| How did the 3 of you first meet? How did you decide upon the band name?
Paul Cohn: We met through advertisements in the Washington City Paper. We chose our name because - in the days when there were four of us - we
couldn't think of anything we all liked. Brett's housemate, Ed, suggested "Los Hermanos Rodriguez" from the movie “Repo Man”, and we figured, what the hell, it was good enough to start with. But once you play out with a name, you're stuck with it.
I remember hearing Tongue Tied from your first EP, and I was sure I heard a female voice. Was she an original member? Good pop/rock/shock music; was shock the idea? Who wrote it?
Paul: No, it wasn't a female voice; I'd just kicked Brett in the 'nads. Okay, yes, it was Anne, the fourth member, but she wasn't an "original" member of LHR. She came on after the three of us (Brett, Dave, Paul) had split away from another band we were in. I
wrote it. It's about a relationship I was in, where a girlfriend sucked me in and then fucked with my head for three months. I changed the gender from a man to a woman because it
sounded better that way, but the point was to sound angry and trapped.
Love the arrangement on American Beauty. I especially like the classic buildup in the bridge. From seeing both of the EPs, "Helper Monkey" & the s/t one, it appears to be pushed as 'the single'. How was this single and the EPs marketed?
Paul: We play American Beauty a lot.
Brett Guizzetti: It was a song that we always got a good reaction off of and has
been received quite well critically. I guess if we do have a single, that's got to be one of the prime candidates, save for the dirty word. For what it's worth, that, I think is the first song we really collaborated on. Paul wrote the words, Dave and Paul did most of the heavy lifting on the music and the bridge was my meager contribution.
Dave Ridgeway: If you like American Beauty you should see the new stuff.
All three of you are very strong and
cohesive, the shout, the choice guitar chords, the signature bars.
Paul: Yes.
Brett: We're certainly not virtuosos, but I think for what we do and the way we work together, our styles work pretty well together.
Dave: When you play and drink and hang out together you start to know what the other person is going to do you get a feel for it and what’s going on around you: I like the surf song Odd Boy. For the album, was the drum mix different?
Paul: Probably. I play it differently every time I go on stage, and we tried many different mixes when we were in the studio.
Brett: Dave could probably speak to this better than I could, but I think the idea was
always to create more of a ska feel to Odd Boy and our new arrangement reflects that. The sort of surf-y intro lead was kind of an afterthought. Dave: I wrote Odd Boy with myself in mind. It is the story of being in a prep school where you don’t fit in, and then years later you notice
all your classmates are doing the the same thing you were at the time, but no one ever recognizes you for it. Take The Clash for instance. I was the first kid in my grade to own the London Calling album. I received endless amount of crap for this. Years later every one in the class is listening to it.
Tell me about the different mixes between the EP and the CD. Sounds like the drums were importantly different.
Paul: The EP was done in two
days in this large, open warehouse space. The CD was done in a basement studio over the course of a few weeks. There was a lot more room to experiment with drum sounds when we were mixing the CD. We wanted it to sound as "live" as possible.
Dave: Any album we do represents how we sound live the energy is there...
Why was
Local 221 created? What is the significance of the number, if anything?
Brett: Really, we've just tried to formalize the way we've operated when we book and promote. We've always tried to be very conscientious about doing trades, helping out bands that haven't been as fortunate as we have, that sort of thing. A lot of what we've been able to do
is the result of hard work, but you can never factor out luck. The bottom line is, we got to talking one day and we thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if there was an easy way to learn all the lessons we've learned the hard way?" I think Local 221 is kind of about that...Oh, yeah; first meeting was on February 21. Get it?
Dave: Brett and myself set up Local 221 to help bands and provide them with the help we never received from the larger bands in DC at the
time. If one of us makes it we all make it. We are pushing ahead with great responses from around the world wishing our organization well. In fact I have just finished setting up show trades in London and our Local 221 is being played in the clubs over there
I still have the MiniDisc of the show I recorded at C-Note in NYC, where you debuted 'somebody else's jacket'. That was an excellent show. What are your new songs like?
Paul: They're more melodic, and a little more sophisticated in some respect. Less of a punk influence.
Brett: I wouldn't say less of a punk influence, maybe just different. Less thrashing about...but still some thrashing about.
Dave: The new stuff is melodic with a touch of ska thrown in overlayering our punk edge.
Brett, do you have any side projects such as Colonel Klink, your instrumental guitar band, or is LHR your main focus?
Brett: Klink parted ways after 5 years in 2003. I've had some one-offs and done some guest appearances, but nothing regular or serious.
Tell me more of the master plan for LHR, about expanding news of the band and the collective beyond DC.
Paul: Hookers and blow.
Dave: The
master plan is to quit the annoying day job and live through the music. Also we want to help our fellow musicians in any way possible, while bringing the scene back to D.C. As I said before if one of us makes it we all make it. Spread the word! www.local221.com
I describe your sound to people as a unique power trio...with songwriting with attitude, lead singer is drummer most of the time, and surf guitar for rhythm. It comes off as catchy pop-rock. What are others saying about the sound?
Brett: That's more or less it, but a lot of people have picked up on the punk influences. We were quite flattered, for instance, that [legendary DC music critic] Mark Jenkins did a really nice piece about us on [the NPR station
in DC] WAMU radio.
You've fairly liberal with mp3 availability. What's your opinion on music downloads in general?
Brett: Let music run wild and free! I don't know from my own perspective, the availability of mp3s only makes me buy
more music and go to more shows and frankly I don't think it would be such a bad thing for the music industry, as such, to go the way of the dinosaur.
Dave: There is no money in this business. You do it for the love of the game. Let the music be heard by who ever wants to hear it. Why hold back???
I love both videos on the page! How did you get the designs for the figures in Odd Boy?
Dave: John O’Beirne makes all our videos for us. He
listens to the music, asks us what it's about and then goes nuts. The Odd Boy puppets came from www.ebay.com He was a Jesus puppet but we thought he looked more Manson/bikerish, so he starred in the video. LHR is extremely lucky to have a professional filmmaker out of NYC helping us make our videos. The third video is coming out soon.
So...who was the subject in “sports shirt”? Dave: I'll never tell (dirty DC promoter bastard)
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