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Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepherd has a lot of big ideas. Recently, he has entertained the idea of creating a zip-line range at a location where “you can go tearing from location to location in the tree tops, but you can only get to it by boat or if you already know where it is” and developing a concert experience whereat a band (which the bassist has dubbed Forming Policy) will experiment with different sonic frequencies and motifs for the purposes...

While he doesn’t want to admit it for fear of jinxing the whole thing and watching it go down the tubes, singer/guitarist Jesse Elliott knows that something is about to happen to his band, These United States. He doesn’t know what, but anyone who speaks with him knows he can feel it coming; something’s going to happen. “Something about this record – God – where do I start,” beams the singer breathlessly. “I mean, with each one we’ve made, every...

It has been said just often enough at this point that it could be taken as gospel: “Necessity is the mother of invention” but no one truly revels in that sentiment more than Mike Watt. First as the bass player for The Minutemen and then as the bassist in fIREHOSE, Watt helped to usher in a new approach to his instrument both in the context of punk rock and rock n’ roll in general. While other players of the same...

In art, as is the case in life, it has been proven time and again that the population of intelligent people in the world fall into one of two groups: those that consider themselves to be smart and those that simply are. So what’s the difference? Those that assume themselves to be intelligent usually come by the notion honestly – they might be scholarly, they might be good (if fairly humorless) conversationalists, they may be the ones that their friends...

The single most important construct to the fabric of humanity and the condition of it is the establishment of motivation. ‘Motive’ is the cornerstone for crime, punishment, change, virtue, vice and myriad other human endeavours but, most importantly, defining motives and qualifying motivation means articulating cause for the purpose of allowing others to understand outcomes and effects. Without that understanding—that relatable human element that everyone can find within themselves—people get very nervous. That was the instinct the...

The single most important construct to the fabric of humanity and the condition of it is the establishment of motivation. ‘Motive’ is the cornerstone for crime, punishment, change, virtue, vice and myriad other human endeavours but, most importantly, defining motives and qualifying motivation means articulating cause for the purpose of allowing others to understand outcomes and effects. Without that understanding—that relatable human element that everyone can find within themselves—people get very nervous. That was the instinct the...

ARTIST: Explosions In The Sky DATE: 02-02-07 WRITER: Aaron Autrand PHOTO: Dianne Jones   Interviews can be tricky. Some artists dread the whole press “thing” and cough up information about as willingly as a potential third-strike suspect under the bright lights. Others babble on incessantly, leaving interviewers with hours of tape and mere seconds of usable content. Then there are the interviewees that make a writer’s job the easiest thing in the world. Explosions in the Sky drummer Chris Hrasky...

ARTIST: Voxtrot The current gods of the EP are back DATE: 10-28-06 WRITER: Casey Lombardo Now Playing: “Trouble” from Your Biggest Fan In 2005, prior to being sucked into the same online buzz machine that launched a thousand Arctic Monkeys, Voxtrot was just another idiosyncratic indie pop band amid a sea of such bands in Austin, Texas. Today, they’ve established a dedicated cult following thanks as much to their literate, Anglo-informed brand of music—somewhere between the melodrama of The Smiths...