Interviews: How Does One Pronounce DESA?

I mentioned in a pervious post on the main blog that I had seen Adam of DESA at slims. That more or less lead to an email interview. hah wow that's kinda funny.. I’m writing this post and Homicide at the Fountain of Youth just came on my media player. Anyway... I really like these guys as a band. Big thanks to Adam for doing this interview and for supplying the pictures. On with the interview? I'll give ya a hint... the Q stands for Question and the A stands for Answer... or Adam.... I guess either works...hm

Photo Credit
Ashley Nicole Wirth
ashleynicolephotography.com

Q: I’ve seen it done many ways, but what is the proper way to write desa? Do you guys prefer it in capitol letters, the E being a 3, or really don’t care either way?

A: We usually prefer to write it in all capital letters. We usually only throw the 3 in if we are signing something (like a news post), honestly thought, we don't really care. The only way we don't like to see it written is like this: D.E.S.A. We're more perplexed by the fact that so many people have such a hard time pronouncing our name. Usually we just let it slide. It's really just a title. If we could have called our band something that wasn't a word, we might have named it after the particular grey color that the sky achieves right before the sun comes over the horizon, and the way it makes you feel when you're driving a van full of sleeping dudes across state lines. I don't know the word for that though. I didn't go to college.

Q: How was DESA formed/how did you all meet?

Barry Kripenne used to travel door to door selling golf clubs. His van broke down in Modesto, where he happened to meet Ryan Noble during an illegal boxing match. They were running from the police, hitchhiking down highway 5 when Steven Heet picked them up on his way to a KISS concert. Aaron Nagel sold them some bad acid outside of the show, and then they all chased him to Oakland. TWenty-five years later, I called the number on a flyer that said "BAND seeks TALL NERD to STAY SOBER and DRIVE VAN. NO PAY!" That's how I met the band. Actually, we were all in Link 80 before this band. Except Steven, he's new. We like Steven a lot though, aside from the fact that he lives in Hawaii which makes practicing very hard.

Q: How did you choose your band's name?

A: Well, MEGADETH was already taken...When we stopped being Link 80, we needed a new name. Aaron had always liked the name DESA, which is our friend Desanka's shortened nickname. We thought about a bunch of other dumb names for a few months and then settled on DESA.

Q: Who writes the songs?

A: We have a team of trained monkeys. Depending on what we feed them, they write different songs. For instance, to get them to write "Delilah" we fed them Jalapeno poppers, glue sticks and frozen peas. We have them writing a new album right now. We're feeding them hydrochloric acid and flour. Actually, we all write the music. Ryan writes the words.

Q: What is your favorite part about performing live?

A: Personally, I really like sweating and then hugging dudes in other bands afterward. I give them the full-on both arm hug and really linger. I try to get as much of my sweat on them as possible. I also like watching Barry watch Steven watch Aaron watch Ryan watch nothing. I also like when the band lets me scream in the microphone. I get to pretend I'm in Converge for about twelve seconds.

Photo Credit
Ashley Nicole Wirth
ashleynicolephotography.com

Q: What's the last place you performed?

A: The last place we played was in Tuscon AZ. We opened a show with Monty Are I, State Radio and RX Bandits. It was really dark inside the club. I hit my shin super hard on something while walking to the stage and cut my leg open. I remember most of the lights being green and a couple standing right at the front of the stage that didn't look up at anyone in our band, Monty Are I or State Radio. I thought they were waiting for RXB, but then during their set I saw them by the merch table not watching the band. I dripped a lot of sweat on kids in the front row.

Q: What's your greatest memory with your band?

A: My favorite memory is pretty stupid. During this last tour, I was driving the van down one of the freeways in Florida that looks just like every other road in Florida. Wet ditches on both sides and tall sick-looking trees. Everyone was just doing their own thing. I remember looking at the wheel and the back of my hands. I felt like I had just woken up from a really long sleep, like the last few years of not touring was just a bad dull dream and I was out living. I think about that all the time at work.

Q: What's the last album you bought?

A: Xiu Xiu "Tu Mi Piaci". It's an EP of cover songs. My favorite is the cover of Pussycat Dolls "Don't Cha". Ryan and I used to live with Jaime from Xiu Xiu. Right before he moved out, he was holding band practices in his room and getting really drunk every night. He came home one night, turned all the furniture in the living room upside down (gently) and stabbed all the kitchen knives into the bottom of the kicthen table.

Q: What's the first album you ever bought?

A: The first piece of music I bought was the Guns N Roses CASSETTE SINGLE of "You Could Be Mine" from the Terminator 2 soundtrack. The B-side was "civil war". The first CD I ever bought with my own money was Fugazi "In On The Kill Taker". I used to steal all my older brother's music. That's how I got into The Cure, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Death, Nirvana, Metallica and underground early 90's techno (my guilty listening pleasure). My high-school friend Jay Solis got me into Fugazi, Operation Ivy, Minor Threat and local punk rock music.

Q: What's the last concert you attended?

A: I did security at the Paramore show at Slim's last Saturday. I was supposed to stand inside the barricade to catch crowd surfers, but the crowd was really tame. I just watched the show. They put on a rad show, I actually wound up having a blast watching them. The last show I paid to get into was at 330 Ritch st, where I went to see Film D'amour.

Q: How did you personally get involved with music?

A: My first band in high school was made up of a bunch of my friends making shitty noise inside of the keyboardist's parents garage. I could barely play the guitar. this dude I knew who ripped at guitar, Ian Crabb, explained how to play a power chord to me at a show and I was off. I had a Peavey predator guitar, a Peavey Rage practice amp (with the little hissy button on the amp for the distortion channel) and a Korg G5 effect pedal. For our only performance, we played "Fascination Street" by the Cure at the high school talent show. Our drummer and keyboardist were inelegable due to bad grades, so two nerds from the jazz band filled in.

Photo Credit
Ashley Nicole Wirth
ashleynicolephotography.com

Q: There seems to be something really substantial happening with the music scene in the Bay Area, maybe even more in the East Bay. Have you noticed it, and what are your thoughts on it?

A: The East Bay has always had it's own thing going on. Jawbreaker, Operation Ivy and Hiroglyphics all come to mind.

Q: On the bands MySpace, you say, “One of us is vegetarian, two of us are straightedge, three of us live in the same building in the ghetto, four of us live in the Bay Area, and five of us used to be in Link Eighty.” Now I know this included Joey Bustos who now isn’t in the band, but care to explain who is who?

A: Aaron is vegetarian, Aaron and I (Adam) are straightedge, Ryan is my roommate and Aaron lives downstairs in our warehouse, Joey lives in the bay area and Barry was also in Link 80 with us. I think I changed the numbers to reflect that Joey is no longer in the band, but myspace is weird and maybe it didn't save my changes. He joined WEEZER and he's on tour with COLDPLAY.

Q: Being in a band doesn’t always pay the bills. When you aren’t playing, what do you and the other guys of DESA do for money?

A: Barry does hard manual labor of some sort (construction or something) in the central valley, which causes him to track dirt into the practice space. Ryan works at Blick's Art Supply on College Ave. Steven is a cook somewhere out in Hawaii. Aaron does graphic design, fine art and website stuff. Occasionally he works for Kaiser. I work at a law firm in Downtown SF and I do security at Slims.

Q: How was touring with Rx Bandits this summer?

A: It was great. RXB are all the guys at we like to hang out with when we are at home, so we were just taking it out on the road. They hooked us up and we were very lucky to have our first tour be in front of so many people. We returned the favor when their van broke down. We had to shove all of them and most of their gear in our van for a few days to make it to the next couple of shows. haha!

Q: What can you say about the new album Arriving Alive?

A: You should go buy a copy! It took a long time to come out. "Delilah" was the second song we wrote after recording Year In A Red Room. The first song we wrote got thrown away. We did play it a few times live, it was called "Lady Luck". The cover was painted by Aaron. I did all the screaming parts in 15 minutes on my lunch break. We recorded it over a two year period in three different studios.

Q: What was the experience like putting together and recording the new album?

A: In the past we've always busted out recordings as quickly and cheaply as possible. With Arriving Alive, we worked on it in starts and longs starts, depending on the schedule of our producer, Michael Rosen. We'd record basic tracks for three songs in two or three days, then wait three months to overdub guitars and vocals. Some of these songs, I never even heard the vocals until the record was done! I'm just glad it's done and it's out. I hope people dig it, it definatly sounds better than our last record.

Q: Does DESA have any shows coming up that people should know about?

A: We are playing at Slim's with the Matches on September 15th. We're playing right before the Matches. Steven is flying out for the show. We are going to write some new music and hopefully get some of it recorded.