Love Letter Band - the extended verses
[ as edited in the October 2006 issue of Thrasher Magazine ]

+ "Please play a soul song on the jukebox at Applebee's", "Superbowl party - trophy construction bosses wife", "I don't like college kids out at the bar" - all lyrics from the new album (the song "College Kids" to be precise). Tell me how you REALLY feel! Are the afforementioned lyrics a direct stab at where you currently reside?

When I play that song live I always feel bad and have to explain that I too go to college it's not meant to be offensive. That song is less about individuals and more about culture in general. Have you seen this new "hit" comedy on FOX called "free ride"? This kid goes off to college and then comes back to his home town after 4 years and the whole show is about how much smarter he is than all the other stereotypical small town yocals because he went to college and they didn't. It's like, college kid goes to college and learns what sarcasm is and he runs around town gawking at the yocals saying sarcastic things like, "O.....KAY....". The show is so fucking offensive and rude to poor people. Meanwhile the suburbs sprawl as our marketplace gets more and more homogenized. Applebees, TGI fridays, Chillies... I saw all these college types at the bar at one such restaurant drinking presidentae margaritas while some soul songs played on the satellite radio. The juxtaposition between the great old music and the surroundings were funny to me. But I have nothing against college types. Some of my best friends are college types! Nothing against anyone. Just an observation on how homogenized our culture has become.

{{{Extra:: It's spelled Presidente Margarita! It's fucking funny how every time you go into a place like that the first thing they ask you is, "Can I get you anything to drink? A Presidente Margarita perhaps?". Like the Presidente Margarita is just everyones default drink! Like I go there when I want to party. I always want to ask them, "Can I just have a regular margarita?" None of this señiór frogs bull shit. This isn't Cabo. This is fucking Chilis. Look around. Is anyone doing jello shots or dancing on the table? No... It's just a bunch of peope who just got off work at one of the surounding office buildings and are awkwardly honoring their co-workers' invitations, "we should all go out for a bite and a drink one of these nights!" Even though deep down no one wants to go so you get a table full of 5 office workers who are only their out of social obligation. Ether that or the place is full of young familys with little kids crawling over the seats and ordering things from the little buckaroo menu. So please... stop with the festive drink names guys. Your joint isn't fun. You don't see Firrs Cafateria or the Golden Coral asking you if you want the "beach bum mai-tai" because they know what they are - A fucking chain resturant where suburban people go when they are too tired to think of anything else to eat! Not a festive "fun" place. Golden Coral keeps it real!}}

+ Your sound - if I may say so - has quite a northwest sound to it. Much in the similar realm as Mister Orange from Thanksgiving (or a greater Marriage Records relationship entirely) and Dave Dondero, both of whom I see you classify as "friends" on the LLB site. What I arrive at from this keen observation is: what keeps you in Denver / Grand Junction? I don't get out much, myself. Is is the Meth?

I like to live in places where there are low-riders, shitty pot, dirt bikes, red rocks and tumbleweeds. Yeah, Adrian and Dave and I might fall into the same category. But all three of had been doing what we do for years before we were made aware of one another. Adrian is a friend of mine. Dave Dondero is a friend of mine. He and I have talked about how some of our songs use the exact same chord patterns. But the thing is... is that we both just play song patterns that have been around in folk music for 100s of years. Isn't Dave from the south originally? I think that it would be silly for me to move to a place just because my music gets classified with other artists who might live in that certain place. The northwest is pretty and green but like I mentioned above, I make home where there are low-riders, shitty pot, dirt bikes, red rocks and tumbleweeds. I wouldn't want to live somewhere where everyone was into the same hip music. The northwest or anywhere but the desert west does not feel like home to me. I hope that my music sounds more desert west than northwest. I tried to do that on purpose, my brother played mariachi style trumpet, I used spaghetti western style guitar leads, I used Navaho style flute and my friend Jake who lives on the border of Colorado and Utah played pedal steel.

+ Prior to the LLB, there was said to have been "a shitty, Southern California-style punk band" that was happening amongst your circle - tell me more!

Jason Anderson and I were talking about this on our last tour. We are both from small towns. We went to a best buy and purchased a NOFX cd. It was fun to blast it on the stereo when we pulled up to a crowd of K records' fans. I think that people would expect us to just be listening to things like the lucky dragons or the microphones constantly. But Jason and I got deep with Metalica's ride the lightening and NOFX's ribbed and a Jessica Simpson jam. (No tongue and cheek, No dirty pleasure's, Just pleasure, be real, ) When you grow up in a small town you can't pick and choose who you get to play music with. The pool of players is just much more shallow. Out there it's not like, "Oh, you like this or that kind of music? Cool me too. Wanna play in my band?" It's more like, "You play an instrument? Cool wanna play music together?" So you get all sorts of weird combinations. I have played in a KISS cover band, a surf rock band, a lot of metal bands, a pop punk band, a ton of sonic youth type of bands. Once my neighbor Justin and I scabbed together a drum set out of parts form thrift stores and we used circular saw blades for cymbals. We couldn't afford a real drum set. Justin played the set, I plated my acoustic guitar with a pick-up (circa Kurt Cobain)(this was around 1993). Meanwhile this other kid read poetry over the top of it and wore these weird ram horns that he had made out of latex. Hey did you ever hear about that woman who was stalking David Letterman? That was the poetry kid's mom. It's a weird cracked out place that I'm from.

+ In further prying of the current LLB moniker, what seperates Love Letter Band and Bad Weather California.. .?

Nothing. I just like to name bands. I tried to change "the love letter band" permanently to "bad weather California", but the people who put out my records advised me against it. They felt that since I had been touring for so long under the love letter band name that I would loose people if I changed names. I think that they think that I'm more popular than I actually am! My guess is that if I changed my name to bad weather California it would only confuse the 40 or so people who knew who I was 3 years ago. But they would catch on. I don't know. Am I cutting myself short? It's hard to tell.

+ You have been historically archived expressing the following truth: "A lot of times you go to an indie-rock show, and it's packed, but no one's really there to see a show. They're there to be seen, instead. I'd rather play in a closet with four people who are into it." Have you ever had to come to a halt during a performance to the "indie-rock" kids and clue them into this fact?

Yeah, I feel that sometimes the "indie scene" (what ever that is) is more about being cool than actually supporting independent music. But I can't blame people for wanting to fit in. You know? But yeah, for sure sometimes I think people want to be where the action is at to be social. It's hard to play intimate music in that climate. You know? Especially at bars. Here in Denver most of the venues are bars and sometimes you can play to a packed house but it's only packed because people are there to drink and hit on one another. It can be a bummer to be up on stage playing a quiet song and the bar sound is drowning you out. But at the same time. Those shows pay the bills and you have to learn how to play them. I think I was younger when I said those things that you quoted in that last question. I have since built a pickup for my acoustic guitar and have started to sing in the mid frequency range so my voice cuts through any noise. I get more attention now. I did once stop and tell a crowd how rude they were being. I felt bad. It was ugly of me. Ian Mckay can pull that shit off but most people just sound whiney.