Jeph Howard, bassist for the emo-metal quartet The Used, has brought a friend along with him on the Taste of Chaos Tour — his tattoo artist.

“There’s a bunch of stuff I’ve been trying to get finished forever, but I haven’t had time at home, so he just kind of came out to try to finish them and then do a bunch of tattoos on anybody who wanted them,” Howard says.

Although Howard has too many tattoos to count — on his arms, neck, throat, back and legs — he’ll be adding a new one.

“I’m actually going to get this thing that goes down my whole front of my ribs and up to my chest and down to my hips and stuff on one side,” he says.

The Used is headlining the first annual Taste of Chaos tour, an indoor festival of music complete with all the features and attractions common to outdoor fests.

The band receives a lot of attention for frontman Bert McCracken’s oddball stage antics.

His spontaneity is one reason Howard says people should come out to the show.

“It’s something to see if you haven’t seen it yet,” he says. “You never know what Bert’s going to do. Every day he does something that makes me look at him like, ‘What the hell are you … what, what?'”

Howard says he can’t even think of one specific bizarre gesture McCracken makes because there are too many.

He says he remembers one of the weirdest things he’s ever seen, however, when scanning the audience from the stage.

“There was some kind of flag pole, and some kid climbed almost to the top of it while we were playing, and it was probably like 15 feet or 20 feet high,” he says. “He was on the top of it screaming at us. It was pretty rad.”

McCracken’s offbeat character would seem to fit in nicely with the rest of the band, since Howard says they all have extremely different personalities.

“Branden’s more the business guy, and Bert’s definitely the ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen with him’ kind of a guy,” he says.

“Quinn’s kind of a — I don’t know — Quinn’s out of his mind!”

When faced with the task of defining himself, Howard says he knows exactly what his bandmates would say.

“Probably the nice guy,” he says.

“I’m usually the easiest-going who gets along with everybody. I just don’t care enough about things.”