Whose in the band and who plays what?
Allison - drums
Derek - guitar and vocals
Michael - bass



Is the whole band from Detroit? How'd you all meet?
None of us is from Detroit but two of us (Allison and I) live in Detroit now. Derek lives in Ypsilanti, a town about 30 minutes' drive to the west of Detroit.
We all lived in Ann Arbor, MI at one time and for varying amounts of time. Ann Arbor is a university town, also west of Detroit, that used to be weird and full of creative and great people but now is like any other generic university town in the USA with a bunch of "chain" stores and yuppies. Anyway, we knew each other incidentally in Ann Arbor but the band started after we had all moved to NYC. We started hanging out because we were from Michigan and that's usually a good character trait.

Which came first, music or skateboarding?
Music was first but the music definitely changed and got deeper after skateboarding and reading Thrasher magazine, watching skate videos and hanging out with older skaters who had more of a clue than I did. Got into bands like The Misfits, Minor Threat, Minutemen. Most of the great bands that start with the letter "em" basically.



Who are some of the musicians that have influenced Awesome Colors awesome style?
Lots of bands from Michigan, past and present. The big guns like MC5, Stooges, Sonic's Rendezvous, et. al. but also friends bands like Jaks, Wolf Eyes, Genders, Adult., et. al. Outside of the state of Michigan, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur, Jr. are big influences because we've toured a couple times with each and I know we all look up to their styles, musically and personally.

Your music is some real thrashin rock n roll. do you think that was influenced by thrashin on skateboards in your lifetime? how so?
Yeah, definitely influenced by skateboarding, going fast, getting gnarly. I think skating can expose you to some weird and creative people and that's also an influence.



When you guys are on tour, can you find time to skate all the spots in the cities your playing in?
We try. Sometimes it's hard because in the States, the drives can be long. Might have to just settle for pushing around in a parking lot while grabbing food or filling up the gas (petrol) tank. But we really do try to skate whenever possible. If we have some time in a city, we'll try to find the skatepark or ask the locals about good spots.
It definitely feels good to have that physical activity after being in the van and in bars for most of the days and nights.

We noticed that on your new tour you have a show planned for "somewhere in Mexico", what's goin on with that? Maybe a new musical direction like starting a mariachi?
We're playing our first show in Mexico on this upcoming March tour. We're playing the NRML Festival in Monterrey, Mexico... north and east of Mexico City. I'm very excited because a few friends from Detroit have gone down there to play music and report good things. I know there's good music down there too. Saw this band Los Llamarada from there play in Brooklyn last year. They were awesome. Like a very demented take on The Fall, maybe.

Have any skate injuries ever stopped any of you from playing music for any period of time? If so, what was it?
NO. Next question!


Eyes Of Light music video

What gets you more chicks (or dudes), the rockin or the rollin?
Allison and I met through skateboarding, before the band started so I guess that worked for us.

For Allison: being a female skater, have you ever gotten tired of putting up with a bunch of grimy slimy sketchy smelly scrappin hanus good for nothin skater dudes?
I'm probably the dirtiest of the dirts in this band, so it doesn't bother me at all. I'm not into fancy boys or anything. Dirts are consistently more fun and entertaining then decent members of society.



All of your art is really Awesome. Is your art done by your friend/s? Is there anything you wanna say about the artist/s? Do they have a flickr or anything where people can check out more of their stuff?
Oh hell yes. We've got some talented ass friends who are blowing minds art-wise right now. The two guys involved with the art on the new record make my brain drool out of my nose when I look at their stuff. Gregory McKeighan did the first 2 covers as well as the new one...
http://www.myspace.com/gmckeighan
http://www.gregmckeighan.com/
And Denis Tyfus drew the inside gatefold art on "Massa Hypnos"...
http://www.ultraeczema.com/

Since we are the BEERICS, we wanted to know if you had any good drinking stories you wanted to share from the road or anywhere else...
If we had any REALLY good drinking stories, we probably wouldn't remember them.


Awesome Color Montage

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