By the time John McCauley is talking about drinking 24 beers in 45 minutes, you realize two things: one, Deer Tick has definitely earned their beer-soaked, working-class rock band reputation; and two, somehow they’ve survived it with enough clarity to make a career pivot into scoring documentaries and fronting Nirvana. Kind of.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to break free from this trend now,” McCauley says of Deer Tick’s new compilation Mayonnaise, following Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 in the great condiment canon. “It’s just too much fun.” The title might sound like a joke, but Mayonnaise is more of a clearinghouse: a mash of alternate takes, brand-new songs, and covers of The Velvet Underground, George Harrison, The Pogues, and Ben Vaughn. Somehow, it all blends together like—well, you get the idea.
“It’s just kind of a mixed bag of Deer Tick stuff from the past few years,” he explains. “But it gels together pretty nicely. I wouldn’t call it anything other than a compilation.” Still, he admits that hearing the alternate takes—particularly some early electric versions from Vol. 1—was a reminder of just how hard it was to decide on a direction back then. “We struggled with figuring out where to place some of those songs. They could have gone either acoustic or electric.”
As for the new material, McCauley says the standout “Hey! Yeah!” came out of a studio jam while they were supposed to be recording covers. “That little riff on the low-tuned guitar, I used to always play that at soundcheck. It’s like my Sweet Child o’ Mine—just something I’d warm up with.”
The most heartfelt moment, though, comes in the form of their Ben Vaughn cover, “Too Sensitive for This World,” which McCauley sang at a friend’s memorial service. “It helped me move along with my life,” he says, reflecting on a rough season of loss. “We made it a part of our live show for a while.”
If Deer Tick’s obsession with covers sounds like more than just a phase, it is. McCauley says he’s always loved learning other people’s songs—not to reverse engineer them like Rivers Cuomo’s mathematical approach, but to “follow in other guitarists’ footsteps.” He adds, “I still want to be the kid in their garage playing covers with his friends after school.”
Which brings us, somehow, to Nirvana.
McCauley’s stint as Kurt Cobain’s stand-in isn’t just a barstool story—it’s something that actually happened, first at Nirvana’s Rock Hall induction and later at Cal Jam alongside Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, and Krist Novoselic. “I didn’t hear anything about it until maybe four days before,” he recalls. “I was kind of just in shock the whole time.”
He downplays the enormity of it all but doesn’t shy from acknowledging the weight. “Nirvana was... I mean, their records were my Bible during my teenage years. It was really heavy stuff. You could tell it brought up a lot of mixed emotions for Dave and Krist.”
Turns out, the whole thing stemmed from a Deer Tick side hustle known as Deervana, a Nirvana tribute that started as a one-off joke for a friend’s birthday party. “We did it once, and then people saw the videos and started offering us ridiculous money to do it again. More than we ever made as Deer Tick.” Naturally, that’s when they stopped.
“Once the money starts coming in... yeah,” he laughs.
But when Grohl comes calling, McCauley says, you answer. “When Dave Grohl sends you an email, you must respond.”
The conversation pivots back to the realities of being Deer Tick in the modern touring landscape: short festival sets in the middle of the day. “It’s not really the ideal situation for bands like us,” he says. “My favorite Deer Tick shows were the ones where we played way too long and drank way too much.”
One particularly legendary set involved the band polishing off a full case of beer—24 cans—in 45 minutes. “It was like, in between every song, drink an entire beer. Play the next one. Just completely stupid.”
Still, the band’s matured—at least by a Miller Lite margin. And while McCauley’s gearing up to score a documentary and dial in a home studio, don’t expect Deer Tick to turn into studio rats. “I never really paid attention while we were recording,” he confesses. “So now I’m learning all this stuff for the first time.”
Mayonnaise may be a sonic junk drawer, but it’s also a reminder: sometimes the leftovers taste better than the main course.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below!
