Josh: I grew up in the Encinitas area, so I’m very familiar with San Diego. The first record store I ever visited was Lou’s Records in Leucadia. As for favorite food, I’d have to say any Roberto’s will do.

Nick: El Indio has to be my absolute favorite place to eat in San Diego hands down. Some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had in my life. As far as record shops go, there are a lot I like to hit, but the absolute best of the best is Beatbox Records. The owner Bernie really knows how to curate a shop. He pays attention to what his clientele likes. Everytime I come in, he’s like “Oh man…you would like this.” and I usually always do. I always make sure to have at least $200 put aside whenever I’m in town for that shop alone. Also, honorable mentions to Vinyl Junkies, and Folk Arts Rare Records… plus their sister shop/bar Part Time Lover – a place I’ve had the pleasure of DJing at many times.

LSD: You’ve been playing increasingly larger venues, including some significant festivals and headlining bigger rooms. We have followed you from The Whistle Stop to Soda Bar and Casbah, to The Belasco (with porno for Pyros) to Desert Daze and Hipnosis in Mexico City. How has playing these larger spaces impacted your live sound and stage presence? Do you find yourselves approaching the performance differently, and what’s been the most rewarding aspect of this growth?

Nikki: We love a big stage! I think with 5 weirdos in the band now, we can take up more room. Physically and sonically! Give us a big outdoor stage and we’ll probably get some people moshing. I’ve seen some crazy crowds over the years. It’s always a trip to play a big space, but so so fun!

 

Josh: Yeah, it’s definitely hard for us to believe some of the stages we’ve had the honor of playing. Big festival stages can feel a bit surreal at times, so we try to stay grounded by setting up close to each other and making an extra effort to connect with the audience—despite the barriers, photo pits, and all. It’s always interesting to see how crowds react to different songs, and that feedback definitely plays a role in our writing process. At the end of the day, the ultimate goal has always been to put on a fun, memorable performance.

Jon: As cliche as it may sound, I really do feel like we all approach “the show” the same, despite the size it may be.  Sure, there are definitely built-in production differences that come with playing larger places, but I feel like our attitude remains the same if it’s 15 people or 1500.  I mean, the most rewarding aspect of this growth is simply being given the opportunity to perform for so many people in a singular moment.  Playing some of those larger fests and bigger rooms always give you this jolt of gratitude that’s hard to ignore.  True blessing.

LSD: With a discography as rich and evolving as yours, how do you approach putting together a setlist that satisfies both long-time fans craving older tracks and those eager to hear material from your latest album, Trash Classic?

Nikki: We’ll definitely be playing new Trash Classic material on these next tours. We’ve been stoked to share the songs live and see what people think! Hope we can get everyone dancing with these new ones! But we’ll always keep the old favorites around too. It should be a good mix!

 

Josh: We try to strike a healthy balance between new and older material. Lately, we’ve brought back some older songs and reworked them to better reflect our current sound. At the end of the day, we just play what feels right to us and hope people connect with it.

Jon: I feel like there’s always the intent to sprinkle in a decent amount of the old with the new.  It becomes this challenge of how to best curate the older material with the new in a way that kind of marries the two worlds.  Also, Nick is always so on point with logging our sets from each show so we have a solid idea of what we played in each city so when we return we aren’t hitting too similar a set from last time.

Nick: I think it’s safe to say that we always do our best to play whatever seems the most true to us at a specific moment in time, but of course, we know it’s important to sprinkle old material in as well for the fans, and of course ourselves – because playing old stuff is fun! We are definitely doing our best to stay true to playing mostly new stuff though, because it’s what we are currently most connected to – and we hope our fans feel the same way.

LSD: Lastly, we have to ask, are there any San Diego-based artists or bands that have caught your attention? Anyone you’d love to collaborate with, or even just share a bill with, in the future?  

Nikki: I mean, Earthless is one band I think we’d all be stoked to play with or jam with someday. And our buddies The Schizophonics are the best, we like to play together when we’re all in town. I know The Locust aren’t active anymore but that’s one of the loudest bands I’ve ever seen in my life, a show with them would be insane!

 

Josh: We were lucky enough to record our album MONSTERS EATING PEOPLE with Mike Kamoo at Earthling Studios in El Cajon. It felt like a collaboration that was a long time coming. Earthling was actually the first studio I ever recorded in, back when I was a wee lad. Mike’s band, the Stereotypes, have been putting out music for over 20 years now—and it’s exceptional!