HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR018- OAK AND BONE 7"

Another year goes by and another changing of the guard takes place.  Things keep moving along.  As more established bands of the Syracuse area either split up, or got more serious about their touring, new bands rose up to fill the gaps. 

In 2005 I had become involved with a collective of people who were working to establish a new venue in the area.  My role seemed to be to give some perspective, a little guidance, and design a couple logos.  There was a wellspring of interest from a group of kids who came out of the Cicero (North of Syracuse) area whom I’d never met before.  All these kids were starting their first bands and many of them played in this little hole in the wall space we had running for the entirety of about one summer before it was shut down.

I made sure to keep tabs on what these kids were up to because in them I definitely saw the next wave of people who would make a significant impact upon the Syracuse scene.  A myriad of short-lived bands sprang up and eventually some of those groups disbanded and distilled into what became Oak and Bone.  Having an idea of where the members had come from previously, and talking with their singer Weston Czerkies (who I could see was very interested in booking shows, making zines, and essentially just making shit happen- all very admirable qualities) about some of the sounds his new band was going for I pretty much knew right from the get-go, before even hearing them, that I would probably be game for what they were planning.

I ended up booking the band’s debut show, opening for Young Widows in 2008.  They were well received and began playing out frequently.  Their guitarist, Jon Sorber, had a wild set up and an almost natural inclination for getting crazy guitar tones and maximum riffage.  Drummer Drew Fitzgerald kind of surprised everyone because it seemed as if no one knew that some John Bonham type kid was wailing away furiously without a band until now.  Those two made a great team for mixing wild riffs with crazy drumming and bassist Chris Putzer holding down a sludgy/fuzzy low-end.  What the group came up with was music that had as much to do with riffy-sludge metal as it did crusty punk and the ideals of a straight up hardcore band.  It was a great mixture and they did it really well.

Their singer Weston eventually moved into the house I was renting with about 5 or 6 other people.  The band had been going for several months at this point.  I distinctly remember one night while we were both separately making some late night dinner in the kitchen and plainly stating, “I should do a record for Oak and Bone”.  Weston seemed surprised, but open to the idea.  And that was about that.

They went ahead and recorded their first 7”, which had 4 songs on the physical version, and a download including a 5^th secret track.  The guys gave me this wild painting they found at a garage sale to use for the cover.  Our man (and Black Sheep Squadron vocalist) Chuck Hickey drew a logo for the band that evoked the Beatles “Rubber Soul” logo, but in more of a hippie-death cult sort of way and I slapped the whole thing together with laying out an insert and a neat inside cover image.  And that’s how Oak and Bone got started.

But to really get into detail, especially about the beginnings of this band that burned short and bright, I caught up with professional grown-up Jon Sorber about all that crazy noise he helped make.

What was it like growing up in the area that you and when did you start getting into heavier music?

Well, unfortunately, my first taste of that was Christian rock.  Not Christian ‘rock’, but like Norma Jean and The Chariot.  Stuff like that.  It kind of evolved from there.  I found Botch, Breather Resist, and stuff like that was pretty awesome at the time.  It still is awesome.

When I first heard bands like Torche that really stuck with me because I had never heard stuff like that before.  It really influenced me in terms of my writing.  That whole vibe of big, open chords, and crushing sounds behind them was great.  But I also really liked rock n’ roll stuff like Queens Of the Stone Age, and that really stuck out for me.  Plus, being friends with people like you and Ted (Niccoli, second bassist for Oak and Bone) definitely exposed me to a lot of great music.

As far as growing up I didn’t really have any great taste in music, so I’m glad I found people who could influence me in the right way insofar as music goes.

Did you find it easy to seek that stuff out?

Oh yeah, and back then, there were a lot of shows at the Westcott Community Center and The Furnace.  A lot of great touring bands would come through.  My early, early influences were metalcore and it kind of just progressed from there.  Smoking weed opened up my eyes to a lot!  (laughs)

(laughs) As it did many people.

I’m trying to think of some early influences for that first 7”.  Definitely Queens Of the Stone Age, Torche, that was kind of the vibe that we were going for.  But it definitely came from hardcore with the vocals.

All the guys came from different parts of town.  How did you all end up meeting each other?

I’ve known Drew (Fitzgerald, drums) forever.  I knew Drew and Chris (Putzer, bass) from church.  I grew up with Drew.

But Drew is from Brewerton and you were out in Camillus, pretty far apart.

We went to school together at Faith Heritage.

OK, so you were both sent out to Catholic School.

Yup.  And me and Drew really started to connect in seventh grade when we found out what punk rock was and we both rebelled at the same time. (laughs)  So the private school didn’t ask us to come back the next year because we were too much to handle (laughs).  So then I started to go to public school at West Genesee, and flourished, because I was just like a normal kid at a public school instead of a punk rock kid at a Catholic school.

 The band in various states of rest (clockwise from top left):  Drew, Chris, Weston, Jon

And how did Weston (Czerkies, vocals) come into the picture?

I met Weston through going to shows at VFWs all over the place.  I think we went to OCC (Onondaga Community College) at the same time possibly?  But I always enjoyed him.  I think the first time I met him was probably through our friends Bill Crate and Shawn O’Brien (Batlord) out in the Central Square area.  Shawn used to have shows in his barn and The Moth Leads the Empire, which was like pre-Oak and Bone, played there.

I forgot about that band!  I was going to bring up your old band Seagrave instead.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Seagrave! (laughs)  When I was playing with Seagrave my harsh sound developed into more of a different style of heavy music.  It was a little more composed, a little less sporadic.  The Moth Leads the Empire was more of a noise thing, but it was fun.

I feel like Seagrave was a bit more metallic, but when Oak and Bone started it was really it’s own thing.  There was nothing like that around town.  So was your intention to completely try to do a different thing, or did it just grow naturally?

It definitely grew naturally.  I had been playing with Drew for so long.  My chemistry with him, to this day, is very natural.  We haven’t played together in a couple years, but I’m sure we would pick up right where we left off in terms of anticipating where the other one is going to go with a riff or a progression.  So me, Drew, and Chris started jamming up in Cicero.  Somehow Weston came into the picture.  Our first practice space was in Chris’ basement, and our first show was with Harbor, Setauket, and Young Widows.  That was a cool first show, especially having been a huge fan of Breather Resist, and getting to see the next step of that band.  Young Widows, for sure, influenced me in writing some of the Oak and Bone stuff.  Definitely them, Queens Of the Stone Age, and Torche mashed up what was I was going for.  And with Drew’s crazy beats behind it I thought it came out cool.  And it just got better from there.  But we did end up having to ask Chris to leave the band.

The first Oak and Bone show

Yeah, what happened there?

We asked him to leave.  It was a band decision that we came to.  We just didn’t really like where it was going with him I guess.  I don’t want to talk crap on him, he didn’t do anything wrong.  He’s a super nice guy, but it just wasn’t working out.  And we wanted to try someone else.

I think Ted was a really good fit as a replacement.

Uncle Ted came into the picture (laughs)

It’s funny you’re calling him Uncle Ted when he’s so much younger than me.  Now I feel super old.  Moving on, I wanted to ask about how you all always seemed to have really shitty luck on the road.

Well, I think our first tour, which was with Chris, we never got stranded anywhere.  That’s good.  But I feel like the shows were decent.  But I think as a group of 18 and 19 year olds out for the first time you’re going to have your poorly promoted shows, and poorly attended shows.  Even to this day that still happens!

We never fought with each other, we had a lot of fun, that’s for sure.  But I think the worst part was when our van broke down in Tampa.  That was our second tour, which was after the full length came out.

We did a bunch of weekends, we did shows with The Helm.  We went up to Burlington in January.  It was so cold.  So cold.

But the worst thing was breaking down in Tampa and having to scrap the van.  And then we got it appraised to see what we could get for it and we only got, like, $300 for it.  So that happened because Drew drove the van from Syracuse to probably Binghamton in second gear, which pretty much fucked the van.  We had issues with it throughout the whole tour.  We sold the van.  Luckily we were at Ted’s grandparents house, who lived down there, while we figured out what to do.  So we went to the beach and swam in his grandparents community pool at their retirement home.  So we hung out there.  Ted ended up flying home.  Weston took a bus.  Drew and I used the money we made from selling the van to rent a U-Haul box truck, because their vans don’t have trailer hitches, and we needed to hitch our trailer with our gear to get it home.  We drove 24 hours straight back home.  We got stuck in a ditch halfway back because we pulled over on the side of the road to get some sleep in Virginia or somewhere and we had to call a tow truck to get us out.  That was pretty wild.  So that’s that.  Success.

One of our most notorious shows, I guess, was in Buffalo at Sugar City where Ted drank too much and forgot how to play bass.  It was a rough night.  He got in a fight and had to go to the hospital.  So we all waited in the ER for him.  He was fine.  He got a little banged up.  And then we went to Denny’s and he threw it all up. (laughs)

I think that was sort of the fall of Oak and Bone.  Not too long after that Ted decided to move to Portland and we got Rob Button to play bass for us for a little while, for a handful of shows, before we split.  We did a weekend with him and Drew and I got arrested.  Did you ever hear about that?

Yes I did.  You were all traveling in different vehicles, right?

Yeah.  We were headed back to where we were staying and I had beer in the car and the cops pulled us over.  And they then arrested us.

What was recording the 7” like?  You took a song or two off the demo, re-recorded them, and threw a couple new ones on there too.

Yeah.  We recorded with Josh Coy at Wayne Manor Studios.  He was really into Batman.

AKA, his apartment attic.

Yeah.  I think I recorded guitars in his dining room.  He lived on Miles Ave.  But I think we were recording while I was going to OCC, so we recorded when we weren’t in class.  I don’t think it took very long.  It was a lot of fun though.  I don’t think I’d ever done something like that up to that point.  I never cut an actual record.  And the support you gave us was huge, that meant a lot.  And then we did the little incense packages-

I forgot about those!

(laughs) Yeah, single use incense packages with each record purchased!  I heard that someone had one, and the incense deteriorated, and the oils from the incense ruined the record, or something like that.

The different versions of the 7" and the inside cover

That was funny.  I forgot about that.  And that was all you guys, I had nothing to do with that.  It was like a record release show thing, right?

Yeah, you don’t remember us hanging out on your porch making them?  When you and Weston lived at that big house on Highland?

Yeah, it looked as if you guys were making drug baggies on my porch.  But I had forgot about it until you just brought it up.

I think we made about 40 of them.  A little drug bag action.

So where did the name Oak and Bone come from?

Shawn O’Brien thought of it.  The original name that Shawn thought of was The Staff Of Oak and Bone.  Weston and him were hanging out and Weston said, ‘how about just Oak and Bone’.  And now I feel like if we named the band that it would sound like some kind of tapas and cocktail bar.  Or a men’s clothing company.  Everyone is ‘something and something’ now.

(laughs)  But The Staff Of Oak and Bone would make people think you were a band of wizards, or something.

Yeah.  We like mythical witchcraft too.

That sounds like a very Shawn O’Brien thing to think of, and he wasn’t even in the band.

No, but he went on a bunch of weekends with us as a roadie.  He was always around.  He was a really nice dude too.

So what would you say was your favorite thing about that band, and what was your least favorite thing?

My favorite thing about doing Oak and Bone was the band itself.  It was all fun.  But putting the 7” out, and then the split with Like Wolves and then the full length, just being able to tour and play cities at that age was so cool.  And have label support too!  That was so cool.  That was the best part.  Being a part of that band, as a Syracuse thing, and being from here, I was proud of that. 

I regret none of it…  except getting arrested in Bethleham, Pennsylvania.  That was probably the worst part of the band.

Funny story- when I had to go back to Bethlehem to go to court the judge was talking to everybody in the courtroom and some random guy in the courtroom saw me and said, ‘yo, you’re the guitarist from Oak and Bone!’

Oh, the places you meet people!

Right!  In the courtroom!  So I said, ‘yeah man, I am!’  That was the best part of Oak and Bone actually.  But it was just an appearance, and I jumped through all the hoops for that stuff and it’s all behind me now.

So several weeks or months go by after this arrest and a random guy in court in a different city recognizes you from your band?  That’s staying power.

I guess so.

That guy is in a jail cell right now listening to your records.

He probably just broke our record so he could try and stab somebody with it.

Yes.  So, job well done.  That’s the legacy of Oak and Bone.

Glad I could influence someone’s life in a positive way. (laughs)

 The 7" record release show flyer

So that 7" is long out of print at this point, but you can always get the digital tracks via bandcamp.  AND you can get it all for only $3 this week. AND just to sweeten the deal, I'll randomly pick a person who buys the digital version and send them a test press copy of the 7".  So go do that now.

USA NAILS, "Life Cinema" OUT TODAY!

It's officially out TODAY! The new album by USA Nails, "Life Cinema" can be purchased through Hex HERE (if you're looking for either color of vinyl), or HERE(for international customers). And you can stream the entire thing HERE:  #usanailsband #lifecinema #hexrecords #noiserock

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.  

HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR016- ACHILLES, "Hospice"

By 2006 Achilles was on a tear.  They had toured quite a bit, become a point of pride within the Rochester community, and all things seemed to be going well for them.  They were getting ready to record their next full length, and had been writing music for it.  But a number of factors were coming into play that would signal that the active days of the band were coming to a close.  However, they did not know, going into the recording of the album, that this would be the end of a chapter.  That was communicated to me later on, but I had enough faith in the guys that not touring on the record would not affect my decision of whether to put it out or not.  I knew it would be good.

The varying factors that became major obstacles for the band to remain as active came for three of the members.  First off, guitarist Rob Antonucci was starting a family.  The guy knows his priorities and knew band stuff would have to become far less in the foreground with a kid on the way.  To date, he is probably the coolest dad I can think of.  Secondly, drummer Chris Browne was becoming way more active with his side band Polar Bear Club, who he played guitar for.  They were getting considerable recognition and in demand.  They began touring pretty heavily, partially based on the decision to put Achilles on the back burner.  And, eventually, Polar Bear Club became a full time band, touring constantly, opening up for Bad Religion, Face To Face, and doing several Warped tours during their time.  Finally, vocalist Rory Van Grol moved out to Providence, Rhode Island and ended up joining hardcore rockers Soul Control, who also became a full time touring band for a few years.  So there was a lot that got in the way of Achilles doing a whole lot after this record was released.

But I distinctly recall the guys getting in touch when they were down in Pennsylvania recording “Hospice” and informing me of how well they felt things were going and how pleased they were with the results.  Once they were finished the guys drove up to my house before heading back to Rochester to play the record.  They were so excited about it and wanted me to check out every song.  I remember as things closed with “The Cold Floor” and how emotional of a song it was, a perfect ending for a record and closing a chapter on things.  I still get goosebumps when I think of that song and I know there’s been more than a few times where they played it live and I got a bit weepy-eyed.  Oh, did I mention multiple shows seeing them play songs from this record?  Well, yeah.  The band didn’t split up.  They still aren’t split up.  They continued to play when possible, even if that meant just a weekend every year, or a show once every few years.  There’s even been some new material written since “Hospice” came out in 2007, even though it has not been recorded (yet).

When I think of ‘successful’ records that have been released by this label there are those that did so in the commercial sense by selling through their pressing(s), or bands that toured extensively and gained notoriety far and wide.  I often come across people who state that “Hospice” is one of their favorite records of all time.  Like, it had a major impact upon their life.  It’s one of those releases that has done fine for me insofar as selling a decent amount.  But to hear people regularly refer to this as a life-changing record, well, that’s big.  That goes above and beyond any commercial success a record may have.  And I’m inclined to agree that it is one of the ‘best’ records I’ve had the pleasure of releasing.

These days the band is still spread out.  Bassist Josh Dillon lives in Portland, drummer Chris Browne lives in LA.  Rob is still in the Rochester region with his family, and vocalist Rory Van Grol moved back to Rochester after Soul Control stopped playing, started a family of his own, and owns a great coffee business called Ugly Duck (which I encourage you all to check out if you’re in the area).  I’ve known Rory now for well over 20 years and he remains one of my favorite people around due to his kind demeanor, thoughtful presence, and his ability to naturally bring happiness to those around him.  He’s a busy guy and we found some time to catch up and discuss “Hospice”, particularly because of its’ lyrical weight even all these years later.

So, going into recording “Hospice” you all knew the band was going to be slowing down, right?

That came afterwards.  There was never any intention of us going in and recording, and then slowing down afterwards at all.  The way we wrote this record was so natural for all of us.  We were practicing, at minimum, two or three nights a week.  It was like we wrote this record naturally, it just came out of us.  It was very natural in the way we put this together, and it felt like kind of a quick turnaround from “Dark Horse”.  It felt very fluid.  And then once that record came out it got kind of weird because Chris (Browne, drums) stated that he had this opportunity to go to school in Boston.  He was like, “I think I got to do it.”  And I thought, “fuck, this is crazy, what are we going to do?”  So we all started having these really great conversations about the identity of the band.

We named the record “Hospice”, but it wasn’t because of a slow down, or a death, or anything.  We knew the band couldn’t last the way it was forever, but we were also like, ‘why would we break up?  Why put a total stop to something that we love?’ And that wasn’t just with playing songs, but hanging out together as friends.  For us, it’s just another way to hang out and enjoy each other’s company.

Of all the bands I’ve ever been in, Achilles, and particular this record, is the proudest record that I have been a part of. And it feels like the most complete record of any record I’ve been on, having played a role in it.  It just has an energy that we all put into it that was so natural.

So there was never any intent for us to walk away from this and say, “ok, that was it.”

And I remember you all made it clear to me as well that you weren’t breaking up, just slowing down.  But maybe it’s the passage of time that makes the timeline of events blur in my mind because there’s a number of songs on that record that make allusions to death, endings, and saying goodbyes, and I didn’t know if that was the point of the record to make a statement about slowing the band down.  But you’re stating that all came afterwards.  So maybe I’m associating what happened with the band after the record came out with subject matter within the songs.

Yeah, I get that.  That definitely was not the theme of the record, and I’ve never been a theme writer, or devote a record to a single subject.  That’s just not how I write.  But there was definitely, at that time in my life, personally, a lot of that going on.  I was coming out of a gnarly relationship that finally ended.  That was cathartic.  Another aspect was my grandparents passed away, and people close to us passed away, and others moved away.  Having attachment to those people, and feeling and exploring those things for me, in my mid-to-late 20’s, made me think, ‘well, what the fuck am I doing? Am I going to be doing this forever?  I have no idea.’  I think there was a lot of internal stuff that I was going through during that.  For me I wasn’t putting it on the band to say I’m writing about this stuff and this is the idea that I think is going to relevant for all of us.

Specifically the song “In These Stark Halls” is a good example.  My grandfather had passed away and I thought later about how I had missed so many things that I could have learned.  I took him for granted.  He had so many stories and I wish I had interacted with him more about that.  And it made me think about my life and what am I going to do next?  Am I just going to play in bands and work in grocery stores?  There’s no career path for me in that!

So what you’re saying is it was more of a coincidence, more or less, that some of these songs had to do with loss, but it paralleled what was going to be occurring with the band shortly after it came out.  It just worked out that way.

Totally.  It totally coalesced together in a natural way without intention.

So besides Chris going to Boston around that time, other stuff started occurring.  And again, I’m blurring the exact timeline, but Rob (Antonucci, guitarist) started a family and you moved to Providence, correct?

Yup.  For me, I knew that Rob had this stuff going on, Chris was doing this thing, and I didn’t feel beholden to stick around because of a band.  My other band, How We Are, had just broken up and I thought that sucked, but it is what it is.  So Chris had just moved to Boston and my friend Brian told me he was moving to Rhode Island and asked if I wanted to come with him.  It was weird because I had never lived anywhere else other than Rochester.  So, why not?  In all honesty, I was starting to look at houses in Rochester and think about buying a house and just staying there.  But my thought about moving was, ‘if I don’t do this now I’ll never do it.’  And that sort of just catapulted my decision to move to Providence.  Everyone was doing their own thing and I felt comfortable enough to leave and not feel guilty about it.  We would have been holding each back from something if we all stayed put. 

So that was huge for me.  The guys in Achilles are family and that’s big for us.

I can’t recall, but did you do any touring at all for “Hospice”?

I don’t think we ever did.  We did some weekends.  We did a weekend with Like Wolves out to Boston, but we never toured on this record.  And that’s a bummer because I think this record is great!

Agreed.  It seems to be the record within the Achilles catalog that people tend to hold up the highest.

It’s weird because when I’ve been out on the road with other bands people would ask me regularly if I was in Achilles.  And then they always would talk about “Hospice”.  And it was always cool to me that people knew that existed because I don’t feel as if we gave it justice.  I think that if we toured on that record, at the time it came out, I feel like we would have been more well-received for that than we ever were when we toured on “Dark Horse”.

And I think “Hospice” is where we came into our own because our influences were coalescing, it was very fluid for us in how we wrote it, and it’s ‘us’, ya know?

It’s never too late to get in the van!

(laughs) If anyone wants to book us on a fest, get in touch!

Just give a 10-months heads up beforehand.

(laughs) It takes that long now just because we laid dormant for so long.  But if we were to play a show and then another one a couple months later, it wouldn’t take as much time to get back into the groove.  But since it usually is quite a long time between shows it takes longer get the gears turning.

        picture by David Beyerlein

I listened to another podcast that you were on recently and you had mentioned something in there that I thought was a bit weird.  It had to do with you stating that you thought people didn’t really care about the band too much when you were active, but once you began playing once every couple years people really latched on and it was a big deal.  However, I always felt that the band had a good response regardless of when it was.  It seemed like you always did pretty well.

Yeah, maybe it’s my own mental thing.  When we were a band, I feel like, before “Hospice” came out we played a lot.  We played a lot of shows.  And I think about some of the shows we did play that if that were to happen today it would be so much bigger.  Or, maybe it’s one of those things where I remember certain shows as not being as great as other people see it.  It’s probably my own personal attachment to it that I think processes it differently.

I also think that we were always a proficient band, we were always tight.  But something didn’t connect for me until “Hospice” came out where it all fit together for me.  It was more intense, and it was the ultimate space for my involvement.  Maybe I was a little distracted in the past with things.

Obviously, the more recent one off shows are more of an event, but I even think back to playing our record release show with Young Widows at a coffee shop, and how there was some energy there that we had never had before.

I remember that show.  It was a small space, but it was really cool.

Anyways, prior to recording the record what was the band up to?  Was there some touring leading up to it? 

We never had a sit-down, let’s write a record’ sort of thing.  It’s funny because Rob brought this up last time he and I were talking about this record.  He said that we started writing this record without really knowing that we were writing it.  We were on a European tour, and we were in the Tate Modern Gallery, and the idea for the song “Curtains” came up.  Chris and Rob were just humming parts, and that’s kind of how those guys worked.  They would just talk about parts, and eventually those pieces would just come together, and we just started writing songs when we got back from that tour.  It just evolved from there.

I also don’t remember about how we approached you about putting this out. I think we waited until we had at least half of the record written before letting you know we had a bunch of songs.  I don’t remember how that went.  But I do remember that, always as a band, we would say, ‘Ryan likes our shit, that’s all we care about.  He wants us to be a part of Hex Records.’  We always felt that was a label that best fits us as a band.  You have been honest and have trusted us to come up with stuff.  We really had no other goals as a band other than being on Hex. 

I also remember nothing about that conversation.  At that point I just assumed that I would release whatever came next.  I’d say Achilles had a good track record of releasing good records, being active, and being good people.

However, I thought there was an odd choice about where you all recorded.  And I mean that because the early stuff was recorded locally, which makes sense.  “Dark Horse” was done in Louisville, which also made sense because a lot of bands were going there at that time and you all had made a lot of friendships with bands from there.  But recording in PA with Vince Ratti left me wondering what the connection was with that guy?

I think Chris made that decision.  But I also think The Minor Times recorded there as well.

Oh yeah, they recorded their full length there.

Yeah, and we thought that stuff sounded fucking sick.  And for us, The Minor Times was just so awesome.  Their sound was angular, and in a similar way, and sonically kind of what we were going for.  We heard things on their recordings that was what we also wanted.  We wanted to go a bit cleaner because we had gone dirty.  We were doing some more spacey sorts of things that we wanted to sound cleaner.  Chris wanted to have some click-track for better timing.  So we searched Vince out and went down to where he was, outside of Philly.  We got there and I think he was recording in his parents garage.  It was kind of weird.  (laughs)

I remember I went down separately with Max (Quattroci, roadie, also drummer for Like Wolves and Coming Down).  Rob, Chris, and Josh went down before me to track.  I figured I wasn’t going to be any good just twiddling my thumbs.  There’s no point for me to be there.  They’re going to get the sounds they want.  I came down when vocals were ready to go.  And I showed up and thought it was funny that it was this kid’s garage.  I guess I thought it was going to be more professional.  Vince was rad.  But I just had to laugh a bit because it was inside this dudes parents’ garage.

It was an overall chill recording, Vince totally understood what we were going for, and the room sounded great.  I remember Chris and Rob going back and forth about a lot of different guitar parts.  I remember Josh was locking in a lot of really great vibe-y bass tones.  We highlighted a lot of that and played with his sound more.  I remember being really psyched on that.

And I’ve always had a hard time with recording vocals.  It’s not my favorite thing to do.  I listen to “Hospice” and I still hear things like “my vocals sound totally shredded here”, but it adds a layer to the record and overall, I think the record sounds great.

We stayed with this guy Bob, who was originally from Syracuse, but lived down there.  And there was, and I’m using this term, a ‘punk towel’.  By saying that most punks can probably understand what that is.  But yeah, someone had forgot to bring a towel and just used whatever was there.  So they had the grossest smelling, nastiest towel, and I don’t know how long it had been there.  But that was the ongoing joke for us was , ‘why would you use the punk towel?  Why would you even consider using that as an option?’  That was a fun experience, but I wasn’t around for the whole thing.

I remember the drive home from recording was awful.  It was in January when we recorded that.  Me and Max drove home super late on a Sunday.  This is how stupid I was when I was younger, though I’m probably on the same level, just in a different way:  I wanted to get back because I felt like I had to be at work the next day, like 5 or 6 in the morning or something.  So it’s like midnight and I said to Max ‘we gotta go!’

So we get on the road and there’s this terrible snowstorm.  It’s a total white out, white-knuckling it, going 20 miles an hour.  Just brutal.  And we’re just trucking.  We kept switching because we were both like nodding off in this whiteout.  It was so terrible.  It’s like every reason you moved to the West Coast.

Yup.

We were seeing big rigs off the side of the road, shit like that.  (laughs) It’s like we’re driving home from recording this record we’re calling “Hospice” and I’m wondering if we’re even going to make it home!

So we get back, Max drops me off at work, I worked my shitty shift, and then went to bed. So those were the big memories for me in regards to recording that record.

Almost dying on the way home from it.

Totally almost died.  I remember too that Boston weekend we did those guys also spun out on the road and almost ate it.  I think Ben from Like Wolves was in the van.  I was living in Providence at the time so I wasn’t with them.  But I remember getting woken up in the middle of the night to a crazy phone call about the guys almost getting killed on the road.  Thankfully everyone was OK.

I know Rob is the art guy, but there had to be some group discussion around why the record just had photos of buildings and decay as opposed to art.  Any insight into that?

Totally.  Rob and I are very much spin things off of one another, moreso than Chris and Josh do.  They tend to hear our ideas and just say, ‘yeah, cool’, or ‘I like this and I don’t like this.’  But Rob and I say ‘what about this’ and go from there.  So this guy Shawn Carney took all the photos for the record.  We just saw the photos he had and thought they looked amazing.  So we asked him if he would want to have his photos for the record and he said that would be great and sent a bunch over.  Those photos just spoke to us, and I think they spoke to the record.  We wanted them to be a contrast.  We didn’t want it to be crazy, we wanted it to be inviting.  We wanted the art to say, ‘we want you to come into this’, rather than everything all at once.  We wanted to bring people in a little bit more.  We were trying to communicate that as a band to have these photos because we thought they were rad.  Plus, the cover is a picture of a building in Providence, Rhode Island!

What a weird premonition!

It was not planned!  I didn’t know I would eventually be living there later.  But Shawn had also lived there, so it made sense.

But we thought it was just a cool layout idea.  Rob wanted to lay out lyrics more than do the design of everything.  We like people to connect to our band.  I remember sending those directions to Shawn and giving him the artistic creativity to do what he wanted.  I liked that collaborative aspect.

So there wasn’t an aspect of ‘look at this decaying city’, it was just more about having good photos.

It was definitely artistic.  But at the time the record came out there was all the crazy flooding happening in New Orleans that sort of connected to that a little.  The song “Sea Level” was named after when New Orleans was just getting devastated, and you never think about all the people that was affecting.  And how do you even relate to that?  That doesn’t happen here.  We get ice storms and shit.  But we’ve never lived through crazy flooding or anything like that.

How have you made the band continue to work all these years later with busy schedules and being spread across the country?

I think it’s just because we care about each other.  We care about where we’re all at with things happening in each others lives.  We check in.  The friendships are the lynchpin of this band.  It’s why this band still exists.  It’s another reason to get together and be a part of each others lives and create something that is still relevant.

I’m so excited whenever I talk to someone in this band.  It gives me life. Our communication is more than just verbal, there’s a feeling there where we think, ‘How could we just walk away?  How could we throw away something that is so intuitive to all of us.’

I think as long as we’re all friends we’re still going to be a band, even if it’s playing one show every four years.  We don’t care.  We’re just psyched to get together and jam, hang out, and be in each others presence.  I care about Josh, and Rob, and Chris and whether we’re just talking about football or basketball, or kids and weddings and shit it doesn’t matter.  We just deeply care about one another.

Is it a little different now because while you guys are all the same, the audience has changed.  A lot of the people you used to expect to see have lives of their own, or moved away, typical things that happen to people after 10 or 12 years.  Does that give you a weird perspective?

Yes and no.  I think for all of us and the people who show up and are psyched to be there that are from the days past is great.  That’s always great.  But there’s also this younger energy that comes out and may not have seen us in any other era other than now.  And that’s amazing.  I mean, this record came out in 2007?  That was 12 years ago!

A literal lifetime for hardcore kids.

Right!  For that record to still connect with others is great.  We always loved these songs, but for them to still be well received in a way that surprises us is amazing.  The last time we played Rochester in 2016 it was wild, it was packed.    It’s interesting to see a totally different wave of kids, a totally different crop of kids, be into this.
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I love catching up with Rory and anyone else from this band really.  You ought to do the same in the form of listening to this awesome record.  Oh, you don't have it?  Well, now you can get the CD HERE for $4 for the next week.  If you do the digital go HERE and score it for $3.  Win-win.