Full Spit-Take Interview from Minimum Rock And Roll #2.
1. Is Spit-Take a punk band, an indie band, an emo band, a DIY band, an underground band, or some combination, and what do these terms mean in 2016, if anything?
JOE: hmm, i guess i usually tell people we are a punk band! or maybe an indie rock band. to me, being a punk band in 2016 still has something to do with operating in an intentional, conscientious way. the term “indie rock” i guess i associate more with a specific sound. like, rough-around-the-edges pop music with guitars.
our friend jules (who can be kinda mean) pointed out that every band i’ve ever been in was an emo band, and that i probably couldn’t help but be in emo bands. so i guess there’s that, too…
DAN: yeah, “punk” still means something to me, beyond the way a band sounds. even though we probably have more in common sonic-ly with indie rock or emo, i usually describe us as a punk band.
MAGGIE: I always kind of balk when people ask what kind of band we are, honestly. I usually end up telling people we’re a punk band, but I guess that I’m not super invested in saying what genre we fall under.
2. What are the best and worst descriptions you’ve heard of yr music?
JOE: i dunno about ‘best’ but to me 'worst’ is probably, like 'fuzz rock’, or something goofy sounding like that. on our first tour a lot of people compared us to that band joyce manor – who i actually really really like – and that made me feel kinda sad, haha.
DAN: i think “pop punk” is a pretty bad description of our music that gets used a bit. even though we are definitely a poppy punk band, i don’t feel like we have much in common with the sound people commonly associate with pop punk (which is not to say i don’t also really like pop punk). fuzz rock is bad too.
MAGGIE: My dad just asked me the other day if we were still playing “hardcore stuff” which I think is pretty a funny, but inaccurate, description. Someone once told me we sound like The Strokes, which definitely doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know if anyone’s ever described our band to me in a way that’s made me be like “yeah, that’s really what we sound like”.
3. What bands or labels or zines influenced the way y’ll do the whole “being a band” thing, as far as politics, the kind of gigs y'all play, the ways in which you market yrselves?
JOE: still just the same cooler older kids that i grew up seeing play in bands. there was a lil generation of local new haven bands like ripshit, dead uncles, dark circles, etc. that were never really popular, but whom i still hold in the highest esteem. maybe that is why spit-take is such a resounding commercial failure though…
also, my partner’s band adult mom – they are way more popular than us, but i really respect the way they choose to operate. that band inspires me.
4. What sort of bands influence yr music directly, and is there any crossover with yr “ideological” influences?
JOE: i think so! to me, the bands i have tried to emulate have always been coming at music from a similar place. bands like superchunk, unwound, fugazi, rose melberg’s bands, etc. i think the important thing (and i have to thank “punk” for this outlook) is not to hold all those old bands up on any kind of pedestal or anything. like, they made amazing music that really resonates with me, but there is still a way to move forward, to improve. to aspire towards a more intentional, more conscientious, more inclusive punk world. i hope that makes sense… i also really like, like, the rolling stones and shit like that, so who knows.
DAN: yeah, i’m proud that we don’t really sound like any one particular band or even genre. we definitely set out to start this band with a vague idea of what bands we wanted to take influence from (i’ll add wipers, lemonheads, and jawbreaker to joe’s list as bands we specifically name-checked in early practices) but have gone in a few different directions since then. from a more ideological standpoint, any time a band is part of a tight-knit scene or community or city, that really inspires me. bands that started labels or fostered community and supported other local bands, etc.
5. How would you say being based in Connecticut has shared y'all as a band? How would y'all describe the DIY community in yr area?
DAN: i think connecticut is a decidedly uncool place. that’s not to say cool shit doesn’t happen here, but it does mean that we lose a lot of cool people to close-by places more often perceived of as cool, like new york and boston and, most recently, philadelphia. the new haven community joe and i grew up around definitely shaped us when we were in high school, and i feel like we had a good thing going in willimantic, ct in college for a while too. since moving back down to nhv, i’ve noticed that the scene here is pretty heavily concentrated around bars, which really bums me out. i definitely want to try and change that, but it’s hard! booking all ages shows can be way more frustrating and expensive than bar shows here.
JOE: yeah connecticut is definitely not a “cool” place. new haven has the most stuff going on, but the scene is kinda state-wide just because of how close together everything is. there are disparate pockets where genuine and nice people are doing cool things, but they are few and far between some times. i think living in willimantic (a really, really tiny town in the northeast corner of the state) probably influenced the way i play in bands more than anything else. everyone who lived there had to be in, like, six bands just so there would be enough acts to open the 4 - 5 shows someone inevitably ended up booking each month. so you learn how to play music in a bunch of different styles, with a bunch of different people, in a really teeny-tiny world of punk. it was fun!
MAGGIE: I think it’s kind of hard for me to say what CT-specific things are a factor, since it’s the only place I’ve ever lived. Living in Willimantic with a bunch of people who were all super involved in a bunch of different projects was really inspirational, but I feel like that has more to do with it being a 'smal’ town than a 'CT’ town, ya know?
6. What do y'all do, beyond being a band, to contribute to yr community?
DAN: less than i’d like to, personally! music-wise, i try to attend and book as many shows as i can. i’ve put out a few records for bands too.
JOE: yeah, i’d agree with that notion. when i am in 9-to-5-work-mode, i help manage a public health non-profit that does vision screenings in elementary schools. at work, i am constantly meeting new people and feeling more & more connected with the city/state as a whole, but i don’t know that i will ever be able to integrate punk into that side of my life. and that might partially be just because i am too embarrassed to tell people i am in this crappy band, haha!
the punk scene here is a little insular, and it’s mostly made up of suburban transplants (as most punk scenes are in 2016???) so it would be nice if someone could come along who could figure out how to change that. not sure it’s any of us right now, though…
MAGGIE: Not enough, personally. Moving to New Haven, where a bunch of people have been living and/or hanging out in kind of a tight group for a long ass time, it took me a while to really start to feel like I was a part of the community. Two years in, I’m finally getting to the point where I feel like I have a “place” here and I’d like to start doing more now that I feel like a little bit less of an intruder.
7. Do you all play in other projects? How would you describe them, and are the politics of yr related bands pretty much the same?
DAN: i’ve played in a bunch of different bands over the past few years. currently, in addition to playing drums in spit-take, i play drums in an indie rock band called pieces of fruit and a pop-punk band called stuffed up. even though both of those bands share some common threads with spit-take, they’re pretty different. pieces of fruit is our friend jules’ project that i just kinda play in. it’s a way less of a “punk” band both in sound and in practice. it’s nice to be in a band that i have less responsibility for. stuffed up is definitely punk, but it’s also two of the members’ first band, so we move at a different (read: slower) pace. i try to defer to them more too. just cause i have more band experience, doesn’t mean i should be the de-facto band boss, y'know? it’s fun to be in a band with people who are just starting to figure out how to be in a band. i also sing in that band a little too, which is pretty different.
8. What’s coming up next for yr band?
DAN: we’ve got a lot of exciting stuff coming up! we recorded an lp a few months ago that’s gonna come out on tape soon. we’re going to do a short tour too. since moving to new haven, we haven’t been quite as active as in the past due to work schedules and skateboarding-related injuries, so i am super excited for the next few months.
JOE: I have been writing songs at a pretty frantic rate since we started this band, so there is seemingly always something in the pipeline. i am looking forward to just touring and playing more right now, though!
9. (dunno if Shitty Present is just Dan or primarily Dan so please excuse my ignorance) Could you talk about how you operate Shitty Present, how you choose what to release, what’s coming up on that front?
DAN: shitty present is joe and i. i almost hesitate to call it a record label, because we are pretty bad about the whole thing. we started putting out stuff for our old band, heats of formation, and have since put out all of the spit-take stuff as well as stuff for friends’ bands. investing money into another band’s record is kind of a major decision for me, so we pretty much only put out stuff for bands we really know and love. it makes me really happy to help put out records for friends’ bands and i want to do it more, but it’s really expensive! in the future i’d like to do more stuff! probably tapes, but who knows?
JOE: yeah, it’s dan and i… but mostly dan because i am pretty lazy about that stuff. i really admire people who make record label shit work. it’s really, really work- and money-intensive. plus it’s infinitely disappointing to end up with a box of your friends’ band’s record in your closet forever, and have to, like, wonder what you did wrong. that’s not really gonna stop us though! at least, i hope not.
