John: So AJ, if I may be so bold, how does it feel when some asshole interviewer asks you, �How does it feel being a chick playing really heavy doom?�
(Suzanne laughs)
AJ: I guess what it feels like is �Ask me something I haven`t been asked before. How old am I and how long have I been listening to doom?�
John: So when did you get started?
AJ: Listening to doom?
John: No. This isn`t A&E Biography. We`re not doing �Inside the Doom Studio.�
AJ: Suzanne and I started playing music together in 1997. We were in an all female doom band called Baba Yaga.
John: No way! How does it feel being in an all female doom band?
AJ: (laughs) It was awesome. Nowadays there are a lot of women in the doom scene, but back then...
John: What kind of doom would you classify yourselves as?
AJ: I always call it heavy doom. Heavy doom metal.
John: Funeral doom?
Suzanne: I`d say heavy doom metal.
John: Is there such a thing as Renaissance Doom?
AJ: There is, but you have to wear frilly shirts.
Suzanne: With ruffles.
AJ: I moved to Europe, and when I came back after about four years, Suzanne and I started playing music again and found Ty again.
Suzanne: It`s been about a year and a half now.
John: You guys have an EP that`s not allowed to see the light of day, right?
AJ: It`s just a demo. It was recorded in a basement over a couple of drunken weekends. We`re not satisfied with it; we just wanted to get something down.
John: Have you been talking to labels?
AJ: We`ve been talking to Steven at Creation for doing those songs. The guys in Sourvein want us to do a split with them. I think right now what we just want to do is for the songs we have is fucking just get them recorded. It`s been too long that we`ve gone without a real recording.
John: Who does the writing?
AJ: Usually we come up with riffs and then it builds off the riff. And then Suzanne and I write vocals together, even though I don`t sing.
John: What sort of lyrical content do you write about? Puppies?
Suzanne: (laughs) Songs about what to wear.
AJ: My new pair of shoes.
Suzanne: It`s usually open for interpretation, but it usually starts off with a story or a thought and builds from there. It`s not really political or...
AJ: One of our songs is about a dream I had, and it just sort of builds off of that, but you wouldn`t really know that. We like to leave it vague. And one of our songs, �What the Thunder Said,� is actually a TS Elliot poem. It`s from �The Wasteland.�
John: So you guys are wicked smart. You guys are Learned Doom.
(At this point, the digital recorded shuts off, as it was out of memory. Deletion of old files ensues.)
John: Okay, we`re back. Where were we?
AJ: We were talking about lyrics.
John: That`s right. And TS Elliot poems.
AJ: And that we`re so smart (laughs).
John: Wicked smart. You guys have done mostly local gigs, plus the Emissions fest and this.
Suzanne: We did a short tour last year as well.
John: Where did you go?
Suzanne: From Seattle to here actually. Phoenix. We traveled with Ludicra and Aldebaran and...
AJ: Keen of the Crow. It was awesome. We had a really good time. �The Caravan of Doom.�
John: Are you getting a good reception with crowds?
AJ: I think so.
John: Do you think people are coming in with an awareness of you or are they just showing up and getting their faces melted?
Suzanne: I think that AJ does so much networking that she`s met so many people, so a lot of people come through knowing her. And they`ve heard us through our MySpace page.
John: If you had to pick your contemporaries who are out there right now, who would you associate yourselves with?
AJ: I would associate us with a lot of the bands that are in Seattle right now. Like Book of Black Earth, and some of the Portland bands like Aldebaran. There`s a lot of underground stuff going on that not a lot of people know about, but we have our own Pacific Northwest Doom Cult going on up there, where everybody plays together.
John: How tough is it playing with other people`s gear?
AJ: It`s really hard. People have been really generous in the last couple of festivals we`ve played, and I always try to return the favor when we do play with other people who are from out of town and try to give them stuff when they need it. When you have good gear and you`re loaning it out, it`s like giving your baby over to someone to babysit. I felt like shit � I thought I had blown up Bob from Deer Creek`s stuff this weekend, but he assures me it`s fine, so I feel better. But it`s hard.
Suzanne: You don`t have your sound.
AJ: When you`re playing doom like we are, we work really hard to get our tone. And when you don`t have that, you just kinda have to show up and...
Suzanne: Hope that it`s going to be somewhat representative of what you`re used to playing.
John: That has to be weird when it`s not sounding exactly the same.
Suzanne: We definitely spent a lot of money trying to keep up our gear.
John: What gear do you have?
AJ: I use all Sunn stuff, so I use a model T, a 300 T, and I have 415s, so playing through an 810 on Friday night is definitely a different sound.
Suzanne: I have two 100 watt heads, a Laney and a Marshall, and I play those through a full stack.
AJ: I don`t know what kind of drums Ty has. We`re not even allowed to look at them. Not allowed to breath on them, not allowed to touch them (laughs).
Suzanne: We don`t even get to haul them.
John: That`s pretty Spinal Tap.
Suzanne: He`ll come to practice and inspect his shit like we`ve been in there.
John: You have another member who couldn`t make it down.
AJ: Yeah, our part time keyboard player, Troy from Asva. He`s got a lot of other commitments. He does underwater robotics; he builds underwater robots for the Navy.
John: Again, they`re wicked smart.
AJ: He was out on the sea for like a month or something. He just got back a week and a half ago. He played our last show with Ludicra, after we practiced for like half an hour, but he just couldn`t make it for this.
John: How did it affect your sound, not having the extra keyboards?
AJ: I think it`s fine, because Suzanne and I and Ty started out alone first, and Troy`s been kind of an addition, kind of with us and then taking some time off. As long as it`s Suzanne, Ty, and I, I feel comfortable.
Suzanne: It`s definitely cool, because he does make it so much more interesting and creepy.
AJ: We write the songs so they`re not relying on a keyboard part. It`s just an addition on top of it to make it sound fuller.
John: Now how come you don`t write more Boston-style riffs?
AJ: You know, if I could play as good as the guys in Boston, I might be fucking writing some riffs like that. Those guys are awesome musicians. That`s some sick shit. I`ve always wanted to do a Boston cover but sat there and gone, �How?�
John: That would be awesome if you did an hour long, doom version of �More Than a Feeling.� So what`s worked out better for you, Emissions or SHoD?
AJ: The reason that I like SHoD is that we played later in the day. That`s definitely a plus when you`re looking at an all day music festival. Look, we`re at the hotel right now and not at the gig, you know what I mean? I just can`t be at a gig for 12 hours straight and remain sober (laughs).
Suzanne: I really, really felt good playing SHoD. That we played at midnight as opposed to one (in the afternoon).
AJ: Also, I got a really good feeling from the audience. I think the crowd and the bands that we were actually playing with on Friday night were kind of in the same sort of vein, so people were really into it. I felt like the crowd was really into it.
John: Did you find it tough that you were basically one of many doom bands? Because Friday was pretty much doom start to finish.
AJ: I thought that we sound different from any of those bands that were playing, so I thought we stood out in that sense. But playing before Graves at Sea is always awesome.
John: And better than playing after.
AJ: Yeah.
Suzanne: Good point.
John: Who are the other bands that you`ve been digging so far?
AJ: Turambar, Valkyrie was amazing.
Suzanne: Valkyrie was really good last night.
AJ: And I really liked Reverend Doom. I thought they were really sludgy and had a lot of good energy on stage. So those were the three that stood out to me. And Graves at Sea, of course.
Suzanne: We didn`t show up yesterday until right before Valkyrie so we missed most of the day yesterday. Hopefully not today too (laughs). We`re not drinking Tecate by the pool yet.
John: Any last words? I`m trying to keep this brief because you won`t see this until 2008.
AJ: I just want to thank the promoter from SHoD and Deer Creek for letting us use their stuff. I think it`s been a really good experience down here.
Suzanne: And I hope SHoD really can just keep going.
AJ: We`ve been really blessed to be able to play Emissions and SHoD the same year after we`ve only been together for about a year, and we don`t have any releases and stuff like that. It`s really a blessing to be able to do that. And I`d also like to mention that the synchronized doom swimming � we are going to copyright that, so nobody better be fucking trying to steal it.
John: That was total grim paddling.
