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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