What struck the most immediately about On The Speakers, as I sat down with them mere moments before their set time in Vancouver last May, was that this is a group of guys who seem very close-knit and very easy-going. They lay around easily on the couches in the back room, laughed away, made silly jokes, and were really laisez-faire about every topic we touched on. Even when I broke down into personal-question mode at the very beginning of our chat, it didn't even seem to phase singer Ian Sefchick, nor perturb the rest of the band (guitarist Scott Ford, bassist Dan Horne, and drummer Anthony Improgo) that I essentially left them out of the first few minutes of the interview.

What was it that I asked about? Just a quick yap about Sefchick's former band, Creeper Lagoon, which is still brought up in every single article I read on the band (including this one dammit!). Although usually, when it's brought up, it's to make a direct comparison between On The Speakers and Creeper Lagoon. Well, listen up, folks. They're two very distinct bands. In fact, Creeper Lagoon is still going on, but that's not the point. It's not like On The Speakers is making any huge attempt to avoid all references to the past. Even their own bio states the singer's musical lineage boldly. Sefchick chimes in first. "It gets people to the shows, you know. We had kind of somewhat… not that big of a fan base, but… I heard Sharky [Laguana, a founding member of CL]… he's still doing Creeper Lagoon… and he went on tour. He toured with the band after I left it, and apparently he'd go and fill up 400-seaters and stuff like that, so the name has something to do with it. And when we started, we'd get like maybe like five people at a pretty decent-sized show that are coming because of that. And only in like San Francisco we had a decent, probably the biggest built-in following, and then LA we had some people but that's about all. But for the most part of it, I think people are just coming to see the show and see the band we're opening for. Now we're just starting on this leg after two months around the United States, so we'll see what we did, we'll see if we picked up some extra people."

That takes care of that topic nicely. The tale of how the band members came together to form On The Speakers is pretty interesting though. I'd only heard it alluded to in a couple places, so I decided to get the full scoop from them while I had the chance. Sefchick explains, "Anthony was moving up here. I had already met Scott in the moving… Anthony was coming up, moving out of his truck, and Scott was driving with him. And Dan happened to be here in LA visiting some friends and they wrecked into each other. It kind of was a fender-bender, but then there was this big angry kind of law suit vibe and mentality going on after they were like, yelling at each other. And Anthony was talking in Philippino a hundred miles an hour and Dan was yelling and swearing at him… but eventually through all this weird legal stuff, Anthony found out that Dan played bass, and he was a musician and he didn't have any money. We had planned this gig with this other bass player, and it was like a month from the time of that accident happening. And we weren't doing good with that old bass player so eventually… well the long and the short of it is we asked Dan to play." Horne adds, "That's just good karma!"

It certainly seemed like fate, and it's proven to be a good match. Ford mentions that it was by necessity that they all decided that despite having been in a car accident, they should just really go off and be a band. And following them joining forces, they had themselves a month-long residency to test run their material, much like their tourmates for that evening, the French Kicks. Ford claims that the audience was comprised mostly of friends who filled the smallish Spaceland room for the free Monday night residency, but that there were also quite a few curious newcomers. Sefchick adds, "Spaceland got its own built in audience too." It was a good time for them to help find their sound, a feat Ford says they haven't yet fully mastered, even though they've already released an EP. "Our music's a little dyslexic right now. It's kind of interesting I guess," he says. Sefchick continues, "The EP we made really early and we were still trying to figure out what we were doing, but I think we'll find our sound on this next record. Or find a sound. We need to nail down a sound."

Living all in the same house might afford them the time together to do just that. Or maybe it'll just spawn a ton of arguments. When asked how living together benefits the band, Ford is the first to speak up with a laugh. "I don't know man, we thought it was gonna be cool. We thought it was gonna help us. And then we got on the road, and I don't think it really mattered whether we were living together or not, like the way we acted towards each other." Improgo mentions that when they're all under the same roof, they don't see much of each other. Ford then goes on, "But I don't know, I think it helped us. We all work together, and made it work for each other. We got along great. There were really no problems ever with four of us living together." Improgo quips, "No not living together, we had really no problems, except Dan's like messy." Horne, who was mostly pretty quiet throughout the interview, pipes up now, "Yeah but Scott's clean." Well, that makes up for it I guess. Improgo is on a roll now though, "And Ian's always in his room fixing amps. Transistors everywhere." Well now they're all airing their dirty laundry. You just can't bring up stuff like this in an interview or things just get horrifically off-track. But amusingly so.

It's Sefchick's turn to toss in his two cents. "Dan one time, one of the biggest arguments… well it's not that big, but… Dan like, for some reason just went to Scott because the cheese wasn't wrapped up good, and he was like, 'Scott, you didn't wrap the cheese up!' and this was like after Dan will make like a full ten-course meal and just leave everything out." Horne exclaims in his own defense, "Yeah but I don't waste perfectly good cheese!" Then Sefchick says something about one of the guys forgetting to give the household cat its tick 'stuff'. Horne clarifies that it's flea 'stuff,' and Ford describes how eaten up their legs get from the pests. Sefchick says he doesn't get bothered by fleas in other houses, so Horne says, "Somehow you pissed off the fleas in our house."

Now everything's completely out of whack, and I lose control of the situation for a few minutes while the entire band turns on me and starts asking questions about Vancouver, CordMag, my best interview, and where I heard of On The Speakers. After fielding their queries for a while, I manage to wrangle them back to their places and continue the interview. We get back to discussing the recording.

Despite the fact that fans on the band's message board were eager to hear recorded material before the EP came out, the guys claim that was not a driving factor in them releasing an EP instead of waiting to just release a full-length disc. Ford says, "We ourselves were interested in getting in there and putting something down on tape and just capturing what it was… We were talking about earlier that we haven't really found the sound but that EP just captures what it was right there in the first six months that we were together and there wasn't really a rush to get it out. Just more our own drive to get it out… We paid for the EP ourselves and… well kinda. We put it out the first thousand copies ourselves and stuff, and so we really couldn't afford to put out a full-length record if we wanted to I don't think."

There was a review that I had read that implied that the band's music would be right at home on the soundtrack to The OC, or some other similar trendy drama. In this case, it seemed to be intended mostly as a compliment, with the band's rich and sunny rock sound being a fitting track for a 'get-it-on scene.' Unintentionally, this brings Creeper Lagoon back into the fold. The On The Speakers guys had seen that same article I'd quoted and informed me that it was a big Creeper Lagoon fan who had found a tactfully snide way of basically saying that the new project had gotten mainstream. Ford says, "We're like glam-rock compared to Creeper so… we're too polished." Improgo elaborates, "All these critics that write negative stuff are all huge Creeper Lagoon fans… But the critics who haven't heard of anything, they write good stuff about it."

I ask if it's a case of Creeper fans throwing a 'why doesn't this sound the same?' blanket over On The Speakers. Sefchick says, "Even in Creeper Lagoon there was like guys who like… Sharky's songs were their favourite. And they're like the ultra-nerdy kinda like underground music, and they were all about the 'old Creeper.' And that used to drive me crazy, that was probably one of the reasons it blew up when it did." Cutting the tension, Horne interjects, "It's hard living up to the soccer-mom rock image, you know?" Everyone laughs at that, and Ford adds, "That's what Creeper was, soccer-mom rock. And... What's this? What are we like? Kinda like… right-out-of-college student." Improgo yells out, "OC soundtrack!" which starts everyone going on that show now. Sefchick comments that they'd make a lot of money if they could swing that soundtrack, and then they dissolve into a discussion on being lumped into the same category as Rooney, and how Death Cab For Cutie was played and name-dropped into an episode once, by 'the dad' of all people.

Naturally then, I wonder out loud if they have any intent for commercial success with this project, or if it's just what they want to do, and if it makes it, then great, it's an added bonus. Ford says, "We'd be lying if we said we never wanted to be famous or have money... If we can avoid getting day jobs, I think that's our main goal." Sefchick somehow disagrees. "That's not even my main goal anymore… I think [getting a day job] would take a lot of pressure off 'cause I'm already… you know, even though this band started out an ideal lo-fi... we were just gonna make music for music. But now already, the feeling of having to make good songs and to make songs more… because we wanna be successful and have careers in music is creeping in and starting to like crank the dials. So I'll always revert back to my day job in a way." He continues to muse about how being a bartender would be perfect because of the flexibility and the amount of contacts to be made, and then continues to discuss how they really only make enough money to sustain themselves on the road right now.

Too soon, we get interrupted appropriately by the show's promoter because they want to get On The Speakers on stage. As we wrap up and gather ourselves to head back into the main room, I begin to get a glimpse of their passion for this project, and how much the little things mean to them. Ford says, "This is the first band I've ever been in and I've been so excited about all the elements about it and it's been interesting to actually have it. Putting something out there and having people react to it at all is fun. So I appreciate anybody that's into it, taking time out for our music for sure." Horne was just relieved to have made it across the border into Canada without incident. And as the rest of the guys are already shuffling out of the room, Improgo hangs back with me to thank me for talking to them, and that it was fun because it had only been the second time they'd had a full talk like that.

They seem to be taking everything perfectly in stride, and are fully aware that, being such a new band, they're only starting down a long road of hard work to get to wherever they end up getting. They aren't bothered by not being overnight successes, and even the minor nits they have with past references roll off their backs easily. With these solid, happy-go-lucky attitudes, they're poised to end up somewhere cool - maybe even have their name uttered by a nighttime teen drama actor. But even if that doesn't happen, something tells me they'll still be perfectly happy as long as they are able to make music together.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : June 24, 2004.