HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR017- PLAYING ENEMY, "My Life As the Villain"

My personal history with getting into hardcore music is intertwined with the Seattle band Undertow.  The first show I ever went to, way back in 1994, Undertow was the band playing when I walked in the door.  They weren’t the headliner, but they were on tour and all the way clear across the other side of the country in my hometown of Syracuse, NY.  I had listened to some hardcore bands at that point, but seeing these guys going off on stage and lighting the place up instantly mesmerized me and I was hooked from that point on.  I sought out their records, two of which- “Control” and especially “At Both Ends”- remained in steady rotation for years to come.

A few years later I took a chance on booking my first show.  A friend had put something together and then bailed on it and I picked it up.  It was in 1997 and for a tour that featured Ink & Dagger, Botch, and Nineironspitfire.  Nineironspitfire was the band that Demian Johnson, bassist for Undertow, had started when Undertow split up. 

Fast forward a few more years and my good friend Bob moved to Seattle and started The Helm, a band whose debut 7” I released.  The drummer for the band at that time was none other than Ryan Murphy, former drummer of Undertow.  By this time, the coincidences were stacking up.  Undertow played the first show I went to.  Ex-Undertow alumni played the first show I ever booked and played on a record that I put out.

And in 2007, out of the blue, Shane Mehling called me up to ask if I wanted to release a record for Playing Enemy.  Playing Enemy was the band he played bass in.  The singer and guitarist for the band was…  wait for it…  none other than Demian Johnson, formerly of Undertow and Nineironspitfire.  Things were really coming full circle here.

Of course I agreed to do this.  Playing Enemy had made quite a mark for themselves already at that point.  They released two well-received LPs on the excellent Escape Artist and Hawthorne Street Records, as well as a slew of EPs and 7”s through various imprints, toured the country with Converge, and stayed pretty damn busy to be concise.  The idea they had in mind for me was to do a a new LP, but turned into a five song EP, which would be the final batch of songs they would record as a band.  At first they didn’t think they were splitting up, but by the time the record was finished they decided that they would be. 

When the band informed me that they would be splitting up, and asked if I was still into doing the project I was still all in.  I had really enjoyed all of Playing Enemy’s material up to that point and was pretty stoked that they had considered asking me to do something for them.

There were some interesting aspects to this release, namely using a special kind of packaging that I had not heard of beforehand for the CD.  This was my first instance of using Portland-based Stumptown Printers and their patented Arigato Pack, a place (and product) I would end up using several more times over the years for various projects.  It was this neat little foldover package that fit like origami to create a CD pocket.  Demian designed the art for it, as well as a little card to go inside and then it was all sent my way to fold and assemble.

“My Life As the Villain” was an interesting one-off for a band that totally fit with what I had been doing with the label, but wasn’t necessarily part of the ‘family’ of bands I had tended to work with.  Yet, by default, they sort of were due to the connections they had with important milestones in my life, which were more coincidental than anything.

In the years since I have remained in touch with the members, though for a long time our paths didn’t cross.  However, since moving up to Pacific Northwest I see Shane and Demian more frequently, including their current band Great Falls, which continues the style of menacing and emotionally jarring heavy noise rock/metal-whatever they do so well.  It has led to us partnering up once again, as I recently released a one-sided split LP for them and The Great Sabatini and it once again features some really wild artwork/packaging.  But enough about that.  This is about Playing Enemy and their final record, “My Life as the Villian”.  I caught up with Demian Johnson and Shane Mehling while Great Falls was on tour, as they blew through Portland.  I can’t believe I’ve been interacting with this guys music for over 25 years and have never interviewed him.  Hey look, now we have another first for ex-Undertow people to add to the list.  Nevertheless, pairing both Shane and Demien up for this look back proved to a good choice since the two bounce ridiculous stories off each other and made for a pretty good conversation.

What was going on with Playing Enemy leading up to “My Life As the Villain”?

D:  The Vill-ian.

Was there a typo?

D:  There was a typo on the CD.

Was it my fault?

D:  No, it was the designer’s fault.  And it didn’t caught until the person printing the booklet was like, ‘hey, you know you spelled ‘villain’ wrong?’  The CDs had already been made before it was caught.

So what was going on with the band at that time?

S: Badness.

D:  That was kind of our demo for getting ready to work on a new album, and these are our songs for it.

S:  We had slowly evolved.  For years we just had to remember all these parts and we didn’t have anything like a phone, or recorder, to capture it while we were writing.  And then Andrew (Gormley, drummer) hauled a whole fucking computer down to our space and started recording our practices, and all these parts, and parts of songs.  He was dabbling in recording.  So we were trying to write another full length.  We got five songs in, and Andrew wanted to produce it, and I’m not sure why we ended up getting such a nice, full recording of what were just supposed to be demos.

D:  I think we were just like, ‘let’s do a nice recording and Andrew also wanted to demo his recording ability.  So we thought, ‘yeah, let’s just do it.’  I think we felt like we had gotten some stuff accomplished, let’s get this under our belt, and get it out to people. 

We spent so much time as a band practicing.  We would practice three nights a week, six to eight hours a night, just fucking playing and arguing.

S:  And fucking around.

D:  Fucking around, and making dumb jokes, and spending too much time on stuff, and there wasn’t a balance.  I think we got to a point where it became tough to even hear the songs anymore.  We don’t know what these sound like.  We should put these out.

S:  I don’t think we were thinking about putting them out.

D:  I mean to say, we wanted to find a label to put them not, not necessarily have everyone else in the world hear them.  I thought we were out there putting it out to labels?  What do you remember?

I remember Shane calling me out of the blue about releasing this and talking to me for around two hours.  I’m not sure how he knew me, or how to get in touch with me.  I thought maybe you all were shopping for a label, or maybe you were specifically  looking to see if I would release it.

D:  We knew you just put out other cool shit that was in our world. 

S:  I remember recording it and thinking it was just going to be a demo, period.  And then  when we were circling the drain I thought, ‘this sounds good’.  So we liked it, and thought it was a worthy release and we were breaking up, and there was no way we were going to do another full length.  So we hoodwinked you in saying we were a cool band.

My recollection was that you initially let me know you were doing another record, and all was good.  I know you got in touch with me way before it came out.  And by the time you had “My Life…” finished you let me know it would be a posthumous release and gave me the option of whether I wanted to release a record for a broken up band or not.

S:  That was very nice of you.

D:  I remember one thing was that we didn’t want our last release to be that terrible 80 minute song we put out.

S:  Oh yeah.  We definitely wanted one last hurrah that was good.

D:  Right.  A lot of people liked “I Was Your City” (second LP), but the follow up to that was that 80 minute noise track CD piece of shit with a Beatles cover at the end.  We didn’t want to end the band with that.

S:  That was sort of a representation of where we were, which was so fractured.  We were doing whatever.  Andrew wanted to do that and we just let it happen.

But all I remember about that time, and recording those songs (for “My Life..”) was that it was our last effort.  It was like the baby that saved the marriage.

D:  We were all sort of driven to get things done.  I had been in Akimbo before that for about a year, and me being in another band kind of motivated me to want to do Playing Enemy more.  I saw how functional Akimbo was, for being kind of dysfunctional.  I thought it was cool, but it wasn’t really my thing.  Playing Enemy is my thing.  And I thought, ‘we can do this, we can do this better.’  I just wanted to get back to it after taking a little time away.

So we just started writing some simpler, heavier parts, and we started getting better.  But all of the problems that eventually destroyed Playing Enemy were never going to get better.

S:  Yeah.  I thought the songwriting was getting better, but it was at the expense of us hating each more.

D:  The day we broke up we didn’t know we were breaking up. 

S:  We were getting band photos taken.  Like, the only real, official band photos that exist of us.  After the photographer left we broke up.

D:  I remember being insanely high too.  If you look at the photos of me I have that look on my face where you know I’m just super high.  It’s like the photo people use to say, ‘this is what potheads are doing to your town!’ (laughs)

S:  So we were just writing the thing and thought, ‘these songs are good, but this band sucks.’  We were happier with the songs, but we were unhappy hanging out with each other.  And the problem was mostly Andrew and I.

"No one in this band does drugs, officer."  photo by Ryan Russell

So you mentioned that Andrew moved into the role recording your material?  Do you think he was he comfortable in his role as an engineer?

D:  I don’t think he would have recorded our full length had we stayed together, but it was good for him.  I think having a product at the end of this without having to have worried about hiring an engineer, and booking studio time, and all this stuff, made us realize we could record music and have it come out without added obstacles getting in the way.  It made me more driven to go ahead and do it.

S:  That’s a good point.  I think going from ‘we just have to remember all these parts and keep playing them’, to actually recording it as it occurred made things a little more free and made me think, ‘why shouldn’t we record this?’  The value wasn’t as high, so it made us more free to write, which I think aided some of it.  That was nice.

I’ve seen more recently your gripes/concerns with living in Seattle and the crazy increase in the cost of living, but back when this record came out over 10 years ago what would you say things were like then?  What was your scene like?  Were things good for the band then?

D:  It was starting to get pretty tech-y and expensive.  That was happening.  The beginnings of it.  Amazon was still over in Beacon Hill, that kept a lot of people over thee.  But they were outgrowing it, and they were opening businesses here and there.  But we hadn’t had the massive development yet, so we still had a lot of cool venues to play, like the original Funhouse and The Comet.  Playing Enemy had some good shows.

S:  Oh god no.  We did not do well.  We didn’t.

D:  I think at every Playing Enemy show we would play really fucking good.  But after every show we would think, ‘how upset is Andrew going to be that Shane jumped in the crowd, or my microphone got knocked over by somebody”

S:  By me! (laughs)

D:  Andrew wasn’t a perfectionist, but he felt like Shane going crazy and having a good time, and engaging the audience, that detracted from the band.  He wanted us to be like Meshuggah, like just stand there and play our parts.

S:  Back to your initial question- no, we didn’t do well.  People didn’t like us.  We weren’t a popular band.  We definitely play better shows today as Great Falls.  Hands down.

D:  We did always seem to have a show, usually at either The Comet or the Funhouse, and they would be with our friends bands like Tion or Lesbian.  That was our crew.  It was a few bands and a tight crew.  Now it seems to be a smaller amount of bands and a less-tight crew.

Some live stuff of Playing Enemy later on in the band

S:  I think there was more a more fertile scene of people who knew people, who knew people, who played in bands and came to shows.  But I still don’t think people came to the shows.  I  feel like it was sort of a bleak time.

D:  I’ll give you that.  It was sort of dark.

S:  I think it was about four years between the last Botch show and when Playing Enemy broke up.  And I feel like the last Botch show was kind of the end of that era.

D:  There was no one to take the mantle.  I thought, for a moment, These Arms Are Snakes would, but they became more of a rock band.  They would tour with less heavy bands.

S:  And Botch rode that line between where they were popular-

And they were a hard band to top.  Whose going to top that, ya know?

D:  Right.  Because they had both performance and ability.  And there was nothing cheap about it.  Nothing seemed inauthentic.

S:  Ad they had been cultivating their thing forever, since they were teenagers.  So someone ‘coming up from the ranks’ for so long was nice.  But when they were done there wasn’t as much around.

So I look back on the Playing Enemy ‘scene’ time as pretty bleak.  I don’t remember that much.

So Demian, as opposed to many people in the city, as well as your bandmates, you’re a long time resident of Seattle.  Did the rapid change of that place inform any of the Playing Enemy material?

D: Not really.  It was mostly sad bastard music.  Twenty year old boy stuff.  ‘I’m in so much pain here’.  That kind of shit.  It was emotional.  Most of Great Falls lyrics are about my existential fear of death, or my fear of being a terrible father, and all that kind of stuff.  Back then, during Playing Enemy, it was all that other relationship stuff.  I think early on in Playing Enemy I just sang gobbledy-gook about nonsense because I didn’t ever really want to be a vocalist, but there weren’t really any other options.

For a minute, Playing Enemy was Andrew and myself, Ashli State, who played bass in Ink and Dagger, and Aaron, who was the singer in the band Jough Dawn Baker.  But he got the opportunity to move to NYC and be a social worker, so he went and did that.  It was definitely the right move for him.

Playing Enemy was also rather unhealthy as a band.  Until Andrew quit drinking, near the end of the band, we would just get fucking destroyed.  And we all lived together.  It was bad.

S: We stopped living together fairly early on though.  We got kicked out.

How did you come across using Stumptown for the packaging for “My Life..”?  Had you known about them and was the design idea already in place before recording?

D:  I think someone just recommended them.  Metallica probably recommended them.

The band?

D:  No, he’s a guy who screenprints all of our stuff.  He designed the layout for “My Life…”.  And he made the typo on the CD.  But he suggested them.  He’s really into cool packaging.

For Demain let’s go way back and discuss your playing style.  I think you have a really unique way of playing that comes across in all the bands you’ve played guitar in (Nineironspitfire, Kiss It Goodbye, Playing Enemy, Great Falls).  Can you talk a bit about your musical influences and what led you to want to play the style of music you’re known for?

D:  I’d say 100% when I started playing guitar I kind of stopped caring about straight edge stuff.  I would still listen to some of that music.  I was listening to Chain Of Strength just the other day.

But I discovered punk rock, and I thought it awesome.  And then I discovered straightedge and that was more specific.  And I would see those records, and the thanks lists, and go out and check out every one of the bands that I saw on those lists.  And we would go on tour and play with all different kinds of bands, and I got into other stuff.  So I then decided I wanted to start playing guitar.  And I realized that all my favorite bands that I started to discover were really weird and skronky and noisey.

Maybe it was from being friends with Keith Huckins and the Kiss It Goodbye guys that I discovered Godflesh, The Jesus Lizard, and Craw.  And I think from not seeing some of my favorite bands, especially Craw, I would have to imagine how I thought they played.  And I tried to emulate that.  But there was no Youtube to confirm any of my suspicions, so I just had to guess, like, ‘I bet they do this to get that sound’.  Of course they didn’t, it was just some stupid nonsense that I came up with.

It was imitating and getting it wrong.

D:  Yeah!  Absolutely.  People have access to all this stuff now and that’s why everyone is terrible and bands are bad.  (laughs)

If you don’t know what you’re doing you’re going to be awesome!  If you’re able to confirm any of your suspicions about anything you’re going to be terrible. (laughs)

What was your favorite thing about being in Playing Enemy and what was your least favorite?

D:  My favorite thing is this Ming shirt we made.

S:  Oh that was cool.

Like Ming the Merciless?

S:  Yeah.  I had this crazy fucking book from when I was a kid and it was faces of monsters and villains, and all of their faces were a maze.  You had to trace the maze.  There was Ming the Merciless, and the creature from the black lagoon, and Hitler-

D:  Hitler’s had a swastika in the maze!

S:  Yeah, and it was for kids.  So there was the maze, and a key in the back on how to do the maze with these dots.  I had done all the mazes.  They key was fine.  So the shirt was Ming’s face with all these dots in his face.

D:  It sold immediately.  It was the best fucking shirt.

And that was the highlight of the band?

D:  It was a really good shirt.

S:  My favorite thing was Demian and my least favorite was Andrew.

(laughs)  Should I print that?

D:  (laughs) They’re friends now!

S:  I am friends with Andrew now, but my least favorite thing in Playing Enemy was Andrew.  And my favorite thing is my best friend Demian.

D:  I’d say my favorite thing in Playing Enemy was when Shane and Andrew would fight, and my least favorite thing was when Shane and Andrew would fight.

If they were arguing about something stupid and little, that neither of them had much invested in, like whether or not Shane brings a towel on tour, they would argue about that for like 12 or 13 hours a day for weeks.  They would just never stop laying into each other.  Like, whether it was a good idea or not to wave to a cop while we were driving somewhere…  which we tested out while on tour.  And Andrew was right.  You should not wave at cops because they will pull you over.  So their arguments were fucking hilarious.  I’d wake up and they would be arguing.  I’d fall back asleep and wake up again and they would still be arguing about the same thing.  It was great.

S:  It was terrible.

D:  But their arguments were also demoralizing and horrifying.  I grew up in an abusive household and that brought back some memories (laughs).

S:  My favorite thing about Playing Enemy was that we were humorlessly dedicated to getting it right.  It was also my least favorite thing.  It taught me great discipline.  I learned to be incredibly disciplined about art, which I had never been as a kid, or ever thought to be.  I’ve carried that over since.  But it also sucked a lot of joy out of the band immediately.  It has, however, helped us a lot as musicians ever since.

D:  To Andrew’s credit, my favorite thing about Playing Enemy, for real, was Andrew’s playing.  Andrew is one of the greatest drummers in the world.  I will put him on the list of greatest drummers in the world at that time.  He was so fucking good and everything came so easy to him.

And that's that!  You can hear Demian and Shane continue to make noise of the best kind in Great Falls (whom I recently released a split 12" for), and- to my knowledge anyway- Andrew drums for prog weirdos Spacebag.  But if you want to own a copy of this record, tough luck, it's gone-so.  BUT you can get the digital version for $3 all this week if that's your thing right HERE.