Geffen Recording Artists: SNOT

INTERVIEW

Below you will find the story of five tough and talented men who blew with gale force out of Santa Barbara straight onto Geffen Records. Below you will read of five intelligent, good-humored and good-hearted guys who have kept success in perspective. Below you will learn the story of SNOT as told to me by vocalist LYNN, guitarists MIKE (the one with the hair) and SONNY (the one without), and bassist TUMOR along with the spirit of drummer JAMIE who had an excused absence.

RCN: From the stories IÕve heard, everyone in Snot has quite an interesting musical history. What is your background and what brought you up to the point of creating Snot?

SONNY: I lived in Washington, D.C. and played guitar in a thrash metal band called Silence for four or five years. I was working with the band Souls At Zero as a guitar tech after my band broke up and I hooked up with Shannon Larkin who played drums for them. I filled in (with Souls At Zero) for one of the guitar players when he broke his hand, doing a string of ten shows. Tumor was playing in another band with Shannon called Kiddie Porn and we got together. Shannon, Tumor and I got this band together called MF Pitbulls. Then Shannon moved out to Santa Barbara to join Ugly Kid Joe, where he met Mikey and Lynn. They wanted to get some heads together, trying to do something, to really go for it.

MIKE: We were doing little gigs in Santa Barbara. We kinda sucked. But we knew what we wanted to do.

SONNY: They had the vision and they had the drive. But they couldnÕt find the right pieces. . .

MIKE: We talked to Shannon about it. Shannon said ÒIÕve got the perfect guys for you.Ó Lynn said ÒweÕve got to get rid of our bass player and drummer right now! What are we going to do?Ó So Shannon popped in the video tape of the MF Pitbulls, and there they were. But I didnÕt know then they were all going to be in my band.

SONNY: Jamie joined later. Jamie joined after Tumor had been here. Tumor came first.

TUMOR: Before the chicken or the egg!! I crossed the road long ago.

MIKE: We got Tumor out here, and while we were practicing we had the single guitar thing. It was cool, a lot of freedom, but it wasnÕt the sound we needed. So Tumor told Lynn to call up Sonny.

SONNY: IÕd seen Tumor a couple months before that and he said ÒitÕs cool, we might call you.Ó That would be fuckinÕ great. IÕd love to come out there. Shannon had told me all about these guys. So Lynn calls me up on Easter Sunday and says ÒSonny! WeÕve been trying to get in touch with you all day!Ó And I said, ÒWhoÕs this?Ó He said ÒLynnÓ and I said Òwhat do you want?Ó He said, ÒI want metal,Ó and I said Òaha, youÕve called the right place.Ó Damn, it was good; we were totally clicking right away. So Tumor came out and we drove across the country in this piece of shit car.

MIKE: They drove across the country, a three day drive, in an 1981 Selica.

SONNY: We got in at 2:00 a.m. and said Ònice to meet you, want to go jam?Ó And we went straight to rehearsal at 2:00 a.m. right when we pulled in. Then we had it all together, all the heads.

RCN: Lynn, where did your head come from?

LYNN: My dad was a doctor in the army, so we moved to ten different states by the time I was twelve. When we got to Santa Barbara it was so beautiful that we decided to stay. I got into the Southern California punk rock scene.

RCN: So youÕve been in the Santa Barbara scene for. . .

LYNN: Nineteen years. I started out playing bass. I was always listening to stuff, and I always wanted to play an instrument. IÕd go and see bands and I started working for bands, then I started tinkering around with the bass and became a bass player.

RCN: HowÕd you make the leap to being a vocalist?

LYNN: I was strung out on heroin for about five or six years and that took over my bass playing. I got locked up for a little over a year. When I got out, I couldnÕt find anybody that needed a bass player. So I was hanging out at this coffee shop and I overheard these guys in the parking lot just talking out loud about how they were looking for a singer. I had no idea who they were but they were my age, and I said Òhey, IÕll try out!Ó I went in there and starting singing blues. I said Òplay some blues and IÕll make something up.Ó They liked it and we started practicing.

SONNY: What band was that?

LYNN: Glue. That lasted a year. We were playing in this stupid little place and Mike came to the show. I was throwing bottles at people.

MIKE: The guys in Glue were standing totally still. And LynnÕs running around the whole club. He wasnÕt quite a rad singer yet, but he had the voice. I saw Lynn on the street in Santa Barbara about a week after I saw him play with Glue and said ÒletÕs get a band together.Ó He came in and played. When he left I said Ònaaah.Ó But the other guys talked me into it.

LYNN: The two guys who are now not in the band! They later got kicked out after talking Mike into keeping me in the band. From the first band I was in, I had to drop that style of singing, that whole musical scene, because that was the only thing IÕd done vocally, at all, ever, besides singing in the shower. I had to drop that and I didnÕt realize it until I almost got thrown out of this band.

RCN: We writers have used up a lot of good words trying to describe SnotÕs music. What is your vision of what your music is?

TUMOR: IÕll just say what it is. ItÕs a mixture of everything weÕve all grown up listening to. WeÕve ingested it and weÕve blown it out our nose. Lynn comes from a punk background, Sonny and Mikey come from speed metal, and me, I was a grindcore master.

MIKE: I definitely didnÕt want to go for the speed metal sound. So I started with the funky light comedic music. I got these guys and it evolved back into a really heavy attitude.

SONNY: But still light-hearted.

RCN: Do you feel itÕs more punk, or more metal?

TUMOR: We like to keep it balanced.

LYNN: We definitely have more metal-edged songs than we do punk-edged songs.

MIKE: WeÕre the best punk band in L.A. (Rock City writer now spends five minutes being harassed and pummeled about SnotÕs RCN Best Punk Band Award. Not my idea, I swear!)

LYNN: We play both kinds of music - punk and rock.

RCN: Snot rose very quickly. The time between when you played your first show here in the Roxy and the time when youÕre sitting here Geffen recording artists was very short. HowÕd you make it happen so rapidly?

LYNN: We got all the people together and started jamming together a lot.

TUMOR: Every day. Every single day.

LYNN: We came down a couple times to really shitty places, HellÕs Gate and a couple others, and played to the bartenders and door-guys. Then a friend of mine who was into Manhole said Òyou guys should play with those guys.Ó I called Tairrie and said, ÒIÕm setting up a show in Santa Barbara and I want you guys to come up and play.Ó It turned out there was another band, Human Waste Project, that came up also with them. We had this show and we all immediately hit it off.

SONNY: They were expecting us to be like an L.A. band. But when they came up we said, Òglad to see you, welcome to Santa Barbara. Thanks for playing with us.Ó They said ÒwhoaaÓ and we became friends. They already had an in here at the Roxy and around town. They gave us some shows and I guess we impressed people..

LYNN: Then we got invited to play on the live Roxy CD where we met Nick Adler and his partner. As these people got behind us, we started playing more and more and practicing more and more and writing better.

TUMOR: There was a point where we were playing an average of four shows a week and holding part-time jobs in Santa Barbara.

LYNN: I was doing all the booking, all the flyers. I was on the phone literally four hours a day to every club between here and San Diego.

RCN: What was it like recording in Boston?

SONNY: It was the best thing IÕve ever done in my whole life. We had a killer producer, T-Ray, who had done Helmet and House of Pain. ThereÕs a great staff there. It was a barn that we lived in, in the middle of this big, huge farm. It was a house and a professional studio with a full stage set up. Each of us had our own bedroom, Jacuzzi, sauna. And we all had time to really focus and get into what we were doing.

TUMOR: The atmosphere was so conducive to creating.

LYNN: The equipment we got to record with, the Neve board and the rooms we got to record in were all incredible.

SONNY: Also the history that was there. Bad Brains recorded there. J. Geils, Aerosmith, a lot of bands.

RCN: How did the music change as you went through the recording process?

TUMOR: It got under a microscope, thatÕs for sure. We realized we were playing sloppy and it was time to tighten up.

LYNN: Everybody whoÕs seen us live, they know the majority of the songs on the album. We come and slam the songs live. Just bust it right down. On the album, we do the same thing sonically. The sounds we got on the album were really great, so it still slams. But thereÕs a lot of musicianship in this band that gets passed over on a heavy live set, and it was nice to put some soft interludes in there.

TUMOR: It was all one take, live jam sessions. We got along really well.

SONNY: We smoked twelve ounces of pot. Good weed!

MIKE: Twelve ounces in two months!

RCN: Any plans to tour?

TUMOR: WeÕre doing a five-day snowboarder tour, starting the end of March into April. We will play ski resorts in California, Washington and Utah. Oasis, Garbage and Candlebox are some of the bands that will be playing with us.

LYNN: In 1997-98 we will be everywhere in the world.

SONNY: Snot is coming to your town!

SnotÕs debut Geffen release will reach stores in May, so time is short to catch Snot before they explode through the universe with rocketing success. Make the most of it.

Get ready, world, for the onslaught of SNOT!