Too Bad Eugene - Interview
Raw Interview of Too Bad Eugene
By Matt Modrich
You go by the name Fat Tony on your message board; are you a big fan of the Simpsons?
Speaking for myself and no one else in the band, I am a huge Simpsons fan. It's my favorite show by far. I have 16 vhs tapes full of simpsons episodes, about 16 per tape, each with the commercials paused out. But now with the dvd's coming out, I don't bother recording it any more. I just buy the dvd's. Plus the last two seasons or so have been going really down hill.
Where are you from, what type of following does TBE have there and what age groups does your music attract at shows?
We are from Santa Cruz, California (North/Central California, about an hour and a half south of San Francisco). We aren't the biggest band in town, but we are probably the biggest in the Christian scene, though that scene isn't especially large in Santa Cruz. Plus, we haven't been playing tons of shows over the last year. When we do play, the average age of the people in the crowd is probably 18.
Playing punk rock, do you consider that to be a philosophy for you or just a type of music?
I guess the best way to answer that is that I don't consider us punk rock. We definitely have punk influences, but that is exclusively a musical influence, not a philosophical influence. Punk rock does historically carry a certain philosophy, but we try our hardest to find better places for gleaning worldviews than punk rock shows.
A lot of people get sick of playing punk rock as they get older, do you see that happening to you?
Definitely. Punk music resonated with all of us when we were teenagers because of its aggression and anger. However, as we have gotten older, we find ourselves feeling the need to express more than one emotion. Punk basically limits you to aggression, unless you are creative enough to bend the boundaries of punk and do something else with it. But the moment you do, the purists become offended if you call yourself a punk band. Therefore, we don't really call our selves a punk band. We don't want to offend the mohicans.
You and Andy used to be in Craig's Brother, did you guys leave on good terms or was Too Bad Eugene started in rebellion?
Too Bad Eugene was jokingly started in rebellion. There was a running joke in Craig's Brother that if the band was going to kick you out, they would take you to the Cowboy Diner and order you a sasparilla. So, when we recorded our first demo as TBE, we titled it The Sasparilla Liberation, playing on the idea that we had freed ourselves by kicking ourselves out. We didn't part with the Craig's Brother guys on very good terms, but things are pretty good now. I don't see any of them that often, but Andy and Heath (CB drummer) still hang out.
You guys were on Mike Herrea's Rock City Recordings; was it your plan to launch from his label to Tooth and Nail?
Of course not. If we had originally intended on hooking back up with Tooth and Nail, Rock City would have been the last place to start considering the relationship between the two at the time. We went with Rock City because we knew MxPx was a big successful band and lots of good labels had been started by big successful bands. We thought Rock City might become something big and we wanted in on the ground floor. However, the label didn't really go anywhere, which is partially our fault because we couldn't tour enough. So when it became apparent that Rock City and Too Bad Eugene couldn't really do anything for each other, we knew Tooth and Nail would be the best place to go. They were already an established label that we had a very positive experience with overall when in Craig's Brother. It was definitely a change from our original plans, but it has turned out a lot better for us.
With MxPx's disagreements with Tooth and Nail in the past, did you have any qualms about joining their label after being on Rock City?
The stuff between MxPx and Tooth and Nail is between them, not us. We knew it might kinda be a sticky spot to be in, but Tooth and Nail was the best thing for us so we didn't care about anything else. Their beef is theirs.
How do you think TBE has changed from the last album to this one?
We have a better sense of who we are now. We are more intentinoal about how the album developes from song to song. I honestly don't think we have any filler on this album. This album is more technical, a bit darker, and the lyrics are better, in my opinion.
Can you talk the record sharing some of your favorite highlights as well as things people might not know or would find especially interesting about it?
This album took a fairly long time to make. All of the songs we used on this record except one (Bad Guy) were written between November '99, right after we finished our last record, and November '02- thats three years of working on songs. Bad Guy was written before we recorded our last record. We recorded this record this album over a six month period, patching together late night and weekend sessions around our school and work schedules. One interesting thing most people don't know is that while there are 10 songs on the record, and we finished one other song for the I'm Your Biggest Fan comp called "In Memory Still", there are three other songs that we didn't finish from those sessions. Hopefully we'll get the chance to finish those songs at someone home studio and release them on comps or an ep or something.
Is there a theme to "Moonlighting" and what types of themes do you address in the songs on it?
I don't know that there is one single theme uniting this record, but I think the most dominant recuring theme is the way our experiences with people direct the way we form our own philosophies on life. "Premodern Donna" reflects on how ultra conservative fundamentalist Christians have affected my thinking about God, while "Charismata" reflects on how Pentacostal and Charismatic Christians have affected me. Virtually every song on the album reflects on how my interactions with either a group of people or a person have affected the way I see world.
How do you feel about being part of the "Christian" scene and can you discuss some of the faith-based themes on "Moonlighting?"
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