Just as the Chubacabra will suck the hearts out of stray goats during the killing season, so too will the Fu Manchu mystery van roll into town, belching fire and buzzing shamelessly, the world’s most unlikely tour bus, forged from blissed out fuzz rawk and skateboard logos. And when it does, the Peyote buttoned stoner dudes, the red-eyed shorthairs, the leather clad burnouts, and even a smattering of bored girlfriends will worship accordingly in the Temple of Headbang, and then Fu Manchu, the once and forever kings of the road will disappear, quite fittingly, in a cloud of smoke.

For the uninitiated, Fu Manchu stole their name from Christopher Lee’s mustache. They are the dizzy brainchild of SoCal sun king Scott Hill, who formed the band back in 1990. The ever- evolving line-up has been littered with Kyuss and Nebula members along the way, and every song so far has involved mesmerizing heavy rock riffs, pop hooks, and a lyrical obsession with moving vehicles. Without budging an inch from their secret formula for a dozen years, they’ve managed to forge a rabid cult following, and every long haired 22 year old guy in America with a guitar and a bong has downloaded the tablature to "King of the Road" more often than they have for lesbian cheerleader porn. Their latest album is called ‘California Crossing’, and it rocks. On this tour, they’re sharing the bill with (gulp) major label stoner rockers Injected.

Fu Manchu are the last anti-rock star holdouts in a heavy rock scene that’s rapidly taking back it’s God given ego mania, trading in the corduroys and sneakers for snakeskin and sneers, and the stoner riffs for flash licks. Will the pioneers of slack carry on undaunted in the face of soul, glitter, and sin? Personally, I think they’re all too stoned to care. I caught up with bass player Brad Davis on the eve of their latest campaign to talk about cocaine cars and aging child actors. Well, brother, we had to talk about something.

Besides buying lots of crappy movies? No.

Yeah, it’s fully equipped. It’s hard to leave. We roll into town, and it’s like, yeah, I can go walk around, but I’ve got Playstation 2 in here…

We never had any complaints about the van experience, but once you have the opportunity to sit on your ass and watch movies and let somebody else drive, you don’t really want to turn that down. It’s pretty cool, but I’d be ready to jump into the van at any time, it’s no big deal.

Well, we opened up for Slayer.

Yeah, you’re pretty much asking for it, but we held our own.

We don’t usually have any. People usually dig what we’re doing. The last disastrous gig we did was in Boston, funnily enough. Some radio thing we did. There were a bunch of kids there that were just like, ‘What the fuck? Who are these guys?’

Love songs. I don’t think I’d ever want to hear some heavy riff with Scott going "Baaaby…" No thanks.

No. That’s not the right material for us. That’s not what we set out to do, we play rock music. We didn’t get this band together to explore our feelings. We got together to explore rock.

I’ve heard a few, yeah. But I think if you stay in another band’s style, you really shrink your options, and you end up making some dull music.

Nope. Most of our fans are just normal people. There’s definitely some of what you’d call stoner rock guys that come to see us, guys with long hair that go, ‘Dude!’ but it’s mostly normal people- college students, kids. The thing is, I don’t think we’ve ever announced ourselves as being one thing or the other, musically speaking. We’ve just shown up, and done our thing, you know, buzzed out rock. So I don’t think anybody feels like they should or shouldn’t be there.

Well, I bought a DVD player, you know, but I still have to pay the rent. Although Scott did get an El Camino. That’s his car on the cover of the record.

Yeah, we did one for ‘Squash that Fly’. We did it with the guy that directed the ‘Bad Touch’ video for Bloodhound Gang. Basically, the song ‘Squash that Fly’ is about ‘Valley Girl’, the movie, so we did a video kind of along that theme. There’s this girl, and it’s her birthday party, and she wishes that this band would come and play, and then we show up in this Delorean, from like, Back to the Future, and we push this new wave band off of their equipment, and play our song. Then there’s this little 80’s party going on, with like, stoner dudes, and jocks making out with valley girls.

Yeah, it only had 3,000 miles on it, and when you got in it, it was like you were lying down. If you sat up, your head would be pressed up against the windshield, it was like a luge, or something. Pretty trippy.