Hawaii's Underground : Local Music | Art | Tattoos | Independent Businesses
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ISSUE 15
Movie Making Man
Satellite Grey - Mirror Transmissions
Ross Jackson of Ross Jackson's Daydream Nation
!The Hell Caminos and Upstanding Youth in.... The Mainland Tour!
Movie Makin' Man
Gerard Elmore on making "All for Melissa"
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Article by Diana Michaels
Contact Gerard at:
www.myspace.com/allformelissa
sowagummybears.com
Upon returning home to Hawaii in early 2007, after working a year as video correspondent for NASCAR, Gerard Elmore started directing his first feature length movie, “All For Melissa.” In it, the main character Jared wants to meet his celebrity crush so bad, he even flies to Los Angeles to court her… unsuccessfully. Although this latest project is semi-autobiographical, success has all but eluded Gerard in the past. His previous short films have won him awards at Cinema Paradise and the Honolulu International Film Festival [HIFF]. And if the amount of help and support he received for “All For Melissa” is any indicator, continued success is merely a matter of time. (Interview by Diana Michaels, photos by Hapa Nazi)
DM: How close are you to almost done [with All For Melissa]?
G: A long time from now. We got a rough assembly together, but there’s music, score, sound effects… We’re gonna be at the HIFF, that’s definite.
DM: What’s it about?
G: A guy’s pursuit for a dream girl who’s a movie star. On his way, he realizes the girl he already is friends with, is really the girl for him. Kind of a coming of age story set in Hawaii.
DM: Are you coming of age?
G: No! I think I’ve already come of age.
DM: You already came?
G: Ya, I think so.
DM: Is the character Jared supposed to represent you?
G: Jared is a lot of me, but he’s obsessed with one thing. I don’t think I’d be that obsessed with a girl. Once in a while you see a girl and she’s really hot, I wish I could meet her…
DM: Oh ya? [flips her hair] Nice to meet you.
G: [nervous laughter]
DM: Have you ever stalked anybody?
G: No, not to that degree.
DM: Have you ever been stalked?
G: Probably.
DM: Definitely.
[both kinda laugh]
DM: This movie seems reality-based; there’s a lot of effects too, right?
G: Ya, the green screen stuff is for all his dreams, his imagination, and what he sees in his world. He’s being tortured in most of the scenes.
DM: You get chased by a [computer generated] menehune. How was directing yourself [with] something that’s not there?
G: You just imagine. I actually got to see it before we shot, so I know what the menehune looks like.
DM: Do you believe in menehunes?
G: No.
DM: I went to Moanalua High School. There is such a thing as Menehunes. How did your shoot go in general? Was it fun? Stressful?
G: Very smooth. Everyone kicked a lot of butt. For a low budget, I think it was very successful. Of course personalities clashed on set, but there’s nothing that can’t be resolved. I will never yell on the set. I’ll get frustrated, but I won’t yell at people ‘cause I don’t want that back to me. Do unto others what you want done to you.
DM: What do you want done to you?
G: Nothing!!! Just wanna be treated…good.
[both laugh]
DM: What was your final budget?
G: I can’t really say, ‘cause if we wanna sell it, they’ll pay just that amount. You wanna make it look good, they estimate an amount, and they pay you for that.
DM: Who pays you?
G: Distributors. If it does get bought, then we can say how much it cost.
DM: Where did the money come from?
G: I saved up a good amount from doing NASCAR. Instead of buying a house, I made a movie. We’re still looking for money to finish it.
DM: You had local celebrities like Big Mox in [the movie]. Did you know him prior to this?
G: Not so much, I just wrote a part for him, knowing that he was on American Idol. I myspaced him.
DM: What about Stan Egi?
G: I was already doing a lot of stand up with him before I knew he was in Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. He’s the bad guy.
DM: Andy Bumatai?
G: Andy was the guy who mentored me [in stand-up comedy].
DM: Kimberly Estrada?
G: She emailed us she wanted to be in it.
DM: She’s hot! This beauty who can kick your ass! Then she donates money she makes from her website to Children With Diabetes. Do you have any cause or agenda?
G: I do volunteer stuff. The other night we shot a play for Kumu [Kahua Theatre], just because we wanted to. We finished a PSA for asthma.
DM: Pro-asthma? Are you all about asthma?
G: No. Well, to help people with asthma.
DM: You just finished the Kicks/HI commercial, right?
G: Kind of. We have to finish the audio.
DM: What’s next?
G: I’m gonna start writing another feature.
DM: Do you want to be rich and famous?
G: I don’t know about rich, I don’t care about famous. I just wanna be comfortable, and make good work.
Satellite Grey – Mirror Transmissions
Article by Katie Whitman
Satellite Grey: Mission Statement
“Satellite Grey. Think of it as a broadcast in a grey area. We don’t want to force-feed the masses. We’d rather everyone interpret our music and lyrics in their own way. We write our own experiences to stories of truth and fantasy, a reminder to all that nothing is ever what it appears to be. Lyrically, our songs can be taken literally or metaphorically. Nothing is absolute. Our musical approach is to convey emotion and is constantly evolving. Satellite Grey is, for sure, an evolution. We will continue growing and writing different styles and different ways in that broad spectrum."
About a year ago in April of 2006, two established bands named Vertical Charles and Secondhand Sin broke up and elements from each band merged together to form Satellite Grey. Satellite Grey then did a curious thing for this music scene. Instead of playing shows, Kara (vocals), Mel (guitar), David (guitar), Jason (drums), and Beek (bass), sat down and wrote and recorded an entire album. They spent six months writing and six months recording – all of which was done in their own living rooms with their own equipment. During that year, they played only two live shows. Why? When you hear the quality and cohesiveness of their album, Mirror Transmissions, you’ll understand.
Often, there is a tenuous balance between time spent on performing, writing, and recording. Satellite Grey’s members understood that delicate dance after years of success in cover bands. Jason explained the decision to neglect live performance and record an album first. “You’ve played all these cover songs. You know what you like. … We already knew what we wanted to do pretty much from last April. Write. Get the CD out. Hit the road.” Beek added, “Prior to that, I think both bands were trying to write, but you start getting a lot of gigs and you’re constantly practicing until the next gig. You have no time to write. You have no time to record.”
Perhaps the most compelling reason for making an album first this time was expressed by Kara: “You go to a show and somebody says ‘Hey, you got a CD?’ and you don’t got it. You don’t got product and yet you’re pouring your heart out and you have nothing to show for it. Tourists were coming and checking us out all the time [as Vertical Charles]. They want to take it back to Missouri, but they can’t because we didn’t take the time out to [record an album]. This time around, we gotta take the time to make our album.”
So what is this pop and progressive rock album about? It’s a concept album. Yeah. A concept album. That’s a phrase you probably haven’t heard in a while. Here, Satellite Grey doesn’t exactly tell a story. Rather, they encourage us to open our minds and lay out the struggle that all of us face when dealing with human nature, reason, and the influence of others or the establishment. The songs are written from the point of view of their main character, The Boy. “You have the little boy and he is the representation of everything innocent and untainted. … The songs are the stories written from the boy’s perspective.” If the Boy is expressed through the lyrics of their songs, then the band itself is the voice of reason. Kara explains more concretely through a musical analogy:
“For instance, our mission statement in the first song of the album, the opening line is ‘Open your mind and just listen.’ It’s to do with you turn on the radio and it’s all the same. You can find one or two bands that you can actually pick out. The boy represents that void or that area that they can be persuaded towards the mainstream or be their own entity. The boy represents that – people who are out there listening to music and deciding if they want to go with the normal pop or if they want to go with a more eclectic vibe. As a band, we are his voice of reason. We are trying to say ‘Hey, there’s more out there…’”
The CD also comes with a lot of neat perks. Over the last year, artist Brian Barnhart (see www.The808SceneZine.com under artists to view his work) has been working with Satellite Grey to create a library of artwork that compliments and interprets their songs. Kara shares why Brian fits so well. “He’s a comic book fanatic and it shows in his artwork. That’s cool if you’re going to do a fantasy story concept behind your album.” Imagine a small boy reaching for the handle of an extremely tall gate with only gnarled trees and darkness beyond. Feel how the pit of your stomach just clenched a little? That’s what Brian’s work does and it fits Satellite Grey’s music like a well-worn glove on a wrinkled hand. Not only are his illustrations on the cover of the album and throughout the CD insert, when you pop Mirror Transmissions into your computer, the DVD-ROM kicks in giving you a slick and slightly spooky interface to view more drawings, read lyrics, and listen to songs.
But why stop at drawings? Not Satellite Grey. Brian has begun developing superhero alter-egos for each of the band’s members. “We all didn’t want to be part of cheesy pictures. It’s not about us. So we wanted to draw characters of who we really are.” Yes, they get superhero powers. David is the mad scientist. Quiet – he spoke only one word during our interview – but calculating. Described as a virtuoso. Apparently, he regularly creates “something out of nothing” in the musical realm. Kara is a Vampiress, Queen of the Night. She adds “[If you’re a vampire,] you’re gorgeous, baby!” Mel can control the elemental power of fire. The 6 foot something, teddy bear-like hulk of a man, Beek, is a gargoyle. Beek just wanted to have wings but Kara asserts “In the daytime you sit like a stonish figure, but at night you are a madman!” Lastly, Jason is the Man of Mystery. He always shows up at just the right time to save the day.
If Satellite Grey understands just one thing, it’s image. Everything about them makes you feel like the lights should flicker when they walk into the room. On April 28th at Next Door (43 N. Hotel St.), Satellite Grey will release their album, their spawn, during a multi-media rock show that will include the panache and attention to detail that went into creating and recording the album and image. Beek, glowing like a child about to receive candy, exclaimed “We’re pulling every string we have. All the stops are out. We can barely talk about what’s going to go on there because it’s so awesome.” With opening bands like the brooding Lushion and the magnetic indie fav, Explore, and backed by Star 101.9, this show will be like nothing you’ve seen amongst this local scene.
Now that Mirror Transmission is complete, expect to see a lot more of Satellite Grey. In the distant future, the band hopes to answer the call of the road and potentially relocate to Vegas to tap into the Hawaii connection and hopefully network the West Coast to “bring a lot of that back to Hawaii.” When asked to describe their vision of success, Jason gets a far off look in his eyes. “It has to do with a packed house. Being able to see people jump up and down, bob their heads, move, cry, sing, yell, whatever they can do to show that [they’re a part of] what you’re doing on stage.” Let’s hope that they get a first taste of that dream on April 28th.
-Katie Whitman
Satellite Grey Interview
April 19, 2007
Interviewers Katie Whitman & Shawn Davenport
Satellite Grey is:
Dave, Kara, Mel, Jason, Beek
Alright, we’re here with Satellite Grey.
We’re doing this story because you’re doing a CD release. The first CD for Satellite Grey. Did you ever have CDs for Vertical Charles or Secondhand Sin?
Kara: No. This is as far as I think both of our actual official. It’s a great accomplishment.
How long have you spent preparing this CD?
Beek: All of our lives.
(laughter)
Kara: It’s kind of true. We formed in April 2006, so we’ve only been together for one year. We wrote together and practiced together for about 3-6 months and started the recording process…. About six months recording. In the year that we’ve been together, we spent about six months writing and playing then six months of recording and here we are today.
The writing – how was that process? Since you were in two different bands, was it hard since you had to meld together, or was it easier because half of you had worked with each other already?
Beek: It was surprisingly easy. Something about the lineup, we just mesh really well.
Jason: Somebody’s got an idea, whether it works or not, we keep working at it. We find the safe zone where it actually fits together. You flip that around and make it bad again and see what happens.
Make it bad again?
Jason: Totally mess it up with odd time signatures, different melodies. So some of the songs come together relatively [easily], some of the others we force together. Then we do whatever we do to make them a little more progressive.
So it sounds like your writing had goals.
Kara: Mel and I wrote a lot of lyrics that have to do with realism as well as a fantasy story, so a lot of times that progressiveness came from emotional… reading through the lyrics and [deciding] that this part had to be darker or brighter or longer or weird just to capture what the lyrics are trying to say. Hence the concept that this album has become – more than just an album of songs that we have collected or written.
So what is the concept behind your album?
Jason: The concept is open-ended in all honesty. It’s not a set story. It is, but it’s a story that begins separately. You have three main parts of the story. You have the little boy and he is the representation of everything innocent and untainted. Basically, he can be perceived as an adolescent that is deciding to write the songs. The songs are the stories written from the boy’s perspective.
All of the songs or some of the songs?
Jason: All of the songs. Then the band is the voice of reason inside his head. Not just one side, but two sides to every story.
Kara: For instance, our mission statement in the first song of the album, the opening line is “Open your mind and just listen.” It’s to do with you turn on the radio and it’s all the same. You can find one or two bands that you can actually pick out. The boy represents that void or that area that they can be persuaded towards the mainstream or be their own entity. The boy represents that – people who are out there listening to music and deciding if they want to go with the normal pop or if they want to go with a more eclectic vibe. As a band, we are his voice of reason, we are trying to say “Hey, there’s more out there…”
Beek: Trying to pick something out rather than being force-fed everything.
Kara: Hence Satellite Grey – we are the message being broadcast into a grey area. It’s up to you to interpret it. Every song has a real story and every song has a fantasy. Every song also has an interpretation. So that it’s kind of like a trinity between us, the Boy, and the song. “Mirror Transmission” being our first album – it’s your inner being being transmitted. If you look in the mirror and you transmit to yourself what’s going on, Satellite Grey is trying to help you figure it out.
Beek: It’s a crazy world!
[To Beek] What did you just say? It made me want to ask a question.
Beek: Try and look beneath the surface rather than being force-fed everything they show you. They tell you what bands to like, tell you what news is right. They tell you who to vote for. They tell you what to eat, what kind of clothes to wear, what’ll make your socks whiter.
So in what way do you think your music acts to open people’s minds?
Kara: Because our music kinda has [wings]… We’re moving into that progressive [field], but we still have the pop. Not necessarily straight-forward pop, but our version of pop. How we’d like a pop song to sound like. … That’s what make us unique in the sense that we have that [ability to play] in a pop manner, in a metal manner, in a rock manner, in an alternative manner. That’s what, I think, makes us different. There are so many bands out there think this is … the way [a song in a specific genre] should be written. Songs need to sound like this [specific sound]. We’re not thinking that at, It’s really up to you to take it as you want it.
Beek: The option is there. If you wanna come along, our arms are open.
Why did you choose to make an entire CD before playing shows? You’ve played two shows in a year. Instead, you spent the time making and album. Why?
Jason: It comes from experience. Both bands were successful on the cover scene as far as getting [gigs]. When you become comfortable with that, you tend to believe that what you like is accepted by more [/other] people. So you have a confidence about you during the writing phase that lets you feel good about yourself. You’ve played all these cover songs, you know what you like. … We already knew what we wanted to do pretty much from last April. Write. Get the CD out. Hit the road.
Beek: Prior to that, I think both bands were trying to write, but you start getting a lot of gigs and you’re constantly practicing until the next gig. You have no time to write. You have no time to record.
Kara: You go to a show and somebody says “Hey, you got a CD?” and you don’t got it. You don’t got product and yet you’re pouring your heart out and you have nothing to show for it. Tourists were coming and checking us out all the time and they want to take it back to Missouri, but they can’t because we didn’t take the time out to [record an album]. This time around, we gotta take the time, make our album. When we start playing, and playing a lot, we actually have product. “Hey, we have a CD. Please take it home. Spread the word. Spread it all over the place.”
Beek: It’s like doing your homework before you get it assigned.
Did you feel confident in doing that because you already have a bunch of fans that are sorta hanging out waiting for you so you know you don’t have to start from scratch?
Kara: [The important thing] is to keep them involved. Posting blogs on myspace, keeping them updated, saying “We’re still here. We’re still suffering. We’re still trying, but we’re trying it for you.” And this idea didn’t come, for lack of a better word, conceitedly. It came from fans requesting albums. I’ve heard that at least, not even exaggerating, at least 50 times every time I step off that stage. It tends to get you when you’re really a humanitarian by nature. It gets to you that I have nothing to give you. You got three hours and a memory, and that’s all you get. That’s sad to me when somebody does really believe in me. Especially when it’s that person in the crowd crying saying they can relate to your music and they can’t take it home with them. All they can do is try to remember, so this is our way of prolonging that really cool vibe, that really cool entity called music.
So how did you go about recording your album?
Beek: In the living room.
In your living room?
Beek: Our living room.
Jason: The drums were… yeah, it was pretty much in the living room. It was done at our house, at Kara and Mel’s house, at Dave’s house.
Beek: The neighbors hate all of us.
[laughter]
Kara: We actually wanted to do it ourselves [because of] the unbelievable horror stories of spending $7,000 - $15,000 on an album that eventually sounds like a demo. If that was the case, we’d rather be able to control that demo, and if it came out better than a demo then we’d be super stoked about it.
Jason: The advantage that we ran into by doing it ourselves was that we had the time. We had the time to re-write probably…
Beek: All of them! Every song is different than how it started.
Jason: We added a new song in at the last moment and we didn’t have to worry about being in the studio and wasting time.
Beek: All the overhead is gone. We already had all the equipment, so it cost almost nothing until we got it mixed.
Jason: We mixed it at a good place – Audio Resource. The benefit with that is you now have all your raw stuff. We did all the editing ourselves. We did eight days worth of mixing total. We had it mastered as well, then we sent it off.
Of course, you guys are lucky because you have an audio engineer (Jason Smith) in your band…
Beek: The whole time was a learning curve. We may know a little bit about it, but none of us were experts. That’s not what we can say now, because we’re all experts in recording because we spent six months figuring the whole thing out.
Kara: Dave [was good at deciding] what things should and shouldn’t be. He would take his tracks home and make them bigger. I would always try to be the Devil’s Advocate and Jason being the other side of the voice of reason. It was really cool having each one of us be experienced enough that we could put viable [input] into this. Not being like space cadet. “Oh yeah, we’re really cool…”
Beek: [jokingly] We’re just gonna make an album and it’s just gonna happen!
Kara: No, we really sat down and we really thought long and hard. That’s the beauty. We all had something give.
Beek: I think Dave even punched Mel right in the eye one time. [laughs]
I was going to ask, were there any blow ups?
Jason: There was very tight-lipped pushing and pulling. We never blew up at each other, but don’t confuse that with never got frustrated. There was frustration with ideas, the direction, whether that was a good enough take or not. That’s just what it’s all about. As a band, if you think you’re going to go into the studio and it’s not going to have that, you’re absolutely wrong…. And if you’re not doing that, then either you really have your shit together and you’ve been in pre-production for months in advance or…
Beek: Or it’s just one guy. I mean, how boring would it be to play with five of yourself? Well, I’d be pretty excited, but everyone else would probably be pretty bored.
Kara: We HAVE to put that in the interview and print that.
It may have been a tight-lipped at times process, but do you feel more confident of your band as a band that can succeed and stay together.
Kara: Absolutely.
Beek: We’ve totally turned into a Voltron Force of a band.
Kara: There were times when we were just like “grrrrr” at each other, but it was a democracy. I think a lot of it, too, was that we listened to everyone’s suggestions carefully. It’s not like I don’t want it there because. You’d have to give your reasons why.
Beek: I trust everyone else in the band because I respect every one of these guys. I can’t say that about a lot of the bands I’ve been in.
Kara: Brotherhood. Sisterhood. Trust. That’s a big thing when you have a band. You have to be able to pay each other’s bills sometimes. That’s the beauty. You become closer.
Beek: [Pointing to Dave] He’s a leg. [Pointing to Kara] She’s a leg. [Pointing to Mel] She’s the torso. [Poiting to Jason] He’s one of the arms. And I think I’m the other arm. Then a sword comes out and it’s way cool. Then we get to go into outerspace.
Do your CD release party. The final culmination of a year of work. What are you doing for this party?
Beek: It’s going off!
Kara: We’ve acquired pretty good networking.
Beek: We’re pulling every string that we have. All the stops are out.
Kara: That’s exactly it. We called everybody.
Beek: We can barely talk about what’s going to go on there because it’s so awesome.
Kara: Both bands (Vertical Charles/Secondhand Sin) played at the Wave so often that we like that set up – band, DJ, band, DJ. We decided, let’s try it like that. Invite a couple of bands to share and enjoy with us, but in return, instead of just playing, we wanted to do [recording of] live sound, projections, mingling into the multi-medi aspect. That way each one of us will be able to bring away not only the memories, but we’ll be able to put it together as an added tool, an added merch, as an added anything to get the word out. If you can’t promote yourself, then that’s a really hard hill to climb. That’s the number one thing that bands, I think really lack. You need to really work hard to promote yourself, because without the hard work within, you’re not going to be [received] out there. You have to be able take nos and yeses equally without getting upset. If they so no, “Thank you for your time” and move on and ask the next person. That’s what this CD release party is for us. It’s our coming out. We’re writing our own music.
Beek: [For this CD release,] everything is way better than it would have been because we pooled three bands worth of resources together into one huge volcano of an awesome show.
Kara: Making it a rock show. Something you can see and interact with. There’s so much more to a rock show. We get paid to entertain, so we want to entertain. We don’t want to just play our album songs, here it is. We want to put on a show that you can leave and say that was an amazing experience. That’s the whole vision behind it.
That’s where are artwork came in. Someone visually interpreting our songs. Brian Barnhart did an amazing job with that.
Let’s talk more about your artwork. In addition to recording your album, what have you been doing?
Mel: We found Brian. He had a set of pictures he drew and when we first saw his artwork, we knew that we wanted him. He drew all these pictures of us and interpreted our songs. We have a picture for each song.
Kara: He’s a comic book fanatic, and it shows in his artwork. That’s cool if you’re going to do a fantasy story concept behind your album. I mean, it’s been done, but it’s really cool to find an artist who can really… without speaking… I mean, we talk to him once a month and these pictures would come out and
Kara and Mel: it was exactly how we imagined it.
Will his art be viewed during the show?
Kara: Yes. It is our CD cover. It is our CD booklet.
Jason: It’s going to be part of the show’s projections.
Brian developed characters for each of you?
Kara: We all didn’t want to be part of cheesy pictures. It’s not about us. So we wanted to draw characters of who we really are. If we could be that crazy out-of-control person, who would we be?
Mel: Our alter-egos.
Kara: Beyond that.
Beek: Our super hero alter-egos.
So do you have super hero powers?
Kara: Yeah.
What’s your powers?
Kara: David is definitely the mad scientist. This kid is our virtuoso. He can make something out of nothing. That’s what a scientist does. He puts a bunch of facts together and comes up with something. And doesn’t sleep much.
Kara: I am the Queen of the Night for sure. I love the night scene. I hate my 9 to 5 job. If I could be, I’d love to be the Vampiress. I would love to be a vampire for the simple fact that you can take life every day if you want it without worrying. And you’re gorgeous baby.
Mel: Mine is fire.
Kara: Like an element.
Beek: I’m a big gargoyle-like thing.
With wings. [Go look at any of Beek’s photoshopped pics of himself - http://www.myspace.com/funkybeek ]
Beek: Yes. With wings!
Kara: You truly are, in a sense, a gargoyle. In the daytime you just sit like a stoneish figure, but at night you are a mad man. And Jason is the man of mystery.
Mel: He shows up at the right time.
Kara: Saves the day.
Beek: We’re not really sure, but we’re pretty sure he can teleport.
What are Satellite Grey’s overall goals? The image of yourself in the future?
Kara: Basically what is the band’s mission? I’m just going to read this:
Satellite Grey. Think of it as a broadcast in a grey area. We don’t want to forcefeed the masses, we’d rather everyone interpret our music and lyrics in their own way. We write our own experiences to stories of truth and fantasy, a reminder to all that nothing is ever what it appears to be. Lyrically, our songs can be taken literally or metaphorically. Nothing is absolute. Our musical approach is to convey emotion and is constantly evolving. Satellite Grey is, for sure, an evolution. We will continue growing and writing different styles and different ways in that broad spectrum.
In the future, we already have a concept mapped out for our second album, which will be unlike our first album for sure. Our future goal is actually to eventually to move to the big mainland and see what we can bring out. Not forgetting Hawaii though! Not leaving Hawaii to forget it. That’s our future plan. To go to Las Vegas. Tap into a lot of the Hawaii people there. Tap into the West Coast there. Hopefully bring a lot of that back home to Hawaii. That would be our mission statement and our future plans.
What’s your ultimate dream as musicians? Is it the standard ultimate dream – making it big?
Beek: Making it big is an illusion.
Jason: A big illusion. The music industry has changed. The money is not there. I don’t care what you see on TV. There are so many different avenues bands can go right now as far as marketing themselves. Making it big, I think to us, is more about having a mass amount of people enjoy what you are doing and being able to emotionally relate to the songs you are writing. It has nothing to do with a nice tour bus. It has nothing to do with a jet or a ton of money. It has to do with a packed house. Being able to see people jump up and down, bob their heads, move, cry, sing, yell, whatever they can do to show that what you’re doing on the stage, they’re a part of.
Kara: I guess the best thing to say is that as a band, it’s not monetary, it’s more of our significance. And we like to be significant.
Beek: It is a little monetary. I mean, I really would love to quit my job.
Kara: Oh hell yeah! But if it comes, that’s the bonus. That would be nice…. I’d like to see our hundred people crowd double into a two-hundred people crowd.
---- Back to the album concept----
Shawn: There’s no protagonist or antagonist?
Jason: We don’t know yet.
Kara: It’s not one of those story-line concept albums. The concept is about human pain and what humans have to go through. It’s all that relation between visual aspects, the boy’s interpretation – human interpretation, Satellite Grey’s interpretation. That’s the concept – writing in a grey area. The concept is the grey area itself.
Shawn: Does he have a name?
Beek, Kara, Jason: The Boy.
Kara: Life isn’t black and white and people try to make you believe that. The concept is broad and vague and relating to that grey area.
Ross Jackson of Ross Jackson’s Daydream Nation
Ross’s playlist:
Club Set-
Pulp- Lipgloss
Apples In Stereo- Same Old Drag
Fratellis-Henrietta
Tangiers- Shoestrings
Pink Grease- Peaches
New York Dolls- Kiss
T. Rex- Jeepster
Rosebuds- Lover's Rights
Rapture- Get Myself Into It
Peter Bjorn & John- Young Folks
Clor-Good Stuff
Metric- Empty
Snowden- Filler is wasted
Interview and photograph by Katie Whitman
How long have you been doing the radio show for?
That particular radio show? Probably for about two years now.
I must have heard of it right when it started because I’ve been familiar with that phrase [“Ross Jackson’s Daydream Nation”] for a long time.
Yeah. It’s been a bit now. It’s weird to me actually that it’s an institution of sorts. I just do it. It’s something I just wake up on Wed. mornings and do.
What time are your shows?
Noon to three on Wednesdays. The other events I’m doing right now - on Tuesdays I’m doing the Kaleidoscope Show with all the local bands and with Shane and Josh [Hancock]. I do Saturdays at Bar 35 and Ara’s parties - I do the Enterprise party whenever those are.
How long have you been a live DJ?
[Thinks a moment…] Maybe I’m wrong about everything. Maybe it’s three years and one year. Anyway, a year I think. About a full year.
Do you prefer radio or DJing live?
I think I’m better at radio. At a dance party, you’re limited what it come to BPM (beats per minute) and in terms of tone. Some systems sound different and you can’t play alt-country and you can’t do sets of different kinds. I mean, one of the strengths of the shows that we do is that we DO play different kinds of music and we do push traditional club [views] and social mores a bit. But, you know, dance party. I mean, you gotta keep people up. When it’s a radio show, I can play Nick Drake all day. And I often do.
Where did the concept for your show come from?
Well, I wanted, at the time… I had a late night show. I used to want to do a really driving bass line, like dark rock ‘n’ roll, like Laura Lee and Girls Against Boys and Devo. Driving bass line glitterati pop rock sort of stuff. But I didn’t get the late night show. They gave it to the ska show girl. So I had to take the daytime show and in the daytime I couldn’t play that stuff, so I started doing sunshine pop stuff. It actually ended up changing the shape of my whole music collection and probably my personality. I’m probably a different person because I have to play daytime music.
Really? Do you think you’re a better person?
I’m a more pleasant person for sure. I don’t terrorize the women populous quite as much as I used to. I’m a sweetheart. Chammomile tea and Belle and Sebastian Records and sweaters. It does sort of change your outlook on things. Daytime pop. I feel like it gets to a lot of people. I feel like people are converting – people who didn’t listen to indie. Or people who didn’t give a crap about indie versus mainstream. They like the show because it’s a pop show.
I’m a pretentious son of a bitch and I make no bones about that. I’m a dick about a lot of things. But the show is very unpretentious. The show is very “this is music that I like and I’m not going to yap about it or pose.” I think we’re okay about that. I mean Shane and I play a lot of pretty obscure stuff and I know nobody wants to go to a dance party and hear three hours of music that they’ve never ever heard before. Oh that sucks. I think we manage not to do that.
I’ve been to Portland and I’ve spent a lot of time in San Francisco and I think we throw better indie shows.
I was an outsider at first. The whole reason I started doing the radio show is because I didn’t know that there even was a scene. I hung out with the Rebel Rebel kids and did a little bit of the Controversy stuff. I wasn’t an insider and I didn’t know a lot of people that were very much like me. The college is a really bad college.
Really bad college as far as what?
The quality of most of the other students and many teachers. I mean, not all of them. Obviously there are some very good students and some very good teachers, but they’re a minority. Especially when you’re living in the dorms as I was when I first got here. There were not a lot of people like me and I felt very isolated. I did the radio show to reach out to other people that were more my kin. Eventually I fell into throwing shows and organizing things and getting events done. Nobody was doing it for a while there.
We came back doing shows at [the Eastside Grill] with Shane. We had a clicker there that day and over 100 people came down.
Oh yeah. I remember seeing Shane’s DJ name (DJ Vagina). What do you think of his DJ name?
You know, I’m G rated now because of the radio show. Yeah, I punch myself all the time. I used to be a pretty subversive guy. I mean, I have pretty subversive tastes in books and movies and literature and stuff. [Shane] has all the free time to be as bad as he wants to be and I don’t anymore. I’m jealous of him for that, that he gets to be more rock ‘n’ roll than I do. In my playlists, I’ll sensor cusses. I coach wrestling too.
So you have a reputation to uphold.
I have a public persona now. Anyway, it’s rough. That’s a silly thing to do.
To get a public persona?
Yeah. I think there’s a big disconnect because I’m kind of aloof. I don’t talk to people at clubs. I can’t relate to clubs. I mean during, during the shows and music and dancing. But all the conversations and connecting to people as people happens afterwards at Wailana Coffee House. We have awesome post-show coffee binges.
Anyways, there’s a big, dysfunctional, beautiful family of all of us who help each other out. Go to each other’s parties. It’s really nice. They’re less pretentious and more real than a lot of people in the scenes that I’ve been around. I really like that. I like that Shane and I don’t have to play what Pitchfork says is cool. If we don’t like it, we don’t have to play it. People don’t care anyway.
Maybe it helps you out – do you think this a sort of uneducated crowd as far as music goes – the audience?
I mean, they’re not faster than fashion. They’re not past every trend. They’re not already so done with the trend that came out this week that they’re thinking of the next one. And that’s good.
If I had to bitch, to kavetch about the scene, I think people are a little too self-conscious in the scene and they don’t cut loose as much as they ought to. I have my theories as to why that is. I think everybody has to stay in couples to keep good reputations. Hawaii is a small town and if you get a bad rep, it sticks for a while. I think it’s because everybody has to cohabitate because wages are so low and rents are so goddamn high. So everybody is in social dyads.
That means a lot of people are in unhappy relationships and they’re all worried about cheating and stuff. It’s a minefield. I notice that when I have a steady girlfriend, everybody treats me a lot better because they don’t view me as a threat.
That’s another thing. People end up being self-conscious that they sort of don’t dance because they’re sort of afraid of who they’re gonna be seen dancing with.
One thing about the indie music, I really think it’s about making a more fun experience. There’s been periods where mainstream music has been very good, but it’s not now. It’s certainly not now. Far from now. I remember hearing a lot of these songs that I play at clubs and I heard them in a context where it never even entered our minds that we could go to a club and dance to it. But I always wanted to. It’s been cool to live that dream. To have a club where I can walk in and somebody’s playing Apples in Stereo on the monitors. It makes me giddy.
Does that make you giddy that it’s you playing that?
Me? It could be somebody else. I mean, I have a decent ear for transitions and things like that, but I’m not a great DJ. Shane’s a pretty good DJ when he’s not lazy. Shane can do some amazing electro sets. I’m just a hack in terms of pure technique, but the music I know is really good and I know my music very well and I know how to transition it in a way that doesn’t seem like I’m as bad of a DJ as I am.
Where do you find your music?
The radio station helps because we get a lot of stuff there. I used to read the major indies. When Pitchfork was good, I used to read them quite a lot. Early Broken Social Scene Records, Exploding Hearts, all of that really brought a lot of things together. They [Pitchfork] are terrible now. Unreadable. Really bad. … They still have really excellent festivals though. That Pitchfork music festival is great. The curation of that festival is awesome, but the magazine sucks.
Do you spend a lot of time looking for music?
I spend a lot of time at the station listening to new stuff that comes in. I have a lot of friends that we share opinions on music. I get a lot of music from friends. There’s a weird DJ thing – because Shane and I even lived together for a while – we hear a lot of each other’s music all the time and there’s sort of my music and his music. It’s sort of fopah to play the other guy’s music [at clubs]. If he introduced you to it and he plays it all the time, it’s sort of stepping on his toes. …
We all have secret sets. Shane and I both have hip hop sets we can play when we really feel like it. Way late at night, people will occasionally hear me do those one off shows. Shane has electro sets and goth, darkwave sets. We’re a little more versatile than indie. That 60’s indie – indie, protopunk, postpunk, psychrock and garage rock. The indie continuum. We haven’t figured out a good word for it.
How do you feel about that label “indie,” because now there are indie bands being signed to major labels?
I don’t know. Like Ferdinand De Saussure says, “The signifier has no signified.” Like the word has no meaning. There’s no such thing. There sort of never was. There were times that it made a lot of sense, like early R.E.M. days. But I mean, Sonic Youth has been on Geffen for a century and a half now. The Dandy Warhols, who we still think of as indie, have lots of tv commercials and they’re on Capitol. The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s are on Interscope. Lots of good bands are on Interscope, which is really creepy because Fred Durst is on interscope. So it’s wide open as far as that goes.
Most of the time when we say “indie” we mean “having artistic integrity” or “having the pretense of artistic integrity.” And I’m fine with that. That’s a good definition. That’s the way music is sorted these days – between truly commercial art, like civil art, or human art. And human art can be bad and fail on itself, but at least it’s human art. At least it’s honest failure. I don’t have any problems with names or labels. …
We preach to the choir a lot. A lot of the kids listening to the show are indie kids. They don’t know every song we’re playing, they’re not dyed in the wool hipsters. Which is preferable in some ways. I like to preach not to the choir sometimes. I like the Bar 35 show because they’re all - yuppies is the mean way of saying it – they’re not scene by any means. It’s cool to get a dance floor going over there.
I have a slightly missionary stance. I don’t like the elitism of keeping everybody out. I don’t like the close quarters sort of thing. I understand the desire to protect from outside exploitation, but we ‘re strong enough now. We’re all discerning enough now to keep ourselves safe from whatever. There is no real legitimate fear of us being co-opted. We do, we are a pretty welcoming family.
[discussion while buying more coffee…]
Are the political messages in the music you play important to you?
I’m a big lyrics guy. If people listen closely during my sets, there’s a lot of in-jokes and stuff. We had a slow night [at the club] and I just played songs, if you weren’t really listening, you wouldn’t have heard anything, but all the songs were about death. I do stuff like that. I know everybody’s personal problems, so I’m always playing little in-jokes…
Do they know that you’re doing that?
I don’t know. Some of the bands caught on at Kaleidoscope. Every once in a while, I’ll tease a band by playing a certain song after or before [their set]. I don’t do that too much. A little rib rib with the friend bands. …
But yeah, Oscar Wilde said there’s no such thing as moral art. I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. I think he was being somewhat facetious. Yeah, I like art that has social conscience or art that makes the world a better place. And you can do that just by being good. Like music that is good and hopeful has an excellent place. And music that is interesting because it’s critical is good as well. I’m trying to make the world a better place, or a prettier place.
It IS “Ross Jackson’s Daydream Nation.” How did you come up with that name?
It’s a Sonic Youth album. The first album I ever fell in love with. The first album that freaked me out and changed the whole way I felt about music. If I was going to talk top 10 lists, in terms of musical achievement, artistic achievement through music, I mean, it’s huge. It captures a whole decade of feeling and despair and hope and sadness and youth and angst and ennui and hope. It’s a really awesome record. Every road trip I ever took in California used to start with Teenage Riot by Sonic Youth.
Have you always been into music since you were little, or did you get into it?
It’s a weird path. … Bad mainstream stuff, I was into really awful mainstream music until the alternative movement. Then Nirvana - even my hair is a relic of the alternative age. There’s a Kurt Cobain sort of mop on my head right now. Then I went into trip hop, the sort of darker sexier stuff for a while because I was a sex perv. I was an enfant terrible from Jean Cocteau’s novel The Terrible Children. … Then sunny daytime pop happened.
What do you study at UH?
Religion. I’m a big culture geek. All types of cultures. All cultures. History. I love it. Big history geek, too. Love history. I love vocabulary, too.
I can tell. That’s good. Not a lot of people love vocabulary these days.
I love a woman with good vocabulary. Oh my god. … Smart people break my heart.
[We chat randomly…]
I miss Puahi, those Rebel Rebel days. And Controversy before that. … [The people that went to those] cut loose. People made out at Puahi.
No one makes out anywhere we go.
No one makes out anymore at parties! And I miss it. I was playing a good set at Bar 35, a slow sexy set, and people were making out. Here and there in the corners, people smooching and stuff. I like having the jangly upbeat big dance sets, but I love people making out, too. I miss that. We need more of that. We need make out parties.
[Everybody is so scared. They’re tethered to one person or another. If they don’t have a set boyfriend, they’re aimed at one particular person and they don’t want to do anything to jeopardize.]
… I like people making connections and being intimate with each other.
… You can educate the audience. Our next project is to make mixtapes for everybody. On a monthly basis, release an actual mixed DJ tape so that other people have more of a common ground. People know more of the bands so that when you play, rather than hearing an unfamiliar song, people hear that bass line, you get that same radio experience. Radio is now failing us, for the most part, in delivering that. Because it’s an awesome feeling when everybody hears that first four guitar notes of the song and they’re like “Oh! I have to dance to this!” It’s an awesome feeling. It’s an awesome thing that mass culture is capable of providing. It’s something that, just because we’re indie, we shouldn’t cut ourselves off from. Oh god, that’s the dumbest thing ever – anybody who thinks in such terms. It’s rough because it’s harder for us to do. We have to manufacture that sort of recognition ourselves. But I’ve got a radio show to do it and other people have radio shows to do it.
At the end, I usually ask this. What do you want people to know about Ross Jackson?
I don’t know. I’m always split between whether I want to maintain the persona. The silly over-the-top persona thing. It’s almost a joke. Do you remember the show promo? It’s so over the top. This mega-reverb voice “Pushing the boundaries of indie rock.” That’s pretty satire. There are some people that didn’t get the joke and some people that hated me for that. Putting my name in the show title was another over-the-top thing to do. You gotta have a gimmick. But I’m a sweetheart. I play chess. I coach kids in wrestling
Hell Caminos and Upstanding Youth in:
The Mainland Tour
Article by Katie Whitman, cameraman for UY interview - Shawn Davenport, left photo of The Hell Caminos by Katie Whitman, right photo of The Hell Caminos by Malia Leinau, photo of Upstanding Youth by Marina Miller (Red Heart Photography)
This summer, the Hawaii rock/punk/ska scene may be breaking a record for the number of bands heading to the mainland to tour. Older scenesters may know better, but in recent history, the last touring splash was made by The Crud (www.thecrud.com), Pimpbot (www.myspace.com/pimpbot), and Missing Dave (www.myspace.com/missingdave) when they climbed in their perspective vans for their “Rock from the Rock, Hawaiian Eruption Tour 2006.” Rock from the Rock was particularly ground-breaking because all three bands collaborated on tour logistics. Happily, all bands made it back to the islands in one piece… and smiling.
In the wake of that success, four bands are preparing to hit the road for the summer of 2007. They can almost smell the stink of the van. Among them are Black Square (www.myspace.com/blacksquare), just returned from a tour in February and heading back on the trail in June, The Golfcart Rebellion (www.myspace.com/thegolfcartrebellion), Upstanding Youth (www.UpstandingYouth.com), and The Hell Caminos (www.myspace.com/thehellcaminos). The Hell Caminos and Upstanding Youth sat down with the zine and shared plans, goals, and the possible (nay, probable) antics that could occur while stuck in tight spaces with their bandmates.
So who will be out there repping Hawaii? Upstanding Youth is a ska-punk band with a bright horn section, a mean electric guitar, and a grooving walking bass line. They formed six years ago in 2001 and won the Hawaii Music Awards category best ska/punk album in 2002, 2003, and 2006. The Hell Caminos have a whole different take on music. They fall in the category of psychobilly. Now if you’ve never heard of psychobilly, imagine this: start with Johnny Cash, speed it up, add a double-shot of rock, and finish it off with the controversy and piss-off attitude of punk.
The Hell Caminos tour starts in just a few days with their first mainland gig in Spokane, Washington on May 3rd. From there, they are going to make their way down the coast hitting major cities like Seattle, Tacoma, Eugene, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Fran, L.A., all the way down to San Diego, then, for the heck of it, it appears, they will drive to Vegas for their grand finale. We asked if they will be doing anything special in Vegas and Mike Camino jested “Actually, it’s Nick’s 19th birthday in Vegas. He’s really excited about it. He’s almost legal. They have 18 and over strip clubs there and they have legal prostitution. He’ll probably get lucky. Maybe he’ll lose his virginity. He’s very virginal.”
Upstanding Youth is taking a different route. Once they hit the West Coast, they plan on driving East into the desert. This is because the core of their tour is the Hyper Festival, a 200 band event held in Albuquerque every year. What’s the big deal? Marc, lead singer, explains: “They take over a whole town and three venues in that town for the whole night…. Then during the day, they have conferences and speakers and these people you can meet from record labels, industry people, promoters. We’re going to have a chance to perform one night in the venue and then an acoustic set during the conference during the day. … More than anything, it’s a big networking opportunity.” After landing that big record deal, Outstanding Youth will head up through New Mexico and Utah on their way back to Cali.
How did these bands book gigs thousands of miles away? The resounding answer was, indeed, the internet. Mike Camino expounds: “Well, ten years ago before the internet and Myspace, it was really hard to put together a tour because you had to get names and possibly travel around the mainland to get names and numbers. Now it’s a lot easier for bands to actually get the gigs.” Apparently, club agents didn’t need much convincing to book The Hell Caminos. Psychobilly is hot right now, and a psychobilly band from Hawaii?? Now that’s a novelty! Plus, have you ever seen The Hell Caminos perform? There’s a reason why they won the Hawaii Underground Music Awards for Best Performance.
Professionalism is what convinced clubs in Country country to book Upstanding Youth. “Once people saw our websites and our myspace and saw that we were an experienced band that was worth their time and money, [they saw that] we could help them out. And that our music worked in their venue – it wasn’t a country venue or something – they were stoked on us.”
As far as equipment goes, Upstanding Youth has the benefit of renting Go Jimmy Go’s van and backline. The Hell Caminos found a hookup in Seattle where they will purchase a cheap van from some kind-hearted Seattle musician. Handsome Jack explains, “Hopefully it’ll make it through the whole tour and then we’re going to stash it somewhere and use it for future tours.” How do they feel about spending so much time in the van? Tom, UY’s drummer, worries “Yeah, I’m kind of wondering how it’s going to work with showers because we’re not going to be staying in motels. We’re just going to be staying with people we know. Or camping out or whatever. So as far as laundry and body odor, I think the van is going to stink really bad.”
No tour is complete without antics, as The Hell Caminos put it:
Mike: A lot of nudity will happen probably.
Nick: Too much.
Jack: Not involving sex. That’s the antics part. There’s uncalled for nudity. Unsolicited nudity. It’s different than sex when, usually, the nudity is approved.
Mike: It’s kind of like streaking.
Nick: It’s never approved.
As for Upstanding Youth, well, “I don’t care where we are or what we’re doing, if we’re with each other for a period of time, we have to game seal it and say ‘Ok. No more hitting each other in the balls.’”
What are the bands goals with their perspective tours? Both want this to be the first of many. Other than that, Mike Camino just wants to have fun. “Nick says world domination, but … I don’t want to think about getting signed or being big because that’s a rarity these days. I just want to have fun.” Upstanding Youth plans to amp it up. “We’ve made over 500 business cards so that in each town, we network the crap out of it so that the next time we have tons of hookups and meet a lot of people.” Other than that, they jokingly exclaim “To become the world’s most sought after punk-ska band…. In one tour.”
It takes a hard working band to book a successful tour and Hawaii’s underground is proud of these bands for continuing to blaze that trail. Let’s hope they shake things up a bit and make people aware of the diversity in our music scene. As Mike Camino puts it, “hopefully we can play a good show and bring a little bit of our scene to the mainland.”
Hell Caminos Interview
Interviewer and Camerperson Katie Whitman
April 17, 2007
[Mike Camino (M) is leaning against a wall, smoking. Nick Danger (N) sits on the ground next to him smoking as well.]
Handsome Jack (J): They’re killing themselves with a cigarette. They’re killing themselves together. It’s always nice to die together.
You guys are that close that you’re going to die together?
J: I’m not smoking.
M: But he’s older, so he’ll probably die about the same time we do.
…
J: What is this [interview] about? Do we need to talk about anything in particular? You know, I searched for shrunken heads on Ebay yesterday and there are shrunken heads on Ebay.
You can find anything on Ebay.
J: There’s shrunken heads from Borneo, I think.
Megan (Hell Caminos #1 fan): People sell their souls on Ebay.
M: I think you can’t sell human parts anymore. They banned human parts.
J: Disease control didn’t like that.
Jack, you said there were a lot of bands touring this summer, so I’m interviewing bands that are going on tour.
M: Do you have any questions prepared?
Not really. I’m just going to make it up. See where it goes. So where are you touring?
M: We’re going to be starting in Washington and working our way down the West Coast. Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Eugene (Oregon), Bay Area, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, then down to L.A., San Diego, and Vegas. We’re going to end in Vegas.
Are you going to do anything special in Vegas?
N: Sleep.
M: Actually, [facetiously] it’s Nick’s 19th birthday in Vegas. He’s really excited about it. He’s almost legal.
J: [Pointing to Nick’s stubbly beard] He’s taking growth hormones.
M: The have 18 and over strip clubs there and they have prostitution legal. He’ll probably get lucky. Maybe he’ll lose his virginity.
[laughter all around]
N: Virginity. [laughing]
M: He’s very virginal. [pause] I think, being our first tour, we were as lucky to get as many gigs as we got. My constant harassment of promoters and venues in California, whatever. We’ve got a lot of shows and we’re pretty stoked. We’re playing twice a couple of nights. AND we actually booked every night that we’re playing.
How did you find these promoters and venues? Research? Word of mouth?
M: [looking a little sheepish] The internet. Well, ten years ago before the internet and Myspace, it was really hard to put together a tour because you had to get names and possibly travel around the mainland to get names and numbers. Now it’s a lot easier for bands to actually get the gigs.
You haven’t gone on tour before?
M: No, this is our first time. We’ve gone to Maui and the Big Island. It’s always fun to travel and have antics when we’re on tour. A lot of nudity will happen probably.
N: Too much.
J: Not involving sex. That’s the antics part. There’s uncalled for nudity. Unsolicited nudity.
Gratuitous nudity.
J: It’s different than sex when usually the nudity is approved.
M: It’s kind of like streaking.
N: It’s never approved.
[laughter]
M: I would like to talk about how there’s actually a lot of bands who are coming from Hawaii and touring this summer. Black Square just came back from tour. We’re gonna go on tour. Upstanding Youth is going to tour. Golfcart Rebellion. It’s the year for touring for local bands in Hawaii and it’s really cool to see that happen.
It seem like this is a really huge group to travel. I mean, the last group that traveled was The Crud, Pimpbot, and Missing Dave went together.
M: I think it’s really hard to book shows – I mean, I think it’s hard enough just to book one band for all those shows. I can’t imagine booking three bands. I give them props for that.
You’ve been in the scene for a long time. Is this sort of a large group touring this summer?
M: At least for our circle of bands, our friends and stuff, it’s a lot of people touring. We’re just following in the footsteps of other bands like Go Jimmy Go who have been pretty successful on the mainland. So hopefully we can follow in their footsteps.
Did you get to use that at all? Say “We’re from Hawaii like Go Jimmy Go?”
M: We don’t really have the Hawaii theme like Go Jimmy Go does. Their whole slogan is “The Island Sound…”
N: “Heard the World Around.”
M: We don’t have that whole theme, but I think just being from Hawaii, when people look at our [myspace] page, it’s kind of like a novelty. [People] don’t think there’s psychobilly in Hawaii.
I was just going to ask. Were people surprised to hear that there was a band like Hell Caminos in Hawaii?
M: Yeah, or even punk rock. I think we’ve probably gotten a lot of notoriety and shows just from that alone. So hopefully we can play a good show and hopefully bring a little bit of our scene to the mainland.
Is that your goal? Do you have a further goal than that for the tour?
J: We hope that this tour will be the first of many.
So make some connections?
[Two girls walk nearby on the sidewalk.]
J: [pointing] There’s actually some burlesque dancers here.
M: Megan, come here. She’s going to be our road manager on the tour. And our merch girl. [pause] That’s probably the gist of our tour is just to kind of get a feel for touring the mainland, and like Jack said, be the first of many, hopefully. And we’re not touring long enough to actually hate each other’s guts afterwards. [laughter]
How long is the tour?
M: It’s about two and a half weeks long.
So Jack, you actually bought a van?
J: Through the kindness of other bands back on the mainland that have been helping us out. One of the members of another band is helping us out. He’s gonna sell us his van for fairly cheap so that we’re going to have a vehicle to tour.
[The original plan had been for Jack to get a free van on the East Coast and drive it across the country a week before the tour to get it over to L.A.]
I thought you had to pick up the van and drive across country and all that.
J: No, no, no. That fell through.
N: That was the old deal.
J: See, deals have come. Deals have fallen through. That’s been part of the whole thing of trying to get the tour going. We’ve gotta change things around. Mike has had to rebook shows, flip flop shows as it changes. So, the old plan with the van went down in flames and we got a new plan. We’re going to pick up the van in Seattle where the tour starts. Hopefully it’ll make it through the whole tour and then we’re going to stash it somewhere and use it for future tours.
What’s been the worst or hardest part of doing this whole thing?
J: I think you should talk to Mike about that.
M: Booking the tour? It’s actually gone pretty smoothly. Just trying to plan it so that we have shows in which city we’re going to be in. We’re backtracking for a couple of shows, but that’s minor compared to all the shows we’ve got. It’s been pretty smooth, I think, for our first tour.
[Jack tells around viewers about Chinatown and as the camera pans around to Mike and Nick, he says]
J: Look at them. They are so cool looking. Look at my band. I’m so proud of them.
M: Like a proud father… that molests us [laughs].
What’s the ultimate goal for the Hell Caminos and this tour? Making another tour and…
M: Nick says world domination, but I just want to have fun. I think it’ll just be fun. As long as we have fun, that’s all that matters. I don’t want to think about getting signed or being big because that’s a rarity these days. I just want to have fun.
N: Breaking even would be fucking amazing. That would be rad.
M: Not paying for food on tour out of our own pocket would be really good.
Where are you going to stay? Are you just going to crash at people’s houses?
M: A couple of places we just have to drive directly to the next venue, so we’ll be driving all night. I think all in all, I have a lot of friends in different cities, so we’ll be pretty taken care of.
Did you make any Myspace friends that you’re going to stay with?
M: People have offered, but you never know. They could be crackheads or something. But they seem pretty cool… on Myspace. But I don’t fucking know.
Upstanding Youth Interview
Katie Whitman
Cameraman Shawn Davenport
April 21, 2007
Thomas plays the drums, symbols, and timbale.
Dimitri plays the bass and the symbols.
Marc plays guitar and symbols.
T: Hi, I’m Thomas and I play the drums, symbols, and timbale.
D: I’m Dimitri and I play the bass and symbols.
M: I’m Marc and I sing and I play the guitar.
T: And symbols.
D: And sometimes you scat.
M: Sometimes I scat. Sometimes I play the trumpet. That’s my job.
SZ: How many members are we missing here?
T,D,M: Three. The horns.
You are going on tour in a month?
M: May 13th. We got dates from May 14th to the 26th, ranging from L.A. to Albuquerque up to Utah and back to L.A.
Are you going to hit Vegas?
M: Yeah. That’s our goal. L.A., Pheonix, Albuquerque for three days, Farmington, Moab, Provo…
Why did you choose that [route] instead of going up and down California? Do you have connections?
M: Oh there’s.. initially we got invited to a three day festival in Albuquerque. So we’re just basing everything off of that festival. That’s from the 17th to the 19th in Albuquerque. We just take L.A. to Albuquerque and we don’t want to go back the same way. We want to hit as many states and towns [as possible]. It’s just towns where we have connections in. Towns where we found bands.
How did you meet these bands?
M: A lot of Myspace. We just looked for bands on Myspace that had gigs listed so we knew they were playing. And we saw what venues they were playing at. A lot of those fell through. Hardly any of those actually worked. We ended up just having to call bars and call universities and calling venues and that’s how we made our tour.
Did it help you to see where bands were playing [on Myspace calendar listings] so you could call up those venues?
M: Yeah. And when that fell through, you’d find venues that were listed and call them. Because we were going to be in the town and we were just desperate to find something.
Did everybody participate in this, or was it just mostly you?
M: It was mainly me and our other horn player Tim. It kinda sucks because I just had a baby and I’m going to grad school. [Tom] wanted to do a lot of help, but he had a baby right in the middle of the whole idea, so he wasn’t really able to help out too much. Dimitri just sucks.
D: Yeah. [laughs]
M: We all collaborated on ideas, just general ideas. Between me and Tim, we just really spearheaded it.
Well, too many cooks…
M: Exactly. You can’t have six people trying to plan a gig in Vegas and six people trying to commit to six different gigs.
Did you find that the club owners were hesitant, or were they more like “Hey, a band from Hawaii. This could be really cool.”?
M: Just recently, there was a place in Arizona where they really didn’t want us to come. They were really hesitant to respond to phone calls and I had to hound them just to get them to say no. BUT, once people saw our websites and our myspace and saw that we were an experienced band that was worth their time and money, [they saw that] we could help them out. And that our music worked in their venue – it wasn’t a country venue or something – they were stoked on us. That really helped out a lot.
Are you going to get paid at all?
M: Yeah. We got different set ups for a bunch of them. Some of them it’s like half the door or a certain percentage. We just figure as long as we can pay for it and get gas money, we don’t care.
You’re going to rent a van?
M: We actually got helped out a lot with the van. Go Jimmy Go – They have their own van and their own gear over there, so we can use their van and their backline.
Bands working together! See? We need more of Hawaii working together!
M: The other cool thing is, too, that we’re playing in Hollywood at the Knitting Factory and The Hell Caminos are going to be there at the same time. We’re going to play the same show with them.
Oh, you are?!
M: We are super stoked with that.
That is excellent. This has to be quite an undertaking. Six members. Six people.
T: Yeah, I’m kind of wondering how it’s going to work with showers because we’re not going to be staying in motels. We’re just going to be staying with people we know.
M: In the van.
T: Or camping out or whatever. So as far as laundry and body odor, I think the van is going to stink really bad.
M: And I sweat really bad during shows.
T: Oh yeah. After shows, can you imagine coming band and we’re all in the van?
M: Sleeping in the van.
D: We’re going to have to have a beard contest.
M: I win.
D: You already started!
[laughter]
Have you spent any amount of time in close quarters with each other?
M: Not two weeks. We’ve done an outer island tour for three days at a time.
T: I keep having this bad feeling that we’re going to end up hating each other about a week into it and we’re not going to know what to do with ourselves.
M: [laughing] No way, man! Because we’re just going to be playing shows constantly and we’ll just be stoked. And if we’re not playing a show, we’re going to be driving because they’re so far away. It’s like six or seven hour drives. We didn’t make it 12 hour drives, but still, we’re going to be driving a lot.
T: It’s mainly Dimitri and Adam in the van. There’s a lot of conflict. [Mark laughs.] Those guys are real jerks. They’re always making fun of people’s shoes and stuff.
M: I’m just waiting for something to happen right there, man.
Are you expecting any practical jokes or just messing with people?
M: Well, whenever we have to be with Dimitri for any amount of time, it always ends up in crotch hitting. [laughter] I don’t care where we are or what we’re doing, if we’re with each other for a period of time, we have to game seal it and say “Ok. No more hitting each other in the balls.”
Shawn: That’s unacceptable.
T,M,D: [nod solemnly]
T: When we were on Maui, though, we had two different rooms in a hostel. The one room that I was in with Dimitri and Tim, we were really trying to figure out how we could prank Marc and [the others]. We were trying so hard to figure something out, but we never got to prank them real good, so we’re going to have to figure out something better this time.
D: We’re going to have to step it up this time.
Shawn: Any ideas?
M: We’re not going to talk about this on tape.
D: Because Marc is here.
M: You’re going to have to give us an interview afterwards.
Shawn: We’ll have to sell this information to the rest of the band.
D: Marc won’t have any eyebrows.
Shawn: Ooh, that’s rough. I’d rather get hit in the balls, honestly.
Katie: So what are your goals for this tour? Why are you planning and what do you hope happens?
M: To become the world’s most sought after punk-ska band.
T: With one tour. [laughter]
M: The idea of the tour was just to be able to do it. It’s something we wanted to do for so long and we finally have the chance to pull it off. The gigs in Albuquerque have a really big opportunity to meet some big name people. MTV. Warner Brothers. It’s a big festival. Over 200 bands participating and they take over the whole town. It’s going to be a really exciting time to meet international bands.
What is the festival called?
M: The HyperFestival.. It’s a bite off the South by Southwest Tour idea. They just take over a whole town and three venues in that town for the whole night. They just jampack it. Same idea. Then during the day, they have conferences and speakers and these people you can meet from record labels, industry people, promoters. We’re going to have a chance to perform one night in the venue and then an acoustic set during the conference during the day. Then there’s a big party where you just go to schmooze and stuff. More than anything, it’s a big networking opportunity. Meet the other bands and meet the industry.
So that’s the real push behind having a tour.
M: The festival is the core. The festival will make the whole tour worth it and all the other gigs will just be fun.
T: That’s the thing. Even if we just don’t make any money and we come back poor and we don’t do well, at least we will have learned what we can improve and what we want to do different for next time. Get out there and do it so we can at least logistically figure out what works and what doesn’t work. What towns to not ever go back to again.
Make a few fans. Sell a few CDs.
M: That’s the other thing. We have a bunch of mainland fans because of Pandora, Myspace, iTunes, all this other kind of stuff. We’ve had sales from Italy, Spain, Germany. All these different places and the whole continental USA. There’s people from Michigan, New York, Philadelphia and all these places, so we’ll have a lot wider range of exposure to meet some of these people.
That’s great. You guys are sort of one of the top, upper level of bands here. I don’t know what to call it. [Marc smiles and looks at Dimtri, makes a talky motion with his hand, then they both smile and shake their heads no.] You’re one of the more professional bands. What do you attribute to making it this far and then going on to this tour?
M: Having nothing else to do in life. [smiles]
D: It’s something we love to do. I’ve been in other bands, and this band, we’re such good friends. We all have the same goal and we all look out for each other. I don’t know about the whole longevity thing, but we’re all pretty tight.
M: I think a lot of it is just making it a priority. Making music and the band a priority. It’s not just to have fun and get drunk – hardly any of us do that anyways – it’s meant to be a business AND fun. All of us having that in mind, we come to practice with a goal. It’s not just to screw around, especially now with kids getting into the mix. You can’t leave the house without a purpose. You can’t just go out and screw around with the boys, otherwise you come home in trouble. It’s not like we want to leave the house for any other reason. It becomes more serious for us now.
Are you going to do anything special for your shows on this tour that you haven’t done here?
T: That’s a good idea. We should think about doing something different. Bumping it up a little bit. We haven’t really thought about it.M: For me, at least, I’ve just been trying to think of logistics. We’ve made over 500 business cards so that in each town, we network the crap out of it so that the next time we have tons of hookups and meet a lot of people. For our shows, we’re just going to go out and play because none of these people have ever seen us.
Shawn: It’s like going to a new school.
M: Yeah, it’s awesome. I mean, how many times have we played at Kainoa’s? How many times have we played at Detox? We’ve played so many places on the island, we’re kind of stagnant here.
So you’re excited to play to a fresh crowd?
M: For them to see us for the first time at the top or our game, that’s just going to be fun.
[The twins roll in for the Kainoa’s show.]
How was the Reel Big Fish show?
D: Awesome.
M: It was great.
Did you get to meet the guys and talked to them?
D: Actually, I talked to the bass player for a while. Tim, our sax player, went to the Hideaway and hung out with them.
M: He went and made out with them for a while. [laughter]
D: It was cool talking to Matt Wong because he’s from Hilo. He was just happy that there’s some good bands over here. I thought the whole show was awesome. I thought that Golfcart [Rebellion] did good and we had a great time. It’s one of those things. When we were younger, we always wanted to open for Reel Big Fish.
M: Playing at Pipeline and opening for Reel Big Fish was a dream, man. That was awesome. [Looks up] This is Aaron, our trumpet player and backup singer.
[To Tim and Aaron, the twins] What are your thoughts on your upcoming tour?
Tim: Stoked.
A: I am so excited because ever since we started to begin playing, it’s like something we’ve always dreamt of doing. It’s something we’re actually going to do. We almost don’t believe it, but we’re happy. I am so happy. I was talking to Nick [Danger of the Hell Caminos] and he was saying that it was awesome that people from Hawaii are hitting the pavement.
Anything you want people to know about Upstanding Youth?
D: We do everything DIY. We do our own recordings. We don’t have a producer or anything.
M: Planning the tour all our own. We did all our own booking. We make our own t-shirts, our own stickers, buttons.
T: We make our own instruments. [laughter]
M: We all have our own lives, too. [Points to Tom] Finishing up his masters degree this semester. I’m [in] the UH masters program. Tim already got his masters degree. Dimitri has a recording arts degree. Aaron is going to grad school and Adam [not present at interview] works full time. We’re pretty involved in other things, but we still make music a priority.
