Today we have a very special episode that features our very first phone interview with Mr. Chris McCaughan of The Lawrence Arms and (more importantly) Sundowner. Chris is as much an amazing sex symbol as he is a musician and if it weren't for the fact that he was in Chicago and not face to face, I would have been drooling this entire interview. Luckily he was some thousands of miles away so we were able to discuss Sundowner, touring, Jenny Choi and the overwhelming Lawrence Arms breakup rumors.
Along with all that fun jibba jabba we have some music from Sundowner and some other odds and ends. Though we continue our two week draught with no give-a-ways (sorry Toby is moving and he's a tool…seriously), but this interview should be able to stand alone for you cheap bastards. Enjoy, and always remember to hit us up at SoundSceneRevolution@gmail.com, on MySpace or on the comments section. Enjoy and remember it's true, this man has no dick.
-Rich
Transcript (auto-generated, may contain errors; songs left out)
♪ music ♪
So we're going to continue to run one more week the Riverboat Gamblers and Fake Problems Contest because SoundGuy Nairman wants to go watch the Warriors game. So he's phoning this one in, which is ironically fitting that we actually phoned in the interview this week. We have a phone interview with Chicago's very own Chris McHoffin-Ninstein from the Lawrence Arms and Sundowner. And we talk about some very important topics from how he started Sundowner to his inspiration for writing songs to living at home with his mom and dad, even to the now rumored Lawrence Arms breakups, which are around the interweb, which you may be familiar with if you're on our website, which is 80% of the internet is our website.
So you've probably seen us. Anyhow, so we're going to start off by playing some Sundowner tracks off of the Sundowner LP available on Red Scare Records. The first track we're going to play here is called Midsummer Classic. I hope you enjoy it, and we'll be back with more interviews in a bit.
♪ song played ♪
How did you get started with doing Sundowner as a solo project?
Okay, that's cool. Makes sense. Now for the album, you got Neil, who you obviously work with on the Lawrence Arms. How did you start working with Jenny Cho? Well, I... When you play live, does she come play with you or is it just you solo? So far, it's just been me solo. So we're doing a show here in Chicago on May 18th.
Definitely. Now, is it... You ever plan to do kind of like full nationwide touring under Sundowner? It's kind of, you know... With this first tour I'm going to do, it's a little bit... Yeah, that's all... Yeah. I imagine it could be kind of hard to do that all by yourself, so... I understand. Well, yeah. It's like, you know, come out... That's a pretty good way to sell it, man. I understand. I mean, it's got to be... It's definitely got to be a change of pace. How is it performing? Well, it's like, I'm used to touring, you know, with my best friends and playing music and... How is it performing live as a solo act? Is it, like, weird being up there with, like, out, you know, anybody else behind you? Well, like, it just ends up being...
Ask, when you were recording or at least writing part of this album, you were living at home with your parents, right? Yeah, I definitely wrote a bunch of these songs when I was still living at home. I kind of lived at home on and off.
That's cool. How is it, uh, living at home? Is it, like, at all difficult? I mean, I imagine, because you're on tour, it's kind of hard to keep a solid residency otherwise, but... Yeah, I mean, it's been a good thing for me, and, you know, but... Yeah, that's got to be good. Did you have to have a curfew or anything when you lived there? No, no, no, no. Oh, that's... That's good. That would have been a little bit sad otherwise. Yeah, that would have been tough if I'd, like, sneak it out of my folks' house at age 26. You know, out of the bar and get a drink. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure it's happened, but luckily, not in this case. Yeah. So, I want to talk to you a little bit about the record. I mean, the first thing that a lot of people notice is there are two tracks on there that are Lawrence Arms tracks, or more Lawrence Arms tracks.
um the one thing that stood out to me is uh 100 resolutions was kind of it was put on the cocktails and dreams which was a b-sides and rarities yeah you used it again on this is it like was that one of those ones that you kind of wanted to put on an album but you just couldn't find a place for it originally or you know i don't know that was a line you know well yeah people seem to be pretty fond of it so it works out pretty well now when you did uh you did my boatless booze cruise which was originally uh a brandon song correct yeah now or brendan rather excuse me um what inspired you to do that and were you at all worried like people would be kind of like pissed that you were i don't know i don't want to say stealing his song but you know people could view shit yeah i mean you know i'll crack my mind for a second but the idea like do you play that when you do it live or do you have yeah i have to play live yeah yeah it's really it's really fun man it's really fun i know uh we're gonna take a quick break there to uh play you some more music from sundowner uh today this part we're uh gonna play the track that is uh actually originally from the lawrence arms it's called 100 resolutions it originally appeared on the cocktails and dreams uh lp which is a collection of rarities and b-sides and has since become kind of a lawrence arms classic and as such has made the transition to sundowner and has become chris's uh uh free bird if you will that appears on every album uh minus the minute guitar solo so uh check it out and we'll be back for one last track at the end after the
♪ song played ♪
i was gonna say now with your experience live do you have kind of like uh out of the album or the material that you have is sundown or do you have like a set on that or do you kind of switch it around every night um you know i kind of just feel it absolutely absolutely uh do you got a favorite song off the album to play live particularly um well you know and i play it out it was yeah so i was gonna ask you actually you played the ukulele on midsummer classics yeah i did what now where that's really kind of an unusual instrument i don't even know if anyone can teach it anymore where did that idea come from well uh my dad grew up in whole course and translated pretty well i don't know i gotta find some of those guys i can't imagine i just doesn't seem like the kind of instrument anyone invests i mean you know a lot of people who have one but not many people who know you know how to play one just kind of yeah that's true wow fuck you learn something every day yeah so uh i want to ask one of the themes i mean it comes up in a lot of like lawrence arms and definitely appears on this album too is like not i don't want to like say drinking as a whole but like alcohol seems to be kind of one of the reoccurring themes and i was just curious like how prominent is it really like in your life awesome yeah it works out funny that way sometimes you know yeah yeah when it comes to so i wanted to ask uh how did you get hooked up with i mean i know you guys are pretty good friends with toby is that just how uh this came to be on red scare yeah i mean basically i mean by you know you know it doesn't sound like screeching weasel so yeah not exactly oh i mean not not that that's bad no not everybody likes screeching weasel so it's okay but uh anyhow um so i wanted to ask i just found this out actually incidentally cause toby neglected to mention it he is moving to chicago right like right now when now he's in route yeah he's in he's traveling at the moment which i got it he's driving up that's fucking ridiculous so uh you guys are all gonna be like really close right now so you excited for that yeah i am but uh it's a little bummed that's good cause he's seeing you i'm sure he's excited about and he has to realize you know it's gotta get a gotta put a little downer on him on that so yeah wow i was gonna go somewhere with this and i totally blanked um anyhow all good so uh i wanted to ask i want to touch on this real briefly because it it's kind of going to be an inevitable question um the internet um i'm sure you've heard of it yeah it's uh on the computers uh a lot of people have been talking about lawrence arms rumors about lawrence arms breaking up and all of that do you got anything to say on that they understand or not you know at least people are talking honestly you know it's like talk about how great it was to be in a band makes sense um on that you guys are going to be playing in july you guys are going to be doing asian man's 11th anniversary correct yes yes we are that's true uh are you guys just going to come straight down for that or is that going to be like yeah i was coming up oh that's cool um that's cool now is that just one of those things where you kind of were talking to mike park about it and he was like yeah no mike asked us to do it i don't know that'll probably be the a's will be stunned that their attendance will double with the extra people that this brings in i was gonna you know it's one of those things you read about and you're like do people know who the a's are because that may not be such a good idea but yeah it'll be a good time i'm sure all right um is there is there we're gonna wrap this up i think is there anything else you would like to add anything you'd like to plug shows fantastic i'm sure they will all right well i want to definitely thank you for taking the time to do the interview with us today chris so no worries man my pleasure all right man well i'm watching tv in between this and i just saw nick cage taking his shit with a phone in his hand so that can only mean one thing we've reached the end of another exciting week of interviews i hope you guys enjoyed it we'll be back in the uh we hopefully will keep the uh the updates coming and we'll be back in the next couple of weeks we got some exciting people i'm talking to so it should be a good time uh we're gonna leave you with one last track from sundowner it's called this war is noise it's good track and uh be sure to enter the riverboat gambler fake problems contest that we're still running we're gonna wrap that up next week but we're kind of busy so uh we'll get to it we promise promise or we'll just keep all that shit and tell you we gave it away to someone else who doesn't really exist which we've never done ever all right uh enjoy it and uh this is this war is noise and we'll see you guys next week
