There’s a bottle of urine rolling around the parking lot of a skateboard shop/clothing boutique in Costa Mesa, California. Although he can’t be certain, Black Lips drummer Joe Bradley is pretty confident that it belongs to one of his bandmates. In fact, he’s even got a hunch which member of the Atlanta quartet is responsible, but declines to offer a name when Chicago Innerview gets him on the phone.

“I swear, it’s not mine,” he said, his mischievous grin beaming through the telephone line, his words dripping with Eddie Haskell sincerity. “That’s all I’m saying…it definitely is not mine. I swear.” The garage-rock outfit just finished an appearance on a Sunday afternoon in February — one of only several in-store gigs slotted into an expansive itinerary that spans three months and two continents — and Bradley is darting in and out of the building trying to find a quiet place to talk.

Such is the lifestyle of the raucous ensemble that has ridden its Nuggets revival for almost a decade, chocking its live shows with an (un)healthy amount of onstage trickery that has been known to include anything from fireworks to vomit. It’s on these antics that the band has garnered enough blogosphere buzz to fill a barf bag. Their time in the trenches culminated last year with Black Lips’ well-documented stint at South by Southwest, in which they sweated and jived to the tune of a dozen shows in three days.

Those whirlwind gigs came packaged between a pair of 2007 LPs. The first, Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo, is a live recording from a boozy prostitute-filled club in Tijuana, Mexico. The second, Good Bad Not Evil, actualized the group’s lo-fi swagger into a proper studio full-length.

“We figured that since James Brown was dead, we could be the hardest working band in showbiz,” said Bradley. “But not this year. Let somebody else do all that shit. I don’t think we could survive another year like last year.” But Bradley and his crew don’t seem too poised for a downswing in ’08. Despite skipping Austin’s SXSW festival this month, the 4-piece is in the midst of a 60-plus date tour. They also have signed a letter of intent to appear on the silver screen. And while the project has hit some financial troubles, the group still is slated to play a fictional, 1980s DIY band called the Renegades in a movie titled Let it Be. The Black Lips are set to write original songs for the Replacements-esque tale, on top of penning new music for a studio LP expected by year’s end.

These projects come coupled with the understanding that, while Black Lips is each member’s primary job, the band is not their only musical endeavor. Bradley also performs in The Spooks, which is comprised of Lips guitarist Cole Alexander and bassist Jared Swilley, as well as members of hometown friends Deerhunter. Alexander also splits time with Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox in the newly formed Ghetto Cross. “Atlanta is cool because all the bands get along,” said Bradley. “It’s not like other cities where bands aren’t friends. We’ve done stuff with, like, Mastodon and Deerhunter. We know all these things are side projects, but they still are fun.”

Yet Black Lips’ tight schedule and dangerous tendencies might relegate the side projects to sporadic efforts. “All the sex and drugs come part and parcel,” said Bradley. “People forget that we’re musicians first and they come and expect us to be wild and insane and hurt ourselves, but sometimes forget to listen to the music. We’re not a gimmick band; we’re not Gwar. Look, if you don’t want to listen to what we’re playing, go rent a porno if you just want to see people pissing on each other.”

Or just hang out in the parking lot outside a Black Lips in-store — it might just be the closest thing.

Chicago Innerview Magazine, March 2008