ThrdCoast: So when did you start making music? How did dating turn into music and a band?
JC: Let’s see, we were living in a studio.
GN: I was making music, I was in a band.
JC: He’s always made music.
GN: I’ve been making music my whole life, I was in a band with really unreliable people, and I just got fed up and started making music on my own. And one day, I had a track, and was just like, “hey, you should sing on it.” Wait, no, it was at karaoke night! We did karaoke together–
JC: Dude, yeah!
GN: And one of her friends was like “you guys should be in a band together!”
JC: No, strangers!
GN: Maybe it was strangers?
JC: There was that weird couple, remember? We did a Talking Heads song, and that weird couple came up to us, and said “you should be a baaand!”
GN: I remember that, but I also remember doing Salt-n-Peppa, and I remember Monica coming up and pointed at us like “you two!” And to me that just never got out of my head, and I had a track, and asked if you wanted to do it with me.
JC: Yeah you had stopped doing your band stuff with people, and you bought a drum machine, and we had a garage at this house… it was actually really cool, it was a detached garage. And we started making music in there. And then you got the TR8, and a Casio… and, like, a memory man, and I was like, “what the fuck are you doing?”
Laughter
JC: And the neighbors were complaining.
GN: We got several noise complaints from the city.
JC: Oh my god, yes.
GN: ‘Cause of me.
JC: And then you brought home a Volca Beats, and you were like, “here.” And I was like, “huh,” and then got hooked, and did a rip off of an E-40 beat. And that’s kinda where it started.
ThrdCoast: How long ago was that?
GN: It was five… no it’s been almost seven years now.
ThrdCoast: So when did you guys leave Portland?
GN: 2013.
JC: I had a really good job, and then Juicy decided to close all their fucking stores, and I lost my job without 30 days notice and I kind of went insane–just lost all my stability.
ThrdCoast: They didn’t even give you notice?
JC: It was so fucked. It was even more shitty because like I’ve worked retail most of my life. And you get that signage, like “50% off!” And I open this box and it was like “50, 60, 70, 80% off” and I thought thats not normal, something’s up. But then the vice president of the company came to my store and said, “Your guys’ business has been so great, we’re gonna revamp your store next year, yada yada yada” and then within weeks, we were nothing. It was awful. But I’m also grateful, because it pushed me to do something different with my life. I turned around and got my severance package and bought a bunch of fucking gear with it.
GN: I sold all my old gear and bought new gear, which was ironic because I ended up buying the same gear over again later.
JC: It happens. And then we just decided to just start doing music.
GN: Kissed Portland goodbye, sort of just hopped in the car.
JC: We left Portland–they were trying to raise our rent, it was like triple what it used to be.
ThrdCoast: What was your music like at that time? Like after Juicy, you just bought all this new gear.
GN: Oh man, it was weird. There was a lot of excitement. Also prior to that, I had a lot of dental issues that I was dealing with, and that also informed the music that I was making before we started. I did this whole experimental record straight to cassette tape, it was much more lo-fi noisy.
ThrdCoast: Were you able to get out a lot of that post-Juicy aggression on your music?
JC: Oh I’m sure.
GN: I feel like the post-juicy aggression is still going.
Laughter
JC: It was interesting, it was a new thing for me. I grew up doing music, playing the violin. I started in the first grade, and was in orchestra through high school. And it’s such a beautiful instrument, but I never felt that I could write with it, it’s so hard. Like, oh my god, no. I still have my violin, and I think that it’s beautiful, but writing with it is difficult.
ThrdCoast: The violin lessons were just something you had to do after school some days.
JC: Yeah, exactly. I loved music, I was surrounded by it. I’m a big time theater nerd, I grew up in a theater, did musicals. All of that. And I also was a dancer. So music, without it…
GN: All of these things are just so funny to hear, because when we play live–you would think these things would inform what we’re doing…
Laughter
GN: They’re gonna be like, “oh sick, I’m gonna go check this out!” And either they’re going to be terrified, or really into it.
ThrdCoast: I was enjoying watching some of your live sets online, I was like, “yeah I can get behind this.”
GN: Oh sick!
JC: It’s been different. It’s been really fun, a really fun learning experience for me.