Sara: Where were you born and where did you grow up?

Jon: I was born in Sandstone, Minnesota, where I spent the first couple years of my life. Then I moved to Chicago and lived there for thirteen years before moving out to California.

Sam: I was born in Stockton, California. Lived there till I was six years old, moved to LA, and spent most of the rest of my life in LA. I spent a little bit of time in Phoenix, Arizona. Lived in Ojai, and I'm living out here in the desert now, but most of my growing up years were in the Los Angeles area.

Mark: I was born in Detroit, Michigan. I lived there just about all my life, except for the four years I was in the Marine Corps. and the last two years I've been out here.

Eric: I was born in Dayton, Ohio. Moved out here just a few days later. It's not really like I can really say I spent a lot of time there. I grew up predominately in Whittier, California.

Michael: I was born in Compton, California. My parents lived in Lakewood and Compton Hospital was right across the border. The first two years of my life was in Lakewood. Then I moved to Norwalk. Moved away from there when I was nine and lived about twenty-two other places since then, so it's kind of like anywhere from Long Beach to Rowland Heights, California and all point in between I've lived. So born, raised, and never been out of Southern California.

Scott: I was born in Redlands. Spent most of my life in Ventura on the beach. Been out in the desert here for a little over a year now.

Rojer: I was born in San Francisco. California native all the way. I went from elementary to high school out in the desert. Two years in Twentynine and two years in Yucca Valley. Went to Sky High for a bit [laughing].

Sara: How did you guys meet?

Jon: Well, Eric and I met through a mutual friend (a guy I went to high school with) a good friend of mine - Mike. At the time Eric was working with him and such. He kept telling the both of us, "Hey, there's this guy you got to meet! There's this guy you gotta meet! You guys can jam together, etc, etc." Eric and I met, and within a couple weeks we were hanging out full time.

Eric: I go over one day and at that point a roommate of his was moving out. And I was looking to get out and move in somewhere else. Party [laughing]. Before I moved in (a month later), I was there like that whole time before that, crashing out on the couch, playing guitar all night long.

Jon: I think right off the bat we knew what we wanted to do. We knocked it out, we were playing day and night.

Eric: And then when we got kicked out, I moved out to the hi desert. Jon was looking for a new pad too, so he moved up to the hi desert at the same time. And we were trying to figure out what we were going to do, because the local place we were playing at that point was this sports bar down in Desert Hot Springs and it was shady. We finally got a gig up here, at Continental Bakery. We invited Mike (my father in law) to come in and check it out. He'd known that Jon and I were playing tunes and I'd bounced things off of Mike at times, asked him questions all along. All through the years if I got a chance to get around Mike I'd ask him questions cause he was a lot more knowledgeable on guitar than I was. A few months later, after doing that gig we asked Mike if he would like to start just hanging out, checking out the tunes and seeing if it was anything he would want to mess with.

Michael: I remember the first thing you asked me was "Do you want to manage Jon and I?" About an hour later the next thing you asked was if I'd be interested in playing. I was like "Well, I'll have to think about it." cause I actually had to think about it. But I wasn't doing too much at that point, so I joined. Basically tried it out. But I think I did iterate that I was going to do originals only.

Jon: Mike was very insistent in the fact that we'd never do a cover live [laughing]. The three of us played for about eight months. We were doing the coffee shops, that was when we kind of moved into the Jeremy's thing.

Eric: And then Jeremy's was where we ran into Mark Grden.

Jon: It was right before Christmas. Mark was hanging out at a gig and somebody said that he played drums.

Mark: It was a Sunday night. It was open mic night. I think it was actually in November or the first week of December. It was a real one of those cold, windy, December Mojave Desert nights when the wind's just blowing. The sun went down at like 4:30 or something like that. I was sitting up at the little place I rented up there in Joshua Tree and I got hungry for a cup of coffee. I walked down in there and I think you guys were already done playing actually. And Dave Carson, who was this Irish guy that was managing the place at the time, introduced all of us. You guys led me out to a practice the following Tuesday to play percussion - congas. I think the first couple gigs I played congas. Then one day me and Jon took a ride down to Fontana. We went to pawn shops and I found a black Yamaha real cheap.

Jon: It wasn't long after that when we started to run into Rojer. He was a big fan.

Eric: Rojer was an avid fan from the beginning.

Rojer: I'm still a fan [laughing].

Eric: I'd always run into Rojer every once in awhile, here or there. Various jobs Rojer would have at time to time I'd end up walking in and Rojer was working. So he came out and checked out a couple gigs...

Rojer: A friend of mine, Oz (Larry the guitar player that I play with), said "Oh, you'd like these guys man. You should go and see them." He's the one that told me to come see you guys. You'd played at Pappy and Harriet's. I showed up just after you guys got done. Either the next weekend or the weekend after you guys were playing at Jeremy's and I was going over to the Winner's Circle. It was my birthday and my friends said "Let's go over and hear this band!" Came over, heard you guys, recognized Eric. I loved you guys from the beginning.

Jon: A little later we ran into Sam.

Mark: I was working at the cappuccino bar and you [Sam] and Kathleen came in with another couple, and you sat in on congas that night.

Jon: And then we were hooked on Sam right from the beginning.

Eric: We knew we wanted that element from the beginning, that's why the congas were there to begin with.

Jon: Sam was the answer to our prayers.

Eric: He came in and filled that seat excellently.

Sam: I had gone to one of the concerts in the park and saw Steve Lester down there. Steve said "We're going down to Jeremy's to catch Purple Mountain Matinee, have you ever heard that band?" And I said no, and he said "God, you'd love that band, so come on in." And I just sat there and listened to these guys all night. I didn't introduce myself or anything. Afterwards I walked up and said "Hey, I really enjoyed your guys' music!" to a couple of guys at that point that, I don't know if they knew I played congas.

I really really really enjoyed the music, because it was eclectic and at the same time it didn't sound carbon copied as so many things do. So many people sound like "Ok, wait a minute, let's take a little bit from here and here so we can sound like this." and this had it's own sound which happened to generate sounding like a little of this, and a little of this, and a little of that. It's real different when the recipe comes up like this and happens to include those flavors, it's a lot different than "Let's reach out and grab the flavors."

The writing in the band is outstanding. Shortly after I started hanging out with these guys, I remember this one night some of the guys couldn't make it. So it wound up that we weren't going to do a full-scale rehearsal. And they said "Well, let's play some stuff we haven't played." and they just played tune after tune after tune that I'd never heard that were great! Not only is the writing really good, but they're able to write in volume as well. There's been some classical composers that only wrote three or four things. These guys have the ability to really crank it out. I'm glad I'm aboard, it's fun.

Eric: When we did the CD, we had a bass player that came in and did some bass work for us. At that point we thought we had a regular bass player but it didn't turn out that way. After the CD we were pretty much bassless for a few months. Then we hooked up with Scott and he was like "Dude, I can play! I can play! Just let me know." and I was like "Hey, let's get Scott in here." Sure enough Scott stepped in. And Scott's our bass player now. That's kind of how that kinda worked out.

And then we have Rojer Arnold. As we said previously, he had heard us prior. In the CD he had worked on the song In The Dark with flute and we realized there were a few other songs that needed the flute. So basically Rojer's been worked in as our flute player.