(conducted at Budgies Burritos on July 14, 2014, originally for Beatroute magazine)
I remember when I used to work here
and you would come in for a burrito and I'd be like “We gotta put on Soda, Theo
from Gob just walked in!”
Theo: I would probably just feel embarrassed
Steve: ‘Soda’
is a Tom Song.
T: One CD we
did, the first EP, in the liner notes you would open it up and it would say
“All odd songs by Theo, all even songs by Tom”
S: And it’s
funny because Theo still writes odd songs.
T: We
usually write our own songs that we sing but I’ve written songs for Tom to sing
because the range of his voice fits the key of the song, like “Nothing New”
(off How Far Shallow Takes You),
“Perfect Remedy”, there’s some other ones too I just can’t think of them. We’ll
get into writing songs and be like, I think you should change this whole entire
verse, but we work together. This last record Tom wrote most of the songs and I
wrote some, but it’s a democracy, we all pick the songs.
During the recording process of your
new album APT 13, you didn’t have any
label to give you a timeline so it was a lot more loose, how did that affect
the outcome of the record?
T: It was
cool that we did it ourselves, Tom and I recorded the whole thing, and I mixed
the whole record. It was cool that there was no compromising in that respect, there
was no one saying, do this, don’t do this. But it took a lot longer and a lot
of things happened in that time. We recorded most of the tracks at Steve’s
parent’s house in White Rock, his parents are gone 6 months of the year so we
took advantage of that and it was really cool, it was awesome.
S: [We
recorded] all of the bass, a little bit of the vocals, and I think all of the
guitars were done there. There’s this walk-in closet and we made a little
booth.
T: We have
all the right equipment, all the pre-amps. Especially if we’re doing it just
using one or two channels for guitars and bass.
T: We did
the drums in two or three days at Armoury Studios, because there are so many
options for the drums, and we wanted them to sound good. But it was still all us
in there. Tom finished his vocals in New York . And a lot of stuff happened to
us during that period of recording. My dad passed away, there were break-ups, a
marriage, all these different things, all in a couple years. We’re pretty
tight, as a band and as friends. It was just life, you know, you gotta get back
up.
So you’ve been playing a lot of
festivals lately, with smaller shows in between?
S: Yeah this
summer has kind of festival season, so we fly out for the festival and then we
do some shows in between. We’re doing a whole big tour in October. Just Canada, hopefully next year we’ll do
Europe and America.
T: We’ve
been doing smaller shows like back in the old days, and they’ve been crammed
with people, and everyone is singing along, yelling at as, and screaming the
lyrics. They’re grabbing the mics and we’re getting bashed in the face,
chipping our teeth. Actually I had to get my teeth fixed a while ago for that.
The shows have been awesome. It’s great to have people show up at the shows and
they’re ready and their stoked. Smaller shows are more intimate and you hang
out with people after the show, you know, you walk off stage and have a beer
and say “Hey, how’s it going?” I mean we’ve always done that.
The Amnesia Rock Fest line up was
insane! It looked fake.
S: We’re
looking at it like, Misfits is playing, and
Danzig? Black Flag and Rollins Band?
It was like the 90s was back.
T:
Guttermouth played right before us and Fishbone played right after us, it was a
crazy line up. There were probably 100,000 people there.
S: Weezer is playing the small stage? We’re
at the hotel and I looked at the sign-in sheet, next to Gob it said Danzig.
He’s in the room right next to you.
(Various impersonations of Danzig
ensue)
Did you watch Danzig?
S: Nah, we
had to leave, we had a seven-hour drive.
T: Saw a bit
of Guttermouth, Belvedere, Fishbone. It was weird to see all our friends we
hadn’t seen in so long, a band we toured with on Warped Tour, 88 FINGERS LOUIE
from Chicago, they just walked up and they were like “Hey Theo!” it was like, I
haven’t you guys since 1999! But it was 100 bands in two days, that’s too many
bands. There were two main stages and then two smaller ones. They had NOFX, Megadeath & Alice in Chains on the
big stage. The kid doing it is a huge metal and punk rock fan, and he had a
bunch of money he won from the lottery or something, so he just spent his
winnings on that I guess. It shoulda been over three days, it was too many
bands for two days.
I can’t even imagine what that looks
like.
T: It was
fucked. Super small town.
S: It was
like Fort Langley.
T: Just
crowds of people walking through, the hotel we stayed at was right next to the
show, we couldn’t shut it out. We woke up to a French version of ‘Oh Canada’ on
the p.a. and then some death metal sounding vocals for sound check.
Who did
the artwork for your new album?
Speaking of Fort Langley, what were
shows like back in the day in Langley? What bands did you play with?
T: We did
the Punk Strikes Back shows in the suburbs, we also did shows in North Delta,
with SPARKMARKER, SMUGGLERS.
S: Those
shows were great, we’d go because there would be like 6 bands in the suburbs,
always all ages, which is important when you’re a kid and you first start going
to shows.
T: Yeah, Tom
and I’d organize with a couple friends, make handbills and go to the schools.
We looked really young at the time so they thought we went to the school. We’d just
walk around put posters up, even if they lasted for a day, the shows were
always packed. You remember CUB and MEOW?
S: BLACK
HALOS, BOTCH, BY A THREAD.
I have a BY A THREAD tape somewhere.
S: I played
in that band!
T: Yeah, I
had that tape, it was 3 or 4 songs. There were other bands like WISECRACK, and SEMEN
from Surrey. How Punk Strikes Back got started was me and Tom would talk about
doing our own shows, and there’s a lot of work involved, but we could do it
right. We had our parents selling pop & chips. It wasn’t about making money
it was just about having our own fucking identity. Shows that kids could go and
have fun at. It was about showcasing new local bands. We did 5 or 6 of those
shows, every year we’d do one, and then it just stopped because Gob got bigger
and it was too hard. If we ever did one again…
You should do one again.
T: In the
suburbs? I don’t know if it would be the same, I don’t know if kids would come
out.
S: We should
do it and make a video out of it.
T: There’s
kids now who are 13 or 14 and haven’t even heard of us. There are people who
heard of us when they were 19 or now they’re like 30.
I think locally you have a connection
for sure.
T: We’ll
definitely try doing one of those shows again. As long as there is some
interest.
S: We were
thinking about doing like a little tour of Western Canada, like do a showcase
of rad younger bands, take Punk Strikes Back on the road.
T: Then
maybe we could do 100 bands in 2 days.
The ultimate goal. 200 bands in 4
hours.
T: Our first
tour was down the West Coast from Seattle to LA, then we starting doing our own
shows, getting on to other shows. We made our own CDs at the time. It was a
different time. There wasn’t the internet. We were booking shows by just calling
people. Then labels starting finally noticing us and Mint Records got in
contact with us, and wanted to do a record, then it just built up from there.
Do you think that hardcopy promotion
and making posters still has a place in doing shows now?
T: To me,
promotion is like, Twitter or Facebook, just getting stuff out to your friends,
or the masses. I think both are still beneficial to the event, because certain
people stay in their cliques of friends and will only know about certain shows.
But if you’re out and someone hands you a handbill, that works too. I think
they work together. They must. I’m no marketing genius, I just play music.
There’s something about having that
piece of paper in your hand. Having that introduction to the show from someone in
person.
S: It’s way
cooler.
T: I like
it, I keep them. I keep the little posters, I think we have all our old posters
stored away. We took digital pictures of them.
S: We should
put an album of them up on Facebook.
T: I
remember finding the reels of the old Gob record we did in 1984. I found the
Too Late No Friends stuff. We were moving stuff out of storage and it felt
pretty cool to feel that nostalgia, and see that that stuff still exists. We’re
thinking of doing a 20th year anniversary album on vinyl and
recording it all analog. So we’re thinking of doing that. So you’re the first
person to hear about that.
And now it’s going to the world. I
think it’s really cool. Analog all the way.
T: Digital
is just easier to work with, but analog has that nice warm sound.
How was the border on your first
tour? How is it now?
T: We had to
pretend we weren’t a band, we didn’t know any of the logistics of crossing the
border at the time. We were just sort of winging it.
S: Nowadays
we always have our papers and it’s completely legit.
Do you remember your first tour van?
What kind of van was it?
T: Oh yeah.
I bought it. It was a brown Chevy van. A propane van. A propane in the ass van.
It was the newest thing coming out at the time, it was cheaper, and it was cleaner.
S: But it
was a Canadian thing.
T: We would
have to go to places to fill up, and they would think we were filling up a
stove, and they were like, it sure takes a lot of propane this stove. And I'd
say, well no, it’s for our van. And they’d stop filling it up and say oh we
don’t have a license for that. So we just said we had a stove from then on. It
was a pain in the ass, but we made it to all the shows. I remember we played in
like, Tacoma, Oregon a couple places, Sunnydale, we played Gilman. I remember playing there two or three times but I can’t
remember the bands we played with.
Tell me about Positive Records.
T: The only
band we put out was Another Joe and that was it and we were starting to do
something like our own label, but as we were doing that and doing Gob, it was
too much to run. Even though we were trying to do whatever it took, drive for
56 hours for one show, from Ottawa to Oregon, we were doing crazy shit, we
didn’t care, we were like “We gotta make the punk show!”, nothing was the smartest.
It was too much shit to do, so it was hard to focus and do it right. We’d have
girlfriends that would help us out [with the label] and then shit would go sour
in the relationship and that would affect them wanting to help us.
Did you ever play shows at A & B
Sound?
T: Yeah, a
long time ago. Tom and Kelly (bass player
on Gob’s first EP) used to work there but it was long after that. I think
we played A & B Sound in Vancouver, and one in Surrey. That was a long time
ago, I haven’t thought about that in a long time.
S: Remember
Trax records? That was the place, that’s where you go to get like, anything
from Misfits to Dead Can Dance or Christian Deth. No one’s buying CDs anymore
though. It’s a dead format. And we’re giving them out for free at our show in
Vancouver.
T: It comes
with the ticket. And if you pre-order the vinyl you can get a colour vinyl, a
shirt and stuff, there is a cool little package that you get. Our release show
is also gonna be with LIVING WITH LIONS, who are our label mates.
So someone I know bought your old
tour van, he played in this band Paper Lanterns, and somehow the bench from
that van ended up in this punk house I used to live at, and we call it the Gob
Couch, it’s been around for years. I referenced in a song I wrote with my old
band.
S: You still
have the seat?!
T: That
thing went around the United States, for three months, on the Eat Shit and Die tour, we’d have five
dollars a day for tour. We were doing alright in Canada because people knew us,
but in the States it was three months straight. I was really trim on that tour.
Tom looked like, you know when the persons been on a desert island too long and
the other guy turns into a chicken wing, Tom looked like that to me. That song
‘Beauville’ is about that van.
So Tom and you (Steve) live in New
York?
S: Yeah, actually
Tom just got his citizenship, him and his partner got married, and the New York
Times did an article on them, they submitted their story and got picked for
this write up. Tom’s wife grew up with really strict parents and wasn’t allowed
to go to shows, so she created this Interview Club at school, and would be
like, I have to go to this show, it’s for Interview Club, so that’s how she got
to go to shows. Her and Tom met at a Mr. T Experience show at this old venue
called the Gate on Granville Street.
Do you tour in a tour bus now?
T: No, it’s
too much money. We’ll do like a van and a trailer, a mini-van and a cargo van.
We gotta be sensible y’know, we’re not living at our parents place anymore.
We’re trying to make a living playing music but have fun. Sometimes it’s
sensible to use a tour bus if it’s the right time of year, and if you’re on a
tour where you would be buying hotel rooms anyway. You can have your own food.
We’re considering a tour bus for the October tour. Stuff gets expensive on
tour, like having a crew, something we have to have. Either that or we have to
do everything and then you only have enough time to maybe eat and play the
show. So having a tour manager and a crew is really helpful, so we can focus on
playing. Stuff piles up quickly, especially on a five week tour.
How many shows do you play in five
weeks?
S: We try to
have one day off a week.
T: Probably
around 27 shows, in 35 days. Just Canada. We wanna do Victoria to Halifax. I
don’t know if we’ll make it to St. Johns. We’ve played in Cornerbrook before.
It’s a long ferry ride, it can be nine or ten hours depending on the weather.
Favourite local bands?
S: Lightning
Dust, Highway Kind, War Baby, Jiffy Marker, A Rock Band Called Time, and Castle
Project.
T: Deny Your
Maker.
GOB is playing a CD release show for their new album APT 13 on August 22nd
at the IMPERIAL ROOM on Main Street, with JIFFY MARKER & LIVING WITH LIONS
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