Kyle: "We must have spent like a year and a half on the music but the comedy sketches came pretty fast."
Jack: "That’s true but conceptually all those bits were contemplated. We talked a long time about doing a drive-through sketch where we’re ordering fast food, but it was something that was just sitting in the subconscious cooker for months before we unleashed it. Yeah, we just pressed record - but it had been germinating and gestating for a while, maybe even years. Once you’ve cracked the code on what a good concept it, sometimes that’s all it takes. You just press record and there it is. It just pops out as a funny little sketch."
Tenacious D’s eponymous album hit shelves on September 25, 2001 and was followed by a worldwide tour that saw them play their debut UK shows.
Kyle: "The release of the record was magic. It was our first album and big rock tour, so the whole thing was kind of surreal at the time. Our first tour was right after 9/11 and the record might have been the healing balm that was needed. Maybe Tenacious D provided that for the nation."
Jack: "Our one big pyrotechnic special effect for that first tour was a giant inflatable dragon. It was basically from some rental house that rented out giant inflatable animals and monsters for parades. We needed something big to happen at our London Brixton Academy show, so we just rented that. It was just for that one show. We had this fire breathing dragon and it filled the whole fucking Brixton Academy with smoke. You couldn’t see us at all for a long time."
Kyle: "It was epic."
Jack: "That was for Wonderboy and the song isn’t even about a dragon, but it was a triumph. There was a lot of fun and excitement for us on that tour. It was definitely a fiery hoop."
20 years on, the impact of Tenacious D’s debut album remains a key moment in the band’s history, shaping their future trajectory…
Jack: "It’s like our album has finally matured into adulthood. Eighteen is the age of consent in the United States. Now we can finally make love to Tenacious D. I’ve been waiting all these years."
Kyle: "I knew the self-titled eponymous album was a classic – it’s our greatest hits."
Jack: "We’ve been very fortunate. We’ve never actually had to pay any real dues. You’re supposed to spend your early years driving around in a van that you drive yourself from gig to gig, staying on people’s couches and making a little extra money by selling weed on the side. We didn’t have to do any of that. We got lucky. I don’t feel like we’re way bigger than we were back in Brixton Academy, but truth be told I like those venues better than the big festivals and ginormous, enormo-domes. They’re not quite as intimate."
Kyle: "We’re still Brixton Academy in our hearts. Still the same old Kage and Jables."
Jack: "Back on that first album we had to throw in every song on the album and a tonne of covers just to stretch it out to have a full-length show. We were like Billie Eilish back then, we just didn’t have enough songs to have a full show. There was a lot of banter, but now we’ve got like 15 years of rad songs to choose from and can condense it down to a greatest hits. It’s more fun now, but I do get winded a little easier. I have to pace myself. You know that song Wind Beneath My Wings? Now we have to have actual wind in the wings, like, actual oxygen tanks."
Kyle: "It’s on our rider."