November 25, 2024 • 56 mins
Up and coming band alert!
Check out my conversation with Alex Fuller from the rock band, Pullstring. We chat about their formation, influences and their brand new record, "Out with the Old." Oh yeah, lots of the Replacements talk in this one. Check out their band. They are fairly new and they rock like you remember rock to be.
Check out my conversation with Alex Fuller from the rock band, Pullstring. We chat about their formation, influences and their brand new record, "Out with the Old." Oh yeah, lots of the Replacements talk in this one. Check out their band. They are fairly new and they rock like you remember rock to be.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You are listening to the Figure It's podcast. I'm your
host Nick Leet from the band High on Stress and
of Minneapolis, Minnesota. And today's guest is an up and comer,
really great singer songwriter, band leader here in Minneapolis. He
has his name is Alex Fuller and he leads the
band Pollstring. Got a brand new record out called Out
(00:30):
with the Old that you should definitely familiarize yourself with.
You could find it anywhere where you get your records,
wherever you stream your records. And uh, I'm giving you
the I'm giving you the guarantee here that if you
like uh, if you like the rock and roll, you're
gonna like the pull String. So check out Pollstring. Great
conversation with Alex. Wish him the best of luck as
(00:52):
they continue to move on in their in their band
daze here and Uh, without further ado, I give you
Alex Fuller.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
To me, it's got my home on work release. You
got me.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
How's your day going?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Doing? Good day off from work? So I just been
hanging out.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I'm a Starbucks supervisor, it's my day job.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We're at downtown, the one That's why I like the
US Bank Stadium.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, nice haul. You've been doing that.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I've been there for three years.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh quite a wow?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Did that? I was doing it part time for a
long time while I was finishing up my undergrad and
then now I'm just continue doing it because pays the bills,
you know.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Nice finished school?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yep?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
What did what did you go for?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Psychology?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Ah?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
That's a good one. Yeah, you'll utilize that one every
day in your life. Oh yeah, no matter.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
What, especially like dealing with other like managing personalities and
bands and stuff like. Yeah, only helpful. I also do
some studio work here and there, and that's definitely a
skill you need to manage musicians in the studio.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
But nice, you have a studio.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, well this this is my like my home studio.
You can't see I have. I have like one of
those like home depot shelves and I got two amps
and a whole bunch of guitar cases on it and
my recording rig over here. That's why I actually have
like a nice microphone, like this is what I use,
yeah for demoing all my stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah you're not messed around with that mic.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, good old sm seven B Yeah, No, it's uh,
that's on my list.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
That's one of the next things to get to add
to the arsenal. I'm in my mine as welly nice
home studio, so awesome. How was the tour you just
got back? How many dates did you do?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It was good? This one was I forget how many
days it was because this one was kind of like
split up a little bit, which is actually really nice.
Like in March. In March, we did a tour that
was like nine or ten days in a row, and
like those weekday shows, especially in a new city, can
be kind of kind of rough. So this time we
wanted to like do more of like Thursday to Sunday
(03:09):
runs ideally, and some of these were just like Saturday,
like Friday Saturday too, So like technically the tour started
the beginning of November. We did a Eau Claire, Wisconsin
with our friend's mother wind and then green Room the
next day Friday, Saturday. Yeah. Oh were you at that one?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I remember you messaged me about it.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, no, I was there. Good show, very nice.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
That was good, and well wee week after that we
went to that that then there was the longer run
we started in Rochester, which actually ended up getting canceled
because we showed up and then like the whole block
had no power. So that one's being rescheduled for December hopefully,
but so to be continued on Rochester. And then we
(03:53):
went to Omaha, Nebraska, first time in Nebraska. That was
a pretty fun, very flat. Yeah, the drive wasn't that interesting, uh,
but so we got to know that that stretch of
drive real well. So we went to Omaha for Friday.
Saturday we went to Ames, Iowa, good college town. We
played there a bunch of times, and then Sunday we
(04:15):
went back to Lincoln, Nebraska. So we did a little
well back and forth through Iowa. Mind numbing drive, but
that's just the way to a routing work sometimes. We
wanted that Saturday and Ames because it was actually a
good show at the university. Those are all really fun,
especially Ames, obviously we have fans there. And then Sunday
(04:36):
in Lincoln, Nebraska, we played at Duffy's, which is kind
of a more famous Oh yeah, then you Nirvana played there.
It's kind of the big one, even though according to
the sound guy, Nirvana got booed off stage when they
played there. But it's still like claim to fame.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, from the people that I've talked to that have
been around that scene and as Nirvana was coming up,
they all will say the same thing. We were very
that Nirvana ended up being the band because they were fine, cool,
We could definitely help to simplify the songs and add
(05:11):
a world class drummer behind.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
The whole thing.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Definitely made made the whole thing go.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Oh yeah, but those on those ones are really good.
Duffy was a lot of fun too, because I was
kind of like doing some crowd work at that one,
because there's a lot of people at like the start
of the show that were just kind of like it's
kind of like the room's kind of like there's like
the music room and then the barroom, like you can
see into both of them, but they're a little bit separated,
so there's.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
A bunch of the tricky.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, so there's a bunch of people just hanging out
in the bar and especially like this big group of
college girls who were there for the last band, the headliners.
So throughout our set, I just kind of kept heckling them.
It's like, come on, it's like a music show, like
let's have a good time. So basically it was bullying
them into coming into it, into the room and having
a good time, and then what do you know, by
the end of it, they were nice.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Nice. How long you've been playing guitar?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
H many, many years? I started like before freshman year
of high school. Okay, I remember I got a guitar
like that. Fifteen, Yeah, like fourteen fifteen whatever age from
which that is as.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Well, probably about the same amount of time.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, and then I'm twenty five.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I was in the nineteen hundreds. Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
So you were fifteen, so that would have been you
said you're.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Twenty five about ten years ten years ago.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, you're an old man.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
It's starting to feel like all gets worse.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
It gets much worse. What was What was your first
band that you played? Is this your first band? No?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
This is like is this number three? It's my first band?
Was just a project with a friend of mine, John Graber,
the son of Bill Graber, from a band called Arc
Welder from the nineties. My dad hooked me up with John,
jammed together for a long time and we had a
band called Grand Tradition of Nothing. We only ever played
like two shows, but that was just like a duo
(07:09):
project for just like our guitars were tuned down to
D standard or like drop C, so we were just
playing like really heavy, like fludgy stuff. We did that
for a couple of years. It never really like it
wasn't until the end. We probably did that for like
three years just throughout high school, and it wasn't until
like the last year that I actually was like, all right,
(07:29):
let's like start making songs out of some of this stuff.
Because most of the time we'd just go to his
place and we'd just jam for like three hours. Like
mostly I'd be on guitar, but like we both played everything,
so like we'd switch, like I'd do drums for a bit,
he'd play guitar vice versa. So for years it was
(07:49):
just just jamming. It's just very just whatever we came
up with. I wish we recorded some of that. It's
kind of a shame that it's all just lost to history.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
But yeah, I have a few of those to where
I'm like, I wish we would have recorded something, just
so I can go back to it and hear it
now after all this time. Nowadays, it's a little easier
because the ability to record is a lot easier than
it was back then, where you had to book studio
time and pay by the hour and all of that.
But yeah, I have like boombox cassette recordings to stuff
that you could barely make out what it is. So
(08:22):
what got you playing guitar? Like what inspired you to
pick it up?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
I was thinking about that earlier today actually, So I
think the main thing was, like I was interested in music,
which is why I asked to get a guitar for
my birthday go before going into freshman year of high school.
But then in high school, like I lived too close
to my high school, so there wasn't a bus to
pick me up, so at the end of the day,
(08:47):
I'd have to walk home every day. It's like a
twenty thirty minute walk. So every day, like I'd just
start cycling through like different albums I had on my
iPod at the time, and my dad had a nice
big CD library, kind of like the one behind you.
It's like I had a bunch of CDs at my disposal,
a lot of stuff you'd like given to me, and
I downloaded my iTunes but never actually listened to son
walking home from high school every day, I'd just start
(09:09):
going through these albums and some of them started to
really stick out to me, like green Day, like Dookie,
and then the international super hits were like the first ones.
I was like, damn, that sounds cool and it's simple
enough that I can actually like try and learn that.
Hell yeah. So that without green Day was huge, and
the Foo Fighters a bunch of those other nineties bands, Nirvana,
(09:32):
but green Day was kind of the key one where
it was like, these are cool, catchy songs and they're
simple enough that I can actually like figure them out
even when I can barely play well.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It's such a gateway because to that point, when I
started to play, it was like Nirvana was Nirvana. So
I learned those songs of like, oh, I can learn
how to play these songs, and it when you're that age,
like you know back in the eighties. I'm sure you
know all the hair band shit. I'm sure there were
moments where people are like, oh, I could never play
(10:02):
like that. But what came later is it was like,
you know what, like I can play these chords and
it's really fun, and I like these songs, so you
can kind of jump into them and get inspired by
them and actually play along with the thing and feel
like you can actually hang someone, which is a little
difficult with some of that other stuff. So Green Day, Nirvana,
(10:27):
food Fighters.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
What else? What else was there? White Stripes is another
big one. When I was going to pick out my
first actual guitar, like, one of the only things I
could play was White Stripes fell in Love with the Girl.
So I just kept playing those same chords on all
these different guitars until I found them that spoke to me.
It worked.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, mine was Polly by Nirvana, like over and over
the same thing. Parents. That's funny. Yeah, I can't remember
who I was talking to on here, but somebody was
Shiit is it the dude from fig Ish It was somebody,
But basically we were talking about what like the different generations,
(11:07):
grasp onto, like Nirvana was for a lot for the
people my age. And then he's like, yeah, I think
the White Stripes are kind of that next one where
everybody kind of learned Icky Thump and you know some
of those songs. Yeah, but it's you know what struck
me about you guys, is and I'm sure you probably
get that a lot from people who've been playing music
(11:27):
for a while, is you're doing the things. It's a
rock band you're you're like you're like a unicorn man.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, no, it which is such an odd thing, but
it's like we have experienced that in the Minneapolis scene
where it's like we've a lot of bands that we
love when, we love playing with, but what we don't
sound like them. Yeah, Like like what we're what we're
doing is very much a nineties two thousand's rock sound. Yeah,
And it's not like that's just what I write. Like
(11:59):
I don't know, it's not like an intentional thing. It's
just those are the songs they listened to and that's
the stuff write.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah. No, I a same thing here too, like like
high on Stress is like very much in that same realm.
But it's yeah, that's what I grew up playing and
hell Ship I played back then. The style has not
changed back. But it was fun. It was fun seeing
(12:27):
that because like even the other night I took my
kid to I d K as a rapper at the
Filmore and the first guy they had like an acoustic
guy playing and he had like these really terrible compressed
backing tracks with bass and drums and he was playing acoustic,
and I'm like, ah, like be a rock band or
(12:48):
just play acoustic. You can't have it both ways. So like,
it was very exciting for me because I'd been meaning
to see you guys for a bit and then uh
high on Stress drummer was playing somewhere and then I
saw them and then popped over to see you guys
at the can Can Wonderland.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
And it was fun to see because when Ian s
Trust started I was twenty four, which is kind of crazy.
So it's fun to see people your age doing this
and doing kind of a similar style of music. So
it definitely got me going, well, I wonder what the
backstory is on this? How did you discover the music?
Because we all do right, Like, you know, I wasn't
(13:30):
alive for the Beatles, but we all liked the Beatles.
It's just oh yeah, it's staying.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Born and raised on the Beatles.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
You have to be. And if you're not, I apologized
to anybody out there who didn't have that as an upbringing.
You may want to talk to your parents, So, so
was your dad? What did your dad do?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
So this is where this is where a lot of
this stuff came from.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I think I may know who your dad is, and
I'm just confirming. Yeah, so his name is Rick Fuller thought,
so I thought that was probably your dad.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah. So he made music videos with a company called
Harder Fuller Films for a long time throughout the nineties
early two thousands. He was also in a band called
Venison that was based out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Yeah,
they toured regionally for a long time. But he was
just it was it was interesting because like music was
always around, and obviously I grew up listening to a
(14:23):
lot of these artists, didn't even realize who a lot
of them were, but like he never pushed it too hard.
It was just always there in the background, and then
like he let me kind of discover it for myself,
Like I was mentioning like in high school when I
was listening to those albums walking home from school, Like
the albums were just at my disposal and it was
just like up to me to kind of look around
and be like, oh, what's this, what's this and then
(14:45):
like figure out what I liked. And then the replacements
big influence obviously in one of my dad's favorite bands.
Hence why I have let it be poster back there,
that one that one.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Didn't see my crap back care ye in casey.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
That yep, yeah, But the replacements didn't click for me
until I got to college. Like it was a weird
thing where Like for a long time I was like, Eh,
I don't like Westerbridge's voice. It's too too screamy, it's weird.
His songs are chaotic. And then he got to college
and it just clicked and I was like, wait, this
is genius, like I don't.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Know, and funny too, because I know you guys you know,
do some covers. But I'm like, have you realized when
you're learning these replacement songs? Sometimes you're like, what they
do that five times? Why are they doing that five times?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Here?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Like it's so like bizarre. In some cases, it sounds
so simple and it sounds natural, but when you get
down to actually learning those songs, you're like, it's not
how songs are written, Like why did they do that there?
That is so weird And there's just that idiosyncrasy of
kind of his songwriting. I don't know what it is,
but it's just so cool. But I don't think you
(15:56):
even realized it until you started getting into them. No,
fuck with this.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
We learned that the hard way last year in December,
we did the like First Avenues Replacements Tribute show. We
did a set of replacements covers, mostly stuff from like
the early period Sorry Man, and a bunch of stuff
from Hoot and Nanny and like like when we were
listening to him, we're like, oh, this will be pretty
easy to throw together, and then we started learning him.
(16:20):
Especially there's one called one song called something to Do
from Sorry Ma. Yep, it's so fucked up the arrangement,
but it's so but it was so satisfying when we
finally like locked it down. It was like, we spent
so much time on this one song that's like less
than two minutes. Yeah, just because the arrangement is so
fucked up. That's just part of the beauty of Westerburg.
It's like you don't know what's gonna come next, and
(16:42):
it kind of keeps you on your toes in a way.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
I think it was just impulsivity. He was like this
feels good, this is unexpected, and he just rolled with it. Yeah,
and like props to him.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Like, yeah, so bizarre we did.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
So.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I did a number of those one year because it
used to be at First Avenue and they would have
First Avenue in the main room, and we did the
first the main room one one time and another year
they were gonna have us do the entry, and then
last minute, like two days before, she's like, hey, we're
gonna move you to the main room. So we ditched
like all of the songs that we had learned because
(17:17):
we're like, well, we're gonna do the main room, let's
do these songs. So we had like two days to
like learn a bunch of songs that we weren't gonna
play or that we were going to play it that
it was so fun and we pulled them off. And
I'm like a little freaky when you're getting up there
and you're like, we're just gonna be uh on the
tight rope yep.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
I mean that's very fitting for the replacements, though you
don't want it to be you don't want it to
be too tight. There needs to be a little too good,
needs to be a little chaos. You're gonna walk the line.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, exactly exactly, And you're didn't your dad your dad
did the Westerburg doc, didn't he?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yes, come to me tremble Yeah. And then and then
he also filmed a bunch of the reunion shows.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
No and we'll ever see. Yeah, did you get to
see any of those or were you?
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I've seen you probably, Oh, I've seen I've seen the footage.
I wasn't cool enough yet at the time because that's
when I was just kind of getting into music. But
if I had been, man, I could have been backstage
like what the fuck is like? Yeah, but like I've
seen the footage and it's it's glorious. Someday, someday hopefully
(18:26):
gets released. But Paul's being Paul.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Moved on. What what shows did he do? Did he
do a lot of them?
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah? It was most of the I want to say,
like the first couple of ones. It's like the first
riot Fest in Toronto, the Saint Paul Midway one Denver,
don't remember what venue, but that one is the Denver one.
Is they they rolled out in like the pink cowboy
outfits in the dresses. Yeah, so that one. That one
it ends with with the extended hooton Nanny where they
hand stuff off to the roadies. So it's like it's
(18:59):
the one that you want to see.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Did you do Chicago? I think so I was at
that show. I was about nine deep from Tommy and uh,
take it a ride kicked in and I feel like
I blew back about fifty eight yards, Like it was
just like, holy shit, they were so good and and
that I was at the Midway show too, which was
really good. But and everybody talks about that being just
(19:22):
such an epic thing, but I'm like that Chicago show
was one of the best things I've ever seen. It
was so freaking good.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah. Well, that's the crazy thing about it too, is
like when they when they did their union, they still
were fucking great. So well they took it seriously, which
is something that historically was hard for them. But yeah,
like they sounded great. I mean, having a fucking powerhouse
drummer always helps.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
But yeah, yeah, when I when I heard Foo fighters
were grabbing him, I'm like, yep, makes sense. Good move, funny.
So how did how did this band come around?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:58):
String? So Paul String, Uh, I don't know. I I
described my my band. All my bands have just been
a result of a strange series of coincidences. So Paul String.
Literally like, I was working on this song called twenty something.
There's just kind of like a nice little power pop thing.
It's it's been released now, but I was working on it.
(20:19):
My girlfriend Kayla posted a little clip of it to
our Instagram story it's like me playing it, and then
a friend of hers, Josh, saw that and was like, Yo,
that's a cool song. Like who is this guy? Like
does he want a jam? So that's it. So that's
hard player, right. Yeah, So that's why I met Josh,
our lead guitar player.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
That's a nice score because uh, yeah, he's he's got
something there, didn't.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
He a He's a great lead guitar player, and he's
there's a certain like he's playing. He has a unique
playing style, yeah, where it's like there's a little bit
of chaos to it.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
He's got a little bit of the Bob Stintson to him,
like he does What the fuck was that?
Speaker 3 (20:56):
But it was I wasn't gonna make the comparison myself,
but they're definitely there is someone out there.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I can hear it.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
But I met Josh and like we the first time,
we just kind of jammed, just kind of just had
some fun with it. And then the second time I
met up with him, he played me some of the
songs he was working on, yeh, because he was trying
to get this project going and so he played me
some of these songs, and one of them was the
instrumental for what became Sunday Afternoon, which was like our
(21:24):
first which ended up being our first single, And that
one really just kind of stuck in my mind, like
the instrumental was so so hooky, so catchy. So over
the next couple of weeks, I just was like, I
need to write something on top of that, and ended
up writing the melody and the lyrics, rearranged it a
little bit to fit the fit what I was hearing.
(21:47):
And then a couple of weeks later he had he
had been setting up this like studio day with some
of his friends where he was just gonna go and
record these songs, just like just to do it. I
don't think he was even meant to be like actually
creating a band. It was just like he set this
thing up, paying it on his own dime. We're all
going to the studio, have fun, record these songs he's
been working on, and just do it. So I just
(22:11):
ended up getting sucked into that. And it was interesting
because he already had a different vocalist that was supposed
to be singing on most of these oh really, and
a bass and a bass player and a drummer and
these other guys. So the first incarnation of Pollstering had
two singers. I was the second guy who came in
because I only sang lead on Sunday Afternoon, which ended
(22:32):
up being the first single, and then I sang co
lead on another one called Isolated, and then the other
three songs I was barely on honestly, So it was
like it was this interesting thing where it was like
we didn't know what this was gonna be yet. Yeah,
so we recorded the stuff, got it mixed, put out
a single. It was cool, and then we started booking
some shows, and that's when it kind of like we're like,
(22:54):
all right, we needed we didn't name. We need to
like figure out what this is. My girlfriend was the
one who came with Polestring. She was trying to like
brainstorm band names. Then one day we were looking at
the ceiling fan in our living room. It's got one
of those old school like dangling chains on it, so
she was like, what about pull String.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I was gonna refrain from asking you where the name
came from, because everybody loves to ask that question about bands,
but I was very interested. So I'm glad you went
there coming.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
From Pull String, And then that's why we have like
a light bulb with a lot of our logos because
yeah turns out yeah, yep, yeah, So that's where that's
where that came from. And then yeah, early lineup of
Pole String was a five piece three guitars, two vocalists, bass, drums,
and then we went through a series of like a
(23:42):
lot of those early members just like had other things
going on. Like their first drummer, Tristan, he would take
like contracts at these different amusement amusement parks around the country.
We'd get paid to play drums at these places. So
he would just be like up and gone for a
couple months at a time. So the first year of
Pollstring was just of like chaotic playing a gig here
and there when people were around. And then slowly it
(24:06):
started uh and then eventually that other singer left and
and slowly I started introducing more of my songs to
the project, which led to like the first album we
put out, All I Know is what I've Seen, which
that one is most more of my songs, and then
a couple that were like co written with Josh kind
of add his flare, I mean he adds his flair
(24:26):
to a lot of them. He's got some cool guitar solos.
But it led to that, and then a little bit
further down the line, we finally got ended up with
like a stable lineup where we got our current drummer,
Will Keebler, who's incredible. I can play, He can play
and hits fucking hard. Every every drummer I've ever played
(24:47):
with is like they come from that Dave Grohl school
of drumming, and I love it. It's beautiful. Like. So
we ended up with Will, and then we rotated through
a couple more bass players. We ended up with Eric
we have now and Eric is incredible.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yes, I feel like it can't can't Wonderland. You had
just introduced him as the new guy.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, I mean it's also an ongoing joke. He's our
seventh base player technically, so we make a lot of
We make a lot of jokes, but we have a
revolving rotation of musicians in the band.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
But he's years from now. He's still gonna be the
new guy. He's just gonna have to get.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Used to it. Yeah, But he's been in it for
a long time now. He's been in it since like
April or May, so that's good amount of time. And
he was a college friend of Will's, so they knew
each other really well, and then he became a friend
of mine. He yeah, he like filled in for the
band a couple of times before he like officially joined,
so it feels like he's been in it a lot longer.
(25:47):
And the other great thing about him is he's got
a crazy vocal range, probably even higher than me. So
I can give him like my high harmonies and like
he can do it just fine. So I'm like, oh,
this is this is nice. Like I can relax a
little bit, don't kind of strain for the high else
today I have.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
A secret weapon like that too. His name is Jim
and he also plays bass. Make me sound better by
singing real pretty over there? All right, thank you? That's so.
How long has the band been around now? With the
at least the three out of four of you?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, so now we're coming up on like three three years.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Three years. You're you're ancient in band terms.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, yeah, that is.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
That is.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
The crazy thing is like a lot of the bands
that like came up around that same time as us,
that we played with in early days a lot of
them don't exist anymore, which is tragic, but it's just
kind of the life cycle of it, as we learned ourselves.
Like it's it's hard to keep it's hard to keep
four people around that long because everyone has their own
stuff going on, their own lives, their own priorities, like
(26:49):
especially in your twenties, Like some people just decide this
isn't for them, and that's valid. Like, musician life is
not easy. There's a lot of a lot of pros
and cons, but we found the right guys for it,
and we're just gonna keep keep going as long as
we're enjoying it.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah. No, we we hit twenty one years this year.
Hell yeah, and it's we had a break in there
for a little bit because our bass player lives in
Chicago actually, so he literally just drives up like for shows,
practice wherever we're going, Like we did some shows in
la and he just we met him at the airport.
(27:28):
It's actually kind of funny. We've definitely experienced the oh yeah,
remember that band we used to play with. Wonder what
those guys are up to these days, because they're you know,
bands last maybe two years, maybe a show and then
they're gone. So it the longer you're at it, the
more interesting it seems to get because you're just like,
we're still doing this, holy shit.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah. Well and the funniest thing to me about it
is like First Avenue and like whatever that newspaper was
would always have like the best new bands things. Yeah,
and we're seeing those, and I would always look at
it and I'll just be like that. I always look
at it and would be like that band has been
around for like four or five years. They're not new.
But that's the part for.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
It's somebody who is in a band for twenty years
has a new band.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, you're like wow, But it's just like that's the
point that like the bands start to reach more general
awareness in the scene type of thing.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, do you find So what would have been your
big pockets as far as when you go out and play,
Like where do you draw best? You draw best in town?
Do you draw best in Iowa? What's been kind of
the the story behind that?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Well, I mean we do good hometown because we have
a lot of friends, family, kind of easy, easy draw.
I mean you experienced the green room like that was
pretty good, pretty crowd there and anywhere we found that,
like any like college towns tend to be pretty good
because college kids like they want something fun to do
on a Friday Saturday night. So Ames, Iowa was kind
(28:58):
of like the first one we stumbled into. There's a
really good house venue out there called the called the
A Hole. Just endless joke has been made about that.
We played at that. We played at that a bunch
of times to kind of get our footing there, and
now we're at to the point where we're playing at
the university's venue, so you've kind of been able to
kind of level that up and the kids always go crazy,
(29:20):
like it's it's fun doing stuff like that. We also
really love Milwaukee, mostly because like there's a lot of
really good bands out of Milwaukee right now. Oh really Yeah,
Like there's a band called Diet Light who's incredible. Their
stage show is just ridiculous. They're the first band that
we met that we like. They do steat, They do
(29:40):
like dynamic stretching and stuff before they go on stage.
And then once you see that, once you see their set,
you understand why, Like you're like.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
What the fuck are they doing back there?
Speaker 3 (29:51):
And then you experience it and you're like oh no.
These guys are like, they know what they're doing. They're great.
There's another band called Modern Joey, and there's a lot
of other Wisconsin towns too. Oa Claire is always fun
because I have family connections there. And then also there's
a lot of good bands. Band called the over Unders,
another one called Motherwind who we played without the Green Room.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Where do you play in o'claire?
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Uh, we played it. I mean we played at the
mouse Trap a lot. That's kind of like the classic
bar there, and more recently we've been playing at the Plus,
which is like kind of like a step up, bigger stage,
nicer sound system. The sound guy there, Colin, is great.
He's fun to shoot the ship with about old music stuff.
We played a couple of Replacements covers and caught him
off guard the first time, and then he's been a
(30:37):
fan ever since.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
That'll do it I made.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
I made a crack. I made a joke before we
did one of them. We were about to go into
like can't hurdly Wait or something. My guitar was a
little out of tune, so I started tuning it and
I was like, wait, it'll be more authentic if I
don't remember I heard I heard Colin Audi cackle at
the soundboard.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
That's funny. So you've got knew. Well, so you've been
around three years. What are some of the more memorable
shows that you've had, which what comes to mind?
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I mean, the most recent runs were all pretty good.
I mean the green Room was that was my one
of my favorite, like hometown shows we've done at a
proper venue. One of my other favorite ones was for
May fourth, like Star Wars Game the fourth d with you,
we did a house show at the Como backdoor and like, uh,
like the Como neighborhood in Minneapolis. It's like that one.
(31:30):
We all dressed up as Star Wars characters and then
like the college kids were going crazy. So that one's
really fun. We like to do a lot of like
themed shows like that if we can, because it just
kind of like gets more people interested. Like first for
Halloween the year before, we did a little weekend run
where we dressed up as the Scooby Doo gang, and
then and then we did the like the pop punk
(31:52):
Scooby Doo theme song that was really good. And one
more I got to mention before we move on, the
and the Replacements tribute show we did at the Turf
Club last year. It was insane that that one was crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Have you just was it just last year that you
did it?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Okay, yeah, pretty packed in there. I've gotten the last
couple of years or the last couple of times they've
done it, but.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
It was it was back in the day.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
It was pretty nuts.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, it was sold out Turf Club and that was
like one of the first times we played to a
crowd that that packed. So that was a huge adrenaline rush.
Plus playing those kind of those crazy energy songs like
it was very good.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Yeah, who are who were the special guests last year?
Usually there was a couple of guests I did it,
so we did the like we did two or three
of them as a band, and then I was like
guest singer when they would do the house band thing,
like probably like five times. But who do they have?
Anybody interesting that you got to meet that.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
I got? I got the poster above me here on
my wall. I mean, they're they're so many of them.
There was like twenty guest artists or something, so they
were just like rotating through them for the second half.
Some of the cool ones whom I who am? I
thinking of there's what's his name? I can't read from
(33:20):
that for there was like there's one like legendary Minneapolis
musician that I finally met, Oh, Curtis A. That's that's
when I finally met Curtis.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
He's a trip.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
That was cool.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
He is a trip.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Yeah, and then a lot of like new artists too,
some of which I hadn't met before, so it was
kind of cool, like oh, like hey, like and obviously
very easy to bond with them because we're all there
because we love their replacements. Like, so it's interesting to
talk to people see like hey, like what song did
you choose and like kind of ask him like why Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And then that had Greg Norton from Who's Kerdo When You're,
Dave Permer from Soul Asylum, Craig Finn from The Whole Steady,
Dan Wilson from Semisonic. So like it's fun because they
always kind of have like a oh like cool, this
will be kind of entertaining.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, And I gotta give First Avenue a shout out
for like actually giving us like a twenty five minute
set to to do our own thing, like because they
could they could have just been like, yeah, I want
to just do like a feature thing, but they actually
like took a chance, gave us a twenty five and
it went well. So on the main stage it was
just the the Slim tribute band was just does it.
(34:32):
Then it was us and then the headliners, so it
was like it was cool they that's all. And then
and then they had they had other bands going in
the clown lounge downstairs YEP to kind of rotate back
and forth, and then the Melismatics doing the doing tim
all the way through with the guest artists, and then
greatest Hits with the guest singers as well. So it's
cool that we got to like basically be one of
(34:54):
the big acts of the night.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yeah, that's pretty fun. The last I think the last
time I did it, I did a Birthday Girl with
the Melismatics and they had Michael Bland on drums, so
I was completely geeking out because when you're standing on
stage and that dude hits a snare drum, it's uh,
you know a snare drum has been hit.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Power.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, No, those shows are fantastic. Are you doing this
year as well?
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Or no?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
We we asked them about it, but they were like,
I'll probably save you for next year because they just
want to rotate artists rotate.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah, yeah, I noticed that too. There was a lot
of different people as the years have gone on, kind
of swapping them out. So you've got the you've got
the new album done. Where do you Where do you
record at? Do you record at your home studio? Do
you book a place? So what's your what's your problem?
Speaker 3 (35:46):
So it started at our friend Zach. He worked at
a studio called Basquez Productions in Saint Paul. So it
started recording recording drums and guitars and vocals there. We
did that for Pull It and Spring is Here, and
then after that we moved to our drummer's basement. Nice,
So our drummer Will he works like Auitar Center, so
(36:08):
he gets really good prices on gear and he's just
over the years been accumulating a lot of really nice shit,
so so he just has a really good setup. But yeah,
so like he had a really good setup. And then
like at one point we had him just like I
had him just do some drums on a demo and
then I heard the drums you recorded and I was like, dude,
why are we paying for studio time? If you can
(36:28):
get something that sounds this good, And I would argue
with the drum sounds we ended up with in the end,
it's like I can hear a little bit more crispness
from the stuff that we did in the studio on
pull It, but his drums sound ninety percent is good.
And we saved like arguably thousands of dollars in the
end doing it ourselves. Yea, So it's like cool works for.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Me, who engineers all of you guys? Oh was that
who engineers the record all you guys?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
So mostly me and Will. Will Will basically has a
degree in audio engineering. He did a program at the
man Cato University. I was like audio engineering and like
music industry stuff. So he knows how to record stuff
really well. And then I also I did a boot
camp thing at a place called the Recording Workshop in
Ohio at one point. It's like I know a lot
(37:18):
of auto audio engineering stuff as well. So Will did
a lot of the drums. I did most of the guitars.
Here in my home studio, I have a capter xbox,
which is like you run a tube vamp into this
thing and it's like a digital cabinet simulator. So I
can record stuff basically silently, which is really nice. So
(37:39):
I could record guitars until like three am and didn't
bother anyone.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, are you in an apartment or are you in
a house?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
I'm in a house, but it's like a duplex. Our
landlords live upstairs, so like it can't be too loud
super late. Yeah, but so a lot of guitars here,
some guitars at Josh's house, which is where we typically practice.
He's got a smaller basement, but like it's it's actually
sound proved pretty well. We put up a bunch of
foam panels and stuff. But yeah, most of it at
(38:09):
Will's guitars, drums, I had vocals there. I just brought
this microphone over there and it took it took us
a couple of months. Like we're very we're perfectionists, but
I'm super happy with how it turned out. Nice.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
No, the record sounds really great and it so it
just came out what about three weeks ago? Yeah, it
when was the green room. I've lost all track of time.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
It was the beginning of November.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
It was like a few weeks ago. Okay, nice, So
what's the plan for the record, What do you do
and more touring, Like, uh.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
So we're gonna do more. The plan kind of for
next year is do a bunch of like weekend runs
so I start keep hitting some of these Midwest cities,
expand our network a little bit. But the other big
thing is we're gonna do some more music videos for
songs that we haven't done him for yet. Out with
the Old is gonna be a big one.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Nice does your dad help you with those?
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Or he might if I asked him to, but it's
kind of fun to just kind of do it ourselves.
He likes the diy attitude. But on this on these
tour runs we just did, we had our friend Al
come with and he was just doing video of like everything,
so there's he has a lot of footage of live
footage and just like behind the scenes stuff. So hopefully
(39:26):
use that to make a music video for Out with
the Old. And I think he also wants to make
like a mini tour documentary, so that should be interesting.
I don't know when that'll come out, but at some point. Yeah,
and just more social media stuff. We kind of go
in spurts where we'll like post a lot of kind
of like funny stuff and then we'll kind of like
run out of run out of ideas.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Sit for you're one, you posted fuck that one about
uh the set list one? Oh yeah, I had like
a million views on that.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
It currently has two point three million. And that's the
thing about social media is like you you don't know
what's gonna work. So like that that one, we spent
like five minutes recording it and editing it, put it
up low expectations. We're like, yeah, it's funny, it'll probably
do okay, and then what do you know, blew up?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Did you find that you had a lot more follows
from that or a lot of views or what? Yeah,
what came for that? Because that's a that's a large number.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah we got, we got We definitely got some followers
out of it and a couple and some more screams
on stuff too. Is like some people actually went through
and listened to it. Not as much as you'd expect though,
for something that got two two million views and now
it has over one hundred thousand likes. I think we
only got like three or four hundred followers out of it.
Just still significant to be fair, but yeah, yeah, the
(40:48):
percentage is like but I mean that's probably the percentage
of people who actually stopped to like check us out
and listen to our music. So it's like cool, Like
those are the people who actually like checked it out
and like roll this is they thought it was cool. Yeah,
but yeah, so we'll keep doing stuff like that when
we think of ideas.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, that cracked me up. But I saw that view thing,
I was like, holy shit, did that take off like that?
But no, it is funny because some of those social
media things, to your point, like people are so onto
the next thing so quickly that like when what you
would expect like, oh, you know, we might have a
million new follow No, it's it's a small percentage, but
(41:30):
at least people know we exist now, you know what
I mean. Yeah, it definitely helps. Well, that's awesome. Some
more videos are you? You know? When was when did
your last because this is your is this your second record?
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Second full length?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Got it? And when was the last one? How how
far apart are they?
Speaker 3 (41:48):
The previous one was December of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Okay, see you rightly quickly?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah, and like some of this album was three of
the songs were ones that we re recorded from the
previous album. Just over the course of playing it for
so long with different members and just whatever, Like the
songs evolve, so like we were playing them live and
we were were just like, these don't sound like they
did on the album anymore. They sound different. So some
(42:16):
of those we wanted to recapture, kind of give them
a facelift, if you will.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, No, that thing sounds good. I hope the folks
that listen to this will go check it out because
it is quite enjoyable. So when when are you playing
around here? NeXT's the what's the plan from a show standpoint?
Speaker 3 (42:34):
Yeah, So we got one of them, was just announced.
We're playing at the Entry in January. Let's say January twelfth.
I don't remember what day of the week it is.
I think it's a weekend date that one. And we're
also going to be doing one on January third or
fourth at the White Squirrel in Saint Paul.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Third, and the other one is a twelfth. The Entry
one is the twelfth, which is a Sunday. I just
got a couple of those, and then in February we
got a couple of out of town ones. We're going
to a Big Turn Music fest and Red Wing Rochester, Thaw.
I don't remember the date for that one, but there's
like a couple of those like ones around the Midwest
(43:19):
that are kind of like festival things that happen yearly.
Oh and we're also playing in Eau Claire at the
Plus in January. It's not on my calendar, it should be.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
You.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, it's in there somewhere, but that'll be How.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Often do you get together as far as rehearsing.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Every Wednesday we rehearse and then typically on Mondays we'll
do like a do a discord meeting. It's just like
it's just basically just different version of zoom, so like
meet and talk business on Mondays. So then on Wednesday
we can just like do the fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Wait, you guys communicate with each other? What kind of
new school rock band is this? You actually communicate? You
need dysfunction and misunderstandings and hurt feelings. That's how that's
how you be in a band.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
That's that's the fun stuff I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
That awesome. So you get a lot of stuff coming up.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
M h.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Nice. Well before we kind of wrap up here, so
what uh what are you listening to today? Obviously you
talked about some of your influences and and what got
you into this kind of music? But what what? What's
been on the uh on the stereo as of late.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Let's check my Spotify. I was just listening to UH.
There's a Jack White album that dropped a few months
ago that I completely missed it because he didn't really
like promote it anything at all. It's called No Name.
It's actually really good.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
I've heard it's good. I haven't listened to it yet either.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
It's the closest thing to White Stripes he's done in
his solo career. Okay, so that's that's been good. I
was listening to the Foo Fighters first album earlier.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
I just I just love the vibe of that album.
The Bens by Radiohead. Ah, yeah, they're fantastic album. I
was listening to our local friends where they Lighter Coo.
It's another really good local rock band.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Check them out.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
I guess I was listening to some Credence Clearwater Revival
because you got a three times Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Cretens is awesome.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah. So just kind of a mixture of new and old. Yeah,
like I I tend to I tend to stay and
listen to a lot of my comfort artists. I thought
I was kind of nineties two thousands type things. Another
big one, Who's not on here? Neil Young Ah fucking
love love Neil Yep. Large influence, especially on lyricism.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, yeah, cool, that's awesome. The I think you need
to have a Creedence Clearwater night or do you just
play all Credence covers?
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Blow my voice out after that one?
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Oh god, yeah that might hurt a little bit. Uh,
that's awesome. Are you gin Blossoms guy? I can hear
a little gin Blossoms.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
In there, so, so jin Blossoms thing is interesting. I
had never heard of him until everyone kept saying our
songs sound like the gin Blossoms. So then I listened
to him and then I was like At first I
was like, yeah, I kind of hear it. And then
I learned how to play the song follow You Down
on guitar and was playing it and singing it, and
I was like, oh, okay, yeah, sounds a lot like it.
(46:31):
And then in response to that, I wrote the song
what If, which is just kind of like meant to
be like playing into that gin Blossoms thing. Yeah, so
so I yeah, I like him now, and we do
kind of sound like him. It was just so funny.
For a long time, that was always the first comparison
you'd get, and then you feel like the gin Blossoms again.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
It's funny because the gin Blossoms when they came out,
like my class base and I I was over like,
like all the noisy shit over here. And then you know,
they liked whatever it was on the radio, like people
I went to school with in high school. But the
one thing we could all agree on was the gin Blossoms.
Everybody liked them Blossoms. They were just great and I
(47:15):
met them years ago. It's funny. Our their guitar tech
was definitely interested in one of our friends. So we
found ourselves side stage at one of their shows and
hung out with them afterwards. But they covered Can't Hardly
Wait that night, and we asked him about the replacements.
They because they recorded New Miserable Experience, had ardent where
(47:40):
policements did please to meet me. So they were keeking
out telling us about how in all of the downtime
they were listening to all of the replacements outtakes, and
how like the engineers were bringing them all out so
they can listen to them because they're like enormous replacements
fans as well, So it's all kind of from the
same family tree. But now I kind of picked up
on So it's funny that you leaned into it with
(48:02):
that song.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Yeah, I actually just saw them. They were playing. I
did like a rib fest in man Cato this last summer.
I took my kid down because I'm like a kid
loves like Ribs and I'm like blossoms and Ribs. So
they're still good. They're a good band.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
Yeah, just really pop, just good pop rock music.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
And just an epically sad. I don't understand why no
one has made it. Well, I probably know why no
one's made a documentary on their story because they probably
don't want to talk about it because it's pretty atrocious.
Part of me is like I can't really blame them
if a guy's literally falling apart in front of them
and derailing everything that they've worked towards. But then the
(48:48):
other part, you're like, dude, road most of those songs, like,
I do not envy any band in the situation they
were in at that time, because I'm like, what do
you do when the guy who's literally like the engine
of this thing is making it fall apart.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's the Bob Stintson dilemma. Like yeah,
I mean, I mean Jim Blossom still wrote some good
songs after that too, like the song follow You Down,
like it's a it's about that, Like yeah, it's it's
about that because they can't really follow you down, but
not that far because that song's brilliant. Yeah, but yeah,
great band. A lot of those great bands just have
(49:26):
someone who's got.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
There's that was the one.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah, you don't have any shows coming up in the
next couple of weeks or anything.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Now. Now we're kind of laying low till January as
we're gonna start hit hitting things hard again. It's getting cold, yep,
getting cold, and just like give ourselves some time to
relax for the holidays. Yeah, that's something we've learned in
the past, like the holiday season, like people got so
much other stuff going on, they don't they don't need
to go to your shows.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Like it's well, it's weird because Minnesota's got such a
fucking weird window of like if you can get the
night before Thanksgiving or like kind of during a holiday
break on a good night, you're probably gonna get a
lot of people to turn out, but if you hit
on the wrong night, everybody's at home, and then you've
got like Spring, it's like, well that's the weekend everybody
(50:18):
goes up north, like you want to stay like that.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
It's it's funny. I don't know if you've noticed this.
Every year in December, at some point Tommy Stinson does
a solo show somewhere in Minneapolis. Yeah, he does that
to just pay for his travel there.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
His visit comes.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Tom Yeah, he's like, I'm coming home for the holidays, anyway,
let me just play play a show, make some money
real quick.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
I think that one was in November, but it must
have been around Thanksgiving. We opened for him at the
fine Line and he actually, no, it wasn't because of that.
It was when he was still in Guns n' Roses
because he Guns and Roses played the Target Center on
like a Sunday night, and then he took the Guns
n' Roses other guys minus Axle, and they backed him
(51:07):
on his solo stuff and we opened that show at
the fine Line the next day, which was epic. But yeah,
like it's always seems to be around a holiday. It's
smart it's smart, really really enjoying your stuff. But I
was excited to see another kind of like minded band
(51:29):
pop up, because you know, there are a lot of
bands out there doing a lot of different stuff. But
it was it was definitely in my wheelhouse. So I
was very excited to see that, and even more excited
to hear you guys live and you guys are damn good.
Alex Fuller from Polstream. Great band, great conversation. I hope
(51:53):
you all will check them out, follow them on the
social media machines, go see them play. If they come
to your town, go see them.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
But definitely check out.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
That album out with the old good stuff. If you're
fans of the of the rock and roll, of the Replacements,
of the Gin Blossoms, of that sort of thing, you're
gonna love it. That is my guarantee. Thank you for
listening to the Figure Eights podcast from Minneapolis Studio twenty four.
Speaker 4 (52:29):
We will see you next time. Happy Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
Stop that there you're going all too long?
Speaker 3 (53:08):
You a ticket ticket father wisted him.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
It's hard say she has a health in that class.
(53:35):
She doesn't need much help, but you tell anything you
have to came.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
She likes a man I care yourself.
Speaker 3 (53:45):
I've been chasing the night all.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
The rest of the life.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
I don't have must choice in the man, you too, fools.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Man, stop that there.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
Going from today now listen to fake stop.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
That you can call it. No, no, you would take
an T.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Colling.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
Listen, it's.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
You keep calling calling me. You can call, you can
talk like, you can talk like a job. You can
(55:18):
talk to me. You can't talk like. Do you talk
like
You are listening to the Figure It's podcast. I'm your
host Nick Leet from the band High on Stress and
of Minneapolis, Minnesota. And today's guest is an up and comer,
really great singer songwriter, band leader here in Minneapolis. He
has his name is Alex Fuller and he leads the
band Pollstring. Got a brand new record out called Out
(00:30):
with the Old that you should definitely familiarize yourself with.
You could find it anywhere where you get your records,
wherever you stream your records. And uh, I'm giving you
the I'm giving you the guarantee here that if you
like uh, if you like the rock and roll, you're
gonna like the pull String. So check out Pollstring. Great
conversation with Alex. Wish him the best of luck as
(00:52):
they continue to move on in their in their band
daze here and Uh, without further ado, I give you
Alex Fuller.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
To me, it's got my home on work release. You
got me.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
How's your day going?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Doing? Good day off from work? So I just been
hanging out.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I'm a Starbucks supervisor, it's my day job.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We're at downtown, the one That's why I like the
US Bank Stadium.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, nice haul. You've been doing that.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I've been there for three years.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh quite a wow?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Did that? I was doing it part time for a
long time while I was finishing up my undergrad and
then now I'm just continue doing it because pays the bills,
you know.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Nice finished school?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yep?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
What did what did you go for?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Psychology?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Ah?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
That's a good one. Yeah, you'll utilize that one every
day in your life. Oh yeah, no matter.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
What, especially like dealing with other like managing personalities and
bands and stuff like. Yeah, only helpful. I also do
some studio work here and there, and that's definitely a
skill you need to manage musicians in the studio.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
But nice, you have a studio.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, well this this is my like my home studio.
You can't see I have. I have like one of
those like home depot shelves and I got two amps
and a whole bunch of guitar cases on it and
my recording rig over here. That's why I actually have
like a nice microphone, like this is what I use,
yeah for demoing all my stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah you're not messed around with that mic.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, good old sm seven B Yeah, No, it's uh,
that's on my list.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
That's one of the next things to get to add
to the arsenal. I'm in my mine as welly nice
home studio, so awesome. How was the tour you just
got back? How many dates did you do?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It was good? This one was I forget how many
days it was because this one was kind of like
split up a little bit, which is actually really nice.
Like in March. In March, we did a tour that
was like nine or ten days in a row, and
like those weekday shows, especially in a new city, can
be kind of kind of rough. So this time we
wanted to like do more of like Thursday to Sunday
(03:09):
runs ideally, and some of these were just like Saturday,
like Friday Saturday too, So like technically the tour started
the beginning of November. We did a Eau Claire, Wisconsin
with our friend's mother wind and then green Room the
next day Friday, Saturday. Yeah. Oh were you at that one?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I remember you messaged me about it.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, no, I was there. Good show, very nice.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
That was good, and well wee week after that we
went to that that then there was the longer run
we started in Rochester, which actually ended up getting canceled
because we showed up and then like the whole block
had no power. So that one's being rescheduled for December hopefully,
but so to be continued on Rochester. And then we
(03:53):
went to Omaha, Nebraska, first time in Nebraska. That was
a pretty fun, very flat. Yeah, the drive wasn't that interesting, uh,
but so we got to know that that stretch of
drive real well. So we went to Omaha for Friday.
Saturday we went to Ames, Iowa, good college town. We
played there a bunch of times, and then Sunday we
(04:15):
went back to Lincoln, Nebraska. So we did a little
well back and forth through Iowa. Mind numbing drive, but
that's just the way to a routing work sometimes. We
wanted that Saturday and Ames because it was actually a
good show at the university. Those are all really fun,
especially Ames, obviously we have fans there. And then Sunday
(04:36):
in Lincoln, Nebraska, we played at Duffy's, which is kind
of a more famous Oh yeah, then you Nirvana played there.
It's kind of the big one, even though according to
the sound guy, Nirvana got booed off stage when they
played there. But it's still like claim to fame.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, from the people that I've talked to that have
been around that scene and as Nirvana was coming up,
they all will say the same thing. We were very
that Nirvana ended up being the band because they were fine, cool,
We could definitely help to simplify the songs and add
(05:11):
a world class drummer behind.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
The whole thing.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Definitely made made the whole thing go.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Oh yeah, but those on those ones are really good.
Duffy was a lot of fun too, because I was
kind of like doing some crowd work at that one,
because there's a lot of people at like the start
of the show that were just kind of like it's
kind of like the room's kind of like there's like
the music room and then the barroom, like you can
see into both of them, but they're a little bit separated,
so there's.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
A bunch of the tricky.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, so there's a bunch of people just hanging out
in the bar and especially like this big group of
college girls who were there for the last band, the headliners.
So throughout our set, I just kind of kept heckling them.
It's like, come on, it's like a music show, like
let's have a good time. So basically it was bullying
them into coming into it, into the room and having
a good time, and then what do you know, by
the end of it, they were nice.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Nice. How long you've been playing guitar?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
H many, many years? I started like before freshman year
of high school. Okay, I remember I got a guitar
like that. Fifteen, Yeah, like fourteen fifteen whatever age from
which that is as.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Well, probably about the same amount of time.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, and then I'm twenty five.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I was in the nineteen hundreds. Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
So you were fifteen, so that would have been you
said you're.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Twenty five about ten years ten years ago.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, you're an old man.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
It's starting to feel like all gets worse.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
It gets much worse. What was What was your first
band that you played? Is this your first band? No?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
This is like is this number three? It's my first band?
Was just a project with a friend of mine, John Graber,
the son of Bill Graber, from a band called Arc
Welder from the nineties. My dad hooked me up with John,
jammed together for a long time and we had a
band called Grand Tradition of Nothing. We only ever played
like two shows, but that was just like a duo
(07:09):
project for just like our guitars were tuned down to
D standard or like drop C, so we were just
playing like really heavy, like fludgy stuff. We did that
for a couple of years. It never really like it
wasn't until the end. We probably did that for like
three years just throughout high school, and it wasn't until
like the last year that I actually was like, all right,
(07:29):
let's like start making songs out of some of this stuff.
Because most of the time we'd just go to his
place and we'd just jam for like three hours. Like
mostly I'd be on guitar, but like we both played everything,
so like we'd switch, like I'd do drums for a bit,
he'd play guitar vice versa. So for years it was
(07:49):
just just jamming. It's just very just whatever we came
up with. I wish we recorded some of that. It's
kind of a shame that it's all just lost to history.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
But yeah, I have a few of those to where
I'm like, I wish we would have recorded something, just
so I can go back to it and hear it
now after all this time. Nowadays, it's a little easier
because the ability to record is a lot easier than
it was back then, where you had to book studio
time and pay by the hour and all of that.
But yeah, I have like boombox cassette recordings to stuff
that you could barely make out what it is. So
(08:22):
what got you playing guitar? Like what inspired you to
pick it up?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
I was thinking about that earlier today actually, So I
think the main thing was, like I was interested in music,
which is why I asked to get a guitar for
my birthday go before going into freshman year of high school.
But then in high school, like I lived too close
to my high school, so there wasn't a bus to
pick me up, so at the end of the day,
(08:47):
I'd have to walk home every day. It's like a
twenty thirty minute walk. So every day, like I'd just
start cycling through like different albums I had on my
iPod at the time, and my dad had a nice
big CD library, kind of like the one behind you.
It's like I had a bunch of CDs at my disposal,
a lot of stuff you'd like given to me, and
I downloaded my iTunes but never actually listened to son
walking home from high school every day, I'd just start
(09:09):
going through these albums and some of them started to
really stick out to me, like green Day, like Dookie,
and then the international super hits were like the first ones.
I was like, damn, that sounds cool and it's simple
enough that I can actually like try and learn that.
Hell yeah. So that without green Day was huge, and
the Foo Fighters a bunch of those other nineties bands, Nirvana,
(09:32):
but green Day was kind of the key one where
it was like, these are cool, catchy songs and they're
simple enough that I can actually like figure them out
even when I can barely play well.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It's such a gateway because to that point, when I
started to play, it was like Nirvana was Nirvana. So
I learned those songs of like, oh, I can learn
how to play these songs, and it when you're that age,
like you know back in the eighties. I'm sure you
know all the hair band shit. I'm sure there were
moments where people are like, oh, I could never play
(10:02):
like that. But what came later is it was like,
you know what, like I can play these chords and
it's really fun, and I like these songs, so you
can kind of jump into them and get inspired by
them and actually play along with the thing and feel
like you can actually hang someone, which is a little
difficult with some of that other stuff. So Green Day, Nirvana,
(10:27):
food Fighters.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
What else? What else was there? White Stripes is another
big one. When I was going to pick out my
first actual guitar, like, one of the only things I
could play was White Stripes fell in Love with the Girl.
So I just kept playing those same chords on all
these different guitars until I found them that spoke to me.
It worked.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, mine was Polly by Nirvana, like over and over
the same thing. Parents. That's funny. Yeah, I can't remember
who I was talking to on here, but somebody was
Shiit is it the dude from fig Ish It was somebody,
But basically we were talking about what like the different generations,
(11:07):
grasp onto, like Nirvana was for a lot for the
people my age. And then he's like, yeah, I think
the White Stripes are kind of that next one where
everybody kind of learned Icky Thump and you know some
of those songs. Yeah, but it's you know what struck
me about you guys, is and I'm sure you probably
get that a lot from people who've been playing music
(11:27):
for a while, is you're doing the things. It's a
rock band you're you're like you're like a unicorn man.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, no, it which is such an odd thing, but
it's like we have experienced that in the Minneapolis scene
where it's like we've a lot of bands that we
love when, we love playing with, but what we don't
sound like them. Yeah, Like like what we're what we're
doing is very much a nineties two thousand's rock sound. Yeah,
And it's not like that's just what I write. Like
(11:59):
I don't know, it's not like an intentional thing. It's
just those are the songs they listened to and that's
the stuff write.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah. No, I a same thing here too, like like
high on Stress is like very much in that same realm.
But it's yeah, that's what I grew up playing and
hell Ship I played back then. The style has not
changed back. But it was fun. It was fun seeing
(12:27):
that because like even the other night I took my
kid to I d K as a rapper at the
Filmore and the first guy they had like an acoustic
guy playing and he had like these really terrible compressed
backing tracks with bass and drums and he was playing acoustic,
and I'm like, ah, like be a rock band or
(12:48):
just play acoustic. You can't have it both ways. So like,
it was very exciting for me because I'd been meaning
to see you guys for a bit and then uh
high on Stress drummer was playing somewhere and then I
saw them and then popped over to see you guys
at the can Can Wonderland.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
And it was fun to see because when Ian s
Trust started I was twenty four, which is kind of crazy.
So it's fun to see people your age doing this
and doing kind of a similar style of music. So
it definitely got me going, well, I wonder what the
backstory is on this? How did you discover the music?
Because we all do right, Like, you know, I wasn't
(13:30):
alive for the Beatles, but we all liked the Beatles.
It's just oh yeah, it's staying.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Born and raised on the Beatles.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
You have to be. And if you're not, I apologized
to anybody out there who didn't have that as an upbringing.
You may want to talk to your parents, So, so
was your dad? What did your dad do?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
So this is where this is where a lot of
this stuff came from.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I think I may know who your dad is, and
I'm just confirming. Yeah, so his name is Rick Fuller thought,
so I thought that was probably your dad.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah. So he made music videos with a company called
Harder Fuller Films for a long time throughout the nineties
early two thousands. He was also in a band called
Venison that was based out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Yeah,
they toured regionally for a long time. But he was
just it was it was interesting because like music was
always around, and obviously I grew up listening to a
(14:23):
lot of these artists, didn't even realize who a lot
of them were, but like he never pushed it too hard.
It was just always there in the background, and then
like he let me kind of discover it for myself,
Like I was mentioning like in high school when I
was listening to those albums walking home from school, Like
the albums were just at my disposal and it was
just like up to me to kind of look around
and be like, oh, what's this, what's this and then
(14:45):
like figure out what I liked. And then the replacements
big influence obviously in one of my dad's favorite bands.
Hence why I have let it be poster back there,
that one that one.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Didn't see my crap back care ye in casey.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
That yep, yeah, But the replacements didn't click for me
until I got to college. Like it was a weird
thing where Like for a long time I was like, Eh,
I don't like Westerbridge's voice. It's too too screamy, it's weird.
His songs are chaotic. And then he got to college
and it just clicked and I was like, wait, this
is genius, like I don't.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Know, and funny too, because I know you guys you know,
do some covers. But I'm like, have you realized when
you're learning these replacement songs? Sometimes you're like, what they
do that five times? Why are they doing that five times?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Here?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Like it's so like bizarre. In some cases, it sounds
so simple and it sounds natural, but when you get
down to actually learning those songs, you're like, it's not
how songs are written, Like why did they do that there?
That is so weird And there's just that idiosyncrasy of
kind of his songwriting. I don't know what it is,
but it's just so cool. But I don't think you
(15:56):
even realized it until you started getting into them. No,
fuck with this.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
We learned that the hard way last year in December,
we did the like First Avenues Replacements Tribute show. We
did a set of replacements covers, mostly stuff from like
the early period Sorry Man, and a bunch of stuff
from Hoot and Nanny and like like when we were
listening to him, we're like, oh, this will be pretty
easy to throw together, and then we started learning him.
(16:20):
Especially there's one called one song called something to Do
from Sorry Ma. Yep, it's so fucked up the arrangement,
but it's so but it was so satisfying when we
finally like locked it down. It was like, we spent
so much time on this one song that's like less
than two minutes. Yeah, just because the arrangement is so
fucked up. That's just part of the beauty of Westerburg.
It's like you don't know what's gonna come next, and
(16:42):
it kind of keeps you on your toes in a way.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
I think it was just impulsivity. He was like this
feels good, this is unexpected, and he just rolled with it. Yeah,
and like props to him.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Like, yeah, so bizarre we did.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
So.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I did a number of those one year because it
used to be at First Avenue and they would have
First Avenue in the main room, and we did the
first the main room one one time and another year
they were gonna have us do the entry, and then
last minute, like two days before, she's like, hey, we're
gonna move you to the main room. So we ditched
like all of the songs that we had learned because
(17:17):
we're like, well, we're gonna do the main room, let's
do these songs. So we had like two days to
like learn a bunch of songs that we weren't gonna
play or that we were going to play it that
it was so fun and we pulled them off. And
I'm like a little freaky when you're getting up there
and you're like, we're just gonna be uh on the
tight rope yep.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
I mean that's very fitting for the replacements, though you
don't want it to be you don't want it to
be too tight. There needs to be a little too good,
needs to be a little chaos. You're gonna walk the line.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, exactly exactly, And you're didn't your dad your dad
did the Westerburg doc, didn't he?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yes, come to me tremble Yeah. And then and then
he also filmed a bunch of the reunion shows.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
No and we'll ever see. Yeah, did you get to
see any of those or were you?
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I've seen you probably, Oh, I've seen I've seen the footage.
I wasn't cool enough yet at the time because that's
when I was just kind of getting into music. But
if I had been, man, I could have been backstage
like what the fuck is like? Yeah, but like I've
seen the footage and it's it's glorious. Someday, someday hopefully
(18:26):
gets released. But Paul's being Paul.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Moved on. What what shows did he do? Did he
do a lot of them?
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah? It was most of the I want to say,
like the first couple of ones. It's like the first
riot Fest in Toronto, the Saint Paul Midway one Denver,
don't remember what venue, but that one is the Denver one.
Is they they rolled out in like the pink cowboy
outfits in the dresses. Yeah, so that one. That one
it ends with with the extended hooton Nanny where they
hand stuff off to the roadies. So it's like it's
(18:59):
the one that you want to see.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Did you do Chicago? I think so I was at
that show. I was about nine deep from Tommy and uh,
take it a ride kicked in and I feel like
I blew back about fifty eight yards, Like it was
just like, holy shit, they were so good and and
that I was at the Midway show too, which was
really good. But and everybody talks about that being just
(19:22):
such an epic thing, but I'm like that Chicago show
was one of the best things I've ever seen. It
was so freaking good.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah. Well, that's the crazy thing about it too, is
like when they when they did their union, they still
were fucking great. So well they took it seriously, which
is something that historically was hard for them. But yeah,
like they sounded great. I mean, having a fucking powerhouse
drummer always helps.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
But yeah, yeah, when I when I heard Foo fighters
were grabbing him, I'm like, yep, makes sense. Good move, funny.
So how did how did this band come around?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:58):
String? So Paul String, Uh, I don't know. I I
described my my band. All my bands have just been
a result of a strange series of coincidences. So Paul String.
Literally like, I was working on this song called twenty something.
There's just kind of like a nice little power pop thing.
It's it's been released now, but I was working on it.
(20:19):
My girlfriend Kayla posted a little clip of it to
our Instagram story it's like me playing it, and then
a friend of hers, Josh, saw that and was like, Yo,
that's a cool song. Like who is this guy? Like
does he want a jam? So that's it. So that's
hard player, right. Yeah, So that's why I met Josh,
our lead guitar player.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
That's a nice score because uh, yeah, he's he's got
something there, didn't.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
He a He's a great lead guitar player, and he's
there's a certain like he's playing. He has a unique
playing style, yeah, where it's like there's a little bit
of chaos to it.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
He's got a little bit of the Bob Stintson to him,
like he does What the fuck was that?
Speaker 3 (20:56):
But it was I wasn't gonna make the comparison myself,
but they're definitely there is someone out there.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I can hear it.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
But I met Josh and like we the first time,
we just kind of jammed, just kind of just had
some fun with it. And then the second time I
met up with him, he played me some of the
songs he was working on, yeh, because he was trying
to get this project going and so he played me
some of these songs, and one of them was the
instrumental for what became Sunday Afternoon, which was like our
(21:24):
first which ended up being our first single, And that
one really just kind of stuck in my mind, like
the instrumental was so so hooky, so catchy. So over
the next couple of weeks, I just was like, I
need to write something on top of that, and ended
up writing the melody and the lyrics, rearranged it a
little bit to fit the fit what I was hearing.
(21:47):
And then a couple of weeks later he had he
had been setting up this like studio day with some
of his friends where he was just gonna go and
record these songs, just like just to do it. I
don't think he was even meant to be like actually
creating a band. It was just like he set this
thing up, paying it on his own dime. We're all
going to the studio, have fun, record these songs he's
been working on, and just do it. So I just
(22:11):
ended up getting sucked into that. And it was interesting
because he already had a different vocalist that was supposed
to be singing on most of these oh really, and
a bass and a bass player and a drummer and
these other guys. So the first incarnation of Pollstering had
two singers. I was the second guy who came in
because I only sang lead on Sunday Afternoon, which ended
(22:32):
up being the first single, and then I sang co
lead on another one called Isolated, and then the other
three songs I was barely on honestly, So it was
like it was this interesting thing where it was like
we didn't know what this was gonna be yet. Yeah,
so we recorded the stuff, got it mixed, put out
a single. It was cool, and then we started booking
some shows, and that's when it kind of like we're like,
(22:54):
all right, we needed we didn't name. We need to
like figure out what this is. My girlfriend was the
one who came with Polestring. She was trying to like
brainstorm band names. Then one day we were looking at
the ceiling fan in our living room. It's got one
of those old school like dangling chains on it, so
she was like, what about pull String.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I was gonna refrain from asking you where the name
came from, because everybody loves to ask that question about bands,
but I was very interested. So I'm glad you went
there coming.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
From Pull String, And then that's why we have like
a light bulb with a lot of our logos because
yeah turns out yeah, yep, yeah, So that's where that's
where that came from. And then yeah, early lineup of
Pole String was a five piece three guitars, two vocalists, bass, drums,
and then we went through a series of like a
(23:42):
lot of those early members just like had other things
going on. Like their first drummer, Tristan, he would take
like contracts at these different amusement amusement parks around the country.
We'd get paid to play drums at these places. So
he would just be like up and gone for a
couple months at a time. So the first year of
Pollstring was just of like chaotic playing a gig here
and there when people were around. And then slowly it
(24:06):
started uh and then eventually that other singer left and
and slowly I started introducing more of my songs to
the project, which led to like the first album we
put out, All I Know is what I've Seen, which
that one is most more of my songs, and then
a couple that were like co written with Josh kind
of add his flare, I mean he adds his flair
(24:26):
to a lot of them. He's got some cool guitar solos.
But it led to that, and then a little bit
further down the line, we finally got ended up with
like a stable lineup where we got our current drummer,
Will Keebler, who's incredible. I can play, He can play
and hits fucking hard. Every every drummer I've ever played
(24:47):
with is like they come from that Dave Grohl school
of drumming, and I love it. It's beautiful. Like. So
we ended up with Will, and then we rotated through
a couple more bass players. We ended up with Eric
we have now and Eric is incredible.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yes, I feel like it can't can't Wonderland. You had
just introduced him as the new guy.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, I mean it's also an ongoing joke. He's our
seventh base player technically, so we make a lot of
We make a lot of jokes, but we have a
revolving rotation of musicians in the band.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
But he's years from now. He's still gonna be the
new guy. He's just gonna have to get.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Used to it. Yeah, But he's been in it for
a long time now. He's been in it since like
April or May, so that's good amount of time. And
he was a college friend of Will's, so they knew
each other really well, and then he became a friend
of mine. He yeah, he like filled in for the
band a couple of times before he like officially joined,
so it feels like he's been in it a lot longer.
(25:47):
And the other great thing about him is he's got
a crazy vocal range, probably even higher than me. So
I can give him like my high harmonies and like
he can do it just fine. So I'm like, oh,
this is this is nice. Like I can relax a
little bit, don't kind of strain for the high else
today I have.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
A secret weapon like that too. His name is Jim
and he also plays bass. Make me sound better by
singing real pretty over there? All right, thank you? That's so.
How long has the band been around now? With the
at least the three out of four of you?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, so now we're coming up on like three three years.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Three years. You're you're ancient in band terms.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, yeah, that is.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
That is.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
The crazy thing is like a lot of the bands
that like came up around that same time as us,
that we played with in early days a lot of
them don't exist anymore, which is tragic, but it's just
kind of the life cycle of it, as we learned ourselves.
Like it's it's hard to keep it's hard to keep
four people around that long because everyone has their own
stuff going on, their own lives, their own priorities, like
(26:49):
especially in your twenties, Like some people just decide this
isn't for them, and that's valid. Like, musician life is
not easy. There's a lot of a lot of pros
and cons, but we found the right guys for it,
and we're just gonna keep keep going as long as
we're enjoying it.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah. No, we we hit twenty one years this year.
Hell yeah, and it's we had a break in there
for a little bit because our bass player lives in
Chicago actually, so he literally just drives up like for shows,
practice wherever we're going, Like we did some shows in
la and he just we met him at the airport.
(27:28):
It's actually kind of funny. We've definitely experienced the oh yeah,
remember that band we used to play with. Wonder what
those guys are up to these days, because they're you know,
bands last maybe two years, maybe a show and then
they're gone. So it the longer you're at it, the
more interesting it seems to get because you're just like,
we're still doing this, holy shit.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah. Well and the funniest thing to me about it
is like First Avenue and like whatever that newspaper was
would always have like the best new bands things. Yeah,
and we're seeing those, and I would always look at
it and I'll just be like that. I always look
at it and would be like that band has been
around for like four or five years. They're not new.
But that's the part for.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
It's somebody who is in a band for twenty years
has a new band.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, you're like wow, But it's just like that's the
point that like the bands start to reach more general
awareness in the scene type of thing.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, do you find So what would have been your
big pockets as far as when you go out and play,
Like where do you draw best? You draw best in town?
Do you draw best in Iowa? What's been kind of
the the story behind that?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Well, I mean we do good hometown because we have
a lot of friends, family, kind of easy, easy draw.
I mean you experienced the green room like that was
pretty good, pretty crowd there and anywhere we found that,
like any like college towns tend to be pretty good
because college kids like they want something fun to do
on a Friday Saturday night. So Ames, Iowa was kind
(28:58):
of like the first one we stumbled into. There's a
really good house venue out there called the called the
A Hole. Just endless joke has been made about that.
We played at that. We played at that a bunch
of times to kind of get our footing there, and
now we're at to the point where we're playing at
the university's venue, so you've kind of been able to
kind of level that up and the kids always go crazy,
(29:20):
like it's it's fun doing stuff like that. We also
really love Milwaukee, mostly because like there's a lot of
really good bands out of Milwaukee right now. Oh really Yeah,
Like there's a band called Diet Light who's incredible. Their
stage show is just ridiculous. They're the first band that
we met that we like. They do steat, They do
(29:40):
like dynamic stretching and stuff before they go on stage.
And then once you see that, once you see their set,
you understand why, Like you're like.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
What the fuck are they doing back there?
Speaker 3 (29:51):
And then you experience it and you're like oh no.
These guys are like, they know what they're doing. They're great.
There's another band called Modern Joey, and there's a lot
of other Wisconsin towns too. Oa Claire is always fun
because I have family connections there. And then also there's
a lot of good bands. Band called the over Unders,
another one called Motherwind who we played without the Green Room.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Where do you play in o'claire?
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Uh, we played it. I mean we played at the
mouse Trap a lot. That's kind of like the classic
bar there, and more recently we've been playing at the Plus,
which is like kind of like a step up, bigger stage,
nicer sound system. The sound guy there, Colin, is great.
He's fun to shoot the ship with about old music stuff.
We played a couple of Replacements covers and caught him
off guard the first time, and then he's been a
(30:37):
fan ever since.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
That'll do it I made.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
I made a crack. I made a joke before we
did one of them. We were about to go into
like can't hurdly Wait or something. My guitar was a
little out of tune, so I started tuning it and
I was like, wait, it'll be more authentic if I
don't remember I heard I heard Colin Audi cackle at
the soundboard.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
That's funny. So you've got knew. Well, so you've been
around three years. What are some of the more memorable
shows that you've had, which what comes to mind?
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I mean, the most recent runs were all pretty good.
I mean the green Room was that was my one
of my favorite, like hometown shows we've done at a
proper venue. One of my other favorite ones was for
May fourth, like Star Wars Game the fourth d with you,
we did a house show at the Como backdoor and like, uh,
like the Como neighborhood in Minneapolis. It's like that one.
(31:30):
We all dressed up as Star Wars characters and then
like the college kids were going crazy. So that one's
really fun. We like to do a lot of like
themed shows like that if we can, because it just
kind of like gets more people interested. Like first for
Halloween the year before, we did a little weekend run
where we dressed up as the Scooby Doo gang, and
then and then we did the like the pop punk
(31:52):
Scooby Doo theme song that was really good. And one
more I got to mention before we move on, the
and the Replacements tribute show we did at the Turf
Club last year. It was insane that that one was crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Have you just was it just last year that you
did it?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Okay, yeah, pretty packed in there. I've gotten the last
couple of years or the last couple of times they've
done it, but.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
It was it was back in the day.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
It was pretty nuts.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, it was sold out Turf Club and that was
like one of the first times we played to a
crowd that that packed. So that was a huge adrenaline rush.
Plus playing those kind of those crazy energy songs like
it was very good.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Yeah, who are who were the special guests last year?
Usually there was a couple of guests I did it,
so we did the like we did two or three
of them as a band, and then I was like
guest singer when they would do the house band thing,
like probably like five times. But who do they have?
Anybody interesting that you got to meet that.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
I got? I got the poster above me here on
my wall. I mean, they're they're so many of them.
There was like twenty guest artists or something, so they
were just like rotating through them for the second half.
Some of the cool ones whom I who am? I
thinking of there's what's his name? I can't read from
(33:20):
that for there was like there's one like legendary Minneapolis
musician that I finally met, Oh, Curtis A. That's that's
when I finally met Curtis.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
He's a trip.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
That was cool.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
He is a trip.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Yeah, and then a lot of like new artists too,
some of which I hadn't met before, so it was
kind of cool, like oh, like hey, like and obviously
very easy to bond with them because we're all there
because we love their replacements. Like, so it's interesting to
talk to people see like hey, like what song did
you choose and like kind of ask him like why Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And then that had Greg Norton from Who's Kerdo When You're,
Dave Permer from Soul Asylum, Craig Finn from The Whole Steady,
Dan Wilson from Semisonic. So like it's fun because they
always kind of have like a oh like cool, this
will be kind of entertaining.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, And I gotta give First Avenue a shout out
for like actually giving us like a twenty five minute
set to to do our own thing, like because they
could they could have just been like, yeah, I want
to just do like a feature thing, but they actually
like took a chance, gave us a twenty five and
it went well. So on the main stage it was
just the the Slim tribute band was just does it.
(34:32):
Then it was us and then the headliners, so it
was like it was cool they that's all. And then
and then they had they had other bands going in
the clown lounge downstairs YEP to kind of rotate back
and forth, and then the Melismatics doing the doing tim
all the way through with the guest artists, and then
greatest Hits with the guest singers as well. So it's
cool that we got to like basically be one of
(34:54):
the big acts of the night.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yeah, that's pretty fun. The last I think the last
time I did it, I did a Birthday Girl with
the Melismatics and they had Michael Bland on drums, so
I was completely geeking out because when you're standing on
stage and that dude hits a snare drum, it's uh,
you know a snare drum has been hit.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Power.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, No, those shows are fantastic. Are you doing this
year as well?
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Or no?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
We we asked them about it, but they were like,
I'll probably save you for next year because they just
want to rotate artists rotate.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah, yeah, I noticed that too. There was a lot
of different people as the years have gone on, kind
of swapping them out. So you've got the you've got
the new album done. Where do you Where do you
record at? Do you record at your home studio? Do
you book a place? So what's your what's your problem?
Speaker 3 (35:46):
So it started at our friend Zach. He worked at
a studio called Basquez Productions in Saint Paul. So it
started recording recording drums and guitars and vocals there. We
did that for Pull It and Spring is Here, and
then after that we moved to our drummer's basement. Nice,
So our drummer Will he works like Auitar Center, so
(36:08):
he gets really good prices on gear and he's just
over the years been accumulating a lot of really nice shit,
so so he just has a really good setup. But yeah,
so like he had a really good setup. And then
like at one point we had him just like I
had him just do some drums on a demo and
then I heard the drums you recorded and I was like, dude,
why are we paying for studio time? If you can
(36:28):
get something that sounds this good, And I would argue
with the drum sounds we ended up with in the end,
it's like I can hear a little bit more crispness
from the stuff that we did in the studio on
pull It, but his drums sound ninety percent is good.
And we saved like arguably thousands of dollars in the
end doing it ourselves. Yea, So it's like cool works for.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Me, who engineers all of you guys? Oh was that
who engineers the record all you guys?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
So mostly me and Will. Will Will basically has a
degree in audio engineering. He did a program at the
man Cato University. I was like audio engineering and like
music industry stuff. So he knows how to record stuff
really well. And then I also I did a boot
camp thing at a place called the Recording Workshop in
Ohio at one point. It's like I know a lot
(37:18):
of auto audio engineering stuff as well. So Will did
a lot of the drums. I did most of the guitars.
Here in my home studio, I have a capter xbox,
which is like you run a tube vamp into this
thing and it's like a digital cabinet simulator. So I
can record stuff basically silently, which is really nice. So
(37:39):
I could record guitars until like three am and didn't
bother anyone.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, are you in an apartment or are you in
a house?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
I'm in a house, but it's like a duplex. Our
landlords live upstairs, so like it can't be too loud
super late. Yeah, but so a lot of guitars here,
some guitars at Josh's house, which is where we typically practice.
He's got a smaller basement, but like it's it's actually
sound proved pretty well. We put up a bunch of
foam panels and stuff. But yeah, most of it at
(38:09):
Will's guitars, drums, I had vocals there. I just brought
this microphone over there and it took it took us
a couple of months. Like we're very we're perfectionists, but
I'm super happy with how it turned out. Nice.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
No, the record sounds really great and it so it
just came out what about three weeks ago? Yeah, it
when was the green room. I've lost all track of time.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
It was the beginning of November.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
It was like a few weeks ago. Okay, nice, So
what's the plan for the record, What do you do
and more touring, Like, uh.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
So we're gonna do more. The plan kind of for
next year is do a bunch of like weekend runs
so I start keep hitting some of these Midwest cities,
expand our network a little bit. But the other big
thing is we're gonna do some more music videos for
songs that we haven't done him for yet. Out with
the Old is gonna be a big one.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Nice does your dad help you with those?
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Or he might if I asked him to, but it's
kind of fun to just kind of do it ourselves.
He likes the diy attitude. But on this on these
tour runs we just did, we had our friend Al
come with and he was just doing video of like everything,
so there's he has a lot of footage of live
footage and just like behind the scenes stuff. So hopefully
(39:26):
use that to make a music video for Out with
the Old. And I think he also wants to make
like a mini tour documentary, so that should be interesting.
I don't know when that'll come out, but at some point. Yeah,
and just more social media stuff. We kind of go
in spurts where we'll like post a lot of kind
of like funny stuff and then we'll kind of like
run out of run out of ideas.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Sit for you're one, you posted fuck that one about
uh the set list one? Oh yeah, I had like
a million views on that.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
It currently has two point three million. And that's the
thing about social media is like you you don't know
what's gonna work. So like that that one, we spent
like five minutes recording it and editing it, put it
up low expectations. We're like, yeah, it's funny, it'll probably
do okay, and then what do you know, blew up?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Did you find that you had a lot more follows
from that or a lot of views or what? Yeah,
what came for that? Because that's a that's a large number.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Yeah we got, we got We definitely got some followers
out of it and a couple and some more screams
on stuff too. Is like some people actually went through
and listened to it. Not as much as you'd expect though,
for something that got two two million views and now
it has over one hundred thousand likes. I think we
only got like three or four hundred followers out of it.
Just still significant to be fair, but yeah, yeah, the
(40:48):
percentage is like but I mean that's probably the percentage
of people who actually stopped to like check us out
and listen to our music. So it's like cool, Like
those are the people who actually like checked it out
and like roll this is they thought it was cool. Yeah,
but yeah, so we'll keep doing stuff like that when
we think of ideas.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, that cracked me up. But I saw that view thing,
I was like, holy shit, did that take off like that?
But no, it is funny because some of those social
media things, to your point, like people are so onto
the next thing so quickly that like when what you
would expect like, oh, you know, we might have a
million new follow No, it's it's a small percentage, but
(41:30):
at least people know we exist now, you know what
I mean. Yeah, it definitely helps. Well, that's awesome. Some
more videos are you? You know? When was when did
your last because this is your is this your second record?
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Second full length?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Got it? And when was the last one? How how
far apart are they?
Speaker 3 (41:48):
The previous one was December of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Okay, see you rightly quickly?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah, and like some of this album was three of
the songs were ones that we re recorded from the
previous album. Just over the course of playing it for
so long with different members and just whatever, Like the
songs evolve, so like we were playing them live and
we were were just like, these don't sound like they
did on the album anymore. They sound different. So some
(42:16):
of those we wanted to recapture, kind of give them
a facelift, if you will.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, No, that thing sounds good. I hope the folks
that listen to this will go check it out because
it is quite enjoyable. So when when are you playing
around here? NeXT's the what's the plan from a show standpoint?
Speaker 3 (42:34):
Yeah, So we got one of them, was just announced.
We're playing at the Entry in January. Let's say January twelfth.
I don't remember what day of the week it is.
I think it's a weekend date that one. And we're
also going to be doing one on January third or
fourth at the White Squirrel in Saint Paul.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Third, and the other one is a twelfth. The Entry
one is the twelfth, which is a Sunday. I just
got a couple of those, and then in February we
got a couple of out of town ones. We're going
to a Big Turn Music fest and Red Wing Rochester, Thaw.
I don't remember the date for that one, but there's
like a couple of those like ones around the Midwest
(43:19):
that are kind of like festival things that happen yearly.
Oh and we're also playing in Eau Claire at the
Plus in January. It's not on my calendar, it should be.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
You.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, it's in there somewhere, but that'll be How.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Often do you get together as far as rehearsing.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Every Wednesday we rehearse and then typically on Mondays we'll
do like a do a discord meeting. It's just like
it's just basically just different version of zoom, so like
meet and talk business on Mondays. So then on Wednesday
we can just like do the fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Wait, you guys communicate with each other? What kind of
new school rock band is this? You actually communicate? You
need dysfunction and misunderstandings and hurt feelings. That's how that's
how you be in a band.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
That's that's the fun stuff I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
That awesome. So you get a lot of stuff coming up.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
M h.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Nice. Well before we kind of wrap up here, so
what uh what are you listening to today? Obviously you
talked about some of your influences and and what got
you into this kind of music? But what what? What's
been on the uh on the stereo as of late.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Let's check my Spotify. I was just listening to UH.
There's a Jack White album that dropped a few months
ago that I completely missed it because he didn't really
like promote it anything at all. It's called No Name.
It's actually really good.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
I've heard it's good. I haven't listened to it yet either.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
It's the closest thing to White Stripes he's done in
his solo career. Okay, so that's that's been good. I
was listening to the Foo Fighters first album earlier.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
I just I just love the vibe of that album.
The Bens by Radiohead. Ah, yeah, they're fantastic album. I
was listening to our local friends where they Lighter Coo.
It's another really good local rock band.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Check them out.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
I guess I was listening to some Credence Clearwater Revival
because you got a three times Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Cretens is awesome.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah. So just kind of a mixture of new and old. Yeah,
like I I tend to I tend to stay and
listen to a lot of my comfort artists. I thought
I was kind of nineties two thousands type things. Another
big one, Who's not on here? Neil Young Ah fucking
love love Neil Yep. Large influence, especially on lyricism.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, yeah, cool, that's awesome. The I think you need
to have a Creedence Clearwater night or do you just
play all Credence covers?
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Blow my voice out after that one?
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Oh god, yeah that might hurt a little bit. Uh,
that's awesome. Are you gin Blossoms guy? I can hear
a little gin Blossoms.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
In there, so, so jin Blossoms thing is interesting. I
had never heard of him until everyone kept saying our
songs sound like the gin Blossoms. So then I listened
to him and then I was like At first I
was like, yeah, I kind of hear it. And then
I learned how to play the song follow You Down
on guitar and was playing it and singing it, and
I was like, oh, okay, yeah, sounds a lot like it.
(46:31):
And then in response to that, I wrote the song
what If, which is just kind of like meant to
be like playing into that gin Blossoms thing. Yeah, so
so I yeah, I like him now, and we do
kind of sound like him. It was just so funny.
For a long time, that was always the first comparison
you'd get, and then you feel like the gin Blossoms again.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
It's funny because the gin Blossoms when they came out,
like my class base and I I was over like,
like all the noisy shit over here. And then you know,
they liked whatever it was on the radio, like people
I went to school with in high school. But the
one thing we could all agree on was the gin Blossoms.
Everybody liked them Blossoms. They were just great and I
(47:15):
met them years ago. It's funny. Our their guitar tech
was definitely interested in one of our friends. So we
found ourselves side stage at one of their shows and
hung out with them afterwards. But they covered Can't Hardly
Wait that night, and we asked him about the replacements.
They because they recorded New Miserable Experience, had ardent where
(47:40):
policements did please to meet me. So they were keeking
out telling us about how in all of the downtime
they were listening to all of the replacements outtakes, and
how like the engineers were bringing them all out so
they can listen to them because they're like enormous replacements
fans as well, So it's all kind of from the
same family tree. But now I kind of picked up
on So it's funny that you leaned into it with
(48:02):
that song.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Yeah, I actually just saw them. They were playing. I
did like a rib fest in man Cato this last summer.
I took my kid down because I'm like a kid
loves like Ribs and I'm like blossoms and Ribs. So
they're still good. They're a good band.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
Yeah, just really pop, just good pop rock music.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
And just an epically sad. I don't understand why no
one has made it. Well, I probably know why no
one's made a documentary on their story because they probably
don't want to talk about it because it's pretty atrocious.
Part of me is like I can't really blame them
if a guy's literally falling apart in front of them
and derailing everything that they've worked towards. But then the
(48:48):
other part, you're like, dude, road most of those songs, like,
I do not envy any band in the situation they
were in at that time, because I'm like, what do
you do when the guy who's literally like the engine
of this thing is making it fall apart.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's the Bob Stintson dilemma. Like yeah,
I mean, I mean Jim Blossom still wrote some good
songs after that too, like the song follow You Down,
like it's a it's about that, Like yeah, it's it's
about that because they can't really follow you down, but
not that far because that song's brilliant. Yeah, but yeah,
great band. A lot of those great bands just have
(49:26):
someone who's got.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
There's that was the one.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah, you don't have any shows coming up in the
next couple of weeks or anything.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Now. Now we're kind of laying low till January as
we're gonna start hit hitting things hard again. It's getting cold, yep,
getting cold, and just like give ourselves some time to
relax for the holidays. Yeah, that's something we've learned in
the past, like the holiday season, like people got so
much other stuff going on, they don't they don't need
to go to your shows.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Like it's well, it's weird because Minnesota's got such a
fucking weird window of like if you can get the
night before Thanksgiving or like kind of during a holiday
break on a good night, you're probably gonna get a
lot of people to turn out, but if you hit
on the wrong night, everybody's at home, and then you've
got like Spring, it's like, well that's the weekend everybody
(50:18):
goes up north, like you want to stay like that.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
It's it's funny. I don't know if you've noticed this.
Every year in December, at some point Tommy Stinson does
a solo show somewhere in Minneapolis. Yeah, he does that
to just pay for his travel there.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
His visit comes.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Tom Yeah, he's like, I'm coming home for the holidays, anyway,
let me just play play a show, make some money
real quick.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
I think that one was in November, but it must
have been around Thanksgiving. We opened for him at the
fine Line and he actually, no, it wasn't because of that.
It was when he was still in Guns n' Roses
because he Guns and Roses played the Target Center on
like a Sunday night, and then he took the Guns
n' Roses other guys minus Axle, and they backed him
(51:07):
on his solo stuff and we opened that show at
the fine Line the next day, which was epic. But yeah,
like it's always seems to be around a holiday. It's
smart it's smart, really really enjoying your stuff. But I
was excited to see another kind of like minded band
(51:29):
pop up, because you know, there are a lot of
bands out there doing a lot of different stuff. But
it was it was definitely in my wheelhouse. So I
was very excited to see that, and even more excited
to hear you guys live and you guys are damn good.
Alex Fuller from Polstream. Great band, great conversation. I hope
(51:53):
you all will check them out, follow them on the
social media machines, go see them play. If they come
to your town, go see them.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
But definitely check out.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
That album out with the old good stuff. If you're
fans of the of the rock and roll, of the Replacements,
of the Gin Blossoms, of that sort of thing, you're
gonna love it. That is my guarantee. Thank you for
listening to the Figure Eights podcast from Minneapolis Studio twenty four.
Speaker 4 (52:29):
We will see you next time. Happy Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
Stop that there you're going all too long?
Speaker 3 (53:08):
You a ticket ticket father wisted him.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
It's hard say she has a health in that class.
(53:35):
She doesn't need much help, but you tell anything you
have to came.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
She likes a man I care yourself.
Speaker 3 (53:45):
I've been chasing the night all.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
The rest of the life.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
I don't have must choice in the man, you too, fools.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Man, stop that there.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
Going from today now listen to fake stop.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
That you can call it. No, no, you would take
an T.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Colling.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
Listen, it's.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
You keep calling calling me. You can call, you can
talk like, you can talk like a job. You can
(55:18):
talk to me. You can't talk like. Do you talk
like
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