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By: Ryan Grandov
DPC: It seems like all the band members come from varied backgrounds, what brought you all together?
SM: We’ve known each other since middle school. I was born and raised in Almaden in South San Jose. Dave the drummer moved here when he was in 4th or 5th grade and Eric the singer moved here in 8th grade from the east coast. Eric and I are the same year and Dave is one year younger. In high school Eric and Dave played football and I sat in my room and played
guitar. Dave’s been in bands since he was like 12. I remember going to a concert for his band Potbelly in the backyard of his friend’s house when I was a freshman in high school. I was in a metal band in called Exile, but we didn't really do anything besides play church talent shows and shit. After high school I went to UCSD and spent most of the time writing punk songs in my closet on to a 4-track. Dave went to UCLA and got a drum set. He practiced in an apartment (which I still don't understand, but it worked for him). Eric went to Santa Barbara City College and got fat as hell, but he started playing guitar. He moved down to Hollywood to act, and he also started recording in his closet. We had all talked about playing together since we got out of high school, but we were all so far apart it never happened.
 Then a couple of years ago we had a bad thing happen to Almaden as a community and Eric was spending a lot of time up in San Jose. He was pretty much living at my house and we started writing songs. We called up Dave to come over and jam, we started playing 'double brown' and 'hopscotch girl' and felt like we had something decent that we could build on. We are from an area where all of our parents are very hard working 9-5ers. They bust their ass everyday, put their money into 401ks and will retire comfortably. We all love music, but we also have our parents in the back of our heads telling us to give it up. The reason we are so serious and crazy about this band is because there are a lot of “I told you so’s” we want to hand out when this becomes something more.
DPC: It seems like all of you have been together for a long time. Do you think that affects the way you're music sounds? Everyone draws inspiration from different sources, can you name a few bands or people that influenced your music?
SM: We have known each other for a long time, but have only been writing together for a couple years. I think the biggest affect for the amount of time we’ve known each other is we can have a full on argument and tell the other exactly what we're thinking and it doesn't effect the group. It's like fighting with a brother. You hate and love each other at the same time and you get over the arguments pretty quickly. I think all of us are trying to do something that other people haven't. I know we take from other rock reggae bands but we really try hard to do it differently. What we notice is a trend of the rock/reggae bands as being either a rock song or a reggae song. We completely mash the two sounds together so our rock or punk is influenced by reggae, and the reggae hints at rock. We think we have a pretty cohesive sound, but we are sort of biased in our opinion. We listen to all kinds of different shit and influences come out very differently.
Dave and I will usually write the music and Eric will write the lyrics. Dave and I come up with songs where Eric thinks we're retards and has no idea what to put over the top of it, which is awesome. I love it when he goes, “dude, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” Those usually come out to be the coolest songs because he is uncomfortable with the music so he
writes a completely different style to try fit it. We pretty much just buttfuck each other with our ideas so it pushes the others to write differently or better (depending on your point of view).
 DPC: Did you guys inherit the work ethic from your parents? How do your day jobs affect what happens at night?
SM: Dave works with his dad and brother at the world famous Moon's Best Cleaners in the South Bay. Eric actually just got off his lazy ass and got a job as some sort of a security system installer. I don't know, but he bitches about climbing in ceilings and fishing wire through walls.
As far as teaching affecting the band, I don't really think about it. Sometimes I worry about stupid pictures I took or dumb shit I did on our tour videos, but other than that it is two completely separate things. I think it would ruin the music to be thinking about how my colleagues and students will react to the stuff we do. I don't really care what they think. I am only a teacher for 7 hours a day. To tell you the truth, I work with a lot of very supportive people who are excited I’m in a band and go play shows all the time. They have really been great.
DPC: You guys are going to be featured in some of DPC Film's videos coming up, have you been connected with the sport before or is this your first time being involved in wakeboarding?
SM: This is our first time on a wakeboarding video but we actually just played a tournament up by Chico for the Northern California WWA. We set all our shit up out on a dock and rocked out with the wake boarders coming right by us. It was so sick.
DPC: It looks like you guys have been playing some nice locations, how are all of you handling the glory? With all of you guys working your ass off at day jobs, is the band number one priority?
SM: We aren't doing this to fuck around. We are having the time of our lives playing shows, getting more attention, and expanding the potential of the band. We have fun, but we aren't jerking off with our instruments; we mean business. We want to make San Jose the music scene it should be with this amount of people and we want to do this for a living. We aren't going to be happy until we can get up for work on a tour bus in Middle America and go melt some faces. That's the job we want. People act like this is a hobby, but it is far from it.
 DPC: How is the San Jose music scene now? You said that a lot of your colleagues come to shows to support you, have you been getting out of the bay area or have you been staying local?
SM: The local scene in San Jose is pretty weak. There are not very many venues that draw in big names so if you play somewhere you have to promote your ass off to get people to come out. We have been getting out of town as much as possible, going down to Long Beach, out to Sacramento, we've played Bakersfield a lot, Vegas, Tempe, and we are heading out to New Mexico and Texas in the winter to support our album.
DPC: It Sounds like you guys have been traveling a lot, so what would your ideal tour be? Hopping on a tour bus and going across the US or heading to Europe? What would your perfect venue be?
SM: The perfect tour would definitely be the Warped Tour, the whole goddamn thing. Getting to go on tour with so many great bands all over the Unted States in the middle of summer would be the shit. We grew up with the Warped Tour as our “Christmas in July.” We love the WT roots bands like Pennywise, NOFX, Bad Religion, Less Than Jake, Rancid, and the Bouncing Souls. We were on one date last year and it made our whole summer. Kevin Lyman, if you are reading this, I love you, please put us on the '07 tour!!! Honestly, at this point, going anywhere and everywhere with a couple other bands that are down to earth and fun to party with would be rad. Fans are nice too. And definitely a tour with fans so we don't have to play to the bartender (which has happened a couple of times).
DPC: Have there ever been any thoughts of adding any members to the band?
SM: We have thought about adding members, an extra guitarist, a keyboardist, but we have such a good relationship having known each other for so long that it would be too difficult to add a “stranger” to the mix. Besides, nothing is better than three guys able to hold their own on the stage!!
DPC: I know inspiration comes from everywhere, are there any songs that you guys play that really reminds of you a certain time or place that you were at with the band?
 SM: The first songs we wrote really mean a lot to us. Double Brown is like our first girlfriend, so it is impossible to do a set without throwing that in there. We’re all still in love with that song like we were 2 years ago. A lot of the new songs are great because they are so different from the first ones, plus we really stretched ourselves in writing them. Eric hated most of the music that Dave and I were giving him because he had no idea what to sing over it because it was so different for him. When we go back and listen to them it gives us all a real sense of accomplishment because we were able to be very uncomfortable during the writing process and still managed to pull a good song out of our ass.
DPC: Alright guys, thanks for the words! Any memorable stories you want to leave us with?
SM: The only story that we can share (a lot we wish to keep to ourselves if you know what I mean) is we got the Warped Tour in Sacramento. We were all pumped up, we had been looking forward to it for months, and as we were taking our gear out we realized that Dave had left all of his drum hardware back in San Jose. Luckily we were lucky enough to be playing with some very nice guys that let us use theirs, but it was rough for a while. |
