What made you decide that music is a thing for you?
Music really became a thing for me (Austin) when I met Chuck (big funs bass player) in the 2nd grade. If I had never seen Chuck jamming in his moms garage I would have missed out on a deeper connection to music.
Introduce us to you and your musical history.:
That’s where the musical relationship with Chuck really started way back in second grade, after that first day I was back in that garage every day singing with him and his little brother Tyler. We must have formed at least 6 or 7 different bands each with their own name and style. We went through a lot of genres and Nick (big funs drummer) came into the picture when we were experimenting with funk and no-wave styles. That was a little later in jr high school haha.
What was life like for you before music?
Before I met Chuck and got into music I was about 10 years old so life pretty much revolved around chicken nuggets and N64.
What was the first song you heard that steered you into a music path?:
We grew up in the CD era and used to listen to entire albums even as kids, so I’ll say the first CD that hooked me was Limp Bizkit’s “Significant Other” The second one was Gorillaz self titled those two albums were on heavy repeat in my dads Ford Explorer.
Where do you feel you currently sit within the music industry?
We’ve been doing this for a while and released our first demos around 2017 so I think we’re pretty well seated in the underground music world of California and other parts of the country. Playing in the underground and DIY community is awesome and we get to play with alot of forward thinking bands and artists, but you can only exist in the underground world for so long until you feel like you have to do something else.
What’s the biggest thing you have learned from someone else in the industry? :
I collaborate musically with Eduardo Arenas from Chicano Batman a big thing he got me wise to was not to play the same city over and over again, and build up a couple of months of suspense before you play your hometown again. Also, our drummer Nick learned how important PR is talking to bands in NY the last time we were there.
Tell us Two truths and a lie about you.
Austin was born in NY
Chuck Is French
Nick can hum every solo note for note on Herbie Hancock’s 1973 masterpiece “Head Hunters”
If you could wish for one thing to aid your career what would it be?
If anything could aid our career it would be a booking agent to help us get a solid tour with a bigger act, and just help us book tours in general. I booked the last 4 and it’s a lot of work. Getting signed to a label would be nice too.
Do you ever worry about people taking things the wrong way or cancel culture? Discuss….
I think cancel culture can be paralyzing to progress if it’s used for the wrong reasons. The line between being just and being overly sensitive has gotten pretty blurred. Things start to become pretty hairy when you see comedians getting censored. It seems like we’re moving away from that type of thinking more recently though which is nice.
Do you sign up to any conspiracy theories? If not why not?
I believe there is life on Mars
What was the worst experience on stage?
We had a pretty miserable show in San Antonio Texas. Somehow we ended up booking our first show ever in the area at this big venue called the Rock Box. It’s a two stage venue-we were playing the smaller room and Drowning Pool was playing the room upstairs.
You could hear them blasting off the whole time we were there and on top of that the only people that came to our show were the members of the band that was opening for us. At the end of the night the promoter was really upset and it was a sad drive to the hotel. Also, I fart on stage all the time and wonder if the people in the front row can smell it.
What makes you stand out as a band/artist?
For as long as we’ve been doing this we haven’t run into a band that sounds like us. They might share some similar qualities but there just isn’t another band combining heavy synth sounds with pocket drum and bass the way that Chuck and Nick do it. Our standing out in some ways makes it harder to progress because there’s a limited amount of bigger bands out there that we could piggyback off of on a tour. But at the end of the day, our goal is to always push music forward and try to do something new and unique.
I hear you have a new music video, what can you tell us about it:
This is the music video for our cover of Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake. I’ve always been a big fan of early 2000’s pop and its kind of in the DNA of my songwriting. We wanted the video to be 3 different scenes-each of them being moments of controlled chaos. There was no script or predetermined sequence of actions crazy little party clusters. The first one is just a cybertronic party bus with our friends and camgirls/porn stars. The second one was a DIY backyard show in the riverside at a legendary punk house. And the third one was me getting worked over by local musician Dove Armitage.
What was the recording process like?
We recorded mixed and produced the song completely on our own in a sewing factory in Commerce CA. Our drummer Nick was the chief sound engineer and mixer.
What was the biggest learning curve in writing the new tunes?:
The biggest hurdle in writing new music as a band is trying to match that initial feeling of magic we all felt in the room playing together for the first time. Something about that energy was the catalyst for the entire project. It’s a hard thing to do because by the time you play a new song the 2nd time not new anymore.
Would you change anything now it’s finished?
The thing we regret about the Sexy Back cover is not recycling the JT riff and making an original that sounds like Sexy Back but isn’t. Maybe we’ll do that in the future.
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