Interview w/ The Truezoos

Hey everyone!

Back again with my ongoing series of interviews with local artists that I've been doing all year with a variety of local artists. Just the other day, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing some friends of mine, The Truezoos! The Truezoos were an Artist Spotlight feature about a month ago and have quickly become one of my favorite local acts recently. The guys took a little break from their afternoon jam session to take part in this interview and without further ado, here it is:

Give your names and what you do in the band?

Sean: I'm Sean, I play guitar with myself and I sing.
Marc: I'm Marc and I play bass and I sing poorly sometimes.
Chris: I'm Chris and I play drums.

How did you come up with the name The Truezoos?

Sean: It's inspired by a book called Ishmael, which is an awesome book. It's pretty much The Truezoos are people, we kind of cage ourselves in houses and things like that. When you think of a zoo, you think of animals in cages and it's pretty much like wild animals that are domesticated, where that's kind of what humans are, the only true animal that is kind of domesticated themselves. So, we're The Truezoos.

How did you guys meet up and when did the band form?

Sean: Me and Marc have been playing since we were 15, stealing things and lighting fires and playing music. The actual band The Truezoos has been together for a year now, since last summer we started playing with one of our friends from high school who plays drums and we just got alot more serious about it around last June is when we decided to get really serious about it so we had to step it up and find an awesome drummer and then we found Chris and then we've been jamming since about the end of June and since then we've just been killing it.

What themes or topics does your music cover?

Sean: It covers definitely relationships and stuff, smoking weed, getting laid (Laughter), a little bit of everything really I don't know, my music is inspired by my life so every song is kind of about something different, I have a song about my dad, I have a song about my sister, pretty much inspired by people in my life. Then some are just for fun and we funk around.

In terms of your songwriting process, where do you draw inspiration from to write your songs?

Sean: All over the place really. A lot of bands answer that question with "I do this" and "He does that" but literally every single song is written different, the way we used to do it was I would write the song, bring them to the band and then he would write the bass line, the drums would be thrown down but then since about June when we started jamming with Chris, we just kind of been all throwing our ideas at each other and just mashing them together and making a beautiful stew of wonder.

Marc: A lot of what we got with Chris was the ability to improvise well, so alot of stuff we do now comes out of improvising and jamming and sort of just happening.

Sean: A lot of it we're just kind of fucking around and then it starts to sound good and then we go back and listen to it and we're like "That is going to be a real song" and I just kind of scribble down some lyrics and pretend I can sing. (Laughter)

What are some of the band's biggest musical inspirations and how big of a role do they play in shaping your music?

Sean: Sublime, they're the best band in the world. The Chili Peppers, Zeppelin, G Love and Special Sauce, Umphrey's McGee, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Jack Johnson, and Miley Cyrus, Jewel, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Love Hewitt, I think she put an album out. (Laughter)

What songs from The Truezoos are you most proud of and feel best represent you as a band?

Sean: Probably the ones our fans like the most which would probably be "So Listen" which people really dig, I think we're gonna name the CD when we release it "So Listen" the title track and then "Dragway Races" people really dig, the new song "Just Enough" people seem to really dig too. "Sleep A Wink", although I feel people kind of waned themselves off that. People like "Take It" a lot, people do dig that.

Chris: That's my favorite Truezoos song.

Marc: I think the more fun we have playing it, the more people enjoy it.

Sean: So we just have to have fun, It's all about having fun with it, just have fun with it.

How do you guys maintain a constant stage presence at shows?

Sean: We do lots of speed before the show and we get alot of hookers too and it just pumps us up. (Laughter) We vibe off each other alot, if there was a wall between each one of us, the show would suck we play for a half hour straight through, we'd be sick of it, but looking at each other and the energy between us really gets us excited and really makes us work off each other. And a few shots beforehand doesn't hurt either. (Laughter)

What is your favorite thing about performing live?

Sean: When girls come on stage and take their dresses off. (Intense Laughter) Literally everything, when I'm not playing on stage or in front of people or even for one person, that's what I want to be doing. And I think these guys can say the same. That's literally the only thing I think about. One time, we were playing a house party and I was sick as hell and I felt like shit and then I put my guitar on and started singing and I felt 100% better and we played for like 2 hours. And then right after I got off stage I'm like "Oh yeah, I'm wicked sick, holy shit this sucks", and then I felt like shit for the rest of the night, but it's a magical thing when you're on stage, the adrenaline and the energy between us and all the wonderful things that happen, It's awesome.

If you guys weren't making music together, what do you think each of you guys would be doing to pass the time?

Sean: I'd be a porn star probably (Laughter) Because that will get me money real quick.
Marc: I'd just be doing a bunch of recording cause I just spent 4 years and it'll all be wasted if I wasn't.
Chris: I's probably be doing media production stuff like music videos, that's what I'm going to school for.

What activities do you guys partake in when you're not playing shows?

Sean: Jamming, making posters for shows, riding bikes, skimboarding, snowboarding, any sort of boarding, hanging out with my dog, that pretty much sums it up.
Chris: Some school, some work too. Boring stuff, It'll be over in a couple of months.
Marc: Me and Sean go on adventures.
Sean: Yeah, we like to go on adventures and we like to hang out with each other when we're not playing music and stuff. A lot of bands like don't hang out with each other but we like to be around each other. We still consider practicing when the three of us just hang out because we can share our thoughts and wavelengths.

Describe The Truezoos in one word.

Sean: Sex.
Marc: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Chris: Sex.

What does the future hold for The Truezoos? do you guys plan on releasing an EP or album in the near future?

Sean: Yeah we're getting together all our own gear for recording now. We're gonna record our own stuff,we just got an interface, we're getting a bunch of mics, we're gonna start recording soon, get our EP out in a few months at least, I don't want to put a date on it, by next Spring at least for sure. And then hopefully get out on the road soon, we want to go down to at least New York, out in western Mass and stuff, we'll be doing all that by next summer, but who knows, can't expect anything, expectation leads to expecting.

Thanks once again to my friends Sean, Marc and Chris from The Truezoos for taking some time to do this interview! They're really awesome, chill, laid-back guys and I had an awesome time hanging out with them. To check out music from The Truezoos, head on over to their MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/truezoos and become a fan of them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/truezoos