Who's heard evening before? Yes? No? Maybe 'heard of' but not know anything about? You're not alone. evening - the word alone conjures up all manner of thoughts. Dark, glamourous, maybe spooky even… This band is as diverse as the adjectives that can be used to describe their moniker. The San Francisco collective creates such startlingly odd yet beautiful music, it's both a shame, and no real wonder why they haven't completely cracked the consciousness of the musical world uniformly across the continent. Part of a bustling artistic community in San Fran, they took time out after their soundcheck in Vancouver to talk about their music, their city, and the world.

It was a long and casual conversation that began with just me and bassist Zach Brewer, but slowly, other members of the band appeared and joined in. The first thing that happened was, as I set up my things and Brewer jokingly 'warmed up' for the interview with a few warbling vocal exercises, a mysterious voice echoed down to us from a balcony of the building across the alleyway, singing back to him. We found this to be of utmost hilarity, and it actually happened a couple more times throughout our talk. But that's really an aside.

As we settle down to start talking, I point to the building that the voice issued from and mention that it used to be the location of one of Vancouver's live music venues, the dearly-missed Starfish Room. Brewer nods with a knowing tolerance and mentions, "Now it's an apartment… what is it about the like the Vancouver… it seems like there's a lot more apartment buildings, like there's a lot of those cranes, and there's like all these brand new high rise apartment buildings." He noticed this going on, the development of the city. As we began to discuss, he had witnessed a similar happening in his own city not so long ago that started to tear up the arts scene. We had been joined by this time by guitarist Lee Burick when I brought up the Death To The Arts March in 1999, that took over a main street in the city, an event that the band members were largely responsible for commandeering. "Kind of in the realm of political, when the whole dot-com thing was booming in San Francisco, we felt that, you know, because there was a lack of rehearsal space that close to five hundred bands broke up. And um, our rent went from 2500 [dollars] to 5000 [dollars] a month. A lot of good venues were getting shut down because the yuppies were moving in to industrial neighbourhoods where there's warehouses and a lot got shut down and it kind of hurt the scene. A lot of non-profit organizations, I think fifty per cent of non-profits in the city at the time got shut down," explains Burick.

Brewer continues, "If you were like a band around that time… like every practice space had a waiting list of bands on it. There was no place to practice. Nobody had any money either because the yuppies came in and fucking took everything over. There was a lot of unlawful evictions. A lot of things going on." That reminds Burick of something. "Yeah like an old lady, she's like eighty years old being evicted. She's lived in her house for forty years, because the owner wants to raise the rent. It was like point-zero-five per cent housing available for populace… It was a pretty epic time."

With there being so much activism against the corporate takeover, I ask if things had actually changed since that time. Brewer weighs in first, "Yeah…It plays into our music too. Like sort of, we're all now living in the wake of that, you know, what like virtually changed the city, the political and social landscape of the city." Burick sums up with, "I often use the analogy that it's like a forest fire. It came in and kind of destroyed everything but now all the bands are springing up… it's cool."

This was around the same time that they put together the Stain Gallery. Brewer had lived there but has since moved out. "It's a house above a Burger King… raging after-hours parties, man," he says. Burick explains what the place is about. "It's a loft. It's a cool spot though. Um. I think it's been influential in some ways as far as like, we had, kind of art shows and it's a good place for people to convene. I mean, half the time it's just partying, but the other half the time actually people do have conversations about what's going on politically… we recorded our first EP there and probably will do a second one there as well… there's been like fifty people that have lived there in the last six years or so. And it used to be more artistically-based. We had a lot of painters living there, and pretty much made a shift over to musicians now. It's all people playing music in different bands there. So it's cool, it's inspirational, we bounce ideas off each other."

evening has provided an environment for artists to get together, so we begin to discuss the scene itself down there, how supportive it is of its musicians, and the band's progress. Burick states that San Fran is a politically-saavy city. Brewer elaborates, "Musically though, it's like pretty separated. Like in San Francisco, you know… one of the things I love about the music scene and also the thing that makes it harder to like go and see a show with all of your friends is that everybody's just… in San Francisco there's like all these types of music, and they're all pretty much separated. And not a lot of bands really cross genres I guess… Which is, which is really cool, but at the same time there's not… I mean I get a sense of like a music scene from the bands that we're friends with, like our tight friends, you know. But as far as there being like one musical vision in San Francisco, I don't think it exists." Burick has a final comment on the matter with, "Yeah not like the Seattle scene or sort of the New York scene that has a similar aesthetic. A lot of the bands do anyways."

Being in that environment certainly has its share of foibles, as well as victories, and the band is quick to point out those who have helped them along the way. "We haven't had a lot of support!" Burick exclaims with a laugh. Brewer agrees before continuing, "I'd say the most, aside from our friends, like our fan base who are also our friends, who show up to every show and make a lot of noise and everything, um the owner of our record label, Chris [Applegren] from Lookout, has really supported us a lot. We never really considered it as like an option for releasing the record on that label, and then we realized that Chris has been to like almost every one of our shows and he's a friend of ours and we all, you know trust him a lot so we just kind of decided to go with that." The attitude that Lookout had towards signing evening is the type of attitude that much of the world needs to adopt to allow this music to be heard more. Burick says, "[Lookout] wanted to sort of expand on their roster and get out of the kind of genre that they built so they kind of used us as a guinea pig."

I'd mentioned how challenging it had been to properly research them past their own official website, what with the general lack of press, as well as the simple band name. Brewer says, "If you put our name into a Google search, I think something like, honestly like three million websites come up and it's all newspapers like, 'an evening of…the black and white fall…. And… an evening of…Remembrance and compassion.'" They don't see that challenge as much of a problem when it comes to people finding out about them though. Brewer continues, "Most of the people that are into our music are pretty like web-saavy, you know. If I can use that word 'web saavy.' Like, you know you would type 'evening,' 'San Francisco,' uhhh you know… 'San Francisco,' 'homosexuals,' um, no I mean, it doesn't really affect us all that much, except when we're trying to find press about ourselves. And also there just isn't a whole lot of press. I mean there is some, but it's mostly just around San Francisco, ordinarily."

Of course, now we have to talk about press for a while. Brewer doesn't spend much time and energy reading over the band's press. "… I've read some of them, but I try not to. In my experience with reviews and reviewers… knowing people that often review music. So much more goes into it personally than the actual music itself or even the… if you're having a bad day when you hear a certain record, you know… this record makes you think about this, it's sad [said in sad voice]." Brewer turns to Burick and asks what he thinks about reading their own press.

"Uh, I do [pay attention to press]. I think you can learn something from them. I don't really care what people say, I mean, we do what we do. But they might say something that sparks… Particularly if they focus on a certain thing over and over. Then if you see a pattern you can either take it or leave it. We tend to take it in." When asked what it is that they look to do with their music, regardless of what the press seems to want to see, Burick is the first to chime in. "I think originality is a big factor. There are so many bands that kind of just jump on the bandwagon, you know, kind of copycat each other. For better or worse, I think we've come to have our own sound. Yeah. I mean that's part of it anyway."

Politics comes up here, but the guys mention that, while the state of the world concerns them, they don't let a lot of the major world events weasel into their music. They focus more on smaller issues. Brewer speaks up, "Well everything's all fucked since World War II. Uh I don't know, I've been trying to educate myself lately more and more on what's going on in the Middle East, you know. The history of the conflict there and the Bolsheviks. But I mean that's just me. I mean, not too much of that goes into our music. It's more like an every day American level I think that really sort of goes into the lyrics and songs. Like sort of the blandness of every day life and turning a blind eye towards the troubles in the world." Burick expands a bit on trying to change the world. "Well sometimes it feels kind of futile, you know. I mean that, ultimately… I think a couple of us maybe that are that are hoping to use, if we gain any sort of status, to do what we can to help change. You know. I know I am." I ask them in that case, how valid musicians are as transmitters of thoughts and information in today's world. Burick is still on a roll with this one. "I think it's totally valid. I mean, I think a lot of people are deeply moved by music, and that's actually another big thing is if you can move somebody in some way you know. It's kind of like almost egotistical in a way of a musician, or an actor or something, 'cause… we sort of have this thing where you're captured and you become timeless once you make a record. It's just, it's always gonna be there and if thirty years down the road some fourteen year old kid is like struggling, and he listens to your record and is inspired or whatever, then that's like a total payoff."

Brewer finishes the sentiment with, "And for me, like I don't know about you, but I've always felt that I could never really, in that sense, move anybody other than by playing music."

Simple desires and simple pleasures for guys who are still working the day-job circuit while maintaining the band. Their collective experiences at work and in daily life have been drawn from to inspire what they do in their music. Burick says, "I've actually, I get a lot out of my job. I worked at a youth hostel for four years, and I met a lot of foreigners that gave me different perspectives from different parts of the world. And now I'm a cab driver so it definitely opens me up to people I wouldn't normally be stuck in a little car forced to have conversations with. It's really interesting."

Brewer discusses his own job. "As a bartender at a jazz club, I get exposed to a lot of music and a lot of ways of listening to or looking at music that I normally don't. Like I'm not really much of a jazz guy but I always inevitably pick something up from that I guess. And then also just like being a bartender is like a pretty funny job to have…It's like a breeding ground for good material."

We finish the interview off talking about gear. This is a band that uses a lot of bizarre noises to set their music well apart from the crowd, giving them a unique flavour. I ask them what they like to use to achieve their interesting sounds. Brewer quickly says, "Old synthesizers." Burick goes further. "Yeah, he and the singer [Matt Rist] like to get old synths… [guitarist] Patrik [Sklenar] has like a 1961 computer box dial to get all his tones and I use an Echoplex which is like an old film tape reel. And we get some crazy stuff. And [drummer] Brian [Kim] puts little microphones on all his drum heads and sends them through like an effects processor so he like puts delay on his drums and stuff."

Burick's ending comment ties together their love of music, experimentation, and their regular San Franciscan lives beautifully.

"It's like the poor boy way of making electronic music."

Give evening a whirl on CordMag's audio player.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : June 7, 2004.