I: So how are you guys?

R: Pretty good.

D: Good.

I: Good?

R: Yeah.

D: Good.

I: So the album is called the Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. So I guess the first question that everybody wants to know is who is Reinhold Messner.

D: Reinhold Messner is the name that me and my friends in high school used on our fake ID. We had this posterboard of an Arizona drivers license we had when we were 17 and he name was Reinhold Messsner nd we were born in, like 62' or something absurd. We all had it, so it'd be a chain of five 17 year old guys going to bars at night with the same name. And so that's who Reinhold Messner is.

R: Reinhold Messner is the patron saint of drinking.

D: One night I went to jail after I got beat up. I don't know how that works, but it worked for me, and the cop, I gave him my fake id, cause that's all I had on me.

B: (laughs)

D: And I remember him calling it in, "Uh, (In a muffled voice) Reinhold Messner. Age, uh, birthday, 1962." So...

B: But he looks more like he's 16.

D: Yeah.

I: So do you guys know that there actually is a Reinhold Messner?

R: We're not sure if there is.

B: There must be, somewhere.

D: I'm sure there is.

B: Do you know one?

I: Well, I don't know him personally. Um, apparently, Reinhold, the real Reinhold Messner, maybe, he was the first guy to climb mount Everest without oxygen.

R: Wow! (laughs) We lucked out man!

D: Really? Is he still alive?

I: I believe he is.

R: Wow, we need to get in touch with him.

D: Yeah, that's amazing. When did you find that out?

I: Well I went on the web and did a search for Reinhold Messner...

B: Great...that is! It's incredable.

R: We could put a mountain...we could do a...

I: More of a mountaineering kind of promotional thing.

D: It was so long ago, that I don't remember how we arrived at that name, but I remember all of us laughing to the point of tears, but it must of been something like...somebody came across that or seen...cause that sounds like (what) one of my friends would have done that. That's great.

R: He was watching Biography while he was stoned.

I: So uh, "Army", how did the song "(I Thought About the)Army" come about?

B: That was actually written as a second movement to this suite, in which "Hospital Song" was the first. "Hospital Song" used to be longer, and my idea of going into "Army" was much more abrupt than we ended up doing. In fact we, for a while, we had changed the first chord of, (sings in a high voice) "Well, I thought about the army" to match the "Hospital Song" which was this nasty, abrupt, sort of...I dunno what kind of chord it was...a 7-12-13-backwards-

R: Flat-5.

B: Flat-5, is that all it was?

R: Yeah, it was 7-12-13-backwards-flat-5.

B: Oh, okay. That's what it was. But, uh, I dunno, I was thinking, once I got on the hopspital kick, lyricaly, I was just going, "okay, what do think about when if you're laying in the hospital?" I'd just kind of be writer for a second. And, uh, and then I was thinking, "I guess you just think about stuff." What do I think about? "Well, I remember that I was going to join the army, to get through school. I told my father that, and he said "You're fucking high." And I said it exactly the way he said it.

The track Army (edited, since this is a radio promo CD) is played

I: Are there any new, uh, any guests on the album.

B: (Brief pause) Yes, there are. A couple members of the Sqirrel Nut Zippers play horns on "Army". Uhhh...

R: (With a southern accent) Antoine & Lorenzo.

B: The string section...we carried part of the string section we carried on the road with us for a while.

R: John Painter played horns on it, too.

I: We can promote him. He's from, painters from the band, Fleming & John.

B: That's right, Fleming & John.

I: Give him a...

B: That's right. Fleming & John: their single's out now.

(they all laugh)

B: "The Perl".

I: "The Perl"?

B: 60 ads at secondary top 40 radio, on your desk. (I dont get it either.)

I: The second song, "Don't Change Your Plans" is an amazing song. How did you guys come to create that song.

R: Ben and our producer did alot of work on that.

D: Caleb (Southern, their producer) kind of...we played it one day, Ben's had this thing he's been working on for a long time, and the instrumental section, which...did it end up in the song?

B: Yeah.

D: Yeah.

B: Right. (laughs)

D: For a second there I had to think about it! I went, wait a minute! I didn't even know...

B: It may end up on the floor for the single.

D: We went out one day and we came back and Caleb had completely changed the arrangement, so alot of that was his influence, that it turned out the way it did, especially from the very beginning of the song.

B: The form of the song.

R: It was - yeah. I guess it was three songs and then it became one song and then half of that was cut out. It was kinda, you know, we messed with it for a while.

B: Caleb wanted it to be more of a hit. And he heard it that way and (I) never heard it that way once, and then we came into the studio one day and he had chopped the beginning of the song, which had been this long, instumental thing, just cut it away. Then all of a sudden it was this pop single. It was like, "Oh, okay, I see what you've talking about." Cause I didn't hear it like that at all. I just heard this little masterpiece thing I was working on.

The track Don't Change Your Plans is played

I: Your sound is like none other. Who are your biggest influences?

D: It's huge...influences. From...70's FM radio to...

B: 70's AM radio.

D: ...soul music, to whatching, discovering indy rock.

R: From the spinners to the Spinains. (I think that's what he said)

I: I love that.

D: I mean Nirvana had a bigger influence on us when we started, bigger than Elton John did. And Burt Bacharach has a bigger indfluence on us than The Pixies-

B: There's this whole pop thing that's kind of centered around the Burt Bacharach sound. It set a kind of tone, that's probably why I remember the last part of the 60's bein' like three years old. It's got that flugelhorn kinda sound in your head. For some reason I want to think about Volkswagons and mustard colored curtains, I dunno why. And then women had their hair a certain way.

R: It's really a domestic sound. It's not...

B: It's not the kind of thing you listen to.

R: Yeah, it's not "Poppa's Got a Brand New Bag", or anything you know, but it's totally true. It's like your first impression of pop music. You know, (singing)"what the world needs now."

B: Sincear white people music.

R: (Hums a verse of "What the World Needs Now")

I: So, um, Darren you wrote "Magic"?

D: Mm-Hm.

I: What was the insparation for that? How do you get in the mind to write songs?

D: Uh, I get really high. (they all laugh) That's songs kind of a composite of, uh, people that I've know that have died, more or less. It's also a love song. So...that's pretty much it.

The track Magic is played.

I: Was there like a theme to this record at all? Like a sequencing theme, perhaps?

B: We were just bouncing off walls, seeing what way was going to lead which way because - I think we all kinda felt like it was going to be kind of concept record-ish. There was going to be that tint to it. But then what's your concept? There were a lot of themes that were floating around. There was this kind of dream, kinda sleeping theme for a while, in fact there were probably 3 or 4 songs cut off the record that were all related to things that happened at night. And, uh, they either didn't get recorded or they got recorded and got cut off and kinda kept going around and it started to sound like a life story after awhile, and that's when we came up with the authobiography, biography, of Rienhold.

I: And, um, "Mess" it's great. I love the rythm, the rythm section just kinda gallops along. Now, is there a harpsichord on that? Sounds like...

B: No, that's an upright piano with kind of this tack thing in it. It's not a tack piano, but it's kinda like a tack piano. Little pieces of metal between the hammers and the strings.

R: It's like one of those honkey tonk...

B: Yeah. If you play those the way you wouldn't exspect to hear it, like if you don't play Scott Joplin on it, they start sounding really cool. They sound good for Scott Joplin too. But you're used to that.

R: Yeah, Stven Foster (Mums "Oh Susanna", I think)

B: It's fun to play dramatic stuff on.

The track Mess is played

I: So, what's the most messed up thing that's ever happened to you while you were on tour?

B: The most messed up thing...we did play a metal bar and that fucking sucked.

R: Was that the one in Dallas?

B: Mmmmmm...no, I'm thinking the one in Pheonix. I dunno if you remember this, but this guy grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go while we were playing...

R: In Phoenix?

B: In Phoenix, Arizona.

R: Oh, God!

B: (Unintellegable, under Robert)...over to the moniter and I looked up at Trey and he was laughing cause, I mean I'm not a fighter. I was gonna kick him in the head cause I was so mad. Then I realized that it was probably not a good idea. Probably would die for that. Looked up, and one of the guys that works with us, Trey, was laughing. That was a twisted moment.

R: Yeah...

I: (Laughs)

B: Oh, this guy was disgusting. It was horrible. We were having horrible PA system problems and I was sick. I guess that's not very interesting but that's kind of messed up. It's hard to rememeber. Everything's messed up on the road. How do you remember that?

I: Are you going to be doing any touring to promote this record?

R: We're going to go do some college shows and that sort of thing and then move into clubs. Just see how it goes, you know. But, uh, no big plans, you know. Maybe we'll go back to Japan, Australia, go to Europe, our usual crowd.

I: So Redneck Past, um, it's about your redneck past. Are you a redneck, Ben? (laughs)

B: Oh, totally. Absoloutly. I grew up right in the sticks with a bunch of kids, souping up our cars and stuff like that. Honestly that songs not really about anything. It's a good concept. Any way I went about it sounded very finger pointy and I thought I'd feel as fun as possible in the verses and try to get to a point in the chorus. It's probably the only song on the album that doesn't really have a heartfelt point but it's a lot of fun. It's a relief to have fun like that without a point to it.