From what i hear, you guys come from a solid background of having been involved with other bands. Which bands were each of you involved with before?

Mostly Terrin and I have been doing stuff with prominent bands in San Diego but the other guys have been plugging away for years as well. My previous bands were Fishwife, Tanner, Hemlock, Rocket from the Crypt, No Knife and currently Pinback along with the Jade Shader. Terrin was in Boilermaker. Matt Lynott played with Gary Jules (of Mad World fame), Mike Andrews, Elgin Park and currently with the Truckee Brothers. Gabe Feenberg does a solo project called Old Man Hands, which is getting a huge buzz right now in San Diego. It's sort of a gypsy orchestra version of Neil Young.

How did the jade shader come about?

No Knife had sort of wound down and Terrin hadn't been playing music for a few years. I called him up to see if he wanted to play and that was it. We knew each other since around 1992 when we had recording arts classes together. I recorded some of the first Boilermaker stuff and he recorded the first Tanner 7"s.

Who are your musical influences?

I know everyone in the band has a pretty wide variety of tastes, which I think plays heavily into what we are doing. My background is pretty much punk music and European new wave and goth stuff. But then I started studying music in college and got exposed to a really wide range of music. From that I started studying classical and "new music" in the vein of the minimalists. Also I continued getting deeper into jazz, which ended up being my emphasis is school. My family is full of musicians and growing up I would go see my parents play in orchestras or with random pop people (like Liberace, James Brown, Isaac Hayes, Perry Como etc.) So I was exposed to lots of different music early on and then sort of became re-interested in it in my 20s. To list some favorites though: Bad Brains, Coltrane, Art Blakey, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Beethoven, Pitchfork, Drive Like Jehu, Meters, aMiniature, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Wire, Lungfish, Duran Duran, Black Flag, Cheap Trick, PJ Harvey, Beck, Otis Redding, Temptations.

Who are your non-musical influences?

Well,... hmmm. It's sort of hard to separate my musical influences from my non-musical influences. My life is so tightly connected with music. I suppose on of the biggest influence would be my family. Basically the people who you share your life's adventure with. And now with the introduction of our new daughter Zoe, there's a whole new range of things to discover. I think also it's worth mentioning other inspirations such as Martin Luther King, Van Gogh, Charles Bukowski, Gerry Lopez, John Muir, you know, the big ones.

What are your thoughts on the writing process and playing live shows? Do you prefer one over the other, or do you enjoy them equally?

It's all good stuff. Each aspect has it's unique pleasures. I suppose theya re all needed so I don't prefer any over the other. The whole process of writing and preparing for the show or recording and then touring and holding the finished CD is all interconnected. I can't really imagine separating these things out. Of course it's always really exciting to work on new songs. I usually demo ideas here in my home studio (affectionately called the Belly of the Whale) and do rough CDs with several instruments and then we listen to it at practice and choose which ones to flesh out into finished pieces. Sometimes the idea is complete on the rough CD but other times it will change quite a bit. Nothing is totally set.

How is the new album coming along?

We are 4 songs into the new CD but are going in to do 5 more this month. We have about 22 new song ideas so we'll just keep recording and finishing them until we have a cohesive group of songs. We might be finished by next Summer. ??? We are doing the drums down at Zach's (Pinback) studio and then all the rest of tracking here at the Belly of the whale. Zach's place is amazing. We feel lucky to have access to it.