D

Hello!

​

Hey, Albert?

​

Sure is, is this Dylan?

​

Yeah man how’s it going?

​

Great, how are you?

​

I’m doin alright!

​

Excited to talk to you, this is cool- haven’t done this in a while, haha.

​

You as well - I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, I’ve been a fan for quite a while, just kinda freaking out ‘cause this is happening.

​

Yeah man I’m super stoked too, this is really cool for me also - I’m excited that you’re excited.

​

So I see you’re living in Boulder, CO at the moment. How long have you been out there?

​

Yeah man I’ve been out here for about 16 years - after I left California I went to Chicago for about 10 years. That’s where I started A-Set back in the day. I got there in ‘97, ‘98 maybe and did about 10 years there, and I’ve been here for quite a while now.

​

Okay right on! I was in Boulder randomly a couple months ago camping with a friend, and it was gorgeous. When we left for our trip it was the peak of the summer in Texas, hitting 100 degrees every day. It was such a nice break from the heat.

​

Oh, totally. We get a lot of Texans over here, they seem to come up here for vacation a lot. Especially in the winter. At all the ski resorts - you’ll be on the lift and it’s like everyone’s from Texas, haha. It’s too bad I didn’t know man you could have come by and checked out the studio!

​

Shoot how ‘bout next time?

​

Yeah totally! I got the original Calm drums here, I got all the same shit haha.

​

Oh sick - okay!! So I’m thinking maybe we just start at the beginning. I was able to find some information on your website, but I was curious if you had any inspirations early on? It says in your bio that you’re self taught on all your instruments, so I’m just curious where that musical drive might come from?

​

It goes way back, if we’re talking about the Calm stuff - I think my biggest influence at the time, around ‘94/95 was Mitch Mitchell from Jimi Hendrix. He’s my all time favorite drummer. It sounds stupid but he’s been my hero on the drums since I was a little kid. There’s this Calm song that’s really popular right now, I can’t even think of the title - the fast one! That was pretty much just me trying to be Mitch Mitchell, I can hear it every time I listen to it. My other big influence at the time was Dave Grohl - Nirvana and all that was happening then.

 

I was part of this music collective, it was called the Sunnydale Music Club. That was in Sunnydale, CA. There were these guys who were a little bit older than us, 4 - maybe even 5 years older than us; they had a band called Drippy Drawers. And these guys had started this little music collective, and they would meet every Tuesday in this park. It was every Tuesday at like 9 o’clock in this gazebo, I think we found out about it through my older sister? Who was in a class with them. We wanted to be a band and had found out about this thing. But my first band - we wanted to call it UFO. So we show up and we’re like hey we wanna play a show. They’re like: okay what’s your band called? “UFO” - they say there’s already a band called UFO, but one of the guys said if we put an umlaut on it, that we could be ÜFO. And so that was my first band, and was my introduction to playing shows. Before that it was just me and Dove (Amber), I grew up with him - he actually taught me how to play guitar. We were like 12 or 13, and he had already learned Metallica songs. So he showed me The Four Horsemen on guitar, which taught me power chords and all that stuff. You know who else was in that band, was Ken Shipley who runs Numero Group. 

 

But that was our start, Sunnyvale music club helped us get our first few shows, playing at pizza places and such. And then there was another band, called Stumpy - that had James (Fuhring) and Clay (Parton), their bass player moved and went to college, Dove moved because his parents moved - and they were looking for a bass player for Stumpy, so that was me. I was going to these meetings, and they needed a singer. So Ken and I joined in, and that’s how we became Mohinder. We played a few shows like that, with the 4 of us - we kinda had a falling out at the time with Ken, honestly I can’t remember what happened - just some teenage drama. So Ken left, and then it was just James, Clay, and I. Clay was playing guitar, I was playing bass, and James was drumming. So Dove had to move up to Northern California with his mom, at one point we were like we’d really like to have another guitar player, so I recruited Dove. We brought him down, Dove joined the band for 4 or 5 months, and we recorded the first Mohinder 7”. A few months later, he had to leave - he like, couldn’t find a job; California was so expensive to live in, even back then. So he moved home, and it was the 3 of us again. We started playing live shows with Indian Summer, and became super good friends with those guys- Marc Bianchi in particular. At that time we were starting to get into the heavy flow stuff. Like, we don’t wanna be a punk band. We wanna be melodic. There was this band that we really loved called Engine Kid, and this other band Seam. There were a lot of melodic, kind of heavy bands coming out at the time. I mean Smashing Pumpkins and all that was coming out, but we were deeper into what was coming out of the scene, all these underground bands. Super Static Fever is also worth a mention - we were like yeah dude we wanna be like that! Marc was also a heavy influence, coming from Indian Summer. So that’s when we started Calm.

 

We switched up the instruments, nobody could really play drums. I had always had a drum set at my house, so that’s when I started playing drums for the band instead of bass. So Marc picked up the bass and Clay stayed on guitar. But I think Clay switched back to bass when Dove came back.

 

What’s up with Bart Thurber and the House of Faith recording studio?

 

Yes dude! He’s a legend on the West Coast - recorded so many bands. He had this run down little studio in like, the most dangerous part of California. Like east Palo Alto, it was the cheapest building down by the train tracks. There were all these holes in the wall that had been kicked in, but it didn’t matter - he charged us like 100 bucks a day to record, it was fucked haha. He had a 16 track reel to reel, we recorded the first few Mohinder things there - the split 7” & original 7”. And then that place closed down, the building got condemned. So what he started to do was he would drive around in his old VW Bus, and he would just bring his equipment to you! I’m telling you man I think we paid $150 for that recording (Calm 12”. 1995). He came to my mom’s house, we had this garage that was separate from the house, and that’s where I was living. I had the studio set up in the garage and then there was this little bedroom. So I lived in the little apartment and we would rehearse like 10 feet down the hallway in the garage. So he mic’d all the drums in the studio, ran the wires back to my bedroom and just had all the gear set up in there. We did it in 2 days, we tracked everything the first day and then mixed it on the 2nd. We never went back to it or anything, which blows my mind because it sounds so good. We didn’t stick with him for the other recordings, and you can hear it. We went to a place called Trainwreck Studio, and he had this little tiny space. That’s where we did the 7” (with Arlington Sunset) and Moonraker. All I really remember about that is the guy running the studio just chain smoked cigarettes the whole time, the whole room was filled with smoke. I also remember, for whatever reason we ended up going all night. I think Arlington Sunset was recorded at like 2 in the morning, haha. 

 

Who ran Unleaded Records, was that James & Clay?

 

Yup, it was James and Clay - it really started even before Mohinder, it was when they were in Stumpy. They started that kind of as a little distro thing, they would go to shows and sell records. So before they were actually putting out records, they were just selling & distributing them. But over time it grew a little larger with what we were doing.

 

So random question, I’ve seen this graphic - a moth or bug of some sort. I’ve seen it on some Mohinder printouts and on the back of the Calm 12”, as well as in reference to Unleaded. Just curious if it has any story or significance?

 

Yeah it’s a moth! I’m pretty sure Clay found it and wanted to use it, just this little black and white image. And we all actually got it tattooed, I’ve got it on my arm. It’s funny, I was like 17 - not even old enough to get a tattoo, we went to San Jose Tattoo and we all got one. I’m pretty sure it was Clay’s girlfriend who got one too. But yeah it was just our logo, the moth. Just kind of became this thing that we used at the time.

 

Any stories from the road playing with those guys? Were you doing a lot of driving or playing closer - to - home shows?

 

We were always limited by our vehicles, we were young. Our families weren’t super rich or anything. A lot of the cars we had were really sketchy - I can send you a picture of the Calm van, haha. It was a ‘76 tradesman Dodge, we had spray painted it black. It was an awesome van but it didn’t have seatbelts. One time, the brakes started to make a ton of noise. We had a show in Santa Cruz, and had to go over the mountains. ‘Bout a 45 minute drive, the highway we took is notorious for car wrecks. We knew the van had been having issues, but we had this show & no other way to get there. We were like: dude this might be it, the van is barely gonna make it. We loaded up all the equipment, and when we got to the top of the mountain, preparing to start going downhill we all just shook hands, haha. Like - we might make it to this show, we might not! But we made it to the show, played for a bit and made it home too. In the morning, we took it to a mechanic who was just up the street from our house, and we’re like dude will you check out the brakes? They’re making noise. So they put it up on the stand and basically all of it was about to fail. They said they wouldn’t let us leave the parking lot because then they’re responsible if we crash; completely unaware of the mountain pass we had just taken. We begged the guy - we were like we don’t have any money to re-do the brakes, so we’re just gonna bring it back to our house. So somehow we talked the guy into letting us drive it away, and then we parked it and it sat for a while. We weren’t driving it anymore & didn’t know what to do with it. So one day - it sounds so stupid, haha. But we took my cymbal stands and just smashed the van! I’ve got a picture of it I’ll send your way. But somehow, a few days later somebody we knew wanted it for parts, so we sold it for like 300 bucks, they just came and towed it away.

 

So Calm lasted a couple of years, and kind of fizzled into Duster - how did that go down?

 

There’s kind of - we just had a falling out is all. We were Calm, and Duster really started out as a 4-track project. Clay’s mom’s boyfriend had bought him a Tascam 424. We had that at the house, and that’s kind of what started Duster. We were all recording songs, just on the side. Like, each one of us would just record our own songs and play all the parts for them. We had compiled all these songs, and that’s when Clay decided to call it Duster. It was kind of this collective where we were all just making our own tracks and recording them to cassette. People would come over and we’d put on a tape of like 15, weird - 1 minute long songs. At the same time, we all were branching off, doing a kind of alt-country thing rather than the loud & fast Calm stuff. A lot of those songs we were doing at the time are on the first Duster record, and I’ve been putting out the ones I made under A-Set. But we played a few shows as Duster, I played guitar and drums. 

 

I feel like there’s this cluster of underground music that was made in the Bay area in the 90’s that gets overlooked. Mohinder, Calm & Duster are very influential to several genres of music. 

 

I love it. And I appreciate that, it’s really cool to hear. I agree too! It’s why I’m really down to talk to you and to other fans. I feel like I’ve gotta get more people involved to get it to happen (repressing the Calm discography).

 

For sure! Personally I spent almost 2 years looking for a copy of the 12” record. People wanna hear this stuff!

 

Yeah I went and looked, it’s super obscure stuff by now. I’ve only got like 2 copies left myself. Another crazy thing about that too - I think we originally pressed about 2,000 of them, but a bunch of ‘em got warped. Something happened, maybe they got too hot - there was a box or two where all of them were warped. In the beginning, when we sold the first few rounds - people came back and were like, yo this one’s warped, so we swapped a bunch out. So realistically there’s probably closer to 1,600 or something that actually got sold - and it was 30 years ago haha! Who knows where they are now, I’m sure there’s some sitting in a thrift store or something. And the thing is too - Numero group & Ken are so down. They’ll repress it tomorrow, but we’re just kinda waiting for the other guys to get on board. 

 

Oh I’ve got one more thing to tell you about the Calm 12”!

 

Yeah what’s up?!

 

So I saw this youtube comment a while ago - it was like “they recorded it during a thunderstorm” and that’s why you can hear the rain. Dude it doesn’t rain in California! Haha! We borrowed a 12” record from the Cupertino Library that was just rain sounds and added it in. And we lined it up so the thunder would play over and over at the end of the record. So that’s a fun little thing.

 

A while back I discovered a youtube video titled “Calm - Rolling Thunder Demo” with 4 songs on it. Are there potentially any other unreleased Calm tracks out there? There’s a couple scattered throughout the live shows that didn’t seem to make it into any recordings (that I’ve been able to find). That demo rocks by the way!

 

The rolling thunder demo was the last thing we recorded as a band. It was recorded in one day at a studio in San Francisco called “the razors edge” - we felt rushed and didn’t totally agree with the engineer. We had rented tape (2” tape was so expensive to buy) and the next day we decided we wanted to maybe go back and remix the tracks. But they had already recorded over it. It was lost to time for almost 30 years and then Hutch Harris (The Thermals) who was our roommate at the time, had a dubbed cassette with really bad quality. This is the only surviving copy we know of. I believe everything Calm is out there in the world already. Wish there was more lost stuff but I think it’s all been discovered at this point. Yeah, the live videos have some unrecorded songs potentially that were only in the videos. Good ear haha.

 

So you moved to Chicago in ‘98 ish?

 

Yeah I think it was November of ‘97, so right around there.

 

And that’s when you started A-Set?

 

Yup, I recorded the first EP in ‘98 with a guy named Tim Hurly, he was from that band Red Red Meat. He was in the scene and he was like, dude I’ll record you! He had this Tascam 388 that I actually bought from him, and I still use it!

 

And that was the Science of Living Things?

 

Yup, totally. And Ken put that out on Tree records. Before the Numero Group, Ken Shipley ran Tree. That was his thing for years, he started it in California and then moved it to Chicago. He did it for about 10 years and then started Numero.

 

Gotcha. What’s your writing/recording process for A-Set? Has it changed much over the years?

 

It definitely has changed over the years, but has also stayed the same in a lot of ways. I play all the instruments on all the songs, and it really goes back to when we started doing the Duster stuff. Using that 4 track taught me the process of doing it all by myself. I pretty much write everything on the drums. I write the part on the drums, and then make up the guitar part on top of that. So that’s kind of the process. I just recently uploaded one of A-Set’s most obscure tracks, this 7” from ‘99. I recorded it on the same machine I have now, and used the Calm drums, and the Bass from Mohinder. It’s all the same stuff, I’m looking at it right now haha! But I hadn’t listened to this 7” in a while, and I played it for my friend last night. She was like, “You haven’t changed! This was 25 years ago? It sounds like the stuff you’re doing now!”.So yeah for the most part it's stayed the same. But I built a recording studio in my house, so I kind of just live in my studio. My room and my stuff is all right here. 

 

You said you do a lot of recording via that Tascam 8-track. Do you run into any major setbacks recording analog in a mostly digital world/environment?

 

Most definitely, there are limitations- but I feel like they’re cool in a way and always lend themselves to the sound of it. The 388 (Tascam) is cool because the heads on it are made for the old 8 track cassettes they had in cars, so it really has this nice 70’s sound to it. 

 

Everything gets transferred into digital eventually, one of the things that was a big obstacle was mixing it- taking it from the analog world to the digital. There's a lot of ways to do that, and one of the easiest that I’ve found is- I’ve got a 2 track digital recorder that has an analog input, and it just makes a WAV file. It's really cool it's called a Denon. It's a DN-300R MK2. A long time ago we just did it totally different, we would mix songs down to a cassette tape to listen to it, and then we’d bounce it into a DAT tape, that's how we did everything in the 90’s. And so this recorder just kind of takes the place of that. But it definitely is limited, I did a session a couple weeks ago- we recorded some live stuff into the protools studio, I hadn't been in one for quite a few years. I was just laughing at all these new apps and stuff, all the plugins - it's just too easy dude! You can just duplicate files and make anything. There's this thing running all the time telling you what your volume is at, so you don't really have to master anything. You can just keep hitting those max levels. It's just funny how easy it is compared to what I do with the machine. But I’m getting worried man, my machine is getting worn out and there's only like 3 people in the US that can fix them. So that's another limitation, just keeping some of this equipment running. 

​

Do you have a favorite instrument to play?

 

I think I like playing the drums the most - physical coordination! Second would probably now be the piano, writing songs!

 

Any advice for the kids out there starting bands now? I've heard in interviews with younger people that it feels hard to stand out in the internet age.

 

My advice to young people starting bands is: Keep going! Don’t stop! We want to hear your music! Don’t let the internet or anybody discourage you from creating things that you believe in and are passionate about! Sometimes It can take longer than you’d like to develop your style, sound and craft. Just keep going, music is a lifetime passion and is also what makes life worth living!

 

For sure! I think I'm gonna cut the interview there, just so I can keep it short enough to print in the zine, but this has been so sick. Thank you for taking the time to talk about all of this, definitely gonna send you a box of gear + zines in a few weeks.

 

You too man - it's so nice to hear feedback on things like this, it really helps to keep me motivated and keep doing what I do, this has been really awesome for me too! 

 

​