Hesher: 'Everlast Named Me'

March 20, 2001 -- Lots of musicians have interesting extracurricular items on their resumes — odd day jobs, school experiences. But Chip Love, the self-described "genre jumper" known as Hesher, whose Self-Titled Debut was released in February, is probably the only artist who can also lay claim to being a "Spliff Coordinator" for another band.

"I rustled up the daily bread, I guess," says Hesher, who filled that role for the pioneering punk-rap outfit Bad Brains. He was actually working at a toothpaste factory before that and was more than happy to sign on to the Bad Brains crew after answering an ad seeking a roommate for their flat. "It started with them saying, 'Pick up that guitar and move it over here,' but I was always shooting for Spliff Coordinator," he says with a laugh.

Hesher didn't get his professional name from Bad Brains, however. Though he tells several versions of the story — which makes any of them suspect — Hesher says it was given to him by fellow genre jumper Everlast, who guests on Self-Titled Debut (along with members of the Deftones and Cibo Matto).

"We were in the studio one day," Hesher remembers, "and Everlast called me a 'hesher.' I didn't know what it was, so he explained it to me; he was like, 'It's one of those dudes you see in high school, skateboarding to class with a Van Halen T-shirt, who was kind of stinky.' I said, 'Oh, yeah? I'm kind of like that. I'm stinky.' Then I asked some other people, thousands of different people around the U.S.A., and they basically told me a hesher is a burnout from the '70s or early '80s. I'm redefining it, I guess."