The Arborvitae press kit boasts, "Equal parts Beastie Boys aesthetic, Radiohead concept and Elvis Costello craftsmanship, the Red Shirt Brigade spastically erupt from a post-rock locus to bring us the sonic equivalent of a thimble full of anti-matter." What it neglected to tell this media agent was that the skipped Ridalin treatments that result in chemistry and showmanship on stage translate to an unpredictable interview.

But, this is part of Red Shirt Brigade's charm; the boisterous energy that endears the listener to their catchy indie-pop onstage will sting the interviewer off-stage. Since when has independent music or the characters that make it fit comfortably into a little box that is easily manageable for the press, peers and listening ears? The answer is: It has never been. Though the menagerie of humorous comments, askew assertions, and jumbled history that resulted from this interview was a true challenge, the pleasure was all mine.

Interview conducted by Tim Anderl in person, December 2001. Photos by Jason LaVeris.

Names: Trevor Naud (vocals, guitar), Dan Clark (vocals, bass), Ryan Allen (drums), Scott Allen (keyboards)
Band: The Red Shirt Brigade

Tim: So how long are you guys out for on this tour, and how many times have you been on the road before?
Ryan: This is our fourth tour as a band.
Dan: This is my third tour. I joined a little over a year ago. The first was a brief five day thing, the summer tour was a little over a month, and this tour is another five days. We will be playing a New Year's Eve show in Detroit on Monday.

Tim: That is your hometown?
Ryan: Yes, Michigan.

Tim: Did I read that you guys met at Central Michigan Univ.?
Ryan: Yes, Trevor and I met at Central, which is a school that is an hour north of Lansing. It is a small, less-cultured town, so meeting someone that is into the same music we were into was very lucky. I didn't go there expecting to make a whole lot of friends and certainly didn't expect to meet anyone with similar interests. So, when we met it was awesome….a god-send. We were both in bands before and decided to start playing together based on our common ground.

Tim: Where are you guys from now then?
Ryan: We are still there. We are both senior journalism majors…we have a year left. Our concentration is news editiorial.

Tim: Where did the rest of you meet?
Scott: Ryan and I are brothers.
Ryan: I met him when he came out of my mom's womb. It was a joyous occasion and he was covered in puss…
Scott: Come on man we are talking about our mother. Red Shirt Brigade had played a couple of shows, and during one practice started jamming with them on an old Yamaha keyboard that is in our dad's basement studio. They were playing a show that night and I learned a few songs for it. Ever since then I've been in the band, bought new equipment.
Dan: Trevor and I met when he was working at a market down the street from where I live. I was involved in a amateurish music project with a kid who worked with Trevor's brother. I heard that Trevor listened to the same music that I did and that he worked down the block so I went to the market and confronted him. I asked if he was Trevor and he said, "No, he's in the back." And I said, "Show me." And he said, "I'm just kidding, I'm Trevor." So, we started comparing bands that we liked. And so then he said that RSB was playing with Wolfie that night. I was pretty impressed and started following them around to their shows. I guess they played 25 or 30 shows and I was at about 12 of them before Paul (the original bass player) had to leave the band and Trevor asked if I could learn to play the band.
Scott: We went over to his house without really telling him anything.
Dan: I'm from Ann Arbor but was going to the University of Michigan at the time.
Scott: We went out to eat and asked him to be in the band. He was like, "No way" and was freaking out…then we all did keg stands together.

Tim: And lit some couches on fire? (laughter) So your dad helped with the first EP then, right?
Scott: Right. He recorded it. We have a studio down in our basement and we asked him if we could record with him. Our friend Eric from Suburban Sprawl Records put it out. We had fun with it….it was cool.

Tim: So you ditched you dad and went all the way to Seattle for your Arborvitae full-length, Home of The Cannon Saints, right?
Scott: Yes, we went to Seattle and recorded with Chris Walla from Death Cab For Cutie in between our summer tour and we stopped there for ten days and recorded with him. In our home studio everything was digital and we had decided we didn't want to record with digital again because the drums sounded flat. So, Chris Walla offered to record us.
Ryan: Basically, we got really lucky. Chris is really supportive of music. He is a music fan….not just some guy in a pretty popular band. I guess he must've seen something in us and decided he'd like to work with us….I'm not sure why.
Dan: Because we plied him with money and drugs and boozed him up and liquored him down.
Ryan: No, he came to us and was like, "Guys, I've been thinking about recording your full-length and I'd love to do it." So we thought about it, wrote some songs with Dan, who was our new bass player….
Dan: It was really kind of startling, because up until that point, they'd done all of the leg-work and immediately things started happening….
Trevor: Before Dan joined we really had difficulty writing songs at the pace we wanted to. Dan had a lot more free time and fresh ideas.
Scott: Plus, he is classically trained.
Dan: I played violin when I was very little and was in orchestra for several years. I tried to learn all of their bass parts before coming to their first practice. I don't own a bass. The bass I play is Scott's and the amp is their dad's. The only things that I own are the pedals and the chords. I learned all the songs from the first EP on the guitar since it is basically the same fret position and wowed them by playing all the songs when I showed up to practice. The first day that I practiced with Red Shirt Brigade, we wrote the first song on the new record. The first day we wrote a song and then it was gang busters from then on out. Also, while we are on the subject, Chris Walla is of like-minds. It was very easy for us to get what we were looking for because he had a similar opinion of what things should sound like and was always coming up with ideas of how to record things differently. He placed mics in weird positions -- and in terms of what I was playing - all of the distorted bass on the record was played through a little Marshall practice amp. It was like a little toy amp….like the ones that homeless dudes who play on the street hook onto their belt loops. He was great.
Ryan: Like the amps that you play out of in your underwear in the basement.
Scott: The naked cowboy.

Tim: Do you guys have a lot of funny stories from your summer tour? (Everyone talking at once) OK, let's start here, did you meet any bands that no one should tour with because they are just off the hook and crazy?
Scott: The Fucktards.
Dan: They were really nice guys, but Salt Lake City is probably the least hospitable place in the United States of America. We were looking for a place to stay and the guy who booked the show told us we could stay on the floor of the venue where we'd just played. The place was this rabies-infested place with homeless dogs running in and out.
Ryan: This place, Kilby Court was in an alley and the guy lived in the alley like two doors away. We were kind of hanging around looking all mopey-eyed like, "We really need a place to stay." And he was like, "You can stay at the venue."
Dan: We played a bunch of shows with this band called The "New" Terror Class….we played like four or five shows with them. They played this place a the day after we did and the next time we ran into them they said that they'd stayed at the dude's house. We were like, "How did you manage that?" And they said we just followed him home and walked in. We aren't as bad ass as The "New" Terror Class though.
Scott: Shout out to URI.
Dan: Shout out to Party of Helicopters, shout out to my man Joe.

Tim: How would you guys describe your sound -- it's kind of genre-bending - there's indie rock with a little bit of jazz infused in it. And it has this whole weird 60's pop thing going for it….
Dan: I think we'd describe it the exact same way. That sounded really good.
Scott: We all really like a lot of different kinds of music.
Ryan: The thing about our band is that we like different kinds of music so our band is kind of a melting-pot. We have bands that we all really like and then we have our unique personal niches of music. It sort of just comes together. It is cool like that. I'm not sure if other bands operate like that or not.

Tim: Are there other Michigan bands that you feel a particular kinship to?
Dan: Judah Johnson and The Recitals are the top two.
Scott: Fabled Automatics.
Dan: The Recital are the single most under-appreciated band in all of Michigan.
Ryan: One band.
Dan: If we could pick one band it would be The Recital.
Scott: One band that we absolutely hate….say it on the count of three…one, two, three The White Stripes.

Tim: Why do you hate The White Stripes?
Scott: I fucking hate White Stripes. I hate you White Stripes.
Dan: Every town we went to while we were on tour - and we played small towns - you'd open up the paper and the White Stripes were there. They are not a bad band, but….OK, I'll shut up now.
Scott: Meg, you suck at the drums and everything, but your boobs look good when they bounce.
Trevor: Don't put any of this White Stripes stuff in.

Tim: This is a super cheesy question that came out of the How To Interview an Independent Rock Band book, but do you have aspirations to be on a bigger major label, or are you content?
Dan: Suburban Sprawl for life.
Scott: Being in high school still…
Ryan: Being in detention still and eating shitty pizza everyday…
Scott: I'm trying to be serious now. Wanting to know what you want to do in life….playing music is what I can do best and I would really like to see this band go somewhere. I'm an asshole.
Ryan: TVT records e-mailed the Red Shirts and asked us to send them a CD…
Dan: You did not tell me about this…
Ryan: Yes I did. TVT records, which is a bigger indie-label….are they an indie-label….they e-mailed us….
Scott: Don't they have Snoop Dogg? Skizim Nizzim My Bizzim….
Ryan: TVT emailed us and asked to send them a CD. So we were like fine. Eric sent them a CD and they said they didn't like it. So that to me says the world is not ready for "The Red." Fuck TVT, Fuck Capitol, Fuck Epic….we'll be on JIVE mutha fuckas. We wanna be on J Records. Ruffhouse mutha fucka.
Dan: My sole aspiration as a musician Is to be interviewed by Ed Love. Ed Love does a jazz program in Detroit on the NPR affiliate. Ed Love is a jazz DJ, and we don't even play jazz, but I want to be interviewed by him in my lifetime. He is sweet and if I'm not interviewed by him I will die a crackhead. Actually, you will hear about him in the hospital, and I think one time an entire weeks broadcast was kept off because…
Trevor: He was in the hospital with a broken leg.
Dan: Bullshit! He was cracked out, which is cool because any number of the great jazz musicians were dope-fiend type fellas. He parties with those dudes. He interviewed Satchmo…
Scott: And Snatchcake.
Dan: And Louis Armstrong. He hangs with those guys, and every time they come into town Ed Love gets fucked up. I want to be interviewed by him.

Tim: In one sentence, because I have to transcribe this, what are your New Year's resolutions?
Scott: Not giving money to Detroit bums. They suck sometimes.
Ryan: To not get my dick caught in a light socket.
Trevor: To play New Years Eve without being too wasted to play.
Dan: Nobody has told the truth so far, but mine is the god's honest truth….I am going to quit smoking on New Year's Eve. I also want to visit the island of Macaws.

Tim: The what?
Dan: Macaws. You know the birds "B." Macaws mutha fucka.
Ryan: (peeking at my sheet) I want to ask this one to the Red Shirt Brigade….Has anyone ever written anything about you in print that was untrue? Did you do anything to get retribution?
Dan: Yes. Nobody gets this straight, Scott is the spazzed keyboard player and Trevor is the mellow vocalist.
Ryan: And we don't sound like The Anniversary.
Dan: All four of us sing. They didn't have enough microphones tonight though. This is a fact. This is the Beach Boys.
Trevor: I have a New Year's resolution….to be compared to the Beach Boys.

Tim: OK, this is the last question. Seriously. Are you guys named after the racing team?
Ryan: Yes.
Dan: No.
Trevor: That's funny. OK, yeah.
Dan: This is the story. The Red Shirts were the followers of Guiseppe Garibaldi. He was a general and one of the high-guys during the Italian revolution of the 1700s. The Red Bridage were a far left radical organization, along the lines of Baadermein Hof who were the premiere leftist organization in Berlin back in the day, in the 1970s. In America in the 1970s they were the Weathermen….OK I'm shutting up now…
Scott: No, no…
Dan: My dad was an eloquent speaker in the 70s. He was a hippy and a political dude and he would speak at rallies. He got hit by a car at a rally. Anyway, he knew some dudes who were Weathermen and the derived their name from the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues." They were a far leftist, radical protest group. They were the American Red Brigade, Baadermein Hof were the Italian Red Brigade and we were the etc., etc. Anyway, so we are the Red Shirt Brigade.
Trevor: UK.