With the announcement that post-Kyuss desert rock outfit Unida would headline this year’s Desertfest in London and Berlin, one of the genre’s most incomplete chapters was reopened. Unida, you see, has been through their fair share of what guitarist Arthur Seay — also of House of Broken Promises — rightly calls “bullshit,” having recorded an album with Rick Rubin only to have it sit shelved and go (officially) unreleased to this day.

Like Sleep, whose contractual immobility also resulted in their dissolution, there was really nowhere for Unida to go. They’d had the Coping with the Urban Coyote full-length out on Man’s Ruin and a split with Dozer, but what was supposed to begin their ascent was this full-length — varyingly titled For the Working Man or The Great Divide, depending on from whom you download it — and with it sitting in the can,Unida were shot down before they even took flight. The list is long, but it’s up there with stoner rock’s bigger bummers.

It wasn’t long before vocalist John Garcia resurfaced in Hermano with a promising first album in 2002 — his movement from Kyuss to Slo Burn to Unida having led him to that point — and the rest of Unida moved ahead as well. By 2004, Seay and drummer Mike Cancino had aligned with bassist/vocalist Eddie Plascencia in House of Broken Promises (Scott Reeder, who played bass in Unida, went on to produce acts, put out a solo record and join a slew of other bands, among them Goatsnake), though it would be half a decade before their debut LP, Using the Useless, showed up via Small Stone.

With Seay and Cancino in HoBP and Garcia devoting his last several years to revitalizing the Kyuss brand in Garcia Plays Kyuss, Kyuss Lives! and now Vista Chino, it’s been a winding road to get back to the unfinished business of Unida. But though there’s enough backstory to fill a book and then some, mostly it was the future that Seay wanted to talk about in our recent interview. New touring, new albums for both Unida and HoBP, and plans for things to come. Seay also built his own recording studio and works traveling the globe as a guitar tech for commercial metal acts like Slipknot and Limp Bizkit, so there was much to discuss.

Fortunately, Seay‘s a bit of a talker. There was a lot of the interview that was off the record, some talk about the desert scene, etc., but there’s a tremendous amount of information contained in his answers, so even if you’re a relative newcomer to Unida or just heard about them through Desertfest, I hope you’ll agree it’s worth a read.

Please find the complete 3,900-word Q&A with Arthur Seay after the jump, and please enjoy.

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Oh my goodness gracious. Not a month ago, I was bitching on Thee Facebooks about how California gets all the good stuff like hoverboards and Unida shows, and while I’m still not sure they’ve caught up with Back to the Future Part II‘s vision of the twenty-teens, London’s at least got Unida going for them, and frankly, that’s more than enough for me.

Yes, I did just say I’d trade a hoverboard for a chance to see Unida live. And I meant it. I haven’t been this stoked for a festival announcement since… well, since Yawning Man, Fatso Jetson, Lowrider and Dozer were announced a few weeks back. This is going to be an incredible weekend, and I can’t wait to get there and be completely exhausted by it.

UPDATE: Unida will also play Desertfest in Berlin! More info here.

Here’s the announcement:

* Exclusive* UNIDA Play Desertfest….*Exclusive*

Yes, it’s correct. The mighty UNIDA and John Garcia are to headline Desertfest at the Electric Ballroom on Saturday 27th April. Here’s the full announcement, share it around and get your tickets quick.

You certainly didn’t see that coming did you!! Well, it’s true. Not only have DesertFest already reunited both the mighty Dozer and Lowrider for 2013, but we are now proud to announce that desert rock royalty Unida are Camden-bound this coming April to headline Desertfest 2013.

I’m sure you all already know the story, but that isn’t going to stop it being told over again… Upon the dissolution of Kyuss and Slo Burn, the voice of the Californian sands John Garcia (vocals) hooked up with Dave Dinsmore (bass), Arthur Seay (guitar) and Miguel Cancino (drums) to add their biker punk-metal rhythms to his unmistakable, paint-stripping bluesy grooves behind the mic. Despite huge early promise, a glorious debut album in 1999’s ‘Coping with the Urban Coyote’, a storming split with Swedes Dozer and a follow-up record due with American Recordings in 2001, the band stalled and sank back behind the cacti’ shadows. The long-awaited second album, reportedly entitled ‘The Great Divide’, was never released; Dinsmore left the band to be replaced initially by Scott Reeder and then later Eddie Plascencia whilst Garcia concentrated more exclusively on his new band Hermano and some solo work. Unida was certainly left in-need-a’ something… until now!

Back to blow us all away with the likes of ‘Wet Pussycat’, ‘Human Tornado’ and ‘Black Woman’ plus a whole lot more, this is one pick-up truck full of hulking riffs, fuzzed up overdrive and classic vocal majestics that you simply can’t afford to miss. Get ready to cope with the triumphant return of the urban coyotes themselves at DesertFest 2013!

http://thedesertfest.com/london/unida-headline-desertfest/

http://www.leedstickets.com/eventinfo/3477/DesertFest-2013

True, in the past I’ve had my issues being burned by ill-advised “import” purchases (see here and here, for starters), but I’ve also had some real wins, and with my recent eBay purchase of Unida‘s well-regarded show in Vienna, March 6, 1999, I feel like I finally reached an acceptable compromise point. I paid $13, and for that, I received a full jewel case, a red-backed CD-R, and decent-looking inkjet artwork. There are no gaps between the tracks. I feel like I got my money’s worth.

Of course, it helps that Unida — John Garcia‘s ill-fated post-Slo Burn, post-Kyuss, semi-concurrent-to-Hermano outfit with Scott Reeder, guitarist Arthur Seay and drummer Mike Cancino, who’d later develop the project (sans Reeder) into House of Broken Promises — absolutely killed in Vienna that night, and that the 12-song set was captured with beautiful clarity and thickness. Garcia himself announces that they’re recording, and I don’t know if the plan was to use it as a live album or what, but they play all of that year’s Coping with the Urban Coyote except for “If Only Two” and three out of the four tracks from the 1998 EP, The Best of Wayne-Gro, so if that was the intent, it’s a solid showcase of what they did in their time, which was cut short by label politics surrounding their second, Rick Rubin-produced full-length, For the Working Man (2003).

That album remains without official issue to this day, though it was eventually self-bootlegged by the band and some of the material showed up on their self-released El Coyote compilation. Cuts like “Wet Pussycat” (with which they opened in Vienna), “Human Tornado” and the heady “Vince Fontaine” were re-recorded for that album, which was to be their commercial breakthrough, but also appeared on Unida‘s earlier offerings, and listening to this set, it’s clear their live dynamic was coming into its own in 1999 — they were developing their own character within desert rock. Seay‘s tone and riffs lead the charge, Reeder‘s warmth vibrates the speakers, and Cancino and Garcia seem to be in lockstep even as the latter veers into his trademarked boozy jam invocations, yeahs, whoas, and so on. Unida‘s is a story of potential left unfulfilled, and that’s no less true here than anywhere else.

But even so, had this disc shown up with some shitty label, or with two-second spaces between these tracks, I’d be pissed. As it is, I’m not. And really, it’s that simple. I know my days of buying a $25 professionally-printed silver-CD bootleg are by and large over, and roughly half that cost is, I think, a fair price to pay for a product like Live in Vienna, which sounds stellar and shows that at least a bare minimum of effort was put into the presentation. $13 for that and I get to put it on my shelf? Well, shit, why didn’t you say so? That’s all I ever wanted.

Did you vote for which podcast you want next? If not, get the deal here. I know I said voting stops at the end of the week, which is today, but if you have an opinion on the matter and give it before Sunday, I’ll take it into consideration. So far, Man’s Ruin tribute by a nose. In honor of that, here’s a little Coping with the Urban Coyote-type Unida. Killer.

Well, my friends, we come to the end of an astonishingly regular week around these parts. I’ve been in Connecticut since Wednesday, but you’d never know it. I can’t remember the last time I had a solid Monday to Friday of normalcy. March maybe. Been a while, in any case.

Good stuff to come next week. I just got my grubby mitts on the new Zoroaster record and am listening to it for the first time as I type this, so hopefully I’ll have heard it enough to get a review together by the end of next week. I’m also slated to interview J.P. Gaster from Clutch about their new DVD, and this past Tuesday I had a chat with Greg Anderson of SunnO))) and Southern Lord Recordings fame about the Goatsnake reunion and the possibility of more shows and new recordings. So that’ll be up in who knows what order, but it’s definitely worth sticking around for, in any case.

Until then, enjoy the weekend, and don’t forget to pick a podcast!