October 10, 1998 - The Daily Grind, Fells Point, Baltimore, MD

B = Brandt Huseman \\ S = Stephanie (Popstar) \\ P = Paul Krysiak

B: Can I start the interview with this question? Are you anal-retentive? [In reference to my unprofessional list of questions to be asked.]

S: Yeah, to some degree. See the only reason I did this is because I kinda got excited about this and knew I would completely forget about everything I wanted to ask. I mean, I would think of questions and think, "Hey, I wanna ask this!" and before I wrote them down they were out of my head.

B: I do that going to like the video store. I get excited about renting a movie and then I can’t remember what I want.

S: And then going to a music store. "I want this CD so bad!"

S & B (together): "What was it again?"

B: And then I always end up looking at Husker Du. I’ll end up looking at the standards when I go to a store and think, "Shit, I’ve had these albums before on tape."

S: I do the same thing. I look at stuff I already…

B: own.

S: It’s pathetic.

B: "Well, they’ve got that!"

S & B: "I already own that!"

S: "Cool, they actually have that in stock!" But anyway, these aren’t my exact wordings or anything.

B: Okay.

S: I mean, I was told, "Don’t have a prepared list of questions," but I went against that.

B: Tough shit.

S: Okay, just to start things off. What are your thoughts on the Clinton scandal?

B: You had to open that door, did you?

P: She really wants to know. Do you really want to know?

S: Oh yes! Come on… I want the whole soap box!

B: I’ll tell ya… I’ll give you the short and dirty. Um, let the people decide. Don’t let the Republicans decide, it shouldn’t be a partisan thing. If anything else, if we should vote on anything in this country, it should be that issue. If they are going to start an impeachment process we should just all vote, anyone who wants to vote can vote, the same as any regular election, and put my ass out there and…

P: Okay, now here’s why Brandt is a complete idiot. If ever there was an uneducable mass of people, this country’s populous. The voting public will believe what they are told to believe if they are told it long enough. Uh… Clinton… Never in the history of politics has there been one guy who had so many well organized enemies who would go to any lengths to unseat him, to get him. And this has been, what, his entire political career and especially the last term and a half or so. It has been an extremely organized campaign on all fronts to get this guy on anything we can get him and we start with a bad land deal. We can’t find anything. We start with a dead cabinet member. We can’t find anything. So we keep going and we keep going and finally we get to that he got a blowjob a few times and he didn’t want anyone to know about it. WOW! That’s a major crime!

B: Why can’t people vote on it?

P: Because people are stupid.

B: So? People are stupid and they vote for the president.

P: That’s why we have a representative system of government to protect the country from its own stupidity.

B: Well that’s part of the problem. They don’t represent us. I’ll tell ya, by public polls, obviously the Senate didn’t represent the people.

P: Good (moot?) point.

B: Public poll says we don’t care.

P: You know what though? That’s stupid too. The public should care. They just shouldn’t care in the way…you know what I’m saying?

B: We don’t.

P: We shouldn’t be not impeaching him because we don’t care. We should be not impeaching him because it’s not an impeachable offense. And because the whole thing is a result of just a colossal smear campaign. We should care. We should care enough to unseat the Republicans, but we won’t. The average American will cast his vote for lower taxes and more guns for everybody! We’re stupid.

B: I still say we should put it up to vote. Public poll says we don’t want him impeached.

P: I still say Brandt’s stupid.

All 3: (laugh)

B: I’ll accept that.

P: You asked for it.

S: Oh no, I’m interested in this kind of thing! I mean, politics I don’t like, government I do. It’s just the feuding and that they are out to get him. If it was a Republican there would be no problems…

P: Can I add something on to this? The Starr Report is a huge, freaking wadey document. People are reading it like it’s Stephen King, right? Now the Walsh Report in the ‘80s had details on how the Regean/Bush years, the government was in drug trafficking, Oliver North was in the basement of the White House drawing up plans for Marshall Law, for suspension of the Constitution, it was called Rex 84, okay? Um, we were selling arms illegally to one country, giving money illegally to one country, we were committing major, major crime against Constitutional law, against international law, and nobody gave a shit. Nobody cared. There was no talk of impeaching these guys. The crimes they committed were serious, serious crimes, but you put sex into the equation and everybody’s interested all of a sudden. If George Bush had, you know, been screwing somebody maybe that would have helped to get that whole thing out in the open. Actually, as a matter of fact, George Bush did have a mistress. And you don’t see anybody trying to impeach him over it. But go ahead.

S: I like what Larry Flynt did with offering a million dollars to anybody that can come up with some evidence of Congressmen. Yeah, bring them down as well…

B: Yeah, right on.

S: Because they are not innocent

B: Of course not.

S: Politicians are the most dishonest people.

P: Hey, no blanket statements! My mother is a politician.

S: I’m sorry! I mean, in general. The politicians shown on TV really are, it’s just kind of unreal. These are the people that are supposed to run our country for us and yet they can’t… They stand for morals and they go around and do that kind of thing.

P: Yeah, right. And plaster pornography all over the mass media. To bring down the anti-family resident.

S: You can’t do that, but let’s give ‘em details on everything with Lewinsky.

B: Oh, I know. That kills me.

P: They are willing to sacrifice public decency, uh...

B: The moral guardians of our country who have just crammed family values down our throats all the time are now forcing Joe Average American into the position where he has to explain what a blowjob is to his seven-year-old. That’s ridiculous.

P: It has made the cigar as martial-aide family dinner conversation. Yeah, that’s real pro-family. Okay.

B: "And what stains are those on the blue dress, Daddy?"

S: (laughs) We’re done with the politics. How did Splitsville come about?

B: I was giving Paul a blowjob in the Oval Office.

P: And I was using a cigar as a marital-aide on Brandt.

B: How did Splitsville come about? Paul?

P: We were eating steamed crabs.

B: True.

P: Brandt said, "I wanna play drums." We said, "Okay, let’s do a band."

B: Matt and I were actually sitting bored on our couch on day, we had just gotten back from touring from the first Greenberry Woods album, and our record company said they weren’t going to give us any money to tour and we had created a bad situation where we couldn’t afford to tour without money. So Matt and I were just bored shitless. I said to Matt, "Look, we’re going to kill each other this way, why don’t we start another band?" And we were like, "That’s cool." And I want to play drums, so we talked it over with Paul who was a friend of ours, so which is what I think, in retrospect, one of the best ways…to get lucky and have a friend who is a musician. The Replacements said that at some point, I don’t know if they were right about it. So, anyway, that’s the long short of it.

S: Where did the name come from? Because it’s a split from The Greenberry Woods?

B: Well, it’s got nothing to do with that actually. Honest to God, it couldn’t have anything less. You know, I had a list in a notebook where I write songs of just lyrics and stuff and just like album names and band names. It was a potential band name, there were a number of them. Another potential band name for Splitsville was going to be Mr. Pink, actually. You know the character from the…

S: Actually, there is a band called Mr. Pink.

B: There is actually.

P: Yeah, we played with them in Phoenix actually.

B: So that’s our story and we’re stickin’ to it.

S: Where did the aliases come in? It was a joke, right? But why Johnny Immaculate and Captain Dusty?

P: Well, there’s two answers. One is, they were really supposed to be doing anything on the side. You know, they were contractionally obligated.

B: But… uh…

P: But…

S: Was that against your contract with Elektra?

B: Yes and no, actually. Part of the thought was, we thought, "We don’t want the other guys in the Greenberry Woods to get all upset about it." You know, that was more, there was less to do with the contract thing. It was more of a personal thing. We don’t want them to… It would have been another nail in the Greenberry Woods coffin and there were plenty already at the time.

P: But more importantly…

B: We thought it was cool.

P: We wanted to have cool names. Like the Beastie Boys have cool names. We wanted to have cool names.

B: You know, it’s a standard rock and roll…

P: At least silly names. I don’t know about cool.

B: Johnny Immaculate was actually…uh, when we were with the Greenberry Woods signing up for BMI, they ask on the sign-up form if you have any aliases and that was an alias I… I said, "Oh yeah," you know. That was one of them, I had two of them. And that was one of them, I just thought it was funny.

S: I was just wondering if there was some specific reason.

B: There is no weighty reason for it. Retards being retards I guess.

S: (laughs) I think it shows creativity.

B: Oh. Creative people being creative people.

P: That’s what he meant.

S: So what if it’s silly. Isn’t that what it’s all about? How would you describe the music? Do you have a certain genre that you would put yourself in or just…?

P: No.

S: No?

B: No. I know, uh… You know, especially the first album was written in reaction to people criticizing… When we put out the first … I hate tying it all back to the Greenberry Woods album, but it’s important since that’s where the songwriting came from. We had no idea we were power pop at the time. We were just doing music that we liked. In some respect, Splitsville has been much more conscious of the genre people put us in, because we’ve had to be… Don’t you agree?

P: You get really conscious of your genre especially when your genre invites you to play festivals.

B: Right. Absolutely. You know?

P: When you keep getting invited to play a power pop festival then you know you’re a power pop band, I guess.

B: So the first album was a pop culture… you know, it was, it was all about pop.

P: We just basically liked punk but wanted to do pop. Punky pop songs about just silly pop culture topics. That’s just sorta what came naturally to us.

B: It made the most sense for the kind of thing… we just sat there and threw out cords and wrote songs. So it made the most sense for three guys together, you know, were really stripping it down. We were planning on recording it in a basement so…

P: We wrote the album in three days.

B: So we weren’t going to do techno or anything like that. It’s just not us.

S: Okay, so who are your greatest influences? You can definitely hear a lot of derivativeness, but we’ll get to that later.

B: What’s the influences on the band or what’s the influences on the individual members?

S: Individual members, and then…both actually. Whatever you feel like. Because they’re different.

P: They are not necessarily things that come through as…like if you ask what bands do I most often quote musically than the answer might be different from the ones that have effected me the most. The biggest effects on me have been, well the Pixies were a really big one. Um, obviously people like The Beatles and The Who and ?. I was a big Queen fan. Then again I am a big fan of things like King Crimson, uh…

B: Yeah, he’s the prog rock dude. Matt and I started off with The Beatles and went to The Police and he got into Elvis Costello.

P: I was way Police, too.

B: Yeah, we were way Police. Then he got into Elvis Costello while I was getting into like The Replacements and Husker Du. Now I listen to a lot of American rock, country rock, and even like The Byrds and The Band. For some reason that’s been a lot.

P: Oh and for me, for the record, this album (playing in the café), Life’s Rich Pageant, by REM. Big moment for me in high school when this album came out. This was big for me.

B: We are all into REM. Absolutely. And there’s a bunch of stuff that without none…like Marshall Crenshaw, which Matt loved. A concert Matt and I saw was just great, we were way into him. Crowded House and all them…

S: So like the older power pop.

B: Yeah, but you know, nobody ever called it power pop at the time.

S: That was mainstream rock, right?

B: Yeah, it was alternative rock actually. I think they called it progressive rock. Remember when alternative rock was progressive? Now it’s alternative, but I don’t know the difference.

S: The terms are kind of meaningless at this point. Because everybody is something else. Nobody really fits into their thing anymore. If you’re on the radio, you don’t have a genre. Free-form, whatever, right?

B: Some of this stuff that sounds alternative, just sounds to me like AOR rock radio. I mean, Matchbox 20 is about as alternative as my aunt.

S: (laughs) And then you mentioned that thing about conversing songs, where you take a specific reference on purpose. Could you give some examples?

P: Right. I guess with a lot of… Brandt and I were just talking last night a bar, very briefly, about this thing where I’m of the opinion that your interpretation of a song that I wrote is just as valid as mine is. As a matter of fact, I might write something and then two months later come up with an interpretation for it that wasn’t an original thought, but makes as much sense. So in that line of thinking, yeah, we are always quoting other people’s music, sure. Sometimes it’s for a very specific effect, it’s because… "Manna" for instance, "Manna" is Beatle-esque, it’s because in some ways lyrically it’s a rebuttal to the simplistic notions like "all you need is love." It’s a rebuttal to that, especially where religious hypocrisy comes in, you know the people who are, let’s face it, killing other people and talking about love. So that’s what Matt was talking about in that song, so it makes perfect sense to bring in this obviously Beatle-esque sound. But other times you just pull in a riff from something else because it sounds cool to you. Later, you realize there’s more meaning than you even thought there was. So…

B: I would say it’s both a strength and a weakness of our band. And it’s something we’re going to have to be aware of and we’re gonna have to push aside to grow more as a band and we’ve grown a lot as a band over the, you know, three albums, obviously. And as songwriters, I mean, we just got blasted for this so that’s why I’m sorta making excuses for it… It’s a strength and it’s a weakness of our band and if we hear part of a song, I don’t think we ever take riffs out of songs.

P: Every once and awhile we have.

B: Every once and awhile we have and it’s been unconscious and we’ve said, "You know what, that’s the part and we’re just going to defend it." And sometimes we end up playing to what a part reminds us of. In other words, if we hear a part that… Like on "Dixie Liquor" it was a very country song. Some people say it’s REM-ish. I can tell you there’s no REM song, as far as I know, that uses that chord progression in that way, no melody line like that or anything. The picking part, is well, not Rickenbauck (sp?), but reminiscent of REM. We sort of fed into that. The thing is, I think we write songs that are very familiar to people’s ears right away and we sort of cater to that. So in some respect, to find our own voice as a band, we’re going to have to put that aside a little bit, but…

P: But by the same token…

B: But by the same token, we’re very aware of our influences and we’re not trying to sneak it under the rug. We’re saying, "Hey, look, this is where we come from and this is, you know."

S: I think that’s what Gardner’s [the journalist from the Baltimore City Paper that had recently slammed them for this] problem was. Thinking, "Yeah, they think they’re slick." But that’s not the point at all.

B: But that’s not it. If we’re going to make something obvious, we make it obvious and say, "Look, this is where we’re getting it from." I think, I think, we quote enough people, from enough places where it’s completely excusable.

P: And plus, anybody that’s ever been great, and I’m not saying we are great, but anyone that ever has been, has taken a few rather disparate influences and brought them together into the same place and made a synthesis that was something new.

B: I mean, you know, you listen to some Oasis records, and ugh, what about, what’s that band? That other band from England, with the bass playing…

P: By the way, I think Oasis is much less intelligent in they’re being derivative than we are in ours.

S: Yeah, because they’re whole point is "We’re going to be The Beatles. Yeah, we’re going to be the answer to The Beatles in the ‘90s."

B: And you see these loser fans going out and saying, "Oh yeah, Oasis is much better than The Beatles!" What? What? Yeah, you twenty-year-old idiot. Why don’t you get something else pierced or something?!

P: Also on this songs conversing thing, not in the music world, but in the literary world, somebody that Brandt and I have both taken our lines from, our themes from, or both is T.S. Eliot. From the same poem, actually, in two different songs. His "Love Songs Of B. Douglas Wilson" borrows from "J. Alfred Purfrock" and was sort of, you know, a parallel to it. I actually borrowed some stuff from it for "First Thing About Regret." It works for me especially well, because T.S. Eliot wrote at length about literary texts conversing with each other by borrowing. To read Eliot’s "Waste Land," you’ve got to read as much footnote as you’re reading text, because it’s that many other references to other works, you know?

S: That’s how I like to work. I always make references to anything I can, I mean, because that’s what I’m around, you can’t write what you don’t know.

B: Especially when you’re starting out and finding your own voice, we’re still in the process of doing that. You can take it into all sorts of genres, Look at Tarantino. He borrows heavily from a lot of sources and he makes it his own. I don’t have to sit here and defend our album. I know it’s a great album, I’m not worried about it, and I’m not worried about…you know when people say, like, "Master of Space and Time" beginning rhymes with "In A Time With A Bottle," I’m like, "What?" I’ve never heard that, but if that’s what it reminds you of then that’s cool. I mean, I don’t have a problem with that. The only shameless rip, I think, on the album, to me, is "My Name Is Jonas" in "Joan of Arc." It’s kind of funny.

P: It is funny.

B: My Name Is Joan of Arc.

P: Yeah, that was the running gag in the studio.

B: That’s what Paul and I subtitled it. But it’s a completely original song, it doesn’t borrow from anything else, it’s not like that part is essential to the song. You know, it’s not like we ripped a whole bunch of chords off it.

P: We could have done the song without that guitar part and it still would have been every bit as strong a song. It doesn’t depend on the theft to be a good song.

S: I mean, everybody is influenced by somebody else and it shows. Other people noticing it, has to do with their influences. Look at Gardner, he was picking out all these Pixies and…

P: He missed some of the best ones!

S: Yeah, he missed Weezer, he missed Fountains of Wayne.

B: And you know, the bottom line of that is a personal thing. If was being a responsible journalist he would have said, "These are the bad things about it," but there were just a lot of digs in there that had nothing to do with it. You know what I mean?

S: That was not a good article from a journalistic standpoint.

B: If it was somebody who was into the band, and he’d have found the same things wrong with it, he would have said, "This is what they did wrong and that’s something they need to get away from and ultimately it’s a good album." Which it is. I’ll be honest with you, this is going to sound kind of, sound like I’m being defensive or dismissive or whatever, but really, really it doesn’t, I have no idea, if Lee Gardner came up and slapped me in the face, I’d have no idea who he is. He’s just some guy in a local paper. It really doesn’t matter. It’s really unimportant. The music reviews in that paper and movie reviews are lame, they’ve always been lame. It just doesn’t matter.

P: You tend to find bad reviews of things that you know damn well are going to be reviewed well everywhere else.

S: Yeah, because I had never heard a negative thing about Repeater.

B: It’s a strong album, you know? It’s a strong album. I’m completely aware of its flaws. Something about Splitsville, which is unlike any other band I’ve been in before is that when we do something, we’re aware of the flaws and want to get over them. We’re trying to get…a lot of bands just put shit down and it’s haphazard and maybe they want to get the guitar playing better, but I’m talking about concepts; you know, themes. There are themes to everything we’ve done. Like over-arching themes, I’m glad that’s something he picked up on, not many people have done that. There is an over-arching theme to the album.

P: Lee did pick that up. There is a theme and he got it right.

B: And that sort of thing… We’re trying to make albums here, I think that’s where we stand out apart. I’ve had some non-musically friends say that to me before, "There’s a beginning and an end to your albums."

S: Yeah, there is a point!

B: Yeah, there is. I think that if you’re not doing that, you’re sort of…

S: It’s not as strong…

B: There has been plenty of great albums that don’t do that, but I think for what we do, we’re conscious of that.

S: It makes sense to do that. That’s one of the reasons I’m drawn to it, it just kinda plays out like a story.

B: Yeah, I think they’ve got beginnings and ends.

P: This album (still REM playing) is a great soundtrack for this interview.

S: And then with the producers… You used Andy Paley who worked with Brian Wilson and wasn’t he with Jerry Lee Lewis, too?

B: Yeah, he did Jerry Lee Lewis.

S: Brian Wilson’s solo album… Did that influence why you chose him?

B: Did that influence why The Greenberry Woods…?

S: Yeah and why you use somebody else now.

B: The Greenberry Woods were sort of in the same situation Splitsville is now, where people would say, "Well, this song was influenced by the Left Banke" and this and that and shit I’d never heard of before.

P: That happens to me all the time. "You did these guys perfectly on that song," and I’d go, "Who?"

B: And The Beach Boys were a band that…one of the first 45’s Matt bought was "Surfin’ U.S.A." but Andy Paley turned us onto Pet Sounds and Smile and he got me the box set for free and all that stuff. So he was definitely an influence … I think he was as much of a flaw in the production, I think we produced stuff much better than he does. He never, I don’t know…

P: I mean, my outsider’s take on the idea, was that we never really got the sense that he understood contemporary rock.

B: I agree. He never got the essence of our live show, which I think we did right away with U.S.A.; we were shit and that album jumps out at you and you’re like, "Wow! At least they were having a good time doing it."

P: You can tell. You can tell we’re having a good time and you can tell it’s spontaneous. I think where The Greenberry Woods succeeded the most in the studio where you can tell somebody, most likely Matt, is beating Andy over the head that the guitars have got to be louder. Or you can tell the band was fighting for a more contemporary sensibilities.

B: I would agree with that and disagree with that. And I would say the other places where we succeeded we said, "All right, we’re working with Andy Paley, we’re just going to have fun with it and let it go." You’ve got "Go Without You" and "Oh Janine" right together, those songs are great, because it was sort of like Andy was getting in there like a kid in a candy store and "No, don’t do that on bass, we’ll let the six-string bass to do that," which is fine for songs like that, but doesn’t work on songs like "Super Geek." It just didn’t work on rockers and he was always telling me, "Make it simpler, we’ll put the six-string bass in," and I’m thinking, "Not on the power pop songs."

P: Which, when you’re in the studio tracking, comes into your headphones as the kitchen sink. That’s exactly how that sounds.

B: Exactly. We dumped a lot of that stuff too. We ended up taking out a lot of tracks on the more lush Greenberry Woods stuff. It was just out of control. It was just too much stuff. I mean, he didn’t know when to stop, basically. Whatever, but that’s a whole different world.

S: I was just curious really. I mean, you really thought these bands were…and then working with their producer.

B: He definitely turned us on to stuff, but as much as he did, reviewers did. Because they’d be like, "The Left Banke." Well, I went out and bought a Left Banke disc and I was like, hey, that’s good: "Don’t Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina" and "She.."um? (starts singing)… I don’t know.

S: They’re doing a Left Banke tribute that has all these power pop bands on it. Jason Falkner…

B: I would love to do one.

S: It’s already finished though.

P: We never get asked to be on the great tribute albums. The Guided By Voices Tribute Album is coming out and Lotion is doing our Guided By Voices song. I’m pissed off about that.

B: Which is cool.

P: It’s cool, but, and they chose a cool song, but we chose it first, god dammitt. We played it at our first gig ever.

S: What about the Pixies’ one? They’re doing… Superdrag’s going to be on there, Weezer, Nada Surf…

B: Wait a minute, all those bands I think are on the same label.

P: Oh, I smell ringers.

B: No, wait a minute, Weezer’s on DGC.

S & B (together): And Superdrag’s on Elektra.

S: Superdrag already had the recording, I think, that’s why.

B: Those things are hit or miss anyway. It’s cool. It’s fun for a band to do.

S: With What The World Needs Now, how did that work, did Big Deal just say, "Everybody submit one"?

B: Yeah.

P: We actually got first dibs.

B: They’re a good, I’m not putting them down, they’re a good label, with their strengths and weaknesses and they’re still growing just like our band, but they really don’t have a clue. I think they think songs magically appear on tape. So we went in on a weekend and did it. It was a cool thing to do. Talk about us doing something just as a wank off, very derivative, and it’s nothing we could do live. So in a way, it was like, it wasn’t a waste of time, it was a cool thing and it got us in People magazine; most everybody said we were a standout track.

P: But it was something that given our druthers, we would have spent twice as long on. Because it’s really just sort of sloppy and slap-dashed and thrown together. Because we had no time.

B: But, in a way, something like that sort of misrepresents the band anyway, so I don’t know.

S: Would you ever attempt to play it live, though?

B: Well, we don’t have that many voices.

P: Yeah, we did it as five-part harmony. I played piano on it, I played clarinet on it. I can’t do both of those things at the same time. Every one of us did like a million tracks on that song.

B: I did a bunch of percussion tracks.

S: You can hear it, that’s what makes it so lush. Probably Andy Paley would be proud of it, right? (laughs)

B: Yeah, who knows. I actually ended up calling him the other day; I left a message on his machine because I was watching, we used to have this thing where I was the guy who did, I came to rock and roll from dinner theater, that’s where I came from.

P: No kidding.

B: And off-Broadway. I would always get up in the middle of recording sessions and do like West Side Story or Oklahoma! or Little Orphan Annie; that was a big laugh for us. I was a little orphan in Little Orphan Annie. Well, I was watching this hardcore rap song and they sampled "A Hard Knock Life" from Broadway’s Annie.

P & S (together): Oh my God!

P: (sings a line from it)

S: And of course anybody that’s watching it is not going to have a clue and be like, "They are so cool! They are so original!"

B: Who is this? And my jaw just drops to the ground. I can’t believe this. Bone Thugs ‘N’ Harmony or whatever the hell it was.

S: Scary… So what would you say is the greatest difference between The Greenberry Woods and Splitsville?

P: The rock.

B: The rock. Absolutely. We tapped into the rock from day one.

P: I definitely bring the handsomeness quotient way up, you see.

S: (laughs)

B: There’s also anything thing, which is nothing you can hear, which is that we have the ability for just the three of us to get in a van and spend a month together in cramped quarters and not fight.

S: It’s personalities.

B: Our personalities just click. That’s a non-tangible quotient, but is so important and partial to that is that we all believe in what we’re doing. And we all like what we’re doing. Which was not the case.

S: I gotcha… Then with the three writers in the band, is that what pulled The Greenberry Woods apart? Were you all wanting to go different directions and that’s why you didn’t click?

B: Well, I think I could answer that better than you.

P: I’m not so sure.

B: Maybe not.

P: I have a great answer to that. I just don’t know how frank you want me to be.

B: I’m willing to listen. My opinion on it is that everybody has got to know their place. For instance, I’m the drummer now, I don’t… Let me see if that’s somebody honking at me because I parked so damn close.

P: Okay, I’ll expand on this… I’ll say roughly what he was about to say, I think. In The Greenberry Woods there were three songwriters, this is my outsider’s point of view, in The Greenberry Woods there were three songwriters and there was this vibe that every one of them had to have equal screen time.

B: Absolutely.

P: There had to be an equal number of Matt songs, Ira songs, and Brandt songs. In this band, Brandt’s the drummer, he’s the concept guy, and he writes about a quarter of the songs; Matt’s the lead singer, he’s the front guy, and he writes about half the songs; I’m the bass player, sort of multi-instrumental guy who writes about maybe another quarter of the songs. We all know what we’re supposed to be doing and we like what we’re supposed to be doing.

B: And it’s not an ego trip. With The Greenberry Woods, it was an ego trip and the problem was that by the time we got signed, I don’t want to sit and trash the other guys, Ira was just a piss-poor musician and we had a lot more to do with the songs; he had nothing to do with the songwriting of our songs. I was forced to the point, and I was a much shittier musician then, and I was forced to the point where I’d have to write guitar parts and I couldn’t even play guitar then. "Just play this, just play this." It was a very frustrating position.

S: But it was a good learning experience.

B: It was a good learning experience, but it was a lot of fights and making the second album was just a frickin’ nightmare. Everybody had to do six songs and it was like pulling teeth to get stuff done.

S: Which is why the album has eighteen songs. Which is a lot.

B: Which is stupid. It’s no way to make an album.

S: That’s why I was going to say that with working with three songwriters in Splitsville, which was the same case in The Greenberry Woods, and it works. You’re making short, great records.

B: This record I said I really, really believed that if we were going to present ourselves the best way we can, we need to limit the amount of songs we have on the album. We have a tendency to make albums too short, but it should definitely be over a certain amount of time. And we got over that amount of time, but I honestly feel we should limit, because there are albums I get where there are fourteen songs but I only listen to twelve of them.

P: Or worse, eighteen, nineteen songs and you listen to twelve of them.

B: Yeah, self-censorship is really tough for a band; you go "This is song’s great too… this song’s great too…" Like the new Sloan album, they did this album that sounds like it was recorded in ’71, ’72, and it kicks ass. I think it’s great, it took me a couple of listens but I think it’s really cool, but it’s got thirteen songs, which is about two songs too many. Back then they only made thirty-five minute albums. Look at KISS albums, they were all between thirty-four and forty-six minutes. And they should have made a thirty-five minute album. They could have even have gotten away with forty. There were two songs too many on it and it starts to get a little…

S: Yeah, that’s why when you listen to Splitsville, you can listen over and over again and it’s not like it is…

B: It’s better to leave people wanting more than for there to be too many tracks.

S: All right… I wish Matt was here for this one, but maybe he’s not going to show?

P: I’m his official spokesperon.

S: Okay, but it’s a twin thing, that’s what I’m asking.

P: Oh.

S: Is it harder to work with your double, your twin…I mean, you’re not identical are you?

B: Yeah we are.

S: Oh really? You look slightly different to me.

B: We are identical twins, believe it or not.

S: But I guess as you get older you want more of different identities, where as when you were kids you were always dressed the same, looked the same?

B: I’m afraid so.

P: I think the twin thing is harder for me than it is for them. It’s harder for me.

S: What’s your perspective on it?

P: Because they’re not at all of one mind.

B: That’s for sure.

P: Anyone that thinks identical twins are identical people is an idiot. They’re almost polar opposites. Because they’re siblings and because they’ve known each other since the womb, they can fight viciously and be over it ten minutes later. I’ve got to deal with it, you see. I’ve got to sit there while they’re screaming at each other, try to break them up, you know.

B: And then he’s left with the bad feelings. We’re gone with it.

P: Yeah, it’s definitely harder for me.

B: In some ways, what can I say, in some ways it makes things a lot easier working with somebody and I’m very comfortable. In some ways it makes it tough. He says things to me he would never say to anybody else and those are good things and bad things, you know what I mean? You know, "Fuck you! Hello? What the fuck are you saying to me?" Of course, with Matt, he probably would say those to other people, the guy he is.

P: Matt doesn’t have that one critical thought that says, "Don’t say that, just think it." Matt just says it. He’s not here, we can talk about him.

B: Then he goes, "Did I do that?"

P: "Oops!" That’s Matt’s favorite gesture. "Oops!"

B: Here’s a classic Matt. I e-mailed him, e-mailed him, that’s the society we live in…

P: Matt’s going to love reading this once we’ve trashed him.

B: 12:30, you gotta be here. And now it’s what, 1:00?

P: Okay, the gloves are off, now we’re really going to start Matt bashing.

B: To give him credit, he was getting his hair cut today and colored. It does take some time, it does take some time.

P: I believe he was having his nails done too. His toe nails that is.

S: The body massage… Everything.

P: Bikini wax.

B: Right, bikini wax and he was having his chest hair trimmed.

P: And his ass hair, I hope.

S: I don’t think we want to go into that…

P: You’re right.

S: So what inspired Pet Soul? The idea to imitate?

P: Well, wow, the thing is that when we first did Pet Soul it was part of a series. We had this whole thing where we were just going to do a series of EPs.

B: Usually started by me, I must say.

P: Like I said, he’s the concept guy. We were just going to do a series of EPs. After we made U.S.A., we did a four-track EP where we basically did the style of the Velvet Underground, which you probably never heard, it’s very hard to come by.

S: Is that Amateur Hour?

P: No, it’s called Strum & Drang, it’s a bit of a German pun. We had this whole thing cooked up about it was going to be a fictional story of our Hamburg days. But in later period Hamburg days where it’s a sort of Euro-decadent, sort of heroin-sheik kind of thing going on. We did four, basically, Velvet Underground styled tunes. And then we moved on to Amateur Hour, being the entire concept album shrunken down to, what, twenty minutes. And then the next logical thing, a sort of…yeah.

B: The cool thing about Pet Soul is that it was a complete act of love. We did some radio commercials, jingles, for a friend of ours and in return got free studio time. And the only thing we wanted to do with it was record some stuff just for kicks. I was like, "We don’t have enough time to do an album." We wanted to get into Dave’s studio, Dave’s our producer.

P: Because up to that point, basically everything had been tapes we had done ourselves.

B: We wanted to get in there and I had written "B. Douglas Wilson," I had concepted it, and said, "I really wanted to work on this tune. And I’m sure you guys have this same type. Let’s do an EP of this kind of thing." And it turned out to be really cool.

S: Why was the idea to distribute that one and not the others?

B: That was the record label’s idea.

P: It was the one that would most grab the fancy of the attendees of Poptopia.

B: It was for the Poptopia and it was a good thing, you know. I think it’s a really cool thing and it’s getting us a little buzz in Japan and stuff like that.

S: And people are still talking about it. It’s amazing…

B: The problem with that…

P: Do you want to say it, or should I?

B: It’s a problem because it a) misrepreps the band in some way, because it’s not what you’re going to get if you buy Repeater, which is not necessarily a good or bad thing. I mean, we tried to spell that out on the back of it, that it’s a side thing, we did this for fun. The other thing is we keeping getting the question "Are you going to make an album of that?" Which is not necessarily out of the question, but we’re not gonna be that band, because, as you know, we get knocked for being derivative.

P: Fuck who’s knocking us. We don’t want to be that.

B: We don’t want to be that band.

P: We don’t want to be a complete imitation of The Beatles and The Beach Boys twenty-four hours a day. It’s just silly. Despite what other people have written about us, we do have real ascetic angles to work here.

B: That would get too boring, you know? You could sell records to a limited amount, or you might be able to sell a lot of records, but it would be just so…

P: We would probably sell more records doing that than we are now.

B: It’d be fun to do an album of that, but it wouldn’t be fun to do any more than that.

S: I know people would buy it, because I’m on all these pop lists. They all like it and they all recognize it is completely different. Never compare Pet Soul to any of the other Splitsville releases because they are different and everybody knows that.

B: I think the more albums we come out with, the more everything makes sense. I hope that, anyway. I think people are able to come back to U.S.A. and go, "Wait a minute, now it…"

P: "…now I get it."

B: Put Greenberry Woods into perspective. The cool thing from me is that I’m hearing from a lot of people now is that they hear Repeater and they go, "Wow, this is the best thing you guys have ever done." Particularly to Matt and I, including The Greenberry Woods. My friend Gina said, "I listened to Rapple Dapple the other day and you guys are so different now, so much better."

S: Because what I did was start with Ultrasound and then I went to U.S.A., because I couldn’t find U.S.A., and people told me, "It’s horrible and doesn’t have the magic that Ultrasound does. The harmonies are not there and it’s just not polished enough." I was like, "What?! I love this! It’s like a joke." And it makes sense. And then I got into The Greenberry Woods and it made much more sense.

P: And people who hated Ultrasound are now coming and saying now that they’ve heard Pet Soul and Repeater, they really like Ultrasound now because they get it.

B: I think Ultrasound’s got great songs on it and I really stand by it, it’s got the looseness of U.S.A., how fucked up is this, I’m comparing it to all our works! But it’s got some strong songs and fairly experimental.

S: A lot of people were saying Ultrasound is an album with great songs and Repeater is a great, very polished album with good songs.

B: I like to think there’s great songs on everything.

S: I do too, I’m just saying…

B: I know.

S: I didn’t say that.

B: If people think that that’s fine.

P: I like to think I surpassed myself songwriting-wise on this album.

B: And that’s a personal taste. Like George Martin thinks Revolver’s a better album than Sgt. Pepper. In some ways I do too.

P: Yeah.

S: In some ways it’s kind of different, but you can’t really compare it. I have the hardest time comparing two works by the same artist, because they grow and, you know, things change.

B: Absolutely.

S: Then with the songwriting on Repeater, a lot of negative energy definitely coming through as opposed to the carefree-ness of the other two.

P: Well…

S: No, no, no, I don’t mean negative in "I hate the world" and you’ve got more of a negative look on things.

P: I understand what you mean. Only negative in the sense that we’re just addressing adult topics more directly. We always have, that’s the problem, people think we were addressing adult problems on Splitsville U.S.A. and Ultrasound, but we were. You have to be able to read subtext.

B: "Let’s Play Grown Up," I think, is a sad song. It’s very negative. "The Kids Who Kill For Sugar" is negative, it’s a big "fuck you."

P: It’s a political scream, I mean, it’s a rant.

S: It is. I mean, I am definitely in the younger generation where people just don’t get this kind of thing, but I still identify with more of the adult perspective.

P: But we’ve always had at least an adult subtext going on. We make references to Swedish pornography in the "Trini Is My Favorite Power Ranger" song, you know what I mean? We’ve always done it and no one…I believe it was the Amplifier review for this album that just came out that was finally nice enough to say, you know, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear it sort of thing. But that’s been my opinion all along. But, yeah, since the more adult stuff is at surface level now. It’s right actually up there in your face now, I guess it becomes a little more negative.

B: Yeah, and if we were taking a lot longer to get to the hooks and singing it with no harmony, somebody was screaming it, you would be, you know, Ultrasound would seem a lot more negative.

S: It’s the presentation, really. I mean, I have never really been one to listen to lyrics, because poetry is not my thing, but I listen to them more if I like the song, the actual music part, and then I really start listening to them and I start to identify with them.

B: Look at "Misfits" on the second album. "Let’s make believe there’s nothing wrong with us." It’s not negative.

S: I mean, there not as positive, happy, shiny…that’s what I’m trying to say.

B: I don’t think we could write an album like that. I mean I’m a fairly centered guy.

S: Who wants to hear about somebody being happy all the time?

B: Yeah, I mean, we’re not the Cowsills. You know?

P: We’re not?

B: We’re not, really.

P: Shit, what have we been doing all this time?!

B: But I mean, "Dixie Liquor"’s just a romp.

P: It’s just for kicks.

S: It shows.

B: It’s a liquored up romp.

S: So that’s basically the differences among the albums, which is my next question.

B: I don’t know, I think we keep writing better lyrics, I think we’re taking more time with the songs. I think we’re not…

P: At both the writing and recording levels.

B: Yeah, there was a conscious Zen kind of thing with Ultrasound where we’re like, "Okay, that’s it. We’re not going to add anymore to this song and they were very short. We’re not going to try to write a bridge or something like that."

P: The idea was to have it just effortless. However much came out, was how much came out.

B: And now we’re trying to write intros and bridges. We’re just trying to explore songwriting a little bit more and not sticking with the standard verse, chorus, verse thing.

S: And then with producing one once a year…

B: So far it’s been that way.

S: Yeah, is that something that you plan to do?

P: Well it depends.

S: Or did it just kind of happen that way?

P: Well here’s the thing. If any one of them had been successful, it would have taken longer for the next one to get done. If this album took off tomorrow, we’d be on tour for the next year. And wouldn’t get a chance to record the next album until like two years after this one came out.

B: But we probably would be in the studio recording stuff. I’m going to be going in to record stuff with The Joiners. We don’t feel comfortable not recording.

P: I go nuts. That’s my favorite part of being in a band.

B: How are you going to grow as a band? The difference between Ultrasound and Repeater, Repeater’s production being so much better than Ultrasound’s, is because we got in the studio with Dave a numer of times in between and worked on stuff.

S: So it’s better to just work on something than to just…

B: Yeah, in between. The Beatles did that. They were always recording songs in between. That’s why there’s such a difference between their albums.

P: Another reason, you’ll probably hear another EP from us sometime relatively soon.

B: Because it’s an easy thing you can do in a weekend.

S: So you are going to work on that kind of thing, because I was going to ask what was in the works.

P: But bear in mind that we’re not making any promises of what it is going to be. The thing with the EPs was that we were just going to do something different every time. So there could be a new wave EP, or…

B: Or a dance EP, you never know.

P: You never know what we’re going to do. Could be rap.

S: (laughs)

B: And we go derivative with those things, because you don’t want to take food from your own mouth. You know what I mean? We want to leave the good Splitsville-written to stand by themselves on the album, so you can be a little more derivative with EPs, because it gives you…

P: They’re a goof-off.

B: Yeah, they’re a goof-off.

S: Do you do this kind of thing for yourselves or for the fans? Because people always want to hear covers, because they want to hear who you like to pretend to be, or whatever.

P: That’s one I still want to do, the covers EP. We have a great list of covers that we do.

B: Um, who do we do it for? Mostly us, I’d say.

P: Yeah.

B: We have a tendency, to sometimes when we’re recording, to not make moves specifically because people want to hear that kind of thing.

S: Yeah, that’s the best mentality to have.

B: Fuck it, man, you know? We want to make a really good album.

P: (sings along to the background music)

S: So would you ever go to a major label?

B: Oh sure.

S: You would? I mean, knowing what happened with The Greenberry Woods where they just stopped giving you money?

P: Here’s the thing though. The way to go to a major label from where we are now is to be in demand enough that the label makes concessions for you. The label comes looking to you. You’re not knocking on their door, begging them to sign you, then mistreat you and put you at the bottom of the drawer.

B: Because that happens to many, many bands.

P: Because they’re coming to you and saying, "You guys are doing really great. We think we can make you do a lot better. Here’s what we intend to do for you…"

S: Will you being doing this your whole lives?

P: I have.

S: I mean, will you be?

P: Oh, will we be?

S: But if you’ve been doing this since you were a kid, let’s go into that.

B: That’s a tough question.

P: If you’re asking would I quit doing music in order to like do the accounting work I did in college or the construction I do now when we’re not on the road, hell no. Do I think that I might have the sense to retire when I’m forty and I suck? I hope so. Brandt?

B: I don’t know. The older I get, I wish I was such a big rock star where I could say, "I could do this forever." I don’t know. I’d love to be in the position where I could do it and be able to make the ascetic choice not to do it. I was talking to Rick Menck the other day. He’s fried, you know the guy’s thirty-five years old and just made money from doing the Matthew Sweet tour. I mean, he had all his bills paid off and stuff like that. It just gets old after awhile, it sucks being broke all the time.

P: Rick… The guy’s kind of like a legend.

B: He’s a pop icon.

P: He’s hanging out at your show and you’re like, "Wow, how cool that Rick Menck is here." When he’s as broke as we are practically. You know? That’s wrong.

B: We’ve put out a lot of material in our short little lives. I’m not yet thirty. I figure I’m still in my twenties, I’m good to go. I’ll tell you what, I’ll carry it on way too far.

S: (laughs)

B: I’ll be a musician way too long.

S: But you’re not going to end up like Aerosmith; "We gotta come back and appeal to the kids."

B: Well, I would say this…

P: I would at least do an Elton John.

B: I would say this right now, let me say no, to ensure the fact that I will be doing that, making that much money in twenty years.

S: Well, that’s not what I meant. My thing is not the money issue…

B: Oh no, I’m talking about money. Fuck making good records, I’m in it for the money.

S: That’s their mentality. People my age are saying, "WOW, they’re better and more popular than they were back in their heyday!!"

P: Well, I’ll give them this much. Pump was a really great return to form.

B: "What It Takes" is a great song.

P: I really did think that, "Wow, here’s some older guys that kicked the habit, and actually rock again, how wonderful!" But it could have stopped there and been a nice capper to the career. I mean, I guess, basically when you have enough of that burning itch to be a musician that you’re willing to live the way we live now, hand to mouth, and you’re willing to do that for years, it means that there’s something in you that says, "You have to, have to, have to do this," when does that just shut off?

B: I certainly don’t feel like I’m anywhere near done yet, because I don’t think I’ve done something that would allow me to say, "Well, that’s it, I can’t top that. That’s the best I can do." This album’s done and I think it’s a really strong album, but I know we can do a lot better. I mean, I really want to put something out where I’m "Wow, that’s above and beyond what I should be able to do," you know? I don’t know if you ever do that.

P: I guess that’s the problem. You have the personality trait to want to keep doing it and want to keep doing it better.

B: I wonder if McCartney now thinks, "You know, The White Album is great, but I can beat that." I wonder if that’s why he’s stays in it or he’s just honest and says, "I just want to put out records so I can keep touring," you know? "See my fans, get that."

P: And there’s nothing too wrong with that.

S & B: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

S: I’m just saying, just putting out music so that you can appeal to everybody and make that big fortune, I think that’s when the music loses its point.

P: I think we are guys who are perfectly capable of making a complete sell-out record.

B: Me too.

P: You know, but that’s not what we do. We could do the Matchbox 20 by the numbers, alt-rock routine, and make a fortune, but we don’t, you know?

B: I’ve got all the rock posers figured out. I’ve got it all figured out.

P: Right, absolutely.

S: So in ten years, you have no idea…it’s just going to be till you’ve reached your peak.

B: I don’t know when we’d see it… It could be next year, I can’t believe it’d be next year. There’s too much going on. Plus, the album’s going to be released in Japan and that’s when things happen. And that’s when the tragedy occurred.

P: Yeah, right. Yeah, we’re waiting on Japanese release next year and the European release hasn’t happened yet either and that should happen next year as well. So those are two areas in which, if we don’t at least try a stab at a Japanese tour and a European tour then we will have missed out on something. Even if it fails dismally here in the States, we’ll bide our time until then at least, you know?

S: When you’ve toured the States, have you gone into Canada…?

B: Yeah, we’ve done everything.

P: We’ve done Canada.

B: A good deal of Canada, actually.

S: Going back to the songwriting, how do you do it? Do you think of what you want to do first? Do you come up with the title, the lyrics, the music first?

B: We’ve done every one of those, I think. We’ve come up with titles first, which is a cool thing about the way we write.

P: That’s like a B-movie way of writing a song, you come up with the poster and then you fill in the details.

B: That was more U.S.A. stuff where we came up with the titles first. And we’ve thrown in parts… Like "Dotcom" is everybody writing a part, and sometimes we just…

P: "The Kids Who Kill For Sugar" has a lot of that kind of thing too. Sort of gang-writing.

B: Yeah, sometimes there are songs where one of us comes up with it and says, "This is my song." And even to some extent, "This is what I hear for this part." I mean, he’s written drum parts for me. I guess I’ve written bass lines for you.

P: "Big Red Sun," I wrote that drum intro myself. I had to learn to play the drums just enough to be able to play that for him.

S: That’s what gives it the Fountains of Wayne feel.

B: Yeah, it’s cool and so we’ve done everything, everything, I think. Everything that you’ve just mentioned, we’ve tried. We try to keep things fresh. Fresh.

S: So how do personal relationships affect your music? Are you married? Do you write about that?

B: A lot less than it used to, to be honest with you. We try to hit more universal subjects.

P: Yeah, songwriting is definitely fiction writing. Even if you’re touching on things that are from your real life, you’re writing a fictional story to a degree. However, I will say that, by and large, almost to the full extent, my lyrically contributions to this album were directly from my own life in the past four years or so. "Big Red Sun" is my way of taking my hat off to a woman that actually manages to live with me while I sit on the couch and daydream about being a great rock star, that’s what that song is about. Well, "The First Thing About Regret," clearly I’ve had a bad relationship or two in the past and that’s directly from that.

B: Or two?

P: Actually, yeah, one or two, I haven’t had that many relationships.

B: Uh…yeah. Oh yeah, that definitely comes into play. In some respect I try not to be too autobiographical, gets you in trouble. But you know, "Dayjob"’s abou work and "Dixie Liquor"’s actually about college drinking days, to be honest with you. I don’t think lyrically it is, but that’s what it’s about.

S: Okay, so what do the suits represent? I mean, that can’t be the most comfortable…

B: Represents good sartorial taste.

P: That’s it.

S: That’s it?

B: I don’t know how to…

P: We look good in those fucking suits.

S: Yeah, you do! Really, very sharply dressed. I mean, The Montgomery Cliffs were wearing suits too and you guys look much better in suits than they did, no offense to them, but it’s true.

P: What can I say?

S: And then Love Nut went on there just in street clothes. I mean, it didn’t have that effect.

B: I mean, that’s there thing.

S: Oh yeah, I know, there’s nothing wrong with it.

B: Max could play guitar better than almost anybody I’ve heard in my whole life. But you couldn’t make him dress up, that’s not his style. He’s got zero style along those lines and that’s fine.

P: And you know what? And if Max dressed up, I don’t think I’d buy it. I see Max Muller in jeans and a T-shirt tearing that fucking guitar apart and I think, "Man, that’s rock n’ roll." But what we’re about is something a little different. The suits just complete the picture for you.

B: I come off stage with people and they say, "I love what you do and how you do it." We’ve thought about everything we do. We give a thought to every…the way the instruments look, why I use two cymbals instead of two crashes…All that stuff’s thought out. The way I sit on my stool.

P: And the thing is that you tell people that it’s all thought out and they seem to take that as the same thing as cheesily contrived and I don’t think it is. I think basically when you get into a rock band, you want to be cool, it’s part of being in a rock band, you want to be like who your rock heroes were when you were a kid. If your rock heroes were The Beatles, for instance, and then your understanding of cool rock n’ roll is, well, not only do you have to write hooky songs, you have to look cool too. That’s part of the joy of doing it. Some people, well their heroes were the Allman Brothers so they go up on stage and wear…

B: Beards and long hair.

P: It’s cool. That’s what they find is cool. But what we think is cool is some guys in some cool-looking suits playing some hooky music.

S: Then with The Greenberry Woods it was completely different, it was the casual with the long hair.

B: That’s a whole other story I don’t know if I want to get into. It was murder to try to get it, Matt and I always felt it was important, the other guys didn’t. I’m not even going down that road. Whatever look we had was a complete compromise and it was like pulling teeth to get that.

S: Okay. So you didn’t just want to have half the band looking one way and the other half another?

B: Absolutely not. The funny this is, one of the last shows we did was our record release in Baltimore and a girl I know took pictures of it and because of the way her camera was set up and the way we were set up on stage at the time, she’s got a picture of me and Matt and she’s got a picture of Miles and Ira. Just because they were on that side of the stage and she couldn’t get us all in one picture. I hate to see it, but you look at one and it’s rock n’ roll and you look at the other and it’s just some local band guys farting around. We just didn’t want that. Not that that’s necessarily wrong, if that’s what you want.

S: Then to change subjects completely… What are you listening to now?

B: Well that’s not fair, because I just got two discs that I’m kind of digging. I’ve been listening to, like I’ve said before, a lot of The Byrds and The Band and American rock. But recently I just got two cool discs, the new Sloan which kicks ass and Rialto which kicks ass. You gotta hear this, you’re gonna freak. They sound like ‘60s Bacharach pop with ‘80s keyboards, but recorded in the ‘90s so it’s got really drums and real bass.

P: All right!

B: It’s out of hand. Very dramatic and OMD, but sounds real, you know?

P: Really? I’ll have to check that out. I can tell you what I’ve been listening to. It’s actually kind of a weird phase for me, because I’m usually never the type listening to something that’s current. I mean, I was when current was the first Pixies album, but lately I’ve been sort of Mr. Retro Guy kind of in a way, in reaction to all the horrible stuff that’s out. I’ve made some great discoveries lately: the new Superdrag album I love. I’ve got critiques of it; harmonieS: it doesn’t have ‘em. Um, I’ve become a big fan of Soul Coughing. The first two Soul Coughing albums I absolutely adore, the new one is a little too jungle and techno for me, I’m not quite into that genre, but I’m getting there. Way into Cotton Mather, Kontiki by Cotton Mather kicks ass.

B: I’ve seen a lot of reviews.

S: Yeah, so have I, but I haven’t been able to find it.

P: I was listening to earlier. It’s just a great, great, great record.

S: Okay, then your favorite place to play?

P: I’ve got a couple. You mean the actual club, venue, or town?

S: Whatever. Both, if you have a certain reason for liking a town then…

P: I love playing New Orleans because it’s an excuse to be in New Orleans.

B: That’s not fair. But that’s okay.

P: Sure it is, sure it is. Uh, love L.A. We always have a good time in L.A. We always get treated right. But then again…

S: It’s the whole pop scene. It’s huge there and so everybody loves ya.

P: I’m not so sure it’s L.A., though. I’m not sure what’s going to happen in L.A. when it’s not a pop festival we’re playing. But at the pop festivals we get treated really wonderfully. Uh… Favorites? I know I’m missing one or two here.
B: I know this good… Minneapolis is always good for us.

P: Yeah, Seventh Street Entry is always good for us.

B: It’s a cool room. And I’ll say we never get to play it, we’ve only played it a handful of times, but the 9:30 Club, what they did to it is really, really good.

P: In terms of the venue itself.

B: I hoping that we get to the point where we can actually bring people into the room. And it’s going to be a great room for us because it’s such a nice room. And they treat the bands so well and that’s so important.

S: That’s what I hear all the time.

B: The screwy part about playing around the country is you never know where you’re gonna, I mean, you could be in Des Moines playing shows and you have a great night so that’s your favorite place now!

P: Yeah. Ames, Iowa, was a great place for us on this tour. It’s like, Ames, Iowa, that’s nowhere. Lincoln, Nebraska, had a fantastic time this stop, just a good time.

B: Wasn’t the best bar in the world, we just had a good time.

P: Yeah, though it is a cool club, actually. Duffy’s in Lincoln.

S: What are your thoughts on the local scene?

P: Don’t really have any, do you? I mean, I have some, but…

S: But you just don’t want to share?

B: I don’t really consider us a local band, it’s not something… I’m not sure… Even playing in The Joiners is more where I’d be in the scene; there are some cool bands and some really cool people and there’s some assholes and there’s some shit I don’t even understand. I don’t know, I really don’t give a fuck about the scene. We’ve never really been local scenesters.

P: I mean, writing a review of another local band for our web page, I called Baltimore "a white-funk hairspray metal town" and that’s what it is.

B: And there’s plenty of bands that aren’t that way. I just saw The Twin Six last night, they happen to be friends of ours, they’re just white trash, not metal, but…

P: They’re like cracker-punk.

B: Yeah, it’s great.

P: Me, yeah, I could roll off a whole list of bands in town that I think are great. The Glenmont Popes are great, I really enjoy Sick, I think they’re funny, I love The Beltways, geez, I’ll leave people out, which is probably why I shouldn’t start listening now. But yeah there’s a lot of great bands, but…

B: There’s a lot of cool people and then there’s a lot of people who I have know fucking idea who they are. People with a lot of attitude. But I guess it’s that way in every town.

S: But I just think Baltimore is much more laid back than D.C.

B: Yeah, it’s a laid back… I don’t think, having been to other towns where there’s scenes, there’s no scene in Baltimore. There’s a bunch of bands playing around and they’re friends and that’s cool, you know?

P: And I have to tell you, to put it frankly, it is more often the people who want to make a scene who annoy the hell out of me. I don’t want to be part of a club here in town. Knowing other musicians is cool, being part of a club is a drag.

S: Outside of the music part of Baltimore, what do you like?

P &B: It’s a great town!

P: I wouldn’t live anywhere else.

B: It’s very kitchy cool.

P: Unique.

B: Yeah, totally unique. Crabs. Steamed crabs.

P: John Waters.

S: I was just about to ask that! If you prefer John Waters to Barry Levinson?

P: No, Barry Levinson is a much better film maker. John Waters is funnier. He’s a little more Baltimore than Barry.

S: That’s what I was going to ask… How he represents Baltimore and all that.

P: Barry Levinson has taste.

B: Yeah, it’s the difference between local and national acts. Barry Levinson is a national act. John Waters is not. He’s a local band that’s got some national distribution basically.

S: But I think that’s how he wants to be.

P & B: Oh yeah, totally.

S: If he went mainstream I think it would be the scariest thing.

B: He ended up being a character on The Simpsons. Barry Levinson didn’t. Who laughs in the end?

S: He’s just got that whole image going for him. I could never imagine him without the mustache.

P: Did you ever see the Christmas cards he sent out with Steve Buscemi dressed as him and you couldn’t tell if it was Steve Buscemi dressed as John Waters or John Waters dressed as Steve Buscemi.

S: No, I never saw that.

P: It’s very disturbing.

S: Yeah, I can imagine.

P & B: (singing along to The Pixies)

P: We’re air drumming to The Pixies, have you got a problem with that?

S: No, if you want to, go ahead… Okay, going to the other side of pop, you know, mainstream pop. The Spice Girls with or without Ginger?

B: To be honest with you, the best thing about The Spice Girls is Ginger because she was such a slag.

P: Such a nasty slag.

B: Who was so nasty…

P: Who tried so hard to look glamorous.

B: It was just such a joke. It’s sort of taken away the fun of it. I think they take themselves seriously and that’s a joke. A better question for me is Hanson or Spice Girls?

S: Okay.

B: I’m pro-Hanson.

P: Them without a doubt.

B: I mean, they’re a talented group of kids and why shouldn’t they take themselves seriously? They’re huge superstars under 18. That’s great. What’s not to love?

P: Yeah. They have great harmonies. They actually play.

S: Don’t they write their own things or…

P: They get help, I’m sure, but yeah.

B: That’s great, they are writing better songs than I was at age. I wasn’t writing anything at that age.

P: I wrote a serenade to my eighth grade girlfriend once, but it wasn’t this.

B: So there you go. What’s not to love? I’ll put a poster of them on my wall. Plus they’ve got beautiful hair.

S: (laughs)

B: "Did I just say that?"

S: I don’t know, when I look at them I think of Leonardo DiCaprio and I want to puke.

P: See, if I squinted, I could pretend the keyboardist was a girl.

B: Yeah, "Come here, beautiful. Let’s get you in a dress."

S: Uh, favorite cartoon character?

P: Rocko Warner. I know he’s contemporary and I should say something that’s old and hip, but Rocko Warner.

B: I’m going to have to say the same thing. Just because right now, I’m really, I won’t watch the news now. I will watch Dexter’s Laboratory. That show is funny. But I have to say Deedee is my favorite character, she’s so damn funny. Everything she does is funny. I don’t know. I mean, I love the classics, you know.

P: Actually, I’d like to alter my answer. I’m going to go with Yako Warner because he’s more Groucho Marx, I dig that about him. They say a word that sounds dirty… "Good night, everybody."

S: Uh, oh… Are you musically trained?

P: I was actually in like the high school band and stuff. So I guess I basically got clarinet instruction and taught myself all the rest of the stuff. So I’m the one that can actually read and write music.

S: You can’t read and write it?

B: I can read it, but like a friggin’ kindergartner. I’m like, "See Jack run." We took piano lessons when we were kids. Taught myself to play bass. Taught myself to play drums, by paying attention to what other people do… But I never sat down and took formal lessons.

S: Do you feel that hurt you or that it helped?

B: Well, Matt gets into this a lot. You know, I think if I knew too much about, like he has a tendency when he’s coming up with harmonies, he makes choices based on what’s in the chord. And I don’t, because I don’t know what’s in the chord.

P: To a certain degree because they’re sort of flying without guidance that, at times, are much more interesting.

B: And sometimes I think something’s right and it’s just sounds awful and so he’s got to say it’s not going to work and he’s right. But I’ve written some bass lines and some vocal parts that are just out of emotion and they completely were not in the chord and sounded great.

P: And a music theorist would say, "Well, that’s an interesting change of the augmented sixth there." Actually, there’s no such thing as an augmented sixth, so it’s okay.

S: Because it’s interesting to see the people that choose to be musicians, if they were trained and learned to love it by that or what.

B: I think I would learn to love it less if I was trained more. I think I definitely learned more.

P: I don’t know, it’s a fine balance, though. Versus, yeah, I had clarinet lessons when I was in high school, but I had started teaching myself guitar and piano when I was about ten. And I taught myself music theory. So when I got to high school, the professor would give all four years the same exam and you were expected to finish a certain amount of it based on what year you were. And I, as a freshman, got graded as a senior and still got the highest score, because I taught myself the theory. It’s different from having a piano teacher beat it into you.

B: It’s different from what I had. You did it out of a thirst for knowledge, I did it because I was supposed to and it took a lot of the fun out of it… And I go in and ask drummers, "How do you do that?" and I’ve gotten a lot better because I want to learn and I practice what I think I should know. I definitely want to be a better musician.

S: So would you ever consider redoing any of The Greenberry Woods songs?

P: We’ve actually discussed that a little bit, as live songs probably, but I don’t know about recording.

B: Not as Splitsville. Matt and I might one day go in and redo them.

S: Release like an EP or something?

B: I don’t know, I’ve thought about it.

P: I thought that if we ever did an EP of cover songs, we would include a Greenberry Woods song as a cover, because we’ve done a few now.

B: In some ways it would be like calling up an old girlfriend and talking to her and saying, "What the fuck was I calling you about? I really wanted to talk to you, but now that I’m on the phone with you, I don’t want to talk to you." I think I wrote some really good songs in The Greenberry Woods that got man-handled, but I don’t know if I could make it better for myself now or not. I don’t know if it’d be worth it. Who knows?

S: I had already asked Paul this, but did you and Matt grow up in this part of Maryland?

B: Frederick.

P: The sticks.

B: The suburbs.

P: I’m an urban boy all the way.

B: I was a country kid.

S: Any last comments?

P: In summation I’d like to say, I never at any point slept with that sheep.

B: I’m going to stick to my previous comments. You can refer to my previous statement. No, I don’t have any.

P: Thank you, Mr. President.

B: Okay, this better be good or I’m going to kick your ass! How’s that?

S: There you go!