. It takes one little thing, and then that person is like, 'I'm not doing it!' And then if you're in a band with multiple people, you have heaps of those little moments.
JOE: Of course!
JAY: It's a real balance between playing your favourite stuff of your stuff, and then stuff that if people are paying their hard-earned cash, they want to see... you've got to try and balance it.
JOE: Exactly. Yeah, you do.
JOE: So for Gum stuff, obviously, you're in charge, and you're steering the ship. For Pond stuff, what's the spread? Do you know what I mean? <says to CDM> We're also just burping in each other's faces non-stop.
CDM: This interview is going so great. Very professional.
JAY: Yeah! Great!
JOE: Because it's a band; band. You know? It's a democracy-ish.
JAY: There's a few things we do to keep it good, even though there's lots of songwriters. We used to share the royalties equally, and then now we stagger it so everyone gets something, but it's weighted towards a songwriter - because if it's just for the people who put songs on, everyone just wants their own song. You know what I mean? Everyone just wants their eight songs of the 10 songs. I mean, not that that's the way that we write, based around how the royalties are split, but we've been doing it for so long, you want to try and keep it so that the best idea wins.
JOE: Of course. Yeah, of course.
JAY: Depending on what the record is and the vibe of it, different people's songwriting will suit it better so they might contribute more. For me, the best Pond songs are the one where Joe sends me a chord progression he's got, and it's a rotating chord progression, and then I stick it with one of mine, and then Nick sings over the top - it's the ones where there's four of us who've written it.
JOE: What are some of those kind of ones?
JAY: There's a song called 'Toast' we did at the headline show. I don't know if you saw in Toronto. It's like real ballad-y.
JOE: What part of the set did you play it in?
JAY: Towards the end - it's really slow, and has a cool synth, that's kind of my favourite Pond song, actually. That's four of us writing it.
JOE: That's so cool.
JAY: Yeah, lots. A bunch off the new one, like that 'Two Hands' one we've been doing, that has the real angular riff stuff, that's got a bit from everyone. They're kind of the best because they sound the least like people's solo stuff. And it's just exciting when you have something that you know that none of you could have come up with on your own.
JOE: That is the magic!
JAY: Like a fun magical thing. Especially because everyone does so much stuff on their own now. I think that's why everyone was so excited by that Geese band. Not that there's not heaps of bands throughout the world who record like that, or write like that, but you could hear that it was truly democratic to a point.
JOE: Certainly, a band.
JAY: I mean, I'm sure different people write different stuff, but you can hear that it's a separate entity to the individuals, which is the best thing about bands.
JOE: It's the magic.
JAY: That's the magic, yeah.
CDM: Joe, how are you preparing for your Broadway debut next month in 'Other Desert Cities'?
JAY: Is that what you've had on?
JOE: <nods> That's what I've been working on.
JAY: Ah, I didn't want to ask in case it was top secret.
JOE: Well, I'm just trying to find the time, and luckily, Wes has been helping me out to learn the lines.
JAY: He does the other lines?
JOE: Yeah.
JAY: Amazing.
JOE: If you ever want to, man, you've got two days left!
CDM: Jay, you did go to performing arts school.
JAY: Yeah, for music!
CDM: This is your time to step up and become an actor.
JOE: You can have the reverse trajectory.
JAY: Oh man, I'm a shocking actor. I was an extra in an Australian crime show.
JOE: Were you the dead guy? What were you?
JAY: I was Sleazy Nightclub Owner's Friend #2.
JOE: Perfect.
JAY: I was shaking the whole time. They gave us prop beers, and I drank the beer out of nerves, and then they gave me another prop beer, and I drank that beer out of nerves. I had one thing, and I didn't make the cut, speaking. Just my face pops up in the hallway, so that's my one and done.
JOE: It's nerve-wracking.
CDM: But it sounds like you gave it your all. I'm so proud of you.
JAY: I did. I tried. I really did. I would love to; it would be so fun. I feel like it must be how a lot of people feel about music, where even though it's not true, and you can be older and learn whenever, like at any age, I feel like it's something that the younger you start thinking about it, the better. You know, the more natural you're going to be at it?
JOE: Yeah, maybe. I'm pretty lucky in this play. There's some big old names; Ed Harris is in this play.
JAY: Cool, I love that guy.
JOE: Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
JAY: Amazing! I love her too. That's awesome.
JOE: It'll be cool. So I'm mostly excited to watch them do their thing and just try to not be the weakest person in the room.
JAY: Ed Harris is the 'Westworld' guy? Yeah, he's sick.
JOE: I'm feeling confident; I know it'll be fine. But finding time... we've got a little chunk of time off in about a week, so I'm just gonna go back and work on that and just try to absorb it as much as I can, and then, do the best I can.
CDM: You've got this. I believe in you.
JAY: Yeah, definitely!
JOE: Easy!
JAY: I feel a bit like that with music all the time, and you come off and everyone's critiquing what was good and what was not, but as long as everyone was fully locked in and doing their best and trying and you're not hungover, and you're not phoning it in, then it's hard to be too critical. It's when people are cutting corners and stuff, it's then that you get a bit more critical - because everyone fucks up constantly.
JOE: Absolutely, there's always something to be improved upon. But also, there's no point in getting down on yourself every time. Just keep going!
JAY: I don't know what it's like with acting, but I guess it is, probably when you're in the pre-production part of it, but heaps of my favourite bits that I do in all the band sets, or when I'm recording or whatever, are stuff-ups that you accidentally mash into some other chord.
JOE: Oh for sure, absolutely.
JAY: Or do some weird little thing that's not quite right, and it's a more interesting interval than you would have done otherwise, or whatever. So, you got to be open to the errors.
JOE: Absolutely.
CDM: Lastly, please close your eyes and imagine you're at the end-of-tour party... it's super fun, but you're also sad that the tour has ended. But now! Oh no! An evil wizard has now poisoned everyone at the party except for Jay Watson and Joe Keery, and although you have managed to find an antidote to the poison, there are only two doses, so you can both only save one person each. Who do you choose to save?
JAY: Well, I'm just a straight-up professional, right? So I would save Kevin Parker and spend all day with him making backing tracks, and then just send him up there for the next night. I reckon he'd be happy enough about that, and he'd be stoked. He'd be stoked; I saved him. I get some brownie points from the boss. You go straight to the top.
JOE: I'd save Shiny Joe, and then we could finally start our side project. Joe and Joe.
JAY: I like that.
JOE: Double Joe.
CDM: Joe Squared.
JOE: Joe Squared!
JAY: I could see your side project making sense, actually.
JOE: Me and Joe?
JAY: Yeah, you've got a Paul McCartney sort of-- you love Wings / Paul McCartney.
JOE: Absolutely, absolutely.
JAY: Yeah, double Joe.
CDM: Thank you so much for making time for us today during this busy tour.
JOE: Of course.
CDM: I'm excited for our next catch-up in 10 years.
JAY: Yes, we'll see you then!
JOE: We'll see you in 10 years!
JAY: Far out, that's intimidating.
JOE: Oh god! Oh no!
Click here to subscribe to the Coup De 🐌 Mail Club.
Coup De Mail Club #3 includes:
⭐︎ Djo + Pond mini zine that features CDM's new 2026 interview with Jay Watson and Joe Keery
⭐︎ Jay Watson and Joe Keery photobooth strip
⭐︎ Djond Summer 2026 mini poster
⭐︎ Djo x CDM trading card
⭐︎ Pond x CDM trading card
⭐︎ 'The Book Of Djond' playlist
+ is all wrapped in special Coup De Main packaging 🌟
Order here.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Pond's new album, 'Terrestrials', and Djo's 'The Crux Deluxe', are both out now.
Listen to 'Nashville I'm Dying' and 'Purgatory Silverstar' below...
Joe Keery