Jason McCaslin has done a lot of press over the past quarter of a century. More recently, however, Sum 41’s bassist – better known to fans as ‘Cone’ after his preferred method of eating ice cream as a youth – has grown a deeper appreciation for artistic interrogation.
The 43-year-old recently began hosting a weekly radio show and podcast, Cone’s Cave, featuring interviews, the inside scoop on Sum 41’s history, and insights from the frontlines of the music industry.
The first person to enter Cone’s Cave is No Doubt/DREAMCAR drummer Adrian Young. Like many of the guests, Cone has crossed paths with Adrian in festival fields sporadically over the years, though he’s been surprised at just how much he doesn’t know about his fellow road dogs, as well as the amount of research he has to do. “Should I be using Wikipedia?” he wonders aloud.
Top of Cone’s list of dream guests, pipping non-musicians Robert De Niro and Al Pacino to the post, is Iggy Pop. Sum 41 and Iggy go way back, of course, having worked together on the track Little Know It All from The Godfather Of Punk’s 2003 album, Skull Ring – which also featured appearances from The Stooges, Green Day and Peaches – and acting as his backing band on and off for a year afterwards. Cone recalls the “humble” legend, then in his mid-50s, bounding into the studio and sitting cross-legged on the floor, refusing to let anyone give up their seat for him, before launching into warm, unassuming conversation.
“Anything that can be done, he has done it and lived to tell the tale,” Cone says of his former collaborator, himself a radio presenter for the BBC. “I still talk to him once in a while, occasionally slipping in that I have a show, but I don’t want to be annoying.”