Seattlest Interview: Young Sportsmen
Seattlest got together with local rockers Young Sportsmen last night in their Bell Town practice space to discuss the finer points of incest, judo, and Webster’s Dictionary…
Some have dubbed the Seattle music scene, "incestuous." Does that ring true at all, in terms of how the Young Sportsmen came to be?
Jeff: Yes, most definitely. [Laughter] I’m sure you guys could elaborate on that…
Ryan: Is there anything to really elaborate on? I mean I think everybody in Seattle knows that everybody who’s in a band was in somebody else’s band at some point.
Richard: Yeah. You remember those elaborate charts with Green River? Yeah, they’re not the only band that can do that… But the great thing about Seattle is that, well, I haven’t had much experience in other cities, but from what I’ve been told, it’s not necessarily the case where everyone is comfortable playing with, and supporting everyone else, as much as in Seattle. In Seattle, it’s easy to play with other musicians as comrades.
Jeff: So, this band specifically… these guys played in Muzzle. Their drummer was Burke Thomas who was also in Pris, and was the first guy I played with, and is how I met these guys.
Richard: And I played with a guy in Radio Nationals, who bought that 412 guitar cabinet…
Ryan: Yeah, that cabinet that I was looking at in the ‘90s… The room that we’re playing in, we share with another band that I played guitar in fairly recently.
Jeff: And another band that you played guitar in, is down the hall about two doors…
Ryan: Yeah, another band I played guitar in… who used to be the bass player in Muzzle… called the Small Change… I played guitar in that band for a while as well. And before that, [laughter] I played in a band called American Junk, simultaneously while playing with Muzzle. Wesley, played with Rustin Meyer, who also played with Rob Skinner, who was our tour manager for a short time, and then [laughter] I played with him in a band called The Fongs, and then Rob came and played with Muzzle for a short rebirth… [laughter]
Wesley: And now Rob and Ryan work together… [laughter]
Richard: And now we practice next door to a band consisting of some of those people we just mentioned…
Wesley: So, I guess the answer to that question is a resounding yes!
Ryan: Yes.
Jeff: Yes.
An understated yes…
Richard: But, incestuous without any negative connotation…
Wesley: …Without any actual sex. [laughter]
Richard: Well that’s your perspective.
Wesley: I can only speak for myself…
Ryan: I haven’t fucked any of these guys.
Wesley: Yet.
Yet?
Wesley: Yet. Put an asterisk next to that comment.
Ryan: I thought it was asteriks…
Wesley: Asterisk.
Richard: Asteriks.
Wesley: Asterisk.
Richard: Asterisk? What are you Polish?
Wesley: Was Webster Polish, asshole?
Your current EP, "The Familiar Glow of Colliding Particles" was originally slated as a Demo. Tell us how a demo became an EP, selling at Sonic Boom, iTunes, and other outlets… and feel free to plug away on that note.
Ryan: Oh man, how did that happen? We really just wanted to make a demo that we could give to clubs, so we could start playing shows again. Turned out… that it sounded really good. I mean, I don’t think it’s official release good… we certainly could have spent more money on it, made it more polished or whatever, but we figured, why not put a cool design on it and have it pressed at a pro CD manufacturer? So we ended up coming up with a great design and Richard took it around to the stations, and then you know, got it to Harms and Dick Rosetti, they were playing it on The End, and you know, after a while so many people were hearing it, we thought, well shit, we can’t just pretend this didn’t happen. We might as well make it official… though it’s not like it’s even technically a release you know, because we didn’t do any preemptive press, there was no real push for it…
Richard: Yeah we wanted to, as modestly as possible, create something that we felt good about selling to people at shows, or even giving to them at shows, or passing around to booking agents or radio stations…
Ryan: There are so many demos out there that are just plastic with a band name written on there, and we’ve done that a million times too, but it just works a little bit better… to have something that, it’s obvious you put a little time and an little thought to… and people are more apt to really respond to that and are more likely to actually hang on to it, or to open it up and give it a listen… And you know, people were expressing interest to buy this thing when it was just a CDR with a white wrapper… So eventually we felt kind of bad about people actually spending their five bucks on this thing, so we decided, hey let’s bump it up a little. And then there’s the Sonic Boom thing…
Richard: Yeah, one day I just walked into the Sonic Boom in Fremont, and the owner there said “Hey man, a couple times a week we have people looking for your CD.” So, they asked us to bring some in there to satisfy some of that demand… which is really kind of cool because, as it was said earlier, it wasn’t like a preemptive decision to do something with this. It’s more a demo that has morphed into something else. So we’re just pushing forward now to get it out to as many people possible.
A happy accident...
Ryan: Serendipity.
Wesley: Oooo, good word.
Richard: But we’re still looking for anyone who might want to help us work on a full-length record.
Wesley: We’re dying to get in a studio.
You guys got the material ready for a full-length album?
Wesley: Yeah, we’ve got a pretty solid line-up ready to go.
Richard: And you can certainly hear some of that at our shows, and you know, Ryan and Wesley are just super prolific at writing great material.
You guys have been getting some love from local stations TheEnd, and especially KEXP... Has this had an impact on the size, the number, or the kind of shows you guys are doing?
Wesley: I think there’s a noticeable impact.
Ryan: Yeah, attendance is definitely up.
Richard: You know, anytime you start a new project you expect only your friends to show up, but… when fairly early on, you look out and see a bunch of people you don’t know, it’s great because it means that they’re hearing about the band from other people… I mean our friends are there too of course…
Ryan: Well your friends have to tell you you’re awesome… It’s great to know that the people you’re playing for are there to see you… I mean, the last few shows we played, the crowd has really really gone crazy, and that’s especially gratifying when you know it’s complete strangers who are going crazy. The last show we played, there were several people who approached us saying, “we love your EP… We came here to see you…”
Wesley: And I think there’s definitely a correlation between the times we get played on KEXP, and say, when we get hits on our MySpace account… And it’s nice to have people come up to us at our shows and say, “Hey I heard you guys on KEXP today…” It’s just the coolest feeling, when that happens. It has an impact… it’s amazing.
Jeff: Just purely from a booking standpoint… once we had KEXP rotation, and The End started picking things up… it was interesting, because we didn’t have to work to get shows anymore. All of a sudden people were contacting us, and the nights that we wanted to play at the good clubs all of a sudden were just coming to us, instead of us having to work so hard to hook these shows up.
Wesley: Which is great.
Ryan: It’s called making lazy work for you.
Richard: That’s Ryan’s handbook.
Ryan: It’s sort of a judo approach to rock & roll. You just kind of let your opponents momentum take them to the floor…
Any Seattle venues you're just dying to play?
All: Showbox.
Wesley: I’m always dyin to play the Crocodile.
Ryan: The paramount someday.
Wesley: But these are you know, just lofty goals right now.
Ryan: Yeah, right now I’d just love to play Neumo’s more frequently and the Crocodile more frequently.
Wesley: I’d like to play the OK Hotel again. If there’s anything you can do about that, that’d be great.
[laughter]
Ryan: Yeah, can you retrofit that really quick?
We’ll get right to work on that...
Young Sportsman will perform on KEXP’s John in the Morning tomorrow at 9am. They also play Saturday night with Llama and Kingsley at High Dive. 9:30pm, $6
This Friday Young Sportsmen will launch their new website: www.youngsportsmen.com (It will no longer redirect to the MySpace site).
