Sandrider Interview
By Jeffery McNulty
Photo by Victoria Holt
When I walked into their practice space six pack in hand, Sandrider gave me a sneak peak of a new song. Even half written it was pure Sandrider: heavy, melodic and epic. I would expect nothing less from these three amazing musicians.
Jon: Guitar
Nat: Drums
Jesse: Bass
Seattle Passive Aggressive: Your album was on a lot of people’s top ten lists for this year, which is awesome and also kind of ironic because…
Nat: It came out in December man! Last year.
SPA: Yeah and it was right on that edge, and also you guys had it in the can for a while right?
Jon: Yeah well, it was originally intended as a demo but when we heard Bayles’ recording we were like, that’ll work!
Nat: It sounded amazing!
SPA: Well Matt doesn’t do demo quality work man!
Nat: We did it because we had the material and we wanted to just put it down. We didn’t have a label or anything. And we hadvery little initiative to go and find anyone to put it out, this is where Nik came in and it just kinda happened.
SPA: Right place right time I’d say. What do you have going on now? I just heard that new song…
Jon: New stuff, yeah.
Nat: How many do we have like 7 or 8?
Jon: I feel like we’ve got close to 7 or 8 that are in various states of completion. We have a couple of shows in the new year and we would very much like to start playing a few of these new ones. I’m personally starting to feel a little fatigued with the seven songs that we have been playing at every show so I’d like to mix it up a little bit.
Nat: Yeah but we’ve been playing the same shit for 3 or four years now. The first song on the self-titled record, I love playing it but I’m kinda done playing it because we’ve opened with it every set with that. For years!
Jon: That’s still one of the ones I want to play every show ha ha! I love that song so much.
Jesse: Yeah it’s a good one. It’s epic!
Nat: Maybe that’s because we keep playing it first…
Jesse: Every time we play that song I think about the first time we played it together-
Nat: That was the first song we wrote.
Jesse: cause I feel like the energy that we had together, it was like, “Whoa, this is fuckin working!” Like right off the bat.
Nat: that song is kinda special for me too but we have played it a lot. Just a breather, or somewhere else in the set.
SPA: You should play it last cause then people will be like where is that awesome song they always played? ha ha
Jon: Dude I’m down to play it first forever ha ha
SPA: So when you guys first got together was it just an idea that you guys wanted to jam together? Like a side project kind of thing?
Jon: It started out that I just wanted to start playing guitar again. I’d been playing bass in Akimbo for a lot of years; Akimbo had been really busy and there wasn’t enough time when I’d play guitar it was just like noodling and stuff. I just wanted to write songs, compose with the guitar and get together with dudes and start playing music again. I wasn’t really down with playing with anyone else on drums except Nat: Ha ha. Well bless your heart!
Jon: And we had a couple other people playing with us on bass…
Nat: Who else came in? Was it Ben Verellen?
Jon: It was just Ben. He played with us like twice or something and it didn’t really go anywhere.
Nat: Yeah he wasn’t that good (Laughter) I’m kiddin Ben I love ya! It was more of a scheduling thing.
Jon: It went really well actually but he was starting Helms Alee at the time…
SPA: It was that long ago? I guess he had a good excuse then!
Jon: I think we’ve been a band for 5 years!
SPA: You guys were a band and you guys were writing songs and stuff but you weren’t playing out every day…
Nat: First couple of years we didn’t play very many shows at all
Jon: Not giving a fuck is the new DIY ha ha
Nat: Well we would get offers and every once in a while something good would show up and we’d be like, “oh let’s do this one!” but for the most part it was like, “Nah, I don’t want to play some shitty Wednesday night.”
Jon: It would only be when one of us would really want to play a show
SPA: I feel that, cause some time in your career you gotta stop doing that shit. I mean no offense to the young bands that are starting out but…
Jesse: You still gotta play em ha ha
SPA: But once you’ve paid them… I mean, we’ve all paid them to that point where you’re like, “Fuck that Wednesday shit…”
Nat: You’re god-damn right.
Jon: Also as you get older you start valuing your time a lot. Not that playing a show is a waste of time…
Nat: Well, you gotta pick the good ones.
Jon: I think if I was younger I wouldn’t give a fuck about playing a show on a Wednesday you know…
SPA: Well that’s why it’s called ‘payin your dues’
Nat: It’s also called ‘playing to the bar staff’ ha ha
Jesse: And the other bands
Jon: If you’re lucky… Although there was a magic time over on the Eastside where Ground Zero and The Old Firehouse would be packed every weekend regardless of what band was playing. And if you could just get on one of those shows… you’d be playing to an almost sold out audience guaranteed.
Nat: Well it only cost five bucks. We’d go see shows and we didn’t have any idea who was playing it was like, “I got five bucks, I wanna get out of the house, let’s go see who’s playing.”
SPA: It’s so cool when there is a club and there is a scene.
Nat: That’s awesome.
SPA: That’s rare. Jon and Nat you guys came up out of that scene but Jesse, around that time Ruby Doe was the band to watch.
Jesse: Oh thanks!
SPA: And we all agreed, these guys are doing this crazy stuff-
Jon: We were all just waiting for you guys to be picked up and explode.
Jesse: (Ironically) Ha ha showed them! Wow.
SPA: I feel like that was a time in Seattle history. It was like the second coming of heavy rock in Seattle and I’m proud to have seen it.
Jesse: For sure yeah. What’s cool too is that I think everyone in this room has been continuing to make heavy music regardless of what’s been going on in Seattle and it’s cool to see that counter culture has never died. No matter how much crappy popular music that comes out of Seattle there is always going to be people that are making music against that.
Jon: Totally!
SPA: Agreed! You guys have any shows coming up?
Jon: January 25th with Big Business and Bali Girls at the Shakedown in Bellingham and February 2nd with Black Breath at the Crocodile.
SPA: Killer, See you there!
