Oscillating Fan Club’s garage rock nightmares have been occupying the minds of Motor City music fans since the group’s genesis in 2006.
‘Oscillations of a Beast’ LP
Comprised of members Jon Biernant, Ray Thompson, Pierce Reynolds, and Justin Walsh, the Ferndale based unit distribute a psychedelic hallucination that catches The Sonics and Dick Dale crashing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Their 2013 album, Oscillations of a Beast, finds the boys stepping up their game, expanding their already eclectic palette, and even rocking out a little harder. Produced by garage rock godhead, Jim Diamond, and released by Detroit’s coolest label, Bellyache Records, “Oscillations” is a noisy and mind bending freak out whose surrealist take on rock n roll will satisfy weirdos of all shapes and sizes.
What are some of Oscillating Fan Club’s non musical influences?
Pierce: I don’t think I’m telling any tales out of school when I say that the band likes culinary goodness from around the globe. middle eastern, greek, indian, and ethiopian are some of our faves. Foreign cinema and cartoons are fun too. I really like art and two of my faves are Jim Flora and Matt Brinkman.
Oscillating Fan Club have such a unique sound. How does a band with such an eclectic sound decide what they’re going to sound like when they first get together?
“Jim Diamond is a legend. His pedigree is well-known throughout the recording world.”
Pierce: We’ve definitely tried to get various sounds in song writing and tones, but I can honestly say that as soon as you acknowledge and try to sound like someone or something that is when you end up sounding like the exact opposite. It is a little frustrating and also liberating to know that in all of your calculations the end result is a surprise and a mystery. It’s not that I don’t want the band to sound like a Jean-Claude Vannier jam, I just don’t know how to do that.
On Oscillations of a Beast you guys were really able to push your sound to the next level. How does a band evolve without losing what made them good in the first place?
Pierce: I think a lot of the internal struggle when working on new material is to make it quirky and unique, and also streamline it or distill the essence at the same time to make it less idiosyncratic. While the songs maybe simpler or more earnest at times the accoutrements become more ornate and detailed. We used a couple unused songs from the old days on “Oscillations” and the last record George Washington’s Teeth (albeit amped up or changed) to mix some authentic Oscillating flare into the mix of newer and bolder experiments.
A while back there was a Creepy Cheapy set you guys did as The Kinks, what is it about Ray Davies’ song writing that has helped The Kinks’ songs remain so timeless?
The Kinks
Ray: Thoughtful, emotive lyrics, beautiful melodies, incredible musicianship, and wonderful arrangements. Great songs will, or at least, should always stand the test of time.
Who do you think would win in a fight, Ziggy Stardust or The Who’s “Tommy”?
Ray: The God/Alien will always beat the deaf dumb and blind kid, even if he’s just faking it.
Have you guys played in any bands before Oscillating Fan Club, if so what did they sound like?
Ray: We’ve all been in multiple bands before, ranging from folk, punk, doom, surf, sea chanties, and some we will never speak of. Justin, Pierce, and myself were all in the noise outfit, Pinkeye.
Oscillating Fan Club have worked quite a bit with the legendary Jim Diamond. What was it like working with Jim?
Ray: Jim Diamond is a legend. His pedigree is well-known throughout the recording world. His knowledge of recording is limitless and I feel honored and privileged to have had the opportunity to work with him, and to watch him work his magic.
Space echo pedal
However, his tolerance for insolent musicians is limited. My advice for any musicians who intend to record with him is as follows: he utterly disdains the space echo machine. Do not attempt to use one or even bring one within his line of sight. He will have you removed from the premises without haste.
Additionally, do not touch his timpani drums. They are not there for you to beat on and don’t even look at them longingly, he will know and his retribution will be shift and painful.
Oscillating Fan Club have some very cool things going on in the guitar apartment. What guitarists influence you fellas the most?
Pierce: Ray and I definitely swoon for George Harrison (read: John and Paul also), Dave Davies and Television’s Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd but my shrines include and are not limited to: Syd Barrett, Stephen Malkmus, John Dwyer, almost any/every guitar player from Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, Ry Cooder, Wes Montgomery, Archer Prewitt & Sam Prekop, Paul Atkinson, Django Reinhardt, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Erkin Koray, Omar Khorshid, Kevin Shields, Damon Tutunjian… this is a trick question too many to list.
Ray: Pierce hit the nail on the head, but I must add, Lee Underwood, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Macale, and local favorites “Jellyroll” Joel of Duende! and the guitar stylings of Ben Audette and Scotty Iulianelli (Bars of Gold/Wildcatting)
Who do you think is doing the most interesting things in the Motor City?
Ray: There is far too many cool things going on in the city, and it’s nearly impossible to keep up with. I think the food culture in Detroit is really interesting, from urban gardeners everywhere to all the pop up restaurants.
Samuel Fraser Windmill–or SFW for short, is more than just a bored kid messing around with with guitar in his room. One listen to his wealth of songs on his Bandcamp page, and you’ll hear a one kid Black Flag.
“I thought that just crediting it to “Samuel Fraser Windmill” was kinda boring, and that the name “SFW” made it sound..(like).. an early ’80s hardcore band like D.O.A. or D.R.I.”
A lo-fi blast of punk rock that recalls The Germs, Adolescents, and The Wipers. But don’t mistake SFW for a one trick pony, as his musical vocabulary runs deep, and finds him whipping out the occasional folk tune and Neil Young cover.
How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard it?
I usually don’t know what exactly to call it myself. Most of the music on what you guys heard from my Bandcamp page is of course punk/hardcore, but that’s only one part of my vocabulary.
I can’t really ascribe any one catch-all description to my music as a whole because it’s so wide-ranging. The best stuff I’ve written has yet to be properly recorded.
Where are you from, and what is the music scene like there?
I currently live in Coralville, Iowa, but the music scene I consider myself a part of is centered in Iowa City, the so-called City of Literature, which is pretty much connected directly to Coralville.
The scene is relatively small, but quite healthy, and very diverse due in large part to it being a liberal college town. There’s a few distinct segments of the music community as far as I can ascertain, including a bevy of pop-punk bands, post-hardcore groups, lots of indie rock, and folk acts, and a lot of experimental noise music.
Not all of it is worth a shit to go out and listen to, but there’s a handful of really great bands that have gotten recognition from the wider underground community. Many of the best artists in town are also friends of mine personally, and are incredibly smart, funny, talented individuals offstage as well as on.
“The Ills are another fucking great band…Every punk fan on the goddamn planet needs to see them live..”
What are some of the cool venues and cool bands there?
Gabe’s (330 E. Washington St.), a long-standing bar located in downtown Iowa City that has previously been known as Gabe’s Oasis and the Picador, is one of the central venues among my musical friends and associated scene people.
Just as important is Public Space One (PS1), or Public Space Z (PSZ), a well-established music and art collective located a few blocks away from Gabe’s that has gone through a number of buildings over the years and is currently housed in the basement of the Wesley Center (120 N. Dubuque St.), which is a part of the University of Iowa’s United Methodist Campus Ministry. It’s a strictly all-ages venue where alcohol consumption inside of it is prohibited, at least as far as I’m aware. This allows it to get around the flawed, back-asswards bullshit liquor laws in Iowa City.
Lipstick Homicide
The most successful local band that I know would probably be Lipstick Homicide, a long-running pop-punk trio featuring bassist/vocalist Rachel Feldmann, her girlfriend guitarist/vocalist Kate Kane, and drummer Luke Ferguson. They’ve been touring nonstop lately and even opened for Green Day when they played at New York City’s Irving Plaza last fall. I might add, they’re also fabulously kind and unpretentious human beings who I’m proud to call good friends.
The Ills are another fucking great band with a sound that’s equal parts Bikini Kill, X, Bags, Germs, Stooges, and Misfits. Every punk fan on the goddamn planet needs to see them live, and they don’t play out all that often. At the very least, they need to get their hands on one of their excellent records, like the “Get It!” seven-inch or their album “Tuning Out” which are available on various formats.
Who plays on your recordings–is it just you, or do you have a backing band?
“As far as Chuck Berry goes….He stands as the real and still-reigning king of rock & roll..”
Okay, first of all, SFW was never a band. I’ve actually never really had a stable band. I never actually hid the fact that I played all instruments on the “Annie’s Fed Up” and “So Sick of You” extended plays except for the drums, but I thought that just crediting it to “Samuel Fraser Windmill” was kinda boring, and that the name “SFW” made it sound more along the lines of a record by an early ’80s hardcore band like D.O.A. or D.R.I.
The drums were played by a dude by the name of Stu Mullins, who is the engineer for pretty much all recordings produced at Iowa City’s United Action for Youth center, which is where everything on my Bandcamp page was recorded free of charge and where I was hanging out as often as possible at the time I made them.
For the record, I don’t really hold any of those recordings dear to me anymore. The EP’s sound like shit for the most part to me now.
What about when you play live, who plays with you then?
Of the sporadic live gigs I have played over the past year, I’ve been solo every time save for one time that I played on my 18th birthday earlier this year where I played with a female drummer.
We called ourselves Suck It, anticipating that we’d actually have something of a future as a band, but it ended up being a one-shot thing because she was pretty much never able to rehearse. We were pretty shitty the one time that we played anyway.
Tell us about your previous bands, and what did they sound like?
My first band with lead guitarist Detrell Smith and drummer Max Bills (later joined by a bass player named Martin Herrera) was horrible and never really did anything in its three or so months of existence, aside from two ill-advised recording sessions.
Honestly, I would call it more an attempt at forming a band far more than a real one. It was called The Tea Party Fascists first, then renamed The No. We hardly rehearsed and never played a gig.
“(John Lennon’s) “Working Class Hero”…is actually more nihilistic than a lot of the punk music that came later.
My next attempt at forming a band, about a year later, was even worse and rehearsed even less. It was called The Percolaters and the only guy I really liked personally that was in it was a guy named Dylan, who played guitar at first and then switched to bass.
The original bass player wasn’t very proficient at his instrument and was into some awful fucking music, not to mention being kind of a dumbass all around.
The drummer was even more of a dumb, dumb, dumbass motherfucker whose hip-hop derived style did not fit the songs at all, and he was talking some silly-ass bullshit about knowing record people in L.A. or some other such garbage at all times.
One of the first things we attempted to do in our very loose four month or so existence was cover The Beatles’ “Nowhere Man”, which we couldn’t even really play all the way through and got so horribly wrong that John Lennon probably spun in his grave about ten times in succession if he overheard it. Thankfully the planned recording of it fell through.
I’ve still never really had an actual band aside from those two dreadful failures which hardly count as far as I’m concerned, oh and I guess that Suck It thing that I mentioned earlier counts sort of.
What is it that’s so liberating about playing a three-chord Punk song?
Well there sure as hell ain’t a science to it, but I mean punk rock was founded on among other things the principle of throwing out the rulebook and just doing whatever the fuck you want no matter what anyone else thinks of it, and in a post-Bush, post-9/11 world this mentality is as liberating to so many people as it was 20 or 30 years ago.
It seems like society is progressing at a snail’s pace in this country, not to mention for the most part around the world. This is without a doubt a very big part of the reason punk has had such a surprisingly long lifespan. The ghastly, bloated ghost of itself that the music industry has become in the last 10 or 20 years is reason enough to rise up and crank up your guitar, or bang your drums, or whatever else.
‘You Grew Up Listening’ is a collection of covers by Neil Young, John Lennon, Lou Reed, and one Chuck Berry song, how important are these song-writers to you?
As far as Chuck Berry goes, there’s nothing I could say about him that hasn’t been said before. He stands as the real and still-reigning king of rock & roll as far as I’m concerned, and is unquestionably the supreme architect of the music.
Neil Young
Neil Young is one of the most amazing and influential talents that popular music has ever known, and his album Tonight’s the Night is to me one of the great rock albums of all time. It’s also definitely one of the darkest and least compromising.
John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, his first real rock solo album, is even darker and quite confrontationally so, and nowhere is that more in evidence than in “Working Class Hero”, which is actually more nihilistic than a lot of the punk music that came later.
Lou Reed stands as one of the very biggest influences on my writing and singing, and was without a doubt one of the greatest and most influential songwriters that ever lived even though he could be very hit-or-miss in that long solo career of his. He also appears to have been at least at one time in his life kind of an asshole, but who really gives a shit ?
It’s a titanic shame that I’ll never get to meet old Mr. Reed, and told him all this stuff. I never knew him personally of course, or saw him live or listened to his more recent music, but I know I miss him.
Could you tell us about ‘The Worst Album Ever Recorded’?
Nothing much to say. It contains most of the stuff from the two hideously awful attempts at recording embarked upon by The Tea Party Fascists/The No. The second one was particularly bad. We were fucking clueless. That “album” need only be listened to for its comedic properties.
What do you mean when you say that you were a song-writer in one form or another since you were a toddler?
Well, I came up with the first thing resembling a song of mine before I could actually write it, at the age of maybe three, which was about a neighbor’s Jack-O-Lantern that I could see from my bedroom window.
Disney’s Halloween town, an early musical influence
Because I had recently seen Disney Channel’s Halloweentown, I was obsessed with those things. So I came up with this thing called “I Saw a Pumpkin Outside”. The title is also the only lyric in the ‘song’. There were also no real chords to it of course, although I attempted to play my toy acoustic guitar along with it. I used to think that you plucked the strings with both hands.
It wasn’t until I was a young teenager that I became a full-time music man, and really knew anything about music, but even as a younger kid, music wasn’t far from my life in some form or another.
It probably has something to do with the fact that my maternal grandparents, who both died this year, were Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members as part of a group they played in called Freedom Road in the 1960′s and early 70′s.
My grandfather gave me a lot of practical advice on music and the music business, and I’ll never forget it.
You also described yourself as an author, filmmaker, and artist, could you tell us about that?
I occasionally write album reviews among other things on a Blogspot site called The World’s First Internet Baby.
I also write fiction from time to time, although the only full-length fictional work I’ve really finished so far is an experimental work called Send Your Curse Words to Hell.
“It’s a titanic shame that I’ll never get to meet old Mr. Reed..”
As far as film-making goes, I made a documentary for the teeny punk scene/social group I was involved in about a year and a half ago in the form of the essentially no-budget Kill Your Sons, which can be found on YouTube either in its full form or just in the form of the individual live performance sections from the four bands featured in it. The footage is quite awful at times and all the performance footage was filmed on my cell phone so the audio is absolutely shit, but it’s an interesting bit of amateur film.
Besides music, what other projects are you working on?
Right now? None, really. I’m always writing music. Fiction, not so much. It just doesn’t come as naturally to me.
And I probably made a mistake by labeling myself as a film-maker. It’s not something I normally do. I’ve had a few film projects in the past, and I’m very interested in such projects in the future, but it’s not really something I’m doing right now, especially because I don’t own a proper camera.
Is there anything you wanna plug, where can we hear your music, and see your other projects?
Well I’m going to be playing another one of my few and far-between solo gigs at Gabe’s in Iowa City November 26, with two other singers. Anyone who is able to come is encouraged to do so, since more people out there need to hear me play. Don’t expect to hear anything from the recordings that I’ve made though, except for a rendition of old man Mr. Reed’s “Satellite of Love”.
“Six years later we are all still confused as to why we are doing this…I mean, it is fun…I guess.”
Rational Anthem are sure to please the bonehead teenager in all of us!
Playing raw bubblegummy Pop-Punk played at a breakneck pace.
The Sarasota trio clobber out smart-ass anthems of puppy-love and teenage boredom that reference all the major cornerstone’s of mid-’90s Pop-Punk (Kerplunk!, My Brain Hurts, Cheshire Cat – you get the picture).
In the words of the ultimate teenage boneheads, Beavis and Butt-head, “This rules!”.
Where are Rational Anthem from?
Rational Anthem started in Wisconsin in, like, 2007?
Noelle and the prior guitarist Alex moved to Florida and found me (Noelle and I were childhood friends). They suckered me in to playing bass, and our long time friend Josh was already playing drums.
“The Punk scene in Sarasota is nonexistent.”
Alex left after one tour because he wasn’t down with that shit. Josh eventually left to grow “herbs” in California, and Noelle’s brother Pete stepped in on drums.
Basically, Noelle and I got left with the bag. Next thing you know we started taking charge, booking tours, and writing songs.
Six years later we are all still confused as to why we are doing this…I mean, it is fun…I guess.
Who is in the band and what do they play?
Noelle Stolp plays wonky guitar, Pete Stolp plays wicked drums, and Chris Hembrough maintains zero rhythm on the bass.
What’s the Punk scene like over there, what other cool bands are there, and what are the best venues for Punk shows?
The Punk scene in Sarasota is nonexistent. We are the closest thing to a punk band here, and people don’t seem incredibly thrilled about it.
Bands in Sarasota sound like some art students rented out their parents garage and bought too many guitar pedals and black lights. That being said, Orlando and Tampa Florida are okay for Punk music. We play there a few times a year and we’ve made some really good friends and fans by doing so.
Rational Anthem’s 2013 release, ‘Whatevermind’
Wet Nurse are a band from Orlando and they rule. The Areolas are our good buds too, and help us book quite a few shows.
Venues always go back and forth, but nothing beats a house show…huhuhuh amirite?!
What was the first record you ever bought?
The first record I ever bought was a Master P tape in, like, 4th grade. That, Trick Daddy, and Limp Bizkit. Shit was super tight.
I found Punk in middle school and things have just never really gotten better.
Before Rational Anthem, did you play in any other bands–if so, what did they sound like?
Before Rational I played in a band called Extra Day For Riots in high school. My buddy, Sam North, who used to run Traffic Street records, was the singer. We just played basic simple Pop-Punk. Really jumpy Blink-182 esque stuff.
We won a talent show and did lots of drugs. The band broke up after we almost killed each other at band practice, and Sam smashed out everyone’s windows.
“Noelle can’t listen to anything that is slower than 140 beats per minute because she has zero patience and drinks too much soda..”
What non-Punk Rock bands are Rational Anthem influenced by?
It’s hard to say. I can speak personally and say that I love Tom Petty, Fleetood Mac, The Cars and older shit like that.
I know that Pete really loves the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, which influence the shit out of his drumming.
Iowa’s Lipstick Homicide
Noelle can’t listen to anything that is slower than 140 beats per minute because she has zero patience and drinks too much soda. So I’m pretty sure she likes Lipstick Homicide, and that about covers it.
Is the “LH” mentioned in “Imaginary Girlfriend”, Lipstick Homicide? What’s the relationship between Rational Anthem and Lipstick Homicide?
Ah! yes it is! Rational and Lipstick met a few years back on tour. We had heard their split with Billy Raygun, and had been playing it ad nauseam in the van while touring, and were excited to play with them in the upcoming weeks.
We met them, not really knowing what to expect, except that there were a couple of girlfriends leading the band, and this dude, “Cool Hand” Luke, shreddin drums.
Well, apparently they knew our songs and were singing them, and the same went for us. Next thing you know we’re getting high under a bridge, and bam we became close buds.
Now, we try to tour with them as much as we can (because they’re rich and have Green Day-money) during the summers, and we’re actually moving to Iowa early next year so we can continue our shitty little Pop- Punk road trips with these kids.
You guys have a song named after Wendy Peffercorn from Sandlot, are there any other fictitious babes Rational Anthem are crushing on?
Um, not necessarily fictitious babes, but probably T-Swift, because she’s the one and only babe awhoaoh!
I’m way in to Natalie Portman, and I’m pretty positive we’re dating, but she’s just been really busy with work or whatever she does. Things are totally going to work out.
Pete owns a turtle, so that’s his love life.
Noelle liked a girl, but the girl got a girlfriend, so she just wrote a song about it, and went to Taco Bell.
What was the first Punk band you got into?
I remember my brother playing Green Day and Nirvana when I was really young, like 8 or 9. I liked it, but didn’t get it, probably because I was 8.
“We love Blink. We grew up on Blink…They wrote some tight fucking songs back in the day..”
Later, when a friend of mine bought me Dude Ranch, I really started to fall in love with Punk, especially of the Pop variety.
Later on, I was introduced to Dillinger Four and some other shit. Since then, everything’s been coming up Milhouse!
Did any of you go through an embarrassing “Punk” phase as a teenager?
I don’t think any of us really did. I mean, being a “Punk Rocker” in middle or high school is inherently embarrassing when you look back at photos
I think the only thing I did that was embarrassing was become sort of a jock for a couple years.
I had fallen out of music and totally lost track of things I love, so I thought it would be a good idea to start wearing track jackets and treat people like shit. God, I’m glad that’s over.
I remember Pete went through a “Screamo-Emo” phase, the bands he liked were shit, and kids still listen to them! He had a spock haircut, and silly bracelets, and tiny t-shirts. It was adorable!
We’re all happy it’s behind us now.
I think Noelle has been wearing the same outfit for a decade or so. She stopped wearing a hat 24 hours a day and moved on to a beanie, so progress is being made.
Many of your song’s titles are homages to Blink-182, any reason behind this?
We love Blink. We grew up on Blink, and that’s about it.
They wrote some tight fucking songs back in the day (we won’t discuss whatever the fuck they think they’re doing now) and have some of the best stage banter ever. And that’s really what Punk is about…stage banter. Everything else is just filler and fluff.
“And that’s really what Punk is about…stage banter. Everything else is just filler and fluff. “
Does Rational Anthem have a favorite piece of in-between song banter off The Mark, Tom, And Travis Show?
There’s too much! I’d say…..
“You have giant boobs and I doubt you’re eighteen…do you have a note from your mom?…If I wanted to see 13 year old boobs, I’d hangout by the junior high like my dad does“
and
“Mark’s middle name is Rebecca…my dad wanted a girl…he treats me like one”
What do you wanna plug, where do we buy your music, and how do we get in contact with Rational Anthem?
Our new record Whatevermind just got released on vinyl, so we’re trying to get those out to people.
We put out a full length called Sensitivity Training last year and it’s on our bandcamp and label’s websites.
Hit us up on facebook (just google it, we’re from Florida), and buy music (mp3 vinyl etc.) from our bandcamp at rationalanthem.bandcamp.com.
Also, Rad Girlfriend, Bloated Kat, John Wilkes Booth, and Kiss of Death records put out our records too. They run distros and would be happy to sell off some of our shit.
You can email us at rational_anthem@hotmail.com too, or just shoot us a message, or something. Chikachikayeahhhhhhh.
“Loud Guitars, straight forward riffs, and screaming.”
Passionate and emotional Punk Rock that you can’t help but wanna raise your fists and sing along to. Lansing, Michigan’s Little American Champ are cut from the same cloth as earnest Punk Rockers such as Latterman, O Pioneers, Joyce Manor, and The Gaslight Anthem. Melodic and intense Punk Rock that would provide a perfect soundtrack to any sweaty and drunken basement show.
How did Little American Champ first come together?
It was in the summer of 2010. My brother and I were in college at the time, and we needed something to do that didn’t involve drinking games and partying. At that time, Jonny’s band just broke up and it seemed like the next logical step in music for the both of us.
Little American Champ’s ‘Nothing Forward, Nothing Backward’ (EP)
I love the fact that I could download all your music for free off Bandcamp. Do you think that’s an important part of trying to get LAC’s music out there?
There is no doubt it helps in terms of exposure, but even more fundamentally, we never really had an expectation of a return on the music we created. I’ve never felt compelled to put a price on our music, especially when delivered in a digital format.
Getting back to your question though, I do believe it’s good policy for upstart bands to put their stuff up for free. Even if you could charge and still distribute it somewhat effectively, it’s still important to remove as many barriers as possible.
Did you play in any other bands before Little American Champ?
I never played in a full time project before LAC, but Jonny was in A Big Crash before we started our band. A Big Crash was made up of some of our good friends who we are still close with today. ABC was straight up Pop- Punk. Lots of Blink 182 and NOFX.
‘This Is A Public Place’ (EP)
Who are some of the non Punk Rock bands Little American Champ are influenced by?
I’m not sure how evident these particular influences are, but we’ve grown up listening to a lot of Classic Rock. I still get down to the Beatles, ELO, and Tom Petty for sure. Tom Petty is a rock titan that could easily crush up with merely his sight.
‘”..A record that brinks on perfection for me….. that record changed my life.”
How would you describe Little American Champ to someone who has never heard you guys?
I’ve never been skilled when describing my own band, but I would say it’s like Get Bent, Against Me!, and Joie De Vivre in a blender.
Or to a non-Punk Rock listener: Loud Guitars, straight forward riffs, and screaming.
“Tom Petty is a rock titan that could easily crush up with merely his sight.”
How did you first get into Punk Rock and Who were some of the first Punk bands you got into?
My middle school years were when I first delved into Punk. I remember going into a fucking ice cream shop of all places, seeing a punk, and thinking, “what the fuck is that?” The rest is history. The first Punk bands that I got into were mostly bands of the late ’70s and early ’80s hardcore. Dead Kennedys (a favorite of my youth), Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Minor Threat, and The Misfits were all bands that introduced me to Punk.
“..I remember..seeing a punk (for the first time), and thinking, “what the fuck is that?”..”
How does the songwriting work in Little American Champ?
Typically, either myself or Jonny would write a song, bring it to the other, who would give their input and help polish it off. Although lately, song writing has been even more of a collaborative process, working together on a song during its infancy vs. just helping the other finish the song. Once we feel a song is the best it can be, we take it to Travis (drummer extraordinaire) and he does his thing. That’s our very fancy creative process!
What are some of your favorite venues to play?
I am personally a big fan of house shows. GTG House in Lansing is a great place for shows and it’s run by a bunch of really cool people. As far as actual venues go, maybe I’m saying this because we have played it nearing twenty million times, but Mac’s Bar in Lansing is one of my favorite venues to play. From the aesthetic of it, to the avenue it has provided for start up bands like us, it’s a huge part of our community in Lansing.
“..I still get down to The Beatles..”
Did you grew up in a house with a lot of music playing and do you think it has shown up in any of LAC’s songwriting?
I’m unsure if we grew up in a house that had more music playing than your average family unit, but there were definitely some tasty jams being blasted. I have been revisiting a lot of the Classic Rock that my Dad would crank in the car like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles. I think my mom helped Jonny and I develop a taste for Pop hooks because she was always very into Michael Jackson, Shania Twain, John Denver, and the like. I don’t think you can glean any overt influence on our music from the stuff listed above, but It was our first exposure to music and definitely molded us as kids.
“…when it comes to having my brain matter melted, one band that definitely comes to mind is Restorations from Philadelphia..”
What bands have you played with live that completely blew you away?
That statement is so strong; it’s hard to have some band stand out like that. But when it comes to having my brain matter melted, one band that definitely comes to mind is Restorations from Philadelphia. Although, I just saw them when they came to Hamtramak last spring, and did not have the opportunity to play with them, that band fucked my ears by the end of their set. When some band your unfamiliar with, travels from far away, comes to your town, plugs in, fucking rocks in earnest, and then leaves you on your ass, it’s a really cool feeling.
“Mac’s Bar in Lansing is one of my favorite venues to play.”
Do you have any friends who play in bands?
Well as I mentioned earlier, Jonny played in A Big Crash, which is now obviously long over. From that band, spawned Little American Champ and Small Parks. Small Parks is a band our friend, James Radick, started with Danny and Josh (the founders of A Big Crash). It’s ’90s style Emo featuring some really fast songs, really a great band. As far as other bands go, it’s honestly too many to name but Cain Marko, Low Cloud, Giraffe Attack, It’s a Secret, Secret Grief, Hawk & Son, This is the Year, and Between Brains are really awesome Michigan bands making sweet music.
If you could name one record as “Greatest Punk Record Ever Made” which one would you choose?
If I am forced to pick one, ‘As The Eternal Cowboy’ by Against Me! is a record that brinks on perfection for me. I really love everything about that album. From the tones to those incendiary lyrics to the album’s frantic pace, that record changed my life.
Anything you wanna plug,where can we get your music?
You can find all of our music at littleamericanchamp.bandcamp.com. For free! Duh! In terms of new music, we just finished mixing two new tunes that will also be available in some capacity really soon! One of the tracks will be included on a 4-way split with some really awesome friends of ours.
