A Lot Like Birds Readies The Release of Conversation Piece

It’s a quiet Tuesday night in Midtown and local progressive/post-hardcore band A Lot Like Birds has 80 or so fans packed into Luigi’s Fungarden as they tear through songs off their upcoming Doghouse Records full-length debut Conversation Piece, set for release on Oct. 11, 2011. Songs like “Think Dirty Out Loud” and “Sesame Street Is No Place for Me,” the album’s first two singles, have the crowd feverishly swaying back and forth to their spastic and energetic rhythms and riffs. Co-vocalists Cory Lockwood and Kurt Travis bounce around the small stage, shaking their long locks, taking turns singing and screaming, fully taking advantage of having co-vocalists (think call and response, harmonizing, layering, etc).

“I’m not the singer and he’s not the screamer,” Travis makes known as the two vocalists and I share a pitcher of Pabst Blue Ribbon at a local watering hole the Friday following the show. It quickly becomes apparent that this is an important point for them to get across. “We’re both vocalists,” he says. “I scream and I sing. And he screams and he sings. And we yell and we talk and we do spoken word. We do everything, we do all of it.”

Lockwood agrees and thinks of it like this, “I feel like a lot of times with dual vocalist bands that have a singer and a screamer, you’re diverging your fans and you’re going to have people that go, ‘Well I listen to the singing,’ and then you’ve got the guys who want tough music and they’re like, ‘Well I like the screaming.’ So if you bleed both of them, you’re forcing people to like it as a whole.”

Couple the outrageous and entertaining vocal work from Travis and Lockwood with the equally impressive instrumental work of the rest of the band, which consists of guitarists Michael Franzino and Ben Wiacek, bassist Michael Littlefield and drummer Joe Arrington, and you’ve got yourself one interesting record in Conversation Piece. One that crosses genres, tears down boundaries, leaves the listener wondering, “What’s next?” after each track comes to a dramatic close, and one that will most likely take a few listens to grow on you. They are aware of this.

“I know that music like this has to grow on people. People are really slow at picking stuff like this up,” says Travis.

“It’s almost easier for us to do weirder stuff,” Lockwood admits.

And weird it is, although we’re not talking about an un-listenable type of weird here; this isn’t just random noise after all. We’re talking about calculated time signature changes, non-traditional song structures, heavy-hitting breakdowns mixed with luscious reverb and delay-ridden clean parts, impressive and off-the-wall guitar riffs and interesting lyrical content to boot. Take the following lines from “Think Dirty Out Loud” for example, where Lockwood screams, “I spiked both our drinks with a gallon of ink / Now I’m writing a novel from your insides / We’re a spider with our limbs doing anything but walking / A conversation with our mouths doing anything but talking.” Or where Travis sings, “I eat emotional wrecks / And yours is the best.”

“I remember the instance in which we started writing the lyrics,” Travis says of the song. “I was totally enjoying myself, just laughing to myself, just thinking I’m the most clever fucking person ever.”

It is noteworthy to point out that in a number of ways, Conversation Piece is entirely different than A Lot Like Birds’ last offering, 2009’s Plan B. The latter was largely the work of guitarist and songwriting catalyst (as well as the band’s original vocalist) Michael Franzino, who invited a horde of local musicians to play everything from trumpet and trombone to cello and violin on the record. Plan B didn’t even feature a live drummer, as Franzino programmed the drums himself via computer. Conversation Piece is much more of a collaborative effort and consists of mostly the band’s core instruments (guitar, bass, drums, vocals), although it does contain some programmed stuff (“A Satire of a Satire of a Satire is Tiring”) and a little bit of horns (“Vanity’s Fair”) as to not depart completely from the band’s tendency to blend live instrumentation with orchestral and programmed elements. One of the most obvious differences between the two records is the solidified lineup, which includes the recent addition of Travis, who up until this summer had spent the last couple years co-fronting another Sacramento-based post-hardcore band, Dance Gavin Dance. “There’s four new members,” Lockwood says of the post-Plan B lineup. Travis interjects, “I’m not the new guy, you know what I mean? I’m the newest by all means. But Plan B was pretty much one or two guys, now this record is everybody giving their opinions and whatnot.”

For the recording of Conversation Piece, A Lot Like Birds turned to Portland, Ore.-based producer/engineer Kris Crummett, a familiar face to Travis, they have recorded two DGD albums together (2008’s self-titled record and 2009’s Happiness).

“As soon as I got kicked out of Dance Gavin Dance, Kris hit me up and was like, ‘Let me know what you’re doing, whatever you do, just let me know,’” Travis remembers. “It was kind of interesting because when I joined A Lot Like Birds, they were already talking about and thinking about going with Kris Crummett. I love that guy, we have a good history; we have a good thing going on.”

The band worked rigorously with Crummett for three weeks, focusing all of their creative energy on the record, which wasn’t even necessarily completely written yet, as Travis and Lockwood both had a fair share of lyrical work to do while in the studio.

“Everybody was hella trippin’, but that’s kind of how I like to work anyways,” Travis says of the high-pressure situation to complete basically half an album’s worth of lyrics on the fly. In the end, things worked out beautifully for the two vocalists, who found themselves locked in a room with Crummett for hours on end, pounding out vocal ideas together.

“I don’t think either of us had any idea how well we were going to work with each other,” Lockwood says of co-writing. “I’ve never worked with another vocalist before.” Travis pointed out that because the group was away from the everyday distractions that come with being home, they were able to channel everything they had into the record. “When you’re in your home town and you have all your stuff, you know, you have your job that you go to, you’ve got your girlfriend, you’ve got your parents and all this stuff. Sometimes it’s distracting,” Travis says. “I hella missed that when I was a full-time touring musician. You kind of just focus on music. So when I got to Portland, I was just kind of like, ‘Ah, I don’t have to think about anything other than just this record,’ and it got all of our attention.”

Even still, the band didn’t finish everything they needed to in their allotted time with Crummett, and they had to record one song in Sacramento with friend and sound engineer Chris Miller. Crummett was still producing even from hundreds of miles away, though, as the band Skyped him during the sessions with Miller.

“He was still there like being able to hear the takes,” Travis says with a chuckle at the thought of Crummett’s face on a computer screen in the room for hours on end.

“He was just like eating Chinese food and shit,” Lockwood says through a laugh while air shoveling a bite of imaginary food into his mouth.

After three weeks spent in Portland with Crummett and a couple more days’ worth of sessions with Miller in Sacramento, the record was finally done, or so Travis thought. “Knowing my luck, we do like two days with Chris and then we get everything done and we’re like, ‘Yes! Fuck yes, it’s done,’” Travis says. “And then I get a call from my guitar player and he’s like, ‘You’ve got to come back and do some more stuff,’ and I was just like, ‘Dude, when is this going to end? We’re not even in Portland anymore.’ But it was completely worth it and the song came out way better than I even thought it could.”

In between the Portland and Sacramento recording sessions, A Lot Like Birds even found time to embark on a week-and-a-half long West Coast tour. It proved a good opportunity to work out the brand new material in the live setting and to gauge people’s reactions to it as well. “It was really like a testing the waters sort of thing,” Travis says. “To see who gives a shit right from the get-go. It was a good response!”

Lockwood recalls one particular night in Anaheim when a girl came up to him at the merch table after the show and told him that she hadn’t heard music like theirs in years, since the early ‘00s. “That’s definitely when I started playing music, that’s when we both started getting really into it. So if anything, if we draw comparisons to stuff from back then, that’s all I’d love to hear.”

Unfortunately for A Lot Like Birds, references to the sounds of the early ‘00s aren’t the only comparisons they’re receiving, as a large number of people (mostly via the Internet) are saying they sound too much like Dance Gavin Dance. No doubt there will be comparisons: both bands are from Sacramento, both have two singers, both have ripping guitar players and rock-solid rhythm sections; heck, they even recorded with the same producer, so yeah, sonically speaking there are some similarities too. But what’s funniest to Travis and Lockwood about the whole situation is that these quick judgments are coming from the album’s two singles, because those are the only two songs off Conversation Piece that the general public has heard.

“People have been really quick to go, ‘Oh, this is what their whole album is going to sound like,’” Lockwood says.

“They don’t even know how versatile it is,” Travis contends. “You know how the Internet goes; people are very, very quick to judge. It’s funny, it’s almost tickling. They have no idea. It’s going to be cool, because they’ll realize it when it comes out.”

Travis also wanted to get off his chest how he feels for Lockwood, who seems to be receiving the brunt of the reviews. The problem? Apparently he screams too much like Jon Mess, DGD’s co-vocalist. “Dude, if you have ears, you would know that it’s completely different,” Travis demands. “Their screaming styles are completely different. It’s just kind of like Jon Mess is the only person they can reference. It’s so funny, like when people compare me to Jonny Craig [DGD’s original vocalist who replaced Travis when he re-joined the band this year], it’s like, ‘Are you fucking retarded? Do you actually have ears? Because I sound nothing like him.’ Not that I couldn’t sing Jonny’s stuff and not that Jonny couldn’t sing my stuff, it’s just, we don’t sound alike. It’s the same thing with Jon Mess and Cory, and I just feel for him.”

Travis has gotten his fair share of attention, too, ever since his departure with DGD. “It’s just something that you have to deal with,” Travis says of constantly being asked about his situation. “It’s like one of those things about your job that you hate but you have to do anyways. I kind of relate it to that, because no I’m not upset, no I’m not tired of it. It’s just one of those things that I know that I’m always going to have to address and that’s fine. If I didn’t have all of that then I wouldn’t have any of this amazing stuff that’s going on right now. So, I think of it that way. Not like, ‘Oh man, I don’t want to talk about the past.’ All of that shit needed to happen in order for this amazing stuff to happen. I look at it like that so I’m not upset when someone is like, ‘What was it like? You got kicked out! Blah blah.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I did, but things worked out.’” And if you’re wondering, everything is cool between all the members of DGD and A Lot Like Birds. So much so that the two bands will share the stage together on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 at Sacramento State’s University Union.

After weeks spent listening to an advanced copy of their new record, an hour spent over beers at a local pub and a killer live set witnessed, it’s apparent to Submerge that A Lot Like Birds are their own band with their own identity and their own sound. Conversation Piece is no doubt the record that will solidify that and as of right now, getting the album out and into the hands of people who care about it is the only thing on their minds. With a grin from ear to ear, Travis says, “I think things will pop off real fast once that happens.”

A Lot Like Birds’ Conversation Piece will be out on Oct. 11 via Doghouse Records. See them live at Sacramento State’s University Union Ballroom alongside Dance Gavin Dance on Oct. 13. Sacramento’s own Ten After Two will also perform. Tickets are available at the University Union Box Office.

KSSU: Back Alley Radio

White, floor-to-nearly-ceiling CD-formatted shelves wrap around the half of the 15-foot long by 6-foot wide studio not filled with soundboards and wires. Little more decoration is needed than the hundreds of multi-colored cases.

Among the “Electronica” and “Alt/Indie” with “Local” and various genres in between, pictures of antennae-d robot mascot “Sparky” hang high on the wall, watching over volunteer DJs, talkers and broadcasters.

Located in the alley between University Union and Santa Clara Hall, Sacramento State’s student-run radio station, KSSU, was streaming live the first week of the fall semester.

With the hope of “forging the way for E-music,” KSSU has been recognized for their programming.

In 2009, the mtvU College Radio Woodie Awards ranked KSSU in the Top 10 of U.S. and Canadian college radio stations. Earning “Station of the Year” and “Best Student-Run Station” from College Music Journal were two of the five big wins in 2009, with 12 nominations in total.

Broadcasting at 1580 AM on the dial and Kssu.com online, KSSU provides local and international listeners with college radio year-round. KSSU accepts and trains volunteers fall, spring and summer. Some KSSU alumni are allowed to return, but most volunteers at KSSU are students.

“KSSU is reserved to be the voice of the students,” said Susie Kuo, station advisor and former longtime KSSU volunteer.

After a rigorous broadcasting training boot camp, volunteers complete at least 15 hours of service a semester by hosting a live show, working at on-campus events, contributing to KSSU’s “blogazine” or screening submitted music to adhere to FCC regulations.

Film production junior Tyler Wyckoff, aka “Cadaver the Rapper,” didn’t slip while rapping live on his first broadcast of The Cap City Collective, incurring no potential fee from the FCC.

As it was his first show, and first live KSSU flow, backup was in-studio. Directing sound level changes and offering tech support, Kuo and station manager/history senior/ resident metal head Brian Bautista sat in the adjoining office to Wyckoff with a window view into the studio.

While Wyckoff played his song lineup, Kuo and Bautista attempted to clear up the station’s wavering history, admittedly convoluted with muddled-at-best documentation, Bautista said.

Beginning as KEDG in 1989, the Associated Broadcasting Club was the jump-off point for Sacramento State’s student-run radio. The following years shaped the student club into a ratified student radio station.

The process of establishing a college radio station at Sacramento State was nebulous, much like the process through which first-time parents rear a child. With such tricky changes, setbacks and encounters of the administrative kind, turning a club into a legitimately ratified radio station took cultivation. Co-founders Jim Bolt and Chris Prosio–both Sacramento State 1991 graduates–consider KSSU their baby, as stated in a letter to KSSU DJs and staff in May 2009, provided by Kuo.

They wrote how two years of sorting things out with administration and setting actions in motion to establish and cement a student-run radio station “certainly felt like a birthing process.”

The student-run station officially became known as KSSU at 89.7 FM in 1991. And Prosio and Bolt’s baby was born.

Frequency changes took place, as did management and semester volunteers.

“Since 1979, the various FM frequencies belonging to Sacramento State were consistently allocated to news and jazz programming by NPR on Capital Public Radio, instead of being the voice of the students,” Kuo said.

Since space on FM is very limited and Sacramento State already owned two frequencies received after applying with the FCC, KSSU found a home at 530 AM in 1991 before transitioning to 1580.

With a past of receiving coveted FM frequencies, there must have been times when feelings weren’t friendly. But KSSU and Capital Public Radio have been bridging the gap for years and are now broadcasting buddies. “I think they like how cute we are,” Kuo admitted.

The “Capital” has just recently made bigger moves in streaming live on the Internet, but the “cute” has been sending e-waves out in the world for some time.

The current KSSU AM frequency is essentially null and void, powered by 3 watts (or 3000 miliwatts, which Bautista said he thought sounded more robust), functioning off of Sacramento State’s carrier current. An electric toothbrush charger requires 10 watts and that laptop used to listen to your MP3s requires 50. No wonder the frequency can’t even be picked up at many locations on campus, or even near the alley-hidden studio.

To be heard, the station had to reach listeners. In 2004, volunteer Melissa Maxwell initiated the process of putting KSSU online, so students could listen to music and miscellaneous streaming online from a computer. Kssu.com went live in 2005.

After very resourcefully sending KSSU into the digital age, Melissa Maxwell went on to work for Entercom with local commercial radio The Eagle, 98 Rock and KWOD (RIP) and is currently doing technical operations and promotions at 94.7 FM.

Maxwell is one of quite a few past KSSU volunteers to successfully capitalize on what they learned doing college radio. Some should-know names in the local spinning scene include DJ Rob Fatal, DJ Mike Colossal, DJ Rated R, Elliot Estes (who currently DJs at The Park), and DJ 671. During the late ‘90s, Marie VanAssendelft was a volunteer at KSSU and went on to work for McGathy Promotions, doing marketing and publicity for Elmo.

Since on-air streaming was jimmy-rigged for KSSU in 2005, tracking the number of listeners is impossible. Therefore, listenership is estimated by public interaction with KSSU through social networking followers, friends and posters, and listener calls. Although inaccurate for statistics, monitoring public involvement is a good way to see which shows listeners are paying attention to and tuning (or streaming) in to.

Sac State Sunset’s prime time slot from 8 to 10 p.m. on Thursdays was earned as reflection of the hip-hop and reggaeton-spinning show’s popularity.

Five years ago, DJ Vince Vicari aka “Dub V” aka “El Doble Frijole” (“V” is a difficult letter to pronounce in some languages, like Spanish, Vicari said) began his DJ-ship at KSSU with an a.m. show called Sac State Sunrise. With co-host Britney Rossman, aka “B-Unit,” the show caught listeners’ attentions and was re-situated on Thursday nights.

On hiatus during the summer, Vicari and Rossman reunited on-air Thursday, Sept. 2 to commence the last semester of their KSSU radio show.

Re-acclimating himself with the in-studio multi-tasking of interacting, storytelling, social networking, PSA-ing, logging, playing music and hopping out to the waiting area to jam down food, Vicari said it was a lot to do but has become second nature.

“It’s almost like we’ve been doing it our whole lives,” he said to Rossman on-air about their first show of the semester. “But we’ve been gone for a while.”

While discussing summer experiences, plans for the future and answering listener calls with “You’re on air, watch your mouth. Who is this?” the fire alarm went off. Bautista said, “Your show is too hot!” while Vicari reminded listeners as he has before: the show will continue until he graduates or the studio burns down. Luckily for listeners, it was a false alarm.

KSSU is one of only a few organizations under the Associated Students Inc. that generates revenue. Even so, their resources are limited, sometimes causing technical difficulties.

Although broadcasting on an insignificant frequency and with some “older” equipment and accoutrements, KSSU seems to make good use of what it has available.

“We’re known for being really scrappy,” Kuo and Bautista explained. “We do some MacGyver Stuff.”

Seems like they earned that “2009 Best Use of Limited Resources” award by CMJ, a Billboard for college radio.

With its 20th birthday approaching on May 14, 2011, KSSU has been pooling resources to spiff-ify its image and broaden its reach.

KSSU understandably markets itself as an online radio station, but it seems to like holding on to the past and look toward the future.

Looking to have an audible presence on the dial, KSSU is partnering with outstanding local radio station KYDS 91.5 from El Camino High School. Soft-rolling Oct. 1, KSSU will fill space and send waves of music daily from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Due to “immense technical issues,” KSSU programming on 91.5 will be pre-recorded content, although Bautista said they would love to go live.

In true studious collegiate fashion, KSSU has been planning to celebrate their 20th birthday the entire year before the real celebration begins.

This next academic year should see a solid lineup of events and programming, as well as improved streaming and a Kssu.com website revamp.

It’s all a warm up for the big shebang; A blast that will only get the e-waves crashing, rocking the streaming radio boat.

Sacramento Punk Legends The Secretions Are Set to Release New Record

The year was 1991. The grunge movement, in all its flannel glory, had fully engulfed the country thanks to bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam; the Governator was just the Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Will Smith was just the Fresh Prince in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; and two young punk rockers attending Sacramento State, Mickie Rat and Danny Secretion, would meet and form a band. “I would have to walk through the University Union and I would get my coffee and go to class and I would always see this guy wearing all black no matter how hot it was,” Danny recalls of Mickie Rat during a recent conversation outside Benny’s Bar and Grill. “Long-sleeve black shirt, black pants and motorcycle boots with these big metal plates on the front and he had kind of a Mohawk devil-lock. It was pretty awesome.”

Mickie was aware of his intimidating appearance and even admits that he was known as the “scary punk guy” around campus. The two would see each other often, but never really spoke until their paths crossed one afternoon under dreary circumstances. “We actually started talking at a funeral,” says Mickie, who at this point had already started a band. “Our original guitarist was the program director for the student-run radio and he passed away. I had seen [Danny] in the studio; we had shows near each other. We didn’t even really start talking until then,” says Mickie.

One thing led to another, Danny was invited to jam and The Secretions were born. “We still have cassette tapes of those practices and how we started every song with, ‘One, two, three, four!'” Danny says.”

The two recall that in those first days of practice, ending the songs in sync was not as easy as starting them. “Usually we would start out the song together but the ending would always end up disintegrating,” remembers Danny. “The guitar would stop, then the bass, then the drummer would just keep playing.”

Fast-forward 18 years and the two are still making punk rock music together. “We don’t know how to do anything else,” says Danny. “I think the thing that’s really helped attribute to us not throwing in the towel is coming to grips with the fact that we’re not going to be huge and famous.”

Money and fame aside, The Secretions are a very successful band. They’ve toured the country many times and released a handful of records, but more importantly, they’re great friends who love playing music together. “My goal was to always be in a band with friends,” says Mickie. “That’s pretty much what it’s always been about for me. I’ve been lucky enough to do that. I mean, some people are like, ‘Oh I’ll hire a bunch of guys to play my music.’ That’s never worked for me.”

What has worked for The Secretions for nearly two decades now is booking smart tours: Gigging every other month as opposed to every weekend to avoid over-saturating the market; recording and releasing high energy, addictive punk rock records; and connecting with their dedicated fans, appropriately dubbed Secretins, more deeply than most groups these days. The band—which currently consists of Mickie Rat (bass, vocals), Danny Secretion (drums, vocals) and Paul Filthy (guitar, vocals)—truly has withstood the test of time. With a new record, entitled GREASYHOTMEATCHEEZY, due out in July, a slew of tour dates including two appearances at the Insubordination Fest in Baltimore, Md. in late June, two Sacramento release shows (July 3 at the Blue Lamp and July 20 at the Boardwalk) and a two-week West Coast run with The Bugs, they are not showing any signs of slowing.

Where did the name GREASYHOTMEATCHEEZY come from?
Mickie Rat: Paul’s girlfriend.
Danny Secretion: We were driving to Fresno to play a show; it was like a Friday night so we had all just gotten off work, went home, cleaned up, drove around and picked up everyone. We pulled over to get some gas and something to eat and I just asked, “What do you guys feel like eating?” And she just blurted out, “Greasy, hot, meat, cheesy!” It was just one of those things. On the inside of our van there is just Sharpie tags all over and written up there is “GREASYHOTMEATCHEEZY” and we just circled it and were like, “That’s a great album.”
MR: It’s a running joke, somebody will say something disgusting and you’ll be like, “Oh that’s what our next album is going to be called.” She also kind of did that to goof on me because I’m a vegetarian and I’m allergic to dairy so she was like, “Hm, what are all the things you can’t eat?”
DS: Yeah, Mickie can’t eat too many things that are meaty or cheesy.
MR: But I like hot things and greasy things.

What else can you tell me about the record? How does it compare to past releases musically and lyrically?
DS: Musically I think it’s on par with everything else that we’ve done, it’s nothing too complicated.
MR: I think a lot of people are shocked because I’m more singing than yelling. There’s some different songs. Usually if I write a pop-y song that sounds kind of smoother and I sing kind of pretty on it, I’ll save it and not put it on the album. I’m getting to the age where you just stop giving a shit. A lot of those songs I didn’t want on the album, but then I was like, “Eh, what the fuck do I got to lose? Let’s just put them out there.” The opening track is like three-and-a-half minutes long, which is like the longest song I’ve ever written.

Yeah, that’s like three normal Secretions songs!
MR: Usually I write stuff that’s a minute-15, that’s like my average song length. I kind of wanted to write this rockin’ Joan Jett and the Blackhearts kind of song.
DS: It’s a fun song. That was the big risk that we took was putting a song that was so different from the others at the beginning.
MR: Yeah I really didn’t want to put it first either but eventually they convinced me.
DS: We were just like, “No, this one has to start it.” It’s one of those things where it’s going to make people listen to it. The next song is just classic punk all the way through.
MR: There’s some different kind of stuff on this one.
DS: It’s just a fun album. We’ve got the songs pretty much telling off certain people. That’s always been what we do, just kind of poking fun at people.
MR: It’s what we do best: pissed off punk rock.

You’re doing a listening party at Capitol Dawg. Whose idea was that?
DS: That was Mickie’s idea.
MR: It’s one of my favorite places to eat. I always hang out and talk to the owner. My girlfriend and I actually went there for the first couple of weeks and nagged the hell out of him to get garlic fries because he didn’t have them yet.

So I have you to thank for my stinky breath after I eat those, eh?
DS: The reason why he didn’t have them was really cool. He didn’t want to do garlic fries, because Jack’s next door had garlic fries and he didn’t want to disrespect them.
MR: But Jack’s has terrible fries, the only reason they are good is if they put garlic on them. A fry must stand alone, by itself, before you put anything on it. I am a total fry aficionado. If a fry doesn’t taste good with nothing on it then I don’t want to eat it.

You guys have a widely renown connection with your fans, a listening party seems like a good way to keep that strong. Have you done anything like this before?
DS: We did it last year at the Javalounge. I think prior to that it had been much more informal, maybe just inviting friends over to our house to get drunk and play our new CD. For Faster Than the Speed of Drunk we did something a little more formal, we had an actual listening party where we told everyone to come on over to the Javalounge and we played the CD. This year we thought about doing it again and Mickie had the idea of doing it at Capitol Dawg.
MR: We’re going to have a special hot dog recipe for the evening; it’s going to be the “Greasy, hot, meat, cheesy.” I somehow convinced the owner to do the 88-cent Pabst long necks for that night. He usually only does that on Mondays, but he’s agreed to extend it to a Thursday.
DS: Oh, that could be bad news for us!

What is this Insubordination Fest all about? Are you pumped to be a part of it?
DS: It’s a big festival, I think this is the third one; it’s basically Lookout Records mid-’90s: bands like the Mr. T Experience, The Queers and The Parasites. They just have this huge festival with all these pop-punk bands back East.
MR: It’s put on by Insubordination Records.
DS: This year the surviving members of The Dead Milkmen are going to reunite and play. Lots of other huge bands will be there. We play on the Friday night just as the Secretions. Then on Saturday we’re backing Wimpy Rutherford, who is the original singer for the Queers, so we’re going to be doing like all the old Queers songs.

That seems like kind of a big deal for you guys!
MR: It’s a huge deal.
DS: It was one of those things where I was talking to Wimpy about the possibility of him playing and us backing him up. I let the guys know, and Mickie didn’t want to get his hopes up.
MR: I was like, “I’m not going to hold my breath.”
DS: Then when we finally got the OK when Wimpy was given a slot and he said, “I want you to be my backing band, learn the songs,” then I let the guys know.

You guys recently did a video shoot for the song “Back in the Day Punk.” Will it include footage from your recent Club Retro show?
DS: Yes, we worked with our friend Rob Young, aka Rob Fatal. He’s a local DJ here in town. He’s an awesome filmmaker, and he’s absolutely punk rock. He’s very fast about how he films things; he’ll have you do everything about five times until he gets what he thinks is just right and then moves on to the next thing. We filmed the first part during the day at our friend Tom from the No-Goodniks’ house and that was a good time. Then we played at Club Retro later on that night and we played the song three or four times. And he just filmed the kids and filmed us. If you want to get people to really go crazy during your set, put a camera right in their faces. Everyone wanted to be on camera for that. We had a trampoline on-stage for people to jump out into the crowd.
MR: It was for stage diving assistance. In full disclosure, we stole the idea from Sloppy Seconds. It looked like fun.
DS: The first kid to do it was this kid named Tony Silva; he’s from Woodland, Calif. Mickie wrote a song about this kid because he’s from Woodland but he takes the bus, because he doesn’t have his drivers license yet, to Sacramento to go see punk shows. So all these kids complain about, “There’s nothing to do, this scene sucks.” And you got this kid taking the bus to pay a cover to go see a punk rock show.

What’s the song called that you wrote about him?
MR: It’s called “Tony Silva Rides the Bus.” It’s on our new record. He’s a really nice guy, but he’s kind of a klutz and always ends up hurting himself, you know the bad luck stuff always happens to him.
DS: Well, he was the first one to use the trampoline. I motioned to him with my head as I was playing the drums like, “Tony, go!” So he runs offstage full force, just jumps on the trampoline, soars into the air and the crowd parts like the Red Sea. He had gotten so far out he didn’t have the time to level out so he could land feet first, so he pretty much did a big elbow drop on the ground. It was captured on video by Rob and we’ll see if it makes it in the video or not.
MR: After our set he comes up to us and was like, “Yeah it kind of hurt, but I got right back up because I didn’t want anyone to think I was a pussy!”
DS: If anyone deserves a song, it’s Tony. I don’t know if we’re going to be bringing the trampoline to the Boardwalk though, because that’s a pretty tall stage.

Preview The Secretions new record, GREASYHOTMEETCHEEZY, at Capitol Dawg on July 2. Catch them live at the Blue Lamp on July 3 and at the Boardwalk on July 20. For more information visit myspace.com/secretions or secretinlifeline.blogspot.com