the awesome boys (nowhereband.org)
(jon maxwell, aaron schiel, josh browne, and dan siegel)

isroxxor: what motivates you to write songs?

jon maxwell: well, for me i get a lot of inspiration from, y’know, the real masters of craft.  like, i’ll listen to big star and chilton’s construction is just so perfect that it makes me think, “i have to try to do that.”

aaron schiel: really?  dude, i’m totally different.  they just, like, bubble out of me.  like there’s a song gland in my throat that just secretes awesome 24-7.

isroxxor: how important is it to you that your lyrics tell a story? do you need to be understood, or is just being heard enough?

aaron: well, man.  i write most of the songs.  and i’ve got to tell you, the song gland doesn’t care about story.  it just secretes, you know? it’s all about impressions.

josh browne:  i think stories are important in lyrics.  my songs tell stories.

aaron:  since when do you write songs?

josh:  i just don’t bring them in.  but i will.  some day.

isroxxor:  which do you enjoy more, recording or concert performance?

dan siegel:  well, when we played this wedding out in fergus falls, it was kind of a blast.  so i guess i say concert all the way.

jon:  especially since our recording has been like, “ok, guys, stand around the boom box.”

isroxxor:  does stardom interest you? how big do you think you would need to be to start freaking out about it?

josh:  i freak out a litle bit now.  like, how will we handle it?  it’s like driving to the mountains.  you can see ‘em a long way off, just inevitable, and you don’t know how you’ll deal till you’re there.

aaron:  yeah, i figure we’ve got probably a year before we really have to worry about it.

jon:  the important thing is that we keep it about the music.  all the way.

isroxxor:  favorite rock and roll towns / venues?

dan:  well, like i said, we rocked the hell out of fergus falls. aside from that, it’s not a coincidence we all live here.  this is a pretty great rock and roll town. what’s better than first ave? or the triple rock?

aaron:  yeah, man, the triple rock’s like this bunker of rock.  you’re underground, protected, and rocking.

josh:  i’m way into memory lanes.  i want to play there some time real bad... i think that’d be sweet, having people bowl at you as you play.

dan:  we’d have to learn all the songs from the big lebowski soundtrack.  did you know that the really trippy one’s a kenny rogers song? i tried to learn that one, and that’s a hard fucking song. the key changes 3 times. kenny rogers!

isroxxor:  best show you ever saw?

jon: matthew sweet, first ave.  that guy knows how to play pop music.

dan:  a buddy of mine got me tickets to the pixies reunion show at the fine line.  mo. ther. fuck. er. that was a great show, and it was awesome being the only one in the room who wasn’t a music writer.

aaron:  the bottle rockets at the 400 bar, long-ass time ago.  i had to sneak in.  holy crap, brian henneman can throw down.  i saw ‘em a year later at the 400 and they blew, so there you go.

josh: wilco, outside at the walker. it was the first time i ever had beer at a concert.

isroxxor:  what makes a show most satisfying for you?

aaron: volume.

jon:  craft.

isroxxor:  ringo or stewart copeland?

dan:  i would say stewart, except that he missed his chance to kill sting at the very end and prevent decades of shitty slo records.  if he would’ve just put a sharpened stick through sting’s throat at the session where they recorded “don’t stand so close to me ’86,” we’d live in a brighter world.

isroxxor:  wilco or son volt?

jon:  son volt won the first round handily.  trace is up there int he best albums of the 90s, and am has aged about as well as a gym bag you leave in your car for a week.  but since then, it’s been wilco by steadily increasing margins.  even when tweedy goes into a slump, farrar seems to out-slump him.

jon: in fact, you know what’s weird?  on trace, all of farrar’s lyrics are really abstract, not really about anything specific.  and tweedy’s am lyrics are all very literal, all i-feel-x about-this-because-y.  but now tweedy’s lyrics are all super abstract and not about anything, and farrar’s are all super literal, and they’re all about how much george w. bush sucks.  and yeah he does suck, but dude, that’s not what i want to get out of listening to music.

isroxxor:  first record you bought?

jon:  r.e.m., out of time

dan:  the best of beethoven.  i thought smart kids were supposed to like beethoven.

aaron: led zeppelin iv.  rock!

josh:  debby gibson, electric youth.  dude, i was super, super young.

isroxxor:  do you write together? if not, what role does the band play in shaping the songs?

aaron: i bring in like a song core, and then everybody else kind of shapes their parts.  right?

dan:  i don’t know, jon’s usually got a lot of ideas about arrangement.

jon:  not that you ever listen.

dan:  i listen.  i just don’t follow them.

isroxxor:  ever inspired by novelists, poets, painters, photographers? who?

aaron:  gland, dude.  it’s glandular.

isroxxor:  favorite bill murray movie?

josh:  stripes.

dan:  screw that.  stripes is good, but go where the buffalo roam.  the movie itself sucks, but murray makes a great hunter thompson.

dan:  you know what?  if i wrote songs, they’d be inspired by hunter thompson.

isroxxor:  rushmore or royal tenenbaums?

aaron:  the chick in rushmore’s hotter than gwynneth paltrow.

dan: plus, rushmore’s kind of a masterpiece but tenenbaums is where anderson really started believing his own hype.  not that it’s bad, but you can see the lines trending downwards.

isroxxor:  kirk or picard?

josh: if earth was under attack, i’d rather have picard commanding the defense fleet.

aaron:  but wrath of khan’s the best fucking movie ever, and it’s the kirk show top to bottom.