#joseph hess

[raccoonofficial]

Alaska State Troopers

is my favorite show all of the troopers are so hot 

[radioutd]

Review/Interview: Spelling Bee

Listening to Spelling Bee can be quite an intense experience at first. It’s sort of like being beaten by an angry mob, but in the best way imaginable. Drummer Joseph Hess and Singer/Guitarist/Saxophonist Mabel Suen are a power duo. Throughout their nine-song debut, Sweet Dreams, Strange Animal, your ears will be treated to abusive drums, muddy and intricate guitar riffs, girlish shouts, and even the occasional saxophone screech. It’s a unique combination of noise, math, and punk, and unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Here’s my top 4 songs from the album and an interview with drummer Joseph Hess.

"4, 13" The song starts simple enough, with a beat of the snare and a steady riff, but it doesn’t last long. The snare snaps again and the distortion kicks in. A bevy of snare hits and a filthy twisted guitar riff spiral downwards into a brief, but groovy breakdown. The song carries on at a steady pace, until finally it erupts and takes off. Great. Stuff.

"Caved In" Basically a hardcore song left out to melt in the sun, "Caved In" starts off easy, but begins to stagger. The beat accelerates and slows down repeatedly and as usual the riffs are great. It all eventually leads to the shouted chorus.

"Omelettes" The longest song on the album at just over four minutes, "Omelettes" has all the staples of a Spelling Bee jam, but it has lots more of them. Sick riffs, spastic drums, and even a saxophone freakout at the end.

"Killing Jar" This was the first song I heard by Spelling Bee and it immediately pulled me in. Once again, they have taken a hardcore song and twisted it around into something else. From the beginning the song pounds at you relentlessly. There’s a short breakdown, then a topsy turvy spazz drum beat and a crazy riff. My favorite.

Interview with Drummer, Joseph Hess

How did you get into music?

JH: That's a long story, but I can give you the shortest version possible. I didn't start going to shows until I was 17. To be honest, I was pretty closed minded about music in general and I really just showed up because I was solicited for a local show online. I poked around clubs and all ages venues for a couple months until my best friend started playing guitar. He left a bass at my house and I started playing it. We started a band, played out wherever we could (basements, bars, art galleries).

So you weren’t always a drummer?

JH: Oh no, I played bass for three years before starting drums actually. My best friend (Curtis Tinsley of the band Navigator) and I became enamored with writing and performing music. Honestly, I wanted to do nothing else but play out. We would drive hours into rural Missouri and play VFW halls, barns and basements just because. I honestly don't remember how it came to happen, but we became involved in a DIY scene that stretched all across Missouri, from St. Louis to Kansas City. In any case, our drummer left and we tried out quite a few drummers from around St. Louis. We came to the conclusion that all good drummers were also arrogant (or flaky), so I borrowed a drum set and started playing. It was strange though, I could immediately just sort of... play. I was getting into no-wave and noise rock at the time, so I thought that loosely-played trashy drum beats would be really cool. As it turns out, I had a lot more fun trying to diversify what I was playing, so a simple punk sort of style never came naturally. In any case, that's how I started playing drums. My first band on drums was Sleep State – the first album we recorded was within two months of me starting drums. I really rushed everything.

So was the DIY ethic a conscious thing for you?

JH: Because I was sort of reckless and played every single show I could get on, I met a lot of influential and interesting people. When I was still playing bass I ran into a person named Francis Pounds early on and he turned me on to Fugazi. I literally spent my next paycheck on the entire discography and the Fugazi DVD "Instrument". At that point I had already played house "parties", and set up "parties" where a band or two would play. I had experienced playing VFW halls and those sorts of things, so to see a band that I was quickly falling in love with preach about the importance of it ... it came at the right time in my life for sure. I can tell you, I was having awful experiences playing in bars at the time so I started looking around for other venues to play in St. Louis. An individual named Stephen Inman (from Nineteen/Dancing Feet March to War) invited my band to play the Lemp Arts Center. From there I became friends with Mark Sarich (the curator of that venue) and learned quite a lot about the DIY culture that had been growing and I tried my best to extend what I was learning by booking shows in my hometown, which sits about 40 minutes outside of St. Louis. Chris Meuther (of The Lonely Procession) introduced me to Skingraft Records and a whole plethora of record labels, bands and scenes. In 2008 I went on my first tour of the central United States. That was with Sleep State. Most of our contacts on that tour came from two years of constantly performing at the Lemp Arts Center in St. Louis. When we returned from tour, Sleep State actually split up. I moved into an apartment in St. Louis with Mabel Suen (my bandmate in Spelling Bee), and we became involved in the local arts and media. I was no longer involved with the Lemp Arts Center, but it was quickly evident that the DIY scene in St. Louis was alive, healthy and much larger than I had previously thought.

How did Spelling Bee start?

JH: After Mabel and I moved to South Saint Louis, we started DJing a show at KDHX 88.1 FM. It is a math rock/noise rock radio show called Wrong Division. We've had wonderful artists on our show such as Zach Hill (of Hella), Cheer-Accident, Zevious, The Conformists and more. My old band Sleep State had been broken up for 6 months, and Mabel's band was on hiatus, so we started playing together. Spelling Bee actually started off as a drum and saxophone band. We couldn't come up with a way to make interesting songs that way, so Mabel switched to guitar (which she had hardly played before, never in a band). Our first show was actually at a store opening in St. Louis, we had no name (the flyer said Mabel and Joe) and half of our songs were the aforementioned saxophone and drum songs. Honestly, I had so much fun on the Sleep State tour that I wanted to get back on the road, so I really pushed Mabel to write songs as quickly as possible. We went on tour 4 months after we started playing.

I recently read a RFT article in which you stressed the importance of touring, could you talk more about that?

JH: Diversity is important. To me, it's a priority. One of the primary functions of a bee is to cross pollinate, right? From every city, small town and street comes a different point of view. Music is the audible expression of the imagination, and it communicates what conventional language can't. So, a punk band from Kansas City will show you what a punk band from Denver can't, even if their influences are identical. Now, how creative or proficient or intense the music is at this point doesn't really matter. I think touring is important because not only do you have the opportunity to enrich someone else's perspective, but you are granted the chance to learn. What you do with that opportunity is entirely up to you, though. This is entirely too analytical. In short, it's a good time. It's a constant give and take. We're keeping the water moving so it doesn't sit and stagnate. That attracts blood-sucking mosquitoes, right?

Any future touring or releases planned?

JH: We are doing a number of weekend ventures to cities in the Midwest and the South in Spring 2012, and we're planning on five week long nationwide tour in the late Summer/Fall of 2012. We are working on a split cassette tape with Banned Books from Philadelphia, that should be out on our record label Hi Fi Octopi Recordings in February 2012. No word on a release date for the second full length, but we ARE currently writing the material. I can comfortably say we've written half the album. We will be recording the next album with Ryan Wasoba (the same person who recorded Sweet Dreams, Strange Animal) albeit in a much more expensive facility and we have plans for 12 inch vinyl. Look out for a Kickstarter campaign in the Spring.

Lastly, tell me about your influences.

JH: With Mabel it is Deerhoof (particular the two guitar players who were also in Colossamite), Lightning Bolt, Shugu Tokumaru, Gnarwhal (Nashville), Arvid Noe. With me it is Cheer Accident, The Conformists (St. Louis), The VSS (Gravity Records 1996), Upsilon Acrux, Neptune (group from Boston that crafts their own instruments and writes great noise rock songs). Anything from Gravity Records as well and Fugazi for both of us, although our vision of DIY ethics has changed considerably. I don't believe in DIY. I'm more keen to the concept of DIT (do it together), whether you're working with a bar owner, home owner or the city (in organizing events in public spaces like a park). There is never any one single entity or group that creates an amazing experience. Performances are just as much the audiences' fault as they are the performers. If the audience is respectful, excited and interested the performer feeds off of the energy and returns it. It's a constant feedback loop.

Original Article