Shellac, Slint, Modest Mouse? Sure you can draw a comparison, but when you get right down to brass tacks, Treysuno is its own beast. Singer/guitarist Justin Hemminger, singer/guitarist Scott Wagner, bassist Eric Komuniecki and drummer John Fleming make up the lineup, which calls Toledo its home. Most recently, they released a seven inch titled The Sexual Deviance Record, and they have a CD dubbed Foundations, which is not yet available for commercial release (see the combined review of both this month in the reviews section). You can also see the band on Aug. 17 at the Toledo Sports Arena for the Toledo Music Festival 2002 and at Howard's, 210 N. Main St. in Bowling Green, Ohio, on the weekend of Sept. 6, 7 and 8 for the Black Swamp Arts Festival. For the moment however, you'll have to enjoy this interview conducted at Frankie's in Toledo.

Steve: Is it really true that you and your wife Valerie Bertinelli are getting divorced? I’m sorry, that’s for another band.
When did the group form?

Scott: We don’t really talk about that.

Eric: The band was formed at a New Year’s party, wasn’t it?

Justin: A New Year’s party?

Eric: Yeah.

Justin: 1999/2000 I believe was the year.

Eric: The breaking of the new millennium with the birth of Treysuno.

Scott: It was a Y2K glitch.

Justin: We were all drunk.

Eric: And, we were eating that pumpernickel spinach dip.

Scott: That shit is good.

Eric: Yeah, I like that stuff.

Justin: It basically came down to I wanted to start a band and Eric and I had been in a band before.

Eric: And, Justin ran out of alternatives and came back to me. (laughs)

Justin: We had to change his instrument though.

Eric: I believe they said, “If you’re on bass, we can’t hear you screw up as much.” (laughs)

Justin: That’s an exact quote.

Eric: That is an exact quote, actually.

Justin: But, Eric and I started playing then in early 2000 [as Treysuno].

Eric: And, it was a borrowed old wooden bass that I was playing.

Justin: Borrowed from Ben Miller, who’s a totally cool guy.

Eric: Yeah, I don’t know him.

Justin: I was in a band with Ben Miller in 1999 called the Miles Reaction, and then, we did absolutely nothing.

Eric: And, then, Treysuno stole all of their songs.

Justin: Correct.

Eric: And, then, we stole their bass, and like I was afraid of Ben, because it was like (imitating the voice of another person), “There’s Ben.” And, it’s like “Oh.” And, I ran, because I was throwing his bass on the ground and everything, and I didn’t want him to get mad at me, because I busted it up pretty good.

Justin: He did. I had to fix that.

Steve: So, Ben was in Miles Reaction?

Justin: Correct?

Eric: Was that Donor on drums?

Justin: That was Mark Donor on drums, who actually became the first drummer of Treysuno.

Eric: That’s a long story, which we shan’t get into here.

Justin: Oh no, we have to get into that.

Eric: We have to get into that?

Justin: Come on, this guy’s got to fill like five, six, seven pages on the Internet.
Eric: I don’t want to get shot. (laughs)

Steve: The never-ending interview. (Imitating a tired reader) “I just keep scrolling.” (laughs)

Justin: That’s how I felt when I read that Cakaw thing. Hi Lenny.

Eric: You guys all got mad at me when I talked about Mark.

Justin: Well, yes and no. We started the band in 2000 with Eric, myself and Mark Donor.

Eric: And, do you remember why Mark played drums for us?

Justin: Because we couldn’t get ahold of Seth Anderson from the Fighting Hellfish.

Eric: And, why he played drums for us? Because we bought him two tacos.

Justin: That’s right.

Eric: And, that’s why he played, and that was his payment every week. So, we did that for a while with Mark and eventually, it came together a little bit.

Steve: When did the lineup change?

Justin: We recorded as a three-piece.

Eric: Did we record before we played a show?

Justin: Yes. We were like Steely Dan or something (editor’s note: Donald Fagan could not be reached for comment). We recorded as a three-piece, and Scott engineered it.

Scott: Yeah, it was for one of my recording projects at Bowling Green.

Steve: That wasn’t a Burton Beerman class, was it?

Justin: No, it was a Mark Buntz class.

Scott: But, it was in a Burton Beerman-related program course.

Eric: So, then, we played a show with Mark. Was that Black Swamp [Arts Festival, held annually in the Northwest Ohio town of Bowling Green]?

Justin: We played our first show in July 2000.

Eric: Was that Black Swamp?

Justin: No.

Scott: It was a metal bill; Noizeefest I think. And, I was there and inconjugated.

Justin: You were right up front if I remember correctly.

Scott: Yeah.

Eric: That was back in the sober days of Treysuno, before we had like our little rut.

Scott: That was a good time too.

Justin: We hit rock bottom then.

Steve: Was that one of those shows that Jimmie [Frederick, metal director at WBGU FM on the campus of Bowling Green State University] put together?

Justin: Yeah, Jimmie Frederick put that together. He’s a straight-up class guy.
(editor's note: at this moment, extraneous funk noise begins wafting into the interview area from the stage in the club)
Could somebody shut that fucking door? We’re trying to record here Bootsy Collins.
We played the Noizeefest. I think we played at least one or two other shows.

Eric: We played a house show with Mark.

Justin: Yeah, we played a house show at Cortney Bird’s (editor’s note: Bird books irregular shows in Northwest Ohio) house. It was a space-rock show.

Eric: For him and his parents.

Justin: For him, his parents, his friends. That was fun.

Eric: So, we played that and eventually, Justin told me that Scott was in the band.

Justin: That was like in August. Scott and I were both DJ-ing for WBGU, and this one day, I just ran into Scott at the radio station, and said, “Hey, do you want to be in a band?”

Scott: I do recall kind of the audition for me being in the band, was it was my radio show, and you were coming in to fill in for the dude after me, and the last song I played before you showed up was “I Would Hurt a Fly” by Built to Spill. And, you were in the studio and started setting up for you show and turned it up really loud. We were both jamming out playing air guitar like really fucking hard. We were jumping around, playing air guitar.

Justin: Scott has this thing where he has to climb on things. (laughs)

Scott: And, you came out and you were like, “Hey, you play…
(At this moment, Keith Jenkins enters the room. Jenkins, who used to play in Bowling Green bands TennForward and Ten Watt in the late 1990s, is in Toledo this particular night to perform with his band The Stepford Five.)

Scott: We were playing air guitar, and Justin comes out and says, “You play guitar, right?”

Justin: I don’t know how I knew that.

Scott: It just kind of came up. He was like, “You play guitar, right?” We probably talked about it, because we had a couple of classes together. We had like music tech and shit together. So, anyway, he asked if I would be interested in playing in the band, and I was kind of like, “Well, I don’t have my own electric guitar, or amp.”

Justin: So, I didn’t know whether or not Scott played guitar, but I had an inclination that he did. And, mainly the reason why I asked him to be in the band is because he climbs on things. That’s really a good reason why.

Scott: Howard’s (editor’s note: a club in Bowling Green) is a good playground for that kind of shit to.

Eric: The first show with Scott was the Black Swamp Arts Festival. We were all hung over, and we hadn’t slept.

Justin: Didn’t we have a party at my house the night before?

Eric: Yeah.

Scott: My performance was less than awesome.

Justin: We were using Eric’s electric guitar and my dad’s guitar amp, which he bought for me for my birthday, but demanded that I trade my Twin Reverb for it, and I didn’t do it. So, he let me borrow it for awhile.

Steve: So, that was the first gig [Scott] played with the band?

Scott: Yeah, that was the Black Swamp Festival of 2000. It was like early September.

Eric: And, that was the beginning of the Mark troubles, pretty much after Scott got in the band.

Scott: Mark and I never got along. And, actually I was the one who extended myself most to Mark after I was in the band. [Justin and Eric] were like, “We have Scott to be nice to Mark. He’ll always ride with him.”

Eric: Yeah, we always did rock, paper, scissors to see who got to ride with Mark. I always won.

Scott: Then, shows started. The Cadillac Blindside show was pretty fun.

Justin: The Shiner show was fun.

Scott: The Shiner show was really fun. And, that was the beginning of the Irish Pirate phase of Treysuno.

Justin: Yeah. Was that the Shiner show, or the one after that?

Scott: No, that was the anarchy bookstore show.

Justin: Oh, yeah, for Pauper’s Books [in Bowling Green].

Scott: All of that stuff started to happen, and then, it was that same year that troubles with Mark started coming up, because…

Justin: But, I don’t want to bad mouth Mark. We were friends for a long time. Mark was having some emotional, psychological troubles, and he just started becoming kind of unreliable.

Scott: He missed a house show in like October or November.

Justin: Actually, he didn’t miss the show. He lost the keys to my house… or actually, he lost the key to my mom’s house, where all of our stuff is stored.

Eric: And, the PA for the other bands was stored there to. So, I was waiting there with Mark out in the snow, and he was like (imitating Donor), “I lost the house key.” So, then, Justin shows up and gets rathered irritated with Mark and myself.

Justin: I crushed a gutter pipe.

Eric: I believe the most classic phrase that came out of that night was “Everything I touch turns to shit.” Put that in the interview.

Scott: And, then, it ended up becoming a situation where we’d end up like all ready to go, and like a half hour later we would go over to [Mark’s] dorm and wait on his ass to get down there, and then we all drove to fucking Toledo finally, and he was like, “I have to go. Let’s hurry.”

Eric: But, luckily for that… When we all got drunk at shows, Mark would always drive us home and remain sober.

Scott: To get to the end of it, the last straw with him was New Year’s 2000/2001. By the way, that recording project was in March of 2000, and then, I was asked to join the band in like July of 2000.

Steve: So, the last show [with Donor] was 2000/2001?

Scott: Yeah.

Justin: Did we get to the bottom of what happened there or not?

Scott: Basically, he never showed up. Anyway, I would like to point out for the record that I was at a family reunion after Christmas, and very, very fucking sick and drove from Buffalo, New York to Bowling Green, Ohio to play that New Year’s show?

Justin: Or, to not play it.

Scott: And, we didn’t do it, because [Donor] was in town, but not around. So, we were pissed, and we all were big pussies about it.

Eric: Not me, I was being a dick. (laughs)

Scott: So, we called a band meeting to kick him out, and we were all feeling really terrible about it. We didn’t want to do that, and he knew he was about to be kicked out of the band, so he was like, “There’s nothing that’s important to me, except this band.” He laid that on us, and we felt fucking terrible and didn’t kick him out of the band. And, like a week later, [Eric] was like, “Yeah, so I was talking to Mark on INS, and I kicked him out.”

Eric: The thing with that though was like, I kept being like, “So, we’re pretty unhappy, but not really unhappy.” I kept getting shot down trying to kick Mark out of the band.

Justin: Yeah, you were being the aggressor there. Which is fine. Someone had to do it, because Scott and I are far too passive-aggressive to do that.

Eric: So, like I’m attacking [Mark] with like a sword and a shield (editor’s note: figuratively) and you were like grabbing my sword and shield and were like, “Eric, no! Don’t hit him!”

Justin: We were actually beating him with cushions.

Eric: Yeah, but they were beating me with cushions and like giving Mark candy. (laughs)

Scott: So, Mark is out of the band. Eventually, what happened… And, that was like late January/mid-January 2001, and then what ended up coming together was we had a couple of opportunities to… We were asked to record a couple of songs for some compilations. One of which was from a band called Space and Noise Productions from South Bend, Ind.

Justin: And, their label, Patsy Presents.

Scott: Patsy Presents Records; they asked us to put the song “A Man” on there for their compilation. We were all like, “Something released. Fuck yeah, we’ll do that. That’s cool.” And, I was also working at the studios at Bowling Green [State University] and had free studio time. So, that was that. And, we had all the access to do whatever the fuck we wanted at night, which was cool. The other thing was something I found on the Internet. It was a Frank Black cover record some guy from some tiny indie label in New York wanted to put together. And, so, Justin and I talked it out and we decided that we would cover for that, the song “South Bay,” from Pistolero.

Justin: S O period Bay.

Scott: So, we decided to do all that. Anyway, so the drummer from the Fighting Hellfish. The original drummer…

Justin: Seth Anderson, who we actually practiced with on New Year’s Day.

Scott: Yeah, the day after the New Year’s show, we were all pissed. We practiced with [Anderson], and it went really well.

Steve: Now, he was the original guy right before [Donor]?

Justin: We were trying to get him.

Scott: But, anyways, so Seth ended up rehearsing with us a couple of times. We went into the studio like that January and February of that year recorded “South Bay” and “A Man” with Seth. We also played one show with him at the Bottle Rocket (editor’s note: a club in Toledo), and that went OK.

Eric: And, that night was the night was the night when that drunk guy tried to ram us from behind that I drove into a pole for.

Justin: Oh, that was classic.

Eric: Don’t fuck with Treysuno. That was like mid-March 2001.

Scott: Anyway, so it came about that Seth wasn’t going to join the band. We had a discussion with him. So, we never had him as a full-time drummer.

Justin: Plus, he was in another band to.

Scott: Yeah, he was in the Fighting Hellfish full-time. He played more shows than we did. So, they recorded an album and everything to. So, about those recordings (editor’s note: the compilation tracks) the “A Man” went on to the Patsy Presents compilation later that year. The “South Bay;” the Frank Black cover album never materialized, and that ended up going on a Lactose Intolerant Toledo Punks compilation. So, that’s where that ended up going.

Justin: The Toledo Punk Rock Soundtrack was the name of that.

Scott: And, then, that was pretty much it for the meantime. I went to Nashville last summer and was out of town the whole time.

Justin: No Nashville stories please.

Steve: I only have 60 minutes on the tape. (laughs)

Scott: I hung out with Beck’s dad and George Jones. I talked to Jerry Reed on the telephone.

Justin: Anyway, no more Nashville stories.

Scott: When I got back that fall, two of our best songs were already written by Justin and Eric.

Eric: By Justin.

Scott: By Justin.

Eric: And, I sat there and went (imitates drooling buffoon and mumbles something).

Scott: And, they had agreed to have our third drummer, who was Bruce…

Justin: Bruce Verment.

Scott: He was a high school student.

Eric: He was a high school dropout.

Scott: His drumming was pretty good. It was kind of metal, but it was good.

Justin: He loved that double-bass pedal. He did, I didn’t.

Eric: I liked it. It gave balls to the band.

Scott: I hated it. We played the Black Swamp Arts Festival, which was his first show; my first show the year before, and that ended up being the only show that he ever played with us, because…

Eric: His mom said he couldn’t be in the band, which was a bummer. He was a nice guy.

Scott: So, then we…

Eric: Went through a dry spell.

Scott: Pretty much kicked around and went through a dry spell again and played like one fucking show, two fucking shows that whole year. We started interviewing a couple of drummers.

Justin: A guy by the name of Paul Basta. I worked with him in Bowling Green. He told me about J.D. (editor’s note: John Fleming, the band’s current drummer). He was in a band with J.D.

John: Twister Champ.

Justin: Twister Champ was the name of the band. But, yeah, so we eventually got hooked up with J.D., and he came in for the audition and just blew us away. He was so good.

Scott: With the previous audition, he left, and we were like, “Well, he was good at this, and this wasn’t so good.”

Steve: This was the previous guy who auditioned?

Scott: Yeah, the previous guy. When J.D. left, he was just closing the door behind him, and we just looked at each other and started cracking up, like, “That is fucking ridiculous.” (laughs) So, we rehearsed with him through December, and then, our first show was in mid-January at the Bottle Rocket.

Justin: January 20, 2002. After that, everything changed.

Scott: And, basically, we had like one other show. I don’t know when it was.

Justin: Uh, we played Mickey Finn’s.

Scott: And, then, to get you up to speed, we went on tour from like March 6 to the 17th and played basically like nine shows from Chicago and back basically; Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio. And, that went, for the most part, extremely well. That was really a very smooth period of time.

Eric: And, then, we got back and didn’t talk to each other for a week. (laughs)

Scott: We all had a kick ass time, but didn’t speak to each other for a week.

Justin: Which is funny since Scott and I live with each other.

Eric: At one point, I attacked Scott. I think I hurt him.

Justin: You tackled him basically.

Eric: Yeah, I tackled him.

Justin: At Little Brother’s [in Columbus, Ohio].

Steve: As a joke?

Scott: Oh yeah. All of the shows went pretty much really well. Since then, we’ve played a handful of dates, and that will bring you up to speed.

Justin: A lot more than you ever asked for. (laughs)

Steve: Did you guys have a certain sound in mind when you started the group, or did you just kind of wind up at the point you’re at right now?

Justin: It’s been evolving since we started. I was listening to a lot of Shellac when we started, and basically, I kind of wanted the band to be a trio like Shellac, but…

Eric: At first, it was sort of like Shellac meets Slint. Then, Scott came in, so it was like Shellac less; Slint meets Modest Mouse. Then, it was sort of like, less Slint; Modest Mouse meets…

Scott: The Pixies.

Eric: The Pixies meets an emo band or something.

Steve: In a dark alley.

Eric: Yeah, and they all have lots of sex. (laughs)

Justin: The point being the music is very guitar driven. That was kind of the goal all along, and it’s just kind of evolved, but it’s still guitar driven.

Steve: Any plans for cellos or anything?

Scott: If there would be a string section, cellos would be the way to go. (laughs)
As far as other than guitars, we also use a synth and a trumpet.

Steve: That’s right.
How did everyone know each other? Were any of you friends prior to…

Eric: I went to high school with Justin, and we were in a high school punk band together.

Scott: I knew Justin through some of the recording classes/music technology classes we were taking together. We took some classes together at Bowling Green [State University], and I was a DJ under his program directing and general managing.

Eric: And, then, one day, the three of us were hiking on top of a tall mountain and found a small nest with a beautiful golden egg in it, and we were like, “Hmmmm, what shall be this golden egg?” And, we took it home and nursed it, and then, J.D. burst out fully grown with drum sticks in his hands, stark nude. (laughs)

Justin: I don’t know how he fit into that tiny egg. It was very small.

Eric: Yeah, I think it was a magic egg.

Steve: Do you think that as far as the band’s sound goes that it’s changed at all since the inception of the group?

Justin: Yeah.

John: I think it’s changed since when I first got here.

Justin: The real turning point was when the Patsy Presents comp got reviewed in Action and Fact Helicopter, a zine out of South Bend [Ind.].

Scott: That was like last July.

Eric: And, they slagged us, didn’t they?

Justin: Oh, they tore us a new one. It kind of made us reevaluate what we were doing. We basically took our songs, which had been kind of simple, and I wrote some songs.

Eric: That’s when we started working together more I think as a band.

Steve: Also, I was going to ask you about the songwriting approach like if there’s one person who usually brings an idea to practice usually, or if there’s one key songwriter?

Eric: Well, basically, Justin writes the songs.

Scott: Justin is definitely the primary songwriter.

Eric: He’s Jesus and we’re the apostles. (laughs)

Scott: He accepts like all of our input. Like J.D. for instance…

Justin: J.D. has free reign to do whatever J.D. wants.

John: Nobody’s telling me what to do. (laughs)

Eric: He gets really mad to when we tell him.

Scott: [Justin] will write the melody lines and lyrics himself, but he’ll basically bring a riff and loose structure, and we’ll put it together in the practice, and it will sound like shit, and the next practice we’ll have it fine tuned.

Eric: And, he keeps on trying to show us these moves to do onstage, but we don’t do those. (laughs)

Justin: I actually got the choreographer guy who does those commercials on TV with N’Sync. (laughs)

Steve: That was kind of another question. Before you step onstage usually, does anyone say, “I’m going to jump off a ledge,” or “I’m going to wrestle with my bass?”

Justin: We always know Eric’s going to do all of that.

Eric: Basically, what happens before a show is I start drinking [and] Justin says, “Dude, we’re playing a show later. Stop drinking.” And, I’m like, “Alright.” And, I go in the bathroom and bring my pitcher with me to drink, and then, I sneak out and try to get some more. And, then, I fall on Scott’s stuff, and he gets really mad at me.

Justin: The way it works out is…

Eric: It’s pretty much how the show’s going I think.

Justin: Yeah. We like to put on a good show, and anything that’s available at our disposal, we will use.

John: Remember that one time we played that porno store?

Eric: Yeah.

Justin: I had you guys scared to death that we were going to get jumped that night.
(At this point, everyone starts talking at once and nothing is understandable.)

Steve: As far as the worst experience goes onstage, is there one?

John: Cincinnati.

Scott: Cincinnati was a shitty situation, but the show actually comes out pretty much alright.

Eric: And, then, J.J.’s was pretty bad to.

Justin: J.J.’s was really bad.

Scott: Well, J.J.’s was at the end of it. It was the next to last day of our tour.

Steve: Are you talking about the Aqua Lounge (editor’s note: J.J.’s Aqua Lounge is a bar tucked away in an industrial armpit of Toledo.)

Scott: Yeah.

Eric: And, like the whole show was really shadily run.

Scott: That guy called us at like 7:35 p.m., and they’re like, “Load in’s at 8 p.m.” Thanks fuckhead. So, we played every day for like five or six days, which was a lot more than we’d ever done, so we we’re all tired out.

Justin: We kind of got backed up against a corner there. It was about like 1 a.m. or something when they had us go on, and they were like, “Hey, the last band really needs to play. Can you guys cut it short?” Before we’d even gone on. We played about five songs.

Scott: So, it was a five-band bill, and the first band played kind of long; no big deal. The second band played well over an hour, and we were like, “What the fuck’s going on here?” After they played, the guy comes up, and was like, “ One of the bands dropped out, so everyone gets to play longer, and we were like, “OK, cool.” So, one more band plays for a while. By the time it was our turn to go on, or no…

Justin: We were next to last.

Scott: We were on a six-band bill, and one of them dropped out, so it was five. By the time we go on, we’re like, “ OK, cool, we’ll play like seven songs.” And, [the manager] was like, “The last band wants to go on. So, are you guys going to go on really quick?” Our soundcheck took forever, so anyway, we were all… Like no one there was really nice to us.

Eric: The bartender was nice. She has like five kids.

Scott: Finally, we played a really short set. It was about the length of our set list. And, the show that we played there, we played OK. It wasn’t the most stellar, but we played OK. But, they turned around actually because after we were done, the last band was from Columbus called Rise and Shine, and they were all really nice kids.

Justin: A really good band.

Scott: Yeah, they were a really good band actually.

Eric: They were kind of emo-core.

Justin: Yeah, a lot of screaming.

Scott: But, yeah, they were a really cool band. We talked to them when we were done. They were all super nice guys. We traded shirts for CDs with them. But, like, yeah, I really enjoyed the end part of the night.

Eric: And, not necessarily shows during the tour, but things got pretty bad to, like around Chicago we were all pretty surly.

Justin: Yeah. Like onstage… Grand Rapids [Mich.] was a joke, because we left Ann Arbor the day before, and it was raining in Ann Arbor, and over the course of the three hours it took us to get to Grand Rapids, it was snowing when we
got there.

John: It was a snow warning when we got there.

Justin: It was like a blizzard basically.

Scott: People who lived in Grand Rapids weren’t even fucking going out.

Eric: The sheriff came on [the radio] and said, “Don’t even leave your house, because it’s so bad out.” There was an Ekoostik Hookah show next door.

Scott: (mock excitement) Ooooh, we played next to Ekoostik Hookah.

Steve: That wasn’t the Stylex show (editor’s note: Stylex, another Toledo band, played that same weekend at the Pop Café with Treysuno.)

Scott: I really don’t have a bad memory about that Grand Rapids show. It was alright.

Justin: Just the snow storm.

Scott: The snow storm was a drag.

Eric: And, then, Scott got drunk on one double-chocolate schnapps.

Justin: It wasn’t even liquor. It was like chocolate and beer. (laughs)

Scott: I bought fucking Harp for everybody that night, OK. I laid out a bunch of money for beer for everybody.

Eric: Did you?

Scott: Yeah.

Steve: One thing that I noticed on the band’s Web site is that you have a listing of five bands or CDs that people should be listening to. I was wondering what five bands or CDs people shouldn’t be listening to?

Justin: Should not be listening to?

Eric: Treysuno. (laughs)

Justin: Should not be listening to. This is tough. Anybody can come out with like the obvious ones like Incubus.

Eric: I don’t like to slag other bands. Justin and I have a feud going on about slagging other bands.

Scott: We can slag popular bands.

Justin: You know the Limp Bizkit remix record? C’mon. Although, like in honesty, the five bands you should be listening to thing on the Web site are usually like indie underground, so we should probably limit it to that. It’s really hard. If you want me to, I can say Incubus, Weezer, Saves the Day.

Steve: Do you feel that you wear your influences on your sleeves, or ironically, do your sleeves wear your influences?
(pause)

Justin: I do wear my influences on my shirt. I’m wearing a Juno shirt, J.D.’s wearing a Stylex shirt, Scott has no influences (editor’s note: Scott is wearing a black shirt).

Eric: And, my influences are DNA.

Justin: The Human Genome Project.

Steve: If you could choose any band to tour with, who would it be, and why?

Justin: I have always had a lot of fun playing shows with Stylex. If those guys blow up and said, “Hey, Treysuno, come on the road with us for three months,” I would quit everything and do that I think.

Eric: I would tour with Britney Spears, because then I could get to peep into her dressing room.

Justin: She has a lot of security though.

Eric: I know, but I’d try.

Justin: There are a lot of great bands that we’d like to tour with, but as far as the best band, I don’t know. Do you have any J.D.?

John: I’d like to tour with Detachment Kit.

Justin: That would be crazy, wicked, bad.

Scott: Their show is so wild. They’re so all over the place. Justin and I were debating asking Detachment Kit if they’d want to stay at our place, but we declined offering them our house, because we were like, “Man, they’re going to trash our fucking big house.”

Justin: But, at the same time, I talked to the one guitar player who was playing a Flying V, and he was the nicest guy ever. They totally could have slept on our floor.

Eric: There are a bunch of bands we’ve played with that I think would be fun to tour with, like pretty much all… Detachment Kit.

Justin: Shellac would be awesome.

Eric: Cadillac Blindside. You can put that down. We love that band.

Justin: If Shellac ever toured, I’d love to do that.

Steve: How did you get Lenny Gitlin (editor’s note: Gitlin is formerly of the Toledo band Cakaw) to record the CD?

Justin: I’ve known Lenny for probably about…

Steve: Wait a second, before you go any further, did he record the seven-inch, or did he record all of the CD?

Justin: He was the second engineer on the seven-inch. Actually, no that whole CD, with the exception of “Ad Nauseum;” we haven’t released anything except the two songs on the seven-inch. But, he was the second engineer on all of those. Scott and I are both recording engineers. We were basically just looking to record the whole thing more live than we had before.

Scott: Also, to kind of speed up the process because Lenny knows what the fuck’s going on at all times, and it just really cuts down on like, “I’m trying to get this guitar part right, but like why the fuck can’t I hear anything?” Lenny’s all over it. He did the whole thing for breakfast at Waffle House. I could never think of anything bad to say about Lenny Gitlin.

Justin: Never, ever, ever. I’ve known him for a while. He was a DJ at WXUT while I was still in high school. I went up there and hung out with Lenny a lot. That’s how I know him. And, then, just by a cruel twist of fate he joined Cakaw with more people that I know. It’s kind of a strange intertwining circle.

Steve: Are you guys going to release the full CD at all, or are you using it for demos basically?

Justin: Yeah, it’s pretty much just a demo disc. We’ll eventually get in the studio again and record a full-length.

Scott: That whole CD is at the WBGU studios.

Justin: No it isn’t.

Scott: No, the first six songs are, but the “South Bay” and “A Man” are on that.

Justin: That wasn’t from the WBGU studios, that’s from the BGSU studios.

Scott: No, but that CD, despite that we’re not releasing it, the songs are available for airplay on [WBGU].

Steve: Are you guys working on recording right now, or not?

Justin: We’re kind of taking the summer off.

Steve: Where did you record the seven-inch at? Did you record that at [Bowling Green State University]?

Justin: No, we recorded it at Hydrant Mobile Studios. Scott and I have a recording concern called Hydrant Audio, and we don’t have a set locale right now, so wherever we can find a decent room is Hydrant Mobile Studios.

Steve: Do you guys have your own boards and reel-to-reel?

Justin: Yeah, we have a 12-channel Allen and Heath board and an eight-track Tascam half inch reel-to-reel.

Steve: As far as the future goes for the band, what do you guys have planned? Live shows?

Eric: I want to buy a Treysuno boat and go play…

Justin: We’ll just cruise up and down the ocean.

Eric: Yeah, we’ll be playing for the fish. (laughs)

Justin: All of the smaller, weaker fish.

Eric: Yeah, and they’ll all have these pots on their heads so that they can breathe water, and we’ll have like barracudas and big bass fucking people up.

Scott: We would like to, if possible, record an album.

Steve: When?

Scott: We’re thinking as early as this fall. We would like to do a tour again. We’d like to organize one maybe within the next six-to-nine months.

Justin: Something a little bigger.

Scott: Yeah. And, we’d like to try and work on weekends out. Do maybe two big weekends. Get out to places like Chicago.

Justin: Bloomington, Ind.

Scott: Louisville, Pittsburgh, Cleveland; those kind of places.

John: It’s all my fault we can’t do anything. (laughs) I’m still in school.


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