THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN Guitarist Talks Upcoming DVD, Studio Album

Cameron Edney of Australia's Inside Out webzine recently conducted an interview with guitarist Ben Weinman of THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Inside Out: I recently read that you guys are putting together the finishing touches to a new DVD which covers the band's history. What can you tell us about that?

Ben Weinman: Yeah, it's been a real pain in the ass to track down old crappy video tape footage, and really hard to track down people who were around the band so long ago to give a word or two about us! I think it's really cool even for people like Greg [Puciato, vocals] who weren't in the band way back then; it's really cool for people to see what it was like when we first started, when it was very difficult. As much as we're going against the grain now we were going against the grain even more. We were starting a band in a condition that was much different to how it is today! There was no YouTube, there weren't even cell phones, we were booking tours via pay phones, it was a very different time and I think that it will be really cool for the newer bands to see a very different time and environment!

Inside Out: Tell us more about the DVD. What details can you give us at this stage? Obviously, it is going to have a lot of early footage. What else can the fans expect when it's released?

Ben Weinman: Initially it was going to be a lot of footage from a lot of old shows, some of the footage is just so hard to use cause the sound and quality is so bad! We've done it a lot more documentary-style with a lot of interview footage, interviews with people, who were around the band when we first started that have some insight on what it was like when we first came out, behind the scenes footage, Davey Havok from AFI talks about when we first started out, there are a lot of veteran bands and newer bands adding their thoughts. Some people may not understand why someone like Davey would be on a DILLINGER DVD, but back in the day the truth of the matter is Davey would call me and say, "Hey, I need a show in Jersey. Who should I call?" so I'd give him a number to a local guy who put on shows, then I'd call him [Davey] and say, "Hey, I need a place to stay," and he would put me up! We all came from the same place even thought we were all playing very different music and that's the bottom line.

Inside Out: Have you guys come up with a name for the DVD yet?

Ben Weinman: "We're Not Trying to Impress You"… That was actually some of the first lyrics that ever came out of us! It was the second song on our first demo, and those were the main lyrics to the song.

Inside Out: It's been a little over twelve months since the last DILLINGER album was released… Looking back on the recording process for "Ire Works" now, is there anything you would have changed?

Ben Weinman: There are always little things that you would like to do but honestly this is the first recording that I'm really completely happy with! You're always after recording sitting there thinking about how you could have done everything different or everything you could do better but I think that this is one of the most satisfying things I have ever done! We were so happy with the way it came out… it came out very close to the vision that we had for it!

Inside Out: I would imagine that you guys are already in writing mode for the next album... Do you have any working titles that you can share with us, is the album going to be in the same direction as "Ire Works" or are you guys looking to broaden your musical horizons?

Ben Weinman: Unfortunately, there's absolutely no working titles; Greg might have some floating around but we're still in the process of me working on the songs by myself and getting together a lot of little demos, which I haven't even presented to the guys yet! As for the direction… so far it's really chaotic, it's really messed up and weird. Let's put it this way… I've gotten many migraines making this stuff [laughs] I've turned all the lights off and put my head into the pillow a few times [laughs].