Our Hometown Disaster delivers the goods on full-length debut

Local punk outfit Our Hometown Disaster wants you to know that they aren’t fucking around on their full-length debut, The Good Life, out Oct. 10, 2009. “We’re not pussies, we’re not fakes, we’re real guys with real experiences and that comes out in the music we write,” vocalist Brad Edison recently told Submerge. “We put heart into writing our music; we have well thought out and provocative lyrics that actually mean something to us. We are proud of our music; we couldn’t respect ourselves if we weren’t.”

While somewhat new to the scene with this line-up, all of Our Hometown Disaster’s members, including Ted Rauenhorst (guitar, backing vocals), Clint Cargill (guitar, backing vocals), Jeremy Roberts (drums), Brian Lee (bass, backing vocals) and Edison (vocals), have been in well-established Sacramento bands over the years. The note-worthy list of past groups includes Losing All Pride, Drowning Adam, A Borrowed Life, The Revelry, Five Victims Four Graves, Hoods and Vomit. With a résumé like that, you’d expect Our Hometown Disaster to hit the ground running. And they have. They’ve got a new full-length record, The Good Life, set to be released on Oct. 10 at the Boardwalk, a tight sound and big plans for the future.

Submerge recently caught up with some of the guys to cover the basics.

How did Our Hometown Disaster form?
Ted Rauenhorst: It all started with Clint and I around July ’08. We both missed playing punk rock and decided to get together and start a side project just for shits. We started writing and really enjoyed it and started looking for members about a month later. Long story short, we found some kick ass dudes that we really meshed well with and really got going on it. All of our other bands were not doing too well and all pretty much fell apart at the same time. We liked what we started doing a lot and decided to take the band seriously. We played our first show with Authority Zero in February ’09 and knew right then we really wanted to do this band full-time, and here we are.

I got a good laugh out of your Myspace page where it says, “Their goal is to prove that Sacramento’s punk roots are still firmly planted in a land where pussy emo and cock rock are running rampant!” Can you elaborate on that?
Brad Edison: The fact is there is a massive abundance of shitty music. Brian and I were talking a while ago about the fact that we still listen to the same CDs we bought when we were kids. Only every once in a while can we welcome a new CD to the list of quality music.

How does the songwriting process work in OHD? Is there one main songwriter, or is it collaborative?
TR: It’s pretty collaborative. Clint, Brian or myself will come up with a riff or even a full song, and we all get together and throw ideas around. Brad and Brian write the lyrics for the most part. We all like to give input in everything we do.
BE: For lyrics, usually Brian and I take an idea from an experience in our life or one of the other guys and just build on that while listening to the riff over and over and over. Sometimes it’s fairly quick and sometimes it takes a while and a lot of different settings. Some of my favorite lines have come to me while I’m driving or in the middle of the night. And sometimes there are parts that get changed even after all that because I won’t sing something that doesn’t convey the message I want the way I want to convey it.

What does a typical OHD practice look like?
Brian Lee: We all show up late and pissed off from work. We make fun of each other the whole time and run through the set and then work on something new. We got the next two albums written already, but we’re still working on our set because this OHD thing is so new to us all being from metal, punk, rock and hardcore bands. The next shit is amazing.

The Good Life sounds great! When and where was it recorded?
TR: We recorded it a few months back at Pus Cavern.

Nice. How was it working with Joe Johnston?
BL: He doesn’t let shit slide and really pushed us to do the best we could. It was awesome and we are stoked!
BE: Definitely. Joe is a great guy, smart and easy to work with. He knows what he’s doing. The proof is in the pudding; the CD sounds amazing.

What’s the plan for releasing The Good Life? Any label interest? Do you even care about record labels anymore? Or are you going the DIY route?
BL: Labels are what they are. We are old school “work hard for what you want” kind of guys. Smaller labels are cool, because they have the same goal as we do: play hard.
TR: We are just going to put it out ourselves for now. We are talking with a few labels and are looking for someone to put it out. We want to be patient and wait for the right label to come along. We don’t want to jump on the first offer and get screwed. Some of us have had that happen and don’t want to have it happen again.

Any touring plans?
BL: We got some shit going on.
TR: We are planning on going out a lot early next year. We have so much we want to do. It’s hard to say right now where we are going to be going.

I’m sure most of you have done the DIY tour thing before. Do you think touring is important in an age where bands break overnight via the Internet?
BL: The Internet is rad; you can see bands or boobs or whatever you want. Emo pop kids love to be sad and take pictures of themselves all day and will find bands that will do the same. We want to appeal to the skaters and motocross kids that are out and about that actually have CDs rolling around their trucks and loan out to their friends. It’s a totally different crowd. Go out and live fast. How rad can you get staying in your room listening to some losers that dress up for the Internet?

A Single Second Celebrate Their New EP

In their almost six-year history, Sacramento’s A Single Second has retained only one of its original members, vocalist/guitarist (he plays trumpet, too) Shawn Peter. While for some bands, this sort of turnover may have been the result of tempestuous relationships, but this doesn’t seem to be the case with A Single Second—at least not according to Peter. It’s just a fact of life: People move on.

“You play with a couple of different people over a couple years,” he explains. “We tour a lot. We play an average of 100 shows a year. Life happens. People want to go off and do other things, and sometimes it’s a good break, sometimes it’s a bad one. But everyone who’s ever been in the band, we’re all still friends. I see them around, and they’re doing other projects. Clay [Wolery, drums], who was in the band the longest with me, left back in November, and we still live together. He’s one of my closest friends.”

Wolery’s last recording with A Single Second, the band’s fourth EP Moments (they also have one full-length) which was available for free at the CD’s release party at the Fire Escape in Citrus Heights on June 21.

“I enjoy going to a show and people are giving stuff out for free, and you’re guaranteed to take one when it’s free, says lead guitarist Aaron Holt of the band’s decision to make the recording available at no charge.

Moments features Mikey Atilano of Ghost in the Flesh and Lesdystics on bass, who has now been replaced by Mogley. Dave Girard, formerly of Drowning Adam, now fills the seat behind the drums vacated by Wolery. Mogley mentions that his transition into A Single Second was pretty seamless.

“I knew who they were, I was familiar with their sound and a lot of the songs they were playing,” he says. “At least I knew they were going somewhere, that they had goals and weren’t trying to start from scratch.”

Recently, the A Single Second extended family also welcomed a new member. Mogley’s wife Rene gave birth to his second child, a baby girl, this past April.

“There has been some stuff that we weren’t able to do because of the pregnancy and stuff like that,” he says of balancing the disparaging worlds of fatherhood and rock ‘n’ roll. “But since I’d had a child already, I knew what I was able to do and what I wasn’t able to do, so it’s balancing out. My wife deals with it pretty good. She knew what she was getting into when she married me.”

The songs on the EP cover a wide range of topics in just a few songs. On the title track, “Moments,” Peter writes about the death of his grandfather through the eyes of his grandmother, while “Black & White” is a subtle jab at trend-hopping scenesters. Moments’ lone instrumental, “Buddha Fish,” which Peter describes as “a groovy stoner rock song” is actually one of the older songs in A Single Second’s catalog.

“We did record it on our second EP like five years ago,” Peter says. “It was never really that good of a recording. It was always such a cool song. Clay really wanted to record that one, and I think he knew that was going to be his last record, so I think he just wanted something of that song recorded really well before he left.”

With Moments ready to go and a new lineup in place, A Single Second is also readying their second full length that Holt says the band hopes to start recording in August. When Submerge spoke with the group, they were at Girard’s recording studio in Rio Linda “recording some new material so we can get it down better,” according to Peter.

Peter reports that the band has three songs completely finished and ready to go, while three more are done musically, but in need of vocals. He goes on to mention that the songwriting with the new members is going well and is a truly egalitarian process.

“I think Aaron and I are 50/50 as far as writing the music, but we all have our input on it,” Peter says. “It’s not so much my idea or his idea; Dave and Mogley have just as much input. It’s basically whoever has the best idea for a song is what goes, whether it’s instrumentally, vocally, rhythmically. When everyone has input in the song, it just makes it better.”

Peter takes his band member’s input into account even on his lyrics.

“I usually write the words after the music is written,” Peter says. “And then I bring the lyrics to the guys. If they don’t like them, then I change them; if they do, they stay.”

So much for the band Nazi/frontman stereotype. Perhaps that’s why Peter’s been able to remain friends with his band’s past members. This easygoing attitude is also reflected in the way A Single Second handles their business. Though they have a strong following locally and have followed a rigorous west coast touring regimen over the past five-plus years, A Single Second doesn’t seem to be in any rush to get signed to a label—a refreshing outlook, perhaps, in a time when instant gratification is so prevalent. Peter seems to be happy with taking his time.

“We’re not looking at anything big,” he says of A Single Second’s plans for their forthcoming LP. “If an indie label comes up and releases our record and help us distribute and give us some tour support, that would be great. That’s all we’re looking for. You’ve got to take baby steps.”