The O.C. Supertones : 2004-04-27
I had the opportunity to interview three of the O.C. Supertones during GMA week in Nashville. The interviewees were Mojo AKA Matt Morginsky, lead vocals; Ethan Luck, lead guitar, and Dan Spencer, trombone.Note: Click for my review of their latest CD, Revenge of the O.C. Supertones.
The Interview
Randy: I had to admit that I was almost moved to tears when I heard Robert Horry Saved The Day (from Grand Incredible: G.I.gantic).
Ethan: Nice! You have to be the first person not from California that actually enjoyed those songs. Most people say they hate them.
Randy: Anti-Lakers sentiment. How about Minnesota? They're just bitter that they left. Or do they still feel a little link there to the old Minneapolis days?
Mojo: I don't know. Doesn't seem like really anybody likes the Lakers.
Ethan: Cuz they're winning.
Randy: Well, I did get a kick out of the project. I did review that one, too.
Dan: I was the number one fan.
Randy: I had a few people whining about "I don't know if you should review it; it's got too many Lakers songs."
Ethan: Only three out of seventeen.
Randy: Four, wasn't there four that mention the Lakers?
Mojo: Yeah, there was four, but that wasn't about the Lakers.
Randy: Right, just mentioned them.
Ethan: Which song was that?
Mojo: Be Thou My Television.
Ethan: That's right.
Randy: Yeah, but that was some fun stuff. Do you guys foresee any future episodes of the saga of G.I.?
Ethan: we might do another one for fun, maybe.
Randy: Nothing planned, but it's just kinda out there?
Ethan: We just kinda did it as we had extra songs.
Mojo: Just for the yayas of it.
Ethan: Yeah, we just did it for kicks. We usually always had full freedom in the studio.
Randy: Have you done any G.I. gigs?
Ethan: One. Dan was our biggest fan.
Dan: I was there. In fact I had the only G.I. T-shirt.
Ethan: You did. Last time I saw it you had a desk you were staining on top of it.
Dan: That's true.
Ethan: No, I found it under your bed collecting dust. It was on the leg of the bed.
Dan: Okay, okay.
Randy: Alright, we'll move on to Supertones.
(Laughter)
Ethan: No, hang on. What about the T-shirt?
(Laughter)
Randy: I haven't had any publicists call me to try booking G.I. interviews, so maybe down the road...
Ethan: You're only like our third ever.
Randy: That's even brought them up?
Mojo: Overseas, they did a lot.
Ethan: Yeah, overseas a bunch of people did.
Randy: You're big in France?
Ethan: We're actually huge in Belgium.
Dan: The French love G.I. It's cool.
Randy: Well, moving on to Supertones. I saw you on the See Spot Rock Tour in Denver. I was interviewing Relient K and Sanctus Real and those guys.
Ethan: The Fillmore.
Randy: Yeah, nice venue.
Ethan: Yeah, that was a great night.
Randy: Lots of big acts have played the Filmore. Did you walk around and check out some of the pictures on the wall there?
Ethan: Yeah, me and Dan and two other guys got to go down to--what's it called?--the Blue Bird.
Randy: Yeah.
Ethan: Got to see Skatellites play that night after us.
Randy: See Spot Rock tour was what--thirty-some cities? How many did you end up doing?
Ethan: Thirty-five.
Dan: Yeah, something like that.
Randy: I know you guys took a little grief about being the old guys from some of the young bands joking about it.
Ethan: It was more us bringing it up to put them in their place.
Randy: Do you have any major tour schedules coming up? What's the future hold for Supertones tour-wise?
Dan: We've got a big fall tour coming up starting at the end of August going through October. Right now Superchic[k]'s going out with us and we're not sure about another opener yet. So that'll probably be a thirty-five to forty city tour.
Randy: Actually the first time I saw you guys in Denver, I think it was before Ethan was around. You'll remember this night, but someone fell off the stage and broke a leg or something.
Dan: That was Jason, probably.
Mojo: Was it? Was that in Denver?
Dan: Yeah, he hurt his ankle. He jumped over a barricade--
Mojo: No, no, he jumped--
Dan: Leap-frogged.
Mojo: Leap-frogged--right--over Mark Stuart [1] into no audience because they were a few feet back.
Randy: So he messed up his ankle?
Mojo: He broke it!
Randy: So it was broken?
Dan: I think so, yeah.
Randy: That was the first time I saw you guys live. I thought "these guys are committed--breaking their bones!"
Mojo: I was all, "What an idiot!" Fortunately it was his left foot and he just put it in a cast and rested it on the high-hat and he was able to play because he never uses his left foot.
Randy: That was pretty wild. Well, anyway what I want to do is just talk about a couple of the projects going back. I used to teach high school and took a break from it for a while. I did software for fourteen years sitting at home. The great thing is that I could get up in the morning and roll out of bed...
Ethan: Exactly!
Randy:...and go to work. I changed a million diapers because we ended up having five kids.
Dan: Wow!
Randy:Randy: I was home for all of them. We had three, and decided to have one more and had twins. All of a sudden it went from three to five.
Ethan: I've got a twin as well. A sister.
Randy: Yeah, we got boy-girl twins. The boy is the drummer in the family.
Ethan: Cool!
Randy: He's in the school band--bass, snare, bells whatever. And he's the kind of kid whose hair's on fire...the perfect animal-type drummer.
Ethan: I get this all the time: "Yeah, yeah I got a twin sister." "Oh, are you guys identical?"
Randy: We had a nurse ask if they were identical. I thought, "You're in the medical field??!"
Ethan: Not boy-girl.
Randy: Well, it would be really bad for one of them--if you're identical in every way. But yeah, it's really cool. You and your sister still pretty tight?
Ethan: Oh yeah, we're totally close.
Randy: They turned 10 Sunday. I missed their birthday because of GMA. Anyway, it was a very "Matt" tour wasn't it? Matt from Sanctus, Matt Thiessen, Matt Hoopes. It was a very "Matt" See Spot Rock tour.
Dan: Lots of Matts are cool.
Ethan: Actually in our Loud n Clear Tour we had five Matts. We had Matt here...
Mojo: The Relient K Matts.
Ethan: Merch guy named Matt. Their road manager was named Matt. I think there was a guy on the crew named Matt.
Randy: Could have had Matt Slocum play a little cello, and you'd be all set. One thing I wanted to talk about was some of the lyrics. I started talking about high school and got distracted. I was teaching high school again... I was teaching Apologetics and it was really cool because we were talking about Francis Schaffer and some of the Reformed Apologetics and talking about worldviews, Weltanschauung and that good stuff. And the kids were doing a really good job picking it up and this one kid comes in one day and goes, "Mr. Brandt, we've got a theme song for our class. Look at the new Supertones CD. Look, it says Bahnsen and Schaeffer." So that was really cool. It was adopted as the theme song for the Bible class.
Mojo: That's cool!
Randy: Matt, you wrote that, right?
Mojo: Yeah.
Randy: So, talk a little bit about the influences in that area as far as world view and apologetics and what inspired you to put that in there.
Mojo: That song was written for the thousand people or so in the country who know about Reformed apologetics.
Randy: We're probably the only high school class that would've picked up on it.
Mojo: Yeah, I know. I spoke at a winter camp once on that subject, but I mean it's really few and far between. If they're interested in apologetics at all it's usually McDowell that they turn to. But, yeah, it was maybe too much of an obsession for a while for me, apologetics. I still read apologetics, but I was like freaky about it. Which was good though because I learned a lot that way. That's the way I am with everything, I freak out about it.
Randy: Immerse yourself.
Mojo: Yeah. So, it came from a desire to answer a lot of the questions that I had about the Faith and I just wasn't getting satisfactory answers from mainstream church. So, my whole journey into the Reformed faith was begun by Putting Amazing Back Into Grace by Michael Horton and then this guy recommended Schaeffer and Packer and Sproul and Bahnsen and those cats as well. When I finally discovered Bahnsen explaining Van Til, that's what really clicked for me.
Randy: Little more on the popular level. Bahnsen definitely takes a little more of a scholarly level.
Mojo: Well, and Bahsen tells you the system. He doesn't tell you its application before he tells you the system. So that was really helpful for me because I need to know the system before you can show me its application, and so it was very helpful.
Randy: Excellent. Now is that something, like you said, you're not as much in that right now, but you still keep track of the current apologists? Are you familiar with James White at all?
Mojo: No.
Randy: Alpha and Omega ministries? You need to check out his website. He's probably the leading debater in the Reformed camp. He does a lot of stuff with Mormons and Catholics. He's done fifty formal debates, I think, in the last few years. He's written a lot of good stuff--wrote a great book on justification called The God Who Justifies and has some cool stuff.
Are you guys here now, or still based in California?
Mojo: In Nashville.
Dan: Three of us are here and three of us are out there.
Ethan: Yeah, I'm in California.
Randy: You guys make up a little air time connecting, or you hook up on the tours?
Ethan: Yeah, when we do fly dates we just meet up obviously. Then for a tour, we'll probably all come up here and rehearse. Kinda wherever the first show is, I guess. Wherever's closest. Just play it by ear.
Randy: Yeah.
Ethan: That's the difference for See Spot Rock. Everyone came out here for a week and rehearsed and stuff.
Randy: You got any new albums in the planning stages?
Mojo: Out June 15th: Revenge of the Supertones.
Randy: Beyond planning stages. It's all recorded then?
Ethan: There it is.
Randy: Oh, is that it?
Ethan: You're looking at it right now. This is it right there.
Randy: Very cool.
Ethan: June 15th, yeah.
Randy: So that's not too far from now. So it's all new material?
Dan: Yeah, there you go. (Dan hands CD to Randy.)
Randy: So, obviously, I'll find out later on but, for the record, are we looking at any sound changes in terms of the musical approach? Or is it kinda what people expect from the Supertones?
Ethan: Different from--did you hear Hi Fi, the last record?
Randy: I'm familiar with it. I've reviewed it.
Ethan: Lots different from that as far as musically.
Dan: This one's got more of a live sound, I think.
Mojo: Yeah, it's our hardest record probably.
Randy: You let Ethan get a little carried away on the guitars a little more?
Mojo: It's our best record definitely.
Dan: We think so. More energetic.
Ethan: We went in wanting to basically capture what we would sound like live playing these songs without recording a live record. We always end up changing songs live anyway, so we were like, "Okay we have this song. How will we play it live before we record it?" There's a lot of gang vocals on the record.
Mojo: Just rock. Just do it.
Randy: Get the raw feel?
Ethan: Yeah, we did the whole record in thirteen days.
Randy: So, does that make it an easier record to tour to because you already got that live vibe going on? Makes it easier?
Mojo: Yeah, you don't have to worry about when you do samples and what not.
Randy: What do you do with the triple vocal tracks?
Mojo: The choir and the bongos...
Ethan: It's just so easy to do for us to get carried away with instruments "Oh this would be cool to put on something" and there is the last song on the record, Dream of Two Cities...
Mojo: Kitchen sink--just everything we had.
Ethan: Yeah, we'll never play it. It's almost eight minutes long.
Dan: Don't say never.
Randy: Yeah, never say never.
Ethan: That's true. I won't say we'll never play it.
Dan: I think it would be cool to play it sometime.
Ethan: If we ever do VH1 Storyteller we'll do it.
Dan: CMT.
Ethan: On CMT we'll play it. Tim McGraw on background vocals.
Randy: So this tour coming up will be a lot of the new material? Good percentage of it?
Ethan: Yeah, almost half the set will be new songs. We've got so many records it's hard to make a set list now.
Randy: Do you find it a challenge to keep the crowd happy as far as people got their favorite O.C. Supertones song?
Ethan: Definitely. Before the show we'll make out a set list. We're like, "Okay these are your good solid songs. Crowd loves this one, loves this one, loves this one. But, every show there's some kid comes up, "I didn't hear this song!" Even last night. It's tough. You've got so many songs to choose from.
Randy: If you know Glenn Kaiser, Resurrection Band. The old days, the first real hard Christian rocker. He was out doing a small show a couple weeks ago. I always give him a hard time cuz he never does my favorites, even though I've known him for a while. Like he said, "Forget trying to do your favorites. After thirty records, I can't even remember half the songs I wrote, let alone fit them into a set." There's always gonna be something.
Ethan: We either get those kids who want to hear another one that we don't want to play or a lot of times kids will come up to me and rap off some song "I wanna hear this song." We've never even tried to figure out. Just random songs that nobody likes.
Randy: Well, on the bright side, at least every song's getting some support somewhere, right?
Mojo: Oh, yeah.
Randy: So, obviously it's been a pretty long run. Especially you guys having been in it even longer than Ethan. How long is the Supertone train going to keep on rolling here? Do you see it as an indefinite thing? Or do you kinda have a future mapped out? As long as it's working, keep doing it?
Ethan: There's no sense in, I mean, if there's some obvious reason, but you know what, it's taking a toll on this or that and a necessity too, and best for everybody, then sure, but...
Randy: Right now, everybody's enjoying it. Keep cranking out the stuff. Keep doing it.
Ethan: Yeah, we just made a good record. People are coming out to the shows still. We're having fun.
Mojo: Better than working!
Randy: The only hassle is I imagine the road gets a little old after this many tours.
Ethan: It does a little.
Mojo: Actually not as much as it used to.
Randy: really?
Mojo: Definitely. You get better at it.
Randy: You got it figured out what works and what doesn't work.
Ethan: It's like dating somebody. Getting to know that person and how they act in certain situations.
Randy: Do you have some favorite cities that you tell your booking people?
Mojo: Denver!
Ethan: I love Denver.
Dan: I love Denver!
Ethan: We really do. It's a beautiful city, we always have good shows there.
Dan: Full of beautiful people.
Ethan: Our friends in Five Iron come and hang out with us. It's just a good town.
Mojo: Solid town. Colorado is an overlooked state.
Ethan: I wouldn't mind living in Colorado.
Randy: Thanks a lot, guys!