PART I

We're closing the label. It's time. A couple of bands are moving to the next level. The rest of 'em have solid places they can go and Kristin (Thomson) and I have a bunch of stuff that we want to do. We're going to have a big festival in the early spring to celebrate the closure.

Considering the personnel shake-up that occurred, was there ever any doubt in continuing with Tsunami? And if so, was the decision to continue as Tsunami business-related (in that people know about Tsunami, recognize the name, and are more receptive towards known quantities) or more of a personal matter?

We never broke up. We just didn't know what we wanted to say with another record. Last summer, I went on a solo tour. It reminded me of what I liked about being in Tsunami. I wrote a bunch of songs, Kristin wrote a bunch and we began practicing. John (Pamer) was deep into his new NYC life and we couldn't convince him to move back. We found the amazing Trip (Grey) and he began playing drums with us. Andrew (Webster) is deep in his new job and he couldn't tour. We worked with Andrew as much as we could. Rob (Christiansen) from Grenadine stepped in and shared the load. When we went to record in Chicago, a bunch of our friends played on the record. It changed the songs quite a bit. So when we came home, we added not one but two new players so we could do the arrangements from the record. Bob (Massey) and Amy (Domingues), who fill that roll, are also in an amazing band called the Telegraph Melts. They opened for us on the tour. It's been a really wonderful experience playing with them.

Is the inclusion of so many instruments and styles in A Brilliant Mistake (never mind the meticulous production) a way of answering those that seek (or sought) to pigeonhole the group as "indie rock"?

No. We can't help but see the world outside, but it doesn't really affect what we do too much. (This maybe is a good response to part of your previous question.) I've always liked arranged music. (Probably more than rock to be honest.) I think the songs are more arranged because they could be. We were smart enough to do it now.

What the hell is "indie" rock now? Does being "indie" actually mean anything anymore? And should it?

I can't answer that question. I'm old enough to remember when Lou Barlow's song ("Gimme Indie Rock") came out and it was just a big joke - not his song, but the term. I try to avoid those terms because they have a shelf life and they never accurately represent anything. They are just a shorthand code that is usually used in the assimilation of something interesting into something marketable.

As for the state of independent music... It's very different and diffuse. It's less idealistic, less innocent and less friendly. There will always be cool people doing music for the sake of it and there will always be cool kids looking for that music. It's just that a lot of the circuit that built up over 10-15 years to serve the punk underground has sort of fallen apart. Or changed. I don't see it as black and white so much as cyclical. I'm sure something interesting is going to take its place. It always does.

As Tsunami's music has changed, the perspectives of the lyrics seemed to have changed as well - Deep End being more of an indirect, "pop"-like nature; Heart's Tremolo being very personal (and bitter); and now, the new album, which seems to be directly addressing (or indicting) the listener. Was this a conscious decision, or just something that was a natural extension of what you folks were writing?

TSUNAMI

Left to right - Rob Christiansen, Trip Grey, Andrew Webster, Jenny Toomey, Kristin Thomson

Um, maybe. I never set out to write one way or another. Sometimes I decide that an album is too much one way and I try to find other elements to broaden the scope. I understand your summaries of the records but I don't really agree with them. It's that short-hand thing.

The first album may have been poppy, but it also had "Genius of Crack" and "Valentine" which were personal and love songs (i.e. not of the poppy nature); Tremolo was personal and at times bitter, but it was also direct (like in "Cowed by the Bla Bla") and poppy (like "Be Like That"). This new one may be direct but it also has the story of "David Foster Wallace" and a love song like "PBS". It is not an indictment of anyone but myself. It may be a more reflective record than Tremolo.

I think the songs on the first record are like the songs on a band's first record. There's a youthful enthusiasm to them. The Tremolo ones are a bit deeper and maybe too heavy handed. This record is definitely a step forward. Hopefully, the lyrics aren't over determined and the recording is way more balanced and representative than any we'd done in the past. That's what we hope anyway.

How's that for a bland summary?

It's interesting to note the new wave and country flourishes on the new album - especially the beginning of "DMFH", with the drum machine giving way to the washboard shuffle, or "Hockey", mixing the Moog and acoustic guitar. (It's not really a question, but any comments...)

Um... I've played with new wave and country before (Grenadine and Liquorice). (Ed. Note - Oh, yeah...) I think we wanted to use different instruments. We got away from the punk ethic ("make it sound like it sounds on stage"). We just wrote the names of the songs on a piece of paper and thought out what other instruments we should use, and what the songs needed. Then we started making phone calls and noodling on instruments we don't usually play. It all came together pretty organically. When you've recorded 10 records you get better at listening. You can actually hear areas of the song asking for sound or space. (Some people hear this junk immediately...I've been a slow learner.)

As fantastically eclectic as the new record is, "David Foster Wallace" seemed to just come out of nowhere (and that's a good thing). (Seems like a sort of pseudo-techno-electronica thing, with Skeleton Key-like percussion - capturing the chaotic nature of SF's travels.) What inspired this? (And is the story/lyric a DFW excerpt, or "inspired by..."?)

Trip came up with the drum beat in practice after listening to a CD of that E music. He wanted to see if he could re-create "cut-up" drums live. Rob added the bass line and I played the guitar. The chorus just came. The story part is a section of the novel I'm writing. It deals with romantic/idealized love in the 90's, and the question of its function in an ever-private, ever-invaded world. I believe that the nature and availability and worth of privacy is changing, and I think that that has residual effects on other forms of interaction. I'm curious about how it fits into "stalker culture". For instance, the very definition of "romantic love" as represented in the great works - well, it contains the same obsessive characteristics that we now identify as stalking.

Concerning the bit in "Match" about the "small minded, big mouthed, well-read but half dead government town" -

a. Does this comment reflect more on the social mores of said town, or the DC / Virginia music scene - I ask because there's this comment I found in a letter to the Sick-n-Tired mailing list from someone that's in DC that goes something like this -

 "Is DC's legendarily youth friendly scene, inculcated through years of all ages shows at clubs now run by the very kids whose pictures graced Banned in DC 15 years ago, stunting our growth? We've got the holy triumvirate of Dischord, Teen Beat, and Simple Machines, grand old men and ladies of the punk esthetic, and god bless their eclecticism of late, but, let's face it, in this town I perceive "punk as fuck" to be the highest praise grant able, and, frankly, it's getting a little tired...We don't get noise. We don't get jazz....someone here recently mentioned that Tortoise refuses to play DC. What the fuck? John Zorn plays 20-25 shows a DAY in NYC; seems to play plenty in Canada, California, Europe, for chrissake... what, do we smell bad? People raving constantly about Harry Pussy, Dead C, whatever you like... we don't see hide or hair of 'em."

b. Do you think that the music underground has begun to suffer from this sort of holier-than-thou cliquiness - a bunch of know-it-all hipsters shooting their mouth off about this and that, trying to dictate how things should be (and were), following some sort of didactic dogma - or has it always been like that? (You know, the microcosm - underground - reflecting the macrocosm - popular culture ...that sort of thing.)

Um...no.

I was talking about two things -

1) The white collar culture of DC and the pessimism that trickles down due to our lovely crack-head mayor-for-life and the presence of the white house and its endless ripples of government pandering, slandering and bureaucracy.

2) I was also talking about the theory that one can never be a prophet in their own home town and you are only as big as the memories, preconceived notions, and expectations of those that have known you over the years.

As for the question of music - DC is a unique city. It has no real college radio. No real solid music press. It hasn't had a small, cool, regularly active club for about 4 years. This means we are sort of isolated. That's good for a lot of reasons. DC kids are suspicious of trends. I saw Mudhoney play to an empty 9:30 Club 8 years ago at the height of their hipsterism. Did we have a lot of Mudhoney clone bands? No. Do we have a lot of Tortoise copy bands now? No. Do NYC, Chicago, etc. - yes! DC also has a huge work ethic. There are more bands and labels and studios here than there are venues and audience to support them. That's the other point. Because of DC's white-collar, conservative overtones, people (other than die hard rockers) do not go to many shows. And thus it is hard for the clubs to justify taking risks on small draw shows. It has always been this way.

"Buying into the myth of the underground as it has been formalized in recent years is in many ways blinding yourself to the revolutionary activities that continue to stretch boundaries but are not yet included in the canon."

Back when DC Space was around, all of those "flavor of the minute" (or in some cases, "ground breaking and seminal") bands had a place to play. A place that wouldn't look like an empty cave with a smattering of gnats when only 50 people showed up. DC doesn't have that place anymore and that's sad. I played all of my first shows at DC Space. It was easy to get a show there and it was easy to fill it. I feel sorry for the young kids for that reason but not for this belly-achy reason. If that "sick of it all" kid is so fired up to get Tortoise to play why doesn't he contact them and figure out how to bring them here? That's how punks did it in the old days. Or on a grander level - why not try to open that club that will make it easier for all the other bands with a small draw? Those punks that he's attacking for having the scene sewn up... well, they were putting on shows for themselves in church basements when no one else would help. They faced the same conservative climate and lack of cool radio and that exists now and they made something pretty neat out of it. And to be honest, most of those punks (save the huge draws, like Fugazi) are playing poorly attended shows themselves. Tsunami sells out NYC venues but has never sold out the Black Cat and we don't have a thing sewed up at any of the clubs.

On an entirely different point - kids are still doing it. There was a three-day noise festival at the Black Cat this summer that didn't include any Dischord, Teenbeat, or Simple Machines bands. There are also super fucking weird and wonderful bands like Crom-Tech burning up the back stage of the Black Cat...and I'm sure if I went out more I could tell you about more interesting bands. Also, our drummer Trip is a professional musician who plays in jazz bands 4-7 nights a week. I've seen him a couple of times playing traditionally, backing up an 80 year old tenor hero in a huge orchestra setting (I wish I could remember his name, but he was a tenor sax player who'd played with all of the be-bop greats - Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, etc.); I've seen him holding down the fort at his weekly Jam session gig and I've seen him back more experimental musicians at State of the Union or the 8th Street Lounge. So what if the Black Cat isn't drawing enough experimental music? There are a ton of other venues out there. You need to make the effort to look to other resources. Rob C. from Grenadine and Viva Satellite, for example, just rented out a space to perform a musical.

Also... I've seen Tortoise & Harry Pussy play shows here and I drove to NYC to see the Dead C. It's a fan thing. We used to think nothing (and still sort of do) of driving to Richmond, Philly or NYC or North Carolina to catch a great show that wasn't coming to DC. That's how it was before Punk Rock got on TV. It was word of mouth. You'd hear from your friend that such-and- such band was playing. You'd get a carload of kids together and you'd drive to the show. TV punk has misinformed kids as to their roll in the process and what they deserve. TV music has confused audiences as to their roll in performance. More and more I am playing for kids who don't understand that performance is an exchange. They respond to us like a glorified television. They want to sit down and consume. For this reason, I'm sort of glad that the media focus is moving away from this type of music.

How's that for an answer?

PS - Neither Mark (Robinson - Teenbeat) nor Ian (MacKaye - Dischord) nor I consider "punk as fuck" to be high praise. The last 3 of our labels releases are, respectively: