I'm writing from the skies, on our way back to Nashville from San Francisco. This trip has been so crazy, it's hard to remember the sequence of events or even what we did with most our time. What I can do is provide an incomplete list of nonsense that was discussed or experienced by myself, Shawn, and/or Garland: Nashville is better than San Diego because we have "The Sonic" fast food chain (atleast that's what we're told), sharing a king size bed before being moved down the hall to an apartment/suite complete with digital fireplace, Fat Burger (Ice Cube lyrics don't lie!), Venice Beach = buy my Cd-R for 15 dollars, many failed attempts at appearing cool and or getting laid, rising early for free hotel breakfast(Garland is the only one who did this), Driving in rainstorms, looking for people's houses/offices in rainstorms, rocking X's "Los Angeles" (can you get any more cliche?), measuring and examining the footprints and handprints of The Marx Brothers, peeing into a bottle in the CBS Studios parking lot (I'm not telling who did this one), all the while arguing over nothing as much as possible. Of course there's more but that's not why you're reading this...
We arrived in San Diego early last week and began the Cali interviews with Marco Collins, an old friend and fan of the band from the early days in Seattle. Marco has had a long career in radio and has always been a huge champion of the band. A helluva talker, full of passion and enthusiasm, how could we go wrong?
Marco Collins on Michael Dahlquist
"Michael was (an) out of control drummer. I remember Michael doing this thing where he wore gardening gloves and he duct taped the sticks to the gloves, so that when he played, because he played so friggin’ hard, that when he played they were still stuck to the gloves. And the genius thing about Michael too, in addition to being a great drummer, I just loved the fact that that guy sweat more than anybody I’ve ever met. He would start out in a friggin’ suit and he would end up in a pair of boxers by the end of the night and that was it. Most of time it would happen within the first song.”
Shortly after, fan and music writer, Dryw Keltz, showed up at the Coffee Shop we had taken hostage and gave a great interview, offering an outsider perspective on "Indie Rock" and Silkworm's place in it.Dryw Keltz on the later era of the band
"That’s the bad thing about fans of that type of music, A lot of people are fickle with their bands. Once someone’s been around for a while it’s like, “Oh, they’re not cool anymore.” But you know, they are, they’re still cool. They’re awesome…I don’t think they continued to make good records, I think they continued to make better records. Like their best is at the end. That’s really amazing.”
As the nightime rolled around, we headed out to find the City of Angels. We never found it, so we settled for a place called Los Angeles instead. The next morning, we drove out to Joel Mark's house. Joel is Vice President of A&R at MCA Records and was SKWM's booking agent from 1992-1997 as well as many other great bands from that time in music.
Joel Mark on Joel, Tim, and Andy's vocals
"All three of them are those kinds of singers, when they're in that room singing for you, they had those moments where the entire room was silent. And not just because it was basically empty but it was silent because they could just...grab you. That's amazing. And to have three people in the band that could do that was just too much."
That's it for part one folks! Check back soon for more quotes and pictures.-Seth
Photo 1 and 3 by Unknown, 1994. Photo 2 by Heather Whinna, 2002. Photo 4 by Liz Clayton, 1995. Photo 5 by Jon Strymish, 2004.
