Vinyl Solution: A Q&A with Darren O'Connor

Did you grow up around Orange County?

Darren O’Connor: No, I’m from Hollywood, LA.  Echo Park, actually, which really isn’t anything like Hollywood.

What was it like growing up?

My dad always emphasized on me, ‘Don’t ever be late, and go to school.  That’s all I ask.’  I ended up being the only one in my family that graduated and got accepted to Otis-Parsons.  Yeah, but I obviously didn’t go.  I ended up falling in love with music.  In fifth grade I bought a Queen album, Day at the Races, and I got David Bowie’s, Young Americans album.  That was all I wanted was records.  Every time I did good, my dad never gave me money, but like allowance, I’d get something and I’d just ask him for records.

That started back in fifth grade?

Fifth grade, 1975.  And it’s funny that those two bands are the records that I wanted most because I didn’t even like any white music at all.  I only liked Soul music, other than The Doors.

                                          

What other artists were you listening to?

The Doors and War and Marvin Gaye.  Al Green and that kind of stuff.  That’s what my mom was listening to.  And rockabilly stuff ‘cause the only thing my dad listened to was Chuck Berry, Neil Diamond and Elvis Presley.  That’s all that he liked, other than classical music.  He didn’t like anybody, but my mom—it just reminded me of Pinesol, cleaning the house, windows open, Soul music in Echo Park.  It was just what I liked.  Creedence I liked, my mom listened to that too for some reason.

(To customer) How are you doing?  You got any questions?

Customer:  Um, do you guys have posters?

O’Connor:  No, not many.  I saw a poster store somewhere, but those aren’t easy to find.  I think there’s a good store in Whittier off on Greenleaf.  It’s like a rock shop and they have sweatshirts, lighters…it’s almost like the old head-shop style.  They’re not so easy to find because they take up so much space and shops can’t afford.

Customer: Alright, thanks.

What’s your history in the record business?

I closed Neil’s records in 1987.  I had a store from ’83 when I graduated, that’s why I didn’t go to Otis-Parsons ‘cause I fell in love with music.  My dad said flat out, ‘If you’re not going to school, you’re moving out, you gotta find a place to stay.’  Just simple as that, and that was always my dad’s theme of life was, ‘As long as you go to school and be on time, I’ll do what I can to support you.  But if you don’t want to help yourself,’ he always said, ‘there’s the door right there.  Whatever you know better than me, you can always go pay rent.’

Records was all you could see?

I ended up just going into a store and pulling up New York Dolls and Dead Boys records from 1983 and started with that and said, ‘You gotta put this up for more money, you gotta price these, you gotta get these up on your wall and get this farty old rock of the wall.  You gotta put up all these neat things.  Put them up for like ten bucks—you have them for like two dollars.’  Later, he wanted to hire me, and of course I wanted to work there, probably more than he wanted to hire me. 

At Neil’s?

Yeah, I wanted to work at another store called Turning Point, but Turning Point was more new records.  They didn’t deal with collectibles at all.  Neil was into everything—bootlegs, collectible—anything with money, he wanted to know about.  So I come in with all these punk records, going, ‘Put these Dead Boys at $10, put these New York Dolls at $10, put the Cramps up or whatever.’  So the store started doing really well, and it was off of Broadway in a little tiny shop, and a lot of crime was going on in that place.  He started having me work, then next thing you know he had to go to jail.  I started running it, moved into a 25,000 square foot store, got a 7” room, got a 12” disco room, and started getting sections.  I wanted to open a head shop in the back and start doing all these things.  Then Neil came back and started getting crazy.  He was buying hot merchandise, wanted to sell bootlegs, and he wanted to start making bootlegs, and I was just the cover kid selling records, ordering new releases, doing all the buying—like everyday and I was only 17 or 18 years old.  I could work 24 hours a day, I was just always there.  When I got that 25,000 square-foot store, I got construction workers and we built a little stage and a step-up counter where we were above the people.  It was kind of cool, ‘cause at the time no store was like that where you’re atop everyone and you could look out and we would welcome you as you walked in.  Then I got racks on the wall and started putting punk records up and that was when the store started going haywire.  I had it and it was going real good, but Neil signed his name…I was a kid, and I thought I was buying the store from him, but he had it in the contract funny, like when he’s in jail I can do it, and I have to buy the store at $3,000 dollars a month, and in five years, it would be my store or something like that.  By ’87, it started getting insane where cops were hanging out in front of the store and all this.  In other words, it started getting real bad.

Because of in-store performances?  Or something else?

No, because hot merchandise was coming in and out of there.  The final days, the cops are outside and I’m drinking a Schlitz and it’s like 10am in the morning and I’m like, ‘Why’s a cop out there?’  I keep putting my beer down to the side.  This guy ain’t even letting me drink my fucking beer, what’s going on?  The cop’s just out there in the front of the store just sitting there, and I’m like, ‘Don’t you gotta go get crime to fix or do something?’  And they were like, ‘No, you’re the crime.  You’re going down, we’re going to get you.’  He said, ‘You can make two decisions,’ and he told me straight to my face, ‘You could either stick with that guy, that criminal, in there and go to jail with him, or you can help us and tell us everything about Neil right now.’  I said, ‘You know what, no.’  And I just walked back into the store.  Neil came in—cops were still sitting there—and I go to Neil and go, ‘Neil, there’s two options.  You’re going to stop buying hot merchandise, you’re going to stop bootlegging, or I’m leaving.’  He said, ‘You can’t leave.’  So I said, ‘No, you have two options and I can do whatever I want, I’m a 20 year old kid.’  No one can tell you what to do if you’re a city kid.  I had the world by a string according to me—I had money, I was DJing, I was spinning at Scream, I was really popular making money doing all this stuff.  But he was like, ‘No, we can’t do that.’  I told him he was crazy and I went and talked to my dad.  I told him, ‘Dad, this guy’s a criminal.’  He’s like, ‘I’ve told you, never deal with a criminal.  Don’t let any liars or cheaters or thieves in your life, stay away.’  I come back to Neil and say, ‘I’m leaving man.  I quit today if this is what you’re going to do.  If I find one piece of merchandise that I think is hot in this store, I gotta go.’  Next day, sure enough, all these people are in with stacks of new release records, like 20 Beatles double CDs, and those were like $40 back then retail.  So I walk in and I’m like, ‘Neil, you’re blowing it, I gotta go.’  And before I could even get out of the store, he calls his attorney.  Neil hands me the phone and it’s his attorney and he says, ‘Darren, I’m going to tell you right now, if you try leaving that store, I’m going to ruin your life for ten years.’  I was like, ‘What are you talking about, I’m fucking leaving.’  He goes, ‘No you aren’t.  You can’t leave.  You signed a contract to buy that store with Neil.’  I go, “Yep, I’ve got three months, but fuck it, he can have the store, he can have everything, I’m leaving.’  He said, ‘Nope, we’re going to ruin your life for ten years if you try leaving that store.’  I’m only 20 so I say, ‘Fuck you,’ and hang up the phone, then say, ‘Fuck you Neil, I’m leaving.’  I left and I came back with my friends Lee and Tom, went into the store, left all my record collection that was at the store—which was quite a bit.  My friends said I gotta grab it, but I told them, ‘Norowitz—the attorney—told me if I take anything out of that store, that it’s theft, ‘cause it’s his store.’  So I took my record player, I left my records there, but took a certain little stack of records that I bought myself with my own paycheck.  Next thing you know, Norowitz, the attorney, comes driving up.  He took the keys out of our vans, stole them, raised them up in the air and ran down the street on Colorado Boulevard.  I was like, ‘You know what, fuck that guy, let him do it and let’s call the police.’  My friend, Lee, who doesn’t put up with anything from anybody, took off after him, and I start running after him, and Norowitz turns around in the middle of the street, still holding the keys.  So I go, ‘Don’t fucking touch him Lee, he’s an attorney.’  Norowitz stopped, Lee bumped into him, Norowitz threw the keys up onto the roof.  We didn’t know, but he threw them and they went up on this two-story brick-building roof.  We end up in jail—all of us—for attempting to hurt a licensed attorney.

What did you do after that?

I moved out to Tustin, came out here, and hid for two years and just traded records.  I didn’t let anybody know what the hell I was doing.  Then I opened Vinyl Solution in ’89.  It took me almost two years to finally find a store I wanted.  I wanted to move down to La Jolla in San Diego ‘cause I love that city and it seemed like a good hiding place.  So my mom steps in and tells me, ‘I’m going to help you, but the only way I’m going to help you is if you move on Beach Boulevard.  Half a million people drive up Beach.’  So I figured I had my balls in a vice here.  I’m either gonna live with my sister and hide and trade records all day, and keep hoping to open a store someday, or I’m going to suck up and do whatever my mom tells me.  She was like, ‘One thing I’ll do is I’d like to help you with your career.  As a mother, this is what I’ll do.’  I ended up opening up this store, and Norowitz comes back, took everything, said it was all stolen merchandise, on the day that my grandmother died.  It was 1989, December 23^rd.  He ended up getting kicked out of the state because of me, ‘cause we just didn’t bow down.  My mom was like, ‘My mother just died on the same day that your store got everything taken out of it—that I saw you work for?’  So she just went to town on the guy and went to court.  It was crazy.  I ended up here and dealing with all that.

When you opened the store on Beach Boulevard, what was the music scene like?

It was a great scene.  I opened the store, but I didn’t know anything ‘cause I’m still thinking of New York Dolls and The Dead Boys and punk this, punk that in the ‘70s, and all of a sudden, all these black and white kids with patches all dirty came walking in here.  And they’re like, ‘Do you have this?  Do you have that?’  They were naming bands that I never heard of that I thought were jokes.  I was like, ‘What’s this crustcore and straight-edge stuff?’  I didn’t even know what that fuckin’ was.  I didn’t even know what straight-edge meant.  I didn’t know Minor Threat or 7 Seconds.  I’m 46 years old now.  At the time in Hollywood, I didn’t even know.  I heard Minor Threat, but it was so ridiculous to me that I didn’t even bother listening to lyrics.  Same with 7 Seconds.  But you know what?  That was a big fuckin’ deal out here.  Like I said, I grew up listening to Soul music, and Queen, and Bowie, and then the Pistols, and I never looked back.  In 1982, I laughed at hardcore.  I went straight into Psychedelic Furs, OMD, Joy Division.  Joy Division showed up in High School.  I was like the only kid at Burbank listening to that, ‘cause I was hanging out with a lot of older people, so I was obviously very influenced, and I was an art guy.  Even when I was a kid, people were into like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and stuff like that, and I was into Roxy Music and King Crimson.  I was into that only ‘cause that’s what my older art friends were into.  The first weekend—I’m only here for like four days—I have a swarm of all these crusty kids coming in.  Then all the Huntington Beach kids from like Confrontation came in and were like, ‘You wanna carry this, you need to carry more Discharge.’  We could barely give away Discharge in Hollywood, but I’ll do it.  Go make a list.  He made me a list of about four pages.  I ordered it all that week.  It sold like that (snapping fingers).  I thought, ‘This is nuts.’  All I did was listen to every one who walked into that store from that day.  I’m gonna do whatever you guys ask of me.  It turned into 40 or 50 people my first weekend.  And from that point on, the store went really good.  All I did was just listen to my customers.  I added the extras, like if Minor Threats first album sells, everything must sell.  So I’d order everything on catalogue.  Then people would tell me what band they’re in now, and sooner or later they’re in Fugazi, then I gotta get Fugazi.  And it was just selling.  I thought I was going to go to my grave selling Pistols and Cramps and Ramones.

That sells too.

Yeah, but people are moving on here.  The other thing was there were 12-year-old kids into hardcore out here.

With working parents, so they just cruise freely on their skateboards?

I always wondered how such young kids, when I’d show up at places on this side, were showing up at shows.  I remember being at Burbank High and having my Pistols and my Dead Kennedys.  Listening to Pistols was like, ‘Wow, I’m allowed to hate.’  I never knew I was allowed not to like something.  And then I heard the Dead Kennedys and I was like, ‘You’re allowed to fucking think!  This is crazy.’  The book, pulling out that poster and seeing what Jello Biafra dare say was like…it changed my world.  And then I saw kids on skateboards that were a year older than me, and then I hear DOA.

What do you think it is about this area that inspires that?

It’s just a suburban thing where they are trapped.  A friend of mine told me, ‘You don’t understand what it’s like out here.  We have these model homes, we live in these nice houses, our parents don’t let us out.  When we go out, we’ve gotta get violent, we’ve gotta get crazy.  We’ve got a lot of hatred in our stuff.’  It’s just being in that perfect-type of model home, and things aren’t perfect.  A city kid doesn’t see that.  They think we’re all crazy, but it’s ok ‘cause we can do whatever we want, ‘cause our mom’s don’t even care about us, we could do what we want to do.  Even the parents that care, they’re so busy working and getting everything taken care of, it seems behind the Orange Curtain, even parents are too busy to have kids.  LA and in ethnic areas, family comes first.  They’re living off of tradition, they aren’t living off, ‘I’m gonna change this thing and I’m gonna build a new way.’  The full Reagan Youth type of thing, it was real, but when it started going metal and punk and people were starting to become songwriters and doing synth stuff and getting all new-waved out and becoming creative artists instead of just hardcore, Orange County, for the most part, was like, ‘Fuck you, we’re still pissed.  I loved when I was 12 in the backyard listening to hardcore, and I’m 35 and I still love mashing it up.’  And I think the reason that it’s that way, like I said, it’s just the way kids were raised in a suburban versus urban environment—two totally different things.

Also including the Orange County ideals of surfing and skating.

They go for it, and they didn’t do that in the cities.  I’m not saying that there weren’t great surfboarders or skateboarders that went to Santa Monica that ended up here.  Those people just had a total outside life that was different than the usual kids that went to the park and played baseball.  That wasn’t exactly what you do in this area, I don’t think.  Like my friend was saying, he used to listen to hard-core when he was 12—his brother was telling him about the Pistols.  And then he thought he was going to carry it through with the local hardcore that Zed was teaching them at Zed’s Records.  Next thing you know the ‘shock’ comes around and those kids came around, and they hit rocks hard.  They’d find drugs and get crazy on them.  I think they just had to skip a beat.  We were, as LA people, already smoking weed and doing dust and having a great time and learning on your own road how to handle life, and drinking beer in an alley.  It seemed like that just wasn’t cool for a long period of time in the Orange County thing when hardcore and straight-edge moved in and it seemed like the whole thing.  And then there was the other crew that were the black and white crusties, like the Reagan and The Confrontation, which won in ’89 in Maximum Rock n’ Roll as the best single of the year—a Huntington Beach band.  They were political, the fastest, loudest, grindiest band, and those were the kids that came into my store and were telling me that Discharge is their Sex Pistols, that’s how they explained it.  They said when they were 14-years-old they were listening to Discharge, and The Amoebics, and all this black and white hardcore, and they had to make it more angry and more pissed, drink more and get louder.  It seemed like there were two ways.  The kids were either grindcore and vegan people, to straight-edge meat eating people.  There was vegan straight-edge, but there was also the angry little rich kids in the baggy shorts and the baseball hats that were hardcore, and never let it go.  That was just a way of life for them.  My friend would say, ‘You don’t understand, when we grew up, it was like, ‘Mom, dad, I did all the dishes, I ate all the food off of my plate, I finished all my homework.  Can you drive me to the show?’  Parents were like, ‘Okay junior, should we pick you up after?’  All you would do is go let out your aggression.  You can’t come home fucked up ‘cause mom and dad are going to pick you up.  You can’t be climbing through a window and acting crazy, you’ll probably be slated off to a mental board and your parents won’t even deal with you.  But it seemed like that was just the way it was.  There was a thing they would call Chore Boys, and it was all the kids that were like, ‘We’re going to listen to hardcore and get crazy, and then go home and go to sleep in our perfect home.’  And then there were the skateboarder kids, the Duane Peters, and the Lorman, and the Ricky Barnes, and Lucero—all the people I met.  When I met them I was like, ‘There’s real people in this town that actually live on their own, wander the streets, drink, get thrown outta bars, and laugh the whole time while they’re doing it.’  We’re not going to jail, we’re not outta control, we’re just loving life.  This ain’t no dress reheasal, we used to say that.  This is our step in life right now.  When I’m on my bed, I don’t want any regrets, I don’t want to be like, ‘I wish I would’ve.’  Don’t hurt anybody, don’t steal from anybody, don’t lie, keep your same chick you had for two or three years.  We all know we’re going to take a tumble, we’re gonna get dropped like a bad habit, or she’s gonna cheat on you, or we’re going to do something messed up and their gonna get fed up with us, but it’s ok, let’s just live our lives.  There was that crew too, which is like TSOL and the Vandals when they started.  Punk was a way of life so much more here like nowhere else, and I don’t think it will ever die because of that.  Just like people who grow up in the Marines and they are always Marines.  With punk, it’s kind of the same way.  Even if you’re a fireman later, you always remember…all I hear from 50 year old men is, ‘Yeah, Social D over at the Casbah,’ or Black Flag or whatever.  It’s like, they still live that.  So Orange County is a totally different type of world from anywhere else.

What do you think about the scene nowadays?  Any venues you like?

I’ve always thought, as far as Orange County, a venue will never last.  There will never be a club that stays punk—the city will snuff it.  It will always have to move.  It will be like little ants just finding new places to go.  As much as you try to water it down or get them, the ants are going to come out in the sunshine and find where to go.  That’s the biggest thing, there’s no traditional nightclub and nothing old that was around.  It all gets snuffed out.  It’s a shame, but it does.  And that goes for anyone trying to do an all-ages show, but this is such a conservative town that I don’t think people will ever have a place.  Detroit Bar had to change ‘cause there was no way what it used to be, when it was Club Nazi, or Club Mesa or whatever, would last.  It was tough and there was blood everywhere and guys with swastikas across their neck, and those guys were the bouncers and they were supposed to win every time.  They never got in trouble.  They were the bouncers and you did what they said.  If they didn’t like someone, you had to leave, and there were people that backed them because they were homeboys.  Gangs and the culture that Orange County is against, they’re exactly kind of like, but in a white way.  You go to the wrong club in LA, it’s because you’re in the wrong territory of a gang area.  That’s pretty much the same thing here, but in a different way.  Club Mesa couldn’t stay the way that it was going.  As strong as it was staying in that mode, and holding true during the whole Fuck Dolls, Stitches, and that whole revival of punk that came back, it had to die out.  That place had to get overtaken with some art form.  And it stays there because it’s art form now.

The indie movement.

Yeah, it’s like everywhere in Long Beach but Alex’s.  You can play any kind of music at those places, but they frown on any kind of hardcore because people get violent at that shit.  It let’s out aggression.  But the scene is always going to stay.  There’s always going to be a scene out here, I believe.

How could there not be a scene of some sort in Orange County when you have so many diverse sections?

And it’s so remembered and traditional.  I mean, there’s movies about the Orange County punk scene.  The Adolescents, Black Flag, bands that came from near the water.  It doesn’t have to just be Orange County.  TSOL, Social D, Vandals—you could just go all down the line and there’s 30 or 40 bands like that.  Being a punk in the LA part as opposed to the Orange County, those guys were a lot bigger than us.  When I was at shows in LA, I was in the corner wanting to talk to some old homeless guy who went to the punk shows before that.  I wanted to learn from that guy.  Seemed like when the Orange County people came, they didn’t want to learn, they wanted to stampede.  It was like, ‘Oh we’re gonna get out some aggression.’  They invented slam-dancing.  The whole term is Orange County.  It’s a living, loving thing out here.

Was there a time when you were working directly with venues?  Ticket sales or anything like that?

Yeah, we’ve done ticket sales with the Galaxy in the older days and the ‘90s.  It never seemed to follow through ‘cause tickets were already going computer-wise.  And because we didn’t barcode, no one wants to deal with guys who are going to do cash—even though we’ve never fucked up or messed up.  Is it about 8pm?

It’s probably right around there.

Yeah, ok, it says 7:09 on the clock over there and I don’t change the clock.  Actually my phone would tell me.

We talked about ticket sales going digital.  How do you think the digital movement has affected the industry?

It kind of booby-trapped everyone into making it really rough for kids to get ticket at fair prices.  They have to pay a service charge, they have to have a computer, they’ve got to have a credit card.  They’ve gotta do these things or have their mom do them and they’ve got to have them done.  They can’t go, ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna go to LA for the weekend and I’m going to go buy some tickets at the Palace and go get the tickets with no face-value, just straight across.  We do that for our shows.  The tickets are $35 for the punk rock thing, plus a service charge online, or you can get them here for $22.  Gotta have cash, but you get them for $22.  It’s amazing how big shows don’t do well at all.  Everyone just does it through the computer, zip, pop, have their number verified on their computer, print up their e-ticket, and go do it.  Like, we have punk rock tickets, and I’m telling you that everyone is gonna call, and I’m gonna get at least 500 phone calls Saturday morning and Friday night asking for tickets.  I feel like saying, ‘Are you serious?  You had to come home from work, make dinner, take a shower, brush your teeth, have a few drinks at a party, and want to pick up your tickets now, when these bands are getting f-ed having to pay to play?  The bands have to go and pay the promoters, and they have to pay to play if those tickets don’t sell.  It seems like very few people buy tickets ahead of time.  Everyone is so used to a credit card and a computer and everything at the tip of their fingers, they think they don’t have to rush.  It’s like, there is no way on earth that I should have 80 tickets for the punk rock thing for $22, when they’re broadcasted everywhere else as $35 plus the service charge.  You would think it would get around that Vinyl Solution has these tickets.  We put them on Facebook, we did them on all of our social network stuff saying come help the kids, buy tickets, they’re only $22 a piece, cash only.  I know it’s going to be insane Friday.  I’m going to want to throw my phone through the window, ‘cause every time we do a show—like we had Fear tickets and they had to pick them up the day before, but we had 50 Fear tickets for The Observatory.  He’s trying to break us into The Observatory.  Like for HFL, he brought us tickets—no one has come to buy them.  Even that I thought would sell hundreds ‘cause HFL is from across the street here.  But you can go to The Observatory and get them now.  It hasn’t affected me, and pretty much credit cards have been going fine since almost back when I opened this place.  It’s kind of the same effect, but I did use to sell tickets way better in the glorious ‘90s.

Before the days of the iPhone.

And that’s probably just a habit.  I can’t live without this thing (holding up iPhone), and I do everything with this, but I do not buy or do anything with credit cards over my phone.  I know it’s probably stupid and everyone else does…

Seems safer not to process that type of information through a cell phone.  Although, they definitely are convenient…

They’re perfect.  Google answers all your questions and is great.  They get real personal with you, but I’m sure iPhones do the same.  But Apple I finally got brave with, ‘cause I was always scared of Apple, but somebody finally told me, ‘Just have some confidence and realize that the Apple phone is only as smart as you are.’  I just laughed thinking, ‘So if you’re stupid, you can’t do it.  I’m not going for that.  I’m not telling myself I’m stupid.  I’m gonna learn.’  So I practically started touching everything and realized that I can go back and it’s ok.  Now it’s like I never want to go back to a PC.  But now it’s like, ‘What the fuck, I can’t get my Google?  Google tells me everything!’  A friend of mine, Lee, who knows everything and he doesn’t use computers, him and I have books and books and we just sit at bars and we talk about and read Mojo every month.  We talk about it and get totally amazed at the stuff that Mojo talks about.  That magazine is like our little Bible.  On the 8^th it’s out, we’re going to go pick it up.  If I don’t have my kid, I’m gonna go to the bar and get ripped and just read that thing all the way through.  Four days later, we’ll meet at a bar and are like two little girls talking about, ‘Did you read that article about so-and-so?  Can you believe it?’  It’s just really nuts because that’s just the way we are.  But we learn those facts, we read those facts from that magazine, and that’s important to find out what Ian McCulloch said about Joy Division at the time, or what he honestly thinks of them now, or what he thinks of his people.  They always have the 20 years later articles about this and that, and there are reissues and new books and new movies, new DVD’s and documentaries that come out and it just gets crazy.  It’s like we’re the two happiest kids in the world on those days.  And it’s really frustrating when there’s a kid younger than us telling us something when we’re talking and I’m like, ‘I know more about Johnny Thunder, I’ve seen him like six times.  I was the number one collector in the country, I’ve talked with him, shared cigarettes with him, I’ve drank with him, flown to visit him.  You know more about him than me, according to your computer.  You just check that, then say things.’

Facts have a certain perception, according to who is writing them.

That’s what Lee is like.  Now you can’t argue too much because there’s people on top of your shit, but when Wikipedia came out, it was a liars club.  I’d see stuff and know, that’s not true.  Many people have said it, but someone said it recently, like Lux (Interior) said it as a matter of fact, ‘Oh I died?  It must be true.’   When they would interview him, people would ask, ‘What did you think of that great rumor about you dying?’  And he’d go, ‘Well it must be true, right?  I’ve died like six times, on drugs I’ve never even done.’ 

People love their gossip.

It was like that when I heard he really died.  Someone told me on the internet or texted me and I was like, ‘Good one,’ and just kept driving and didn’t even worry about it.  Then I called Lee, and Lee was like, ‘Let me find out.  Well according to the Cramps fan base, it’s true.  They’re not accepting any friends, do not show up at the funeral, and all this stuff.’  I asked, ‘Can you say you’re sorry or your regrets?’  And he said, ‘You can, but she (Poison Ivy) isn’t acknowledging anyone.’  I’m like, ‘I’m not arguing with you Lee, you probably know what’s going on.  I guess he did die.’

What would you say the role of the record store is today?

I’ll use a perfect example, Record Store Day, everyone wanted the five hottest things; the Jack White or whatever, the Bruce Springsteen, the Devo Live double album, it doesn’t matter what it is.  It seemed like that was what my phone calls were all day.  People were out chasing an Easter egg, like, ‘I want that Wonka Bar.’  People used to buy records when they liked them.  They didn’t have to be told that it was cool and time to go do this.  I’m not against it, it’s the greatest idea, I’m happier than a pig in shit for Record Store Day, but at the same time, why do you gotta be reminded?  Why does it have to be like rat to cheese, let’s go get it, it’s on the internet…?  I dig the help-the-independent-stores thing, don’t get me wrong, but why do we have to be reminded?  We do that for McDonalds.  We do that for Coca-Cola.  Let those guys put commercials out for you to go remember to have a Coke everyday, or go eat at McDonald’s three times a week.

Everything is a brand these days.

Art shouldn’t be like that—but even the commercials are art, aren’t they?  A witty jingle of a McDonald’s commercial is gonna get you to buy their food.  I’m gonna say that the good things about the records is that it’s opened people up, because so many people don’t have genres or categories or closets anymore—they don’t have to be put in the punk rock closet, they don’t have to be put in the new wave closet, they don’t have to be put in a jazz closet.  Hip-hop artists like everything and if it has a cool riff, they’re gonna try it.  They’ll put a Metallica riff next to a Cramps riff, next to a Sugarhill riff, next to a Miles Davis.  But I wish people had the attention span to listen to the whole record because that’s when you really love music is when you own entire albums—and you look at them and feel them and you’re sitting down with your drink.  There are a couple things better than that, but that’s a really good feeling…of alone time…that lasts.  No one calls me after 10pm.  You can pretty much guarantee.  I could answer that phone but I’m busy listening to records or doing laundry.  I’m busy, I’m not gonna talk on the phone.  You can get me tomorrow.

(Steps away to check out a young male customer at the register.)

O’Connor (To customer): Great fuckin’ record man.

Customer:  Totally.

O’Connor:  I went and saw them just recently with Paul Collins Beat.

Customer: Yeah, I’ve seen Peter Case and he’s super good.

O’Connor:  This is one of my favorite singles I’ve gotten rid of a good 80% of my pop singles, but this one, no way.

Customer:  Yeah, as soon as I saw it…I thought, I can’t pass it up.

O’Connor: The live stuff, the studio stuff, it’s just the best pop where you don’t get tired of it.  Alrighty, you doin’ a card?

Customer: Yeeah.

O’Connor:  Okie dokie.  You’re all set, catch you later.

Customer:  See ya later.

(Customer leaves.)

As a record store, how do you picture yourself?  I mean, you have two young guys like that come in, cruise around the store, and probably find something that they might not find elsewhere.

Yeah, that’s kinda what it is.  I mean, that kid is a really open-minded type of kid.  You never know what he’s gonna buy.  He used to be the most fashionable, best looking little punk kid.  He was in a really good band and he’s really witty and smart.  Punk was really exciting to him and he liked all the new punk just as well as the old punk, then he started getting into the new-wave as well, and now he’s crossing over to just picking up stuff.  He’s still getting records at least once or twice a week.  He’s not a rich kid, but he can afford a record or two and he always supports the scene and always tries.  And those kinds of people are always really good.  Just three years ago, which is decades ago to him, but three or four years ago, he was just picking up CDs and shirts all the time.  He’s really smart and he knows music, but in the last couple of years, he’s been buying records like crazy—and an array of them.  It’s all over the place, you never know.  Like, he bought a $20 record, and that’s kind of outlandish for him.  He doesn’t buy too many reissues that are new, which is a big deal.  But he’s like a lot of people, they like dollar and five-dollar records, for the most part.  I sell those better than anything, unless it’s the new Tom Waits or Cramps or some really profound new record that comes out that people wait for.  That White Stripes guy, if he puts out a record—like today, all I got was phone calls for his new record.  I hate to be a dick, but that’s not my forte of music.  Those people aren’t my people.  I’m not going to chase that goose egg.  When I was younger I would be all over it.  I wanted everything new, I wanted every customer, ‘cause I remember when Nirvana was coming out and I was like, ‘Man, I fucking hate that band,’ and I could do that in LA ‘cause there were so many stores, but out here, people want to give me their money because this is their store.  It’s like, ‘Don’t make me go to Bionic, and I don’t want to go to Tower enough to buy that record.  Even if it’s more money I’d rather pay to buy it from you.’  It made me feel like, I gotta get on the ball here.  I gotta get whatever they want.  I’m not making money like I used to, but it feels like my store more than ever in my life.  It’s my absolute passion and love, and I love getting things for people and doing a lot of important releases, but now that the money is so hard and I’m not making bricks of money.  It used to be that I wanted to get anything for every customer.  Now it’s like, I want to get what I think my customers might like the most.  I just want to make the people who support me happy.  I don’t want them to say, ‘Pretty much you’ve got this, but you don’t have this.’  I want them to feel like they know their home-cooking, you know?  They’re not going to change on me.  Well, they’ll mature, but they’re not going to change and they come here for a reason ‘cause we suit em’ and people like that.  I kinda know if, for instance—whether it’s a Bags record or a issue of the new Tom Waits, or Townes Van Zandt--that’s more important for me to have at this store, than to have the new Jack White.  It beats me.  It beats the hell out of me—Record Store Day—when I know I’m not going to get those things.  Literally, somebody said, ‘I can’t believe you don’t have the Social D on yellow vinyl for Record Store Day.’  I had to be like, ‘Look, I ordered 40 of those, and I got zero.  I thought for sure I would get that yellow vinyl for Record Store Day.’  I bet they’re off in Massachusetts, at the one-city one-stops you know?  Or all around the colleges.  That record was #2 or something in Billboard charts for alternative music.  It was Record of the Year and stuff.  They have billboards on the side of the freeway and stuff like that.  And you know what, that kinda hurts when you’re like—I don’t mean to be cocky—but kids like us built that shit.  I’ve sold thousands of that, and this is what we get on Record Store Day?   A big fat goose-egg?

That seems to be the industry in general.

It is, and that’s ok.  You don’t want to get your feelings hurt, but that’s why I’m saying  I’m trying to stay and not throw any change-ups at my customers, and try to make a new one stoked.  It’s great, I love to see these people.  I just feel like their heads are opening.  I’m never gonna make fun of a kid in art.  I love the whole idea.  I love that you’re different, I love all that.  When you come into my world and all of a sudden vinyl is cool, I’m never going to mock someone for that.  It’s just the greatest thing and it’s one of our last hopes.  I’ve always said of life that, the day that art and music and literature is gone—basically art—freedom of speech is gone, this world is over.  We think that, because of art, that it’s a free world.  But when that gets taken, it’s going to be an ugly, fucked up world and we just can’t let it happen.  So I just praise God for anytime that any person does anything different.  When I was younger, I’d make fun of like, ‘Dumb fuckin’ rich kid with his Capezios and legwarmers, what a mannequin.’  Not only could I never afford that, but I never wanted to be like that.  As a punk, you didn’t want to be like that.   You wanted to wear your torn up flannel, you wanted to have orange hair, and it wasn’t even bad to get beat up, you just kind of expected it.  And you hated people that wanted to be cops one day.  But as you grow up, you realize we need all these different people in our lives.  It’s so beautiful to see that two people can hang out, and be so different.

If someone new walked into the store, and they had no clue about the scene, what would you suggest for them to listen to?

I usually have to talk to them for a little while and get them warmed up—see where they kind of stand.  They have to have some kind of category, whether it’s The Doors, or the Sex Pistols, or Elvis Costello, or power-pop.  I need a general idea of what kind of the power-pop you like, then I’ll lean them towards that.  I usually just start walking around the bins and start flipping through, ‘cause it doesn’t come to me until I’m looking through records, and then it’s like a fire in my head and I can just start nailing them.  But it takes me a few minutes to talk to them.  I don’t just lump someone into a category.

No two people go after exactly the same thing.

If you say you like stuff like David Bowie, I’m gonna start throwing you things like Roxy Music and stuff like that, and just keep going ‘cause that’s what I grew up on and that’s what I’m into.  I’d throw Queen at them, and if I see them shying away, I’d be like, ok, you’re more into the Rolling Stones, so let’s try Faces. Or, you’re more into guitarists, I’ll throw you over to the Ted Nugent.  Maybe you like some songwriters, so go for Bob Dylan.  Or if somebody said they wanted something new and they liked Nick Cave, I’d say grab the Grand Elegance.  If someone said they liked new-wave keyboard synthesizers, but I want something new, I’d tell them to do VUM.  I have stuff to push them into of newer or brand new stuff.  Some people want to know something new, some people want to know old that like new, and then I do the opposite.  If they said, I really like that VUM record that you turned me onto, or I really like that Grand Elegance.  Well I can tell you right now that VUM listened to a hell of a lot of Siouxsie and the Banshees, and they listened to a lot of Suicide.  And I’d tell you if you’re into Grand Elegance, they listened to a lot of Nick Cave and Velvet Underground.  Then we’d just go from there, and then I’d take a look around and pull something out of my head that is somewhere in between that that kind of would surprise them, or maybe not.  They might be like, ‘Oh I like that other band, but I don’t even know, who were The Velvets?’  And then they hear them and they’re like, ‘Oh I love The Velvets.’

The Many Faces of Devendra: A Review

            On Wednesday, May 23^rd, over 1,100 people—mostly of the unwashed indie persuasion—gathered in the main room of the The Observatory concert theater in Santa Ana with iPhones and modest recording devices in hand, hoping to catch the many faces of Devendra Banhart during his solo performance.  Despite the overwhelming size of the venue, the charismatic artist charmed his massive audience into a quiet submission, rolling round Spanish syllables back and forth in conversation with his biggest fans lining the front of the stage, causing the audience to feel a personal and intimate connection with the folk singer throughout the night.

Setting in slowly, with Noah Georgeson (guitar) and Brent Dunn (bass) by his side sitting on stools, Devendra chose the angelic composition, “Brindo,” to commence the evening.  With this choice, he called for full attention from his admirers in the most delicate manner.  Spicing things up a touch in the next bit, Banhart showed the true talent of his clean vocals during his piece, “Hey Mama Wolf,” undulating each chorus with a slight trill that is difficult to master.  The next song was dedicated to Jerry, a fan he met that afternoon at the grocery store, and his girlfriend.  There were no complaints from the concert hall as the threesome began to gently play, “Baby.”  The crowd showed their approval as they sang the final lyrics along with their entertainer, “Because you showed me/ a sunset overflowing/ but who cares where it’s going/ as long as you’re next to me.”

As the night continued, Banhart and his companions unleashed five new tracks yet to be released to the public, as well as old favorites like “The Body Breaks,” “At the Hop,” “Carmensita,” and “Little Yellow Spider.”  At times during the performance, Banhart’s accompaniment left him to his self, his solitary vocals, and the beautiful tones oscillating from his electric Gibson.  To imagine capturing the attention of hundreds of onlookers would normally frighten the normal human being, but this isolated musician never stopped radiating with intensity.  After a few songs on his own, Devendra was joined once again by his skillful partners.  The three effortlessly playing in perfect harmony with each other for over an hour, proving this audience definitely received the $25 show they paid for.

Click on Photo for Slideshow

Reggae Vibrations: A Q&A with The Simpkin Project

Phil Simpkin (Lead vocals/Lead Guitar), Shawn Taylor (Keyboards/Vocals), Mark Thompson (Organ/Synth), Sean Kennedy (Drums), Sergio Sandoval (Percussion), Ralph Arenas (Rhythm Guitar/Vocals), Eric Riegler (Bass)

There are quite a few of you in the band… How did you end up meeting and eventually playing together?

Phil Simpkin:  We’ve known each other in the neighborhood for a long time so there would be long stories, you know?

Shawn Taylor:  Mark (Thompson), Phil and I went to grade-school together, it started that long ago.  I was in first grade with Phil, and Thompson was at our school, and we were all at elementary school in the same neighborhood.  And Riegs was…where were you?

Eric Riegler:  I went to St. Bonaventure, then moved out of that track the last couple years of high school.

Simpkin:  That’s probably going back too far… We had a band once, and then Ralphie was in a band.  Taylor has been doing music of his own and he was in another band.  Then we met up and did a recording with Taylor, and that’s what was recorded as the first Simpkin Project thing.  I did some songs with Thompson and a few other people and then we got together at a party for Ken’s (Sean Kennedy) dad.  That’s when we formed what is The Simpkin Project now.

How long ago was that?

Simpkin:  About seven years ago.  It was an impromptu party thing that kind of turned into something more.

Sean Kennedy:  You had Timmy playing drums for a couple of shows.

Simpkin:  Yeah, but it was never thought of as a band at that point.  We had another guy playing guitar and doing some harmonies, and then Ralph stepped in after he had to leave.  A little more than a year ago we had a bass player who stepped out, and we got Riegs in here, who’s been playing bass with me since Big Cat days—which was our other band.

Are all seven of you from Orange County originally?

Taylor:  Oh yeah.  Born in Huntington Beach.

Ralph Arenas:  I grew up in LA County then moved here in high school years.  I had been playing music with my buddies and we actually looked up to Big Cat, which was Phil’s old band with Eric and Thompson.  We got into reggae and really started getting into the thick of it.  We would listen to their stuff and be super stoked on it.  After years went by and our band broke up, Big Cat kind of broke up too.  Phil started doing this solo stuff and I got invited to play.

Taylor:  Ralph joined in 2007.  It’s funny because some of our oldest material was written in 2003.  When Phil and I recorded it, Thompson was on part of the recordings.  When we put that stuff out, we didn’t have anything to do with it.  It was just more like Phil had some tunes and we had a recording studio, so we just worked with all the different musicians in the neighborhood.  Everybody we showed this stuff to was like, ‘Yeah that’s good music’ when we gave the recordings to them.  When we played Kennedy’s dad’s party, it was kind of like, wait, we have a band and we can plays these tunes—why don’t we start really playing?  It just stuck together and we kept getting a routine.  Really, Kennedy is the one who has had the big dream the whole time.  He’s the one who’s responsible for getting us the van and the trailers and getting in contact with a lot of managers and pushing things forward.

Simpkin:  It’s a unifying factor.

Taylor:  In the beginning, we just made music—and that’s what we still do—but at the same time, we are trying to have a presence in the local music scene.

Kennedy:  It’s crazy too, when we play shows, people will come up to us and be like, ‘You guys sound great, how long have you been around for?  I’ve never heard of you guys.’  Since 2004?  2003?  A long time.   It’s cool though because I just enjoy playing shows.

Taylor:  The time just flies.

Why did you choose the roots reggae style?

Kennedy:  I think it chose us, personally.  I’ve listened to reggae music my whole life, and I know I’m not the only one in this band.

Mark Thompson:  It’s what Phil and Eric and I all got from our older siblings who were listening to it.

Taylor:  There was a small movement through Huntington Beach and it infected the neighborhoods and it became a popular music to listen to amongst the kids.  Just in that little pocket of Huntington Beach, there’s like ten neighborhoods that listened to that stuff.

Simpkin:  All pre-Sublime kind of stuff.  Everybody was into like old Jamaican reggae.  That was really the most influential kind of reggae before Sublime, then they really had a big affect on the scene around here.

Arenas:  That’s what my old band—before we even formed a band—we used to just mess around out in the garage.  We used to play that stuff and Sublime stuff and Bob tunes.  Our drummer was working with Phil at Tuesday Morning back in the day.  Phil would be giving him some discs or some advice to go get a certain kind of music.  Since then, I’ve been collecting reggae.  The cool thing about it is that it’s so old, yet you still find new things everyday.  The more and more you dig in there, the more and more you find some hidden gems.

Simpkin:  The computer is aiding in that.  Just being able to get old music onto the computer and then get it out.  When we were younger, it was hard to find that. You would search every store you could find, get it in the mail from catalogues, and stuff like that, and now it’s just a different story with all this digital music.

Taylor:  Users are sharing it too.

Kennedy:  I spent so much money at Ernie B’s.

Who were some of the bands inspiring you as you grew up?

 Simpkin:  How do we do this?  Let’s go around the room…

Riegler:  Marley, Gladiators….

Arenas:  Definitely Gladiators.  Man, that’s a tough question…

Simpkin:  That’s a good start. The Abyssinians, Big Youth, Farai, Johnny Clarke.

Thompson: Don Carlos, Mykal Rose.

Kennedy:  Mikey Dread.

Arenas:  Barry Brown.

Riegler:  Black Slate. I mean, the list is just infinite.

Simpkin:  And there are so many styles of reggae too.  Ralphie, he likes to do a little more like an old school Jamaican style of reggae when he does certain forms.  Ours is probably more like the English reggae sound.  It was music that was really imitating Bob’s first album that really went big in England, Catch a Fire.  We keep a lot of the instrumentation, but we love the old DJ style.

Arenas:  One of the models that I like to follow, as far as style in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s stuff, was a house band called Roots Radics.  They were the type of band who would play in the studio and multiple singers would come in and sing over their rhythms.

Simpkin:  Then you’ve got like Sly and Robbie, classic duos, and Horsemouth.

Riegler:  The Dub Engineers too, like the works of Scientist and Mad Professor and Jah Shaka really influenced me as a bassist, and I know these guys too.  It’s definitely present.  That stuff really moves your soul.  Some of the drums and the bass line, and the effects that they put into the mixes when it’s all dubbed out and done, it’s amazing.

Simpkin:  It’s mostly reggae music, but obviously we have other influences from all kinds of other music too.  Taylor loves all kinds of music.

Talyor:  I’m all over the map.

Simpkin:  Old classic rock is what I grew up on.

Did all of you play music growing up, or was it something you got into later in life?

Taylor:  I started messing around with music when I was in fifth grade ‘cause I was a band kid.  I was a trumpeter but after a few weeks I quit and I went to play drums in drum line.

Kennedy:  I got my first drum set when I was 10 years old.  I think it’s always been in me though, ‘cause even before I started drums I was constantly hitting things.

Simpkin:  I wasn’t like a big sports guy, but I played sports to a certain point.  Then I kind of dropped out of that and started playing music.

How has living in Huntington Beach and Orange County affected your music?

Simkin:  What we do that’s different than the old reggae music is that we put ourselves into it as a product of this area and these people and the vibe that we create.  I think it’s reflective very much in the music, but maybe not a flashy, surface-level way, but it’s definitely a product of its area.

Kennedy:  To credit this band, personally, I think we do a good job of trying to stay true to who we really are.  We speak our minds and we don’t talk about certain things that other bands use as topics, since it usually sounds like a monotonous topic that they use.  Phil’s words, especially, are really well written and they have deep meaning.  It’s not just words on the surface, but there’s thought behind that stuff.  It’s deep and honest.

Taylor:  In regards to the area, one thing that’s kind of nice about it is that everyone is connected really well, and that’s definitely because of Facebook.  But we do live in a very densely populated area, so you can get a hold of someone very easily when you need something done, even if it’s booking a show or making a connection with a singer from another band.  Everything is going on right here, so it’s easy to keep yourself busy and connected with other musicians and other bands that are trying to do the same thing.  You can learn from them, team up and do activities together, and enjoy the time you spend with each other.

Just the fact that the opportunity is out there must be inspiring as well.

Taylor:  Yeah, there’s a nice carrot still dangling out there in front of us.

Arenas:  I think that’s also the challenge for us too—of where we’re based and what kind of music we’re playing and the style that we’re trying to keep.  There are a lot of reggae bands coming out of Orange County and LA County, and Orange County seems to have that typical sound that we would call surf-roots or pop reggae—the whole Sublime deal.  Sometimes it feels like we’re kind of battling that ‘cause we’re keeping true to our stuff.  It might not please the average kid that goes to a reggae show and is expecting that sound.  It might take them a little bit longer to actually get into it and listen and actually feel it, instead of just going to a show and getting drunk and dancing around having a good time.  Reggae shows are fun, but there’s also something about when you go and see a conscious band.  I’ve gone to many shows and just experienced the full vibe of a band that’s not singing pop songs, but they’re actually playing conscious music.  It’s a different kind of crowd.

Simpkin:  At the end of the show, you’re like spiritually uplifted.

Arenas:  Or it means something more than just going and dancing around.  I think we struggle in that when we play with that kind of music, ‘cause the crowd is expecting this other style, and then we give them this.  It’s kind of cool too because we love being able to expose them to that.

Taylor:  It kind of is a double-edged sword ‘cause it works to our disadvantage.  Like Ralph said we get swallowed up and there’s a lot of noise out there, so it’s hard to get your sound through.  But on the other hand it works well because so many bands are trending toward this sound and they’re naming themselves similar names, so when we do get on a lineup with them, we tend to stand out ‘cause we have a sound that’s unique.

Listening to your music, I started to feel like you guys might be perfectionists and are very detail-oriented in the creation of your sound.  Is that true?

Simpkin:  Shawn really cares about the recording and he works really hard.

Thompson:  Nothing gets past him.  Do it again! (Laughs) Do it again!

Simpkin:  He makes it his baby and takes it and mixes it for hours.

Taylor:  You only get one time to make a first impression and in todays society, you have someone’s attention for like a millisecond.  So if you don’t give them something that they can latch onto…  I think it’s mainly the recording industry as a whole, regardless of your genre, is very competitive.  You have to stay competitive, so if your music comes in the form of a bad recording, then people are more likely to turn away.

Arenas:  I think that’s one of our advantages—we have access to a quality studio and somebody who is really knowledgeable in recording and producing.  That’s been a big help for us too.  It’s one thing to go into a studio and try to record an album, and you’re paying by the hour.

Taylor:  You’re watching the clock and it’s not musical or creative.

Instead you’re stressed out the whole time.  Where do you record?

Kennedy:  All of the recording is done at Taylor’s house.

Taylor:  We actually just moved the studio, and at the end of this month we’re going to Colorado to do a five-song EP.  We’ll track it and then bring it back here to finish it up and mix it.

What’s in Colorado?

Simpkin:  We are actually making a change for recording since we’ve done the three albums here, and we have someone that we actually trust that we think will do a really good job, and just have some fun.

Taylor:  It’s going to be cool to be out of state and create a little buzz.  It’s like, I’m far away from home, I’m in the middle of the wilderness here, I don’t have to work.

Kennedy:  Have you heard of Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad?  They’re from Rochester.  Speaking about close friends, they’re about the closest bands to us, which is funny because they live across the country from us.

Taylor:  Yeah they live in New York.

Kennedy:  Well those guys are our brothers, and their sound engineer, Joel, has a house and a recording studio in Colorado and that’s whom we’re going to record with.

So you’re planning on recording an EP out there?  Will it work towards the next full-length album?

Taylor:  Yes, absolutely.  This is like we’re setting the table for another banger.  Hopefully we can start by the end of the Summer maybe, but if not, it’s going to be a Winter time start.  I want to hopefully do a lot of it live and I want to get good samples.  We’ve been performing live really well recently, just our energy together, and we’ve been writing the songs to flow into one another and be real good showstoppers.  We can capture that energy on tape a lot more than we’ve been doing in the past, and that usually speeds up the process.  The more you can record at one time the better.  You press play and record twenty sounds and hit stop, you’ve got twenty things done!  You press play and record one thing, then just one thing got done.

Are you going to be touring when you head out to Colorado?

Simpkin:  We’re doing a few shows.

Taylor:  We just recently got a manager…I guess that’s what you would call it…a booking manager, that’s a better way to put it.  He’s been providing us with a lots of great opportunities and he’s really connected with people in this new reggae scene coming up, and so he’s able to tie us onto a band and send us off for three or four days.  Just this last year, since January, he’s been starting to work for us.  It’s been quiet before the storm during February, but we have ten shows between now and the end of May.

Kennedy:  I used to do all the booking, and it was tough for me when I was always running my daytime business.  I was too busy to sit on the computer, and that’s Jared’s job.  He’s a musician in the sense that he plays guitar a little bit, but he likes the business side of music, whereas I like the music side of music.  And it’s nice because there’s so much time involved and you have to be so dedicated.  To his credit, he’s done a good job so far and he’s awesome.  It’s nice to say, ‘Hey these dates, can you make it happen?’  He says yeah and then puts it together.  One less thing to worry about.  We have a team here and it’s like a family, and he’s part of the family.  That’s the way that it has to be.

Where will you be stopping during your travels?

Kennedy:  Vegas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona.

Taylor:  We’re going to hit those four states.  There’s a band called Rootz Underground from Jamaica and they’re doing a little tour, so we’re gonna grab onto them for three or four days.

Gives you the chance to go international one day.

Simpkin:  Yeah, we would love to.  We do everything at our own pace, so we can only do what we can do.

Kennedy:  One thing is that we don’t tour as much as other bands do, and I think that’s definitely by choice on our part.  But to make up for that, we release what we deem to be quality music, and we take our time making a lot of albums.  I think that’s one way we make up for not being gone all the time, which is nice.  I don’t think any of us want to be on the road all year long.

When you’re writing your lyrics, are you drawing from the day-to-day details of life?

Simpkin:  Yeah, I think I’m drawing from everything in the day-to-day, from the past and present and what I’m projecting for the future, although you probably wouldn’t be able to tell what I do in my daily activities from listening to the music.

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Where do you like to play when you’re in Orange County?

Simpkin:  Marlin Bar, we used to rock that one when it was the old one.  That was our stomping ground.  There’s a new one now that’s been really good and it’s really nice, we gotta hand it to Diane.  But unfortunately Huntington is mainly bars and no venues.

Riegler:  When you think of Orange County though, The Observatory comes to mind right now, formerly The Galaxy.  They have great sound and lights now.

Kennedy:  Observatory is nice, and the guys that run it are great.  Sound engineers are awesome.

Tell me about your writing process.  With seven members, how do you keep it democratic?

Simpkin:  When we first started, a lot of the ideas I did and I created a lot of the music.  I had a couple other instrument players and a drummer.  After that, I still wrote a lot of the music and we kind of gave parts out.  So this last one, we all wrote our own parts like a real band.  It’s still called The Simpkin Project, although it probably should be called another  band name, but there really was a Simpkin Project in the very beginning.  So now on the last album, we all pretty much wrote our own parts.  I wrote most of the lyrics, and that’s what we’re still doing and we’re trying to keep it like that.  Every once in a while I’ll suggest a progression or something, or Riegs will come in with a bass-line.

Riegler:  I’ll show a bass-line, or Sean will have a drumbeat, Ralph has some chords, or Mark has a hook, or Sergio has a beat on the congos.  It really is a collaboration.

Kennedy:  Now more than ever.

Simpkin:  It went from something that I did once, to something that we do together now.

Taylor:  We used to do a lot of covers, and we had our own style for the covers.  By 2007 we had our own vibe going, and as soon as Ralph joined, we would play the old songs differently and we kind of evolved in that way for the old stuff.  The new stuff seems much more team oriented.  Somebody usually plants a seed, within a couple minutes we’re melting together, and we try to go through it.  Next week we come back to it and we start back where we left off and now you’re fresh with it and you’re able to say, ‘What if we put a stop right there?  Kick it up extra hard right there?  Do something new there?’  You’re not all blasé from the week before and you’re usually chiseling the song like from a block of wood.

Are you usually recording when you practice?

Taylor:  With just iPhones, just to keep the ideas.

Kennedy:  Usually before doing an album, we go up to Phil’s family cabin up in Tehachapi.  We go up there and lock ourselves in, just the band, for two or three days.  It’s nice to do that ‘cause you’re in your own environment, no one is there, you don’t have anything to do, no work, and cell phones are off.  You really get to create and that’s a lot of fun and I look forward to that.

Arenas:  For the longest time, we were rehearsing our material that we released to try to keep up and be able to perform the songs live.  A lot of the stuff we were experimenting in the studio, then we were like, ‘Ok now we gotta play this live.’  We were always rehearsing and perfecting that.  I think recently we’ve gotten to the point now where we have played covers for long enough that we really got on ourselves to play all of our original music.  We could play two or three hour sets of pure original music.  Lately we realized that we had tons of material.  It seems like we got all of that out of the way and we can play all of our songs now.  Sometimes we come in and just have a jam day, and that’s when we come up with new rhythms and new ideas, and we’ll record them.  Phil’s pretty amazing on just picking up lyrics and just going with it.

Taylor:  Yeah, and write a hook the first time he hears it.  He says, ‘Here, how about this one?’  Then it sticks for five years (laughs).

One of those melodies you just can’t get out of your head…

Sergio Sandoval:  Having a place like this is fundamental in our growth lately because we’re not paying hourly rates for rehearsing.  We come here, we vibe out, and it’s our own thing on our own equipment, and I think that’s definitely a key component in our growth.

Tell me about this place we’re sitting in?

Taylor:  Scrub Rug (laughs).

Kennedy:  My business partner, Eric, and I, spend countless hours of the week here and he’s a big supporter of our band too.  Like I was saying earlier, what a difference it is having a place like this.

Taylor:  I think we’d be out of the game already.  We used to take our gear and go to one of those places where you pay by the hour and there’s a drum set, and you rent the room for like two hours.

By the time an hour has gone by, you’ve finally finished setting up with all your equipment.

Taylor:  And you get in there and it’s sweaty and small.

Sandoval:  That scenario, I think, limited our creativity because we would just go in and run the playbook, go over the charts we’re going to play, and call it a night.  Here, we come in and get some ideas going, and that’s how these seeds become trees later in the creative process.  Not having those limitations has enabled us to do expand and it’s been great.  I think that’s a recent step in our development is that now that we’re not so limited by these outside factors, we can really just hone in on music and these wonderful ideas that sometimes just come about.  We just meet up and, I don’t know, we just have inspiration.

Simpkin:  Kennedy will call us up and we’ll be like, ‘Let’s do a breakdown on that song.’

Kennedy:  It will have been stuck in my head for the next three days.

Simpkin:  We come right into practice and it’s the first thing that we do.

Kennedy:  There’s even more development now that Taylor has the new recording spot.  It has an unattached garage, and so that will be the recording room, and then he has a tracking room in the house.  It’s nice that now we can go and set up on the weekends and say, ‘You know what, let’s record these five songs at our own will.’  We can do anything, and the band can throw in ideas.

Taylor:  I just moved from Huntington Beach, that’s where that recording studio was.  It was just a room in the house, and then I moved to this house in Westminster over by Springdale and Westminster.  It has so much more space for us to do our thing.  We can’t really rehearse there like we do here with the full band, but we can get a lot of stuff done there that we couldn’t do at that other place.  So this next year we’ll be doing a lot of good work.

What do you envision for the rest of 2012?

Kennedy:  I think we’re in a good place right now.

Arenas:  It’s a new chapter.

Kennedy:  It is.  And once Riegs joined the band a lot of things changed.  With a new relationship, there are always a lot of ups and downs, but I think everyone is one a level field right now and we have a common goal.

Simpkin:  Ever since we got Eric in the band, he’s been a motivating factor.  We got a new outlook and drive.  He’s a workhorse.  If you hang around with this guy and you need something fixed or you gotta take care of some business, Riegs will definitely help out.

Taylor:  He wants to just meet up and just sit and have a beer and talk about how the band’s sweet.  We just sit there and fluff each other like, ‘We’re so cool!’ (Laughs)  You gotta keep each other filled with inspiration, so the next day when you get up and you gotta go to practice, you could be like, ‘Ugh,’ or you could be like, ‘Great! I get to see my buddies tonight.’

Riegler:  It’s been an honor with these guys.  The first year has been some of the most fun I’ve ever had and the music we’re putting out—I can’t get enough.  I watch the videos all the time, I listen to it all throughout the day.  All of those YouTube hits are probably from me (laughs).  We’re always thinking, and Sean’s like, ‘Hey we played 40 shows last year.  Let’s play 70 this year and go to three more states.’  I like that and I think that everyone pretty much has the same goal to just keep traveling and playing show and trying to spread this positive message.

Sandoval:  The positive message is definitely crucial, because beyond the musical aspect that separates us from this areas prevalent style, is that the message goes a step ahead of all the normal things we are constantly hearing being repeated over and over.  It’s like a breath of fresh air.  To hear something that you can relate to and that’s positive, you can think about it and reflect and it can bring about a positive vibe.  I feel like when I hear some of the music out there, even beyond our genre—just modern day music, it was like, ‘What was the message there?’  I think that’s important too because it feels good that we’re actually spreading this consciousness.

Simpkin:  We’re hoping that it’s going to bring longevity.  It won’t be something that’s just in-and-out.  It will be something that in 20 or 30 years you can reflect back on and think that was good music.