GENE SIMMONS, INTERVIEWER

Out of work since Dec. 2, 2023, the founder and bassist of Wicked Lester is our newest foot soldier. This isn’t his first brush with publishing. He used to work as an assistant to Kate Lloyd, the former editor of Vogue magazine, bragging that he could type 80 wpm, then wrote the column “Tongue Lashing" for Tongue Magazine. But it wasn’t his keyboard agility we were excited about. It was his ability to embarrass Maynard James Keenan, so we turned the Big Interview over to Gene this month and let him grill Maynard about wine, women, and song. Mostly women.

See: The Big Interview: Maynard James Keenan, page 96

SAM WILKERSON, WRITER

Sam Wilkerson is an L.A.-based musician, writer, and jack of all trades. He played bass in White Reaper from 2013 to 2024, before he and his twin brother Nick left to pursue other musical avenues. Since then they have toured and worked with artists like Bully, Eddie Vedder, and Dear Boy. The Louisville native got his start writing for his hometown’s LEO Weekly paper and lately spends his time refurbishing electronics, working in the real estate photography biz, spinning vinyl at bars, collecting clown paintings, starting a T-shirt business, and interviewing people he thinks are cool and interesting.

See: Shit and Bones, page 44

TARAN DUGAL, WRITER

Taran Dugal does not want you to know much about him. He is fond of blue jeans and vintage Gibsons. He cultivates a habit of ruining said jeans in a myriad of ways that he only vaguely remembers. He dislikes sycophants, dilettantes, and blowhards. He has been described by a close friend as “perhaps the most impulsive person’’ they know. His nonfiction has appeared in several magazines, including The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. He writes other things, too (music, poetry, fiction). He will level with you, if you ask, and he hopes you’d return the favor.

See: Feeling the Voidz, page 56

STRUMMER HOFFSTON, WRITER

Strummer Hoffston is the recipient of fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned an MFA in poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Fence, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Likes: good manners, pugs, Aliens, The Piano Teacher, the Nama J2 juicer, radical acceptance, karaoke. Dislikes: gel manicures (nail art of any kind), podcasts, getting up early, walking, Instagram, tarot. She’s listening to Dwight Twilley, Status Quo, William Onyeabor, Mamman Sani, and the Chemical Brothers. She recently had a one-minute convo with Ron Wood.

See: Strummer Calling, page 16

BYRON COLEY, WRITER

Fifty-two years after his Greasy Truckers Party review was unceremoniously rejected, Byron Coley is tickled to have finally placed some words in CREEM. While biding his time, Coley wrote for NY Rocker, The Village Voice, Touch and Go, and so on. His columns ran in Take It!, B-Side, Boston Rock, LA Weekly, Spin, Arthur, The Wire, etc. His books include No Wave, C’est la Guerre, and the Trash Tanka series. A free-jazz book with Thurston Moore and Mats Gustafsson is due in spring '25, and he hopes to get the long-promised Forced Exposure anthology together “soon."

See: The Unfortunate Authority on Fighting Authority, page 34

MIKE O’BRIEN, ILLUSTRATOR

Maryland native Mike O’Brien is the founder of Wheelhouse Art studio, and he can basically draw anything. He spent most of the past decade working in corporate retail doing graphic design and artwork for big dogs like Nike, Topps, and Wrangler. When we told him we wanted a rock ’n’ roll rest-home argument done Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post-style, he just kind of shrugged and said, “No problem.” If you want to learn to draw really well, you should go take a class from him at Savannah College of Art and Design, where he teaches.

See: The cover of this issue.