Jack: Hello, Sophie. Hello, Dean. Thank you very much for joining me today. I'm excited to talk to you. Why don't we start out with Sophie? I'm curious, how did you get into music? And how did you come to the sort of scene that you're a part of, work in and are associated with? What avenues led you to that? And what were your early experiences with music?
Sophie: I didn't come from any super particularly musical household, but I was into music. But I didn't play music. I took some guitar lessons when I was ten and then quit because he wouldn't teach me how to play a Jewel song. [laughter] I was like, "That's all I really care about." I was into art - drawing and painting - and then started to get into music. But everything was very non-linear, it didn't really amount to anything until probably freshman year of high school, when I went to my first DIY shows. I didn't know what that was, but I was just kind of thrown into it and wanted to keep going. Even though I was going to punk shows, I wasn't really into punk music, necessarily. And then, like... Yeah, nothing made sense, I was really into classic rock and I loved Yes and David Bowie. Nothing really made sense. Then later I met my best friend in high school because I went to this arts magnet school junior year and she was burning me tons of CDs and was into punk music. She was like, "Listen to this, listen to this." And it kind of started to build something for me and something that I always think about is she played Trout Mask Replica in the car and I was like, "I'm getting nauseous from listening to this." [laughter]
Jack: That's a good reaction.
Sophie: But I was like, "I need to know about it." I also remember downloading my first song offline in middle school. That was Radiohead "Creep," and I was scared when I listened to it, but I was like, "But I have to listen to this," kind of. But yeah, Minneapolis did have a cool DIY situation and there were these venues that were really amazing and I could go and just kind of... I was extremely shy, so I was just absorbing it until right after high school. Then I started to make music with people.
Jack: Do you remember some of the early DIY shows that you would go to and what the venues were specifically? Just curious for my own personal interest.
Sophie: The first DIY venue I went to, which was when I was 15, was this place called Mala's. That was this insane warehouse and I think it was the first show which... I remember I went there and it was this band - I ended up becoming friends with the people in it later - called Faggot. [laughter] They dressed insane and it was very aggressive punk music. That was the first thing but then the kind of overlapping DIY venue with that was this place the Church, which was in a church, and I saw Bastard Noise there. But then I think what really became important to me were local bands there, which some of the ones that were super amazing to me. One called Skoal Kodiak and then one called Knife World that were around during that time for five or six years. Pretty strong. But yeah, those were the first two that were going a lot.
Dean: I remember the Church.
Jack: Yeah, I never played there, but that was a big one. Is it still around? It has to have closed, right?
Sophie: No, it's demolished.
Jack: Very Minneapolis style.
Sophie: Yeah, probably the last show was in 2008 or 9. Maybe 2010. But then after that was Medusa, which, I don't know if either of you guys would know.
Dean: I don't know that.
Jack: I've heard the name, but I don't know it.
Sophie: That was more my coming up. I played there, I would go there and work the door and I was more involved with that place.
Jack: Totally. I'm always curious what was sort of the bridge into being like, "I could participate in this" or "This is for me."
Sophie: I also started to get into no wave and one of the things was No New York, that album. It was like, "Oh my God, I get this." And my really good friend who ended up being my bandmate when I was probably 18 was like, "Do you want to do a cover band for this Halloween show? We could do the Teenage Jesus and the Jerks." I was like, "I don't know" and he was like, "Well, I think you could just sing and it's just open chords, you can just play. It'll be fine." I was like, "I don't know." I was just so shy but I liked the idea of it. So we were driving around and he was like, "Just sing to this and see how it works." And I was like, "Okay." Then he was like, "Oh, you have a good voice. You're a singer." I was like, "No, I'm just whatever." And then we didn't even do the cover band, we started a band.
Jack: That's a good pipeline.
Dean: That sounded like a ploy. He was trying to get you in a band. [laughter]
Jack: He's like, "There was no show!"
Sophie: Yeah, yeah. It's so funny, because when I think about it, nothing makes sense with it. "Why did I like these Saddle Creek bands in middle school?" [laughter] And then all of a sudden I'm just shoved into this other thing that I completely identified with. But yeah, that moment was a little stunted because then I graduated high school and I was going to move away, but I was still going to a lot of shows. And I was going to move away, it sounds insane now for some reason, but I was going to move to Santa Cruz for no reason with my boyfriend at the time who I was broken up with pretty much by the time we went.
Jack: Not even for, like, "I want to go to the History of Consciousness program."
Sophie: No, I was just like, "Oh yeah, that sounds cool. I've never been to California." I'd never even driven more than 45 minutes myself. He didn't have his driver's license and I drove the whole way and it was hell. But I went and I kind of just was like, "Oh, Minneapolis isn't that big. Everywhere will have a cool scene." [laughter]
Dean: Santa Cruz. [laughter]
Sophie: I was like, "There's nothing happening here." I got a nannying job but then I left after two months. I went back to Minneapolis and there's, of course, more of a saga with the whole thing. But I moved back and then my friend who wanted to do the cover band, Sam, had started this band that I then joined but then we started a new band from it. That was my first band that I performed in and that was called Tips for Twat. There's a Bandcamp up still, it was a good band. It was lots of. Yeah, we never toured, but we played in Minneapolis a lot and then we played at Bitchpork in Chicago.
Jack: It was the anti Pitchfork Fest.
Sophie: Yeah. And we played in Iowa City once.
Jack: What year was this?
Sophie: Probably end of 2008 was the first show, but 2009.
Dean: Iowa City back then was pretty cool.
Sophie: Yeah, I met a lot of cool people there. A lot of those people moved to Minneapolis.
Jack: Yeah, you met Shawn [Reed] and Ryan [Garbes]? Daren Ho was long gone by then, I think.
Sophie: Yeah, you know, I heard his lore. For years to come.
Jack: It's still developing today.
Sophie: Yeah, and then I think I just realized that I liked playing, I liked performing. I was just doing vocals in that band. And then I lived in a house with Sam, that bandmate, and a bunch of guys. We had shows at that house. That's where Angels in America played, I think. At least they stayed over. So we had a lot of cool shows in our basement and then I started to mess around with a guitar. One of my roommates had built this Big Muff clone pedal and I just was like, "Oh, I'm going to buy the kit." I don't even have a guitar but I was like, "I'm going to buy the kit and I want to build one too," because I was just playing it, I guess. So he helped me build this pedal and then I just was into playing guitar. Just noise, just straight noise guitar in the basement. That was kind of the beginning of Syko Friend, in a way. And I still have that pedal. But yeah, that environment was just so open and I was the youngest person there, so I was always just like, "What's that?" I didn't feel ashamed about not knowing gear or anything and all of those people I lived with were very into gear and talking about it all the time. So I just learned things, but I didn't know how to play, I didn't know how to play guitar. I just was like, "Okay, I'm kind of working backwards here."
Jack: I feel like that's kind of a weird paradigm for people in this scene: learn about the gear first and then at some point you actually learn how to play the instrument.
Sophie: Yeah, it was very backwards.
Jack: Good foundational knowledge in gear.
Dean: Yeah, build a pedal and then find something to plug it into. [laughter]
Jack: Absolutely, classic.
Jack: Why don't we switch gears a little bit and then go and start over with Dean, and then, of course, these things intersect and we come back and interweave the stories. But yeah, same questions for you, Dean: what was your avenue into music and in the scene that you, you guys and we are all in now and what were your early experiences with music?
Dean: I got into music pretty early but, you know, like, MC Hammer and New Kids on the Block. I got a cassette player and then a CD player and was just really into getting new tapes and CDs. I got some hip hop compilations pretty early. I think my childhood was kind of intense, my parents had a lot of problems, so I think when I found music it was really just this thing that was, like... I could just escape and listen to it all the time. And it was really, really important for me. So as I got older - I'm probably a bit older than you guys - Nirvana hit when I think I was in fifth grade, so that was a really big point. I think that was kind of the big thing. Metallica and Nirvana were huge. So then I started getting tapes and listening to tapes all the time. And then right around that time I got into some punk music from kids I went to school with, they had older brothers. We'd be skateboarding and then we'd kind of sneak into their room and I'd found a Dead Kennedys tape. And I found some more local stuff, Big Drill Car, some weird SST records type stuff. And when I got those things, that was really... I felt connected to it and I would borrow these tapes, listen to them, but also metal S.O.D. and Slayer and things that.
Jack: Do you remember how you felt connected to that stuff or what about it you could relate to?
Dean: I feel like it just was that thing where you feel like, I don't know, "They look like me." I think the intensity too is what I was into. But once I borrowed more tapes from friends and their brothers I had a similar experience as Sophie with Trout Mask - but not Trout Mask - when I heard the first Ramones album on cassette that a friend let me borrow. He let me borrow I Against I and the Ramones, but I listened to the Ramones album and I remember being in the back of my mom's car listening to it. And it was scary. It freaked me out. And I'm trying to think, as I get older, how did the Ramones freak me out? It's not scary, but at the time...
Jack: It's caveman music!
Dean: Yeah. I didn't know anything about music or production, but hearing one of the tracks, the vocals kind of speed up and slow down, when they trail off like that and it keeps going. I remember hearing that and being like, "This is insane! Is this real? Are they gremlins?" [laughter] I didn't understand what it was. But then the one picture of them with midriff shirts on the cover, the thing with leather jackets was just really wild. I can't remember if that was right around Nirvana or right before, but it's all kind of all mixed up. But I kind of got a sense of, I guess, what punk was. And I really liked it. I liked being kind of freaked out. I liked intense music, so metal fit into that. But when I got into punk stuff and I got more tapes, you know, connecting the dots. Then there was a pretty big moment. My aunt lived with us for a while and she started dating this guy that was from Oxnard.
Jack: "Oxnard! Nardcore!"
Dean: Nardcore! So I didn't know anything about that, but I think I was in sixth grade and she had told him, "Oh, Dean likes punk rock." And I didn't know much, I had some tapes, you know. So he came over and he was like, "Oh, she says you like punk. I got some tapes for you." I'm like, "Okay, cool." And I thought this guy... I know now that he was probably a skinhead or into that nardcore stuff because the tapes he gave me had oi! music and Cockney Rejects and the 4 Skins and then all of this hardcore stuff like Agression and Stalag 13 and Minor Threat. Anyway, so he gave me this stuff, but I remember him hanging out at our house and I just thought he was a cowboy because he wore these really tight, like, 501s. It was the '90, we all wore giant clothes. I was like, "Who the fuck wears tight-ass jeans?" You know? I knew nothing about skinheads. Anyway, he gave me this tape and I really liked it. I think I've told this story before a couple of times, but it's pretty interesting. He gave me these tapes and he had this really kind of stylized writing on it. They were mixtapes. So the Es were just three lines and no vertical line. And he put the Adolescents on there and I thought it said "Adolf Scents." [laughter] And then I started listening to some of this oi! stuff. At the same time I had learned about what Nazis were and I got freaked out. I thought I was listening to Nazi music.
Sophie: Wow!
Jack: Damn! But it's, like, a false flag, it's not actually!
Dean: Dude, this is crazy. And my family was Jewish, and I also had this crazy thing, I had a moment where I was like, "Fuck, this music is so good, but it might be Nazi music. And I kind of don't care because it's blowing my mind!" [laughter] I had that moment where I was like, "Well, shit, this is going to be interesting."
Jack: "Well, here we go nothing." [laughter]
Dean: So then I went to the local record store, it was called Tempo Records and Tapes. It was out in Newhall, near where I grew up. And I'm, you know, 11 or 12 or something. I go in super, super timid, and I ask the cool person at the counter, "Hey, do you have the Adolf Scents?" And he was like, "What?" And I was like, "Adolf Scents. There's a song called "Amoeba," and he was like, "You mean the Adolescents?" And this instant wave of relief just pours over me. And I go, "Yeah." [laughter] Dude, he shows it to me and I look at it and I'm like, "Oh my gosh! Amazing. Perfect."
Jack: So funny. You dodged a bullet.
Dean: I dodged a bullet. Although on the back of that record, Rikk Agnew is wearing a t-shirt that looks like a swastika, actually. So I don't know how much of a bullet I dodged, those guys are a little fucked up. But anyway, once I learned about that and like we were talking about earlier, you know, just not having a bunch of information, all the liner notes led me to other stuff. And from then I think I got into the scenes of regionalized things. I was pretty into understanding Frontier Records and SST or whatever, BOMP! and then Dischord and all those kind of things.
Jack: Yeah, so how did you bridge that gap then? What was the sort of trajectory into getting into what was happening in that time in L.A. or around L.A. And then when did you start playing music or when did you start learning an instrument?
Dean: Where I grew up I wasn't that far from L.A., but culturally it was a whole other world. It's 30 miles, but it might as well be the Midwest, you know, where you guys were from. No offense.
Jack: Yeah, thanks. [laughter]
Sophie: "Yeah, it might as well be the middle of fucking nowhere!" [laughter]
Jack: Gonna let that one slide for now.
Dean: You know what I mean. But actually, I mean, Minneapolis is a great music city. L.A., too, but we were in the boondocks. I found out about some local stuff. I think one of the first bands I saw, local thing. I must have been in ninth grade, in high school, and they were called the Outside. They were kind of a pop punk band. I went and saw this show at the American Legion Hall and my dad dropped me off on his motorcycle before he went to his AA meeting.
Jack: Really painting a picture there. [laughter]
Yeah. He's like, "I'm going to pick you up in an hour." I'm like, "Okay," and I walked in and it was just a sea of older kids. It was insane. I was like, "This is awesome." I don't remember anything except one visual screenshot of just madness, you know? And then I started playing music with some kids and we started a band right around that time. We were called the Grommets. I guess I played guitar. It was two chords, you know, it was that Germs song "Forming." Every song was like [sings "Forming"]. That's all we knew. So every song was like that.
Jack: Good blueprint for No Age, honestly.
Dean: Yeah! I mean, I haven't veered too far from there, really. And then the guy who sang in that band, the Outside, his name was Darwin, and I actually got his phone number and called him and said, "I'm in a band and want to play a show." And he was like, "Well, alright, I'm booking this new club in town called Nicole Teen Dance Club." [laughter]
Jack: Again, what is this? 1954? [laughter]
Dean: Dude. So, I called this guy and it was really a two minute bicycle ride from my house, super close. I met this guy Darwin at this new club, and he was like, "I'm booking this club. What's your band?" I was like, "We're called the Grommets." I don't think we ever even played before. I'm like, "We're like punk!" [laughter] You know? And he was like, "Do you have any demos?" "No, I don't have a demo!" But he booked us a show and we played the show. We booked the show, I don't know if I booked other bands, but there must have been 100 people at the show, kids from my high school that just came, you know?
Jack: Did they help promote it?
Dean: No, dude. I just promoted it. I made fliers and my mom ran a silkscreen shop, so we already had Grommets t-shirts. [laughter]
Jack: Wow! First show.
Dean: First show! Before the show I was selling them at our high school.
Sophie: Amazing.
Jack: Which is a long standing tradition, of making merch before you ever actually make songs or play a show.
Dean: I know, yeah. So I remember we played the show. That was the first show I sang, I think right before that I shaved my head. I was 12, I think, or 13. So that was my first band. We played one show, I think that might be the only show, maybe two. And then I guess we broke up. So I started traveling to go to shows. There was a club called the PCH Club that was out in Wilmington, really crazy kind of gnarly industrial area. But they had touring bands, I don't know, Piebald or some kind of hardcore, you know, whatever. Then the local bands would play, Le Shok, I saw the Locust there and was like, "Oh, this is insane. I like this." And then where I grew up wasn't that far from Santa Barbara, so I started going to see shows up there. The Pickle Patch, which was Steve Aoki's house.
Jack: Oh, funny. Right.
Dean: Yeah, so I remember him and meeting him.
Jack: What was his band? What band was he in again?
Dean: This Machine Kills.
Jack: This Machine Kills. That's right.
Dean: Brian Roettinger was in that band too. He played bass, I think. I remember seeing them play. Ebullition Records was up there too, so I kind of understood that I was getting into, like, "Okay, that's kind of local. That's contemporary stuff." Orchid, all that stuff was around and touring. I was in another band in high school but didn't know how to participate in that stuff. I tried to book a show at the PCH Club once. I think the guy was like, "Sure, dude." But I didn't understand, like how to... That's far, I didn't really even have a band. And then when I was in a band, trying to convince these three other guys to drive down there to play, they were not that into it, you know? They were like, "What? That sounds dumb." [laughter] I was so eager, you know? I'm so eager to do a thing or try to do a thing. And they're just, like... The drummer, I remember, of the band we started after the Grommets was, you know... The other two guys, we liked Bad Religion and Minor Threat, okay? And the other guy, the only drummer we knew, was a Deftones guy. [laughter]
Jack: Not bad, but...
Dean: Not bad! [laughter] But a different drumming style, you know? A lot of splash cymbals and little toms and really busy drumming. So I'd be like, "Hey, maybe check this out. This is Ned's Atomic Dustbin," or whatever.
Jack: Yeah, right.
Dean: So as I was getting into 11th, 12th grade, I understood there was sort of a network of touring bands, and then I'd see local bands and became friends with some people. And then the Smell opened up when I was 15 or 16. I went to the Smell when it first opened up, the first week or something. This guy Ara [Shirinyan], who was one of the original people who started the Smell, was dating this girl who worked at the Hot Dog on a Stick at the mall in my neighborhood. [laughter]
Jack: Love it. Love it.
Dean: Yeah. So I somehow knew her and I saw him at the mall and he was like, "We're opening this club, you should come to this party." And I went and I thought it was cool and then met people and then ended up seeing shows there and playing there. The Smell was really where I think my mind got a little more blown because these guys were older and coming from the Jabberjaw era, like Nels Cline and even Mike Watt and Carla Bozulich and the more noise scene, Godzik Pink and Uphill Gardeners. It wasn't a punk scene. I went to the PCH Club and Pickle Patch and that was, like, emo hardcore, very specific stuff. The Smell had its own kind of vibe. I was definitely younger and not privy to all that, but like I said, I knew the Lounge Lizards, I knew No New York. I kind of understood this stuff, but these guys looked older, it felt more sophisticated or something. I feel like once I started going to the Smell I understood the other stuff felt almost poser-y or, you know, it's on the nose. It's like, "I'm into this." We'd see Steve Aoki's band play and every song he'd talk about Mumia Abu-Jamal or he'd read a quote from something and he'd talk for a while. And that's cool, I was into it, but then the Smell scene just kind of blew my mind more. I guess those other scenes were like you had to have the right kind of haircut and vibe and look, too, to be cool and the Smell is just freakier in a way. You're like, "Well, I don't know. I just saw a guy with a contact mic on a piece of glass, yelling into it." [laughter] You know what I mean? And then that opened for Melt-Banana and you're like, "Fuck, this is insane, this is cool." So I think once I got to know those guys a bit, I started going there more and hanging out with them and seeing stuff. Again, they were older and I think I just kind of jumped into that. I think the Smell was very crucial because I was in the band Wives with Randy [Randall]... So when I started going to the Smell, I was in another high school band that played at the old location at the Smell, I think once or twice.
Jack: Where was the old one?
Dean: It was in North Hollywood on Lankershim and Magnolia. It was really small and then they closed down. I think they moved to the downtown one in 2000, or 2001 maybe. And so by that point I already knew Jim [Smith] and I had helped book a couple of shows at the newer location. Then I started playing music with Randy and Jeremy, who were in Wives, and we couldn't play, there was nowhere to play in L.A. We all lived in L.A. There was nowhere for us to play except the Smell. Those guys went there but I don't know if they... I think because we were a bit younger, I remember them both being like, "I don't know if the Smell is that cool," or it just felt like that because we were more into punk stuff and the Smell was a bit stuffy, you know? Like I was saying, that kind of avant garde world. I really enjoyed it but I was like, "I think we could just play there, the guy Jim is so cool, I think we can kind of do anything, he doesn't give a fuck, he's kind of an anarchist, I've talked to him about it and he doesn't give a shit, he just wants people to do stuff." So we started playing there and I think that's what's cool about that space, was that Jim - still - just opens the door and allows things to exist. So yeah, that band played there a bunch and, you know, I do think there was some of the older crew that thought we were a bit annoying at first because we're younger and real excited and sort of just jumping around all over the place and they're like, "Well, this was our kind of, you know... We come in here and relax and to make artful noise," and we're like, "That's cool, but..." So that kept going until the scene became bigger and bigger and then Wives broke up and No Age just kind of continued jamming along.
Jack: Eventually you guys signed to... Sub Pop? Is that right?
Dean: Yeah, but first we signed to FatCat and then we went to Sub Pop.
Jack: Oh, right. What was that like? I mean, what was your experience of that? You know, it's not something that everybody who makes music, even for a long time, gets to experience, of being like, "Oh, I'm getting signed to a label" or getting released on this bigger label, especially Nirvana being important to you as a kid.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. You know, at that time we were approached by a ton of labels, too, it was just one of those things that happened for us. We were the buzz band at the moment and so a bunch of people came at us, major labels, Vice Records, other smaller indies and stuff. I think we kind of always felt like, "This is kind of insane, I don't know if this is going to last, we should jump on this." And then we did the thing with FatCat and then we signed the thing with Sub Pop. Randy and I signed a deal with Sup Pop that was for three records and our intention was to just put out records really quick on Sub Pop and then jump back to maybe doing our own records or just be on PPM or something like that. We definitely miscalculated how long records take or how busy we'd be touring or how insane things were going to be. So that plan got thwarted. But it was a great experience for us. I think as far as getting our name out there as a band dealing with Sub Pop was okay at the beginning and then it became kind of less and less cool. We met with the owner and we kind of got up to him and were like, "Hey, man, we want to own our masters, so we'll just license them to you." He's like, "Oh okay, we can do that, but you won't get an advance and we won't push it as hard." He kind of played it back and we're, like...
Jack: You're like, "Oh..." Because it's like, would it matter if you own your masters if they don't push it?
Dean: Yeah, that's the thing. I think we were just like, "Fuck it, fine, okay."
Jack: In the end it's kind of "damned if you do, damned if you don't."
Dean: They were paying and at the time the amount that they were paying us was a lot, for the advance. There's advance one, two and three on the records. So all written out were like, "That's kind of crazy for us." I don't know. And at the time they're just records, you know? We didn't know what they were going to be like. We had just put out this other one on FatCat. We wrote and recorded that real quick and busted it out. "It's just music, man. We'll make more." I didn't really know how monumental feeling these records would feel. You know, they make it so it’s like, "This is the record," and they push it. And you’re touring this one record and you're constantly going. We were very naive too; we didn't, we don't have, we never had a manager. We still don't have any of that stuff. So we were just figuring shit out and making stuff up, you know? And now we work with Drag City for records and it's a different thing. I think the thing with Sup Pop is, they're such a big label and the people that originally we worked with when they brought us on, every time we were ready to do a record, people left and new people came on. So you're working at a company. It just felt like... The person who originally signed us left by the third record.
Jack: Yeah, you forget what a big label they are.
Dean: Well, they're actually owned by Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers owns 49% of Sub Pop. Sub Pop retains 51% so they can still be an indie label.
Jack: So they're not UMG, but they're still basically owned by Warner.
Dean: Yeah, and it's a weird thing where they're like, "Well, we retain indie ownership because we're indie, but if we need the muscle from major labels... I don't even know what the fuck a major label does for anyone, I don't know what they would do now. I mean, we got to be on MTV, which, maybe that's the thing the major label can do.
Jack: Wow, really? I mean, the label that's pretty sick.
Dean: Yeah, they played our video. We were on a show, this guy Pete Wentz had a show. We premiered our video on his show. And the guests on this show were No Age, T.I. and Rihanna. [laughter]
Jack: Dude... What an era. That's so funny.
Dean: I know, right? Like, how does that happen?
Sophie: Oh my God.
Jack: What year was that?
Dean: It must've been 2008. 2007 or 8. Yeah, but I guess that must have been the Sub Pop influence of the major label vibe.
Jack: Of course. Yeah, he's like, "Fall Out Boy is on hiatus right now, gotta see what the kids are up to."
Dean: I know, "Start my own show!" I forget what it's called, I can probably find it, it's pretty ridiculous. Actually they play a Hüsker Dü track. They ask us about music and I'm like, "Oh, I like Hüsker Dü, they're from Minneapolis, on SST." And they play 30 seconds of "Don't Want to Know If You're Lonely."
Sophie: That's amazing.
Dean: Yeah and the video's them driving around Minneapolis or something, so... That's cool. Another connection.
Sophie: There, we're intersecting now. [laughter].
[Syko Friend "The Star Don’t"]
Sophie: Why don't we go back to Sophie for a bit from where we left off. Maybe it was the beginning of when you started doing Syko Friend, your solo projects, and then being in Minneapolis and being involved in the scene there and then moving to L.A. and getting involved in the scene out there that you are in and that you guys are both in now to this day.
Sophie: Yeah, I think the beginning of Syko Friend was very... Again, I was learning everything from the ground up essentially by starting this project.
Jack: Including learning to play the guitar. [laughter]
Sophie: Including playing guitar! The person I was dating at the time gave me a 4-track, it was a classic like, "Okay, I'm just fucking around..."
Jack: Starter kit.
Sophie: Yeah, my starter kit. I made a tape on the 4-track and then I got a really shitty iRig that I plugged into a computer, cut up the tracks in somebody else's GarageBand and then had my roommate dub the tapes. And that was my first tape. But I mean, and I played some shows with the 4-track and I played guitar, but it was very... Open.
Jack: Like open tuning or open... [laughter] Both could represent the same thing, maybe.
Sophie: I never turned my guitar, it was just... going. [laughter]
Jack: I forget who says they didn't know about tuning so they were like, "Oh, some guys it tight and some guys it loose." [laughter]
Sophie: Yeah!
Dean: Oh, that was the Minutemen, I think.
Jack: There you go, exactly. I think that's Mike Watt.
Dean: Like, "The bass is loose and guitar is..." [laughter] So good.
Sophie: My bandmate in Tips for Twat he is an amazing guitarist and his tuning was loose, let's say, but also specific. And I think I tried to figure out how to tune my guitar like his because I just understood that. But I was doing that and during that time Caethua - Claire [Hubbard] - played at my house and that was a huge opening of understanding what kind of music I related to, for making myself. And I became kind of pen pals with her and it just felt really important because I think I hadn't seen one female musician playing music that was beautiful, but it was scary. And I just got it. Or it connected me to something else outside of Minneapolis, that was kind of my first like, "Okay, I want to know about these people that live in Maine, what the hell?" But I started to also play music with my friend and roommate Fletcher, and that was improv, kind of sludgy, I played bass and sang and he played drums. It was improv but we made a tape and then went on a tour with our friend's band Beat Detectives, and it was when Aaron and Eric had moved to New York. But we did this tour with them and that was my first tour that I did. So that was fall of 2013, and that was on the East Coast. And that just also felt like, "Okay, I really like just being able to play every night, I get this." It felt really good to be involved in that way after seeing so many touring bands and then understanding. That kind of solidified some of the scenes of people in a way where I didn't really understand a lot of the connections. But I think coming from the Midwest, I knew the Iowa City situation and then I knew Night People and just that kind of stuff. But I hadn't gone out on my own. So we did that tour and I think that really motivated me to just keep making Syko Friend music because then I made another tape and I started working on a record. And this feels important, but I adopted my dog at the time too and I felt like, "Okay, I can tour by myself if I have my dog with me, I feel like I can just go and it won't be like I'm alone." Because I was doing some road trips and things like that alone but I just felt like, "Okay, I can do this." So then I booked my first tour, which was really weird. And also again, every step of this didn't really make sense in a way because it was like, these people in Albuquerque were having a "Women in Noise Music" festival and they invited me to play. So I was like, okay, I'll book my tour around this really weird fest thing that was actually amazing, but I don't know who any of those people are now.
Jack: Like, not even still? It's like, you know, you normally are like, "They're my friends now, I realized that they were all there!" And you're like, "I have no idea who anyone was." [laughter]
Sophie: I didn't know anyone.
Dean: Do you remember the venue? I'm curious.
Sophie: No. [laughter] But before that happened, actually, Body/Head played in Minneapolis, and I think it sort of was this weird time for me. And I just was like, "I'm going to go back and I'll meet Kim [Gordon], I don't care." And I saw Bill [Nace] and I was just like, "I'm just gonna follow him."
Jack: Not the normal reaction people have to Bill, but... [laughter] I love Bill, I've known Bill since I was 18.
Sophie: Yeah, yeah. So I was like, "I'm gonna follow him. It's fine, I'll just figure it out." And I followed him and he went into the backstage and I was right there. The door was closing on me was kind of like, "This is so weird, why am I doing this." And he was like, "Hey!" And then Clint Simonson, who did De Stijl, I knew him, he was in there and he was like, "Oh, that's my friend Sophie, let her in." And I was like, "Okay..." So then I was backstage and I was like, "What am I doing?" But I ended up just talking to Bill for a long time and it was good. And then I emailed him and we became friends. Then when I was doing this tour, I was like, "Do you know anybody in LA?" And he was like, "My friend Tim Leanse just moved there, you should hit him up." So I was working sort of for this person that had a publication that was going to have something at the Book Fair in January. And I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go there again." But not to play a show, just to work at this thing. And I was corresponding with Bill at the time and then he was like, "Oh, Body/Head is going to play a show there during that weekend and Tim's band is going to play. Do you want to play?" Again, I'll always be like, "I don't know, yeah, of course." I remember being at work - I worked as a guard at the Walker Art Center - and I was just standing there and I just was like, "Oh my God, this is, like... What the fuck is happening? This is amazing." I just didn't understand but it felt like, "Okay, this makes sense right now, I'm going to do this and going anyways." So I never flew with my guitar, which I kind of knew how to play better at this point, but still fully not... But then I went there and I just had a really good weekend and I met a bunch of people and then I came back to Minneapolis and my roommate at the time was like, "I want to move to LA." And I was like, "Okay, yeah, I will too." And it I just did. Again, another "going to California for no reason." [laughter] I did another tour in between there on the East Coast and I played a show with Flannery [Silva] and Esra [Padgett] in the basement at Trans-Pecos and I had a crazy stack amp that I brought into the basement. It was so hilarious because Flannery was doing this Whisper Pinky set that was with a guitar and she was like, "Can I borrow your amp?" And I was like, "Sure, will you help me carry my cab downstairs?" And she was like, "This is insane." I was like, "Yeah, it'll look really cool. You'll look really cool standing in front of it." [laughter] So I met more people, Flannery was like, "Oh, I'm moving there," and I felt like, "Okay, I will know some people," and I didn't feel so lost. I had some connections, but I ended up just going to tons of shows by myself. I was like, "I'm just going to go do everything that I can," which was the same as I was when I was 18 or 19. "I'm just going to go to a bunch of shows at the Handbag Factory and Coaxial and wherever I can and just meet people." And it really took me a couple years to feel I had a scene or I had my scene, which would be meeting Behavior and meeting Nicky and becoming friends with these people. I was like, "I see the music they're making and this makes sense to me, finally." I had seen them play, but it was just the circumstance that I didn't meet them until 2017, really.
Jack: How did you guys end up meeting for the first time?
Sophie: Well, through Behavior, I think, because the first time I met Dean, I also had started my tape label at the time, Dove Cove, and I put out this Behavior tape for a tour they were going to do with No Age. And at the same time I was doing a Syko Friend tour and I was like, "Oh, I'll cross with you guys in Minneapolis. And then we can hang out there." And so I went to the show that you guys played at 7th Street Entry, and I think that's when I met you.
Dean: Yeah, Behavior had just driven from somewhere really far.
Sophie: I think Missoula or something.
Dean: They had all dropped acid or something? They were really fried. [laughter]
Jack: I feel there's a ton more to talk about. We don't have to belabor any of it, but Dean, I'm sort of curious, there's so much stuff to talk about with being a band that was on MTV and touring like crazy for years and and you're still going today, obviously, but there was definitely a blip in time where you guys had this crazy exposure that very few people get to experience. So I'm just curious what that experience was like for you going into it and then also coming out of it.
Dean: Yeah, I think I think you can definitely sum it up with I was sick of it and it wasn't worth it. I think because we talked about it before, where my coming up to punk music or finding these scenes was all about people and connections. And I think touring a lot you lose connections with people that you're at home with. So it's like, we were a band from L.A., but we don't know what's going on in L.A.. I don't go to shows in L.A. when I go home, I just want to be alone because I've just been on tour for three months. And these bands that we were in a scene with, pick one out of a hat, Mika Miko or something, it's like, I see them, play with them, but more often than not I was playing with bands like fucking Yeasayer or something, you know what I mean? Because we're at a festival, and it's like...
Jack: You're really painting a picture of that time. [laughter]
Dean: You know what I mean? Like, "Oh, those guys again. What's up, Les Savy Fav?" [laughter] Nice guys, totally nice guys. Yeah, but not music I want to see all the time. So I think that became for me, definitely, feeling just separated from my world and then myself. And it just became a lot. I think we probably pushed too hard and played a ton. And because there is no money, really, in record sales, it became shows. And at that time, too, you played, like, the Taco Bell Cabana showcase at fucking South by Southwest or, you know, the Mountain Dew Jimmy Jam or whatever. [laughter] And you'd play a show, but then it's like, "Hey, you got a bunch of money to play the thing down the road." And you're like, "Cool, alright. Let's do it." You gotta work. But that shit became a bummer and it didn't last very long. It was during the Great Recession, you know, it's coming down but all of a sudden, right before then, companies had money to spend to have bands play. And our band seemingly was very popular, but we never really sold that many records or really sold out that many shows. Maybe in L.A. or New York or London or something. Maybe because we were on Sub Pop and it seemed bigger, but we would definitely show up to places and there would not be that many people, and the amount of money wouldn't really justify the amount of people that were there. So there'd be tension or we would get these offers from, you know, a company that would want to throw a private party and they'd be like, "Here's this cool band No Age playing." And then we'd show up and they're like, "What is this?" We're a noisy, kind of fucked up band most of the time, 90% of the time, so there'd be a lot of things where they like, "We gave you money, can you stop or maybe just turn down?" [laughter] Shit like that would happen all the time.
Jack: You like, "That's the best case scenario for us."
Dean: Kind of! We always were like, "It'd be great if we show up and they just don't want us to play. And it happened a couple of times. We're like, "Oh, wow..." You know, maybe they never heard us or they heard one song or something. But I think that got to me. I feel just being on a label like Sub Pop, they're just crunching numbers and putting out whatever can sell, so we were on there, but also, like, Flight of the Conchords and, like...
Jack: Oh God! [laughter]
Dean: You know what I mean? Fleet Foxes or something.
Jack: Stuff that you thought you could forget. Well, unless we left anything very important out - I don't want to gloss over anything - do you guys want to talk about where you're at now and stuff that you are currently working on and stuff that you're excited about?
Sophie: Well maybe one thing that is left out, but also just will tie in to the current, is I think also making the first record that I made with Dean was with my friend Robbie [Cody] and Evan [Burrows]. We recorded it and mixed it together and that was before Robbie was playing with Behavior, I think, and I think him being really excited about working on recordings also brought this group of us together in a way and just produced a ton of material in the last few years. So I want to shout out Robbie. But during the pandemic me and Robbie and Evan and our buddy Nick lived together and the three of us made this record then, the Pink Trash Can record. And that model of making records was: the first couple of weeks of lockdown we jammed, we used those jams to cut up to compose the songs, which then was how they made the Behavior / Mayako XO record and then how they made the Split Bell Chime tape that they made. So it's kind of been this cool model that we all have now sprouted a lot from. And that's kind of how I made my Unifactor tape I did with Jayson [Gerycz] in a way. But yeah, I feel that our group here in L.A is very cool because we've been able to record and produce all of our records in-house, essentially. And that's been very important and also really reminds me of when I lived at that one house where I was learning how to build a fuzz pedal and playing guitar, everything felt very holistic again, just like, "Okay, we're doing this, we're working on this record, we're all hanging out, we're going to be in it all of the time in a way." And I think that's just been amazing for me, when I start to lose steam to go to shows, but Evan especially is very motivated to go to shows. So it helps me be like, "Okay, I still have this in me and that makes me feel so happy to see live music." I have to go see two shows a week, no matter what. It helps and it just does keep you connected to what's going on, which is... I mean, I have many thoughts of "I don't know what's going on," but it's...
Dean: I'm glad I have you to tell me what's going on because I can't go to two shows a week.
Sophie: Yeah, yeah, we're always like, "Dean! Dean! Check out this band!" [laughter]
Dean: Yeah, I mean, for me I'm just really jumping into the label and I rely on Sophie and the crew to continue to put out good music, to release and to find other people.
Sophie: Street team.
Dean: I've been trying to work on my own record. I don't know, you know, working on music by myself... It's hard to do. You don't have someone to bounce off of. I like playing live with this thing I've been doing and trying to make. I have 40 or 50 tracks I've recorded, and I'm just like, "I don't know, it all sounds good to me. I can't tell." But I just never know what to do.
Jack: Well, I feel great about this. I got a lot of material, so thank you. Thank you guys so much for doing this. This was super fun. I'll talk to both of you guys soon.
Dean: Yeah, thanks.
Sophie: Yeah, thank you!
