Mitchell: We haven't done a whole lot. The catalog is pretty small with only a few CDs and a few seven-inches. Ummm...Hate Fuck Trio was our flagship band. With them we did a couple of seven-inches and a couple of CDs. We put out the first Delusions release of what was, I think, their two best songs...ever.

What else? Dork Weed; Blast Off Heads, which was a friend's band from Denver. It was all either Denver bands or Seattle stuff that I was involved in or were friends with.

Quentin: Hominy was another one. Remember a band called Sycophant?

Yes.

Quentin: We were really close to signing them, but that never worked out.

Mitchell: Well, the reality of that we were working out a deal with Sycophant, but they wanted more than we were able to give them or willing to give them. I loved those guys--still love those guys--but their sound was just very different from what we were doing. We were doing very cheeky, off-beat stuff and they were a little too rock star-ish.

Yeah, they seemed to have a bit much drama on the working end of their music.

Mitchell: Gavin, the singer, is a great guy and I really like him. He's a very smart guy who had a very specific philosophy about how he wanted things done that became evident when we started working with them. I told him that if we were going to put out his record and if they wanted all this money, which was just an unheard of amount, then he was going to come in to the offices and work on the record and learn the record business for both his benefit and for ours. Learn it so you can get a better deal next time, because the more you know the better off you'll be next time around.

Having run a record label for five years, and having spent a fair amount of time in and out of bands, what keeps you motivated and what are you looking to get out of it all? Knowing the effort you have to put into this business to get the bare minimum back in return, what keeps you interested? Do you have specific steps or goals you're trying to achieve?

Quentin: That's a good question.

Curtis: But not the easiest one to answer.

Well, it goes back to a few weeks ago when Quentin and I were talking about a band as a business model. When you sit down and do the math, it's simply fucking ludicrous to start a band with the hopes of achieving something of economical value.

Quentin: Right. You're just basically shoveling money into a fire.

Well, having goals is a bit irrelevant--you really don't need them. I guess what I'm after here is I'm interested in knowing what the is impetus that keeps the band going.

Quentin: As is the case with everything, there are several different layers of answers here. Broadly, the three of us are very good friends. We have fun playing music and we love playing music together.

Curtis: And what we're doing is interesting to us.

Quentin: Yeah. So the main goal is to keep things fun. Stemming from that, I think it would be wonderful if The Tremens were a self-sufficient band that we could work on full time. But that's not really a goal, because it's not a very feasible thing to accomplish with the type of music we're playing.

Mitchell: We recognize that the type of music we play is not what is popular here in Seattle.

Maybe you should become a tribute band. They're quite the cash cow these days.

Mitchell: Yeah, a tribute or an indie rock band. We have different musical aspirations. We're inspired by things other than the musicians in Seattle, or at least in the music scene as we know it here. Bands like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill are great and I like them a lot. However, they're nothing like what we want to do, and so we're not inspired by them as the foundation for our music. We don't aspire to fit in whatsoever, and with that I think we recognize that we've got our work cut out for us if we want to make a success out of what we want to do.

Quentin: I think we would do better as a band in a city like New York where the scene is so much more diversified. Here it's almost a necessity to have a sense of humor about it.

One thing that I hear from people all the time about the band and our music is that we're "funny" music, or "humor" or "quirky" music. I can tell you that those are three words that never enter my mind when I'm writing lyrics. The music is fun, we're trying to write challenging music that people can have a fun time hearing, but the words are far from it. I think the words are serious, if not a bit depressing.

Curtis: There's a dark humor to the whole thing.

Quentin: It's also one of the things that works against us. Last weekend we were playing a show, and after each song there was a long pause and you could just feel the people scratching their heads and wondering what it was about. "Okay, song's over. What did I make of that? I dunno...but I liked it."

That's very indicative of most Seattle crowds. They rarely seem to show any outward emotion at shows. If you see them nodding their heads to the rhythm it's a sure sign you've won 'em over.

The last song on the new album, "Unscenic," is not in the same vein as the rest of the tunes.

Mitchell: Yeah, that's our "indie rock song." It wasn't intended to be that way, but that's how it turned out.

Funny enough, I like that song best. It is a step away from the all the rest and has a feel that's very mesmerizing.

Mitchell: Quentin came up with that one a couple of days before we went into the studio.

You've recorded both your albums with producer and Northwest icon Steve Wold, who has spoken very highly of the band. Wold recently moved back to Europe, but he was noted as saying before he left that The Tremens were the one band he would always want to work with. That's quite a compliment. How did you meet Steve and what was your experience recording with him?

Curtis: Our very first show was down in Olympia at the East Side. Steve Wold just happened to be at the club helping out a friend, who was the sound man. We started talking and found out he had a studio, so we mentioned that we had a demo and were interested in recording. He stuck around and watched us play, really liked what he heard, and invited us down to his studio.

Quentin: It's one of those things that's difficult to communicate in words, but there's definitely something with Steve where we were meant to meet, become friends and know each other for the rest of our lives.

Mitchell: He's like family.

So he's the fifth Beatle--or the fourth Tremen, as the case would be.

Quentin: He never goes out to shows...ever, and for some reason he came out that night. We then went and did our first record with him (Belmont Smiling Racehorse Downtown) and he then asked us to be his backup band. So we actually cut a record with him that never came out.

Really. What kind of music is it?

Curtis: We were called Dr. Steel and the Forty-nine's.

Quentin: It sounded kinda like ZZ Top with a delta feel to it. Lots of slide.

Mitchell: That guy is...

Curtis: He's a fucking awesome guitar player!

Mitchell: ...unbelievable!

Quentin: And his voice...

Mitchell: Sounds like Joe Cocker.

Curtis: We were going to go on tour with him, then he found out there was this huge blues scene in Norway and ended up moving there.

Yeah, I've heard that, too.

Curtis: It's a great stepping stone for him. He's got all this old recording equipment that no one has over there, much less has ever seen.

Who has he played with?

Mitchell: Everyone from the Beach Boys to... Who was that band he first played with?

Quentin: Shanti.

Mitchell: Shanti, who also included Aashish Khan, and Ravi Shankar's tabla player, Zakir Hussain. They were one of the first bands to intertwine East Indian music with rock.

Hussain's tabla playing is incredible!

Mitchell: Steve knows all those people...he knows everybody. And he's got stories you wouldn't believe. Everything from hitchhiking and getting picked up by Jimi Hendrix, to playing with people like Albert King and a ton of other blues guys. But the coolest thing about him is his attitude, which is simply "God forgive the soul who wants to be a rock star."

It was a cool marriage between us because if we had somebody else, some Northwest producer--and there are many of them who are dialed into whatever scene and carry a lot of weight in those scenes--it would have not been the same. With Steve there was no weight to be carried, there was no scene to be talked up, there was nothing but some people who got along and wanted to make music that's different from all the other stuff out there.

Quentin: In our eyes he's got integrity for miles. And for him to think highly of our band is perhaps the single biggest compliment we could ever receive.

On the web:
The Tremens

Inside Earpollution:
Belmont Smiling Racehorse Downtown album review