KG to the rescue

Kyle Gass and Jack Black of the long-running joke-rockers Tenacious D have been teasing new material for months. Back in May, they posted a crudely drawn animated video of the duo worrying about how to pay rent; Gass suggests putting out a new album and going on tour.

“Ugh, dude, that’s gonna take us like five more years,” Black replies. “We are fucked.”

Given that the forthcoming record is the follow-up to 2012’s Rize of the Fenix, which featured artwork of a penis and testicles soaring on fiery phoenix wings, the short video was enough to get fans pumped about the dick jokes to come. More details slowly trickled out: The album is a rock-opera called Post-Apocalypto. It comes out Nov. 2 and will be accompanied by a U.S. tour and preceded by an online animated series of the same name (hand-drawn by Black and premiering on YouTube Sept. 28).

But first, Gass is hitting the road with another recently revived comic musical project—the Southern-rock band Trainwreck, which had been on hiatus since splitting up in the middle of a 2010 tour. During a recent phone conversation with the CN&R, Gass said the band made a pact to keep details of the breakup hush-hush.

“It’s a dark tale,” he said. “It’s kind of in the misty fogs of yesteryear, and the fact that this is happening now means the story is still being written. We had something happen in Chicago that night, and we had to discontinue the tour. We all decided to keep it amongst ourselves, but we knew we needed to stop right then.”

Trainwreck is playing The Maltese tonight (Sept. 13). The band features JR Reed (known as “Lee of the D” in Tenacious D lore) on lead vocals, bassist John Spiker, drummer Nate Rothacker, John Konesky on electric guitar and Gass on acoustic guitar and backup vocals. The same dudes are also heavily involved in Gass’ other musical projects; Konesky plays live with the Kyle Gass Band and Tenacious D, and Spiker is producing Post-Apocalypto.

“There is quite the cross-pollination,” Gass said. “I call them the ‘John-as brothers’—John Konesky and John Spiker. They’ve been with me since Trainwreck got together and Tenacious D went electric. Really, they’re exceptional players and we’ve gotten to be really good pals over the years. It’s an ideal situation.”

Outside of getting Trainwreck back on track, Gass has been mostly working on Post-Apocalypto. The record features songs from the animated series, but Gass was tight-lipped, and maybe a little snarky, about the plot.

“The title tells you a lot,” he said. “Post-Apocalypto infers there was an apocalypse, and ‘post’ means after. I think that’s all I can tell you.”

Based on the D’s tradition of mocking/embracing cock-rock clichés, it’s safe to presume that Post-Apocalypto will repeatedly reference Gass and Black’s otherworldly musical and sexual abilities and how awesome their friendship is. (The bromance is real, by the way. Gass told the CN&R they celebrated Black’s most recent birthday by going for an “impromptu picnic” together.) But a few things are for sure: There will be monsters. And mayhem. And tasteless album art.

“Situations arise and get pretty intense, and then we have to write a song about it. We have to save the world, basically,” he said. Which is nothing new for Tenacious D. Gass asked rhetorically, “How many times can you save the world, anyway?”

Every time they’re short on rent, apparently.