How the Brian Jonestown Massacre Changed My Life, Part Deux.
How I met Anton.
On July 25, 2003, the High Dials played David Bash’s International Pop Overthrow festival in Los Angeles. We arrived late. I think we’d been driving for hours. We barely got paid for the set, if at all. We played it thinking it didn’t really matter much either way, just another show on a long summer run. I think it’s called paying your dues… but I digress.
What we didn’t know was that Nelson Bragg was in the crowd. At the time, Nelson was the drummer in Rob Campanella’s band, The Quarter After. He’d later go on to play with Brian Wilson, but that was still ahead of him. Nelson was/is a serious power pop fan, familiar with our label, Rainbow Quartz Records. He was there with Rob, who would also later become a member of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. At some point Rob wanted to leave not really feeling the power-pop vibes of the bands. Nelson talked him into staying for one more band. Us.
They watched the set. Afterward, they bought a CD. That CD made its way through Rob Campanella and eventually ended up in the hands of Anton Newcombe.
Three weeks later, on August 16, 2003, we were playing Davy Love’s Wilderbeat Weekender in Port Hope, Ontario, the final show of our 5-week self-booked North American tour in support of our album A New Devotion. We knew Anton and the Brian Jonestown Massacre were on the bill that day too. I remembered the last time I’d seen him, five years earlier, at the Jailhouse Rock Cafe in Montreal. I’d been an intimidated twenty year old who couldn’t even manage a conversation with one of his bandmates.
This time would be very, very different.
We just got off stage when this shirtless guy came barreling out of another van, making a beeline straight for us. It took me a second to register who I was looking at. It was Anton.
He was talking a mile a minute, this wild excitement in his eyes. “You guys are the High Dials,” he said. “I love you guys. I’ve been listening to you the whole drive out here.”
I didn't know it yet, standing there in that parking lot, but that was just the beginning of a friendship that's now spanned more than two decades.
By November of that same year, we found ourselves supporting BJM on a run of Ontario and Montreal dates. This was before the documentary Dig! came out, so they were still very much a cult band, travelling in a van, hauling and plugging in their own gear. Nothing glamorous about it. Just the work.
BJM were notorious at the time for missing soundcheck, always arriving just in time for the show, if that. The Montreal date was small, maybe thirty people at the Jupiter Room. We played London, ON after that at Call the Office. Then came Toronto, at Dan Burke’s Silver Dollar on Spadina, and that one turned into something else entirely.
The bill was stacked. Us, the High Dials, going on first. Then 20 Miles, playing bluesy rock and roll. Judah Bauer from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. BJM headlining. Around 200-250 showed up, which felt massive for us at the time. Before we went on, I remember Anton introducing us to the room as the best band in Canada. We looked at each other like, oh boy. We went on nervous, playing too fast, rushing through everything. Anton sat on the edge of the stage the whole time, watching us, coaching us along without saying a word, just his presence keeping us steady. It went well.
20 Miles played after us. Then BJM took the stage, and Anton opened with something like a genuine “Thank you to the High Dials!” followed immediately by a pointed “Fuck you!” aimed at 20 Miles. I remember Judah Bauer was playing pool nearby, close enough that I could hear him mutter something like, “Why does he have to be such an asshole?” He seemed genuinely hurt. I felt for him. But that was Anton as master of ceremonies. At one point during the set he just stopped playing altogether, sat down on the edge of the stage, and said, “Alright, let’s talk about sex.” The entire room hung on every word. He was, and is, one of the most genuinely charismatic people I have ever been around. Here’s a review of the show: https://www.inmusicwetrust.com/articles/64h13.html
Word started spreading about a documentary being made about BJM, and by 2004, Anton invited us to open for them at all their SXSW shows that year. Every night, we’d open, and every night felt like another step deeper into Anton’s orbit. We also got invited to the premiere of DiG! at the festival.
By that point I’d only known Anton for less than a year, but I understood something about him: he talked at you, not with you. It was less conversation, more transmission. That’s changed some as he’s gotten older, but at the time, being around him meant being swept into whatever current he was generating in that moment.
I remember sitting in that theater watching Dig! for the first time, thinking, this is kind of wild. Here was a documentary capturing exactly the chaos and charisma I’d witnessed firsthand, except now the whole world was about to see it too.
And that same SXSW run, on a random evening at a 6th Street venue, I’d meet two people who would open up an entirely different chapter of my musical life. But that’s a story for another time.