I love hearing about how people got into music. You grew up in a house full of writers.
Yeah, that's right.
Were you interested in playing music, and was that something you were doing in school?
It was always present in my life. My folks weren't musicians, but they were very into music. There was always music being played in the house. A lot of the music I remember hearing when I was young was sitting in the back of the station wagon on trips up north, to the northern part of Michigan. Back then, they would lay down the back seats, and it was a flat bed in the back, and we would lay in the back of the station wagon, which sounds so unsafe now, and listen to music that my folks would play. That stuff stuck with me for sure. My dad wasn't a professional musician, but he and his brothers would love to sit around and harmonize and sing the songs they liked – up north, around the campfire. It sounds cliché, but that's really what they used to do. They would sit around and harmonize on Neil Young and Johnny Cash songs, and I soaked that all up. I started playing around on my dad's guitar when I was pretty young. I'm left-handed, but I got a right-handed guitar and I forced myself to play that way. I joined the orchestra and played upright bass. I chose the biggest thing I could, because we had the station wagon, right? I had to fill it up. That led me to electric bass, and I remember a school assembly where the jazz combo from the high school came through and played for us in middle school, and I think that was the first time when I was really thinking, “Okay, I could be in a band, maybe.” I started my first band in seventh grade with some of the guys who are in the band still today. We geeked out through high school, playing out around town and even traveled a little bit, just in punk bands and maybe a couple of ska bands. I don't want to talk about that, but... [laughs]
The music we listen to as kids is always interesting. It’s part of the musical quilt that makes us who we are.
You remember Columbia House? [A mail order music club. -Ed.]
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's where I learned about all the music.
Yeah.
I still have some of those tapes.
My brother was a member. I soaked up all the financial ruin he led himself to through that service. It was the early way to sample all kinds of stuff, so he ended up becoming a big hip-hop head, which is great because I got to soak up a lot of that. But he also had The Smiths and Nick Cave records, and I got to hear all of it through him. He was my biggest musical supplier in those formative teenage years. He was listening to all this weird stuff and taking me to shows. It was pretty cool having someone like that around.
Did you guys keep that high school band together into college?
Once high school ended, we all went our separate ways. I went to art school and I kept playing in bands, but with new people, and I think everybody did the same thing. Really, we all went our separate ways for quite a while, well into our twenties. But I started recording again when I was about 27, back in 2009 and 2010, and I got the itch again to get out and get a band going. My sister and I handed out some demos I made at a few music festivals out here in California, and I started getting hit up to play shows so I was needing to put a band together. The first people I thought of were those guys who had started that journey with all those years ago. They're like my brothers. I've known them so long, and it felt like a really comfortable way. They all came out West, and at first it was, "We'll just play a few shows.” But we've been on the road ever since.
There's got to be a comfort level with people that you've known for that long, and a level of communication being from the same place. Having a common language musically and socially really lends itself to the creative process.
I don't know if I had that much foresight, honestly, but I'm so glad it worked out that way because we didn't have to go through all the growing pains that a lot of young bands go through getting to know each other. If it's going to become your lifestyle, you want to be around people you love. I'm really thankful that it all fell together the way it did.
What got you interested in the technical and production aspect of record making?
