Latest / The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine / Matt Morginsky: The O.C. Supertones

Transcript

Matt Morginsky: The O.C. Supertones · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Today we've got Matt from the O C Supertones. Matt,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: this kind of feels like a dream come true because
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: obviously the OC Supertones are just like a legendary band
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: in the Christian alternative music scene, which you know, a
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: lot of the bands that Colin and I chat with,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: not all of them, but certainly a lot of them
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: come from you know, like the Tooth and Nail world
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: or Solid State Records or you know, like adjacent you know,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: type of alternative Christian music labels. So, uh, this just
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: feels like a dream come true to chat with some.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: That's a very circumscribed world.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: You just yeah, all three fans, all three fans. We
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: got all three of them listening to us.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: That's how we make our bread and butter.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Though I'll tell you what I hate.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: So yeah, we're big fans. And you know, I know,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I know I just mentioned anyone cares.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I'm happy that anyone still cares. But it was our
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: first record came out thirty years ago.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: So unbelievable that it's been that long. But uh, yeah,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I mean Supertones. I know, I was just mentioning this
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: right before we started recording, but Supertones were one of
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: those bands when I was like maybe seven or eight.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I got a CD for maybe Christmas or something, and
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I got a CD that had all the Veggietail characters
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: but they all had mohawks. And it was like the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: first moment where I was like, Okay, I can listen
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to music that sounds like the kind of music I
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: want to listen to, but it's approved by my parents.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And and obviously super Tones were on this like Veggie
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Rock ceed, I forget what song did you do? Water Buffalo? No?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: What one?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: No? No? We could we did? I can be your friend.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I can be your friend. That's right.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I uh again, probably was like first or
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: second grade, and when I would like do the dishes
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: for my chores, like, I would be putting that that
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: CD on and I was jamming out. And so Supertones
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: have been a part of my life for a very
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: long time. Even though I probably would be considered one
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: of the younger fans of Supertones, they have been a
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: part of my life for a while for sure.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, my kids actually request that song from time
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: to time, and you.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Know, it's a banger.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: It is. And here's the thing is, my kids don't
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: really get the whole Supertones thing. But I think that
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: the fact that we did a Veggietail song on like
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: a actual legit, canonical Veggietails album is the thing that
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: makes them say, oh dad, that actually did something with music, right,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: I can tell them.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: You are legit, like you actually are legit crazier kids.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Because of Vegetails.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: That's funny. What what is your favorite I mean maybe
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: it is your guys' cover, but what is your favorite
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: cover off of that album?
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I feel like Relyant Kay had a terrific one.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pirates don't do anything.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: The Pirates who don't do anything, they they had a
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: real I think Steve Taylor even produced that particular session
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: if I'm mistaken. And Steve Taylor has besides being a
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: great producer, he has a a real gift for the
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: quirky and uh very much and so well.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: And Reliant Kay did too, especially at that time of
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: their career, like they were still kind of a goofy band,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and so it fit perfect for them at that time.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're hystorically funny and uh and also musically
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: talented and also you know, the Pirates who don't do
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: anything As a song is probably the pecks of VeggieTales.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I would I think you're up there. I think I
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: think that's a fair take. Even if I might, I
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: don't know if I disagree with it or not. I
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: have to think through that. But certainly their.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Own the Pirates were stars ed of themselves. They're hysterical.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: They did a whole movie with featuring them, The The
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Journal Movies.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: True, Remember that's true. I was able. I was able
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to bully Relyan k into playe Pirates who don't do
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: anything a couple of years ago when they were on
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: their tour, and uh yeah, I think I like, right
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: before they played, I like tweeted something out about you know,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: if if they don't play that song tonight, then I
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: would declare switch Foot as the greatest two thousands Christian
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: rock band. And uh one of the guys, I think, yeah.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I think I think Schneck found it or heard about
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: it or and and they sort of know us a
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: little bit. But he got a hold of it, and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I think he was able to get Matt to like,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: all right, maybe when we're like in between songs, tune
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: in our guitars. I'll just play like a little rendition.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: And they did and it got on like Relevant magazine
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and everything. It was kind of a cool little moment.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Relevance Magazine is still publishing.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I don't think they're doing yeah physical
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: but yeah yeah. No one is right, yeah right, including
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: HM magazine.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, Mason's Mason's first experience with you
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: is quite different than my own, though mine is a
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: little bit, a little bit in the opposite direction. So
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: I remember going with my older sister to her youth group,
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: which was very very cool in town who's called U
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Turn and it was in an old warehouse, which it
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: does a big thing.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Edge or the upper room. I feel like edge and
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: upper room is of U lit youth group names.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: Especially. That is exactly the right way to say it,
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: because it's no longer cool to say lit. Right, just
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: one step behind the Christian culture, is right. But I
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: remember going with my sister and I was way young
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: to be there, and she shows me this record she
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: wants to get because they had like a little like
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: CD stand in the back that you can get cheap records,
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: and Chase the Sun was there, and my sister's like,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: should I get this one? Or should I get I
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: don't know, Casting Crowns or whoever it was, I can't remember.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: And I was like, well, definitely not Chase the Sun
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: because that looks like mom's big band album that's in
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: her car. It's like the exact same font and everything.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: So I told her to go get whatever the other
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: album was. But so I could have been a die
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: hard OC super Tones fan from age.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: What's that when the year two thousand?
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just after Chas the Sun came out.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, I mean for its time, that album
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: was pretty jamming.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: I'm sure it was great. It was the it was
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: just the it was just the connotation of my mom's
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: uh you know, big band uh collaboration.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's sort of that classic classic cursive.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what it was. That's what it wanted.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Who picked that? They lost us a fan.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Seven year old fan, Yeah.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Racking in that money exactly, so the all important seven
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: to nine telegraphic. So, Matt, it's fun to sing your praises.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I will say, though you aren't the first Christian ska
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: band to be on the Black Shoe Podcast. We have
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: had Leonor from five Iron several times now. Uh, and
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: she's become a dear friend. But I just gotta. I
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: want you to know you are our sloppy second for
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Christian SKA bands.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, Five Iron of Courses. It's an amazing group
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: and I love them very much.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Good good folks. Yeah. What like and you're in Colorado now, right?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Denver.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of funny to think that, like, yeah,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: it's like, you know, I think most of the Five
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Iron people are still in Colorado. You're in Colorado. It's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: just kind of funny that, like there's just like, I know,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: this weird little Denver thing going on with Christians godbands.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean nothing's going on because we don't
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: planning actual ska Yeah. And Reese lives in Virginia, so
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: that's right.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I forget that he's he's out there.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I moved here and I was like, were you
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: speaking of hey, how he's like I'm moving away? That
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: was thirteen years ago.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: You should have just commandeered Five Iron, That's what you
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: should have done.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just because they're just taken over the singer.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Five Irons, put glasses and step up on stage.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Reese's top range. I don't have it that that high
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: high tenor I can't get there.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: Sure, Sorry to say.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Fair enough, fair enough. Well, let's stop talking about five
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Iron because they are inferior to the OC Supertones.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: So let's say that. I wouldn't say that on a podcast.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: But some would say it. Some would some people say that.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: I mean they say it.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: You know that sounded very Trumpian of you.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't take ownership.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: I mean I don't know.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Some people were saying it. Who's the same.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about just your history, maybe before you
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: actually started super Tones. Let's talk about just how you
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: got into music in general, Like what what made you
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: just want to, you know, start singing and playing music
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: and all of that, Like, what what was the impluise
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: for that?
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I so my older brother kind of discovered the whole
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: rock and roll thing, Guns n' Roses, def Leopard, Motley Crue.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: This was that your brother and my dad should be friends.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe, uh, And he he got a guitar, and so
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: in the same way that younger brothers have to play
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Luigi instead of Mario, I got a base. And and
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: you know, I think that the real appeal it was
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: undeniably cool. But also at twelve years old when I
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: got a base was when I was first interested in girls,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: and I had no plan I was gonna make that happen.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: Huh, yeah, those don't go together. I mean, what was
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: even the big baseline in Hey, the late ladies there,
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: you know, yes, but.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying being in a band generally was a
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: good plan. According part was to my twelve year old brain.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: You know, I was looking at how ugly all these
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: guys in the bands were, and they were famously pulling
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: left and right, and and so I said, I said, Okay,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I'll do that because I've got no better plan.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: No, there's no better way to get girls than to
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: start a Christian ska band. That is the best way
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to get girls.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Well, at that point, I was not I was not
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: raised in a Christian home at all, and so I
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: was more aspiring to maybe not be guns and Roses,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: but perhaps great white guy. You guys can't go that
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: deep bang tango ra rat. That's a good group actually,
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: and so so you know, it was it was partly
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: love of music, you know, it really was my first
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: the first thing I loved in life. It was the
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: first thing I got into. I wasn't I wasn't very
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: good academically. I was a very good at sports, and
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: so it was kind of like the world that I
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: fit in with. And just connecting with other musicians in
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: junior high, you know, it kind of gave you. It
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: gave you a social circle to fit in with. And
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: when you know you brought you brought an instrument to
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: the table that made you with someone. So there was
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: definitely that too, and so so you know, I wasn't
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: very good, but I was writing songs right away, like
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: just these nonsensical songs that I would write with my
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: friends and you know, not real bands, like we never
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: had a drummer or a singer. It was just like
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: me and my friend who played guitar and or you know,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: like instrumental rock bands, because that's the one thing that
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: was really hard to come by, was a singer. And
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: so I think when I was freshman year, I had
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: a public performance for the first time at high school.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Where at Capistrano Valley High School, so in San Juan, California,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: at lunchtime, we would have like bands, like local bands
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: or bands within the school play and this was like
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: the apex, you know, like if we could just get
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: on the lunchtime stage, and I ended up being the
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: singer and we did We did Paranoid by Black Sabbath,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: and we did Anti Social, Anti Social by Anthrax, which
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I think was actually a cover from another their band.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: And so that that was like my first foray into
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: singing and so ever ever after that, because I was
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: the only one who was willing with singing bands. And
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: so when I was fourteen years old, also that freshman year,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I got invited to play bass in a local Catholic well,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: of course it's local in a Catholic church youth group,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: and so that was the first time I had ever
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: been in a church. And you know, I was like
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: this plot smoking acid dropping, getting in fights at lunchtime
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: kind of guy, and was just kind of like real.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: I wasn't anti religion or anything like that. I was
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: just really confused as to what was going on. And
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: I just sitting in there considered the question of God
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: for the first time of like what about this? Look
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: at all these people praying, what's that preest talking about?
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I didn't understand a word of what was going on.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: It was just kind of a I don't know. I
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: think God was moving in me though through that, and
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: so over that year I just became curious and our
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: our born again neighbors as we like to call them.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Moving from New York to California, we heard about these
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: born agains, my born again neighbors. Awesome family, the Collins family.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: They're they're awesome to this day. Had given my brother
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: a Bible, and so I just started reading that Bible.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: It was it was before the Living Translation existed. It
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: was the Living Bible, and it just said the book
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: on the cover. I still have it, and I just
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: started reading that and out of curiosity, and over that
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: year of just reading the Bible, I just I said, well,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I'm not totally sure what this is all about, but
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: this is what I'm about. And it was then that,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: like right going into my sophomore year that I as
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: soon as I became a Christian, I also started the
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Supertones what became the Supertones with with a friend at
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: high school, the guy who invited me to the to
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. Yeah, and so that was the beginnings.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: What I mean, at some point you move from playing
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Anthraxin and Black Sabbath to you know, obviously eventually something
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: like SKA comes around and I'm trying to remember maybe
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: it was you guys that like I'm trying to think,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: like I think I saw you guys like on that
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Tooth and Nail documentary where you guys had used to
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: have like an entirely different sound, right, and then like
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: moved into more of this like SKA direction than obviously
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: like really catapulted Supertones to this kind of new level.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Can you talk about that maybe that timeframe of like
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: you guys, you know, playing your own music that maybe
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: was way different than SCA at the time, and then
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: eventually what that story was of kind of like being
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: convinced that, Okay, maybe we need to make a new
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: direction musically.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Well, when I was twelve years old, I was into
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: all like the you know, for lack of better term,
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: butt rock stuff and that, and I still love all
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: that stuff, yeah to me, bon Jovia Motley Cruz stands
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: up to this day, as does of course Metallica. But
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: you know, I kind of got into when I was
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: thirteen years old started listening to the more alternative stuff
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: as we called it back then. Ram Jaane's addiction. Jaane's
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: addiction was a really big one and so kind and
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: read how chili Peppers was like my favorite and so
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: so also in my freshman year I had a friend
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: who introduced me to the Specials and and Operation IVY,
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: and that was a huge game changer. I saw in
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety I saw The Selector on their comeback tour
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: up in Redondo, and when I went to that show,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, this is the most amazing thing
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: I've ever seen. And so just that's when I fell
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: in love with Scat when I was fourteen years old.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: And so it was all of it. And so when
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: we started the band that became the Supertones, it was
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: a pot pourri. It was it was a little bit
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: red Hot Chili Pepper's one song, it was a little
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: bit you know, our best approximation of Operation IVY the
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: next song, and it was no doubt, you know, they
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: were they were really jumping off back then. They were
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: massive and so cow before they broke nationally and and
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: so we were just playing all these different kinds of
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: musics and getting nowhere. And so the real shift in
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: from from the prior band to the Supertones where we
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: became more successful was instead of playing different music's song
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: to song, we used SKA as like the mainframe sort
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: of I'm misusing that the main framework, and we put
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: in hip hop and punk rock and all the other
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: things that we were in to. Ska's a very sort
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: of flexible framework that you could work with. Is you
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: know which kind of is evident over the years, and
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: how it's changed and accommodated, like you know more R
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: and B or mode or whatever.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: M hm, Well tell me the story of you convincing
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Brandon Ebel to sign you then, right, because that that's all.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: It was not right it for some reason, But wasn't
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: there like somebody locked him in a room and am
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I mixing up with that another band?
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: No? No, no, no, it's us, But it wasn't me.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: It was Carson, So our drummer, Jason Carson, that was
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: that was really so as soon as I started the
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: what the band that became the Supertones, that it was
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: with this other guy who had invited me to his
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Catholic church and we like had a friend who was
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: a drummer who wasn't very good and he quit on
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: us after like a month. We're like, oh no, what
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: did we do now? Oh? And we got connected through
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: a guy in another band at our high school to
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Jason Carson who went to a different high school. And
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: so when he joined the band. You know that that's he.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: If you ever meet Jason, he's just got so much
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: can do, attitude, enthusiasm, all that stuff, right, he was
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: just born with it. And so that's when we really
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: started to that's when we really became a band. And
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: so yeah, you know he I still think of the
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: core of the Supertones as it's me, it's Jason Carson,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: and it's Tony Russa, because we were we were we
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: were the band that was kind of what was left
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: of the prior band when we started the Supertones. And
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: of course Darren the chief, our trumpet player, was with
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: us like a long long time too. But no, Jason
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: was the sort of the organizational driving force behind the Supertones.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: I think that it could be said that Tony and
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I were we kind of were responsible for the music
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: and everything from you know, promoting shows and knocking down
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: doors and all this, and knocking down is the right
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: word for it. That's all Jason. That's one hundred percent
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Jason Carson. The dude just has hustle and he's got
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: as we say in the good language, woodspot. And so
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: the story is, and I actually, uh in the liner
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: notes to the to the vinyl reprint of the Adventures record.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: I tell this whole thing and in depth, so buy
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: it everybody. So the story goes, and this is true,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: This is one hundred percent true. So Jason promoted a
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: series of really successful shows in Socaw at our church.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: It was called April Fest. And April Fest got bigger
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: and bigger over the years. You know, the scene in
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: southern California was really burgeoning at that point. I think
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: I've never heard of a scene like it since. But
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: every weekend hardcore bands, you know, punk rockets, they were
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: playing shows and they were getting packed. It was getting
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: bigger and bigger, and so April Fest I think we
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: could fit about eight hundred people, which was unheard of
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: at that point. Like it used to be a Christian
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: show in Sokaw was like fifty people are like, hey,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: fifty people were there, And so he would do it
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: would be the four weeks of April. There would be
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: a show every week, every weekend, and he booked MxPx,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: who had just put out Pokanacha and MxPx was the
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: apple of the Tooth and Nail Eye and Brandon Ebel
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: especially and for us, you know, it was Toothnail or bust.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: There was only one label in our minds. Every other,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: every other Christian rock label was hopelessly lame to us,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: and so and so Brandon came down for mxpx's first
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: show outside of Washington, and needless to say, it was packed,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: and it was the first really actually we were still
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: called by our old name then, but we had developed
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: our new sound. But Jason booked us as the opener.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: He booked his own band as the opener, and he
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: put up MxPx and Brandon at his parents' house quite generously,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: I might add, giving up his bed for Brandon. Now.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: The morning after the show, the you know, they had
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: to leave to catch the plane, and we had been
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: sending in demos to Tooth and Nail for years at
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: that point, and they had passed on us because we
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: weren't very good, be honest, and so Jason took the opportunity.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: And as Brandon is, you know, kind of packing up
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: his stuff, and he he goes in the room and
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: he says, hey, so you saw us last night, our
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: new sound and everything. What do you think you want
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: to sign us? And he's like, I don't know, I'll
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: have to think about it. He's like, now I don't
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: know exactly what he said, but he as Brandon was
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: starting to leave the room, Jason got between him and
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: the door, and I guess some would say that that
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: would be holding him against his will in a room,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: might be fit some definitions of kidnapping. And he said, Brandon,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: you're gonna tell me right now, you're gonna sign us
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: yes or no? And Brandon said no, and He's like, okay.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: But subs sequently later as he was listening back to
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: kind of our new stuff, he did he did here like, Okay,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: they've this is a different group. They you know, they've
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: found their thing and ended up signing us. But it
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: would have been better if he said yes in the room.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, a lotless nerve wracking for sure.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: No, he turned down. But that that is so I
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: say this in the liner notes too. That is on
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: the lower part of the greatest hits of Jason Carson's
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: acts of audacity. Like Jason, that is that is a medium, right,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: the dude just honestly, super tones would have gotten nowhere
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: if it wasn't for Jason being Jason. You know, he
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: just goes after things like no one I've ever known.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: He is it is awesome. He's like that to this day.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Just all the guts, all the guts and backbone in
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: the world and will make things happen.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: So so y'all get signed and uh, y'all started to
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: pick up steam really fast.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Night.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's true. So we became the Supertones in
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: ninety four and uh and yeah, I think the first
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: show where we really so we we played, we played
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: that April Fest show, but that was like that's our
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: like our people. It was the church we went to
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: and so so we were well received there. But you know,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: we were always kind of like the opener, no one
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: cared about in the in the scene. And then it
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: was it was a show. It was nineteen ninety five.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: It was called Lolla Paloma at Point Loma University and
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: I remember sixpence None the Richer was was headlining that year.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Do you guys have any memory of this? Where are you?
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: No, we're nowhere near California. Yeah, in South Dakotayah, we
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: grew up in the middle of the South Dakota. Yeah, yeah,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: that's where That's not where I'm at now, but yeah,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: So it's on the cliffs above the beach in San Diego. Like,
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: if someone's out there considering where to go to college,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can't be point low for for scenery.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: That sounds cheesy as hell.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Though not gonna It was a good festival. I forget everyone,
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: but I do remember Sixpence None the Richard Way before
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Kissed Me Wow was was headlining it, and we played
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: a mid slot, but it was as the sun was
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: going down, and you know, we were as we started playing,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: there was just a few people kind of checking us out, okay,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: but as the show went on, like like it, it
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: got like there was a lot of people and they
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: were really cheering and they were really dancing, and it
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: was one of those it was one of those moments
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: where we said, what just happened, you know, and we
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: kind of became the talk of the town after that.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: And and that was after we were signed and after
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: we had cut the record actually, but the record hadn't
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: come out yet, and so that was that was when
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: we kind of had the first inkling of oh, oh,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: this is actually going somewhere, this is actually catching on.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It felt like probably like your movie moment right
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: a bit.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I'd say that when we first started to
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: develop the real ska sound. It was the first song
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: that we did like that was called Never Want a Fall.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Listening back to it now, it's maybe not our best song,
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: but like, you know, we had recruited horn players and
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: I had come in with this song, and Tony, you know,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: during rehearsal, had come up with this horn line. D
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: We didn't know how to write horn lines. Tony was
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Tony is just a very I don't know, it was
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: definitely the best player in our band. But he's just
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: he's just, you know, he's a good musician.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: He just is sure.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I think if he had wanted to, he could have
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: he could have just played bass professionally, like as a
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: studio guy. But when we when we ran that, like
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: he shows the horn line to the horn players and
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: and you know, I was I was the guitar player
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: back then, playing guitar and sang and we ran that
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: song for the first time, and it's just like we're
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: all looking at each other like what just happened? Like
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: are we suddenly a good band? Like like what is this?
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Like we just hit we just level up and and
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: you know, so there definitely are those moments of like, uh,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: of of when you start to feel it, like did
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: you watch the movie Straight out of Compton about n
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: w Ay, So you haven't seen that one, Mason.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of I've seen it or not.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: I definitely know about it though, yeah.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's a scene in it where they're doing
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: what's the song called the one where Easy E raps?
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: It was their first hit, right up?
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: No, sorry no, straight up? Yeah yeah no, I was
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: thinking his his solo, his solo.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no it was I don't remember.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: And that's but you know, bom bom boom that song.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: So when they were recording that, they were working on
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: that and they were listening back to it and everyone
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: was just so excited. There's just this this energy in
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: the room. And Jason and I talked about that of
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: boys in the hood. Thank you, that's it. Yeah, the
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: boys in the hood are always hard. I'm talking about trash,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: will pull your card, and and so just that that
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: we could definitely relate. I think every band who gets
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: somewhere has that moment of like, because you know, it's
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: necessary that you suck for a while, m and you
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: gotta you gotta go through that. It has to come
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: out for you too to improve and kind of find
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: and your sound. And when and when it does come together,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: when the chemistry actually happens, it's it is an incredible
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: feeling and so so yeah, definitely, yeah, that was that.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: But that that point Loma show. Definitely when we when
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: we started, when we started to catch on, we thought
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: we were great after that point, but that's when anybody
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: else noticed.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: What is it about SKA in particular that maybe captures you?
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: You know, like obviously you mentioned like you know, one
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of your guys' first shows is with like MxPx, Like
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: you guys could have totally gone down just like straight
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: up punk route, and you know, obviously you definitely have
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: like punk elements within within your whole discography. But what
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: is it about SKA that like captures you? Because like,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: when I think of Scott, it's kind of hard to
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: believe that like such a genre ever existed. It kind
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: of to me reminds me of like a platypus of music.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: It's just like how why and how did this ever happen?
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: So it's just to me, it's like maybe one of
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the strangest music genres that ever at least had like
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: some level of success at one point in music history.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm just curious, like for you, like, what is
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: it about it that maybe is like infectious or captures you.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it is interesting how how at certain
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: times and places certain sounds catch on and maybe subsequent
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: generations don't hear it the same way. I get that, right,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Like if you listen to the Lemon Sisters right now,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: we're probably like that's weird. But like it was the jam,
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: it was uptown funk back in the day. Yeah, you know,
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: it just caught up. I think for me, the dancing
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: part of it definitely right, like shows where people were
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: dancing that was amazing, Like we didn't dance. We didn't
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: know how to dance. You know, it was grunge, and
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: it was all this stuff of like either just bang
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: your head or whatever. And it's like you could dance
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: with girls to this music, kay, And so that's definitely
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: part of it. But I think just hm, you know,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: just taking the first band I heard was the Specials,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: and just something about just the the groove of it,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: the way it moves, and and also it's just musically bigger,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: you know than like three chord punk where there's different
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: things happening. You have horns happening, right, there's punk. I
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: love punk, but it is you know, there's only so
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: many options, and with Sky there's a lot of different
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: feels and there's a lot of different ways you can
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: go with it. As you know. Any if you listen
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: to a sampling of kind of the great SKA bands,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: it all sounds pretty different. I guess it got pigeonholed
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: at some point, but it was just big and exciting,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: especially live. You know, there's no way to communicate to
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: because I get it, like after a while, it's like
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: people listen to it now they're like, that's not that good.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: But back in the day, it was the most exciting
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: thing going.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: I don't know if people do say that about it today,
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: though some are saying that that, and I think I
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: would agree that there's a little bit of a resurgence
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: coming around with SKA.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: You know, as much as anything can be resurgent, you know,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: it seems to me that new nothing new is happening anymore.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: It's all regurgitation.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, sure, I understand.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: That third wave SKA was a new take on what
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: had come before, and I haven't actually heard a new
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: sound in rock, hip hop, or ska. Oh gosh, since
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: in hip hop, I think the last new thing is
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: like Kendrick maybe Migos that's a while ago already.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Everything else it's it's repetition. And then in rock, the
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: last time I heard something new was Jack White.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: Excuse me? Have you ever heard of Imagine Dragons? Wow?
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: That's awesome? It is called yeah, is it? I'm sorry?
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's he really loves Mormonism.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I do love Mormonism about that, right?
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah? Isn't it kind of weird to think, you know,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: between The Killers and Imagine Dragon's like maybe two of
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: the largest rock bands of the last twenty five years,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: they're both Mormons.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy, kind of weird. Yeah, I don't have
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: much to say about that.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Well it actually speaking along those lines, uh, this is
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: something that Leonora Cullen and I talked a little bit
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: about before. I'm just kind of curious, like maybe your
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: own reflections on this, But it does seem like, in
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: comparison to other music genres, the Christian influence in a
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: particular music genres, in a particular music genre, it does
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: seem like there was maybe a disproportionate weight of influence
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: in like popular scot especially in the late nineties, in
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: comparison to other genres, you know, like whether it's alternative
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: or pop or hip hop or whatever it might be.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: And I think like maybe the the like I'm just
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: trying to like, like you guys were massive in scott
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Five Iron was obviously big as well, and and so
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: there just was like this like larger Christian representation within
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: popular scot in the nineties that you know, like you know,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: maybe the closest we got to like that and pop
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: was maybe a little bit of Amy Grant in hip hop,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the closest maybe we've ever gotten in kind of in
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: terms of Christian representation is maybe like yeah, Lacrae.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: You're saying where Yeah, there just was like more things.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: It's like it's like whatever's happening in rock is it's
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: like the terminus as in the Christian world, whereas five
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Iron and the super Zones were legitimate contributions to the sound.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and more so more so than any other genre,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: especially at the price.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, I definitely think, like you have to look
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: at m xp X. They they definitely they took that
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: three chord melodic punk thing too. It's platonic ideal basically,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: you know, not too many others.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Though, huh well yeah, but I'm just trying to If
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: you think about it this way, if you were to
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: like come up with like a mount rushmore of genres
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: within each genre, you know, we could come up with
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: one for hip hop, we could come up with one
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: for country and so on and so forth. But if
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: we were to come up with one for ska specifically,
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: like third wave, the third wave, Yeah, you're gonna be
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: a part of that conversation in the mount rushmore.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Of skin thought like four top four.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that No, especially in Okay.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: It's Bosstones, no doubt. And I think Real big Fish
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: has to be of us. I don't like their music,
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: but they definitely were more successful than us.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: I think you'd like if somebody is to write a
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: like a history of third wave ska, it would be
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: remiss of them to not include oc Supertones and five Iron,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Whereas if somebody were to write if somebody were to
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: write a book about two thousands hip hop, they're not
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: They're likely not going to include the Cree, right. So
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: there was this like outsized Christian influence in especially third
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Wave Scot. Honestly, I think the closest we've ever seen
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: to like that kind of influence in a particular genre,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Like a Christian influence in a particular genre would be metalcore,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: like many of like it. It would be like if
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: you were to write a if you were to write
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: a history of metalcore, like especially two thousands of metal core,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: you couldn't you couldn't name, you could not not name
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: under Oath, August Burn's Red Devil, ors Prada like they like.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I do think Christianity had an outsized influence in that
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: particular genre. But I think like there it could be
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: a claim to be made. Actually maybe if you even
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: include the insiders in this, that Third Way Scott kind
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: of had a similar kind of at least Christian third
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Wave Scott had like a really outsize influence in third
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Wave Scott in general.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think maybe that's also part of the
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Tooth and Nail effect. Now I know that that those
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: other two groups weren't on Tooth and Nail. You got
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: a credit Tooth and Nail with signing stuff that was legit,
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: right right, Like that's.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: Why we're fans of tooth and nail, Yeah, because it
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: didn't make me feel as a Christian. Did make me
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: feel like a like a loser for picking up one
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: of the records, you know, right.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: And so so when I when I first became a
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Christian and I was kind of taught, you know, you
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: can only listen to Christian music, I was like, okay,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Like it was always the diet version of whatever music
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: you were into, right, Not I don't want to bang
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: on any of these bands, but it was it was
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: almost metal, it was almost rock and roll, it was
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: almost whatever. It was almost hip hop.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: It was like always very cheesy.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: It seemed like it was just it was pumped through
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: the Nashville system.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: Right right, and water down version of it too.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the talent was inferior too. I don't.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: I don't think like One Bad Pig would would work
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: like it's just you know, they they would have been
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: like fiftieth tier in the punk rock world if it
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: wasn't you know, no no offense to One Bag Pig
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: or their their fans, But there just wasn't anything out
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: there that was as good, you know, as as as
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: the general market music that I was into. And so
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: when when Tooth and Nail came along, and you know,
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: I mean those early records were rough around the edges,
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: but it was legit. You know, it was people who
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: were who inhabited those worlds. It was it was kids
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: from those scenes that were starting these groups. And so
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: I think that that would be you know, hip hop
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: had a long time of developing before Lacree spoke into
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: the conversation. If you had put Lacree out in, if
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: La Craye was Lacree in nineteen eighty six, then you
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: know what I mean. Yeah, it's just it's a time
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: and place kind of thing. And I think that, you know,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Five Minute Walk was definitely piggybacking on what Tooth and
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Nail was doing. Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's fair
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: to say. But likewise, had some legit groups there, like
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: five ir.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean to you know, obviously, people have lots
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: of thoughts around Brandon Ebel and everything, but to his credit,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: he wanted the music to have integrity. Yet like again,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I think from like that Tooth and Nail documentary, he
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: said something along the lines of the music has to
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: hold like it has to be able to hold itself
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: up on its own without like the fact that it
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: is going to be marketed to Christian moms and it's
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: and teenagers, like the music has to hold up by itself.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean those early records, a lot of them
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: are not commercial, you know, like they had some I
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: think that MxPx was the first or Plank Guy in
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: MxPx were kind of the biggest commercial hits in the
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: early years. But you look at blender Head, you look
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: at ninety pounds, you look at like, this is not
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: like this is intense hard stuff, you know, like it
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: was for real, it.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: Was cred stuff. I mean, it's credit.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: It was, and they did a great job with that.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you gotta give it up. So yeah, anyway,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: I was just always really curious around kind of this
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: idea that it does seem that Christians, uh just have
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: a disproportionate amount of influence in Third Wife Scott in comparison.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I just find that really interesting.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: But as you say, with you know, Tooth and Nail
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: was putting out those groups under Oath and the and
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: and all this stuff. I'm not really into it, but
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: I get it. But it was as that music was burgeoning,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: not after it was already well established.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: That's true. That's true, fair enough.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: And so so Yeah, I definitely think it's the tooth
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: and nail effect.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, without a doubt. Let's talk about Yeah, let's talk
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: about thought.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: It's pretty good.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Huh, it's pretty good.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Not too bad, not too bad. Let's talk about just
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: kind of maybe towards the end of things for you know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: super Tones. I would imagine a lot of kind of
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: the the recent developments of you know, like the breakup
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: in the like kind of mid two thousands and then
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: you know, reuniting for a little while and then breaking
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: up again. Like, I would imagine a lot of that
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: is just due to you know, people having families and
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: getting full time jobs and just you know, life happening.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I just love to kind of hear that
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: part of you whatever comes to mind right away when
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: you think about that part of Supertones history? Yeah, what
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: what comes to mind for just kind of the breakup
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: and all of the you know, just that part of
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: its history.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that it's hard for people on the
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: outside to understand the the when you when this kind
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: of sounds kind of weird when you hit right, like
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: the amount of pressure and stress that gets introduced into
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: your system and I was nineteen when our first record
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: came out, right, I was like twenty one and very
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: immature when our second record came out, and we were
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: on MTV and Billboard and all that stuff, and the
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: other guys weren't much older, but they were somewhat more mature.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: And so to begin with, you know, pressure on immaturity
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: is a bad thing, and I definitely think that. I
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: definitely think that internally our system became tense and contentious
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: to a large degree. It wasn't always like that, Like
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: we still had a lot of fun, but it just
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: it was different, you know. And so I think that
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: when you have that combined with the pressure of the
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: inevitable with SKA bands, it's like it's a pretty quick
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: what you might call it popularity wave. You know, when
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: you look back through the history of SKA kind of
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: the shelf life seems to be four years. We did
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: better than that, but but that's it's it's inevitable. And
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: and so I think that as our sales were going down,
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: as we could feel the popularity going down, and we're
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: still trying to make it work. When you get an
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: opportunity to when you get offered full time work in
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: something that you love, which happened for some of the guys,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: you know, and and internally it's like, well, we're not.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: It isn't as fun as we as it used to
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: be anyway, you know, I think that there's a there's
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: a push and a pull there to say I'm gonna
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: move on. This was great, but I'll move on, And
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: so that that happened just multiple times. I was the
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: last one in the group. I was the only one
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: who was in it the whole time, and so so
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: it's hard, definitely lee. But but yeah, when we started
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: playing shows again in twenty ten, I think there was
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: I hope other people enjoyed it. I think it was
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: mainly for us, because because I think for Jason, Tony
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: and myself there were there's a lot I regret, honestly
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: about how I treated everybody and just how I didn't
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: realize it at the time, just how my immaturity was
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: responding to pressure and being tired. That's what's the thing.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: It's just the sleeplessness of being on the road. It
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: just it's a grind. And so for us to do
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: a record and do a bunch of shows and just
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: enjoy each other and enjoy what we were doing and
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: just to be grateful with no pressure because we had
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: all moved on to different careers at that point, we
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: all had families and we're all doing great and so
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: so that that time that sort of I don't know
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: if this is appropriate term anymore, but Indian summers that
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: still okay to say.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I think so, right, I think it's not sure.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: But that was that was really special time time for
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: the band.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: I can imagine. So it it kind of lends to
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: what we're talking about now with this this reprinting, right,
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, a vinyl record thirty years later has
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: got to feel pretty cool, it.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Does, you know. I'm continuously surprised at how people care
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: like anyone. You know, it is really interesting and I'm
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: grateful for an original vinyl thinking it's it's worth doing
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: a re release of this, this sort of warts and
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: all first record we had. You know.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: I think there's also not a better genre to listen
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: to vinyl than SKA. I don't know why. It just
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: feels like it matches for some reason to me in
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: my brain.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know, if you're seen in the back here,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: I've got a vinyl collection and we're in the is
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: where I listen to records, and yeah, I definitely think
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: that anything recorded on digital medium it's not really worth it, right,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: I agree, But yeah, sort of nineteen seventies through nineteen
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: nineties SKA or six I should say, sixties through nineties
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: SKA very much worth it. There's just a there's just
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: a warmth and separation that you get with the vinyl
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: that you don't that you know when when things are
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: produced the way they are nowadays, this digital wall of
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: sound kind of thing where there's you know, live tracks
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: back there or whatever. It's not it's not that great,
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: but when you listen to older records on vinyl, you
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: do you do get much closer to the artists intent.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Like I will tell you listening to our record in
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: the studio when we were making it and things will
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: stay back. I was like, oh, this sounds great, and
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: then you get the CD You're like, oh this doesn't
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: sound that good. Yeah.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Well, not only that, but also like one of the
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: things that I love about Jason and Unriginal Vinyl is
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: the fact that they they bring the listener closer to
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: the artist. You mentioned, like a lot of the kind
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: of original liner notes that you that they developed for
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: a renew liners. In fact, yeah exactly. So it's just
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: things like that where it's just you you feel like
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: so much more connected to the artist when when you
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: get this really special type of release. It's not just
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: that they're putting this album on vinyl, it's that you
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: really are getting a special connection to this album that
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't have had before.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: What's kind of fun. I don't know if I guess
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: this would if if you really like that record. One
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: thing that I did for the notes is I hadn't
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: listened to it in twenty six years. Wow, right, And
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: and so I put on headphones and I went back
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: and listened, and I don't know what I did a
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: live like as I was listening, I was I was
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: kind of writing down thoughts and remembering the making of
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: the songs, and so that's included in there too. I
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: think if someone really likes that record, that they could
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: be interested in some of the sort of deep background
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: of making those tracks.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure people are gonna get that right up.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: That's yeah, especially because it was very unprofessional like it
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: really was like I was nineteen, Jason was twenty, Tony
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: was twenty, like we were kids, and we're like, they
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: gave us so much money. They gave us like eight
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars to make a record. This is gripe, you know,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: and just we were you know, I think that when
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: I listened back to that record, it is just so earnest. Right,
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: it was before like no one had heard of us,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: and we were you're just popping with dumb ideas that
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: we thought were great, and some of them did turn
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: out pretty cool, but it is I mean, we couldn't
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: make that record now if we tried, just couldn't do it.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: It definitely comes from a time and a place and
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: where we were in life and and and yeah that's
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: why you know, sometimes first records by bands, it's there's
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: warts on them, lots of them, performance, sonically, all that stuff.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: So some of the writing I wish I could have back,
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: that's for sure. But also, you know, the whole is
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: much greater than the sum of the parts, right and
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: so so yeah.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it So it's coming up on about eight years
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: since you guys played your last show, and yeah, I'm
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: just kind of curious maybe what maybe you personally would
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: hope for the super Tones moving forward. You know, a
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: lot of times. We see a lot of these bands
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: that we interview that you know you probably maybe have
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: played shows with or grew up loving, and you know,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: things are slower now because people have families and are
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: working full time and everything, but they're still you know,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: maybe playing a handful of shows here and there and
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: maybe very slowly they release some new music. And you know,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: I know, you know, like we've talked about Five Iron,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: they're kind of in that position now where they're all
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: working full time, but they're they're playing a handful of
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: shows each year, they're maybe slowly releasing music every now
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: and then. And I'm just curious, like, is that like
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: something you would hope for with the Supertones. Do you
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: feel like very comfortable of it just being done, Like
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: I'm just curious, like just in terms of your own
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: like hopes around the Supertones moving forward.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean at this point, we don't have any plans.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: We did definitely say hey we're done back then We've
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: been offered a couple of things to come out and play.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: It's tough, you know, because I think for Supertones, being
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: a live band was our calling card. Yeah, you know
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: that that's who we were at our essence and and
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: our best our best recordings are how we sound live,
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: like the most the closest we could get to live.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: And so it just takes. When you're not playing all
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: the time, you're just not sharp. There's just no two
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: ways about it. And so I think doing something that's
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: that's a diminished version of the Supertones is not very
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: appealing to me. Uh yeah, I don't know. You never
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: say never, right, but as of now, there's no there's
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: no plans.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: Well, we'll keep crossing our fingers and our toes and everything.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: You'll come on out.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: And the thing is, though, is again you know, I mean,
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm forty eight now, the other guys are fifty
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: and all this stuff. It's just I don't I don't
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: know if we could ever be as good as we
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: once were. And I would hate to. I would hate
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: for people to come out and say, oh, I heard
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: how you know the Supertones they were this great live band,
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: and then and then to see a diminished version of
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: it and think that that's the Supertones. You know, It's
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: just there's a certain effirmeral quality to it.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: I bet it's like riding a bike. I bet you
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: guys got on a stage all of a sudden, it's
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: all gonna come back, and it's it's going to feel
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: exactly like it did thirty years ago.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: So, I don't know.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: I would.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: You might be a little you might be a little
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: bit more gassed. You certainly might be a little bit
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: more gas.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: But I bet it cos I'm one hundred times more
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: fit than I was back then. Never mind, Yeah, I'm
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: way better shape.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Traps ready to pop through that shirt right now.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying, well, no, yeah, Like when we were
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: doing the it was funny because when we I didn't
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: exercise except for playing some basketball back when we were
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: doing you know, our full time thing. And then when
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: we came back and we were in our thirties, I
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: had started running, I started doing all this stuff, and
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: honestly playing shows, I was like, oh my gosh, I
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: have so much energy, like it just it wasn't even close.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: You know, It's funny because you'd be just dying during
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: a show, you know, getting towards the end of a show.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: Because if you ever saw a super tone show, like
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: it was a contact sport for real. Yeah, but but yeah,
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: it was funny, you know, in my in my thirties
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: and even into I was forty when we played our
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: last show. It's like it's so much easier when you exercise.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: What is fun to watch people skankin and everything, even
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: like a five iron show. I mean, it's just unbelievable,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: like how many people are yeah, pushing you know, in
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: their forties, maybe even pushing you know, later forties, and
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: they're still in the pit, skanking and doing the thing.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: And it might not be quite as rough housey as
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: it used to be, but it's still pretty intense.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: I don't like that rough housey stuff. I wanted people
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: to dance, you know that. That's one of the things
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: that really appealed to me, is uh, it's just you
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: could you could you could be you know not because
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: you know when you went to punk shows and all
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: this stuff, it's just like you know, I used to
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: go see fish Boat. It's like getting crunched in there,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: and you know, all these girls are just like fleeing
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: the pit. But you know I liked that at a
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: super tone show, you know, you get everybody to to
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: give some room and and and you know you didn't
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: have to be some some strapping, sweaty you know, Jock
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: dude to to get up front. You know, you could
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: just have it be, be smaller and have a good time.
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: Sure, sure, well, speaking of having a good time, I
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: think everyone's ready to have a good time. Hearing about
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: your top five most influential albums.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: Man, oh gosh, most influential albums, I am so so
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: when you get as old as me, right, like, it's
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: too much, like you have to you have to, you
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: have to choose, and so I'm gonna go with albums
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: that influenced the super Tones. Okay, fair enough, So so
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: kind of there's a cutoff point. I would say, first
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: and foremost, there is no bigger influence than the Operation
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: IVY album.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Mmmm.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: That was we were chasing that album our whole career,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: never caught it, but that one is massive.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: That's a that's a band that just we hear fairly frequently,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously from like folks that were you know,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: mid to late forties now maybe early fifties. But I
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: remember even like when we talked to some of the
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: guys from Furnace Fast about like who were there white
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: whales for Furnace Fast, Like Operation Heavy would have been
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: one of them. So I mean they clearly are really
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: really important to like a generation of folks.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, they're like Develovet underground of punk rock. Yes, yeah,
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: they didn't sell that much, but everybody that bought a
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: CD started a band, right yep, exactly, So yeah, that
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: that's far and away, I would say. Then the first
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: Specials record was also huge. It takes a nation of
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: millions to hold us back by public enemy.
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there we go.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: So one thing that the super Tones did a little different.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: I would say that that I haven't heard since is
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: we brought hip hop to it, not not only in
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: vocal delivery, but even in even in uh, some of
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: the musical beds of the songs, if you listen to them,
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: we're trying to I'm not just talking about a song
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: like Chase the Sun if you know that song, which
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: which has like a beat and all that stuff, but
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: like like the song Unite, which was one of our
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: more popular songs, we didn't get the idea from that
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: from any scar record, you know. We got the idea
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: from that from hip hop records. And in fact, the
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: uh there's a little you can hear a little record
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: scratch like when that song kicks in. That's actually pulled
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: from the It Takes a Nation in millions, uh, Public
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Enemy record. We sampled that. There's a it's on rhythm
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: and the rebel. Yes, the rhythm the rebel, it's the same.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: So that one's big.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: Now I'm gonna go back and listen and I'm only
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: gonna hear that I love it.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah A be that no, it really we really did
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: just pull it. Uh and even even we pulled the
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: kick drum from that because we didn't have like a
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: we didn't have an at weight in the studio. So
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: there's a there's an eight weight on that record, and
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: that's sampled from the Public Enemy record. Nice. Yeah. Another
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: one that was huge for us, just so influential in
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: vibe and kind of even even our our ethos and
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: uh like our sound, our attitude was was ill communication
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: by the Beastie Boys.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel that. I feel that in most of
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: your records. It's that kind of that kind of uh,
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: that that raw energy feeling. Yep, very very similar.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: Definitely definitely we were we were we wanted to be
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: the Beastie Boys in a lot of ways, and and yeah,
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: you know, they just had a way of making an
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: exciting track that wasn't metal.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: You know, I think having power and having having punching
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: this that isn't isn't metal. Is is kind of like
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: it's a it's a thing in and of itself. Yes,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: you know, it's it's it's hard to do, but like
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: like we we wanted to make really exciting, powerful music
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: live that wasn't like you know, headbangy and and so
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: BC boys kind of had that down and then for
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: a fifth record, hm hm, boy, man, it's it's hard,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: but you know, whenever you get the last one, it's
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: like a ten way tie right right, It's it's hard
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: to overlook the selector too much pressure. That's a that's
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: a big one. Boy. There's so many local bands we
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: loved so much. Like that's the thing is, there was
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: all these local SKA bands and bands in the scene
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: that were listening to a ton that never made it anywhere,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: that were huge influences. Sure Meal Ticket for instance.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: They never got any that's a great name too.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go bowling. We wore that stuff out. Ocean's
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: eleven they never made it anywhere. They literally just had
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: a demo that we listened to a bunch.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: Well they did make a movie. I mean, so there's.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: That they did make a movie in the band you
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: think they have gotten further? Boy, I'm gonna have to go.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to go with London calling by the Clash.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Oh God, that's called one too.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see that.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: That's a band that I don't know why, but maybe
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: like ten fifteen years ago, I feel like I would
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: have heard them mentioned more for influential artists, and you know,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: obviously to some degree they certainly are, but for some reason,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: you just don't hear about them much anymore, for some reason,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: And I've never really understood that. Mean, it's just like
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: as as like more. You know, at one point, you know,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: two thousands nineties, so much like alternative. You know, guitar
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: driven music was so popular for a while, and I
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: wonder if you know, so many of those bands were
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: influenced by the Clash. But now that you just like
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: don't see as much guitar driven music in mainstream music.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Maybe you just don't hear about the Clash anymore. I
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: don't know what it is, but you just don't hear
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: about them as much anymore.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: True, Uh, yeah, because everyone's server artist now is Machine
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: Gun Kelly. So they're all trying to rip off Machine
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: Gun Kelly.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I don't know. I can't I can't
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: really speak to that. I would say, you know your
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: measure of you can't tell the story of this genre
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: without this group, I say, you can't tell the story
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: of rock and roll without the Clash. Yeah, right, They're
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: one of the greatest maybe top five rock band ever.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, at least an influential nature, right, I mean in
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: terms of.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Im even looking at the music they made and holding
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: it up against led Zeppelin or the who were any
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: they've along right there, They're they're top.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are incredible band. Wow. Well that is actually
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. But for some reason,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: I'm a little surprised by this list, uh, in a
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: in a good way, Like I'm actually very pleasantly superst
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know why. But you know, obviously you mentioned
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of like there was a lot of Tooth
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: and Nail influence of you know why you guys even
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: wanted to be on Tooth and Nail, So I was
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: thinking maybe more of those artists. But I love the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: fact that, like, yeah, public enemies on this I love
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: the fact that the clashes on this operation ivy, so
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: you know, and obviously you can hear those sounds in
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: super tones. But yeah, I'm just I'm I'm glad to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: know that, like some of the important artists around that
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: time were artists that influenced your sound.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that if you if you were to
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: pull most of the Tooth and Nail artists of that time,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: they weren't influenced by Tooth and Nail.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Right, right, that's true.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: I hadn't been around.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: Long enough yet, had been around now. We were into
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: it definitely, and so I mean, obviously there's gonna be
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: some influence, but we weren't really looking to We didn't
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: want to sound like any of those bands. The one exception,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: here's one thing I would say, and it's not an album,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: but so so kind of the most one of the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: one of the things that really drew were the hardcore
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: bands Unashamed to our drummer actually played in that band,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: Unashamed and Focused And did you guys know any of
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: these records? Oh yeah, Oh it was like it was
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: like the first couple of years of Tooth and Nail
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: and these hardcore bands they would draw a couple hundred
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: people around SoCal and these shows were just intense, you
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: know what I mean, And they put so much into
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: the live performance. I didn't like the music, to be honest,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: but I did find the live performances compelling. And I
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: would say that our performance style was heavily influenced by
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: the hardcore scene of SOCOW. Yeah cool, like you just
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: kind of go all in and so yeah, I definitely
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: think that that in a non musical level, just on
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: a performance. In a performance sense, those those early tooth
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: and nail mans were heavily influential.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: I like that cross pollination, uh kind of situation, right.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, we talked about the BC Boys just a
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: moment ago, and they did the same thing with pump music.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: They just put it into hip hop, you know you.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: I mean they literally started out as a hardcore.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: Por right exactly. You take you take a little bit
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: of the the energy from those hardcore shows and you
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: throw it into an OC super tone show.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's no doubt, it's.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: Fantastic, It's brilliant. That's that's a fun thing. And you'd
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: see this even with like pop stars nowadays, there's tons
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: and tons of pop stars that listened to some pretty
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: stream heavy music.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I heared Olivia Rodrigo's latest record. I was like,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: this sounds like, you know, like yeah, kiny Kill would
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: do or whatever.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly something. Yeah, well I think Paramore like suit
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: her at one point or something.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: Really, No, they didn't sue her, but they they had
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: they had like a nice agreement with one another. I
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: think the label tried to to sue her something like that.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: But yeah, no, they had. They had a fun agreement.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: There's a there's a story behind that. I have to
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: go back and line.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: You know what's funny. There's this country artist Max mcdown.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, you heard of him, No, I'm not familiar.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: So I had never heard of him. By Ethan who
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: played in the Supertones for a long time. He's he's
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: like his band leader now, and it turns out he's
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: like grew up on the Supertones. He was singing like,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: I guess it's Americana. It's like pap Americana, I think,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: is the right.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: I can handle that a lot laster, I think, yeah,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: I can handle that a lot more than just like
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: your radio country these days.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: Oh no, it's just it's it's good. I mean if
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: you listen to it, it's good, but like, yeah, you
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: know he grew up on our group. It's like, what,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: how never in a million years of thought that that
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: would that that we would be anywhere in this dude's psyche.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: Well that's so quick.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is weird to think that there is, at
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: least at one point there was a genre of music
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: that had the energy of a hardcore show but had
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: literally trumpets and trombones on stage. Like that is It's
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: amazing that that that combination existed at one point in history.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: And you know, rock from the Crypt to Rocking from
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: the Crypt was a was a hard music band that
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: had horn suit.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I ever heard that real quick. I do
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: have a question related to what I would view as
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: like the most modern version of ska, at least in
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: terms of like, you know, cultural relevancy. I don't know
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: if you've ever heard of like Brass Against or some
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: of those bands that do like a lot of like
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: covers and stuff like that, but they're they're essentially ska
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: versions of of a big hit.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm time honer tradition actually in ska and reggae
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: very going back to the.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: Sixties, very very true. Yeah, you should go check some
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: of those out. The tons and tons of energy, big
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: big sound. There's a lot of fun. Yeah that's cool.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so cool, Matt, what do you want to plug?
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Obviously the vinyl is out right, and it's it's not
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: hasn't been sold out right, I'm sorry the vinyl, like
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: the vinyl hasn't already been sold out or anything?
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: Has it sold out?
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Like? Meaning like you can you can still buy copies
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: of it, right as.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: Far as I know. As far as I know, I
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: don't know how long supplies will last. So if you're
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: thinking about getting one, you should probably get it.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: Well, I will say you definitely should because a lot
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: of times when we when we have discussed one of
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: these reprints from on original vinyl, there are like they're
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: right on the cusp of being sold about. So uh,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: I really no doubts this is going to be the
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: same thing.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, yeah, ac Supertones, who knows one? There
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: will be another printing?
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does appear that at least on the Tooth
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: and Nail website it's still available. Okay, deal, So I
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: know they don't be available.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: I know they only pressed a few hundred, so.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, get on it. Then get on it. Great, wonderful.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that that's that's out. Anything else you'd like
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: to plug?
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I do think this isn't I don't really have
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: anything to do with this, but apparently there is a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: documentary that one of our mix engineers turned out to
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: be a serial killer.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: What I think, like, what for?
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: What?
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: What album?
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: For the Chase the Sun record?
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Okay? A serial killer in California or where?
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, throughout California. There's a lot of California
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: and so so yeah, I forget what he was. They
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: you know, they all have names, but I think he
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: was the Seltzer water killer something like that. The Cels
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: drown people in Seltzer water. No, there's no cry back then.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: This was this was in the nineties. But yeah, you know,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: this guy's sitting there working on our record and yeah,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: like had corpses in his trunk trunk. Oh my god,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: that's crazy.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: Wow. But you you never got like a whiff of
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: it or anything, like, you never got the sense that
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: he was he was doing all this nonsense.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know how how your memory colors things
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: when you're like, once you find out, you're like, oh,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: I saw it alone. But no at all. I mean,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: you don't seem wow, completely normal person. Yeah, I think
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: he was Canadian?
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Was he at least a good mixer?
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, listen to the record.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: Do you do you know how many he killed?
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: How many did? I guess? I don't know. I just
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: heard about this. I just heard about this.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: With your idiot quick. It does look like maybe potentially
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: there there are five confirmed and seven uh like there
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: could be up to seven though, but five confirmed?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: Holy cow, that's that sounds right?
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: Wow, that is How does it feel to be so
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: close to death?
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: Hm hmm?
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: Like when you look back on this now, you're like,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: you you could have easily become one of the victims, Like.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: And why and why didn't he choose you? Like, well,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: we hired him, Yeah, but why do you think that
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: he didn't that was good enough? Yeah? You and you're
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: and the rest of the band.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, we had a good relationship fair enough.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's because you're both killers, you know, like you
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: guys were killing in the studio and uh and he
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: was he was killing for real, sure.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, he didn't want that, he didn't want to
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: see what that that trombone can do he didn't want
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: that smoke.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that that's true. I mean we don't
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: look like pushovers. I suppose that is true. That was it.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, five iron it could be a different story,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: but Supertones. You don't mess with the Supertones. No, yeah,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: well that is I'm glad. I'm glad you survived to
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: tell the tale.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I don't know. Maybe
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: it'll emotionally hit me at some point. I'm not sure
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: if I'll watch the documentary.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: Oh there's a documentary coming out too.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: What I was telling you that this just is this
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: like on Netflix or is it one of those true
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: crime Netflix ones? Oh?
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: Not sure. I think that they're making it and then
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: you know they the the streaming sources bit for it
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: or something like that.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: Okay, I hope it's all oc Supertones songs the soundtrack,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: because I think that juxtaposition.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: A mixed for a lot of people. I'm noting. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: that that absolutely like like some of our more are
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: more happy go lucky tunes to yeh. You know, juxtapose
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: and make it extra.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: Chilling would be a great creative direction.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: This while he was doing this, I love.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: It, well, Matt thank you so much for chatting about
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: the Supertones. Again, this is just one of the cooler
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: interviews to do, just with how legendary the Supertones are.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: So thanks for so much for chatting, and good luck
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: on the vinyl. Looks like it's doing well and really
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: really cool to just get connected, so thanks so much.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: Great talking to you guys, Thanks for having me