GOB INTERVIEW, April 10, 2001
INTERVIEWER: A lot of the interviews focus on the mischievous side of the band. Is April Fool's day a bad time to be around the guys in GOB?
THEO: I slept through it.
TOM: I think it was a day off or a drive day or something. I think we probably didn't think about it after midnight.
THEO: Well, I actually did. I was going to plan something, but when the day came, by the time we realized it… if you do it past noon, you're the fool right? I think by the time we got up it didn't matter.
TOM: I think I played a joke on someone that day, sometime in the afternoon, but I play jokes all the time.
THEO: It's April Fool's 24-7.
INTERVIEWER: "The World According to GOB" is a strong release. Do you find yourselves doing things differently now than when "Too Late … No Friends" came out?
TOM: Yeah, we put the album in the weight room, so it got really strong.
THEO: Doing a bit more bench pressing than normal. The debut came out in '94. First of all we put it out ourselves, we made like 500 copies, which sold pretty good. Me, Tom, and Jay [Clark, currently GOB's manager] took control of Landspeed Records and did our own little record company thing. Now there's a lot more people working for us, which makes it easier to do stuff and get it out there. There's more stuff behind it. Obviously in the beginning, no one knew who the hell we were or anything. So now it's a bit more professional I guess in that sense.
THEO: We're more recording artists now, we make records, we write songs, we go on the road, whereas before we did everything. We were the business people and everything. We don't exactly like the business, so it's kind of nice to have people there that will deal with the business for us. We don't even have the energy to do everything anyway. We couldn't possibly do everything. We don't really have a record company anymore, we don't have our own label. If we did, it might be a little different, but we decided to work with Nettwerk so we have them behind us. They've been putting out records for years.
INTERVIEWER: GOB has been together since 1993, how do you keep from killing each other?
TOM: '94. Seven years now.
THEO: Fire band members and get new ones. I'm just kidding. Most of the time it's pretty good on tour. There's always going to be... we argue about topics and stuff we feel strongly about, and everyone obviously has their own opinions. Personality-wise, everyone pretty well gets along. Me and Tom have been friends the longest. Everyone's pretty well part of the whole thing and we kind of knew what we wanted to do and we just went for it. We went through four bass players and two drummers and finally found our setting in a sense. It was weird, we'd have sketchy bass players in the band before we'd find someone who was good. Then Gabe came into the band because our other drummer quit, he wanted to pursue his family thing. So it was really good that we got Gabe, cause he's a really good drummer and stuff. And he's right there.
[Gabe and
CRAIG: join in the conversation]
INTERVIEWER:Was there a point in time where you said "Ok, this is going to work?"
TOM: We just always did that.
THEO: I think right from the start we kind of knew it was happening after we were getting our stuff on college radio. Tom, you can elaborate.
TOM: Yeah, I worked at a record store in Vancouver and I ended up losing my job for the band because we had to go on the road. Or we wanted to go on the road. I didn't want to work at a record store for the rest of my life.
INTERVIEWER: You've toured in the States and in Canada. Do you find any differences between the crowd response here and there?
TOM: Yeah, we have a crowd in Canada and we don't in the States, really. Hopefully it's building as our record is released. I don't even know that it is, but we'll be playing some shows down there on this tour so we'll see what it's like.
INTERVIEWER: When are you playing down there?
TOM: A couple weeks or so?
THEO: The end of April. After we go to Newfoundland we come down a bit and go down the east coast. We'll do a couple of places in New Jersey, New York, a whole bunch of places. Then we make our way back up to Winnepeg. Then we play from Winnepeg and cross back home, and finally we'll end the tour on the 25th in Vancouver at the Vogue Theatre. We've never really done a tour and I've always wanted to do a tour where we end in our hometown. It usually starts there, so it's kind of cool, we get to end in our hometown.
INTERVIEWER: Who are your favorite Canadian bands?
THEO: Um, Anne Murray [chuckles].
GABE: Neil Young.
TOM: Stompin' Tom. No seriously.
CRAIG:: Trooper? Honeymoon Suite?
TOM: I don't know about that.
INTERVIEWER: GOB is really good at getting the audience involved in the show. How do you keep that kind of intensity going when you're playing the same songs night after night?
TOM: We try to just have fun with what we're doing.
GABE: Alcohol.
CRAIG:: The kids.
THEO: A lot of it is the audience. The last time we played [in Peterborough] it was a bar crowd but they were still given 'er, they were giving all they got.
TOM: Last time we had a really good crowd here, especially for a bar. But I think it's also like, coming on after Treble Charger, it's like … not to diss Treble Charger, but we're way more energetic. Actually, we didn't come on after Treble Charger, we should have, but we didn't.
THEO: See, if I went to a show, trying not to sound biased or anything, I'd rather see a band like ours where they're fuckin' giving what they have and having a fun time with the audience instead of just hanging out and just playing and whatever, you know what I'm saying?
TOM: When they're getting into their music, passionate about their music. That's the way it looks to me if someone isn't given 'er, they don't care about it… if they're just sort of standing there.
INTERVIEWER: What's the hardest thing about being on the road?
TOM: Sitting in the van.
INTERVIEWER: Doing interviews?
THEO: That's second.
TOM: That's not hard, it's just annoying.
INTERVIEWER: I don't blame you.
THEO: No, it's all right. But being in the van, you just sit there while you're driving. I try to sleep. You know it's like all that "half-sleep" at a hotel. I'll get four hours of sleep so I can do something while I'm in the town until whenever. Then sleep a little in the hotel, then sleep in the van on the way to the show. You don't really get a lot of proper sleep.
INTERVIEWER: I don't think a lot of people realize the ten hours that goes into the two hours at night.
THEO: When you're hanging out at strip bars getting posters signed … (laughs) [trying to get Tom's attention while he talks to the waitress]. I'm just kidding. Trying to make reference to Tom last night but…
INTERVIEWER: What are you looking forward to doing when you get a break from touring and the studio?
THEO: After this tour we're going to be taking some time off just to ... some down time.
GABE and TOM: We don't know that for sure.
THEO: Well, we don't know for sure. Well, I'm going, I'm going to Varadaro, I don't know what these guys are doing [laughs]. I'm leaving no matter what.
GABE: I'm going to Hawaii.
TOM: I have a couple of plans but I don't think it's going to happen. I wanted to go teach English in Japan. I wanted to join the peace corps and do stuff for people, but I don't think we're going to have enough time for me to do that properly. I don't think they'd want to send me anyway.
INTERVIEWER: How much time would you need for that?
TOM: Probably a year or six months.
GABE: At least six months.
INTERVIEWER: Do you do any songwriting on the road?
THEO: Hardly ever. It's pretty hard.
TOM: Hip-hop, a cappella kind of stuff [grins].
THEO: I think I've written maybe two songs on the road in seven years. It's pretty hard to do that. When do you have time? We get to town, we get in, we try to get something to eat, and next thing you know we're at the place playing. By the time the night's over you're at your hotel sleeping. You sit and talk to your girlfriend or whatever. Then that's it, the whole day kind of starts over again.
INTERVIEWER: Any plans yet for the next record?
THEO: We're thinking about it. We're going to try to do something for next year obviously, try to get something out.
GABE: By this time next year probably. Hopefully over the winter we'll record, that would be ideal, for once. We always seem to record in the summer for some reason, so we're in the studio for two months in the summer which totally sucks. It would be better to do it in the winter and hopefully we'll do it like that this time.
INTERVIEWER: Do it in the winter in Hawaii, then you'll take care of a few things.
THEO: I want to record our album in the Bahamas where AC/DC recorded "Back In Black", in ah ... Nasa?
GABE: Nassau.
THEO: Nassau, whatever. N-A-S-S-H-O-L-E [chuckles].
GABE: We'll be recording it in Vancouver, I'm pretty sure of that.
TOM: I'll be in the studio all day and all night, so I don't really care where it is.
INTERVIEWER: Where are you more comfortable, onstage or in the studio?
THEO: In the studio, it's a little different. You're trying to be more focused. I mean, you're trying to have fun and that. Onstage it's a little more relaxed because you can do whatever you want. In the studio you're concentrating, you're trying to make a piece of art or a piece of work that you want to be happy with, and you're trying to get it done, you know?
TOM: Live is more about energy. In the studio you have to get it right. You have to get everything right. It's got to be in tune, in time, energetic, with feel. How do you do that? I mean, it comes to us, no problem, of course.
INTERVIEWER: The band is musically tight onstage, do you still go for the first or second take in the studio, or are you experimenting more?
THEO: We haven't really gotten the chance to experiment that much.
TOM: I would say that we're more picky because we can be… and that became apparent in the record, just better performances.
INTERVIEWER: Do you show up with say 90% of everything done when you get to the studio?
THEO: Yeah. Like this last record was about 90% done and then we had the producer come in and do some tweaks here and there.
GABE: But the producer's tweaks were things that we would have done anyway the way I looked at it, so it was about maybe 98% what we did and maybe 2 or 3 percent he helped with, like in terms of production. He's a very good engineer, Neill King.
TOM: I think the people that are working with you … like we will hear something and we'll be like "that's great", and they're like "no, it's out of tune" or something like that. No, it's got character. We would love it, but they're looking at it from a side perspective. I don't know what's right.
GABE: Whatever you like is what's right.
INTERVIEWER: Where do you see the band heading in the next ten years?
THEO: Ten years? Hopefully... It would be amazing if we're still all together and playing, doing the same thing.
GABE: It's hard to picture ten years. I don't know. Who knows. It's hard to picture a year away.
THEO: … that'd be awesome if we could still be doing what we're doing. You know, at that point, we'd be seventeen years old as a band.
TOM: We'll be doing a reunion tour [laughs].
INTERVIEWER: Eric Hoffer said "Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others." Do you think that anyone can create truly original music these days?
TOM: Not really.
GABE: No, no, no.
TOM: I mean, I'm sure every melody was written before rock n' roll came around.
THEO: … even up to the Beatles' albums. I think they wrote every melody left for pop music these days.
GABE: But still, every kind of music… like Theo plays Van Halen, it doesn't sound like Van Halen, it sounds like Theo playing Van Halen. You play music, it's like putting a fingerprint on it. Every person puts their own little fingerprint on it, so it's not going to be exactly like whatever it is you're trying to emulate. You just have to put your own fingertip on it. Get your fingers in it.
TOM: Yeah, the people making the music recognize the elements that they extracted from other places that they put in their music, that the people listening to it don't have a clue. I know things where I've ripped off a lyric or a melody, lots of melodies, and a lot of people don't know. Sometimes these guys don't even know until I tell them.
INTERVIEWER: So it's the combination of things. Is that how you keep it fresh?
TOM: I think it goes back to what you were saying about being original from what you steal.
GABE: Exactly. You just don't steal from the obvious places where everyone knows "oh, that sounds like Green Day" or whatever. At least go to where Green Day stole from.
INTERVIEWER: Do you want to add anything?
THEO: This food tastes good.
Interview by Brian
Benwell for
and
SIN CITY
THEO: Fire band members and get new ones. I'm just kidding. Most of the time it's pretty good on tour. There's always going to be... we argue about topics and stuff we feel strongly about, and everyone obviously has their own opinions. Personality-wise, everyone pretty well gets along. Me and Tom have been friends the longest. Everyone's pretty well part of the whole thing and we kind of knew what we wanted to do and we just went for it. We went through four bass players and two drummers and finally found our setting in a sense. It was weird, we'd have sketchy bass players in the band before we'd find someone who was good. Then Gabe came into the band because our other drummer quit, he wanted to pursue his family thing. So it was really good that we got Gabe, cause he's a really good drummer and stuff. And he's right there.
THEO: When you're hanging out at strip bars getting posters signed … (laughs) [trying to get Tom's attention while he talks to the waitress]. I'm just kidding. Trying to make reference to Tom last night but…
THEO: I think I've written maybe two songs on the road in seven years. It's pretty hard to do that. When do you have time? We get to town, we get in, we try to get something to eat, and next thing you know we're at the place playing. By the time the night's over you're at your hotel sleeping. You sit and talk to your girlfriend or whatever. Then that's it, the whole day kind of starts over again.
THEO: In the studio, it's a little different. You're trying to be more focused. I mean, you're trying to have fun and that. Onstage it's a little more relaxed because you can do whatever you want. In the studio you're concentrating, you're trying to make a piece of art or a piece of work that you want to be happy with, and you're trying to get it done, you know?
TOM: Yeah, the people making the music recognize the elements that they extracted from other places that they put in their music, that the people listening to it don't have a clue. I know things where I've ripped off a lyric or a melody, lots of melodies, and a lot of people don't know. Sometimes these guys don't even know until I tell them.
INTERVIEWER: Do you want to add anything?