We chat to Wheatus about dream collabs, favourite guitars and rumours of a covers album

You’ve played here a few times in the last few years and you return in December, appearing at Rescue Rooms as part of the self-titled anniversary tour. How are you feeling about the tour, and how are you feeling about that Rescue Rooms show?

[We’re feeling] really strong about the tour. We’ve been on this tour for coming up to a year now, for the 25th anniversary. It began in Australia, it seems like ages ago but it was only at the beginning of the year, and we’re back to Australia in January, it keeps coming around and around. The Rescue Rooms has been a place where we’ve enjoyed some very wonderful, intimate [shows].

It’s a strange stage, the Rescue Rooms... It’s lit strangely, which I like, and you can tend to feel like you’re in a boat or something in that room. I’m not sure why, but it feels like isolated from its exterior urban environment, in a strange sort of pillowy way. It doesn’t make sense, but you get on enough stages and you experience these feelings of them, and some of them are sort of drab and, you know, a box where music gets blasted at you, and others have something to them, that’s a little bit more elegant or sophisticated, and while the Rescue Rooms is a standard rock and roll design, it has this floaty feel to it that makes it surreal. 

I’ve had dreams where I’m on the stage at Nottingham Rescue Rooms, I can’t say that for every place I’ve ever played, but I’ve had strange music dreams of being on that stage.

What are some of your memories of performing in Nottingham?

Many, many many memories of performing in Nottingham. 2007, one of my most intense, perhaps dark, memories. The show was fantastic, we opened for Bowling for Soup, on the Get Happy tour, at Rock City, and somebody got the wrong message about what to do with our gear afterwards and it was put out, in February, in the absolute sheeting frozen rain - you know the type - and we had to run out there very quickly in the shirts that we just performed the show in, which were very sweaty, in February, and load the trailer, in the ice-cold freezing rain. I woke up the next morning with a 104.3 temperature, a fever that was dangerously high, and I was hospitalised in Leeds the following day. It was really bad news. I had pneumonia. Very poorly, very poorly. I had to drop off three of the shows after that.

So I have lots of intense memories of Notts, and going back to those rooms and playing again is like “Oh, it’s a chance to get it right and not get sick!” I always think about my health when I’m in Nottingham.

We’ve been so many times over the last 25 years... It's just a great place, Nottingham, I love it.

You’ve collaborated with one of the Nottingham music scene’s most prominent acts, ALT BLK ERA, on a remix of their song My Drummer’s Girlfriend. Could you tell us how that came about and what it means to you?

I absolutely love that song. They reached out to us on Twitter, DMs, just to see if we wanted to have a go at singing on one of their tracks, and then somehow that evolved into “Would you like to write an alternate version?” and I thought, “That’s a little scary, I don’t wanna ruin your music”, you know. But we figured out how to do it and have it be not ruinous and the girls liked it and wanted us to fly over and do the vocal and sing it with them. So we did just that as well.

They’re [ALT BLK ERA] a sort of quintessential Nottingham act, aren’t they? A real Notts sound. Notts goes hard, you know? They don’t mess around. It was really an honour to be in the studio with them. I think they have a very clear vision of what they’re doing... It's like opening a comic book or graphic novel when listening to one of their songs. I was happy to be a part of that.

Who's another artist that you’d like to collaborate with?

That’s a really good question. Biffy Clyro. I would love to write a song with those guys, and maybe play guitar on it or something. They’re a super cool band. They’re sort of right up the progressive tree that I like; progressive but sloppy, you know; interesting, but dirty; smart but clumsy. There’s so many other artists that I can’t name them all, but it would be wonderful to collaborate with Biffy Clyro. I would do anything that Richard Ashcroft told me to do as well, absolutely anything. 

How does it feel to have written one of the defining songs of the early 2000s, which is still as popular now as ever?

I don’t know, that’s a difficult question to answer, because it came from a place in me that wasn’t really necessary for its ongoing relevance or survival; and back to the point, it's only really interesting when somebody shows a new side of it, or reveals that it can be this or that, or they can find themselves in this part of the story, or that part of the story.

Anytime somebody reveals something about it - and younger people mostly do that these days - that’s when it feels interesting to me. I still feel strongly about the way that I created it, but that is unique to that time and who I was then, and still is a part of me and we still perform it with relish, but the most interesting things that happen are when people come up and say “This is how I interpret this song, this is what it means to me and my mates”, or “It means this to me and my husband.” Those are the important ongoing stories of Teenage Dirtbag.

Have you got a favourite version of it?

It's been interpreted so many ways, it’s hard to track. I really like the Phoebe Bridgers version. SZA’s version was really cool. I like Jax, the popstar from TikTok - she did a switch on the perspective, singing it from Noelle’s vantage point, which is interesting. I think there are no rules and you can make it your own and it's always interesting when someone does, you know.

What else is in the pipeline? Any big 2026 plans?

Indeed. We’re going into the studio to make a covers record, an acoustics version record, and then a seventh studio album with all originals. So we’re trying to make three records next year - we’ll see if we even finish one. The goal is to get into the studio because we’ve been on the road for such a long time.

What might the covers be? Any hints?

Yes, quite a few covers what we’ve done are currently on our YouTube channel. They range from the Scissor Sisters to Mika, to The Trees by Rush, to the Darkness. We have many many many covers that we’ve done, over the years.

What are you currently listening to? Any recommendations?

That’s a good question. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jeff Beck recently... I feel like, for the 1960s era, no guitarist even came close to Jeff Beck, and the way he evolved over the years, through the 70s and 80s was like - he was just better than everybody. Such an interesting guitar player. So, Jeff Beck has been creeping into my world lately, a lot.

Same with the new Cardi B record, and also Doja Cat. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in hip-hop and RnB happening these days, especially coming from women in the field.

What are your favourite guitars in your collection?

I have, almost exclusively, custom guitars in my collection, and ones I’ve designed and built myself. There’s a guy named Brian Neville whose helped me build them, and another guy named Scott who helps me build them, Scott McCoy, he’s a machinist, and currently my friend Nick Palmeri is finishing up a guitar that I designed that I’ve been re-designing for a few years now. The Dirtbag model... a double cutaway acoustic archtop.

There’s all kinds of ideas floating around, and I’m trying to make them real. I’ve found that having luthier experience myself, working under violin makers a little bit (enough to get myself into trouble anyway), I am better off designing and building something that I prefer as opposed to going to find it in a store - they don’t really make what I like in a store.

Of course, my old Martin, my SP00016TR, from the 90s, a guitar I have alerts set for on eBay, just in case they pop up. They’re getting more and more rare; yeah, that’s the original Teenage Dirtbag video guitar!

Wheatus play at Rescue Rooms in Nottingham on Wednesday 10 December 2025.

rescuerooms.com