News / Bands

Jon Lewis (Dopamines)

SPB: Do you take any precautions to stay healthy while on the road?

Lewis: Typically I'll stock up on multi vitamins or those "EmergenC" powder packets. Jon W and Michael rely on a force field of porn and chicken wings to prevent illness. Mikey Erg wears a full body latex suit between shows to block harmful fatty acids from penetrating his leathery Mr. Burns skin. The suit is really fun at hotels because we rub him down with vegetable oil and slide him across the tile floor in indoor pool areas.

But honestly, none of these so-called "sure fire" [precautions] stop one or all of us from getting some sort of debilitating illness at the worst possible time on tour. Collectively we're a pretty self-destructive band health wise, especially on the road. Maybe it's one of those cases where you take no precautions to prevent illness, and as a result you become immune to more shit? If only that theory could work on our live shows. 

Aidan Baker

SPB: Other than music, what other art forms interest you?

Baker: I would say all other art forms interest me, but I guess that's probably a vaguer answer than you would like...So I guess I'd say literature is my second passion after music, both reading and writing. I grew up in a family that played music and read books, so both art forms were an important part of my upbringing but in my early twenties I was much more seriously pursuing a career as a writer than as a musician. I didn't especially have a lot of success in the literary world, although I have published a few books of poetry. I still try to write when I can, but music has certainly taken precedence in my artistic endeavours. Some of my favourite writers: Angela Carter, Richard Brautigan, Shelley Jackson, Steve Erickson, Iain Banks, David Foster Wallace, William Vollmann, Martin Millar, Mark Leyner, Kelly Link, etc., etc.

Nik Christofferson (Good to Die Records)

SPB: What was your first live show that you attended?

Christofferson: The first live show I attended was Seattle band Sweet Water in 1994 (I was 14 years old) as part of the Pain in the Grass free concert series that Seattle rock radio station used to put on in the early-mid nineties. Plenty of local rock luminaries played those shows including Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.

Mom waited in a parking lot across the street while my friend and I attended the show. I remember she was worried about people openly using drugs in my presence and sure enough some guy was smoking something out of a light bulb a few feet from us. It was good for a laugh. I don't really remember the show other than they played a bunch of tunes of their recently released 2nd album Super Friends, which saw moderate success in post-Nirvana Seattle.

Pete Noteboom (Morality Crisis)

SPB: How did your approach to music change during your years off as a band?

Noteboom: Our approach to the music itself did not change much at all, hell that was part of the reason we wanted to play together again in the first place. Maybe our musical understanding and maturity developed a bit in that time, but that was just a result of experience and age.

What really changed was our understanding of what we were doing. We had broken up just before leaving for school, and we understood ourselves to be turning the page on the band and moving on. Basically, we all thought of Morality Crisis as what we did to not be bored in high school. Making the decision to start riffing after 6 years was us realizing that growing up is for bozos, that what you feel as a pissed off teenager at a barn show is just as legit as anything you'll feel later on in life.