What is the Maserati story? How did it all come together?

Steve and i started playing music together a couple years back in Greenville,SC. we had a couple projects but nothing ever stuck. before we met i had decided to move to Athens, he was down with the move and we both knew that if we were going to take music seriously that was the place to be. probably 2 months before we moved i met matt at a promise ring show at the 40watt. i met him through this girl that i dated for like 5 seconds, i guess it was just really good timing because he was planning on moving to the west coast after graduation. i remember talking music with him and he said h really liked unwound and tortoise. i knew right away he was down. i remember asking him if he knew any drummers?? "what kind of style??" he asked. " sonic youth style" i remember saying. "oh shit i know the perfect guy!!" matt said. he was talking about Phil and after we played for the first time i know it was all there.

In the time you have been a band, what have the highlights and low points been?

Id probably have to say that the highest points for me were putting out a record ourselves and touring on it for 2 months. i look back on that as a really big personal achievement because we did virtually every step on our own. probably the lowest point i can remember was right after we got back from tour. we were totally fucking sick of looking at each others faces but we had to start writing new material. we didn't take a long enough break from each other and things got really tense for a while. we couldn't write anything and I really questioned if we would ever be able to write material like we had done in the past.

Best tour story?

I'm sure the other guys have there favorite tour stories but the one i always think of happened in the first week of our summer tour. we played in Roanoke, Va with this band called drowning victim. the show was at this place called club cobalt, which im sure was usually some sort of red-neck dance club. the kid putting on the show said they had just started doing rock shows that week. this place looked so seedy, i really wanted to bail from the start but half the band wanted to stay. i have a really funny picture from the sign outside that read: 'hotplate thurs. and Maserati', totally like fucking Spinal Tap. drowning victim went on and they were this noise art rock kind of thing, they were just high-school kids. they made this ungodly noise for over an hour until the sound guy cut them off and turned up the house lights. those dudes in drowning victim were so pissed, i could see something was going to go down. so we set up and play for like 4 people, bad show right?? when we were packing up stuff the kid putting on the show came over and apologized for the shitty turnout and said they only made $27 for the door. i said that was totally cool and thanked him for all his effort. while the guys were loading up this bartender yelled at me and said we had to pay for a beer we drank so i pulled out some money to pay him and i noticed that there was a lot more money there that 27bones. i counted it and it was $127! by this time i started freaking out and the only assumption i could figure out was that these duded in the victim were so pissed off about the sound guy turning them off that they ripped off the club to pay us!! i run outside and the guys are shooting the shit and im like" we gotta go guys, right now!" they look at me like im a fucking alien or something so i start throwing shit into the trailer. finally they get the hint and we get the hell out of there. you should have seen the look on their faces when i pulled out a wad of cash. i never found out what exactly happened but its cool to leave it up to your imagination.

You guys are in the van crusing down the highway. What is in the tape deck?

we always go around the van to see who chooses the music. if its phi's pick its usually some so-cal punk shit like nofx or penny wise, he is a sucker for that shit. (side note: phil is really into tapes) Steve usually keeps it chill with some miles davis or yo la tengo. matt skips around a bit but likes to go for 5style or something like the album leaf. im pretty random but i brought all my old-school tapes so it went from danzig 1, jesus lizard and U2.

Speaking of tours, your live shows are really what impresses me. Not that I think your band is not great recorded, but it does not blow me away like your live show has. What is your take on playing live? How do you approach it?

i know this might sound a bit cheesy but i think we all approach playing live as this sort of release that we get w/ we play together. ive never played in a band that gave be those kinds of feelings. i know for me anyway that i try and make the audience fell exactly what im feeling.

The reason I stay involved in this whole indie rock thing is so I am able to look back when I am old and know that I was activly involved in something that was important to me and other people. Why do yo guys truck on?

i guess we keep going so we don't have to wash dishes 24/7. no seriously, i think were all in this for the long haul because we love playing together. even if we sold 1 of our next record or 1,000,000 it wouldn't really matter because were going to do it just the same.

This may be top secret, but what is in the pedal arsenal? It looks pretty impressive.

oh my pedals... nothing to out of the ordinary. i just use a rat dist, akai headrush(one of the coolest pedals ever made) it can get a really cool delay or this looping effect that i use sometimes, boss reverb, boss digital delay/reverb, memory man (probably my crutch pedal) and a tuner. ive really narrowed it down over the years, i used to have a tremolo and a phaser, all that shit but i think ive finally found what pedals i can  use to accent my playing, not take it over.

What would you like to see happen next for Maserati? When do we get a new album?

were planning on recording in February with Andy Baker at Chace Park here in Athens. the album is coming out again on allay records and were going to tour in April. That's all i can really look forward to is getting out there and playing a new batch of songs. im really excited to see all the great people we met last summer, that's half of it i think.