Tone Glow 143: Lync
An interview with the Olympia, WA-based rock band about skateboarding, Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and K Records, and playing video games as part of their songwriting process
Lync
Lync is an Olympia, WA-based rock band made up of James Bertram (bass), Dave Schneider (drums), and the late Sam Jayne (vocals, guitar). The group formed in 1992 as grunge was exploding in popularity. While the members of Lync were fans of such acts, they were unable to attend most of the shows as they took place at bars. Consequently, they frequented countless all-ages shows and became enmeshed in the local punk scene. They released four 7-inches throughout their short existence, including Pigeons (1993), a split with Excuse 17 (1993), Mhz (1993), and Two Feet in Front (1994). The latter release was issued by K Records, who also released their sole album, These Are Not Fall Colors, in 1994. The trio broke up shortly after. The album—now understood as a highlight of ’90s post-hardcore, emo, and indie rock—has been remastered and reissued by Suicide Squeeze. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with James Bertram and Dave Schneider on October 27th, 2023 via Zoom to discuss skateboarding, their high school radio show, Isaac Brock, Beat Happening, their final concerts, the late singer Sam Jayne, and the origin of their band name.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Were you guys both born in Bellevue?
Dave Schneider: I was born in California.
Where in California?
Dave Schneider: Orange. I only lived there for two months, then we moved to France.
Whoa, where in France?
Dave Schneider: I really can’t remember. I was an infant and had an infant passport. My dad’s German, my mom’s Hawaiian, and he went there to work.
James Bertram: I was also born in California, in La Mirada. I lived in California until I was about seven, and then we moved to the Northwest—to Renton, WA—for like a year, and then we moved to Issaquah, WA.
How’d you end up back out West, Dave?
Dave Schneider: My parents did the thing where you get a Volkswagen bus and drive up and down the West Coast. They would go between Oregon and places in Canada because my father had friends who lived in Canada that he came over with. Then they basically settled down in the Pacific Northwest.
Were there specific aspects of your upbringing and family life, with the moving and everything, that you feel shaped who you are?
Dave Schneider: I went to a different public school basically every two years as a product of living way out in the mountains. There’s no real school. It’s an unincorporated county. Every two years, it was a different school system in either Issaquah or Renton. That was always kind of weird. I didn’t have one stable place. You made a lot of friends that way, so when you got to your more formative years and were just cruising around, you would know random people from other places. My friends would trip out and ask, “How do you know that guy?” And I’d be like, “Oh, I used to go to elementary school over here.” (laughter). That’s kind of how me and Sam [Jayne] met, too. We both went to different high schools for one part of the day, and then we went to the same high school for a radio program at the end of the day. Well, we initially met skating and then two days later, high school started and he was in class.
James Bertram: My mom was a hairdresser. I don’t know that this has to do with anything, but she always had her own business. She had her own space at one point, and then she always had a business operating out of our house. I don’t know if that really relates to your question, but it showed me that you can kind of do your own thing.
(Dave turns on video).
James Bertram: There’s Dave. You’re all clean shaven.
Dave Schneider: I know. I just did that, I feel weird (laughter).
James Bertram: I haven’t seen you in a long time. I’ve just seen pictures.
Were you growing up in households where your parents were playing music all the time? Were they showing you stuff?
James Bertram: There was always music at my house. Not necessarily stuff that carried on for me, but my parents had one of those big consoles—I don’t know what you call them—a giant piece of furniture that has speakers in it and a stereo, a record player, and probably an 8-track. There was often something playing. My uncle who lived with us occasionally was into music and had a band and stuff. So I was exposed to music from a pretty early age.
Dave Schneider: Tapes and the car radio. We drove a lot, so my mother would get tapes. That was really the first thing—tapes in the car (laughter).
Do you remember stopping by different stores to watch them pick out tapes?
Dave Schneider: The Hallmark in downtown Issaquah had a record section. There would be the Hot Wheels cars and the tapes. I remember buying Blondie and Three Dog Night as a kid at the same time, and being bummed on Three Dog Night (laughter). We had the same console thing as James, but it broke one day and didn’t make any noise. It didn’t even do radio anymore—it just was there. It was a bummer (laughter). I got a little stereo system in the Shout at the Devil (1983) era, when that came out. And in Seattle, Swass (1988) by Sir Mix-A-Lot. That was a popular one, too. I had the tape. I remember listening to it in the car before my parents got in, and we’d carpool home from school. You had to listen to it real quick because you didn’t want to get in trouble.
James Bertram: I have two half-sisters that are five and seven years older. They were both into music, but I specifically remember my sister who’s five years older gave me a tape shortly after we moved. It was when we lived in California. I remember her being into The Cure and she gave me that Standing on a Beach (1986) singles cassette. Also, I remember her trying to teach me the words to [Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s] “The Message.” I was so young. When I think back, god, it’s so cool and crazy that she was into those things. But those are the two things I remember from being young. I remember when I lived in Renton in second grade, the movie Popeye (1980) came out and I got a 7-inch. I just loved that thing (laughter). I played it all the time. I think it was probably the first actual record that I had.
Dave Schneider: I had [Bobby Helms’] Jingle Bell Rocks and [Queen’s] Flash Gordon (1981). But Jingle Bell Rock was like the first kind of childhood air guitar moment, I think (laughter).
That’s awesome. Dave, I know you met Sam because you saw him wearing the Ten-O-Seven shirt. So you were friends with Matt and Jeff from that band? Did you meet them through the skate scene?
Dave Schneider: The Ten-O-Seven guys didn’t skate. They were the people who told me about the radio program. I did it for two years and Sam only did it for one and we just met through a mutual friend, this guy Shawn Fenn. He happened to skateboard too. Unbeknownst to me and Sam, I was friends with Sam’s really good friends and we had just never crossed paths. It was really funny. It just kept happening, where he’d be like, “Wait, you know that person? How?” It kept going like that because my elementary and middle school situations involved going to all these different fucking schools (laughter), as well as skating and being a juvenile delinquent.
James Bertram: Hey Dave, what year did you and Sam do radio at Bellevue High School?
Dave Schneider: We graduated in ’92. So it would be ’91 or ’92 when me and Sam were both there together.
James Bertram: It’s so funny, because I was totally doing that same thing in 1991.
Dave Schneider: Were you?
James Bertram: Yeah, I was thinking about that. I graduated in ’91, and I went there.
Dave Schneider: I was there for the last two periods of the day.
James Bertram: I can’t remember if I was there earlier in the day or not, but we all didn’t cross paths then. It’s just so funny. I was thinking that we might have all met because of Ten-O-Seven.
Dave Schneider: I knew who you were because there were maybe two people in the city of Issaquah who would wear a Misfits shirt and you were one of them (laughter). Speaking of which, The Mummies’ single with this on the cover (holds up middle finger)—it had an Issaquah PO Box. I would be skateboarding downtown after high school, and I’d always keep an eye out because I suspected it was this one rockabilly looking guy (laughter). I wanted to confront him about it.
James Bertram: I had a tape from some band called Brain Dead and it was the same thing. There was an Issaquah post office box on it. It was weird.
Dave Schneider: I think I had that same one. It was a demo tape, right? I know what you’re talking about.
James Bertram: So, Matt Matsuoka and Matt Knowles. Matt Matsuoka lent me a bass guitar in high school. It was the first time I ever played bass, the first time I played music with people, really.
Dave Schneider: That dude was rad. You met him in high school and he already had all of Henry Rollins’ tattoos, but he did them himself (laughter).
James Bertram: I guess we’re kind of going off the rails.
No, it’s great. I specifically told the person who helped set this interview up to make sure both of you guys could be here, and I’m happy for you guys to just talk. I just interviewed Honeywell and it was a similar situation.
James Bertram: No way.
They had never done an interview before, or if they had they couldn’t remember.
James Bertram: That’s funny. I was trying to think—have we done an interview before? I don’t remember.
Dave Schneider: Maybe for a fanzine, but it was mostly Sam.
James Bertram: Yeah. Or maybe through the mail, writing some questions with one person. But I don’t remember anything like this before. But that’s awesome that you interviewed Honeywell, they’re rad.
James, did you skate at all?
James Bertram: Yeah, I did a bit. I don’t know if Dave and I knew each other. But I knew Dave from afar from skateboarding and seeing him at shows. I remember him from Party Hall and maybe skateboarding in Bellevue. At that time, tons of people skated but it also wasn’t tons of people—skateboarding was really huge, but being from where we’re from, there were only like six people in Issaquah who did it. But you would go to some skate demo in Bellevue and there would be a shitload of people there, so I recognized Dave from that.
Skateboarding is so tied to underground music because of the skate videos and their soundtracks. Can you guys recall anything about your connection to music through skating?
Dave Schneider: For me, it’s really easy. I lived in this mountain community, and it was basically a failed housing development. When they finally paved the gravel roads was when Future Primitive (1985) came out. I got a paper route to buy a skateboard, and then all of the other people who had paper routes on the mountain also skateboarded and they had this launch ramp. And the older brother made me a mixtape with Agent Orange, Minor Threat, and all your typical hardcore bands.
There was this really Thrasher dude who ran the paper shack where we dropped off the papers. He only wore Metallica t-shirts, had a mullet, and drove a Firebird. Everything was perfect. He would make us tapes, too. We would listen to that shit on a boombox and skate this launch ramp. But they bought knee pads because you’d watch those Bones Brigade videos and they’re always skating halfpipes. When they’d fall, they’d land on their knees. If they were bailing, instead of just landing on their feet, they’d slide on their knees. I always thought that was the dumbest idea (laughter). But the music was rad.
James Bertram: Same thing for me, with the videos and stuff. But Thrasher magazine was huge. Do you remember ads for Deluxe Mail Order? It was this band Drunk Injuns, The Vandals, The Faction, and all that shit. Then skate videos, Thrasher skate rock cassette comps. But yeah, Thrasher magazine. There was one that had Misfits or Danzig on the cover and that totally helped get me into that. My friend Mike Smith, who I met through skating, was super into Misfits. I got into that all through skateboarding.
Dave Schneider: The skate shop was also a record store. There’s Fallout and there’s Time Travelers. You can hit those in one day and that’s a weekend, man. That’s Saturday (laughter). We can just go back and forth. That was really, really, really helpful. Did you ever get to Wake Up and Smell the Pavement?
James Bertram: Yeah, totally.
Dave Schneider: Do you remember the bands? I remember seeing Cat Butt, because of the name. And for some reason I think I saw Diddly Squat, but I think I’m just making that shit up (laughter).
James Bertram: Because we wish we could have seen them.
What is Wake Up and Smell the Pavement?
Dave Schneider: Fallout Records & Skateboards would have a skate contest every year and bands would play. They were first and foremost a record store, but they also sold skateboards. It was probably Seattle’s best skate shop—it was tiny, but it was killer.
So Dave, you met Sam through this, then saw him at school the next day or two, and that’s where all this started. But James, you didn’t join until later. CJ Phillips was with you guys.
Dave Schneider: There was a meetup spot for skating on Saturdays and I’d always get there first. I worked in the morning at a fitness center—it was only like a four-hour job, so I’d get to the skate spot before everyone. I would just sit there and wait and eat some food. Sam was the first dude to show up and he was wearing a Ten-O-Seven shirt. And then the two people he was coming to meet were the two people I met. Two days later, I walked into school and he was with CJ. I actually knew CJ when I was younger. I’d spent some time in the summer with him when Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Sigue Sigue Sputnik were bands (laughter). That stuff had just come out in the ’80s. We went on a trip. I was with a family friend, and we went sailing around the San Juan Islands. So I was with CJ all summer, sailing (laughter).
James Bertram: That’s so crazy. Because I went to high school with CJ, but at the time I didn’t know that you guys had any kind of involvement. It’s so bizarre.
Dave Schneider: It was funny. It’s like, “You know him, too?” There was another dude at his high school that he really liked who was in this band called Smile. They were this kind of quirky band. It was my friend Robbie Baxter’s band. That dude used to actually be my best friend when I was in middle school. There’s two other people just like that.
Both of you guys were part of this radio station. Was this just a thing at your high school? You could just play songs? Was it public radio?
Dave Schneider: Exactly. It was basically a 10-watt radio station. Our high school was on a really high hill. It was the highest place in the Bellevue area, really. It’s all surrounded by water pretty much, so it broadcasts in the downtown Bellevue area and some other outlying areas if the antenna could see you (laughter). It was KASB.
James Bertram: I went to Issaquah High School, and it was an elective class that you could take at a different high school.
Dave Schneider: It was like vocational training. When that was done, you could go to the news station and get a job or do a little intern thing and then get a job. When you’re done, you have a demo reel and you already have these login hours and a broadcasting license. You could do the whole thing. But you’re just going to be at a station doing tape duplications, grunt work, transferring data from point A to point B.
Were there any specific things you guys really appreciated or loved about having this radio station experience?
Dave Schneider: It was cool because you could screw around with all the stuff. It wasn’t high tech—it was a bunch of old shit. There were a lot of records, and that was cool. Your assignment would be to write to Dischord (laughter). You would get a letter from something like, Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, saying “Congratulations, you win!” Sam wrote a letter to Dischord on the back of that.
James Bertram: You could play stuff you liked. No one’s hearing it, really, but yourself and your friends.
Dave Schneider: Sam made something out of me, CJ, and his little brother just screwing around after school once. We had made some joke songs and Sam recorded it with that boombox thing, and he put it on a cart and just started playing it on the radio station. The high school kids liked it. There were other bands in the high school, like George’s Wall and the Ten-O-Seven guys. It was kind of funny, but it was just so dorky that people liked it.
Dave Schneider: It was kind of a joke. We just did it because we thought it would be funny (laughter). Adrienne Davies was in that class, too, with me and Sam. She’s in Earth. Same with this guy who is not the guy who recorded our first demo tape, Jeff McCullough, but his brother, Pete. He was in that class. And they’re both equally as weird as each other (laughter). It was a really positive experience—it made high school bearable.
James, I know that before you officially joined the band that Isaac Brock was a part of this lineup. What was Isaac like as a teenager? Was there anything you remember about him? You can tell from the music that he was already a goofy guy.
James Bertram: I went to high school with Isaac and I think he was a freshman when I met him. He was a sort of theater kid. I don’t think he was in plays, but he did sound or lights or the curtain or something. But how I knew him was that he wore a fucking top hat (laughter). And he had a sort of lisp that was very pronounced. He was just a character. I was like, “Who is this guy?” That’s how I always picture Isaac—I go back to this kid in high school wearing a top hat and just being wacky (laughter). It’s so funny that these folks that I went to high school with all ended up crossing paths. Isaac and CJ were the people I knew who were into music in high school. There was this very small group of folks.
Dave Schneider: We worked together at the theater and he got me a job there; I knew how to do everything because of the radio stuff. They had plays on Friday night but on Saturday, the plays would be earlier so we’d be able to make it to shows. We’d haul ass to the fucking city—to Party Hall—to catch the end of shows. I remember this one time, the name of the theater production we were working on was called Jump Queen Debutante. One time we hauled ass out of there to see Christ on a Crutch. I knew Isaac from seeing him at shows. And there was this video store with an espresso bar that was basically the coolest place in town.
James Bertram: City Lights.
Dave Schneider: Exactly. His family was really cool with them, so he was always around there. The dude owned everything that they sold at RadioShack. That was cool (laughter). I think we met that way, and we’d go to shows together. On my way to anything in the Issaquah direction, I’d go right by his house so I’d pick him up on the way.
How did you two first meet then?
Dave Schneider: There was this gas station/grocery store with everything: RadioShack, City Lights Video, a place you could do wall rides (laughter). It was this one little area downtown. I met him there. It was the appropriate place to loiter. But we had probably met at some show that he went to with James.
James Bertram: I would say that I probably met Sam and Dave through some connection with Isaac or Ten-O-Seven, I’m sure. At some show.
Dave Schneider: I was really good friends with Matt Knowles and Chris Drechsel from that band.
James Bertram: Exactly.
Dave Schneider: So I would chill out with those guys if I was in Bellevue and I was bored. I’d chill out with those dudes. Those guys kind of got me into DC hardcore. The Embrace record, I guess.
I know that when you guys were together as a band for the first time, you played a battle of the bands. How was that? Did you guys win?
James Bertram: We didn’t. My recollection of playing with these guys is that we didn’t play a battle of the bands. My recollection is that Sam was like, “We have this battle of the bands, and you should play with us.” I didn’t know that Isaac was playing with these guys. I don’t know how long Isaac played with you, Dave.
Dave Schneider: One or two weeks, maybe. It wasn’t that many times. When we were playing music back then, me and Sam would do it a lot with CJ at first. Afterwards, we made that tape and that promo photo. I think one of the bass players who lived in Bellevue who was in Positive Greed may have taken that photograph. But after that, Sam was just like, “Hey, we could actually probably try to be in a band?” It’s all kind of blurry to me. It’s more so a question of logistics (laughter). Isaac wasn’t old enough to drive yet, Sam didn’t have a car, and I had a real piece of shit. It just meant all this weird commuting thing—point A to point B to point C, back to point B to point C. It was just like, “Oh, James could just come here” (laughter).
I remember when we were doing that with Isaac—going to his house—he had a black bass. He would play these bass parts and they were really good and really complicated. They were more complicated than what me and Sam could do at the time and he was just able to put this shit together. He totally destroyed his stereo receiver because he plugged his bass into that and played bass through the stereo.
James Bertram: Yeah, you’d go to his little shack and he would just be like, “Oh, I’m gonna show you something.” Dave, I don’t know if you remember this first bass amp that I had.
Dave Schneider: Yeah, the one with the grill, and you’d put fabric over it and it’s 115, right?
James Bertram: With a custom padded head. I think my dad found that in the newspaper. When we were buying it, the guy was like, “I have this bass that I could sell you,” which was that black bass. My dad was like, “Do you think Isaac would want this?” My dad threw down like 75 bucks. You’d go over to his house, and after he blew out his stereo he’d be like, “I gotta show you something.” And he’d play without being plugged into anything. Just playing on a bass and sometimes singing. It was very interesting. You were just sitting right there with him.
Do you remember a battle of the bands, Dave?
Dave Schneider: I think it was just a joke.
James Bertram: I don’t think it actually happened. We didn’t play it (laughter).
Dave Schneider: There wasn’t a battle of the bands. I haven’t been to a battle of the bands. The only time I saw a band play at a high school, it wasn’t there. But here’s a weird one. James, did you see Social Distortion when they played at that Gotcha skateboard contest?
James Bertram: I didn’t.
Dave Schneider: Really? Okay. That was one of the first punk things I saw. I always forget about that. They played “Mommy’s Little Monster.” It was in the ’80s. But it got busted up by the cops. They were playing on a halfpipe. Another weird thing is that I saw Alice in Chains open for Tales Of Terror.
James Bertram: That’s so crazy.
When was that?
Dave Schneider: In Bellevue when I was in junior high. It was the summer before high school, basically. I was wearing a Punisher sweatshirt (laughter).
Just to get a sense of things. When were you guys born? ’72, ’73?
Dave Schneider: Yeah. I started going to shows in the later ’80s.
James Bertram: I was born in ’73. Were you born in ’74, Dave?
Dave Schneider: ’73.
I know that, James, you went with Isaac to DC because [Olympia bands] Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile were playing shows there. Were the DC hardcore bands ever coming over to the Pacific Northwest to play shows, or was that the first time you saw any of those bands?
James Bertram: Oh, yeah. They totally were. At that time, IPU had happened and we’d seen [Nation of] Ulysses and Fugazi.
Dave Schneider: Yeah, you’d see Ulysses, Fugazi, Holy Rollers. I’m trying to think of any other Dischord bands.
James Bertram: Jawbox.
Dave Schneider: Circus Lupus was right after that, I guess.
James Bertram: We had definitely seen Fugazi.
Dave Schneider: I saw them twice at the same place, in Lake City Theatre. The best show I ever saw in my life was actually a Fugazi show, but it wasn’t Fugazi. The highlight of the whole thing was when Beat Happening opened. That was the best fucking shit I ever saw in my life, man. It was more surreal than a John Waters movie.
What was going on?
Dave Schneider: You had all these people who were into it, and then all these people who were just furious (laughter).
James Bertram: I don’t know if we’re talking about the same thing. Was that at Washington Hall?
Dave Schneider: For the one at Washington Hall, did they play with Jesters of Chaos?
James Bertram: I can’t remember. I think it was just Beat Happening and them. But it was the first time I saw them. They played with Beat Happening again, later. It was twice at the same place. I remember seeing Calvin [Johnson] at that first show, just before Beat Happening played, and being like, “Who is this guy?” And then seeing Beat Happening and being like, “What is this?!” I eventually got super into it. But I didn’t know anything about him before I saw that show. And I just thought it was so weird, like, Fugazi is playing with this band? How? Why?
Dave Schneider: I knew what it was because of flipping through 7-inches. The artwork was different and you’d always notice that.
James Bertram: I just remember seeing Calvin dancing around all weird, funny, and he had a t-shirt. He was dancing and he had a white t-shirt that he had written on in pen and it said “art fag.” I was just like, “Who is this person?” (laughter). I just have that memory of my first time meeting him.
Dave Schneider: I saw Verbal Assault there and then Resolution and Resolution again. And regular Seattle bands. I saw Undertow there. That was the first kind of steady place to go. It was like, “I’m gonna go here again, then I’m gonna go here again, then I’m going to keep going here.” And the OK Hotel was going on, too. That was rad because if you’re in high school, it was a little more adult. You would go to that place and check out the more kind of meat-and-potatoes Seattle stuff. You could see grungier stuff. It was easy to sneak in, too. If you had a group of four people, only two people would have to pay, and the other two would do this (shows hand symbol), and they would recognize two of you, so shit’s all cool, and everyone goes outside to smoke cigarettes anyways. It was pretty rad and it was a cool place to take girls in high school because they’d be impressed (laughter).
You guys had the three 7-inches in ’93: Pigeons, the split with Excuse 17, and Mhz. Do you guys remember when you first made a song together? Did it feel complete? Were you proud?
Dave Schneider: This is my memory: For some reason, me and Sam were going to the OK Hotel. We were driving up and there was a viaduct and we were driving underneath it at night. It was foggy. There was James there, and he put his hand up. There were a bunch of people around, but we just noticed James. Me and Sam were talking to James and Sam played the joke tape we had made with his little brother. The next thing I remember, it’s Saturday and James was there playing bass with me and Sam.
James Bertram: Yeah, it was very quick. You guys had a couple songs.
Dave Schneider: I get two of the early songs confused, so if I flub it, forgive me. It’s “Lightbulb Switch” and “Electricity.” That was like the first thing that we had, me and Sam. It’s band practice, you’re there and it’s like, “Oh, the riff goes like this.” It just kind of clicked and it didn’t take more than three minutes to learn.
James Bertram: I feel like I had a bass and had some type of riffs. Very quickly it was like, “I’ll try to make something to go along with what those guys were doing.” And then we made some stuff with all of us together and had a demo quickly after.
Dave Schneider: I didn’t realize it but Sam was more serious about it than I was. It was in that moment when James was there. I guess the logistical issues were solved. Everyone was just like, “Oh god, shit. He actually wants to do this.” (laughter).
How did it feel to go from demo tapes to actually releasing these 7-inches on labels? Was there a thing that went off in your mind where you were like, “Oh yeah, we’re actually doing this now”?
James Bertram: For me personally, it felt like, “Oh shit, we’re actually doing something.” Making a 7-inch was just super cool. I felt like we were super lucky. I honestly can’t remember how we met Calvin or how it turned out that he was going to help us do this 7-inch.
Dave Schneider: The tape thing just kind of happened. It was like some shit you do on the weekend. It was in the summer, and the dude who was doing it, Jeff, he was grounded (laughter). We had to be done by a certain time because he couldn’t get caught—we had to be done before his mom got home. I used Jeremy [Green]’s drum set. They were there because they would practice. He was in a band with Jeremy and they’d practice at that house. We just came over and we did it. We had to get out of there before his Mom got home. I remember I went someplace else afterwards and hung out with these other friends. It was really weird because I don’t think I had a copy of the tape yet. I was just tripped out that I had done that. We made demo tapes and we would give them to people. Three of us were constantly dubbing tapes.
There was Muzak on Broadway in Seattle. There’s an alley where they threw away trash, and they would throw away the cassettes they got back because you would rent Muzak cassettes. They would send them to, like, the burger place. A guy who made this fanzine told us about the dumpster and it had all these tapes in it. So we’re going into the dumpster and getting all these tapes, and we would just record over them—they were 4-track. They had bad sound quality, but they were free (laughter). I was pretty stoked. It came out on a weird comp.
Was that the This is My World (1992) comp on Excursion?
James Bertram: Yeah.
Dave Schneider: I guess those were popular in our world at the time. It seems weird to think about. And then the second time we did it, it was for a compilation as well.
James Bertram: Yeah, I can’t remember how that came about. Maybe it was through Michelle Noelle or someone.
Dave Schneider: In high school I was always in Olympia because I was staying at her place, and I would stay there and go to high school, and Calvin was our neighbor. Me and that dude would get along.
James Bertram: I went to school at Evergreen for a very short amount of time, the year before I met Sam and Dave and we started playing together. I can’t remember if you and I had met, Dave. I was in Olympia a bit, and I had gone to shows, and when I think about it I’m sure I met Calvin through that at some point. But after we recorded with Pat [Maley], we had a tape with all these extra songs. That’s how we ended up doing a 7-inch ourselves. Calvin helped us do it because he distributed shit for a ton of people. My recollection is that I worked it out with him to be, like, he was going to buy X amount at $2 each, so we basically knew that he was going to buy a bunch of them before we made it. So even though we were making it and paying for it ourselves up front, it was almost like he was gonna buy enough to where we could cover the whole thing.
Dave Schneider: We weren’t going to work. It was just money from playing shows. It didn’t really cost a lot of money to make singles.
What was Calvin like as a person? What was it like to hang out with him and meet him?
Dave Schneider: He could be a smartass (laughter). When I first met him he gave me two batons. He was like, “Oh yeah, I got this for you and your girlfriend so you two would have a hobby together” (laughter). I was like, “Oh sweet.” I’d stand in front of his door and open the door and throw the thing in the air. Crap like that. But we got along. I used to actually break into his house to do my laundry (laughter). That was when he got a house. When we lived in the apartment over there, we’d go hang out and drink tea with him. We were in a joke garage band together with a friend of mine.
James Bertram: I don’t exactly remember meeting him, but I feel like it was crazy. Him and Candice [Pederson] had this label, so he was this older person who knew what he was doing, but he was probably only 26, you know? (laughter). They were the adults at the time, which now just seems so funny to me. I remember it just being interesting that we were even acquainted and that we ended up doing stuff together, all of us.
Dave Schneider: And Candice is really rad, too. I remember booking shows. I didn’t even have long distance. But from Josh Warren, I got a tone dialer. Josh was a bass player from Satisfact. A tone dialer is a device that makes the noise that a quarter makes when you put it into the telephone. You put the thing over the speaker on an old payphone, push the button and it makes the noise of a quarter being slotted into the telephone machine. So we’d do that to book shows for a while all around Olympia. That’s some punk rock stuff.
With those 7-inches, were you guys just sort of jamming together? Or were there specific goals that you guys had in mind? Were there specific bands you were trying to emulate with certain songs?
James Bertram: I felt things just happened very quickly. All of a sudden we were participating in a different way—we went from being fans and going to shows and then getting to play shows. I’m sure we were like, “Oh, yeah, let’s make a 7-inch, let’s try to play shows, let’s try to go on tour.” I don’t know that we put a lot into it aside from that. I don’t know what your take is Dave.
Dave Schneider: Are you asking if we had a conversation about what to sound like?
Yeah, or were there specific things where you were like, “Oh, I like this band. Let’s try to do something like that.”
Dave Schneider: Like any young adult, we were easily excited about certain things. The funny thing is all the slow intros. We really liked Codeine. We had kind of weaned ourselves off of the Slint drug, but then you start going to California and listen to all those bands from there, Heroin and all that. So you knew these people, and then the Olympia stuff was not like that. There was Unwound.
James Bertram: I personally feel like everything you’re into influences you, but I never felt like I knew how to play enough to be… it was like, “Oh, we’re into Codeine and we’ll do something slow” (laughter). But that’s about as much as I could fathom. We were just doing what we came up with, influenced by everything around us, including the folks we met when we’d go to other places. But all different kinds of bands played with each other, so there were all different kinds of music. We’d play with Undertow, or with Heavens to Betsy, or with Evergreen in California. It was just the idea of, “We like Codeine and they make slow songs, so maybe we try doing something slow.”
I didn’t know you guys toured with Evergreen. It’s cool thinking about how you guys were absorbing all these things. All the DC stuff, and then acts like Heroin, and then Codeine and Slint too. A song like “Pigeons” is a slower song on that 7-inch. When I first heard your music, I couldn’t really pin down where you were from. That’s what I like so much about These Are Not Fall Colors (1994)—each song feels like a different experiment, but it still feels cohesive.
Dave Schneider: It’s kind of weird. You know how people will say music is reactionary? I never thought about us being reactionary to grunge or anything like that, because it was kind of new? (laughter). It was more reactionary to the mid-80s, more like a 120 Minutes kind of deal. I didn’t really think of Mudhoney and Nirvana as grunge, really.
Were you guys into grunge bands?
Dave Schneider: Oh yeah (laughter). I was into every single one of those bands because I saw all of that as a kid. Plus, it’s really rad because it's more of a middle school type thing. There were music mags like The Rocket and Backlash and that’s how you’d find out about it. And Capitol Hill was covered in fucking flyers. A phone pole would have all these fliers and you’d just go up to them and know what you were doing for the next two months.
James Bertram: I kind of looked at some of that stuff as being more bar music because we were too young. We weren’t going to a lot of the places where a lot of those shows were happening. That was just kind of not my scene, but you knew that it was around. My interest in music was in other areas, I guess—the difference between all-ages shows versus playing at bars. Grunge, to me, felt like they weren’t all-ages shows. I don’t know if that was the case; I’m just saying that at the time, that’s how I felt.
Dave Schneider: Did you see The Accüsed?
James Bertram: Yeah, yeah.
Dave Schneider: Did you ever go to Bremerton to see their shows?
James Bertram: I saw The Accüsed in Bremerton once, but the first show I went to was at Natacha’s there. 7 Seconds and Circle Jerks, which was one of the last shows at that place, actually.
Dave Schneider: I remember my mother wouldn’t let me go to that show (laughter).
James Bertram: Yeah, The Accüsed were huge. Them and Brotherhood.
Dave Schneider: In Issaquah, there’s Old Issaquah and they build new stores on this street called Gilman Boulevard. And behind the Safeway grocery store this one dude spray painted a giant Accüsed mutual. I would see it every day on the school bus, and so did everyone else. Kids would loiter there just ‘cause, and it was the place to hang until it got painted over.
James Bertram: So good.
Dave Schneider: They were on Nastymix Records.
Just to get the timeline straight—did you guys create the Two Feet in Front (1994) 7-inch then before These Are Not Fall Colors?
James Bertram: Yeah, These Are Not Fall Colors was the very last thing.
Dave Schneider: Those recordings were done—that yellow K single with the flower on it—with Tim. Also during that time, we recorded “Pan,” just to save on that time recording with Tim [Green].
James Bertram: The K 7-inch was actually from when we recorded with Pat. I only know this stuff because I found these tapes. I found these ADATs. We have two different sessions, and they weren’t that far apart. We recorded some songs with Pat. I think that those songs are off that 7-inch, and then for the stuff we recorded with Tim, we let Calvin pick a couple songs. That was Two Feet in Front, and then we used two other songs to do the 7-inch with Land Speed. And another song that we did on the split 7-inch with Candy-Ass—all that stuff was from the stuff we recorded with Tim. It was kind of the second set of songs we recorded.
Dave Schneider: It’s funny. Everything that we recorded pretty much got on something.
James Bertram: Eventually, yeah. And all that songs we didn’t use on the 7-inches were included on the Fireballs compilation.
What was it like when you guys were first playing shows together?
James Bertram: I’m trying to think. I never really felt like we killed it (laughter). We got to play a lot of really awesome shows. In California, when we ended up going farther south, we played shows with Hoover.
James Bertram: Then we went farther south and met Nuzzle and Evergreen and those folks. But one of the first shows we played—I don’t know if you remember this, Dave—was with One Eyed Richard and the Goddamn Liars and Tummy Ache. It was at this weird place that might have been a storage space, but I just remember that was super cool. And playing shows at Jabberjaw with Evergreen was super cool. And we played in Pomona. I just have fond memories of all those shows.
Dave Schneider: I just remember random things, like before we played the Jabberjaw show, we were playing a show at some college. We were going to play with Unwound.
James Bertram: Claremont.
Dave Schneider: Yes. And me and Sam decided it would be a good idea to drink a bunch of cough syrup (laughter). Then I met Gary [Dent], the Jabberjaw guy. We were just loitering outside. He was talking to me and he just asked me what band I was in and he was like, “Oh, you’re playing in my club tomorrow.” “Oh, cool. Do you want some cough syrup?” (laughter). Sam got the Sunn Beta Lead when we were on tour with Hoover. It was at Black Market Music. We bought that amplifier and got it into the van. But when we got outside, we realized that we didn’t have an IEC cord. We were like, “Oh, we could just use the other one,” but I just went back in there and stole one. I put it down my pants and went outside and all the guys and Sam were talking to Paul [Lee] from Monsula, the singer. So I met Paul with this power cord stuff shoved down my pants like, “Hey dude, what’s up?” (laughter). I just remember dumb shit like that. I remember going to rad places to eat.
James Bertram: Going to Fake Burger (laughter).
Dave Schneider: There's one show that we played in Bellingham that was kind of last minute. It was before James went on a trip, I think, to DC.
James Bertram: I remember going to that show because it was so weird. We had a weird group of folks with us.
Dave Schneider: We got there and the show was already going on and you fell through the stage (laughter). This happened another time in Missoula, MT. We were going to meet up with Beck and James broke the stage (laughter). The stage was just built like shit and it gave out. Everyone stopped playing and he got out afterwards (laughter). There were some weird Beck shows. At this place we played in Kansas City, James had to hold people back with his feet. There were these barricades that were basically like a wooden bench.
Is there anything else you want to add about the shows, James?
James Bertram: Not really. I just felt like we got to play a bunch of awesome shows with bands that we liked, and we became friends with people and they would come up to Olympia or Seattle. There was just a network of folks that would play together when you’re around.
Dave Schneider: The networking stuff was rad. It would just be word of mouth. Someone gives you this phone number or this other person contacts you. There’s this gossip telephone line, I guess, and it’s how people networked (laughter). It was neat.
What was the process like for These Are Not Fall Colors? Did you know you were going to make an LP beforehand?
James Bertram: I think the idea of getting to make the record through K came up. We were trying to have enough songs to make a full-length (laughter). In reality, the whole time we were even a band or played was a fairly short amount of time.
Dave Schneider: We never really had a practice space either. All this time, we would just practice at random places, like in friends’ basements.
James Bertram: We eventually got a shared practice space with some folks at a storage facility. People had spots there. There were a number of other bands who had places, so you’d just go and lift up the garage door and play (laughter). For a little while, towards the end, we had a practice space where we could leave our stuff. But most of the time, we didn’t have a consistent space. After we had that, and had toured more, we had another group of songs and knew that we were going to go record. I didn’t think that we were doing anything different. It was just like, “Oh, we’re just gonna record our songs. That’s what we do when we’re ready.”
Dave Schneider: It was our first proper recording studio. And it was a really scrappy little place, too. With Pat, it was that theater, but it was just him recording on a little ADAT with a Mackie board. So this was the first time we recorded in a place where there was a mixing board. It looked like a spaceship. In my mind I was like, “Oh, shit. It must be serious. There’s a guy working this control center thing.”
James Bertram: And we were recording with someone that we didn’t know. Before, it had been people we knew and it was comfortable. This was the first time where we were like, “Oh, there’s a person who works at a recording studio, and they’re recording us.”
How long was the studio session for the recording of this?
Dave Schneider: Four days?
James Bertram: Yeah, I think so.
Is there anything that you remember about being in the studio? Were there songs that were getting reworked, or songs that were figured out in the studio?
James Bertram: We definitely had our songs, but I wouldn’t say we had everything super set. When we played our songs, it wasn’t always exactly the same every time because we were just trying to get through them (laughter). I feel like we might have made a song there. I can’t exactly remember.
Dave Schneider: It’s kind of easy for me to remember because most of the time I recorded it was with Phil [Ek]. For “Can’t Tie Yet,” we had figured it out at the practice before. It was that cheap yellow Boss Super Overdrive pedal that, back then, you could probably get for $17. You’d be like, “Oh, I found a battery for this. It’s kind of cool, but it makes my bass really chainy.” And you could do stuff like this. We were just doing that at the end of practice when we were done.
James Bertram: Yeah, I guess with that song, we were like, “Fuck it. Tim, just play keyboard noises or whatever.” It wasn’t like, “This is exactly how this song goes, and it sounds a certain way and we have it down totally.” I just felt like there were a few things like that, where we were just kind of seeing how it goes.
Dave Schneider: The whole thing only took four days and then it was sent out to mastering. Done. We didn’t have to do any studio stuff anymore. We tracked it on the first day and a little bit of the second. And then it’s overdubs, vocals, and then you have the mix. Phil was good because he was a good taskmaster.
James Bertram: I just felt like, “Oh, we’ve got to try and get a good tape where we can play the whole song all the way through.”
Dave Schneider: It was really interesting because it was the first time you could hear it in a place where it actually sounded kind of good. Normally, when you’re recording something, it was on a 4-track just listening on tinny speakers. The home recording industry wasn’t like it is now. If you were recording something on a 4-track, you would play it back through, whatever, a boombox (laughter). That would be your listening source when you’re recording.
James Bertram: It sounds more real or something. Not bigger, but I definitely remember being like, “Oh, this is how it sounds.” You can really hear it.
Dave Schneider: We’d always try to live track 4-track recordings and there was always this hissy thing. We were able to make a really noisy recording with some fidelity because we still wanted all the noise. That part was exciting. There’s nicer microphones. I kind of have a thing for microphones because when you play drums, they put microphones everywhere. So when you play a bunch of venues, you’re like, “What’s that called? What’s that?” After a while, you start to know the names of things. I knew what some things were called because of the radio, too. I would memorize the names of equipment because you're in this place forever, listening to your songs over and over again. It’s like when you’re bored in school and you’re counting the tiles on the ceiling or something like that. I memorized the names for all this pro audio equipment that I have no use for (laughter).
I did want to ask about Sam. What was Sam as a person, and as a band member? What do you feel like he brought to the band, not strictly musically?
Dave Schneider: It’s weird for me because I associate most of my music stuff with Sam. I’m on a lot of things with him. My relationship with music has a lot to do with him or with people that I met from being around him. lt’s weird because he would seem really unprepared. He’d maybe be a little more prepared than you, but he would not have anything together. It could be broken and it didn’t matter.
James Bertram: I guess he liked how personal damaged goods could be because it gives you more of a different outlook.
Dave Schneider: Yeah, exactly. Like, “Yeah, this is mine because of this imperfection.” I always thought that was a big thing with him. Something had to be a little bit off-kilter and it would actually get a little bit better.
James Bertram: Yeah. I feel like Sam was just awesome. To me, it felt like he had a real confidence about him. I don’t know if he did, but I felt like that. Pretty much everything he did was awesome (laughter), from the beginning of us to the last stuff he did. He was extremely creative and very prolific—it was inspiring what he did. It definitely inspired me to keep making things.
Was he a really serious guy when it came to making music? Or was he more loose?
James Bertram: I would say he was serious. But, to me, it seemed effortless. I don’t know if that meant he was really serious or not, but I took him as being serious.
Dave Schneider: It’s weird. I know a certain songwriting style that he had, like a certain procedure, because I was there when it started.
What was the procedure?
Dave Schneider: It’s not really a procedure. Like, if you needed Sam to make a piece of music, I would know a way to get him to do it. But when you're actually there, it doesn’t really take that long, you’re just kind of screwing around. You just kind of pick one of the things you’re joking around with and it would come together pretty easily. The longest I think we ever worked on a song with Sam was probably “Firestarter.” That’s the longest period of time to construct a song ever, over different bands. Everything else after that was pretty quick. In other bands, me and him would just do it together. I would play drums, he would play guitar, and we’d work it up that way. And then you’d show stuff to other people.
We’d just listen to records and play video games and talk about the music we’re listening to, but also talk about the music in the video game. Nintendo and Sega have a different sound. I liked the Nintendo games better but the music on Sega was way cooler. I had a Yamaha synthesizer, and you had to program it. With early Lync stuff we would play video games and make fun of what we were listening to and the video game at the same time, and then we would start playing music after that. It was like a warm-up thing. James has definitely seen me and Sam do this in Love As Laughter, too. We’d sit there and play video games and then finally go to band practice. Time was spent just fucking around. Normally with him, too, you’d have these spurts when you could get two things done at once.
You guys would listen to records, play video games, and then comment on what you were listening to?
Dave Schneider: Yeah. You have to remember, I used to work at jazzercise. My perception of music was really weird because I had been brainwashed. Because this is the ’80s. Not brainwashed, I should say, but I was just subjected to really loud dance-pop music. I’d be taking care of these kids in a racquetball court, and jazzercise was going on in a basketball court in front of me with a giant sound system. It was really echoey, gated reverb drums, some Janet Jackson pumping at club volume, and women in leotards doing their thing. Video game music is kind of like that, the aggressive parts. The backing tracks of certain dance songs are actually pretty gnarly. We would just talk about that. But we were also listening to something like Moss Icon while we were hearing Nintendo or Sega music at the same time.
This is random, but “I’m Back Sleeping or Fucking or Something” was the band trying to make a dub reggae song. And I know that for NES games, the composer said he had to figure out how to make music good with a very limited range of sounds, and said that the secret was listening to reggae to figure out how to make complex rhythms with just a bass and drums.
James Bertram: I love Moss Icon and Tonie Joy. I used to buy stuff from Tonie Joy. I felt like Sam was always the first person with something, or if Dave made a drum beat or I did something on the bass, I didn’t feel like it was hard. Maybe that’s what you meant Dave, about not spending a lot of time.
Dave Schneider: It never stopped.
James Bertram: It was just like, “I got something to do and it’s cool.”
Dave Schneider: I started playing drums pretty much right before that demo tape (laughter). I was just a willing participant. I had no aspirations to do it, he just talked me into it. It’s funny, too. The song construction stuff—I didn’t think about it. I think that came as easy as pie to him. I did an on-the-spot song with him in the studio, but I knew what it was because I just heard him doing it and was like, “Oh, you want to do that? Okay, cool.” But I was always impressed by the vocal stuff because the only thing we ever had to sing out of was everyone’s first Peavey practice amp. It was our famous P.A. and when you sing through it, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. You can’t really hear, or at least I can’t because I’m playing drums. You could hear the melody, but you couldn’t articulate the words. He was able to just change things and make them up so quickly. I was always really impressed by that because it seemed like even if he didn’t have an idea of what he was gonna do, he always knew how to do hooks. He understood that concept. If you took away Sam’s voice from the music, I probably wouldn’t like it.
Did he ever mention specific vocalists that he liked?
Dave Schneider: Not in that way. He would be like, “Hey, I made you a mixtape. It’s all the Canned Heat songs with the guy with the high voice.” (laughter). And things that sound like that. Typical shit, like Iggy Pop.
James Bertram: He just had his own thing. I would say the same thing, Dave. Even if he might cite somebody, I just don’t think he was like anybody else. It didn’t seem from the outside like it was a struggle at all. It was like he just had something cool from nothing. He was awesome that way.
Dave Schneider: He would do things like try to sing like this person, or say a phrase like this person, but everybody does that.
Is there anything else you want to mention about These Are Not Fall Colors?
Dave Schneider: I just associate it with that practice space that we got because we started doing it right when we first got it. I always associate it with that one storage unit, basically, and some bad jobs in Olympia. It was weird in Olympia at that time, in everyone’s apartment, because you had to take a bath. You didn’t have showers, you just had tubs and the water ran really slow. You had to turn the water on and wait for 20 minutes. In Sam’s apartment, you had to take a bath, so you’d turn the water on, wait around for 20 minutes. You’d take a little hose from the sink and stick it in for hot water (laughter).
James Bertram: It wasn’t out for very long at all before we kind of stopped playing. In my mind, it was a pretty short amount of time. I don’t really know exactly how long it was. It’s almost separate from when we were a band. It was after us, in a weird way.
Sort of like a posthumous release.
James Bertram: Kind of. We had it on our last trip that we ever did. But it wasn’t like everyone had heard this record and it was representing us when we’re playing shows. It never got there. I’m super proud of it, but it was probably never the thing that people knew us from.
I know you guys had your last show at the Velvet Elvis. Is there anything you recall about that final show? Did you know it would be your last show?
James Bertram: Yeah. Directly before that, earlier that month, we played our second to last show with Team Dresch. We went to Eastern Washington and played a show at a college.
Sick.
James Bertram: Yeah, it was awesome. I can’t remember when our last show before that was. Maybe it was in August or something. And then it was like, “Oh, we’re gonna play this last show.” We knew we weren’t gonna keep playing and we had set up this show. And then, Team Dresch was playing this show and we got offered to play with them, and they were going to pay us. The school was paying us 350 bucks or some amount of money that seemed insane at the time (laughter). It was like, “Shit, should we do it? Yeah, let’s do it.” That’s my memory of it. But there was a gap. Probably a longer gap than there ever was between those late shows because I felt like we played all the time.
Dave Schneider: Yeah, I remember that show too. I just met a lot of people during that, that I was friends with for a long time.
James Bertram: It was awesome, because we got to sort of set it up and be like, “Here’s who we want to play.” There were a lot of friends there. I just thought it was cool. We played at like 1:30 in the morning or something. I don’t know if it was that late, but it was really late. We didn’t start until after midnight, we were like the fifth band.
Dave Schneider: It was really crowded for the Velvet Elvis. Meg [Watjen] couldn’t let some people in. It was crazy.
Is there anything else we didn’t talk about today that you wanted to talk about?
James Bertram: I don’t think so. For me, it was the first band that I was in. I don’t know if it was all of our first “real” band. It’s super awesome to think of all the stuff that we got to do, getting to make records, go on tour, play with cool bands. And it’s not something that I’m embarrassed about as my first band or whatever. I’m happy that we did it. It’s super cool that anybody even cares. It got us going, playing music, and we all got to keep doing stuff together. We made different bands, but we still got to play shows together. It’s the same kind of thing that a lot of people experienced—you end up becoming friends with people, either that you were fans of or people you meet. And that just lasts. I’m sure that we’re still friends with people that we met because of being in that band. It just led to a lot of cool things over the years.
Dave Schneider: It was weird because we were always around each other. When Lync stopped, me and James were in Built to Spill together, then after that was done, I was back in Seattle and Sam moved back to Seattle too. Love As Laughter and Red Stars Theory started to practice in my bedroom, basically. Me and Sam would be there while Red Star Theory was having practice, and I was always around James and Sam, musically, even if I wasn’t in a band with them. With all those records, you have to get Sam’s fifth Love As Laughter record before I wasn’t on it (laughter). He would put things on those records, and I would be like, “You put that on there?” He’d tell me it was me and I’d be like, “Really?”
What’s it meant for These Are Not Fall Colors to get this cult fanbase over the years, and now to get this reissue?
Dave Schneider: I’m flattered by it. I like it (laughter). I’m glad Dave [Dickenson] put it out and all that.
James Bertram: Same thing for me. It’s super flattering. It was awesome. There’s a lot of weird stuff about how it came about. But for myself, personally, getting to do stuff with David Dickenson with Suicide Squeeze again was super awesome. I haven’t made music or put things out in a really long time. If I had to hang around with someone to deal with doing this, David would be my first choice. And Dave let me run with it a lot, I think (laughter).
Dave Schneider: That idea, you didn’t really have to explain it to me because I’ve always liked that guy’s stuff. It just made sense to me because it’s within that community. If it was just on some label that didn’t have anything to do with that whole scene it would feel weird.
James Bertram: I’m super psyched about the way it turned out. I just wanted to do something that I think Sam would think was cool, too. Just to make a cool version of the record, basically. It was sort of therapeutic in a weird way.
Do you guys have a favorite Lync song?
Dave Schneider: There’s one on the demo tape, it’s this song “Girl” that I really like. The crummier something is, the more I like it. And plus it’s the most embarrassing for me, so it’s even better. Our version of “Lightbulb Switch” on the demo tape is really more of that alternative soft-pop sound, like the Violent Femmes or something like that. In my older age, I find it neat. But on the record, I guess “Pennies To Save.” That and “Turtle” are the oldest ones. “Pennies To Save” always makes me think of jangly British pop music, and that I have a big soft spot for.
James Bertram: I like “Pennies To Save,” too. We played that one for a long time. I feel like that was one of the first ones that I helped write. It’s something that I remember just playing on bass.
Dave Schneider: Exactly. Because for a lot of that, James would have a bass riff and Sam would know what he was going to do with it right away—it would come together really quickly. One or two times, he talked to me about song lyrics, and it was just joking around with his mom in the kitchen about the lyrics for a song. And it’d be like, “Oh, you could just use that.” That was the only time I ever really talked to him about lyrics. He would use what me and his mom were saying back to him as the lyrics.
That’s amazing.
Dave Schneider: He would kind of make fun of us while doing it. I always think about that. It was this old Lync song called “Pan.” He would say something, his mom would repeat it, and I would repeat it. We were basically playing a game of telephone and kind of changing it, and that was the lyrics of the song. The demo tape is on the internet.
James Bertram: I’m trying to do something with it. I found a tape recently.
Dave Schneider: It’s on YouTube. It’s that hissy 4-track recording and it’s a copy of a copy of a copy. We didn’t sell them, we gave them away for free. Sam actually put some for sale at Cellophane Square in Bellevue at the mall. But the week after we played our first show, we were just giving them away. James, one day, made a shit ton of them. I didn’t know he did it. He just had a lot of them after we played our first show and just gave them away.
I wanted to ask this earlier: Do you remember what video games you and Sam loved playing?
Dave Schneider: I was over Nintendo. I think there was a new Nintendo system at that time. It might have been N64, but he had a Sega. His brother had the handheld one with the screen. In Built to Spill, I bought it off of him because it was something to do in the van (laughter). It was a lot of that Mario game. And I really like Metroid. That has the famous video game song, so it’s kind of a cop out.
James Bertram: Legend of Zelda (laughter).
Dave Schneider: Yes. Well, that’s basically obvious with the [band] name. Also, on the way to Washington Hall, if you’re coming on the I-90 from the east side and you get off on Maynard Avenue—basically, if you’re driving to juvenile hall to pick up your juvie or to meet up with your friends—on the left-hand side there’s a bait and tackle store called Linc’s. And their sign was art deco and I thought it looked cool. Me and Sam came up with the name one night after like we were talking about it, and this is from taking the Slint pill. We wanted the shortest name possible (laughter). It was like, “Well, that works!”
The name, These Are Not Fall Colors, came about after we played a show in Missoula, MT when we were going to Detroit to meet up with Beck. We needed to think of a name and we were working on that. Me and Sam were passing time, I was driving at night. We were just talking about the dumb shit we talk about, like, “What do you want to use for a gatefold?” “Do you have any bad drawings that you did as a kid?” (laughter). Then I told him about some bad Dungeons and Dragons drawing. I had this really killer one of a wizard going like this (lifts arms and stretches them outwards), like the cover of Black Sabbath Vol. 4. He was like, “Dude, we’re not using that.” Then he told me he always had this school assignment that he liked that he didn’t get a good grade on because he didn’t use fall colors. He used blue and black for the leaves. That drawing is in the gatefold. So that’s how that name came about.
Wow, so Lync came from the name of a bait and tackle store, as well as Legend of Zelda?
Dave Schneider: Yeah, and we wanted the name to be as short as possible, so these three things together.
Amazing.
Dave Schneider: That’s basically the whole thing. The funny thing about that is Chris Takino, the guy who started Up, lived right by that bait and tackle store later in life. It was funny because when we were in Built to Spill, sometimes we’d go to that place and we’d be like, “Should we tell them?” Being in Built to Spill also felt like being in a band with Sam.
James Bertram: My father-in-law’s name is Link (laughter).
Dave Schneider: I was wondering if Microsoft’s bad operating system was named after us. That always tripped me out. Why would they spell it that way?
Lync’s These Are Not Fall Colors can be purchased at the Suicide Squeeze website and at Bandcamp.
Thank you for reading the 143rd issue of Tone Glow. A Link to the Past fans rise up.
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