Veteran musical comic (or is it comical musician?) Kyle Gass is reclining on a velour ‘70s sofa at Licorice Pizza Records, getting ready for his eponymous band’s very first in-store concert, live in Studio City, celebrating the release of their new release, Live in Palmdale.
But since it’s Grammy week in Los Angeles, Gass’s rare pre-show chat with the store’s LPTV (only his second interview in the past 18 months, after he recently broke his silence via Rolling Stone) inevitably turns to that historic night at the Grammy Awards — when Gass’s other band, Tenacious D, were up for Best Metal Performance. It was an especially stacked category that year, with the D’s fellow nominees being rock titans Slipknot, Motorhead, Mastodon, and Anthrax.
“And who do you think won?” Gass laughs, incredulously. “And [the other nominees] were so unhappy about it. Oh, they were not happy at all. Who were these ‘punk comedy dudes’ coming in, ‘stealing our hard rock?’ But it was a great track.”
Yes, that’s right: In a total upset, Tenacious D’s “The Last in Line,” a Dio cover recorded for the Ronnie James Dio tribute album This Is Your Life, prevailed at the 2015 Grammys. One might have assumed that the D’s fellow nominees — particularly Anthrax, who were nominated for their own contribution to that same Dio tribute compilation — would’ve actually been totally fine with this result. After all, it was technically a win for both the D and the late, great Dio, right?
“No, they didn’t see it that way,” Gass chuckles. (Anthrax’s Scott Ian, for what it’s worth, had more of a problem with the Recording Academy than with Tenacious D themselves.)
“I mean, the Grammys are pretty bogus — except when you win, and then it’s like the greatest thing ever! But come on, the Grammys, they’re so clueless over there,” Gass continues. He actually thinks that he and his Tenacious D cohort Jack Black, who were “very surprised” to be recognized by the Recording Academy in the Metal category at all, were more deserving at the 2013 Grammys, when their third LP, Rize of the Fenix, was up for Best Comedy Album.
“I think Jimmy Kimmel… no, who’s the other guy?… Jimmy Fallon. He won. I thought we were actually better. So, we didn’t win when I thought we should have won. And then of course, when we shouldn’t have won, really, because of all those great bands — we did!”
Sadly, Tenacious D were on tour in Europe at the time, so they weren’t able to accept their Grammy in person. This prompts LPTV to suggest that Gass launch an awards-season campaign for the Kyle Gass Band, so that Live in Palmdale can nab a nomination and he can enjoy a full, proper Grammy experience next year. To that, he quips, “Um, is there an award for Best Side-Project?”
Gass has a long list of acting credits (during his wide-ranging LPTV interview, he lightning-rounds about his onscreen debut in a 1988 commercial for the short-lived spinoff soda 7-Up Gold; his film debut in the then-little-known Peter Jackson’s splatter flick Braindead; starring in the Vandals’ cult TV series Fear of a Punk Planet; and his various roles in Elf, Wild Hogs, Seinfeld, and Friends). And the Kyle Gass Band isn’t even his only musical “side-project — he’s also played on and off for the past two decades with the Southern Rock comedy group Trainwreck. But of course, he will always be best known as one half of Tenacious D.
And so, LPTV’s conversation also inevitably turns to questions about the status of that comedy duo, who’ve been on hiatus for the past year and a half. In July 2024, during a Tenacious D concert in Sydney, Gass was surprised with a cake for his 64th birthday onstage, and when Black told him to “make a wish,” he blurted the unplanned, unfortunate comment, “Don’t miss Trump next time.” (There’d been an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, who was running for a third presidential term, three days earlier.) Despite Gass’s sincere apology on social media for what he called a “highly inappropriate” and “dangerous” joke and “a terrible mistake,” the backlash was so intense and immediate that the Australian tour was cancelled, and all future plans for the band were put on hold. Tenacious D have not been heard from since.
“Read the Rolling Stone [interview]. It’s all about it,” says a visibly uncomfortable Gass, referring to the above-mentioned exclusive he granted the iconic rock magazine just two days before he visited Licorice Pizza. “That’s my last interview on that [subject].”
Gass understandably has no desire to keep rehashing what went down that night in Syndey, or the subsequent fallout. He’d rather spend his LPTV interview, which he eventually cuts short to grab some preshow grub, cracking wise about blue ice meth (which is apparently popular in Palmdale?), bogus concert albums (Live in Palmdale isn’t one of them. but apparently The Last Waltz is?), or that time he visited Peter Jackson in New Zealand and took a secret passageway to Bilbo Baggins’s Bag End house, as one does.
But he shows no bitterness as he reminisces about the D’s early days, when — after he moved from Northern California to study music at UCLA, realized he didn’t fit in with all the “serious musicians playing piano and violin,” and switched his focus to acting — he met fellow Actors’ Gang theater troupe member Black. And he is willing to vaguely yet optimistically address Tenacious D’s future, saying they’re just “on a break.”
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“I’m actually a lot older, like nine years older, than Jack. But he did a play with us in the Actors’ Gang [in 1986] as kind of a youngster, and he was just a great singer,” says Gass, recalling Tenacious D’s formation. “He was doing these four-track tapes on the TEAC, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this kid’s amazing!’ And I was like, ‘’Well, do you play an instrument?’ He didn’t play an instrument. And I thought, ‘Well, dude, you’ve got to just have rudimentary guitar, if you’re going to do that.’” Gass offered to teach Black guitar, and he says Black was “a very good student. I remember for three months, he played the same three chords on the guitar, D, A, and E, over and over again. … He actually accused me of not showing him all the hard stuff!”
Eventually, in ‘94, Tenacious D made their official but humble musical debut at the legendarily seedy, now-shuttered DTLA dive Al’s Bar (“It was kind of our CBGB”), where they played their future classic “Tribute” and were approached afterwards by David Cross, who asked them to open for the live cabaret version of Mr. Show. “And the rest is history,” says Gass.
But are Tenacious D history now? Are they broken up? Gass insists that’s not the case. For the time being, he’s keeping busy with projects like the Kyle Gass Band and Guitarings (his recently revived guitar-tutorial YouTube series with his longtime “virtuoso” guitarist John Konesky), but he assures fans that the D will rise, or rize, again. Maybe they’ll even win another Grammy someday.
“Listen to Rize of the Fenix. That’s about us burning up and coming back from the ashes. So, the Fenix will rise again… as long as we’re alive,” Gass declares. “We’re buds. [Black] is working on his movies; he’s got a couple movies coming out. But we have a saying: We will serve no D-wine before it’s D-time.”
