Moneen. Those who know them, are intense and dedicated fans. Those who don’t, have never even heard the name. This is a band undeniably on the cusp of something huge, and just waiting to fall over the edge of mass public consciousness. They tour non-stop, gaining mountains of fans every time they step into a city. So what is it that makes these guys tick? I stopped by Mesa Luna, a bright, art-deco style club just outside of downtown Vancouver that usually plays host to ballroom dancing and cocktail parties, to talk to singer Kenny Bridges and guitarist Chris “Hippy” Hughes between their soundcheck and a meet and greet.

My original intent was to conduct a simple interview with the members of Moneen and then write a concise feature based on their answers. However, they provided me with such a humourous transpiration of conversation, I feel it would be more worthwhile to simply run a transcript of the interview, along with a bit of commentary on what they were physically doing at the time. Beware, it’s pretty long, so we've broken it up into a couple easy-to-read sections. Enjoy!

I follow road manager/merch lady/Bridges’ gal Lisa and bassist Erik Hughes upstairs to the band room to wait for Bridges to finish with his soundcheck. The band and crew seem amazed by the gorgeous Renaissance-style room they’ve been given, with a corner-view of the mountains and city, and the spread of fruit and cereal waiting for them. Bridges finally arrives. Since there’s another interview being conducted on the balcony, and one inside on the couch (adjacent to the bed with a disco light that was for some reason set up in the corner to everyone's bemusement... "Why did they give us a bed? What do they think we're into?"), Bridges, Chris Hughes (henceforth referred to as Hippy to alleviate confusion), and I head off to another balcony, facing the setting sun, down a short hall.

(from here on out, Cord Magazine's speaks in blue and artist comments are in grey.)

As I set up, there is idle banter between Bridges and Hippy about the show that night and guitars. Bridges gets sight of my recorder and picks it up :

KENNY : Whoa, look at this, it’s a little gun!

(He starts aiming it over the balcony and making gun-firing noises.)

HIPPY : Oh my God, that’s awesome.

K : We got something! Bogeys at 6 o’ clock! (more gun noises) Ironically enough it is 6 o’ clock! (more gun noises) Full destruction [I think he says something else but I can't quite pick it up]! (more gun noises) … Is it recording?

Listen to the gun...

ANDY SCHEFFLER : It is recording!

K : Oh my gosh. Made a fool of myself immediately.

A : That’s all right. There’s nothing wrong with that. So, uh, today’s April Fool’s Day!

K : Yes!!

H : Yes it is. More importantly…

A : Did you guys pull any pranks?

K : Lisa did. She was like, she was like the pranksta. (something incoherently mumbled) She wakes up in the morning and she calls Haris, our guitar tech and good friend. She’s like, ‘Haris, we slept in, it’s daylight savings time! We’re like so late, we gotta go! Get up, come on, we gotta go right now!,’ and he just woke up right, and he’s like, “Oh my God…”

H : And the best part is, he put back the phone and rolled over.

K : What??!!!?!?

H : I think, I don’t remember him trying to get up.

K : And then Lisa calls back in five minutes, she’s like, ‘Haris! April Fools.” And he was all like, ‘Awwwww.’ And then she calls Fullblast [band on tour with Moneen] and said, ‘Oh guys, have you seen your van?!’ They’re like, ‘Whaddya mean?’ ‘Your van’s got a flat tire. And we gotta go, man, we gotta go right now. We’re gonna be late.’ And she called them back in five minutes and they’re all freaking out trying to decide who’s gonna get up and go change the tire. Mean Lisa, mean mean. But it’s my brother’s birthday today!

A : Oh really!

K : And that’s no April Fools. It’s really … urgh urgh (choking, vomiting noises)… it’s really his birthday. For real. As real as can be.

A : I completely slept through April Fools Day. I think. It only goes ‘til noon, right?

(Kenny starts singing something about “we walk….”)

H : Some people go ‘til midnight.

K : If you really wanna stretch it and be a friggin’ a-hole. We’re not really the pranksters. We don’t really like… we’re not one of the bands that, like pulls pranks on people afterwards, like when the tour’s done or anything like that. We destroyed Boys Night Out’s set when they were on the Senses Fail tour with us. Accidentally… my whole thing is I wanted to duct-tape them as they were playing, and duct-tape them all together. And it would just be the guitarist and the singer and it would be fine. But then immediately, one of the Senses Fail guys goes running and grabs their drummer, they pick him up. So, as soon as the drummer stops, it’s done, it’s over. I felt so bad, we ruined the whole set.

A : Awww.

K : Well, not really. We ruined the last five seconds of it.

A : Okay, well that’s not so bad then.

K : But we’re not one of those bands that throws friggin’, crickets and dead fish in the seats and stuff like that.

A : This is kind of an aside, ‘cause I don’t really have anything in particular to ask about it, but you’ve cited Failure as an influence, and I just think that’s really cool. And Muse too.

K : You know Failure??

A : Yeah, Ken Andrews is God, pretty much.

K : Ohhhh yes he is. Yeah I was …

A : You’d said he’s one of the people you’d like to meet the most.

K : Oh yeah definitely.

H : He almost did get to meet him!

A : Did you meet him?

K : I almost did. He was in his tour bus at a roadside stop around Syracuse, and we were at the same one. Just this old busted up tour bus. And we were like, ‘Man, that’s gotta be a band. That’s a weird tour bus.’ And then we were inside and some of the roadie guys were getting food, and we started talking to them and they were like, ‘Yeah we’re with the band Year of the Rabbit.’ I was like, ‘What the hell, what are you talking about??’ I’m like, ‘Ken Andrews is in that bus right now? He’s in that bus? He’s in that bus. Oh my god, he’s in that bus!’ and then, uh, he was sleeping at the time so I didn’t get to meet him.

A : Awww…

K : But they were all, even the band was like, ‘cause the tech guys went up and were like, ‘Hey there’s some guys that know you out here.’ And they were all so surprised, like, ‘Wow, someone actually knows our band?’ They were on the [A] Perfect Circle tour, and the funny thing is that, they were talking about how they were like the opening band and no one knew them, you know and whether people cared or not, you don’t know, it’s… you just gotta play for yourself pretty much in a situation like that. And we were on the Saves The Day/Taking Back Sunday tour at the time, so it was a lot the same, for us. It was like we had to play our friggin’ butts off every night. Because everyone that was there knew that Taking Back Sunday was playing after us. It’s like, ‘Who is this band in front of me right now? I wanna see Taking Back Sunday and Saves The Day.’ And uh, but it went over really well. I don’t know how it went for [Hippy]. But for us it went over well.

A : Kick everybody in the pants.

K : But yeah, I listened to [Failure album] Fantastic Planet the other day and I forgot how amazing that record is. (shouts into mic) How do you get that bass tone?!? We tried today and it didn’t work!!!

A : Hahah. I can ask him that question for you one day. I met him in Seattle.

K : You did??

A : I froze completely, I had nothing to say at all. Just like, ‘hey… urrrgh!’

K : I heard he’s a pretty chill, shy kinda guy.

A : He is, he was pretty quiet. But he did an in-store at this little record shop, there were like twenty people there, so we went and saw that…

K : Year of the Rabbit…

A : Yeah, Year of the Rabbit.

(Hippy’s saying something in the background I can't pick up.)

A : It was a weird little electronic set, like the drummer just had a laptop with a bunch of loops on it, and that’s what they did.

K : Really.

A : Stripped down with loops.

K : No way. They’re friggin’ cool, we’re nothing. Haha!

A : That’s a lie! That’s a lie. Okay. Let’s get into video games.

K : Yes! Bring it on, here we go, all right.

A : How sane do they keep you on the road? Or insane…

K : Oh…addiction, addiction. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, or… we all… la la la la… Halo. Halo keeps coming and going. Like it’ll be the addiction, and then we’ll put it down for a while. Then we’ll play it again, then put it back. The thing about Halo, is that it’s a great game for multiple people. They call it ‘multi-player.’ I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that before.

A : Yes yes.

K : It’s a technical term they use to mean more than one player. But anyways, um, Fullblast had never really played it before, so we got them hooked now, so we’re trying to find a way to hook up the two vans together, so we can play 8-player Halo. Band versus band. But they have five players, or five members in the band, so one guy’ll have to sit out. But Ian, the singer, he’s into sports games so he can just friggin’… (indecipherable mumbling). But yeah, that’s the addiction now. But Grand Theft Auto will always be true to our hearts. That was the theme of our record.

H : Yeah that was blown up…

K : When we recorded [latest release] Are We Really Happy [With Who We Are Right Now?] Whenever anyone wasn’t doing something that had to do with the record they were killing people on Grand Theft Auto.

H : Remember they’d just be like, [producer] Trever [Keith] and [mixer] Chad [Blinman] got (lost in background noise) and they’d just be like, ‘All right, break time.’

K : Yeah yeah they’d break every five minutes. In between a vocal take I’d be like, ‘So we re-al-ly… oh my voice cracked, can we do that again?’ ‘No we gotta take a break.’ They’d both go, play video games for an hour and come back, I’d go do the line and my voice’d crack again.

A : You played video games on some big screen somewhere… read that whole deal…

K : Yeah Erik did, yeah!

A : Oh okay it was Erik.

K : Yeah. I didn’t… I missed out on that one.

H : It was a bar in Moncton.

A : And then somebody brought up the thing about playing, like about having watched the movie The Wizard… I guess that was probably him still, talked about that.

K : You know what’s crazy?

A : What?

H : What?

K : Is because of that movie... that guy he always wanted to play the video games? Is our friend Shawn [Edstrom], who does that site emoneen.com, he’s hanging out with us now, and he brought Erik that movie, The Wizard.

A : Really?

K : Yeah.

A : I was gonna ask if you’d ever played or ever thought of playing shows with Rilo Kiley? ‘Cause uh…

K : (Laughter) I…

A : What the hell is her full name? Jenny Lewis!

K : Yeah.

A : The girl from that is the singer. And they’re like on the same label as Cursive and…

K : Yeah yeah yeah, I’ve seen the singer before.

H : She’s the girl from the movie?

(I nod)

K + H : What!? (in unison)

A : Uh-huh!

K : Are you serious??

A : I’m totally serious.

K : I never knew that!

H : That’s so cool. Oh my God.

A : Go hook it up!

K : Holy crap, crazy. Okay I was wondering where that was coming from. Like, ‘So you guys are really into video games. Would you ever think of playing with Rilo Kiley?’ What? What does that mean?? But oh, that’s crazy yeah. Is that the same … she’s the girl that’s in Postal Service as well.

A : Oh really. That I didn’t know.

K : I think it’s the girl from Rilo Kiley. I’m pretty sure it is.

A : Another great band.

K : (starts singing again directly into microphone) Sorry about that.

A : That’s okay, as long as [the microphone] doesn’t get knocked off.

K : Hiyahhhh! (makes karate-chop movement towards michrophone) Where would it go?

(we all peer over the railing)

A : Onto that roof!

K : We could get it.

H : Nothing that could really get hurt.

A : There’s nothing really down there. There’s a bunch of duct tape.

H : Unless it goes on that pole.

K : Yeah.

H : That would suck.

A : Yeah that wouldn’t be good. You’d think that there’d be a lot more stuff here.

K : But lookit, someone didn’t pick up their duct tape maxi pad.

A : Oh look there’s a paintbrush.

K : So that means, it would be safe if it dropped on [the maxi pad].

A : That’s true.

K : Ooh a battery.

A : Yeah a battery …and, is that a bone of some sort?

K : Okay. We’ll back away from the evidence now.

A : Very interesting. Somebody fell down there and died.

H : And turned into one bone.

A : Do you like doing the all-ages gigs? Do you like doing those more?

K : Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah (sung)! Yeah much more. Hippy, what do you think about those bar shows? We’ve had some good bar shows, but our feelings have changed now.

H : We have had good bar shows… yeah.

A : Really.

H : But all-ages shows are always very exciting. They’re always exciting.

K : See, look, think about this. They call a bar show, a bar show, or 19+. Here’s what I say. 19 plus WHAT? Huh? What else do you get out of it? Bar show. Barrrrrrr show. 19 plus what? All-ages? All is EVERYTHING! ALLLLLLLL! I love it.

H : Haha!

A : That’s a good point.

K : ‘Cause if you don’t, you tell someone… ‘you’re gonna get this plus…’ And then they walk away? Like what the hell is that?

H : And they cant get it all.

K : But they’re like, ‘Yo, you’re gonna get all.’ You’re like, ‘Yeeeeah!!’

H : Yeaaaaah!

A : Oh my… where am I? I totally lost my spot.

K : I like how we’re out here with the sunset.

A : It’s kinda pretty hey?

K : Very pretty. Hippy…

H : It’s beaming off the wall.

(Bridges and Hippy move in for a romantic sunset kiss)

A : Damn I didn’t have my camera out.

(sheepish mumbling)

A : You interact a lot with the fans on your website.

K : Yeah, not enough though. What, man, did I put this on backwards? Oh my god it loops around (examines his jacket zipper). Holy that’s like…

A : Is it reversible?

K : It is reversible. But I would never wear this. (indicates what is currently the inside of the jacket)

A : What is that, 13? Is that a number?

K : No, C1, Circa. But yeah that’s one thing I, we are lacking a little bit on the website. I want more on there, like I wanna get some video and stuff.

A : Yeah.

K : We just try and keep up with the tour diaries and news and things like that. ‘Cause that’s the one thing with our band, is we’ve always been… all about the people. Like we’ve always been more than happy, wanting to hang out with people all the time. There’s never a time where like, yeah we’ve gotta hide in a friggin’ in our van or something like that. Like as soon as the show’s done, I usually try and get a big group hug going. You know just jump in the audience and…

A : The crowd connection.

K : …get... cuz I know for me, when I went to go see bands I liked a lot I would always go up and like… if they moved me or if I really liked it, I would always go up and say something to ‘em. And like not everyone’s the same. Like I’ve gone to many people and I just watch bands and been like, ‘Hey you guys were really really good,’ and they’re like, ‘(in robotic voice) Thank you. I really appreciate that.’

A : Form answer.

K : But it’s amazing when you do meet that band that are just, like, regular people. And they just like music and they just want to talk and, I dunno, that’s just the way we are. And of course everyone gets in bad moods. Like when you hear some people who are like, ‘Yeah that band, they’re a bunch of assholes.’ Well when you’re on tour friggin’, getting no sleep half the time, of course you’re gonna be in bad moods sometimes. So I never really hold it against people. But if I’m talking to someone and they pee their pants in front of me, I’ll punch them in the groin.

H : Haha.

K : That’s not right. Uh huh. You know what I’m saying?

A : I got it. Uh, how’s the…

Continue to Part 2.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : May 21, 2004.