Shark Tank interview from May

   Yet another interview I did months ago and never did anything with. I did this interview with Shark Tank when they played a Pittsburgh release show for their new release Fun Youngs. They're super nice, I got the chance to meet all these fools in the past. Even if you're not into what they're doing, you should still go see them to see their nonstop hilarious onstage banter. In this interview the group talked about how the members met, the unfortunate "death" of former member Mickey Free, and some future plans.

TheThrowAwayDays:Who is, and what is Shark Tank?
Shark Tank-Lord Grunge: Shark tanks is a conglomeration of independent rap artists. Independent emcees that met a long time ago, and have been boys for a long time. And it is myself, Lord Grunge from Grand Buffet, my man Height from Height with Friends, and my man B. Rich has a band called Slaves of Spanky in Ontario.
Shark Tank-B. Rich: Stand up
LG: Stand up.

T-TAD: How did you guys meet, and what happened to your fourth member, Mickey Free, who is apparently dead?
LG: Mickey Free didn't actually die, although it wouldn't be inaccurate to say he's basically dead to me. I'll always have love for him, but in my mind he's passed away. No I don't know, I don't meant to bogart this interview, but I feel like Mickey is an extremely talented dude. He's an emcee, he's a producer, he's ridiculously talented. He just wasn't in the right mind set to do another DIY project. He's all about trying to stack his paper, and get this record deal or some shit like that. Which is cool, which is cool. But like, Shark Tank, is kind of not about not giving a fuck. We're just trying to do our shit regardless weather anyone cares. And I don't think he was in the right mind state to do that, so he respectfully bowed out. There's no beef. Even though dude is dead to me, he's cool. He's like the coolest dead dude ever.

T-TAD: Alright, well how did everyone else in the group meet? Just through solo projects, or through Grand Buffet touring or what?
Shark Tank-Height: We met, Me and Grunge met, in 2000. I had a group called Wombs, it was our first and last tour. And it was on the last day of it we played Roboto Project(in Pittsburgh). And we played with Grand Buffet, and had never heard of them or heard them before. But I think it turned out to be a really awesome show. And as I went solo Grand Buffet has always helped me do my thing. You know what I mean, So we been doing various shit together for a long time, and then we met(pointing at B. Rich)well you two met before...
LG:  Yeah, B. Rich was, no disrespect, on my dick a little bit.
BR:  Little bit.
LG: Yeah.
BR: I mean, shit was tight.
LG: Grand Buffet fan,(smirking at the camera) who turned out to be very nice on the mic.
BR: Yeah I booked a show for GB, in my hometown, in the great white North, in 04. and Big Height and Mick Free were the opening acts, and I guess it jumped off from there a little more I guess…
LG: Yeah it wasn't till 2009 when we actually started making songs together and stuff. But I kinda feel like that trip, the tour, we had Mick and Height opening for Grand Buffet we met. Well I had met you before then, but like we kicked with Brendan, and it was like this dudes tight yanno, some day something is gonna go down with all these dudes.
BR: No homo.
LG: No homo.

T-TAD:(laughs) Hell yeah. Well what do you think it would take for Shark Tank to be your main focus, you all seem to have your solo projects you're pretty wrapped up in. Is there any chance of that happening?
LG: It's something we wanna do regardless, I mean if Shark Tank ever gets the jump off. I mean of Cock Fork, or whatever, yanno. if someone ever gets behind Shark Tank, I think we'd all rise to the occasion, But I kinda feel like the goal is to keep making records regardless of anyone giving a shit. We would love it go off big, I think we'd all be very amped. But the purpose is just to crank out these records no matter what.

T-TAD: What's different about Shark Tank than about any of your solo stuff? What are some different elements that people will recognize that's different about your solo shit?
Height: Well I know for me, my solo stuff is kind of getting away from just like rapping over beats, More like either I'm trying to start the song from scratch with instruments, then kinda make it into a beat. Or whatever, I have different concepts and shit. But I feel like for me Shark Tank is more where the beats rhymes and stuff goes.
T-TAD: More conventional rap?
Height: No, not even conventional. I think for all of us, that's always been a thing, just making beats and rapping over them. Keeping it straight to the point. For me at least that's where that kind of stuff goes now. That side of myself or whatever, I dedicate towards that, if that makes any sense.
LG: Yeah, I mean I think with Shark Tank, we're keeping it rappy. Where with other project we've explored different genres. Like the Grand Buffet shit was kind of like experimental rap. Yeah I think the rap shit is going down more so in Shark Tank.
BR: Yeah I think for me the difference is it's tight to be able to rap and hang out with dudes that don't say "ey" all the time. I guess from my end of it, it's way more like rap. I'm in like rap bands. I do this rap band shit at home, it's fire. But this is way more like straight up rap to me compared to other shit I've worked on.

T-TAD: Last question, what are the future plans for Shark Tank? It's kind of hard for you guys to get together, just the cost of getting all three of you in one place for a short weekend tour. Do you guys have anything longer tours in mind?
LG: The tentative plan, and this is definitely subject to change. When we're gonna drop another record next year, we drop that, the plan is to do a proper tour. Do like a month long north American tour. In the mean time we are hoping to do some gigs, probably late summer or fall, do another run supporting Fun Youngs. But again, card subject to change, that's the loose plan. The next album "Don't Fuck with Us" which we've already started grinding on, will come out in 2013, the plan is to do a bonefied tour for it. But we're gonna continue the sporadic gig bullshit for the rest of this year.




PS once I steal a faster internet connection I'll upload some videos to youtube to link I filmed at the show.

JE Double F interview from May 19th 2012

JE Double F is a tour-monger. He's a multi-musically talented, incredibly smart, nonstop, touring machine. A few months ago when he was in Pittsburgh I interviewed him about his hip hop music, as well as his other music projects, tour plans, thoughts on "real" hip hop, and more. Unfortunately I sat around doing nothing with this interview until after the full US tour of his I was hoping to help promote making certain parts of this interview irrelevant. I suck, Jeff rules, check it out.

TheThrowAwayDays: JE double F, how did you go from being in a punk band to rapping?
JE Double F: I've always listened to hip hop, I've always been into the music itself. Just like anyone else you want to be like the people that you like. Listened to a lot of Aesop Rock and Wu Tang as a kid so i wanted to be like them, and rap. And that's why I tried it, and that's it.

T-TAD: What do you when you're not rapping? For work and for leisure?
JEFF: For work I have a degree in computer science and minor in mathematics, so I usually get a job in that field. Pays the bills and allows me to tour whenever I want for the most part.
Leisure, yanno I play a lot of chess, star craft 2, video games, yanno, read. That's it, I play in a couple bands, GraveYard State and Cut it out, that's it.

T-TAD: Is Grave Yard State the one for your solo stuff?
JEFF: Yeah, it's like a melodic rock band, probably more along the lines of Hot Rod Circuit or Archers of Loaf. Yeah bands like that.

T-TAD: And what does Cut It Out sound more like?
JEFF: Cut It Out is like a hardcore punk band, kind of like Black Flag meets Black Sabbath usually what people say. It's fast but with a lot of riffs.

T-TAD: What do you do in each of those bands?
JEFF: I play guitar and sing in Grave Yard State and I just play guitar in Cut It Out.

T-TAD: Back to your job, how do you balance a super serious sounding job with all your touring?
JEFF: I guess I kind of just use the degree to "fall back on" per-say in terms of I just quit jobs to go on tour, and when I'm gonna be home for a few months just get a new job and then just kind of grind it out to the point where I'm basically quitting jobs and getting new jobs pretty often. Like twice to three times a year. So it doesn't really balance out naturally, you just do whatever it takes to keep playing music. that's what I want to do, it's not paying the bills yet, so I gotta do something to do that.

T-TAD: What do you think it would take for you to make music full time and not sweat a job anymore?
JEFF: Umm, I'd probably have to touch into Europe a lot more. I'm doing my first European tour this year in a couple of months. but I'd probably have to go over there a lot more because i don't feel like the type of music i do is really ever going  to be able to pick up n the United States. I don't feel like the mentality of people here is right to be able to make a living off playing. In Terms of getting enough people to come to every show in every city to make enough money for when I come home to be able to pay my rent for X amount of months or whatever. So I'd probably need to go to Europe more which I'm working on. and just more hard work I guess in general, so I'm working on it.

T-TAD: You got a full US tour coming up, what are you plans with that?
JEFF:  Yeah, it's a full us tour with Greenlander and MC Homeless, the first 10 days of it, it's just gonna be me and Greenlander. we're doing the whole east coast, all the way from Jersey, we're doing Baltimore, Richmond, Greenville(North Carolina), etc, etc. just me and Greenlander. Then we're hitting New Orleans and meeting up with MC Homeless and going all the way to the west coast, pretty much playing every single day at this point, 35 days straight. Just full US, just a big loop around the whole country.

T-TAD: How do you feel about "real hip, hip hop"?
JEFF: Real hip hop? I hate it, I think it's disturbing.

T-TAD: Why, what about it?
JEFF: just people that think a genre of music has to be a certain way, and anything outside of that certain way isn't "real." It's s. stupid. the point of music is to take you somewhere right? You're here, we're suppose to go here, and we try to stay here with "real hip hop." First of all it's just boring for me, and second of all you're just holding back.
     I feel like most people who say anything "real hip hop," just want every record to sound like Illmatic, or 36 Chambers, or something. and anything that sounds like that and doesn't break that mold.

T-TAD: Something that's already been done.
JEFF: Yeah basically, and I love those records and they're great and it's what got me into hip hop. When I make music I just make it. I don't try to sound like this, or try to sound like that. you just go make it and write the songs, and the way it comes out is the way it comes out. I feel like it's way more interesting that way, to see other people play, and yanno. It's way more interesting when it just happens organically, and not like "we gotta make this song like a real hip hop song" or something like that yanno.

T-TAD: What's your formula for making a song?
JEFF: Usually I'll just write a lot of lyrics. It's kind of two separate things since I make the beats, and write the lyrics. But usually making the beats and writing lyrics are totally separate. Then it just kind of like works out, cause i make a lot of beats, so eventually something I write is gonna work of to a beat, and I kind of just change it to make it into song that cohesive and makes sense to a point, usually I just write  a lot of lines, in my notepad in my phone. Eventually it all comes together in a  verse, and usually right around that time is when a beat will surface, and I'm like oh this works, and something like that.



Website
Facebook
Tumblr
Sound Cloud(with acoustic songs, Grave Yard State, and some remixes)
Cut it Out

Bleubird interview from 4-26-2012

     When I first did this interview with Bleubird four and a half months ago, I had the high hopes of publishing it in the first issue where I would turn this stupid, unread, online blog, into a stupid, unread, waste of paper, fanzine. Since then my zine dreams haven't manifested any, and I've realized I have more important things to waste my money on than a poorly distributed underground hip hop zine. I've recently had a streak of bad luck that drained my will to live and keep this blog updated. This streak of self induced misfortune left me, in jail, in court, unemployed, heart broken, at funerals, loosing friends, loosing cars, in a perpetual state of drunken haze, all the way back to swearing myself to staying sober and turning my life around.
     So here's to a pending new hobby of mine that will hopefully keep me motivated, sober, and out of trouble. Here I'll be interviewing indie rap artists and posting them on this blog. And to Bleubird, I'm sorry for hassling you so much to do an interview for a blog with such low traffic, maybe that will change once I start posting more of the interviews I've been sitting on...



TheThrowAwayDays: For those who don't know, let 'em know!
Bleubird: Bleubird; Sloppy Doctor, Les Swashbuckling Napoleons, Grimm Image, Fake Four, Endemik Music, Freebird(laughs). I'm a rapper.

T-Tad:You just released Cannonball, but it seemed like you had a bit of a hiatus before that, what was the deal?
BB: Yeah that was my bad, I actually did have a lot of music. I released a record called Primsin Allaey with this produced named Jay Rope from Berlin. That was my bad not calling it Bleubird and Jay Rope because technically it was a solo record just all produced by one producer. But it was a side project I did that was more noise rock influenced. I also did Les Swashbuckling Napoleons which was produced by Edison out of San Francisco and it was with this rapper named Thesis Siheid out of Canada. And I also did a project called Triune Gods produced by Scott Daross of Endemik Music and with a Japanese rapper named Shabit from this group called Oragomy. So I was super involved with making a lot of music I just hadn't put the effort into a "Bleubird" record per-say.
   But yeah, I just released Cannonball a couple months ago and have not stopped touring, at the end of this run, on Saturday, I'll have played 69 shows already this year.

T-TAD: Cannonball is sort of a new direction for you, between your process of making your beats on this one, and even your flow seems paced a bit more compared to your standard "rapid fire" delivery. How come, and are you going to keep going on that direction?
BB: umm, I mean there is still some rapid fire to it. But I've been recording for about 10 years, even more. I just wanted to try something different. I was taken out of my comfort zone on purpose on Cannonball. I wanted to see if I could do that, and I'm just getting more into song writing; melodies, harmonies, and tension. You know like I just use to like my writing song was like "badadada" and the whole thing was just tense. But like I love the idea of like kind of getting you excited, and then calming you down, and then chilling you out, and then making you be like "oh", and then dropping it on you again. You know like the whole roller coaster ride aspect of song writing, and pitch, and mood. But I'm probably about to record some trap shit, you know I'm always gonna be doing different shit. And that's what I love, I don't know what the next Bleubird record is going to sound like, but it probably won't sound anything like Cannonball.

T-TAD: How is the first US tour to promote Cannonball going thus far, and how was the reaction for it during your European tour with Astronautalis?
BB: Europe was fucking awesome. I've always been more successful touring in Europe, I don't know why it just always worked for me better out there. But I know that it's also important to grind it out in the US. I had been touring the Freebird project during the last year and a half of during the process of making Cannonball, so I was trying out those songs. As far as the record being out and me playing shows, it hasn't been an overwhelming response, but the people that have been responding to it are awesome. I'm really excited about gaining new fans, people that have never heard of me and are just getting turned onto me on through Cannonball, because it's my first US release. Then I'm like, "look man there's ten record behind it." Yanno like all these different project and it's cool you know cause it blows peoples mind and shows them all these different sides of me. But you know it's been great, just seeing people that know some of the new songs, it's cool, because in Europe the record hadn't really hit, I was touring already while the record hit. So I'm actually going back in June to Eastern Europe and playing a few festivals in Hungary and German with Astronautalis again and I'm excited to see how it's gonna take over there. because I did 34 shows in 36 days in January and February, just hit it real hard, so now I'm psyched to go back and see how it's going to affect it. I don't have any plans to stop touring this year. I don't think just putting out my record was gonna make this huge response, i have to tour on it I have to play the shows. Directly after this tour, I have 8 days off, then going back to Europe for a month, then get back and I have 3 days off, then I'm jumping on the Warp Tour for another month. Then I'm trying to go to Japan and Australia after that.

T-TAD:Got any good stories from the road?
BB: (laughs) One of my favorite stories is a couple years ago I got invited to the middle east, to play in Amman Jordan. I was the first American rapper to play in Amman. I played with a Palestine rap group called Ramallah underground, on July 4th which was fucking hilarious. I was totally frightened, I had never been to the middle East. My mother is Jewish, but I wasn't raised religious, but i didn't know how much that affected peoples opinions, and the dudes I was playing with were pretty radical Palestinians. I didn't know if they would get my sense of humor, I showed up by myself, stayed in this Best Western next to the fucking Egyptian Embassy, there was just troops all over the place. I just Wandered all over the city for days, went to the Dead Sea, the show ended up being amazing, there was 300 kids there. I got along so awesome with Ramallah underground kids.

   But the best part is I was through the airport, back into america. but leaving jordan, and I was leaving with one of the Palestine kids who was flying to Dubai. he was trying to help me through customs and shit because I didn't speak and Arab and they didn't speak much english, the custom dudes. and I ran into a snag with some of my gear, because i had a lot noisier of a setup then. and I had theses pedals that were homemade, with just boxes with knobs, with batteries taped to them and shit. and they were just like, "whoa, what the fuck is this?" and I like turned it on and it started being "beepbeepbeep" and they were just like "nonono!" and I got separated from my buddy, and next thing I know I'm surrounded by military in the airport in jordan, asking me all these questions but like it's just not working so they start calling over higher ranks. So finally they call the like general comes over and the dude is so stone faced and hates me as he walking up. And he opens my bag and all these stickers fall out it's this picture a French artists did of me with this ghetto blaster, it's a drawing. and i'm like great, now these mother fuckers are gonna hit me with this graffiti rule, like vandalizing their city. and he picks it up and he's like is this you? I'm like yeah, and my heart stops, and he's just like, "it's beautiful!" And I'm was like "YEAH!" and he was like, "you make rock or rap?" and I'm like, "rap!" And he's like, "I like rap!" and I'm like, "y-y-you want one??" He's like "YEAH!" So i'm handing out stickers to all these military dudes and they don't even look at one more thing on my bag. They shove everything back one, they're like, "thank you, please come back again."

T-TAD: What else do you plan on doing to promote cannonball?
BB: I been doing another serious of videos, like I worked really hard on that kickstarter campaign to shoot the super 8 video for pimp hand. but that didn't really have the affect I hoped cause we worked so fucking hard on doing that. but i just shot another video with Ceschi for time for real, with this crazy directory in San Francisco named Allen Price, he's done some videos for sub pop. I'm really excited, he's like building sets, it's puppets, and stop motion. me and Ceschi are gonna be floating over this digital ocean. We had a lot of fun making that, and I got some plans for some other videos. And I'm putting out 150 vinyl on my own, with a Lazer Beak remix on it, which is being worked on right now. I'm gonna get them pressed and I'm gonna screen print them myself. So throughout this year, I'm gonna keep on touring and try to release the remix, and vinyl, and a couple more videos. Just trying to get it out. I'm really proud of the album, and I love it. We had no budget for publicity. So the best publicity I have to do is just going out and playing it everywhere I fucking can.

Bleubird
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