Claud Mintz & Del Water Gap on Justin Bieber, Vintage Netflix and Creating "My Body"
Interview by Claud Mintz & Holden Jaffe
Photos courtesy of Holden Jaffe
Artists Claud Mintz and Del Water Gap’s Holden Jaffe first met at Brooklyn venue Baby’s All Right over a year and a half ago. Label mates under Terrible Records, their friendship started when they worked on Claud’s single “Never Meant To Call” released back in 2018. Their second collaboration, “My Body”, which came out yesterday, is the outcome of a hot July day in the studio. “It’s a heavy story told though a blanket of autotune, but to us it’s a light hearted jaunt and a funny take on our friendship,” remarked Jaffe. Below, the two friends continue some light hearted fun and discuss their new single, vintage Netflix and the current state of dating.
Holden: what are you drinking Claud?
Claud: I’m drinking an Airborne capsule!
Holden: It looks like Gatorade.
Claud: It’s not Gatorade… it’s too early for Gatorade, it’s 10 AM.
Holden: Haha, it’s ok if it’s Gatorade…
Claud: It’s not Gatorade but I did have two orange sodas last night, what did you do last night?
Holden: I was uploading this really fire music video that I directed with my friend…
Claud: Tell me more about that!
Holden: It’s a really… hi-def good music video…
Claud: When’s it dropping?
Holden: Tomorrow….?
Claud: We’re not sure of when our music video is dropping! Probably soon? In the next 24 hours?
Holden: Ok what do the people wanna know…. what’s your earliest childhood memory?
Claud: I have memories from my attic in my house in Illinois—we had one of those things that is a circle and you sit on it and spin yourself around, and I would literally do that for hours and just lay on the floor of the attic and watch the room spin, and I have this memory of my grandma coming in and saying to my mom, “Oh god… you’ve got a wild one on your hands,” and my mom saying, “are these early signs of drug use??”
Holden: Haha, literally yes—the things you do as a kid to get high…
Claud: What about you?
Holden: My earliest memory… I remember my fifth birthday pretty well.
Claud: What happened?
H: My mom got me a clown! Named BeeBee—and I remember the clown had bees on their feet, and my mom made me a train cake, where every car was a separate little cake…
Claud: That’s so cute.
Holden: …and I got to eat the front of the cake.
Claud: I was obsessed with pie as a kid, so all my cakes were pies, they weren’t cakes.
Holden: That’s so bohemian! Having a… cobbler on your tenth birthday, that’s so funny.
Claud: I just loved pie!!!
Holden: Did you want to be a rock star when you were a kid?
Claud: Oh yeah… When I was eleven I decided I wanted to be Justin Bieber so I called my uncle who like works in film and I was like, “I’ve got it! I want to be Justin Bieber! What do I have to do?” And he was like, “Can you sing Claud…?” And I was like, “I don’t know!”
Holden: Haha and you sent him the Toast EP?
Claud: Hahaha yeah. What about you, did you want to be a rockstar?
Holden: Oh yeah… I definitely did… I used to play harmonica along to an AC/DC CD I had.
Claud: Harmonica??
Holden: Yeah… and it was in the wrong key and stuff obviously.
Claud: Haha that’s funny.
Holden: It’s the only instrument I could play!
Claud: Right.
Holden: My parents had a Netflix subscription back when it was DVDs and um…
Claud: Wait Netflix had DVDs?
Holden: Yeah! And you’d have a cue on your account 1-10, and they’d come in that order, so I would go in and move all my parents’ movies down and make the top of the cue all music movies, like the Woodstock documentary and the Metallica documentaries and all that…
Claud: Ohhhh that’s so funny.
Holden: So like seven music documentaries would show up and my parents would be so pissed.
Claud: Hahah I didn’t know that’s what Netflix was.
Holden: Yeah, I think they may still have a DVD service… I know you’ve been looking for DVDs haha.
Claud: Yeah, I’ve been looking!
Holden: …thought you seemed more like a Blu-Ray person—you love that quality!
Claud: I vaguely remember going to Blockbuster.
Holden: What would you get??
Claud: We’d get like… The Rugrats movie and we’d have to close our eyes while the movie rewinded.
Holden: Hahah right, so that the movie wouldn’t be ruined!
Claud: My dad would be like, “Close your eyes, close your eyes!!” And we’d be like, “Ahhhhhh!”
Holden: Haha yea, it was so shitty when you’d rent a movie and it wouldn’t be rewound! Like, what monster wouldn’t rewind their movie…
Claud: So funny.
Holden: Would you ever cover your eyes during kissing scenes?
Claud: No but I’m pretty sure I would look away until the time I was thirteen or fourteen.
Holden: Yeah, I used to do that…
Claud: Cause it would be like soo awkward.
Holden: Haha! Yeah kissing is gross. I mean I love kissing now…
Claud: I mean I wouldn’t cover my eyes but…
Holden: Just between you and the lord you’d want to know that you weren’t watching that stuff
Claud: Exactly… me and the lord… I started getting all these Jesus-loving TikToks on my phone… I feel like they do that to gay people… they give them all the gay ones and then they sprinkle in the Jesus ones.
Holden: Haha!
Claud: What if?? That’s my new theory…
Holden: Wanna talk about our new song a little bit?
Claud: It’s a sad slapper.
Holden: It’s sad and slaps.
Claud: It’s about someone only wanting you for your body!
Holden: It’s a burden having such great bods!!
Claud: And that’s an ok thing, but it’s not okay when you want more.
Holden: Yeah, we’re at the gym all day, we’re tanning, we’re having green juice, we’re doing arms…
Claud: Yeah I definitely didn’t have two orange sodas last night…
Holden: Haha!
Claud: Yeah and I didn’t order a salad and fries last night and only eat the fries…
Holden: What’s with people??
Claud: You know what it is, I think sometimes you want one thing and someone else wants something else, but you think you both want the same thing so you don’t say anything.
Holden: Yeah…
Claud: And that’s what it is with people!
Holden: Yeah and also I think people want to protect each other and protect themselves—and it can feel safer to just not talk about the difficult stuff, what you actually want and all that—it’s just easier to assume you’re on the same page.
Claud: You’re right! But this song is just… sayin’ it as it is… like, I need your love, but you only want me for my body.
Holden: Yeah it’s interesting… the friends of mine that are really doing the Tinder game…
Claud: Not me…
Holden: Haha not you! There’s this inherent melancholy that comes with that sometimes—with the misalignment.
Claud: Don’t even get me started on Grindr, that shit is craaaazy.
Holden: Yeah I bet!
Claud: What else…
Holden: I do want to say… I had a dream last night that Connor Oberst and Caroline Polachek had a band called Meeker.
Claud: Don’t spread that rumor!
Holden: But I heard it on Spotify in the dream and it slapped so hard…
Claud: Thanks for talking to me Holden.
Holden: Any final words of wisdom for the kids?
Claud: Um… untie your shoes before going through security!
Holden: Wow… that’s great.
Claud: So that by the time you get to the front of the line your shoes are untied!
Holden: Yeah! Get off Instagram! Untie your shoes! But what if you have Velcro?
Claud: Even better!! Even better piece of advice, get Velcro shoes—Velcro, what a great word…