Eventually the itch returned, however and the duo put together Wicked Wonderland, a turbo-charged set of heavy rock. And if the 5-track EP I heard is anything to go by, it should put Lita right back firmly in the thick of things. Driving, relentless and wickedly sexual with more than a hint of a winking eye, the CD provides what has been missing from a lot of current releases: fun!

I had the pleasure of speaking with Lita and Jim recently and it was one of the most fun interviews I've ever got to do. Clearly a strong team, they throw asides to each other during the interview and seem as though they genuinely like being in each other's company. Wicked Wonderland is out now and Lita and Jim are on tour with Queensryche.

antiMusic: Hey Jim, I love "Piece". It's excellent. It's not a really good song to play loud in the car though because the pedal kind of tends to go down (laughs).

Jim: (laughs) Yeah. We've heard that about quite a few of the songs. (Laughs) You sound like you're going to get us in trouble, people.

antiMusic: Yeah, we'll have to pass along some of our tickets to you.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. Somebody told me "Crave". Same type of thing. Goddarn. You look down at the speedometer and just about sh*t yourself. (laughs)

antiMusic: I hear you. "Piece", "Crave" and "Patriotic SOB" are my favorites on there. I can't wait to hear the rest of it. I imagine the title track is something.

Jim: Ah, it's all really cool. There are 15 songs on the album. And they all kick ass, I swear to you. They're all really, really cool songs. We actually had 20-something songs. And even the other ones were really good songs, but we had to stop somewhere. (laughs). Like, come on man. Now most guys are putting out 10 or 11 songs and we're opening it to 15. Let's just put a cap at 15. But yeah, even at 15, that's a lot of songs but we still got rid of a bunch. So I mean, these are all really good. As a matter of fact when Lita heard the five songs for the EP, she was like, "What about this one?", "What about that one?" I mean it was like, she rattled off 6 or 7 more that could have absolutely been on the EP, so you're going to freak when you hear the whole thing man.

antiMusic: So that means you have enough for like maybe another EP early 2010, right? (laughs)

Jim: (slyly) You know what? 2010, we might have a couple of surprises coming out. Some pretty cool surprises actually.

antiMusic: Oh excellent. I can't wait.

Jim: I'm just going to leave it at that. But if we do it, you're going to know damn well that's what I was talking about it. Cool. All right buddy. I'm going to throw it over to Lita. She may toss it back and forth to me. We've been kind of tag teaming everybody and it's been real fun.

antiMusic: Sounds great.

Lita: Yeah, hello.

antiMusic: Hi Lita. How are you doing?

Lita: I'm okay. I'm a little froggy.

antiMusic: (laughs) You just get up or just a little shellacked from all the interviews.

Lita: No it's actually kind of a weird story. We went to the Rocky Mountains. You know we live in the Caribbean. And the Caribbean is sea level. We went to the Rocky Mountains which is 10 thousand feet elevation. And we got altitude sickness. It's where you actually have a lack of oxygen in your blood. You start to get headaches. You start to vomit and it's really nasty. So we went to the emergency room and they put us on oxygen. And the oxygen they put you on is the kind that has tubes that blows through your nose. We keep it on for 24 hours straight. So I had this wind blowing down my throat for 24 hours. And my son, Rocco, he had it. And it irritated our throats. It gave us laryngitis.

antiMusic: It dried it right out, I imagine.

Lita: Pretty weird, huh? Okay, wait, he wants to tell you something real quick�

Jim: Hold on, it's James here. (deep, serious/sinister voice) Luckily for my wife, I have some throat pills. It comes in a tube. She has to work on it a bit (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Jim: It's the only one that comes in a tube�but it works. (speaks quickly) Now back to Lita.

antiMusic: (laughs)

Lita: He's such an a--hole. You've heard the new record right?

antiMusic: Yeah, I've got the 5 track EP. So I haven't heard the whole thing yet, but that's what I was just telling Jim; I really like everything I've heard. The favorite song by far is "Piece" and I like "Crave" and "Patriotic SOB" but as I told him, thanks a lot for making that. "Peace" is not really a good song to be playing in the car while you're driving because the pedal tends to go down.

Lita: (Laughs) Oh, I know what you mean. I KNOW what you mean. See my music goes up and my pedal goes down. I got a monster truck and recently my husband had a chip put into it because it makes it goes twice as fast, so I know exactly what you're talking about it.

antiMusic: So I guess the obvious first question is: your last record came out in '95 and then you took some time out to raise your family. Were you just done with music at that point or did you just feel you couldn't properly do the two simultaneously?

Lita: Hmmm, Jim get out of here. He's distracting me. Get out of here. Come on Jim. Put that thing away.

antiMusic: I could only imagine. (laughs)

Lita: Yeah. You'd be right. (laughs) What was the question? See he distracted me.
(laughs)

antiMusic: After your last record were you just done with music at that point or did you just feel you couldn't do music and raise your family simultaneously?

Lita: No I just felt bored. I had my first album out when I was 17. I was pretty bored with the music industry. And the way things were going, everything was going towards the grunge and the grunge vibe and I'm bored, so you know, I wanted to bail. I really was ready to bail out of the industry at that time so it was a perfect time. And Jim and I got married had a kid, moved to the islands and we didn't expect to stay that long. But we stayed 10 years in the islands. He was developing the island at the time and when he was done, I said, can I make a record now? Now that you're done, can I play something? So he was like sure. So he threw down his hammer and nails and picked up the phone and we started figuring out what to do. Carmine Appice helped us quite a bit get going. Carmine set us up with a record company that we ended up not using. But still he introduced us to Greg Hampton who was the third producer on the album and him and Greg and Jim made a really good team as far as writing and recording. And I put the icing on the cake so, the three of us together worked quite well on this record. We didn't really need anybody else. Greg plays all kind of instruments too. So what I couldn't play, Greg could. So it pretty much was the 3 of us.

antiMusic: So while this sort of hiatus was going on, did you think very much about music and what did you miss most about that period in your life?

Lita: Ah, I really didn't. There were times when I missed music; closer to the end I would start to miss it. But mostly I focused on my kids and being a mom because I had never held a kid before. I had never had a kid in my arms until I gave birth to my son. And I gave birth and they gave me the kid and I was like "Sh*t, this doesn't have guitar strings. This doesn't come with a manual. What am I supposed to do now?" So just trying to figure out nurse him and how to change his diapers�I was just there for his every beck and call---and I still am. And then we had a second child, and I just wanted to be there for them. But now that they're a little older, it's okay to go out on the road. I don't want someone else raising my child. I don't want a babysitter. I don't want to hire somebody to be there for my kid. That's my job, you know. Why do I want someone else raising my kid?

antiMusic: Good for you.

Lita: So we take them with us. They travel with us. They see the world. It's like, look James, there's the Swiss Alps. How cool is that? They're getting to meet all these rock stars. They're getting to meet all these professional fighters. They're UFC fighters, these boys.

antiMusic: Yeah, I've seen the videos.

Lita: Okay, I'm going to put Jim back on. We're tag teaming here. Hold on.

antiMusic: Sounds good.

Jim: Aloha

antiMusic: So how did Wicked Wonderland come together, Jim?

Jim: We started talking with Greg. And the next thing you know, my wife and I would crack open a bottle of champagne late at night. The kids had gone to sleep, and we'd write. And the songs were coming out very, very, very sexual and we realized, we were like, geez this is about us. It's about our life, you know. Should we put this out? This is very personal. You've only heard five songs but the whole album is about our life and how we keep our marriage STRRRROOOONG. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Jim: We have a couple of sayings: great sex everyday keeps the divorce lawyer away. You have filet mignon at the house, why are you going to go eat at McDonalds?

antiMusic: You're exactly right.

Jim: We think it's a very important part. Seriously I mean. So many of our friends, they got married after us and are already divorced. I've got a couple of friends cheating on their wife or they were and the wife finally finds out and they get divorced. All my buddies are: "Well, I'm not getting it at home, I gotta get it somewhere." Well I GET it at home buddy. I get it every night. And it is GOOOD. (laughs) I ain't going nowhere.

So back to the story. We're like, geez this is our life, do we put it out? And we both agreed yeah, let's do it. And it's kind of cool because we're the management company. We're the record company. I think this is the first time that either one of us has done what we wanted to do with music. You know, there's always some a--hole in a suit that thinks he knows what cool is and he wouldn't know what cool is if it bit him in the ass. I mean seriously. If you knew what cool is, what don't you do it motherf**ker? They try to tell you what songwriters to use, how to dress, and oh, Lita, don't say f*ck! That's not ladylike.

And you know, we are who we are. We're not going to change. We don't have to do this. We've got a nice little house in the Caribbean. I can sit under the coconut palms and dodge the falling coconuts everyday. This is a labor of love. And you know, if Lita was going to come back and do this, it was going to be something she loves. And not be told, play this way, or play this song because we think it's going to be a single. So we just sit there at night writing lyrics about what we do (laughs) and it just fell together very, very easily. I mean when you're writing from the heart, it was almost like�this sounds insane, we would like compare notes on what we did (laughs).

antiMusic: (laughs)

Jim: And I would say: I said THAT? (laughs) You're goddamn right you did, baby. And it would be stuff like "I told you to stick your what in my what?" "Yeah, you said it." "All right. Let's go with it." And I mean it really worked like that. The songs almost wrote themselves lyrically. It was a really, really cool experience. Just having a studio at the house. We used to go in a $2,000 a day studio and what that meant was even if you didn't feel great, you still went into to work because you were spending $2,000 bucks a day whether you showed up or not. And today, we have a recording studio. You don't feel great? F*ck it. We'll record tomorrow. We only have a couple of hours to record? Okay. Put banks and vocals out. And we didn't feel forced. So it was just a very organic, very natural process and god it was a lot of fun. And we were in the studio f*cking each other. And actually we WERE recording some of it (laughs).

antiMusic: You just have to listen very carefully right?

Jim: The advantages of home recording. (laughs) I was the engineer. So it was just me and her.

antiMusic: (laughs)

Jim: I would crank the old heat up. Or I wouldn't crank the a/c up�and it would be hot and ah, "Take your shirt off baby, nobody's here. It'll be fine." Next thing you know, we're going for it. (laughs) Actually, there's a song called "Indulge" (laughs)

antiMusic: Yeah, I see all the comments on line about that�

Jim: Jesus Criminey "Indulge", there's a real sex version. We actually�yeah, we were really going for it while we were recording that song. Usually you clean up takes like, when you're taping you'll mute the space between when you're singing�.we didn't. (laughs) We let it roll baby. (laughs) We didn't put it on the album because we wanted it to be able to be sold in Wal-Mart and stuff but we may let it go on iTunes or something. We may even do a free download later, after the album's been out for a while. It's pretty cool.

antiMusic: I'll be the first in line to hear it. (laughs)

Jim: You're sick, man. You're sick and perverted.

antiMusic: I try.

Jim: I knew I liked something about you. (laughs)

antiMusic: How was it working with Lita? I'm pretty sure this is the first time, or I assume this is the first project you've worked together

Jim: Actually we worked together when we first got married, we did something called Rumble Culture and Lita was the guitar player and I was the singer. So we recorded some demos, some people call them albums, I don't know. We recorded some stuff; maybe one day we'll put them out but, it wasn't like this one. You're right. This time we were writing together, we were recording together as the engineer, you know what I mean? This was the first big thing. This was awesome. We're soul mates, dude. We got married after 2 weeks. I swear to you the first night we had a real date. I put my arm around her and at that very instant I knew I was going to marry her. I said to somebody: I'm going to marry her. Right there, man. Right there. Two weeks later, we said I do. Two freaking weeks later, on Friday the 13th. I think everybody thought we were absolutely insane. (laughs) And you know what? Most of those f*cking a--holes are divorced. (laughs) They waited 3 years. They waited 8 years to get married and guess what, and they got divorced 10 years ago. F*cking a--holes who said we were nuts.

You've pretty much gathered, family is what we're all about. To be able to work together was just a joy, but it's normal for us. We've been partners for 15 years, we share everything. We do everything together. It's kind of freaky for some people; we're almost twins. It's like, I'll be saying something and she'll finish the sentence. You know what I mean? And the reverse. It's kinda weird. (laughs) It's kind of gross, really. (laughs)

antiMusic: I imagine especially with a working relationship like this in music, it would make it a lot easier. You don't have to explain something to someone else, you know what the other person�

Jim: Exactly. Exactly. She'd say something weird (stuff) and I KNOW it would have taken other people forever to know what she was talking about. She'd say, and she doesn't f*ck around right? She'd say, "Let's do this. Let's take this chorus out and move half of it here. Let's put that part there� "And I'd be listening and going "Oh, my god; okay." (laughs) And I'd slice it and dice it and give it a boom, boom, boom. And she goes: yeah, that was it. And I'm like; "Whew (laughs). I wasn't quite sure. She wouldn't tell me 1 thing. She'd tell me 15 things to do (laughs). And she'd go, yeah. That's it. That's exactly what I'm thinking.

antiMusic: Simpatico.

Jim: Yeah. If she had told somebody else that crap they would have�their head would have been spinning for at least a week before they even moved one knob, you know. And vocals too. It was awesome recording vocals too. Because you know me, I'm a vocal cat. Lita's always told me: "I'm a guitar player, not a singer". And I've always said: "Bulls---, you're a singer." But she'd say: "No, I'm a real guitar player. I'm an okay singer." It's like no, "You're a freaking awesome singer. Wait until I get a hold of you." So when you hear the rest of the album, vocally, I think I kind of stretched her out a little bit, you know? And got her to realize a little more and I don't know maybe give her a little more confidence to do try things. But she kills them. Dude, she hasn't been around for 15-20 years. Does her voice sound like it's aged even a minute?

antiMusic: Not at all.

Jim: Doesn't her voice sound phenomenal?

antiMusic: Yeah, really. For sure.

Jim: She's doing all sorts of stuff she's never done, but still her tone �you know a lot of singers' tone and range disappear, you know? A guy who used to sound good, his tone sounds a little old and fried now. A lot of the guys. And a lot of the singers. I'm not going to mention names, but I saw one not too long ago and he's singing stuff an octave lower. And he's talking about, "Hey, my voice is still kicking ass." Well, SORT of. I mean it sounds good for what you're doing but why don't you give the old sh*t a shot, big boy. Let's hear the songs like they were written. And Lita? When you see her live, she sings all the s--- she did 20 years ago. She doesn't drop them down an octave and pretend like that's the way they always were.

antiMusic: Well in fact, it sounds like the bottom end of her voice sounds fuller.

Jim: Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the things I'm talking about. I don't know if they did it intentionally or what, but a lot of her songs were kept in a similar range. And I wanted to get her down there, because she's so sexy down there. Sounds f*cking awesome down there. Don't you think?

antiMusic: (laughs) Absolutely.

Jim: Very sexy down there in that lower voice. And I always thought as a singer and as a vocal guy, when you drop down like that, say in the verses of "Crave", for example, when she's doing that kind of low sexy thing and then she pops up with (high voice) "You're the one�" you know? It's even more powerful, it's even more dynamic�I dig that stuff. I was really, really looking forward to getting that out of her.

antiMusic: What I thought was interesting in some of the songs was your lower register on the background stuff, and I figured I'd be hearing the higher stuff and you were going for the lower..

Jim: I think a lot of people didn't realize what I was doing with Nitro, cuz all they heard was me trying to do the f*cking vocal Olympics, laughs. Hey, I can sing higher than you. Guess what I can hold a scream longer than you too. And just in case you missed it I'm going to do it for the whole damn hour. (laughs) Hey, I was 19 years old. I was nuts.

antiMusic: Well, no one else was doing it at that time. That's what made you stand out.

Jim: That's true. But you know today, especially with her stuff, I'm just trying to add for the song, you know. And to just give the song what it needed vocally, so I wasn't trying to say; hey look what I can do. I was trying to say, hey, let's make this song as awesome as we possibly can. And the song too. (laughs). Damn, I can't always be talking about our love life �ooohoooo (laughs).

antiMusic: Well you could�.

Jim: I could� (laughs). Yeah, I got a couple of things that are a little out there. Nothing crazy, but most of it is in a kind of a mid range. A lot of it is in the mid range that I don't think people realized I had. I kind of sing in a normal, mid range thing that I think people didn't think that existed in my toolbox?

antiMusic: It helps flushes everything out; it expands the thing of what you can do...

Jim: Well she brings out stuff in me too. It's not just a one way street. I didn't just bring everything out of her. She brings it out of me too.

antiMusic: How did you approach her guitar sound?

Jim: You're going to think I'm nuts. You're going to think I'm lying to you.

antiMusic: Why?

Jim: We used a f*cking pod, dude.

antiMusic: Really?

Jim: Yeah. Now, I'm lying a little bit. We did direct vocals. And then when we mixed it, we added in some stuff on the direct one. But for the most part, well, all the songs are through a pod and then we added on a little bit. Pretty cool sound, eh?

antiMusic: Yeah, that's why I was wondering what's done differently. And she's not using BC Rich anymore, is that correct?

Jim: Actually on the album she is playing a few BC Rich's. And now she's playing Bernie Rico guitars. Do you know the story behind that?

antiMusic: No I don't.

Jim: Bernie Rico Jr. was a kid when Lita was first playing all those BC Rich guitars. And Bernie's father was BC Rich. And Bernie Senior passed away and they got rid of the company. So BC Rich is still BC Rich but it's not the people. But it's still Lita's guitar. We just found Bernie not too long ago, and Bernie was learning how to make guitars back then. And now he's a master builder and he builds the same way as his father done. And Lita loves all her old guitars. But s---, some of them are 30, 20-30 years old and we wanted to get some new ones. So we talked to Bernie and he made a killer one. I don't know if you saw, there was a picture; I saw it on MySpace, I think where she's got this weird looking kind of V.

antiMusic: Yeah, yeah, I saw that.

Jim: It's called a Vixen. That's a Bernie Rico Jr. guitar. Isn't that killer looking?
We might actually do a signature model with Bernie. She should have had one of those 20 years ago

antiMusic: Yeah, no kidding.

Jim: How many people would have played it, especially the women, to have a guitar by the freaking baddest woman to ever play guitar, you know?

antiMusic: Yeah, really. So you've got the tour coming up with Queensryche. What kind of set are you doing? Just going with new stuff�

Jim: The Queensryche thing is really different. She's actually playing WITH Queensryche. We're only playing a few songs. Maybe 3 or 4. But it's cool because it's right in the middle of the Queensryche set. What a kickass show it's going to be. I mean you're rocking a Queensryche set and all of a sudden the queen is out. They're going to start by playing "Close My Eyes Forever". Geoff Tate is going to sing Ozzy's part. I mean is that cool or what? And then I'll come out and sing "Crave" with her and then maybe do a couple more new ones. And then we're done.

antiMusic: It's kind of good in a way to get back to big time touring�

Jim: You know what I dig about it? It gave us something to do. We had to have something to do with the album coming out so we had to get out there. It's only a taste. So every market we play, not only are we not ruining that market for six months from now, we're actually hyping that market up because we're just giving them little taste. Like god, I wish I would have seen a whole show. Well, hopefully in six months we'll be delivering a full show.

antiMusic: Excellent. Is that in the works or are you just gauging�

Jim: No, we're starting to go there. But you know it's tough. You don't know who's going to go out and we're not going to do a little club tour. We could headline clubs all day long, but that's not what we came back to do. Like this year we played 25 shows. Some of the shows have 35-40 thousand people at them. That was some awesome, awesome shows. That's the kind of stuff. We want to do motorcycle rallies, these big festivals, big, big things. We want to do big events. We don't want to play little sh*tholes.

antiMusic: So being out on the road, how does this all affect your UFC training and everything?

Jim: Well I'm not doing too much of it right now. It sucks. Somebody asks Lita, do you feel like you're cheating your family? Well we both feel that way a little bit. And usually our boys train 20 hours a week. They're serious. They're 8 and 12. Our 12 year old is 130 pounds. He's a grown man, literally. He beat our keyboard player 3 times in a row�when he was 11. I swear to you man, he's a beast. They're both actually Jujitsu teachers. They've grown up with the Gracies. We've got videos of them at 2 years old doing arm bars and triangles with H�lio Gracie. So this is how the boys have grown up. They sleep as long as they want. They wake up at 9 one day, that's fine. If they wake up at 10 the next day, that's fine. We want them to grow as much as they can. We did a computer thing, I don't know if it's real, but it said that James would be 6' 3", 285, which seems�I'm 6 2, and 280, so that seems real. And it said Rocco, the younger one, (laughs) it said he'd be 6' 5" and 295. And I'm yeah; I'm going to have me a couple of grizzly bears! (laughs)

antiMusic: Lita doesn't have to worry about anything when you three are around.

Jim: Yeah. She's safe. (laughs) Our oldest boy, when he was 8 years old --- this is a pretty cool story --- he shot his first deer --- oh PETA is going to be all over us. PETA we love animals. Like Uncle Ted says, "They're delicious". (laughs) Our oldest boy James shot a deer, this is pretty cool. He'd never shot this gun before that day. We took him to a target shot and he shot it a half a dozen times. He's 8 years old. We go out to this place, there's deer and he drops it in one shot, right? Listen to this. The gun he had was a 30/30 with a scope dialed in for 50 to 100 yards. He shot this deer at 317 yards.

antiMusic: Wow. That's crazy.

Jim: One shot. I watch him in the back yard; this kid with a pellet gun, with a freaking pellet gun can shoot a butterfly out of mid-air. With a pellet gun! We can beat your ass and we know how to shoot. (laughs) Get the point you motherf*cker?

antiMusic: Don't come around the Gillette house at night unannounced.

Jim: That's right.

antiMusic: What's it like to take the kids on the road. You're used to living the rock n' roll lifestyle.

Jim: It's cool. You know what, it's been 15 years. And for a lot of those years I'd get up at 6 a.m. and would be at work at 7. And then we'd go to bed at 9:30 10 o'clock at night because in the islands, man, it's a different world. We didn't have tv. We HAD a tv, but we just had videos�which we'd watched 84 times. (laughs) Like goddamn these are getting stale. Let's get some new ones. When you don't have TV, and you look outside and you see these stars, I swear to you, on a full moon you can walk around and the moon is so bright it casts a shadow on the beach. Unbelievable. But touring with the boys, it's like a big field trip for school. Lita said, "I had to learn about a lot of this sh*t in a book". Most kids do. Even Lita when she was 17, she was touring the world. So we kind of one upped her with the kids. Rocco was in 3 countries on his 8th birthday. Where was he? Sweden, Spain and Italy�or Germany. Pretty wild.

antiMusic: So these kids are going to have to be in the entertainment business or something because you've ruined them now, they can't go back to the 9 to 5.

Jim: No I never expected them to be. And people say, "Well what about college?" F*ck college. My wife didn't go to college. I didn't go to college. We've done okay. Some people aren't cut out for it. She graduated from the Runaways University. (laughs) Some people, that's what they're made for. They're kinda built for that sort of thing. But for me and my wife, we weren't going make a kid cut out for that sh*t. (laughs) They've been training to fight since they were 2. They plan on being UFC fighters and musicians. Lita kind of slyly did this: a couple of years ago, she said "I want to get James a gold top Les Paul." And I said: "Is that for you or for James?" (laughs) She said: "It's for James. It's for James. He's going to start playing. You watch."

I said, okay. So he started to play a little bit here, a little bit there. But once he saw the stage thing, and on the tour bus and limousines and flights to freaking Germany and Switzerland, it was "wow", he kind of got the itch. And now, he'll play for 3 or 4 hours a day. And he's got his momma's feel, man. He's got this killer vibrato. And that slow kind of backbeat (sound effect). He's got it man. We're really happy about that.

antiMusic: Well the dedication to the fighting�if he applies it to guitar, there should be no problems.

Jim: And he has. He's such a good polar opposite. Because they train so hard and it's intense and you've got to be really on your game and concentrate on focusing and it's very regimented and disciplined. And our kids are very respectful. To be able to just kind of let loose and crank up the guitar and just enjoy yourself, it's just kind of the opposite, you know? And I think it's really good for him. I think you're hot all the time; it's good to get cold.

antiMusic: Well, I've kept you on a long time. Are there any last things you want to say about the new record, Jim?

Jim: Hope that everybody loves the record as much as we do. It was a labor of love. It's very personal for both of us. Lita loves her fans. She's got amazing fans. They have such a bond. I've seen it for years. We'll be walking through an airport or something and it's like the goddamn Beatles. Not the masses. But girls will see her and just freak man, and just be hugging her and saying, "you have no idea." You helped me through such a tough time in my life. And it's weird. They feel like Lita's their best friend. They've never met her and they're freaked out but they're bearing their soul to her as you would to a best friend because she was such an important part of their lives. And that means everything to her. People have asked what she's missed most and it's the fans. That interaction, that energy from them. Do you remember, Lita's mom had that column in RIP magazine?

antiMusic: Yeah, totally.

Jim: Lita's turning into her mom. Lita is her mom. (laughs) She used to tell me all these funny stories about her mom. About how she forgets everybody's name, she called Joe, Hank, George was Shawn. And she does the same thing now, man. (laughs) The exact same thing. Honey, that's Joe not George. (laughs) And she's like "Oh, my mom would always try to stuff everybody with food." I've gained 100 pounds, buddy. Everybody thinks I'm on steroids. No, I'm on my wife's cooking. (laughs) To be 180 when I was in Nitro, that was called not eating. That's called starving for your art. I'm surprised I don't weigh 450. (laughs) I'm serious man. She cooks up a storm.

And just like her mom used to stuff people, if you ever come over to my house, you're going to walk in; she's going to ask you if you want something to drink. She'll bring you a massive drink. Then a couple of minutes later: "Would you like a sandwich?" "No I'm fine." "No, no let me make you a sandwich. Want turkey or ham?" (laughs) And she won't leave you to it so you got to take a goddamn sandwich. And then instead of just a sandwich, she'll bring you a sandwich with potato salad and an apple. And then you'll feel bad so you've got to eat it, right? (laughs) And you're stuffed because you just ate before you got here. And then boom, she'll throw a piece of pie in there. And then she'll refill your drink. And I'm like, "Honey didn't you tell me that your mom used to stuff everybody who used to come over?"

antiMusic: History repeats�

Jim: Yeah, big time.

antiMusic: Well, this has been a real pleasure, Jim. Thanks a lot for taking the time. I wish you all the best with the album. I hope to see you out on the road soon.

Jim: Thanks very much, Morley. I hope so too. We'll just go wherever they want us.