Real Groove: Give me a brief history of the group. No one knows anything about you.
Trevor Kustiak: Shane and I are from Canada. We moved down in 1991. We were living in Vancouver and we thought we�d gone about as far there as we could. We moved down to Los Angeles and that didn�t last very long. Then just through meeting people we hooked up with Gordon, our singer and then a little while longer with Andrew [bass player Andrew Sives]. We all moved in together. We had six people living in a two bedroom apartment, living off beans and rice.
Shane Hills: We used to have jobs at moving companies, whatever we could do.
TK: Whatever we had to do to support ourselves.
SH: We did one job, this lady had this bucket of rice.
TK: Like a big, black garbage bucket of rice.
SH: And we took that home and ate it for the next month. It was almost empty and someone came over and thought it was a garbage can, so they dumped an ashtray in it.

RG: There was a bit of a bidding war with you guys with quite a bit of time between when you first did your showcase and when you were finally signed. What was going on there?
TK: We just wanted to make sure that we were ready. We had been together for a long time playing around the clubs in Hollywood and then all of a sudden these people started to become interested in us. It was kind of a strange thing don�t you think Shane?
SH: Yeah, you know we did a couple of demos and we used to play our demo tapes for anybody.
TK: When you get to the point where you�re doing a showcase, you�re playing in a club where there�s like six or seven labels there, sometimes record company presidents.
SH: If one of the presidents or somebody walks out on a show the rest end up wondering, �Why�d they walk out?�
TK: I think you have to take the attitude, �They�re not here, if they are here, who gives a shit? We�re not playing for them, we�re playing for these people.� So we just put that in the back of our mind and just go on like we did the month before when none of those people were there anyway.

RG: Sound wise, I�d say you fall into the same territory that Counting Crows and Live cover. Are those bands that you listen to, are aware of?
TK: They are both great, popular bands so you have to pay attention to them. We like them both. But we�d been writing some of these songs before Counting Crows and Live existed.

RG: �Don�t Wanna Be Here� is the song getting airplay here, where did that one come from?
TK: I think it just comes from a lot of people as kids, or as adults, just not feeling accepted. Feeling a little to the left, a little strange, maybe. Everybody�s been in that sort of situation, that you don�t want to be in, you don�t feel comfortable.

RG: The band seems to have a very earnest, very serious vibe to it, does that reflect the kind of people that you are?
TK: Maybe it reflects the way that we lived together in the earlier years. Like I said, we were very poor, and it was a struggle. Everything that we wrote was based on real human emotions that we experienced or that we watched other people experience. I think the message of the album is very uplifting. It�s not a downer record. It�s based on real things, it�s based on some tragedy but at the end it�s uplifting, it�s positive.

RG: How have your lives changed since the album�s come out?
SH: I think as people we�re still the same, maybe a little more tired. [Laughs] We drove from Milwaukee to San Antonio [about 1500 miles] on our US tour.
TK: 31 hours straight. Actually, interesting about Milwaukee, we stayed at a hotel called the Ambassador in room 226 and right across the hall is room 213, which doesn�t exist any more, because that�s where Jeffrey Dahmer killed his first victim. His apartment was like, a block away.
SH: We were on 23rd St., he was on 25th.
TK: Those were his hunting grounds, it was a very morbid area. We felt it, we really felt it.

RG: What other interests do you guys have besides music?
TK: I love the ocean, completely fascinated with the ocean. I�m not an experienced scuba diver, but that�s something that I really want to get into. I�m very passionate about travel. I want to travel the world. Shane has a lot of different interests...
SH: Yeah, anything with a motor on it.
TK: And snowboarding, too.
SH: Yeah, I don�t snowboard too often, I can�t really afford to go out and break something.
TK: He�s broken something that I don�t think anybody ever has.
SH: I kind of broke my ass once. I went off on this jump when I was 16, landed the wrong way, came down and there was a tree stump right under the snow, about 3 inches round. And it hit me right in the right butt cheek and it went right through the cartilage. I had to slide down on my stomach all the way down the rest of the mountain. It was about a month and a half later I went to the doctor for something else and I was, �Oh, by the way, you wanna feel, my butt?� and he said, �Oh yeah, yeah, you broke your ass!� [laughs]

RG: It sounds like you guys are having a good time.
TK: A lot of bands complain about being out there and doing what they�re doing. You know, it�s what you wanna do. Be careful what you wish for cause you might just get it. We�re having so much fun. �

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