Features / One Question Interviews

Mike McColgan (Street Dogs, FM359)

SPB: How much space in your home is dedicated to music storage (instruments or records)?

McColgan: One entire room in my house is dedicated to all of the vinyl, CDs, instruments, stereo equipment, posters, flyers etc. that I own.

Naoko (Shonen Knife)

SPB: What is your favorite Ramones song?

Naoko: It’s impossible to choose one song. I like all Ramones songs.

Joe Holland (Sex Rays, Violent Shifters)

SPB: Do you wear earplugs when you play? Why/why not?. 

Holland: I almost always wear hearing protection at rehearsals, shooting range style "ear muffs" are the best, in my opinion. In most cases I do wear earplugs when I go to shows as a spectator, especially if the band is not "worth" …

Clay Reed (Subsonics)

SPB: It seems that the hyphenated genre "garage-punk" keeps popping up more and more. What do you think of the term?

Reed: The term garage-punk...is as meaningless and subjective as all genre labels are. Kierkegaard said: "When you label,me you negate me"...but he was maybe kinda extremist. Maybe when you label me you negate the …

Loren Shumaker-Chupp (Signals Midwest, bass)

SPB: What do your parents think of your music?

Loren Shumaker-Chupp: My parents have always appreciated that I play music and what I get out of it. It was something that they encouraged me to learn when I was younger and supported throughout grade school when I began to draw serious interest into …

Sarah Neufeld (solo, Arcade Fire)

SPB: What are the biggest challenge you face in getting the sound you want live while playing with amplified instruments?

Neufeld: I've always had a pretty good pick-up situation on my violin, so it hasn't really been an issue. It is fun to experiment with pushing the sound of that instrument in a …

Anthony (Stranger by Starlight)

SPB: What is your favorite 1970s artist?

Anthony: It's incredibly difficult to pick a favourite artist, album or even track from the entirety of the 1970s, so many things spring immediately to mind, all of which deserve to be mentioned: Leonard Cohen, The Stooges, Amon Duul II and Ash Ra Temple, Gang of Four, …

Bryan Spinks (Samothrace, vocalist/guitarist)

SPB: How did you get so bloody heavy?

Spinks: I suppose it is a culmination of some different things. Obviously the riffs have to be solid. Tone is a huge factor, too. I, as many guitarists do, have spent the past 20+ years searching for the proper tone from my amps and cabs. It …

Swordplay (Swordplay & Pierre the Motionless)

SPB: Is there a regional food you look forward to when you tour?

Swordplay: Boiled Peanuts. Probably the best part about going to the South is boiled peanuts. Last time I was in SC, I learned they can even be turned into hummus. It's delicious.

Jared (Sundowners)

SPB: What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you on a tour? Have you ever been stranded or forced to cancel?

Jared: Great question! and really annoying memories to look back on. Hahaha.

Sundowners were on an eight-to-ten hour drive to Salt Lake City maybe three weeks into the tour. We had already been missing …

Phil (Somos)

SPB: What is the worst job you’ve ever had?

Somos: This is tough because I have had a lot of shitty jobs. But first would have to be babysitting rich kids. I was 18 and had just moved to San Francisco from Massachusetts. I was desperate for money and was looking for any kind of work …

Alex (Silver Snakes)

SPB: Who was your favorite band that you discovered on your last tour?

Alex: My favorite band I discovered on our last tour is Third Seven. We were playing our last show with HRVRD at The Launchpad in Albuquerque, NM and I was captivated by the music playing over the PA after sound check. Layers …

Adam (Say-10 Records)

SPB: What is your go-to karaoke song?

Adam: Let's set the stage... I am the worst karaoke performer of all time and I only participate when I am surrounded by people that treat it as if they are at an american idol try out.

I always grab the mic, wrap the chord around my …

Mike Hall (Sick Sick Birds)

SPB: If I’m not mistaken, one or two of you in Sick Sick Birds have children, correct? What do your kids think of your band?

Hall: Yes, we all have kids. There are five of them now, ranging from 2-10 years old. Mostly, I think my kids just think of the band as …

Spoonboy

SPB: Do you still get nervous before you play a show? How do you address your nerves?

Spoonboy: Sometimes. I just try to remember that I've played like 1000 shows and I just mentally teleport myself to after the show is over, where I see that everything went fine. Because, even if some shows go better than …

Annie Sparrows (Soviettes, FM Wired, Lil Happiness, God Damn Doo Wop Band)

SPB: What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you on tour? Have you ever been stranded or had to cancel?

Sparrows: Yes, I TOTALLY got left at a gas station in the middle of nowhere by accident. Everyone else got about 5 miles away when they …

Stuart Dahlquist (Asva, ex-Burning Witch)

SPB: What is a city or country you’d love to play but never have?

Dahlquist: One city or country is tough because there are so many places I'd like to play and haven't...

I guess you could throw a dart at a world map and say ,"You’re going here, Stuart. Pack appropriately," …

Chris McCaughan (Lawrence Arms, Sundowner)

SPB: I take it by the multiple baseball references in your songs that you're a fan. What are your thoughts on the recent doping scandal?

McCaughan: Hold up! There's cheating and steroids in baseball?!! C'mon. Are we really so surprised by all this?

It's certainly unfortunate, as I think a lot of …

Shellshag

SPB: What are the origins of the Y-microphone?

Shellshag: Our custom, Flying V mic stand was invented by Shell.

We started facing each other at practice since we used a stand-up drum kit and there were just two of us, but we were already used to the standard performance positions of facing the crowd so, at …

Daryl Gussin (Spokenest)

SPB: How did you come up with the idea to form Spokenest with money received from wedding gifts?

Gussin: Well, that’s not exactly what happened. We got engaged pretty close to around when we started writing and practicing the songs that ended up on We M?ve. Then we got married. Then we recorded the …