Interview With Longmont Potion Castle

I first stumbled upon Longmont Potion Castle when my best friend recommended me to listen to one of his calls a while back. We recommend a lot of stuff back and forth to each other so I kind of forgot about it and carried on with my day. The next time I was at his house he put on his call "Clown Motel" and I immediately was hooked. There might be a stigma against prank phone calls due to them usually being rooted in toilet humor and whatnot (or so i've observed) but LPC's calls are mostly centered around confusing the person on the other line with a unique style of humor. A little like how Tim and Eric invented their own style of comedy, LPC carved out his own niche of prank calls. His diction, insults, the absurd aliases used in his calls, and his vocabulary are truly one-of-a-kind.

Before I knew that he was into metal, punk, and hardcore, I sensed a great DIY approach to his work akin to most hardcore bands. Littered throughout his discography are thrash metal tracks with plenty of notey, slayer style riffs which are musically literate and also add some variety to his albums. 

After reading some interviews with him, I decided I would want to know more about his musical influences, while also asking more questions about his style, and what's in store for the future. LPC has maintained anonymity over the years, but despite this, the king of prank calls was remarkably easy to get in touch with. I went to his website, sent an email, and did not expect a reply. He got back to me the next day under the name "Grover Knox" which is 100% one of his many aliases and to be honest, I was taken off guard by this and didn't really have any set questions in mind, and was getting ready to go on a 2,000 mile road trip in my station wagon, so I decided to try and keep it short. Nonetheless, here is an interview with LPC.

I guess my first question or rather proposition would be to talk about your childhood. Specifically as it relates to the presence of music and art in your household.

As a small child, my parents had a collection of 45s and LPs at home. My favorite 45s were "Money" by Pink Floyd and "The Joker" by Steve Miller Band. My favorite LPs were ones by Charo, who played some crazy finger-picking guitar solos. And a bunch by Sandy Nelson, which was like surf rock led by a drummer, so it was sort of like Dick Dale-style music but he kept breaking out into drum solos. And the Beach Boys "In Concert" album. I liked a couple of songs but loved looking at the instruments they were playing - all what would now be called 'vintage' Fenders. Around this time I also gravitated towards any noisemakers or musical instruments that I came across. My very earliest memories were of grown-ups saying, "he is pretty good at that".

Did any of your parents play instruments themselves? How long until you got your first instrument? 

None of my relatives played any instruments. But I got a drum kit when I was about age 7. I got an acoustic guitar shortly after that, and an electric guitar at age 13. I left the drums alone during this time to concentrate on guitar. Then at age 19 I bought a new drum kit and got back into it.

Talk about your first exposure to punk and metal. About at what age did you discover it and how?

By age 6-7 I was all about Kiss, Rainbow, Deep Purple. So, it was mostly hard rock, and the guitar work of Ace Frehley and Ritchie Blackmore in particular. At around age 10 I heard Dead Kennedys' "In God We Trust, Inc.". Then I got everything that that band released. A little bit later I got into Venom and Slayer. So those were the first metal and hardcore bands I was interested in. And I remember seeing an ad, probably in Creem magazine, for a free catalog from Toxic Shock records. So I requested a mail-order catalog and got all the records I could from them, and I became a hardcore punk junkie -  The P.E.A.C.E. compilation was a real awakening. Then I got records by Conflict, Flux Of Pink Indians, Neon Christ, B.G.K., Crass, Butthole Surfers, Mental Decay, Pig Children, N.O.T.A., Rhythm Pigs, Subhumans (UK), The Gynecologists, D.R.I., M.D.C., Offenders, Minor Threat. The list goes on. And I stayed into metal, with records by Judas Priest, Possessed, Sodom, Exciter, Celtic Frost, Destruction, Voi Vod, Omen, Onslaught, Exodus. I didn't necessarily stay with all those groups but I was with them in the beginning.

Did your first musical project predate LPC? Coming from metal and punk and having a DIY stance from those genres, how would you say it has influenced your LPC work?

I have made hundreds of cassette-based projects. These date back to the early 1980's. They're not suitable for release, much of it is not listenable. When my musical ability got to a certain point I  delved into harder-rocking material. And by that time, LPC was a thing as well. And the DIY stance you mention was for sure a motivator, although I did eventually connect with a few record labels. And that musical side also manifested in LPC. For one, it's mainly album-length releases (or longer), so having variations from spoken word to musical sections was an important feature to me. I want the albums to go to different places in that way. And I would describe the musical side of LPC as being 'experimental thrash'. As far as any lyrical or vocal influences, it is probably not that perceptible. I think my free-form side comes out most in LPC, free of the lyrical concerns dealt with in music. But metal and punk listeners can still find things to like about it. So I would say it pretty much exists now as some bizarre hybrid.

LPC started in 1988 if my memory serves correctly. How did this come about? Talk about the early days and some of your first calls and how you got the idea to start recording them.

I had a land line telephone in my room. Then I saw the 1/8" telephone pickup at Radio Shack. That seemed like a thing to do as the unit was made available, so I got it. And I talked on the phone every day. All day. Played guitar for a while, and got back on the phone. I liked recording and wanted to do it. I drove around with people and played them parts of it on cassette. And they kept wanting to hear more of it. I continued calling everybody, in the phone book, on random pieces of paper. And it seemed like in general, more folks answered the phone back then. I remember having a bunch of problems with shoddy recording equipment at that time, too. Now, everything is pristinely recorded, and people ignore the phone more often. So it is still a time investment. How much I want to be doing it myself varies every day.

The recordings got pristine on LPC 8 where you began recording digitally with skype. Shortly after you began using effects pedals to confuse the caller even more. What gave you the idea to use an effects pedal? I recall on NBS electronics on LPC 8, the caller accuses you of talking through an effects pedal, and was curious if this sparked the idea?

Not at all. That guy isn't so smart his own damn self. But there were lots of tracks on LPC volumes 3 and 4 with live echoplex vocals. I just like to mix it up, having the voice with and without processing. But when I do, there are some terrific digital delays made by Pigtronix, TC Electronics, and my classic Digitech rack delay. I like collecting them.

His calls off of LPC 8 and 9 are some of my favorites from those respective albums.
Part of what I think sets you apart from “bigger” prank call artists (jerky boys particularly) is that your goal with your a lot of your calls appears just to be to confuse the other person on the line. I think you achieve this by your use of obscure, older words, also knowledge of lesser known things as well(In some calls you mention long forgotten vehicles, such as a pontiac lemans, and a daihatsu.)Where does your vocabulary come from? It is a huge highlight of your calls and definitely separates you from the rest of the more well-known artists. 

Where did you learn to be obscure, man? It's like the good book said (Merriam-Webster). But not like that pipsqueak Jeff Sessions, who seems bent on trying to utilize 100% of his vocabulary 100% of the time. It's just ridiculous. And I saw no reason for Jerky Boys to stop. But that stuff was 20 years ago at this point. I am something of a conscientious observer, myself, and that seems to constantly funnel into my wording. But where do I come from? That is the question I am often left with

Jeff Sessions has one of those voices that is just irritating to hear haha. I just think of his twang saying “i will recuuse mahself” and get bothered.
I didn’t know the Jerky Boys stopped actually. I wasn’t putting them down at all. I just noticed that your work seems to be more centered around nonsense which I believe you mentioned in another interview.
Another question I wanted to ask was about your trademark call. You call and pretend to be UPS, or DHL or some other company, and ask for money via paypal, credit card, whatever it may be. Has anyone actually fallen, or began to fall for this and given you their information? How did you backpedal the situation?

For anyone interested in sending me remuneration I am set up to handle that. I am set up to handle the murderous haters, the giddy and stupefied, the whole entire spectrum. It's really that spectral analysis that I'm involved in. Someone said "there's machines that do that now." But spectral analysis machines have no soul.

You’ve released 15 albums with LPC over the years, and a documentary is currently in the works, or so I’ve read. What’s on the horizon for LPC after that?

That's 17 albums. And the LPC documentary is nearing completion now. Beyond that, you will find out after I do, not before.