Episode #409
Tenacious D. Flight of the Conchords. The Lonely Island. We have plenty of examples of goofy guys getting together and making mirthy music. Where do the Wolves of Glendale fit in? Eric Jackowitz and Ethan Edenburg both came out of South Florida rock bands, and after performing for the Todd Glass podcast, formed a comedy band called The Cooties who were New Faces at Montreal’s Just For Laughs in 2017 and performed on Conan before fizzling out. Eric and Ethan then added Tom McGovern, a former dueling piano player from New York City who performed on the 2021 season finale of American Idol. The trio formed Wolves of Glendale, who already featured in the 2022 Netflix Is A Joke: The Festival. They met up with me before a gig at El Cid in Los Angeles to talk about where they’ve been and where they’re heading next.
Here they were in May helping to kick off Netflix Is A Joke: The Festival in Los Angeles:
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So what is the thing that binds you all together? Is it Todd Glass?
Ethan and Eric: No, I wish!
I feel like Todd Glass is the origin story for all of this.
Ethan: I will say when Eric and I first moved to LA, we played on Todd Glass’s podcast a few times. And that was a wild time, really fun.
Eric: He was sort of our bridge into comedy from straightforward music. We had always done comedy, but he was the first like, real professional that lent out a hand and was like, ‘Come on my podcast. You guys are cool.’ We were his house band.
Ethan: And he’s like, ‘You guys are funny.’ We’re like, wow, really? We can be funny, too?
Right, because I remember seeing him in Montreal with the band. And all over the place. Doing a special with a band. So how did it go from just like being on a podcast to like, going on tour with him?
Ethan: We did not tour with him. I don’t know who’s telling you this. They are under arrest.
Tom: They should be fired and locked up.
Eric: We’ve never been on tour with Todd Glass, but we have done shows with him.
OK, so, well, let’s get to the heart of it, then. Ethan and Eric: You two knew each other how?
Ethan: since we were younger, in South Florida, we sort of grew up together playing like different Battles of the Bands and stuff. I was in a band Eric was in a band. So we like knew of each other. But then we became friends at Berkeley. He was the only person that I knew there.
Berklee school of music in Boston?
Eric: Yeah, the dumb Berkeley.
The same Berklee College of Music or school of music that gave us Eric Andre.
Eric: Yes, that’s true. And from South Florida as well.
Right. So OK, so what kind of music were you playing back then?
Eric: Rock, rock and roll, muse?
Ethan: Fucking rock and roll! And then yeah, it was hard rock and then, I moved out to LA. I was begging Eric to move out to LA. Ginally he did come because we were just on the phone all the time. And I was like, This is annoying. I want to talk to you in person and let’s hang out in person. And then he finally did move out to LA, we made a comedy band, and then that fizzled out. And then at the same time that we stopped that band, Tom moved to Los Angeles, and we said, who’s this guy? He’s good looking. And then he’s like, no, I play music, too.
Eric: And we’re like, take your shirt off.
But wait. You skipped that Todd Glass step, where, for some reason you guys aren’t doing comedy yet. But you’re on his podcast.
Eric: Yes, we had a friend, a mutual friend Keith Blomberg, that was his producer, that now works for the World Wrestling Federation. Is it WWF?
It’s WWE now.
Eric: That’s right.
WWF is World Wildlife Fund. They were the only people that had power over Vince McMahon.
Eric: We met him at a comedy show or something. Yeah, we had a podcast that he enjoyed.
What was it called?
Eric: It was called Species Elite.
Ethan: But now it’s called Success Express. You can find it anywhere you get podcasts.
Eric: And yeah, he was producing The Todd Glass Show. And he said hey, you guys are funny. You guys are musical. He’s looking for a band. And so we became his house band.
Wait. So going on the podcast was in essence an audition?
Ethan: Sort of. Yeah, maybe. He was trying us out.
He was trying to suss you out to see
Ethan: Yeah, can you guys hang?
So then how many of you were in that band?
Ethan: That was just an Eric and I. It wasn’t really even a band. We were just kind of fucking around.
Eric: Yeah, we were just his Paul Shaffer, on the side. And then he would randomly hire me to like play drums at parties that he would throw for like $100.
What was the best gig you did with Todd? And what was the worst gig?
Ethan: Sean loves Todd! I’m learning. And I get it.
If Wolves Of Glendale are a comedy band, then we need to establish the roots of how
Eric: I like this origin story work he’s doing.
Ethan: I would say though, if we are honing in on somebody, well, I don’t know for the Wolves. I don’t even know who that would be. Because we’re still fresh.
Eric: Bro. He’s going deep. This is New York Times level deep. So we gotta go with him.
So the two of you are doing some gigs, not touring. So what was the best gig and what was the worst?
Eric: The funniest gig was he hired me to play drums for a group of people that had done ecstasy in the woods the night before, and he thought it would be fun to have a drummer and a DJ come
In the woods?
Eric: No, at a big Venice sort of mansion situation. And I just show up with my drums. I’m like, young and you know, I don’t know what the hell is going on. And I am met with just the most burnt-out — because after you do ecstasy, you’re just like I want to go to sleep. I feel like garbage. It’s like an ice cream scoop is taken out of your brain. And so I’m sitting there with loud drums and Todd’s going: Louder! Louder! Louder! And everyone’s like, no stop!
It wasn’t making everybody want to hug?
Eric: No.
Ethan: I will say there was another time early on maybe our one of our first times during the podcast where Andy Kindler was the guest and we probably had a drink or two, or a smoke or two, and Kindler was just basically berating Todd for like an hour and a half, two hours straight. And I just remember the two of us were like crying the entire time. Just laughing so so hard.
Eric: Yeah, Todd definitely gave us like access to a lot of really, really funny people. Like, I remember Jamie Kennedy came once he was amazing. Andy Kindler. Tom Martin, who became our best bud, like comedy dad, and a bunch of people.
So at what point do you start writing funny lyrics?
Ethan: So Eric and I were living together. And we determined that our ideal job right now would be to work for Colbert. We’re like, for some reason he’s the best. He’s the man.
Eric: We would often ponder who was on Mount Rushmore of comedy? That was like our big conversation. We would talk about that — all the time. And sometimes we would sub people out and it was like a big deal.
Ethan: We would have to keep each other apprised as to who was on your Mount Rushmore today.
Eric: The one that never changed. It was both in common for us was Colbert, and we were like, you know what we should do? We should give ourselves an assignment is if we were hired by Colbert,
Ethan: What would we bring to the table?
Was this before or after he got the CBS job?
Eric: This is right after he got in.
Ethan: We were like, man, it’d be so great to work for that show. What would we do on that show? And what we would do is write a funny song about something topical, which at that time, was that Trump had just announced he was going to run for office
That was topical and funny at the time.
Ethan: So we wrote a song and if you listen to the go back and listen to song, the whole joke is that what a terrible president he would be, you know, which of course then became very not funny, once that all blew up, but anyway, so that’s what we did. We wrote a funny song about that thing, as like, this is what we can bring to the table.
Were you guys called The Cooties at that point, or?
Eric: No, it was just Eric and Ethan basically. And then our buddy Jacob saw that video and it was also a friend of ours from back in the day, South Florida. And he said, I like that. Let’s write something funny. For a show that he was playing. He’s a singer songwriter in his own right. Serious songs. And then he was like, I don’t want to do a serious song. Let’s write a song today. And we did. And it was called Mitzvahversary. By the anniversary of a mitzvah that you did, and we wrote it in one day and performed it that night. And that night, because we were professional musicians, people had assumed we have been in a comedy band for like 10 years. And so then The Cooties were born.
Did you look at other comparable bands for either inspiration or competition?
Ethan: I mean, I think we were just always fans since we were little like we had been obsessed with Tenacious D, Flight of the Conchords, Lonely Island, Weird Al.
Eric: We have always been comedy music dorks.
Ethan: Yeah. Big time.
OK. So Tom, what are you doing at this point in your life?
Tom: It’s a great question. Eating broccoli and cans of tuna? At this point I’m living in New York City. So 15 I was touring with a musical called once the musical at the time, I had a theater degree from Temple University. And so I graduated
Eric: You still do have a degree.
Tom: I still do. I couldn’t shag that off. But I still do have that. And I thought I was gonna be doing theater and so I moved to New York City after this tour, and I may I’m auditioning for theater gigs. I’m not booking anything, because frankly, I’m not very good at musical theater.
Eric: Hey, that’s my friend you’re talking about.
Tom: It’s just not, in retrospect. It’s just, it was never meant for me. And so because I was auditioning my first six months in New York, I was auditioning auditioning, but I booked nothing. I was feeling super creatively dry. And so I thought, You know what? I’m just going to make a funny video for Facebook when Facebook was still like, that was like where you posted funny stuff to show your friends at the time. Like I’ll make something and so I made a parody of a bachelorette audition tape, and it was received well by my friends. And so I was like, You know what, I had a lot of fun doing this. I feel like creatively stimulated in a way that I haven’t in almost a year since I moved here, I’m gonna keep making funny videos. And then that naturally led to me finding musical comedy because I had worked in Philadelphia and New York as a dueling piano player playing cover gigs for years and years. And that’s what I did my entire time in New York City. And so I had grown up playing in cover bands a lot like Eric and Ethan, some buddies of mine from Jersey. And so music and comedy felt like a natural crossroads, especially because I had always been a fan of Tenacious D and Flight of the Conchords, Lonely Island, much like Ethan and Eric and I started making these short-form musical comedy videos. One of my songs in the pandemic, which was hilariously kind of also a short form political song about wearing masks and how you should just shut up and put your mask on, went kind of viral and someone had tagged that song and a Cooties song in a story on Instagram.
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I had no idea who the cooties were. As soon as I found The Cooties, I said, Holy shit. This is the band that I’ve been looking for. I cold DM’d Ethan and Eric at the time and I was like, Hey, I am thinking maybe within the next year of moving to LA, if I’m there, I’d love to grab a coffee or write a song or whatever. I’m a big fan of what you guys are doing. Because truly it was like, it’s rare that you see a band nowadays, a musical comedy band, that prioritizes musicality and comedy and
Eric: Go on
Tom: They were doing that. They’re playing sick tunes, and they were so funny, tight harmonies, riffs. I was just like, Thank God that a band like this exists. And then I moved to LA and I told I told a friend of mine, I said, the only thing that I want to do when I get to LA is find a band like The Cooties to play with. And then fast forward to…
WAIT.
Eric and Ethan: Oh! I love this.
(NOTE: What Tom failed to mention was that in 2021, he also performed on American Idol. On the finale episode!)
AND HOLY CRIKEY! I FAILED MYSELF THIS TIME AROUND, because I didn’t realize until just this moment that I’d already loved something Tom has been doing on TikTok, a game he made up called Good Band Name, Bad Band Name!
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Ethan: We’re gonna hear a quick word from our sponsor.
Our sponsor is Team Coco. Team Coco, part of Warner Brothers discovery. So, The Cooties are not just the two of you. How many people were in The Cooties?
Eric: Three
So, how do you go from completely unknown trio to playing on Conan?
Eric: That happened because? Well, it’s actually very fortuitous that we’re at El Cid right now in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. So after that gig that we did for Mitzvahversary we had started playing shows around town, and then eventually Reggie Watts moved to town from New York. He had the late-night gig with (James) Corden and he was doing a residency here.
Cordon was not on your Mount Rushmore.
Eric: No. But he’s very funny. I didn’t even know who he was when I was making my Mount Rushmore.
(We joked for a hot second about Corden being in the news that week for all the wrong reasons, but it’s not relevant really)
So Reggie Watts come out to LA to be the bandleader for The Late Late Show.
Eric: We’re obviously obsessed with him at the time. And he’s doing Tuesday nights at El Cid. Every Tuesday. Ethan DMs the booker. And we had been gaining a reputation around town where we can bring 50 people. The guy was like: You have to bring 50 people in order to be even considered to come. So we say we can bring 50 people. We do. Reggie watches our set becomes a little bit of a comedy dad, a little comedy hero starts throwing us a little opportunities. Then we start opening up for him at the Teragram Ballroom which was like we’ve only been doing comedy for I don’t know six months and now we’re opening up for him for 1,000 people or something. So from there, we get signed to a manager some hotshot Hollywood managers, and then pretty shortly after that, we get the Conando.
Ethan: We made a video for one of our songs called ‘Maybe That’s God,’ which is like a fake country song, fake religious country song. And because we put it on YouTube, our manager sent that to JP Buck.
Shout out JP Buck, comedy booker
Ethan: Comedy Booker for Conan, who liked it enough to give us the huge honor of our lives to play for Conan.
Eric: Because he was on our Mount Rushmore also (JP Buck?!) JP on a satellite mountain next door that was carved with dynamite. But yeah, Conan obviously was the unflinching member of of Mount Rushmore.
What does performing on Conan do for an up-and-coming band?
Eric: Well in our case, not much because
Ethan: It just feels nice. It just feels like.
Eric: It’s more symbolic at this point.
Well, you didn’t have records to sell, right?
Eric: We didn’t have records to sell. We didn’t have anything to show for it.
You didn’t have tour dates to plug?
Eric: No, no, there was just they were just putting us on because they liked us and gave us a really great opportunity. Yeah. And it was awesome.
Ethan: Let’s just say The Cooties didn’t end by accident. It was not a functional machine in a lot of ways. And so you’re right, we did not take advantage of such an opportunity as we should have, which we will do moving forward. With these Wolves. We are ready to go.
So how did Cooties beget Wolves? So Tom, we’re now, we’ve slow forwarded to Tom has moved to LA. He’s DM’d you.
Ethan: I was hanging out with Tom. We got along so scarily well, and we’re writing stuff together. And I could just tell like this is a special dude. And then completely unrelated, like I said, we were ending our group, not planning to do another group at all. And then, like, we were hanging out and I was like, let’s just for fun for just shits. Let’s get Eric in here and let’s just jam and let’s see what happens. And then that jam, we wrote a song called Vapin in Vegas, which if you stick around, you’ll hear this evening. And we were like, OK, this is kind of fun as hell. We should probably make this like official and like, rehearse and get together and see what happens.
Tom: I was so nervous that day, too. Sincerely like bugging out that was like, Oh my god. Eric and Ethan are like we’re jamming for the first time because this is like I’m basically jamming with The Cooties as a fucking fan of The Cooties.
So then how do you decide upon Wolves of Glendale?
Ethan: We wanted some kind of badass. Eric is very good at this stuff. He he has a weird sixth sense with I don’t know what branding, design stuff, logos, and we wanted something that kind of sounded like Queens of the Stone Age or something like really cool. We just wanted something that sounded cool, but was actually somewhat lame, because that’s kind of like our songs. Like, they sound cool. You’re kind of into it. But then if you actually listen to the lyrics, it’s like these guys are dumb as rocks. And so we were going back and forth on names and Eric chuckled. He said Wolves of Glendale and we’re all like, that’s great. That’s funny. And it sounds cool. What the fuck?
Eric: Sounds badass, is stupid.
Do any of you live in Glendale?
Eric: Yes, two out of the three of us.
Ethan: Asterisk! When Eric moved to LA, we lived in Glendale. OG Glendale. OK, so we all have roots here, and by here, I mean Glendale.
So you start up in the spring of 2022. Were you able to use any of the back history of The Cooties to start booking gigs immediately or?
Ethan: Yeah, pretty much we know a lot of people in LA specifically that were able to, you know, give us a shot. Give us a shot. They’re like, yeah, no problem. You got a new band. Let’s fucking hear it. And so that was really cool. And then Tom had been playing in New York. So ever since we started, it was always part of the plan, like every few months. Let’s go to New York. And let’s hit up some of these people that Tom knows and see if they can give us shows. And so that’s been super beneficial.
Tom: We got to play play Carolines, which was awesome.
That’s a small stage for a band.
Tom: Yeah, we have a pretty compact setup. We’re lucky because Eric has this little thing called a Roland SPDX that he makes sound like a full kit but it’s you know, it’s like one by one feet. It’s square. A beautiful rubber square.
You have any regular residencies?
Ethan: We were doing the Virgil for a little while and now this is our first Wolf Den as we call it. which is our once a month show here in LA at El Cid.
So what is the game plan at this point? Is there a game plan?
Eric: Tom and I were just talking about this last night. Yeah. And we haven’t even unleashed it on you yet.
Ethan: You’re gonna tell me on the pod as a surprise?
Breaking news.
Tom: We’re gonna paint our faces a lot like KISS does. And we’re gonna start all the shows like that. From now on. But just us, not you. So you’re out.
Ethan: Hmm. Can you turn off the mic?
Eric: The goal I think going into q1 of 2023 is to continue our monthly residency. Gain more fans online through doing, we’ve been doing a lot of like musical parodies and stuff. But now that we’ve amassed sort of a following, start to release original music that you people can stream and make music videos. So we have six tracks right now. In the holster…what is it called? In the chamber, got six tunes in the chamber that were produced by both John Spiker who plays bass in Tenacious D, and Ryan Lewis, who is Doja Cat’s engineer. And we’re just we’re gearing up. We’re huddling up November and December, ready to unleash tunes every month, month and a half.
So Q4 2022
Eric: Yep. what we’re calling the hibernation q
Ethan: Phase 1 into Phase 2 transition.
That’s for the bears of
Tom: Bears of Burbank.
Eric: I live in Burbank. I’m a bear.
But seriously, when we talk about any sort of music, invariably turns to TikTok and Spotify, right? Because that’s where everything happens. Maybe not financially, but that’s where the juice is. So what what has been your strategy up until now in terms of being out music and getting so getting any sort of momentum with fans?
Ethan: The momentum has been mostly on Instagram through these kind of short-form videos, but we put live clips up as well. We’re starting to do that on YouTube as well. And Spotify like you said, we’re going to start the plan is right now to do January 20th, for our first single and then every month release another track on all streaming platforms. And we have a couple plans when we’re done with this little tour that we’re doing. We get back in November. And we’re going to try and do a couple of different things to hopefully gain some traction on TikTok as well as, because we get told that at least once a freaking day.
Tom: I think maybe the reason that Reels is we’re finding much more success with the short-form parodies on Reels, and I think that’s because our demographic floats like young 30s late 20s. It’s not necessarily Gen Z which is obviously like the bulk of what TikTok’s audience is, and we’re getting some success on TikTok but the focus I think, is after we get the songs on Spotify continue to push to people.
Ethan: I’m going to start making cleaning videos. That’s what I really like on TikTok. Where it shows you a messy room.
Eric: I’m gonna do mukbang.
Ethan: And then we’re gonna blow the fuck up, Sean.
Tom: Then just buckle up, Sean.
Eric: Watch me slurp a bunch of hot tofu. Really loud.
The bands that that all three of you mentioned, like Tenacious D, or Flight of the Conchords. Both of those bands, kind of emerged also through TV. Tenacious D through Mr. Show, Flight of the Conchords — both of them came through HBO. What kind of acting, I mean, musical theater.
Ethan: Yeah, we all act as well.
I know you have a troubled past with musical theater.
Tom: Film and TV, yeah, I’m good.
Ethan: For sure, and he’s good at it
Tom: But musical theater makes me want to peel my skin off.
But is there also something in your Reels or, or YouTube videos that also like plays to any sort of sketch?
Eric: That’s another thing that we’re going to start doing next year is releasing small sketches. That’s part of the plan. That’s part of Q2, of 2023.
Ethan: Only speaks in Qs
Eric: I’m Q by the way. Of Q-Anon.
But I mean, you know, you’ve come a long way. Geographically since South Florida Battle the Bands. Do you feel like it’s tricky to keep up with how the music business and how the comedy music business has changed, even just since you first started thinking about doing comedy music?
Eric: To be honest with you. That’s where Tom is a godsend for our band. I think Ethan and I have a very trepidatious nature towards social media. We’re not like aggressive with it. We never were. It’s just in our nature. And I think Tom is the perfect amount of aggressive with it and also healthy and, you know, not doing anything cringy. There’s a fine line and I feel like he rides it perfectly and it’s only benefited our band, Tenthousandfold.
Ethan: I agree.
Tom: Thanks guys.
Ethan, Eric, Tom thanks for chatting with me before your El Cid show and I will let you play and then hibernate and look forward to q1!
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