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Dylan Wiggins: I appreciate you once again, I’ve been doing this zine for a minute, about bands that I fuck with or these bands that don’t have a lot of available information.

 

Drew Pickell: Yeah, so you just have to ask the person involved specifically.

 

DW: Yeah, yeah. It’s just so cool to me, the intersection of skateboarding, art & music - meeting all sorts of people over the years. But I’ve been seeing your videos for a while now. I grew up right outside of Austin, and when I was younger my homie Christian would put us on to the local videos. That’s also how I got introduced to Calvin Millar’s videos. Old Mark Roberts’ clips and shit - that’s what I grew up on skating-wise.

 

Somebody told me, I can’t even remember how I found out about your involvement in Toru. I had been wanting to ask about it for a while - and when I bumped into you at the bar it seemed like the perfect time. How did you start off playing music/get into skateboarding?

 

DP: My dad was a surfer - so whether or not I skated wasn’t ever really a question. He was in prison, and while he was locked up I’d just ask my mom about my dad. And growing up in Austin - ‘cause he got caught with my mom in Austin, so she raised me here. And since I was raised far away from a beach, skating was the closest thing to that (surfing). So I’ve been skating just about my whole life. And then I got into music - my friend Duncan Knappen, who I met at the OG House Park. He was a scrawny punk rock kid, he was in a band called The Snobs - and he had a really sick double flip. We became best friends, and I took him into skateboarding, kind of under my wing - and he showed me music. It’s pretty funny, when I met him I was all hip hop; just super - Blink-182, baggy pants, Wu Tang. But I met him and he showed me the classics, as well as the ins and outs of hardcore. He showed me a band that his friend, Rusty Kelly really liked called Saetia - and he was like “doesn’t this band fuckin suck?” And I was like this shit rules! Me and Rusty became friends and I got really into screamo & hardcore. So I got into music through skating, for sure.

 

DW: Yeah dude Saetia is really sick. So you met Rusty and it kicked off from there? 

 

DP: Yeah I met the other band members - we all went to Austin high together. Pretty much the only reason I got to be in the band is because I assembled it, because I didn’t play any instruments. But it was just some classic shit out of a movie. Me and a group of dudes from school that didn’t quite fit in; we discovered that we liked old school Modest Mouse, the Promise Ring - a bunch of classic emo. And one day at school, we were just bullshitting - talking about being in a band together. And I kind of knew each member, I knew Rusty and he was in a band and knew how to do all of this. Me and the other 5(?) of us: Me, Sam, Sam and Ali and Will were all friends, and I kind of got Rusty in on it. And we all just went into practice one day together. That’s kind of how we wound up with 2 vocalists - Rusty knew what the fuck he was doing and I didn’t have anything else to do. So we just ran with what we had.

 

DW: Hell yeah. What was the local scene like when you were playing shows, were there any other kids doing anything similar?

 

DP: Kind of, we played with a lot of bands that were on tour. I mean, we all went to Austin High - Recover was a band that was playing back then, but we never played with them; they were a little bit older than us. I always thought they were awesome. We also went to school with At All Cost, which was like a metalcore band. And we played some shows with them. We would play shows at Monkey Wrench books, which is an anarchist bookstore over off North Loop. And there was this dude named Rich, he would kind of book a lot of the bands that came through town. Lots of other screamo bands would come through, and it was just kind of a tight-knit thing. We played with some bands from Houston too, this band called Die!, Emperor, Die!.

 

DW: Yes! I’m a fan of the split 7” y’all did with them

 

DP: It was just this niche little thing that some people didn’t understand - then or now, and we kind of got made fun of but we didn’t give a shit.

 

DW: I was trying to find any extra info on Toru that I could scrape together before we talked, and couldn’t find much besides a few old blog posts and a Sophie’s floorboard post.

 

DP: Rusty was pretty much the only person that ever spoke to anybody on our behalf. He made all the zines, he booked all the tours. The rest of us were kind of just drunken buffoons that liked to be in a band and act silly. Rusty was also straight edge, and really was the face of the band. All the credibility needs to go to Rusty, he really made shit happen - he funded; made sure all of us went on tour. Assembling all the zines and screenprinting the shirts - which is why from day one, I was like we need to get Rusty in the band! He knew what he was doing. He was in The Snobs, and they were already a pretty successful band. 

 

DW: How long did Toru last?

 

DP: I’d say sophomore year of high school; when we were like 15,16 - all the way until.. I’d say the last few shows we played I was 19 or 20? And at the end of it, I was probably the last person who was like: “guys lets keep it going!” Haha. But I just had to accept that people wanted to go to college and get jobs and whatnot. But I was pushing for it, all the way to one of our last shows at the Broke Neck. We played at a video premiere for a video some friends and I had made. So a good 5 years I guess?

 

DW: At what point did you start making skate videos?

 

DP: That was way before Toru. I had made a few videos called Locals R US when I was in 7th and 8th grade - and into high school. If anything, being in the band - I skated a little bit less in high school. I never stopped skating, I always brought my board with me on tour and skated flat outside of shows. But there were definitely a couple years where skating wasn't really on the forefront - but after the band stopped I went back to skating a lot more.

 

DW: Any good stories being an Austin OG and around before they built house park? I know it was an old tennis court before it became a legit skatepark?

 

DP: Yeah, so the green park that we skated was beside the tennis court. It was where the bowl is now - which is always funny describing to people. Like, “back in my day, the whole skatepark was smaller than the bowl”. But even when it was just a few props, it was more than enough space. Little flat bar and a hip - a couple of jump ramps and quarter pipes. I’ve got all kinds of stories - saw this guy pop one of his nuts out trying to boardslide the flatbar one time. People were dicks to BMXers back then. Skaters and Bikers didn't really get along. It’s nostalgic, the vibe was definitely different. The whole sitting and chilling and smoking weed; not skating wasn’t welcomed. You couldn’t just hang out there, like you had to fuckin’ skate. Which is something that I miss. The whole postin’ up - cool guy thing is not where it’s at.

 

DW: I feel that, especially being a filmer. I don’t film as much these days, but It’d always be like: “Yeah man let’s link at the park at 10, go get some clips.” Then nobody’s there until noon - it’s hang out and smoke spliffs until 3 - like dude, I’ve been at the park for 5 hours now and it’s the summer time haha.

 

DP: Totally

 

DW: So that video you made with Shakey Graves (Alejandro Rose-Garcia) doing the soundtrack - I assume y’all kept in touch over the years?

 

DP: Yeah we grew up together, and he was part of the original Toru crew at Austin High. We remained friends through his pursuit of Shakey Graves and I had always tried to use his music in my videos. But eventually he signed a contract with a record label and he was like “dude, you can’t use my music anymore”. Like, it’s not on me it’s the suits, ya know. And then the pandemic happened and he had time on his hands. One day he was like “Fuck it man just send me your video and I’ll make a whole soundtrack for it.” Cause they can’t say shit if it’s made specifically for that purpose - but yeah the whole thing blew my mind. I edited the whole video and sent it to him with no music - and he wrote the whole thing over it. So the people at the record people can suck both of our nuts on that one, Hah!

 

DW: That’s tight.

 

DP: I asked him one time what he would charge a normal skate company for the music rights, and while I won’t say the number it was in the tens of thousands. So the fact that he did that just as a homie favor - he pretty much owes me no favors for the rest of our lives. Even though I still ask him for favors all the time haha.

 

DW: I feel like that’s gotta be a trip, too. Editing a video with no music.

 

DP: It made it about 1000 times easier!

 

DW: Whenever I’ve put together videos in the past, I’ll always have a few songs I know I wanna use for sure - 

 

DP: But then you’ve gotta edit to the beat and everything.

 

DW: Exactly.

 

DP: I just ended up putting the clips together in the way I wanted them to go, and then he - he fucking crushed it. Like, the song he made for my part. If he would have sat me down and been like “describe to me what you want” it would have been that. It had this photosynthesis/Alien Workshop vibe to it - and he just nailed it. Probably one of my biggest accomplishments, and one of the reasons I don’t really pursue making another video.

 

DW: I feel you on that one - that’s kind of how I felt with my last skate video. Like, if I don’t make another one after this I’m okay with that.

 

DP: Yeah, you can still skate and stuff. It’s just that creatively, you did what you sought out to do.

 

DW: Exactly, I’d go out to skate and I’d be thinking about batteries and SD cards and shit like that, rather than just having fun with it and skating.

 

DP: Another thing to mention on that video, me and my buds that are in that video - we about lost our minds making it. We butt heads on all sorts of silly things. And we’re all grown men in our 30s now, and we all knew it too. Like why are we arguing - and we wouldn’t even argue. We’d just be passive aggressively butting heads. Like we wouldn’t even be saying a word, but we’d be disagreeing about something. Let’s just get through this project and maybe… not do this again… for a while? Haha.

 

DW: So you said that was during the pandemic?

 

DP: Yeah, and I guess it should be said that at the time we were kind of all losing our minds, being cooped up inside a lot more.

 

DW: I feel like we had this short, “golden era” for a year or so - 

 

DP: Totally. It was great to be able to go and skate spots that were usually un-skateable, and for a person like me that usually has to work full time; I was getting paid from the government, getting unemployment checks. So I could skate all day, everyday. And so I stayed sober for 6 months and just skated all day, everyday. It was nice to prove to myself, like - if you have the same opportunities as everyone else, you’re just as capable of doing something.

 

DW: Exactly! It was sick being able to skate random government buildings, the Capitol and shit - where normally the big brims would come after you.

 

DP: I’d go skate solo and get selfie clips too, I had a blast doing that.

 

DW: I feel that, I was on the same wave. Sometimes it’s like you just have to. Being cooped up in the house as a skateboarder is tough. I was in the same boat, getting some cash from jobs but working shorter hours. My cousin who lives in Hawaii, because they were on such a heavy lockdown - he and his lady were getting hooked up every month and just surfing.

 

DP: I filmed a lot of BMX too, I had filmed a lot of skating and got tired of it. I’ve got this whole other side of BMX people that I film too.

 

DW: How’d you get tapped into the BMX side of things, just hanging out with homies at the park?

 

DP: Growing up, I rode BMX a tiny bit before I started skating, and there was a dude - his name’s Chase Hawk. I would call him the John Cardiel of BMX maybe? We’re the same age and I’ve just known him about my whole life. He asked me to film his first House park edit, when the park had first opened. And then Empire BMX, the shop he rides for here has always hit me up to make videos, I’ve always had a good relationship with them. Because Austin is like San Francisco for BMX, there’s a thriving community here. It’s fuckin’ sick. Very sick connection to have.

 

DW: Getting paid to film is a trip. Just starting out doing it for fun - it’s validating when people start to take your projects seriously. 

 

So one more thing about Toru - there’s this one record label I’ve followed for a while, Larry Records. I think it was a year or two ago, they put out a compilation tape - it was the Toru 10 Songs comp. Did you have any involvement in that?

 

DP: I had no idea. It’s always cool to hear about stuff like that, I’m sure Rusty probably did but nah.

 

DW: Word. I had just been running through the Discogs page, trying to put together the pieces. 

 

DP: Yeah I’ve had a number of people hit me up through the skate shop, and it’s kind of mind blowing because at the time, when we were performing, the skate community was kind of making fun of me - like “what are you doing wearing girl pants, all this weird emo shit”. And now - full circle, it’s all cool again. Which is sick , I love it and I’m down. But I just never would have seen that coming.