My interview with Richard Hawley first appeared in Little Radio.
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I first saw you on a show called London Live, and they had one of those cool lights that shoots all over – I can’t think of what they’re called.

Richard Hawley: A mirror ball?

Q: Yeah.

RH: Mirror balls are great. We don’t always have them but if we do have a mirror ball – no matter who you are, whether you’re a little old lady or a hard-core punk it affects every one the same. It’s a nice light - it seems to be a true light – it’s light reflecting off all shapes of glass.

Q: You don’t use your natural accent while singing – do you ever think about singing with your accent?

RH: I don’t deliberately do anything. It just comes out the way it is – I don’t think I’ve got a particularly American accent. The songs are based, a lot of them anyway – not all of them – in my hometown, with geographical places as points of reference. But I never wanted that to be exclusive to people so that it’s so colloquial that only people who live at the end of my road can relate to it. That would be a waste of time. I grew up listening to American music, so that when you open your mouth to sing that’s what comes out. I’ve learnt from birth.

Q: You toured in strip joints when you were 14 with your dad?

RH: Some of the gigs were in strip joints.

Q: Was that kind of a dream come true?

RH: It was a fucking nightmare. I was so young I really didn’t know what was going on. My uncle Chuck played piano for my dad in the 60s. It was the early 80s and basically they couldn’t get an adult to do the gig so the only person they could get was this snotty nosed 14 year-old kid who knew all the chops. It was a trade off of him having to deal with this kid with his first time out of the country let alone out of the city. We thought a foreign holiday was a weekend in Wales. He lied to my mother, he said we’re playing really nice venues and he’s going to be looked after. We played shit hole bars and strip joints and really dodgy places. I got escorted into the gig and then at the end of it escorted out. A lot of the dodgier bars we’d be playing all night – which for me, I had the energy of a lion then – I was enjoying it, it was great. I didn’t really know – when you’re young you deal with the reality that’s presented to you. At the end of the night they’d lock me in the van and I’d sit there bored and they’d go and get shit-faced. I saw some interesting things – it only lasted over a month because it was in the school holidays. I lived off Mars bars – in American speak I lived off candy bars and Grolsch beer. I was skinny as a stick anyway. I must have lost about a stone. My Mother was in tears. I think my Dad knew that I was ready for it, he thought that if he survives this then he’s going to make it through his life. Music is not an easy profession to chose. He prepared me for what may or may not happen in the future. Looking back, as a father now, I don’t think I could do that to my kids but I don’t resent the fact that he did that. I thank him for it now because I knew from when I was really young that all I wanted to do was play music. It was a way of saying, here you go.

Q: Are your kids into music?

RH: My daughter plays guitar, she’s really good and my son’s got a little drum kit. The baby’s too young. He just dances to rock and roll. He loves Little Richard the most, but he likes Johnny Cash as well. He also loves the Sonics – his favorite is Have Love Will Travel – do you know that one?

Q: No.

RH: You should know that. Are you from Seattle?

Q: I am.

RH: You should know your own history. You have a good pedigree here. We better be good tonight.

Q: You’re a spokesperson, along with Sean Bean, of Henderson’s Relish?

RH: It’s a local condiment.

Q: They had an official Richard Hawley sauce?

RH: They did bottles in tribute to the albums, which was amazing. Local beer companies made four different beers for the albums. My Dad said you’d cracked it now, they never did that for me. It was great.

Q: Your wife and you got an allotment?

RH: You’ve been doing a lot of reading. It’s kind of a backburner now – it’s utter chaos at home right now. I’m kind of glad I’m on tour. I’m not a hippie or anything – I fucking hate hippies – love and peace are not fashion accessories, it’s a state of mind. We live in a world where everything’s prepackaged – there’s loads of crappy food. We just liked the idea of growing stuff ourselves. My dad and grandfather were gardeners – I know how to dig a hole. I’ve dug quite a few in my time - of various kinds.

Q: The video for Serious, where you have a mannequin for a girlfriend is great.

RH: It just brings a smile to people’s face.

Q: Have you seen the documentary Love Me Love My Doll?

RH: Yeah – I saw that after and it freaked me out. I couldn’t believe there were people who actually did it. I thought it was just a product of me and Shane Meadows’ (Serious’ director) warped mind, that we kind of imagined . . . what if. Are you aware of Shane Meadows?

Q: I want to see This is England.

RH: You’ve got to see it. It’s awesome. It’s his life, in Nottingham but it’s that period of time when kids were really passionate about music and music culture. It is still important now but not like it was. When I was a kid people would fight in the street because you’re into different music. It was quite serious and it got quite heavy at times. It’s basically working class factions of the music. It was important to take that seriously.

Q: What group were in?

RH: None really. I was always into a bit of rockabilly a bit of a Teddy Boy. But I also liked a lot of music that the Mods liked.

[Hawley was really open and shared some photos with me of his family. I say this honestly – it’s a lovely family.]

It’s funny because looking at these photos stops me from feeling homesick. I never used to (get homesick) but being a father you really miss home. You get back and you’re kind of in bits and they just say ‘hi Dad’. Anyway so now you know I am telling the truth. I take telling the truth very seriously. If you’re a liar and you invent stuff, your life has no meaning. The truth, however ugly, cannot help but be beautiful. Sometimes things are not so easy to face up to. I can’t tell anyone how to live their life. For me, if you’re going to grow as a person you have to face yourself and the truth. It’s quite hard. You become less of a victim then, especially for women. You become less prey to advertising and how you should be. We are not what we wear, what we own or do – those are things that just pass the time. There’s something more fundamental about a human being other than those things. I’ve been searching for that my entire life.

Q: Do you feel like you’ve found it, or bits of it?

RH: Bits of it, but not all of it. That would spoil it. I think the journey’s possibly more interesting. This trip has been great. I’ve been to Chicago before and English bands don’t always go down too well in the Mid West. They loved it. I was really surprised. I understand in New York and LA they’ve got the Anglophiles who think American culture sucks and England is some kind of magical place, which it so isn’t. I really like to communicate musically with Americans – not just the East and West Coasts.

Q: Do you think they were tuned into the rockabilly?|

RH: Possibly, but everything went down well, even the colloquial stuff, like Cole’s Corner. Cole’s Corner is just a play - the actual subject of the song is about loneliness going out on a weekend. I think it’s just something fundamental that has no geography to it – but it has a very specific geography. As a writer, as a singer, as a drunk, it’s given me a whole new perspective on the songs – the songs have taken on a whole new life.

Q: What do you like to drink?

RH: Guinness. I could drink that forever. Doesn’t touch the sides.

Q: But not mixed with anything, like Coke?

RH: What, you mean cocaine?

Q: No, soda.

RH: Hideous. Jesus Christ you must be American. Fucking hell – Guinness with soda. Guiness straight. I gave up drinking spirits a long time ago. Occasionally I will have a vodka, cause that is a demon for me. If you have a pint there’s a quantity to it. Red wine’s my nemesis. I love it.

Q: Does it make you crazy?

RH: I don’t get crazy anymore. I used to.

Q: What about Pulp. Did they get you out of a crazy phase in your life?

RH: I was crazy from being a young lad. Doing drugs and drinking was something I did anyway. It was on the estate where I was growing up – everyone did mushrooms. All the kids smoked weed – homegrown weed. The thing was then you didn’t have heroin, coke and crack. You might get a bit of speed. My perspective is I’m a 40 year-old man and I’ll never do drugs again. The only regret I have, well I’ve got loads – every human being has regrets, is – I’m with Bob Dylan, never look back. If you look back you’ll never be able to change things. I think there are things you can do in your future that can apologize for your past. I wouldn’t say that I’ve done anything really bad, although a couple of things just flashed through my mind – I’m just a travelling musician, and I was trying to have as good time as possible. Sometimes you have too much of a good time. But to get back to your original question ‘Pulp saved me’ – they reset, kind of re-calibrated the guiding system. They weren’t saints, they were all out of their minds in their own ways. That had all finished by the time I started working with them.

Q: What are the songs you’re having fun doing on this tour?

RH: I’m enjoying the new record. We toured it loads in Britain and Europe. Playing it to an American audience – our country and yours speak the same language but in actual fact we don’t. Our humors totally different, some people get it some people don’t. British people are closer to Europeans in their mentality actually. Very subtle things. But it’s been a pleasure to see the reactions from the Americans and not just people who are into British music. It’s people who are mid westerners – lots of check shirts and baseball caps, guys who just dropped in off work. I like that. I’m a steelworker’s son. My entire outlook on life is from the perspective a steelworker – a steel worker’s son should I say. I never worked in the steelworks – that would be a lie. But that kind of working class outlook – just checking it out. A lot of them didn’t even know that we played. We’ve had a lot of support from the people who booked us. Tom, the guy who ran the bar in Minneapolis, he was an angel – amazing. He worked for hard for what he does.

Q: Is this the first time you’ve been in Seattle?

RH: No, we played here a couple of years ago. Next door to where we played [turns out it was the Tractor Tavern] was this record store that had over a million records and a gramophone where you could sit down on a sofa and listen to records. It was great.


Q: I wonder if it’s still there. It might be gone.

RH: Well that’s sad. One of the things I do is shopping, hunting for records. People can distract me easily from getting a pint by saying there’s this great record store . . . The bastards only told me that this place existed twenty minutes before we were going onstage. This guy opened the shop for me and I blew like 400 bucks. Dean, our drummer, and I went to the Army Surplus store and got these satchels we can put all our vinyl in to take home.

Q: You recently made a horror movie, Flick?

RH: I am a horror movie. It’s kind of like a rockabilly spoof horror film. It was good fun.

Q: Did you get to be a killer?

RH: Oh no. I got to play a pirate DJ – he was called Bobby Blade and he was on a barge on the river in London. Originally when they asked me to do it this film was a really tiny budget film. I first got asked to do the soundtrack to it. Why don’t we meet up and go through the script because they wanted pieces of music for the characters. We got to the bit where there’s this Bobby Blade – it was like a late 30s guy with glasses and a quiff and I said – who’s playing that? And they said, actually you if you want to do it. I said I’d do it for a laugh because it was a really small part and I thought, I can probably do this. And then it all changed because a lot of money came in. So all my scenes were with Faye Dunaway – I was really nervous. It’s like diving in the deep end with lead boots on. But it was good and Faye was really gracious. I told her I’d never acted before and she said that I was a con man, that I was winding her up. There were also a couple of English actors I really respect like Mark Benton in it who was amazing. Liz Smith was in it as well who’s a classic English actress. The only hard thing about it was that I had to get really violent with Faye. I was brought up to respect women in general, very much, and having never acted before and getting your head into this space where you have to be aggressive towards a woman was something that didn’t sit right with me at all.

Q: Are you going to meet with Shane Meadows again?

RH: We’ve talked about it. There’s quite a few projects we’re gonna do. I kind of introduced him to my life and I took him in a few bars that I go in where there are regular music sessions – no rehearsals, musicans just play. It happens every night in this bar in Sheffield. He freaked. I’ve taken loads of musicians there, Jools Holland, Nancy Sinatra – I took her in there for a pint. It’s a beautiful place. We’re maybe going to make a film about that.

Q: Nancy Sinatra seems interesting.

RH: She’s great - she’s really down to earth. Whenever you work with someone you’re a fan of you always pray that they’re going to be okay. If ever anybody on the planet was going to be difficult it might have been a little difficult you might have thought it would be the daughter of Frank Sinatra, but she was the exact opposite. She was just like my big sister, we got on great. We still email and speak to each other – she’s a very special person in my life. If anybody can be that humble and gone through what she’s gone through and be who she is and still be straight in her head . . . there are people who are shopkeepers who are nuts. She’s a beautiful person. When we did the recording it was late in the year – September or something like that – I got home and then it came to Christmas time. This huge package turned up at our house – and I mean it was fucking huge – a big cardboard package. We couldn’t get it in the door. Me and my wife had to open it in the corridor. When we got it all out it was all these hat boxes that went from big to small and when you assembled them all it made a snowman for the kids. She’d made it herself – she didn’t order it from the store – it was paper mache and crepe paper. We still put it up. The kids put the tree up today, which made me really homesick. They’ve got Nancy’s snowman. Nancy had filled it with sweets. I didn’t know whether to thank her or send her the fucking Dentist’s bill. No, it was a really generous and kind gift. That displays what she’s like.
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Click here for photos I took at his show.

This interview with Sharin Foo originally appeared on Little Radio in 2007 ahead of the Raveonettes' Electric Duo Tour.
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Q: What’s happening with the Electric Duo Tour?

SF: Actually today we were going to Canada but Sune’s had his passport stolen. I don’t think we’re going to be able to go to Canada, which is really disappointing to me. Then we’re going to do our West Coast part of the tour in June, which we’re really excited about. We did our East Coast tour already and it was so much fun for us to do it this way – just the two of us, a stripped down version, to play the songs in a very minimal way.

Q: I’ve been hearing good things about the show. So Sune’s passport just disappeared?

SF: It’s vanished.

Q: That’s horrible.

SF: It is horrible. It’s very strict getting into Canada, it’s always difficult, so there’s just no way. There’s US visas and Canadian visas so we’ve been back and forth with the traffic control group and embassies. This is just a classic obstacle which happens occasionally. I was so looking forward to going to Canada and I haven’t seen Sune for a while because I’m living in Los Angeles and he’s living in New York.

Q: Have you been able to go back to Denmark at all recently?

SF: It’s been a while since I was in Denmark. I think the last time I was there was when we did a show in January. That was the last time we played with a full band with AC (Anders Christensen, bass) and Jakob (Høyer, drums). I miss Denmark. I miss my family and my friends. We’ve just confirmed a show in August – I’ll be in Denmark in the late summer.

Q: I think it was probably a couple of years ago now when you played for the Danish royalty?

S: We played for the Crown Prince when he was getting married to the Tasmanian Princess. We played a big party at the Royal Theatre and it was the first time that they had rock and roll – they have classical music there . . . ballet. It was the first time that they had really noisy, really loud rock music. It was fun – we enjoyed it.

Q: How have the Raveonettes changed? Last time I saw you here was when you opened for Depeche Mode.

SF: That was a great tour. It feels like a deconstruction time, a rebuilding. There are a lot of unknown factors. We don’t know the release time for the next album. We’re embracing it and focussing on making a really good album and connecting with the people who really enjoy our music. It’s exciting times because it’s really basic. We’re going back to the original reasons we started this band, with just me and Sune, which is really the core of the band. Then we’re building it from there. That’s really what this tour is about too, just to be the core of this band, going back to what was the original foundation.

Q: I’ve been listening to the new demos up on your myspace page and they sound great. Are you going to focus more on the new things or a mixture?

SF: We’re definitely going to play some new stuff. Actually we’re going to play a lot of rare songs, b-sides, songs we haven’t really played before live, like Sex Don’t Sell and Experiment in Black. We’re doing a couple of cover songs. On the previous tour we did some Gun Club. We haven’t really made up our minds on how we’re going to do this next tour. We might even bring some other person to play some drums or we could play with tracks as well. We just have to be creative about it.

Q: You’re going to love the Triple Door in Seattle.

SF: We’re trying to play some small intimate venues.

Q: It’s a jazz club. It’s really cool.

SF: Oh wow, that’s exciting. We’re bringing some good bands too. We have Midnight Movies for main support and then for weekends we’re bringing the Meek and also the Pity Party. Bands that we really love.

Q: Any music you’re studying right now? I know you have a background in studying some unusual music.

SF: You know, yesterday I was practicing playing drums because that’s my new thing when we go on tour. We both play upright drums. It’s really fun to play drums. I’m practicing but I don’t have a drum kit so I’ve been practicing on these pillows at home. That’s the extent of my studying at this point.

Q: That’s organic.

SF: Yes. And I’m taking guitar lessons because I feel like it’s time I really learned how to play the guitar for real, not just faking it all the way through.

Q: Did it embarrass you when Blender had you on the list of the hottest women in rock?

SF: It’s a surreal concept. I was looking at the fellow hottest girls in rock trying to see if I was in good company or bad company. Everyone from PJ Harvey to Christina Aguilera.

Q: It was an interesting group, you were in good company. I have a strange fashion question for you. You always have the perfect eye-makeup. What do you use?

SF: Thank you, a compliment. A liner, black kohl liner on the inside of the eyes always make the eyes pop when you’re on stage. I like the black smoky eyes and lots of mascara.

Q: Is there a particular brand you use?

SF: I use MAC a lot. They have good eye shadow colors. I use different mascaras – Chanel, Shu Uemura. I’m getting into playing with colors too – like really strong blues and purples.

Q: Yeah I saw some pictures from the East Coast tour and the colors looked very pretty.

SF: I’m kind of lucky because when we do shoots there are always makeup artists and they have good tips. I like it - it’s very soothing when someone is paying attention to you, doing your hair or makeup. I just learn from these people – they’re professionals you know.

Q: What’s your experience like with videos and photos? I love the photos you’ve done with Søren Solkær Starbird.

SF: We’ve been working with him even before we left Denmark. He’s from the same small town that Sune’s from, in the southern part of Denmark. We’ve always enjoyed working with him also because he’s a good friend. It’s always nice to hang around with friends and be creative, even though photo shoots are not always necessarily creative. But they can be fun. Video shoots are fun. When we did Attack of the Ghost Riders that was a very low key, do it yourself kind of video. It was another creative outlet for us. It’s tough because you have to work for like eighteen hours a day. I like the work with imagery.

Q: The Raveonettes’ videos and photos are works of art too – I am always impressed by them. So what’s been your last substantial vintage clothing purchase?

SF: It wasn’t actually clothes, it was an office desk. The last clothes purchase – I bought this really beautiful vintage dress that I really love. Like a piece of art from the seventies. It has kind of a Russian feel to it. Subtle but beautiful. It’s from a great store in New York called Family Jewels.

Q: Have you ever gotten anything back from those jerks who took your gear in Brooklyn a couple of years ago?

SF: No, nothing was retrieved. We lost everything. After struggling with the insurance company for a year we got some many back and we were able to repurchase some stuff. It was a positive thing in retrospect – what came out of it was that when you lose everything you’re forced to be creative about your sound and building it up again. Sune and I started rethinking about what do we really want, what kind of sound, what kind of pedals. . . That was the positive part of a really negative experience. But, no, we never found anything. Maybe one day. I heard that Sonic Youth got a bunch of stuff back six or seven years after they had everything stolen.

Hardy Morris, singer/guitarist/songwriter of Dead Confederate, talked with me before the band played a recent show at Chop Suey in Seattle. Dead Confederate comes from Athens, Georgia and released their first full length cd, Wrecking Ball just this year. It's a sublime cd indeed and Morris' voice is a thundering and hot living thing. Their live set was also a miracle of rock - one you'd be so lucky to experience. I wanted to know other things too but the band's breakthrough song, the Rat, compelled me to ask Morris about run-ins with actual rats.
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Q: You had a band in high school - was that fun?

Hardy Morris: Walker [Howle, guitarist] and I always played together, but I played with other folks as well. I met Brantley [Senn, bassist] in high school and he was playing with different folks. He and Jason [Scarboro], our drummer played together in a band in high school. It wasn’t until after that that we all wound up together.

Q: I was reading that you studied English.

HM: Yes, I was an English major.

Q: Yeah – what was your favorite stuff?

HM: I kind of went through different phases. I had a big poetry phase. I went through a big Brit novel phase as the classes came along. I got obsessed with Bleak House for a while. It’s nuts. And then some of the more modern classes – literature and media. It was several years ago so it was when the Internet was really crashing through and taking over. I enjoyed all parts of being an English major.

Q: I just saw the new Masterpiece Theater version of Bleak House – it was brilliant.

HM: Anything involving someone spontaneously combusting is interesting. They get in the room and he’s gone, but there’s all this gooey stuff.


Hardy Morris onstage at Chop Suey, 2008

Q: Do write all the lyrics for Dead Confederate?

HM: I write the lyrics for my songs and Brantley writes the lyrics for his songs. This album [Wrecking Ball] combined by happenstance 5 songs of mine and 5 of his. We recorded even more songs and we had other songs written.

Q: You recorded it at a set of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

HM: It was a studio in Austin. You know the band And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead? It was their old practice space. Back in the ‘70s it was a soundstage where they used to do voiceovers and overdubs for movies. They put out a lot of horror films and one of them was Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It definitely gave it an extra edge. There was a little concrete room, literally – the room we recorded in was concrete and painted black. I loved it. It was loud and everything sounded off the walls – which I think the album picks up on. It sounds pretty loud. And live.

Q: Are you into horror movies?

HM: I never got too into them. I always liked horror movies for the comedic value in them. I love Freddie Krueger and the Friday the 13th movies but as far as movies go I was always more into historical characters – the Wyatt Earp movies and Tombstone.

Q: I love that movie.

HM: Braveheart. Those movies were awesome. In this day and age, being an entertainer and you think about now being a musician or an actor or something . . . I just want people to hear my music. But part of what goes on is fame and what goes into being a musician or an actor. They do interviews and have publicity companies and people writing about them but people back then, like Jesse James or Billy the Kid, they were famous just for being themselves. There was no publicity company or US Magazine and everyone knew who they were. Their personalities were that big – it’s crazy. Could you imagine that now? You’d have to shoot a president to have that now. People may know my music – but that’s famous. That’s notoriety.

Q: Who came up with the spider symbol that's on the band's drum kit?

HM: Our friend Joel Wheat. He did the ep art, which was the spider, and the album art. The spider came from an idea he had based off Soviet propaganda art. He had a whole catalog of Soviet stuff he would use for some of our posters. We thought it was really cool. We have a collection of posters that look really cool – we need to bust some of them back out and do more of those. Once you’re on the road you have a stock poster for the whole tour, whereas when we were doing a lot more local and southeastern shows we had specific posters that looked cool. I wish we could do more of that but you can’t really do all that from a van. I’d like to get back into that.


Cover art for Dead Confederate's 2008 ep

Q: What places would you like to play?

HM: I like Seattle, it’s cool. This is our third time in the vicinity. This is our first club show in Seattle. We played at the [KEXP] Yule Benefit last year, which was just a total blessing - our first time in Seattle. Then we played Sasquatch Festival. It was cool.

Q: I was reading on the Dead Confederate blog about Conan O’Brien playing guitar.

HM: He’s good. When you’re backstage at Conan O’Brien you have your own dressing room with a television set up in there. You can watch whatever want or they also have a channel that’s the dress rehearsal. In the show they’ll do, like 5 jokes but they do 25 and then cut them. So you get to hear all the jokes. He [O’Brien] had this stratocaster strapped around his neck and he played that thing the entire time – his monologue and then he’d do interview stuff. I guess it was kind of like his stress reliever. Like that squishy ball or whatever - he had the guitar. He’s really into music. He knew the record and had us sign a vinyl copy for him.

Q: What about rats. Have you had any run-ins with rats?

HM: Actually yeah. We were in New York for CMJ last year – it was me and my brother and our booking agent. We were all out after we had played. We were all out drinking and people started to make their way back to the hotel. We decided to keep going, to go to another bar. I was really drunk and needed to go back to the hotel. So I stumbled to the place we were going next and I drank about half my drink and thought I’ve gotta go back, I’m wasted. We’d been to New York before a couple times so I thought I knew how to get back. Dawson’s like, take a cab and I was like, I’m not gonna take a cab – I know how to get back. I’m not wasting any money. So I started walking, and I cut over one street and I cut over another back street and there was a pile of trash and I’m on my cell phone trying to call the hotel to figure out where the hell I was. One rat ran between my legs and I said, shit! As soon as I said shit there were hundreds of them. I was having to run for my life. They’re all ahead of me and as soon as I saw a main road I took the first cab I saw.

Q: Were they big rats?

HM: They were big. Little cats – a bunch of kittens. Want another rat story? I didn’t actually see this – my friend did it. They had this rat in their house and they were trying to get it with these traps. It would always get the food off the trap. It was smart. One night they had been out to a bar and they got all drunk. When they got home a friend turned the light on in the kitchen and the rat’s just sitting there on the counter, looking at them . My buddy had a bow and arrow for deer hunting and the rat’s sitting there, frozen by the light. He got the bow and shot the rat – arrow all the way through it – stuck it to the wall. Killed it but then they’re like, fuck, there’s rat blood all over the counter and a dead rat stuck to their wall. [They cleaned it up] and there were these rat rags. Rat blood? You don’t want to fuck with rat blood.

Q: What’s the best thing about Athens?

HM: There’s a lot good about Athens. It’s got a killer music scene, super supportive, always something going on. Great bands – no two bands sound alike. Rare egos. There’s no competition there between the bands. There’s no traffic – you do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. There’s not a lot of jobs that pay a lot of money there – if you want to be a musician and a cook at a taco place, it’s great. If you want to try to be a banker, move to Atlanta. It’s got tons of musical history and it continues everyday.
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Dead Confederate will play several shows in Georgia and Florida through December 24th. You can also see more pix I took of their show at Chop Suey here.

Seattle's Blood Red Dancers sat down with me at the Comet before a recent show. The band, comprised of Aaron Poppick (lead singer, bass) Kevin R. Lord (drums & vocals) and Julian Thomas (keys& vocals), released an ep recently called Let Him Fight, I'll Be in the Breadline. It's one of the best releases of this year. I found these guys to be engaging offstage. Onstage they are still engaging but alarming in their intensity.
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Q: Who came up with the name Blood Red Dancers?

Aaaron Poppick: I did. I’d heard a story about Aborigines – I think it’s a custom for more than one tribe in Australia – when they’d kill their enemies they would bathe in their blood and do war dances.

Kevin R. Lord: At least that’s the rumor.

AP: Some of the tribes still perform the dance, but they don’t use blood anymore – they use rocks and shards.

KRL: It’s supposed to resemble blood.

AP: We just liked the imagery.

Q: I like it. . . are you all originally from Seattle?

AP: We’re all from California. Julian’s originally from England – I’ll let him tell that. We met in California and we moved up here at different times. We’ve all known each other since we were very young.

Q: Julian, where in England did you grow up?

Julian Thomas: Redditch, it’s near the Midlands. It’s famous for fishhooks.


Julian Thomas

Q: How did you learn to play music?

AP: Julian and I had been in a punk band since we were 14. Julian originally played guitar but then he started taking classical piano lessons when he was 15.

JT: 17.

AP: Kevin doesn’t know how to play the drums.

KRL: I have no idea how to play drums.

Q: You’re self-taught.

KRL: I just figured it out a year ago. I generally like hitting things with sticks.

AP: He’d never played drums and it just came naturally. We’ve been playing for 10 years and he knows how to keep up with us. I don’t know how it works.

KRL: I took one lesson a couple months ago with the drummer of Diminished Men. He’s amazing.


Kevin R. Lord

Q: Who writes the music and lyrics?

AP: I write the structure and then we all write the music. I mostly write all the lyrics and then I write a bass structure. Julian writes the meat of the music.

Q: Are you doing more recording?

AP: Hopefully in 2009. We’re writing this winter. I think we’re going to try to get back in the studio late spring/early summer.

Q: Good. . . what do you think has influenced you?

AP: War.

KRL: Not the band.

AP: You know when you watch the History Channel and you see all the tanks driving over the skulls and stuff?

KRL: We just think that’s kind of typical.

AP: Pharmaceutical commercials. Moral decay. The decline of society. Recently Kevin paid a guy $120 to move his mattress out of our apartment. You can’t just leave a mattress out on the road anymore – people look down on it. $120 dollars in some countries can feed a whole family.

KRL: I couldn’t even get rid of a nice comfortable bed.

AP: We just like dark, cynical imagery. Shit that makes people uncomfortable. We really like Swans, the band, their attitude.


Aaron Poppick

KRL: There’s enough dark imagery on the news every night to write songs for the rest of my life.

Q: How did you decide not to have a guitarist in the band?

JT: When we first started I was on guitar, keyboards and occasional singing. The songs I ended up liking the most were the ones with him [Poppick] singing, him [Lord] on drums and me on keyboards.

KRL: He’s a lot better as a pianist than he is as a guitarist. I mean, you’re a good guitarist, but he shines on piano.

Q: The ep stunned me. Do you feel like you’ve created something different from what other people are doing?

AP: We’re very much trying.

KRL: We want to mix our influences. If something sounds too much like a jazz song or too much like a blues song we’ll mix it up.

Q: The pix of you taken by Mary Henlin . . . those are great. Who’s the girl with the rabbit head?

KRL: His [Thomas’] girlfriend. We rented that hotel room and got so fucked up and she was sober. We stayed up all night and we look completely gone. We look like scumbag freaks, which is what we were going for. Mary’s good.
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You can see more photos I took of their show at the Comet here.

Blood Red Dancers next play the Bit Saloon in Ballard on February 21, 2009.

Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip come from the UK and they are brilliant. They recently visited Seattle for the second time and while Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip had their dinner before the evening’s show, I asked them all sorts of questions. Things about tattoos, the video for Beat That My Heart Skipped, and what they think of Prince.
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Q: I saw your video based on Cribs – it was fantastic.

Scroobius Pip: Glad you liked it. It’s a nice little house.

Q: What kinds of things have you cooked on your George Foreman Grill?

SP: I cook anything but then I got dragged into the actual George Foreman brand, like pork and beefsteaks and turkey. They are really low fat. I don’t really eat any fruit or vegetables so making eating meat healthier for me is a winner. I’m healthy, as you can see my dinner is 4 chunks of meat [he was eating chicken satays].

Q: You need your protein. Do you take vitamins though?

SP: Not really. I’ve started to be healthier and eat more vegetables now but by anyone else’s standards I’m unhealthy.

Q: What kinds of things do you read, like on the road?

SP: I can’t read in vehicles.

Dan Le Sac: Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh. But every now and then I pick up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Q: I looked up your hometown, Stanford-le-Hope, and I couldn’t find too much on it but there was a guide online to hooking-up spots.

SP: Really? I need to look that website up.

Q: Is there a big singles scene there?

SP: Not really. There’s not enough of anything for there to be any kind of scene. I think there’s like probably eight pubs, a few takeaways, a pool hall . . . there’s a library, it’s a small one but it’s decent. Not a lot going on there. My mom runs the libraries in the area – that’s how I know they’re good libraries. They’ve got our album in there, so it must be good.

Q: I’ll have to look at the site again and see if maybe the library is one of the hook-up spots.

SP: Yeah, it might be. Kind of bizarre.

Q: I read you’ve been doing a cover of Sugababes on the tour.

SP: Yes, the Sugababes’ Push the Button. A brilliant pop song.

DLS: We don’t do it in America though.

SP: Not many people know who the Sugababes are [in America]. We’ve got three covers that we do and only one of them is by an American. [People think] that we’re doing it ironically but we’re not.

Q: Dan, you studied photography at University of Reading? Was it commercial or art?

DLS: Photography and Digital Imaging – a general thing, somewhere in between useful and not useful. It was cool. It was a nice way to spend three years of my life although I worked full time while I was at Uni.

Q: Did you two meet at University?

SP: No, we met at College properly– before Uni. Then we both went off to Uni, then we met up again at HMV when we were working in the record shop. Then we re-met up again on myspace. We’ve had a long career in meeting and losing each other.

Q: I was reading you do all your song writing via email?

SP: All over email. We’ve still never sat down really and written together. There’s not as many conflicts and you’re not on each other’s backs. To make a change to a beat or develop it could take ages, so while I’m sat there waiting for another chunk I’ll get anxious and annoyed. And Dan will bet annoyed because he’ll be aware that I’m waiting for this extra little bit. It works better to do it over email and give it the appropriate amount of time.


Scroobius Pip


Dan Le Sac

Q: I'm wondering, how many tattoos do you have?

SP: I’ve got four tattoos and two piercings, all hidden away.

Q: There’s one on your arm.

SP: That’s the battery compartment, where I keep my batteries. I’ve got one on my lip.

[He shows me the tattoo of his name on the inside of his lower lip.]

Q: Oh god. That’s awesome – that must have hurt.

SP: It was all right – it wasn’t that bad. It only took 10 minutes. Every one always assumes that but it only took ten minutes.

DLS: Whereas I’ve had my whole body tattooed. I’m mainly scar tissue.

Q: That’s going to give me nightmares. . . so, Prince. Is this someone you are both into?

DLS: I would say Scroobius is slightly more into Prince than I am. I’m more a greatest hits man.

SP: I worship him. I think he’s great.

Q: I noticed in your Cribs send-up you had a dvd of his videos. What’s your favorite Prince video?

SP: I’d like to go for Cream. It’s got this whole preamble before it starts. I haven’t watched any in a while because I’ve been on the road so much. I’m really into Darling Nikki at the moment as a Prince song. I’m not sure if there’s a video for that one – I’ll have to look when I get home.

DLS: Wasn’t the last time you watched that when you got pulled over by the police?

SP: We were on our way back from a gig, so it’s me and [friend] Paul and the driver. So they pull us over, open the back of the van and there’s me and Paul with no shirts on, drinking wine and watching Prince videos. It was a weird scenario. We’d played Brighton the night before and both of us had got tattoos to mark the tour. We’d sweated a lot with these fresh tattoos and they were dripping. The police just popped their heads and go, okay? That was a weird experience.

DLS: I led that.

SP: A good tour story.

Q: Prince will get you into trouble.

SP: He just makes you take your shirt off.

Q: Where did you find the girls for the Beat that My Heart Skipped video?

DLS: We found them on myspace.

SP: I put a bulletin out saying that we needed some girls for a video. The director got a couple of professional pole dancers in for some of the pole dancing. It was meant to be set in a strip club but not your typical one. We didn’t want bleached blonde [hair] and fake breasts . . . we went for more alternative looking girls. The girl who’s playing the one who isn’t a stripper, the one at the bar being hit on, is a singer called Paloma Faith. Again as we have a very low budget or no budget it needs to be favors. All of our videos have included myspace bulletins.

Q: It was good casting.

SP: One of the girls, Nina Kate is on the cover of Bizarre Magazine. She’s got a clothing company. The latex stuff (in the video) is from her clothing company. It works as a good advert, so that’s cool.

Q: How would you describe the look of Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip?

SP: Hairy. I wear a hat sometimes. I like leather ties – I always wear a leather tie on stage.

DLS: I’ve recently moved to wearing a round-necked tee from a long time wearing a collared tee.

SP: A polo shirt was typical of Dan for a while.

DLS: Oh – balding. I’m losing my hair. That’s part of our look.

SP: It’s true. I think that [Dan’s] sideburns are getting bigger and bigger and longer and longer and turning into a beard as the hair disappears on top in an Einstein-esque manner.

DLS: And that guy was a hit with the ladies.

SP: He was.

DLS: [Speaking of] brains not brawn – Stephen Hawking. He managed to leave his wife and cheated on his wife with his nurse. And then married her and had two kids.

SP: I don’t think that’s an indication of brains over brawn. Callum Best is a big hit with the ladies in the UK and he’s an idiot, but he’s very handsome. Whereas Stephen Hawking has a lot of money, which I think influences the deal on that kind of thing in general.

DLS: I don’t know how much money I’d need – he does need a lot of looking after.

SP: But still that’s a good wage. My girlfriend’s a carer so she looks after people like Stephen Hawking on far less. [For Stephen Hawking] it’s like I’m your carer but also your girlfriend. That’s all the girl had to do, surely.

DLS: They had two kids!

SP: They did not. They may have adopted two kids or may have built two kids.

Q: He’s so smart though I don’t know what anyone would talk to him about.

DLS: Jazz – he likes jazz. You can talk silly voices. Famous cyborgs.

SP: I’m sure he could get any voice, so you could say tonight I want to have a chat with Sean Connery and he’ll type in as Sean Connery. That’s how he gets the ladies.

DLS: His voice in his head now is that computer voice. He’s had it so long so when they tried to upgrade his computer system, they’d given him a new, more humanized voice and it freaked him out.

SP: I’ve heard about this before but I don’t think in sentences in my own mind. I don’t think, I wonder if I need to go to the toilet? Yeah, I might as well . . .

DLS: But when that sounds going out and coming back into his ear it was not sounding like him. We’ve had this conversation before and I couldn’t answer it, so I’ve spent some time waiting for this topic to come back up.

SP: There’s a podcast that Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington do – Karl wonders if people think in their own accents and use terminology in their heads that’s local to them. And they figured out, particularly the terminology thing, you don’t think, "Happen I will."

DLS: But there’s one school of thought that says that you do. [There are some people] who visualize their thoughts and others who word them out. Like I can’t imagine something, full stop. If he [Scroobius] walks away I can’t imagine him. I can describe him perfectly but I can’t get a clear, fixed image.

Q: I have been reading a lot about your beard, Dan. What is the ideal conditioner?

SP: Aussie Leave-In – you can leave it in. I haven’t got a lot of time – a lot of good conditioners you need to leave in to soak for 3-4 minutes and then rinse out. I’m an on the go guy.

Q: How did you come across the artist, Jock Mooney?

SP: We saw this little Hitler in a tutu figurine. There was some dumb luck with the line Thou Shalt Always Kill and Hitler stealing Nietzsche’s ideas of having to destroy to progress. . .


Album art for Thou Shalt Always Kill.

Q: What’s the story behind Waiting for the Beat to Kick In?

SP: It was originally a rambling spoken word piece. All the people I meet in it are film characters. All the messages that they give are messages I learnt from that character in that film. I love films, films that have got a good meaning.
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I looked the characters up from Waiting for the Beat to Kick In and here are their respective movies:

Elwood P. Dowd = Harvey
Lloyd Dobler = Say Anything
Billy Brown = Buffalo 66
Walter Neff = Double Indemnity

They did not perform their cover of Sugababe’s Push the Button – instead they did a smashing cover of Prince’s Cream.

Currently they are touring in Europe.

Look at more photos from their Chop Suey show here.

I talked with Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo of the Raveonettes before their most recent show in Seattle. I wanted to know about what scares these cool people and I had to grill Sune on his Christmas fixation. This is a band I fell in intense love with the first moment I heard them – they have held this love now for over six years.

Since the release of the astounding Lust Lust Lust in early 2008, Sharin Foo had her first daughter, Molly, and the band released three more eps: Beauty Dies, Sometimes They Drop By and the Raveonettes Remixed . Plus there's talk of a Christmas ep.

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Q: I have some questions that I have never seen asked of you two. What are your earliest memories?

Sune Rose Wagner: That is actually a very good question. Sometimes I think about it and I really don’t know. I have a lot of childhood memories but I don’t know which would be my earliest.

Sharin Foo: I think some of my earliest are probably from when I was in China – when I was three years old. I think that was so intense and different for me. I have some very vivid memories from being there. I was in a village where my grandfather was from and they didn’t have any toilets. So my dad had to take me outside and they had these little black pigs that would run around and I was so scared that they would come towards me. And they would – they would get into everything.

Q: That would be scary.

SRW: That’s terrible.

Q: So what are some good memories – or bad, I guess?

SRW: I remember burning my hand on the electrical lawn mower once. I couldn’t have been very old because my dad was still living at home – it was before they got divorced. I remember it being wrapped up in a big bandage and we used to call it the crocodile because it resembled a weird looking crocodile. But I think I was pretty old, like six or seven. I lost all my memories.

Q: Sharin, your dad was a musician – what does your mom do?

SF: My mom works in accounting.

Q: Sune, you’ve mentioned your parents weren’t musical?

SRW: No, my dad was working with antennas . . . an engineer. My mom’s been a school secretary all her life.

Q: How did they come up with your names, like your middle name?

SRW: My middle name is my mom’s name.

Q: And they spelled Sharin with an i?

SF: That’s from my dad, back in those days when he was meditating a lot. I was supposed to be Simon if I had been a boy. I don’t have a middle name.

Q: What scares you? What’s your biggest fear?

SRW: My biggest fear? I think there’s a lot of them.

SF: There are fears on different levels. I mean I’m scared of spiders and I’m scared of the dark. But if you say biggest fear it would be the atomic bomb, or a big world war.

SRW: I’ll quote that guy from that great movie Young Sherlock Holmes “My biggest fear is that I never want to be alone”. I think that’s kind of true. I like that.

Q: What frustrates you?

SRW: A million things. Lack of sleep. Being sick. Working too hard.

Q: Is this the first cd you’ve produced on your own?

SF: No - Whip It On, too.

Q: Is it easier to do it all yourself?

SRW: We’ve never really worked with a producer in that sense. With Richard Gottehrer [producer of Chain Gang of Love] he was our friend, so it was more based on friendship and wine. I’ve never tried to work with, you know, Rick Rubin so I have no idea what that would be like. We’re not a regular band – we don’t have a drummer and a bass player and we don’t write songs together. It’s very natural to do stuff at home.

Q: What are some of your scariest or best drug experiences?

SRW: Scariest drug experience? I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those.

Q: That’s good.

SF: I had a bad experience with ecstasy. I was hyperventilating. And then one time I was smoking weed . . . hash is not my drug because I get too stoned.

Q: I was reading that you edited the video for You Want the Candy – do you want to do more of that?

SRW: I hope not, no. We [Sharin and I] weren’t in the same place together and we needed a video. Someone had to do it.

Q: I just thought maybe you’d found some new love.

SRW: No, it would probably be fun if you had time to do it.


Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo in Seattle, March 2008 - photo by Dagmar

Q: Was the new cd difficult to make? It seems like the vocals are very complicated.

SRW: I don’t think in that sense it was hard but it took a little bit longer to find out what we wanted. That’s actually the part I don’t like about starting a new album. It seems very exciting at first but then once you get started you hit on dead ends. One day you like this and the next day you like something else. It just seems so confusing. I like it when you know what you want.

SF: It wasn’t more difficult than the other albums in the recording process but like Sune was saying, it was a longer time coming.

Q: How did you decide The Beat Dies was going to be just Sharin? And Blush is mostly Sune?

SRW: The Beat Dies just sounded really great with her voice on it. It just fit the song really well. With the Blush thing, I think I had just recorded a vocal on it, so I had it but I just ended up liking it. It seemed very passionate, so we liked that. Both of those songs were very hard songs to harmonize to.

SF: It’s also nice to utilize the fact that we have two different voices. Oftentimes when we sing together they sort of melt together. It’s hard to tell who’s who, and I think it makes it more multi-faceted – the different personalities in the vocals.

Q: I was reading something in Filter about Sune liking Christmas a lot and having Christmas trees up all year round.

SRW: I like all the lights. I think it’s nice ornamentation. It’s just a nice place for me to relax and feel comfortable. It’s not something I really think about, it just makes me feel comfortable.

Q: I can understand that. There are a lot chimes and bell sounds in your music – do you think that’s where it comes from?

SRW: It could be. When I was a kid I was alone a lot and I liked being alone. I used to sit in my room – in the old days it used to snow a lot, it doesn’t snow that much anymore – and I just remember sitting in my room. It was all nice and warm and it was dark and snowing outside and I had the lights on. It was just a nice place for me to be – I felt inspired and very happy. Maybe it’s just something that’s stuck with me over the years. I do like a lot of old Christmas music that I think is very beautiful. Even some of the tacky stuff like Perry Como. Nat King Cole, Phil Spector, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Sinatra – there’s a lot of good stuff on it. And obviously with the bells and chimes and stuff, some of it came from there for sure. We used to use the jingles a lot in our music. We don’t use it on this album but even from Whip it On there are a lot of jingles on there. That Great Love Sound has jingles.

Q: I love that.

SF: We do listen to Christmas music. Maybe we are sort of brainwashed.

Q: What do have dreams about?

SRW: I have nightmares all the time. Everything – killing people, shooting people . . . at least four times a week. I think I’m just growing through a change and my dreams reflect that. I need to get rid of a lot of bad things, apparently.

SF: I dream about my friends a lot – and my family.

Q: Here’s kind of an open question, what do you find sexy?

SRW: I like women who have jobs. I like women who are very determined and have a goal. I like career people, people who strive for something, who burn for something. I think that’s very sexy. I never really liked people who didn’t want to do anything or who were lazy. That does not appeal to me whatsoever.

SF: People with strong personalities – people who have a strong sense of who they are and what they want. Sweetness, intelligence and humanity. Things like that.

Q: I asked Sharin about this in our earlier interview, but Sune do you like shopping for clothes?

SRW: I do. I don’t do it very often but I’m good at speed shopping for clothes. I like vintage shopping when I know the stores are good, like in Portland. I always find great stuff there.

Q: I read somewhere that you called this your Doors album? Do you like the Doors?

SRW: I love the Doors. I meant in the sense that we have a keyboard bass on the album which the Doors used to have. If you listen to Black Satin, that rhythm is typical Ray Manzarek style playing like he does in The End and all those great songs. That’s very typical in playing the piano – you would play the bass like that. It also has a mystifying, California feel to it that I think the early Doors had, when they used to make music out on Venice Beach.

Q: What do you do in your downtime to relax?

SRW: I watch movies, I walk a lot, I go out to restaurants and I sit at home and write music and read. I go to the shooting range, actually. I really like to shoot rifles. I just try to do fun stuff. I go to yoga sometimes. I want to go play golf – I’ve done that a bunch of times and I thought it was relaxing. Maybe I’ll even go take a swing at a baseball, why not?

Q: You’re really open to trying different things.

SRW: Totally.

SF: For me it’s really, like Sune’s saying, to enjoy your life when you’re home. I just really love having my home and my family – the books and the movies – I love cooking. I like my every day life when I’m home. It’s very exotic to me because I don’t get to spend much time there. I go hiking in the mountains around Los Angeles. I like to go to the Pacific Ocean.

Q: Have you seen any cougars yet while you’re hiking?

SF: I haven’t. I haven’t seen rattlesnakes yet either. I’ve seen possums. There’s lots of little animals around. Skunks.

Q: Do either of you have pets?

SRW: No.

SF: A cat.

Q: Sune, you should have a cat too.

SRW: Yeah.

SF: He had a dog but he didn’t like it, so he sold it.

SRW: I made a profit on it.

Q: Nice.

SRW: I should go into business.

Q: What kind of dog was it?

SRW: Pomeranian.

Q: I have a question that’s probably kind of impolite. How did you hurt your tooth?

SRW: It just fell out one day.

Q: Did it hurt?

SRW: No, it was just an old tooth. I used to have a lot of accidents as a kid so most of my teeth are fake or half fake.

Q: It’s charming though.

SRW: That’s what some people say. My mom doesn’t think it’s very charming. She thinks I look like a thug.

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I took photos of their show that night and you can check out their tour dates here.
And I recommend listening to Aly, Walk With Me.

I first heard Travis when I came across their song Why Does It Always Rain on Me? – it was in an episode of East Enders and Ian Beale was in a car, processing the discovery of his wife’s affair. It was raining. Perhaps it’s a strange way to discover a band but I have found EastEnders features many bands I have come to love. The Man Who, which came out in 1999 was actually Travis’ second album and it was obviously glorious. As good as Why Does It Always Rain on Me? is the album also featured The Fear and one of the most beautiful songs I suspect I will ever hear, Luv. Travis’ first album, Good Feeling, included All I Want to Do is Rock – still a great anthem – and Tied to the 90s. Tied to the 90s they aren’t, they’re more tied to being Travis and thank the heavens they’ve maintained their strengths through the new millennium. The Invisible Band and 12 Memories are brilliant albums as well – though perhaps 12 Memories had its detractors it’s my favorite Travis album in totality. Peace the Fuck Out indeed. 2007 saw the release of The Boy With No Name, a superbly charming panache with Closer and the stomper Selfish Jean. Now Travis has released Ode to J. Smith and struck out on their own with Red Telephone Box Records. It’s out now in the UK and will be released in the States on November 4th. You can hear several songs off it on their myspace page. They have succeeded again.

I talked with Fran Healy and Dougie Payne before their show at the Moore in 2007. It was before Healy moved to Berlin and Payne and wife, actress Kelly Macdonald became parents to Freddie Peter Payne. I wanted to find out what they thought about their home Glasgow, their new Prime Minister Gordon Brown . . . and how exactly these guys all found each other.

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Q: You were a scout when you were a kid?

Dougie Payne: Yes, I was! What on earth brought that up? Have you been looking at Wikipedia?

Q: So you learned how to do all the survival things?

DP: Yes I did. It’s funny, I was talking about this to my nephew the other day – he’s a scout now. I was asking him, what kind of stuff do you do? It seemed like it was hardcore when I was a scout compared to now – now it’s all trips abroad and going to Prague. When I was in it, it was sitting in the wet in the West Coast of Scotland and skinning rabbits. And sticking sticks up their asses to roast them over the fire. It was all pretty hardcore – maybe that was just growing up in the 80s - none of this nanny state that goes on now.

Q: They wanted to toughen you up right away.

DP: Exactly. It didn’t work.

Q: I just thought it was cute, they sent you out there to learn to survive on your own.

DP: As an eleven-year-old. They left us on an island once, a tiny little rock in the middle of the North Sea. They left us for two days to fend for ourselves, just the six of us. I remember that, that was good fun.

Q: That’s scary.

DP: It was good. Perfect training for going on tour.


Dougie Payne - Seattle 2007 - photo by Dagmar

[Fran Healy joins us.]

Q: I was just grilling Dougie on how he used to be a scout.

Fran Healy: He was. People love that - people love the scouts.

DP: Until quite late . . . until I was about 15.

FH: That’s quite impressive.

Q: You two met in school?

DP: Just after school . . . just before art school. So we were 17.

FH: Dougie knew Neil [Primrose], our drummer. He worked with Neil in a shoe shop.

DP: A scout shoe shop.

FH: Neil worked in a bar in Glasgow called the Horseshoe Bar and I used to go in there after school. I knew Dougie independently of Neil and Neil knew Dougie independently of me. Neil didn’t know you knew me and you didn’t know Neil knew me.

DP: Fran and I met just before you went for the audition for Glass Onion [Travis’ former name] –

FH: No, I went for that the day we matriculated in the art school. I met you way before that, like a year before that.

DP: That’s right, because Neil was working in the shoe shop and he said, we’ve got a singer coming in to audition. He was going on about this band, Glass Onion all the time. He was always playing with things that looked like drumsticks in the storeroom. He was always going on about Glass Onion, how we’re going to audition this singer who’s really good. And then I slowly put two and two together – it’s the same guy.

FH: The first week of art school Dougie and Andy got matey.

DP: They were giving away pound a pint Guinness and me and Andy got drunk and talking about the Monkees. We kind of all met each other very independently.

FH: I was in this band [with] Andy, myself and two brothers, eventually – five years later we got rid of the two brothers and Dougie came in. As soon as Dougie came in it became – it wasn’t a band that had advertised for anyone. It was just suddenly four mates. That was the keystone of the band, four friends. The weirder thing is that Dougie and Andy’s fathers go back twenty years – without them realizing.

DP: Me and Andy didn’t notice but they were both bank managers in different banks. Before they were bank managers they were clerks in different banks on the same street. Andy’s dad and my dad used to go for lunch together back in the 60s, when they were about our age when we met.

Q: How tough a city is Glasgow?

FH: Now I don’t think it’s any tougher than any other city. Every city’s got its –

DP: Glasgow is a bit fucking crazy though. Honestly I am not putting any bad adverts out but you and I both know people who have been punched or slashed out on the street. I haven’t heard of that anywhere –

FH: In London.

DP: I don’t know anyone in London that I personally know that’s been – maybe it’s because London is a bigger city.

FH: It’s got a reputation that stems from the 60s. Places like Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield . . .they’re all places that are traditionally working class and not particularly wealthy. They’re based on heavy industry, like Sheffield and steelworks. When the heavy industry leaves there seems to be a build up of testosterone. Maybe it comes out in ways that it shouldn’t. There are aspects of it [Glasgow] that are tough but it’s a great city.

DP: It’s a brilliant city.

FH: I think it’s definitely becoming more civilized.

Q: I was impressed when you had those terrorists drive into the airport and people started beating them up.

FH: That’s Glasgow. That’s quite Glasgow. There’s a website dedicated to one of those guys called johnsmeaton.com. Only in Glasgow would people actually run towards . . .

DP: Try to get a boot in. You come to Glasgow and you’re not going to get away with that. I like that attitude towards terrorism.


Fran Healy - Seattle 2007 - photo by Dagmar

Q: Fran, I read you’re planning to move to Germany.

FH: Yeah, to Berlin. My wife is German and I want to change the backdrop. We thought Berlin would be a good place. New York was a place we were going to go to but before we go there we’re going to Berlin. It’s closer to our mothers and the boy’s grandmothers. New York’s just too far away.

Q: How’s being a dad changed you?

FH: It makes me want to work harder. I enjoy my job more. I feel more mature – but that might have nothing to do with being a father. It might just be to do with being 34-years-old and having been doing this job for 10 years. All I know that as a father, as a parent, it’s great. It’s a pleasure watching someone grow up and to be there for them and not judge them. Let them become who they’re going to become. Obviously they’re going to pick up traits of you and other people. It’s such a nice thing to see.

Q: Dougie do you know if you’re having a boy or a girl?

DP: No, Kel was quite keen to know. She wanted to know if she was having a boy – she said she wanted to know if she’s got wee balls. But then a friend of mine said, don’t find out - it’s the only time in your life that you get to meet somebody with absolutely no preconceptions whatsoever. I told Kel that and she was like, that’s quite good.


Q: I read you like to test music on kids?

FH: I was kind of worried at first because I would play Clay music and he would just sit, motionless. He wouldn’t move a muscle when he listened to music – for a year. For over a year he had no reaction to music. If he had a reaction it was to sit really still – almost in a trance. Now he’s started to dance and I think he’s started to sing. Anything melodic on the radio that comes on he goes, Paba. I’m Paba.

DP: Like Robbie Williams.

FH: Robbie Williams came on the radio and I was like, son – no! I was thinking last night actually about how when I grew up I didn’t have any musical instruments around me and I gravitated towards them. To do music as a career it’s a whole different ball game but just playing an instrument . . . if you’ve always got them around you, you will gravitate towards them. When I was first gravitating towards them it was always this thing you couldn’t get. There was always this guitar and it was always in a window or in a catalog.

Q: How is Gordon Brown doing?

DP: We don’t really know at the moment because we’ve been away for months. In general I think he’s great. I really like him. I met him once at a premiere of one of my wife’s films and I thought he was fantastic. I thought he was the exact opposite of the way he’s portrayed in the British media. He’s portrayed as very dour and very serious and not particularly charming. He is incredibly charismatic, very intelligent, really charming and a really nice guy. He’s got a lovely way about him. During the Blair years – which were full of optimism and playing with the media and all that I feel like there’s a grown up in charge again rather than a celebrity. I don’t want a celebrity running the country, I want a decent politician. He seems like a pretty decent guy.

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For more photos of their show at the Moore, click here.

I talked with 2/3rds of Israel’s Monotonix before their sold out show in Seattle. Ami Shalev, singer and Yonatan Gat, guitarist and I sat down in front of the Comet Tavern on Saturday night. Passersby chatted them up. We gained a fellow-interviewer. A hotdog vendor did brisk business and a fire truck raced by.

The hard-rocking, hard-touring trio Monotonix, including new drummer Haggai Fershtman, are probably coming to a city very near you if you live in the States or the UK. Their music and shows are genuinely awesome and you have every reason to check them out. Plus these guys have a wry sense of humor - quite a few of their responses to my questions were tongue in cheek, although I would believe these foxy guys are fighting off chicks and maybe I believe that the drummer is a good businessman.

Q: Do you ever get injured during your shows?

Yonatan Gat: I got this three weeks ago in Portland. [He points out a cut above his right eyebrow].

Q: Did you get stitches?

YG: No, we had to fly to New York so we didn’t have time.

Q: So you just toughed it out.

YG: I guess.

Ami Shalev: Nothing really serious – except I broke a shoulder.

Q: That’s pretty serious.

AS: Nah, I was in the Army.

Q: I wanted to ask you about that – I read you were a tank commander? What did that involve?

AS: Hard training, discipline, girls, mud, dust –

YG: Gourmet food. Grease. Women.

Q: That sounds pretty good.

AS: It’s a glamour job.

Q: What’s the craziest thing a fan has done?

YG: A woman?

Q: It could be a woman. Are they just crazy all the time?

AS: Yes, the girls are crazy about us. They get crazy only when they see us.

YG: Even before we were in the band, like just walking down the street.

Q: That would be awesome.

YG: I have to push them away – I walk around with a bat.

Q: A bat?

YG: A baseball bat, to scare the women away.

Q: That would work, but some of them might like that.

YG: That’s the problem.

Q: Does the audience ever get angry about anything you do while playing live?

AS: Only when we play too short. That’s the reason most of the people get angry.

Q: I can understand that.

Q: I was impressed how you calmed the crowd at Bumbershoot when the show got shut down early.

AS: Like Dan Deacon says, safety is first.


Shalev drums on the crowd - photo by Dagmar

Q: Yonatan, I came across something about you having to give up your cat?

YG: I had to give away my cat because we tour so much.

Q: Did he find a home?

YG: He’s staying with a friend of my ex-girlfriend. She likes him a lot. Did you see the picture of the cat?

Q: I did, he’s beautiful.

YG: Pretty cute. He’s very beautiful, but he’s very mean too.

[In case you're wondering, in the notice for the cat the Hebrew means inoculated and fixed.]

Q: Is it hard to find places to stay in all the cities since you tour so much?

YG: On our first tour we used to ask people after the show, hey can we crash at your house? This is the first tour we can actually afford hotels.

Q: Now you can spend your money on other things.

AS: Wait, what do you mean by that?

YG: Like for hotdogs.

AS: We’re saving the money for bad times. For the children.

[At this point a guy to see the show sits next to us. He talks about Dan Deacon to Shalev and Gat.]

Q: Do you ever lose each other?

YG: Sometimes I have no idea what our drummer is talking about.

AS: I always have no idea what he’s talking about.

[Now the guy next to us asks me to find out if they’re going to get naked for the show.]

Q: He wants to know if you’re going to get naked tonight.

AS: Yes.

YG: If you pay us. Maybe I’ll get naked if somebody pays me. How much are you willing to pay?

Q: We’d have to negotiate – I’ve only got so much money . . . Were you very musical in school?

YG: One day they had to choose people to sing for graduation, they kicked me out. Out of 60 people they chose 50 and I was one of the 10 they kicked out.

Q: That’s sad.

YG: Now I am playing a sold-out show in Seattle and I am showing them that they were wrong.

AS: I was always out of tune. Right now I’m still out of tune but . . .

[Now a fire truck races by.]

AS: Fire Marshall.

Q: They got here early. [Monotonix has actually set fires as part of their shows – so you never know.]


Gat and Fershtman seize the center of the Comet - photo by Dagmar (on stage taking this picture)

Q: Have you been able to do any sightseeing in Seattle?

YG: We went to Lake Washington.

AS: We saw Jimi Hendrix’s gave and Kurt Cobain’s house.

Q: Yonatan, do you ever get worried about what Ami is going to do next live?

YG: Only that he’s going to put a trash can on my head.

Q: I saw him do that to the drummer.

AS: He’s the victim – he’s the ultimate victim.

Q: Have you started the next cd?

YG: We’ve written a couple of songs – we’re going to record it in the spring, in San Francisco.

Q: Ami, I read an interview with David Berman where he mentions your Dad escaped the Nazis?

AS: He was in the Holocaust. He had to run away from the Nazis when he was 9 years old. He ran away from Europe. His brother was five and his sister was seven. The funny thing is that they ran away with a group of Jewish people to Iran. From Iran they came to Israel.

Q: What is it about Monotonix that’s making you so popular in the US?

AS: Our English is perfect, especially mine. I don’t know why.

YG: Our drummer is a very good businessman. This is kind of like an oxymoron – the drummer is a good businessman. It can’t be.

Q: How do you stay in shape for all this touring?

AS: We eat a lot of Little Debbie Snacks.

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For more photos of their show click here.
You can also see in some of the photos how Shalev was again able to command the audience and get them to sit down on the floor of the Comet.


Gat, Me!, Shalev - September 27, 2008

-This interview appeared originally on Little Radio.-

The Presets are an electronic/pop duo from Sydney, Australia. They just released Apocalypso, their follow-up to 2006’s Beams – both cds are excellent - and are set to tour the States in September and October with fellow Australians, Cut Copy.
I talked to the Presets’ drummer and co-writer, Kim Moyes from London. Moyes has a fantastic sense of humor and even answered some of my stranger questions about Cane Toads and masks.

Q: So you’re in London? I noticed you have a lot of shows there.

Kim Moyes: We just did a festival yesterday called Get Loaded and then we did another one called Creamfields. We’re kind of in London all the time and jet-setting around, doing festivals in Europe.

Q: You travel a lot. Do you have any pets at home?

K.M.: No. A girlfriend – a very patient girlfriend. I’m not that cruel to get pets. I suppose she could look after them but I don’t know how well she’d do.

Q: Were both of you (in the Presets) fans of Pet Shop Boys?

K.M.: Yeah, we still are. We weren’t sort of obsessive fans. I think we like what they do in terms of pop music. They’re really quite camp – and there’s one guy, you don’t really know what he does. They’ve always kind struck of as kind of weird and they’ve always had crazy video clips and flamboyant shows.

Q: How come you two weren’t wrestling in the milk in the video for This Boy’s in Love?

K.M.: We were meant to be standing in purgatory or something seeing these two people fighting. I don’t know why weren’t in it – that’s just the way the treatment came through.

Q: It’s a great video. Did it take a long time to get rid of all that dust you had flying all over you?

K.M.: It did actually – at least three showers and a couple of antihistamines.

Q: How did you find the director, Caspar Balslev?

K.M. He was great – like all directors they come in to the shoot and they’re really excited and then they get into this crazy detail about what’s going to happen and it gets a bit lost on you when you’re not a filmmaker or whatever. They’re all very passionate about what they’re doing and love to tell you about it. It’s all going over your head but you’re like, that sounds pretty cool.

Q: I don’t know how often you still use them in shows, but they’re have been a few pix of you guys in masks. Are there ones you seek out or is it a coincidence?

K.M.: The mask thing just kind of happened when we were waiting to pick up our girlfriends in Byron Bay and they were coming in on a plane about an hour later than us. So we went into this shop – it was like a fancy dress store – and they had these masks. They were just these plastic, clear masks with features on them – but if you put them on it kind of looks like you, but like a weird, older version. That was the first time we ever used them. The guy who does all of our artwork, Jonathan Zawada kind of saw that and ran with it. He’s really into skulls and masks and really exotic, weird and wonderful looking stuff. He got some masks for our first album cover and then it sort of developed into the second album cover, where a piece of bark became a mask and I was dressed up like a pumpkin. I’ve got some friends who go to parties dressed up and they really go out of their way to do really strange things when they go out. I guess people like Lee Bowery – those people from the 80s – you know, like Party Monster with Macaulay Culkin? It’s based on this whole New York dance scene and there was this really famous guy called Lee Bowery and he had this costume that would zip up over his face. He’d make these masks that were kind of like gimp masks but really elaborate, really colorful. We’ve got friends who are really into that kind of stuff. We’re always getting inspired by them.

Q: I like that. That’s cool . . . so Byron Bay, you did the second album there?

K.M.: A friend of ours has a farm. We’d been doing so much touring so we went up there to get away from all the distractions and make a start on the new record. We kind of had a mini-holiday and switched on the creative brain after all that touring. It gets damaged after playing the same music every night for three years. We got to go swimming every day. There were cows.

Q: It was a cattle farm - for food?

K.M.: No, it’s more a hobby farm. There were about 15-30 cattle.

Q: So they’re kind of like pets.

K.M.: Kind of.

Q: That’s good . . . this is kind of a weird question but do you ever see Cane Toads?

K.M.: Yes, they’re in Queensland. They were introduced in Queensland to get rid of these sugar cane bugs that were eating all the sugar cane. The bugs in the cane were like crickets, or something like that – they were damaging all the plants so they brought these Cane Toads in to eat the bugs. And of course Cane Toads don’t have any natural predators in Australia. A dog knows not to eat a Cane Toad because it will die. It has poison on the back of it – no animal can eat a Cane Toad. There’s an epidemic of a plague of them now and no one knows how to get rid of them. They’re really stupid and have no natural predator so they have no guard. You can just walk up to one and kick it. There are a lot of mean people. But in some areas if you walk out into your backyard the [toads] are everywhere, like in a horror film. And some people try to smoke their skin as well because apparently it’s hallucinogenic. I don’t know anyone who’s actually done it – I wouldn’t recommend it.

Q: Do you two ever argue, like on tour?

K.M.: There are moments when we get on each other’s nerves. You’ve got six dudes in a tour bus, every day. It’s a great life but there is a lot of boring, getting to the airports on time . . . stress for an hour of music a day. When you see situations arise you step back. We had a funny situation on one of our first tours. We were away from home for four months’ straight and we were on tour with the Rapture. The whole four months we didn’t have a crew, we did all the lugging, all the setting up, all the breaking down – everything. For four months we didn’t have one argument - except when we were packing up after the very last show. It was about whether or not I could put this new guitar pedal that I’d bought into the case or in my suitcase - if I put it in with the gear it would put it over the baggage allowance weight (we were going to Japan). We were yelling at each other in the middle of a car park in front of everybody about the stupidest thing. Sometimes it’s healthy to blow off some steam.

Q: The Presets have quite a large gay following – is it to do with the dance scene?

K.M.: Definitely. I mean in Australia we were first embraced by the gay community. The dance scene in Australia is very homocentric. We have massive clubs and we have the big gay and lesbian Mardi Gras once a year.
A lot of it is quite commercial but there’s a cool underground dance scene as well. It comes back to things like Pet Shop Boys, Bronski Beat and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Those are the people who like to party the most, have a good time the most and show the least inhibition. It’s always been a real attractive thing for us – that freedom. I don’t mean to sound patronizing, it’s just a good fucking time. No matter what city we’re in we’ve had a gay following – and I guess it helps with the homo, like “fauxmo” thing that we do – playing up to it. We always said when we started out we wanted to milk the pink dollar.

Q: Did you learn to play drums when you were very small?

K.M.: Yeah, I started when I was about eight. I could barely reach the pedals. My sister started having lessons – and it was group lesson – and I really wanted to go. She went twice, and I just continued.

Q: Are your fans different, like in the U.S. compared to Australia?

K.M.: I think everywhere you go people are pretty much the same – obviously little bits of differences. I’m just talking as someone who stands up on the stage and looks out at the crowd. In Australia it’s a lot more advanced for us – the crowds are bigger. The reach has gotten more suburban whereas before it used to be more inner city and I guess hipster orientated. Those people like that are every where in the world . . . Istanbul. There’s almost the same kind of night club every where – kind of indie-disco. Now that we’re getting a bit bigger in some of the major cities people are starting to react more like they would back home. When we first started playing back home no one knew quite what to do and then they developed this kind of way getting into it. I’ve always felt it’s warmer for us in the States than anywhere else. People are kind of up for it. I think people in the States dance better than anywhere else. They really know how to dance. In Australia people don’t really dance together, they do this kind of weird robot dance. The States are just groovier, I can’t explain it. You guys should pat yourselves on the back.

Q: Before you worked as a musician you were teaching – what other types of jobs did you have?

K.M.: When I finished Uni I was teaching part time, one or two days a week, at various Catholic Girls schools. They never turned up – some were cool. I picked up a part time job for six months at a corporate recruitment company and I was the receptionist. That was bad. I was so bad at that. I was really grumpy. I was trying to be nice . . . we have this thing called the dole, I guess it’s like benefits – don’t know what you call it there. I went on unemployment benefits for four years and started the Presets. I worked every day and vowed never to have to do anything unrelated to music again. I saw it as kind of like an arts loan. You have to have meetings with these people at the dole office and explain to them what you do. It wasn’t like I was sitting at home smoking weed and watching television. I was working hard and learning about electronic music. I worked in a library for three years when I was at Uni. I worked in supermarkets – I worked at McDonald’s, that was my first job.

Q: What’s your favorite drink (alcohol-drink)?

K.M.: I’m really into vodka apple at the moment and we were in Munich the other day and this guy was telling us about the Russian way to have vodka. So you have a shot of vodka and then you have a pickle and then you have a beer. It’s so delicious. It really gives you a nice buzz.

Q: The tour with Cut Copy starts in mid- September?

K.M.: It officially starts on my birthday, the 15th of September, in Kansas City Missouri. We’ll be in Seattle on the 8th of October at the Showbox.

Q: Are you going to do any dj-ing?

K.M.: Possibly. We’re in a tour bus with Cut Copy so we’ll probably have to split after the shows to get to the next city. I think along the way I think there will be a couple little soirees.

Q: You guys are going to be on the same bus?

K.M.: Yeah, don’t rub it in. Twelve dudes. Normally when we tour there are twelve beds and six guys. Now we’ve get twelve stinking men on the bus. I think this tour will end the relationship I have with Cut Copy. We’ll all crack the States but we’ll all hate each other in the end. It will be worth it.

Brent Amaker and Mason Lowe of Brent Amaker and the Rodeo met up with me at the Cha Cha Lounge a bit ago and let me ask them all sorts of questions. I had heard they'd spent some time in a Belgian prison, well okay, played at a Belgian prison - and I was also curious about where these guys came from and what they're going to do next.

Q: This band seems very together, very focussed.

Brent Amaker: I model it after the Ramones, the Briefs -

Mason Lowe: Devo.

B.A.: Any cool band that has a very defined image and they just go for it. That's what we're about. I mean, we're cowboys – we're doing the old school cowboy thing. When the Rodeo gets onstage or we put out a record, people know exactly what they're going to get. Every time. You may like it, you may not, but you'll always know what to expect. There's going to be drinking, asskicking, songs about girls and drugs and cowboy themes –

Q: And whiskey?

B.A.: Yeah. We've got the intercontinental thing. Mason calls us intercontinental cowboys. We're going to travel anywhere who will have us – we're going to Japan next. We put Japanese on our record cover – Japan's going to love us.

Q: Why do you think the Europeans have taken so well to you?

B.A.: I think anybody outside of Seattle loves us. It's just because we're from here – Seattle's a really tough market. They're starting to get it here. We did a US tour last year and we can play to any crowd anywhere and we walk in in our cowboy outfits, do what we do and people freak out. I'm not trying to be cocky but it's so unique. There are real country fans that like us (but) on our US tour last year we played with metal bands and the metal crowds loved us. The heavy metal people totally dig it. I think it's about being well-defined.

M.L.: In Europe the cowboy image is so exotic. Our take on it is a little different.

B.A.: The real hardcore country people like us, but they're a little confused. We all came from the rock scene - we all played in rock bands. We kind of have our own take on old-time country music. When we play to rock crowds, they understand what's going on. I think there's a potential for a mainstream country market to grab onto it..

Q: I think so too.

B.A.: But it would be really weird. I want to be to country music what the White Stripes were for rock. They did the old rock thing and people really dug it. Rock music was totally going in the wrong direction and they came out and said this is what cool old rock music is about.

Q: But I have heard some Keith Urban I liked – I haven't heard all of his material.

B.A.: The director of the video for Sissy New Age Cowboy had me dressed up in a Keith Urban outfit. It was humiliating to have wardrobe come in and say I had to wear this sleeveless shirt that didn't flatter me very well. But I did it.

Q: That's a great video.

B.A.: We shot that over at Manray before they tore it down.

M.L.: We did it at Manray and at Havana.

Q: I was wondering where that part in the counter was shot.

M.L: That was like the 500th guy who had his pants pulled down at that counter. A balloon came down with 500 on it.

B.A.: We shot it about a week before it shut down. I think we immortalized it.

Q: Especially with the steak-eating.

B.A.: That was actually my idea. When we were doing the storyboards I asked, can we do a scene where I eat steak? I really want to eat steak.

Q: Being served steak by women.

B.A.: Yeah, it was kind of a dream of mine. I could do that all the time. If we ever really make it, watch out. . .

Q: What are some of the stranger things that have happened to the band?

B.A.: We have really bizarre stuff happen to us everyday when we're on tour. A weird thing for me is, we'll be in Holland playing at a club we've never played at before and we're loading our gear and someone yells, Brent Amaker – play Reno! That's myspace.

M.L.: People in Holland are on their computers all the time. They have a mouse in one hand and a bong in the other.

B.A.: Pot's legal over there and everybody acts like you're a child if you smoke pot. They're like I did that when I was twelve years old. I think they get really sick of the Americans coming over to get legal pot.

M.L.: We spent a lot of time in Belgium. Every town is like Enumclaw – it's like 90 Enumclaws held together by a network of roads. It's all farmers and factory type people. I don't know why we were there – it's just where we ended up.

B.A.: We had a house there.

M.L.: We played a lot of shows there and the people would just stare at us.

B.A.: We always had to play two sets every time we played a show in Belgium. The first set they would stare at us the whole time. The second set – they were into it and clapping. But it was always like we were warming up for ourselves – we had to be our own warm-up band, which is really hard.

Q: I kind of like that idea.

B.A.: We worked hard for that second set. They were completely sober during the first set, and then the beer started flowing. . .

Q: Have you had any hostile crowds?

B.A.: The prison got pretty scary. Half the prisoners loved us, and the other half weren't sure. There were people yelling f**k America. You weren't sure if they were happy or if they were going to riot.

Q: But they stuck around?

B.A.: They had no choice, they were in a prison.

Q: I walked right into that one.

B.A.: They were by definition a captive audience. Guards were there to make sure they stuck around. This was a maximum-security prison. We rolled in and these metal doors slammed down and the guards took our passports away. We all got this uneasy feeling – we're in a foreign country, in a maximum-security prison and this guy just took our passports away. They weren't going to give them back to us until we finished our show and left. It was a little creepy feeling.

Q: Who's the one who had his hat stolen?

B.A.: Lewis, he's not playing with us anymore. We're working on a list of howdy dos and howdy don'ts. Getting your hat stolen is a howdy don't. Girls like to take your hat at shows. They'll grab it – and we have terror alert levels and send another cowboy to get your hat back. You don't want to flatter her by trying to get the hat. We don't want to encourage the hat-taking. We're serious about our hats. In Holland we had people show up dressed like us. Like Kiss. We bought one of their hats [to replace the stolen one].

Q: Who's the most difficult to tour with?

M.L.: Sugar [bassist].

Q: You all seem like easy-going guys.

B.A.: It's the cowboy suits. I have a theory. It's like with sunglasses – no one can really see you, no one can see your eyes. The outfit is like sunglasses for your whole body.

Q: So let's talk about the label, GraveWax Records.

B.A.: It's really a perfect situation for us. One of the owners lives in Jenna, Germany and the other one lives in Texas. From what I understand they have better distribution in Europe than in the US even. They have good distribution in the US but they are hooked up with a really good distributor in Europe. Our record's going to be on the shelf everywhere in Europe. The more shit happens there, the better we'll do here.

Q: Are you going back to Europe soon?

B.A.: There's a festival in Berlin called Popkomm that we played last year – we're going to play that again in October and then do a short tour around that in Germany. Our record comes out on November 4th in the US and in November we're going to start with a three-week US tour. We're definitely going to the south.

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Brent Amaker and the Rodeo are set to play the Ellensburg Rodeo August 29th and 30th. After that they're starting a big tour, including 5 days in NYC in October.
I reviewed both of their cds earlier - I recommend them and their shows. Don't miss them.