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Schools, Sweeney talk about Acetate, Athens music

The following is the transcript of an interview conducted by Online Director
David Bill with Dave Schools and Kevin Sweeney about one of their musical
projects, Acetate. Schools is the bass player for Widespread Panic and has
his hands in numerous side projects. Sweeney is the lead guitar player for
Hayride and The Sunshine Fix and also has many side projects. The third
member of the band, Ben Mize, was the drummer for the Counting Crows for
most of the last decade, but has returned to Athens and recently released
his first solo effort, "Nantahala."

The interview was conducted March 11 in the basement seating area of Blue
Sky Coffee in downtown Athens.


David Bill: When I did the interview with Ben [Mize, in reference to an
interviewed conducted earlier for his "Nantahala" CD release] the way he
described Acetate starting was he would call you when he was out in L.A.
with the Counting Crows, that you'd been friends for a long time, that it
would be fun to come home and do a garage rock band. So how did this come
about?

Kevin Sweeney: Well, we lived together about 10 years ago, right before he
joined the Counting Crows, and we always liked the same kind of music and
thought we played well together, so we just thought it would be fun and I
always knew I would be here and that he'd come back some day.

David: And he made it back.

Kevin: And he made it back. The same thing with Dave. I've known him for 15,
17 years. We've always jammed together on different projects when he's got
time off, and we like to play with him.

David: How did the three of you meet. Just hanging around the scene and
playing?

Dave Schools: Back in the old days, I can't remember how long it's been,
probably through you (Kevin) or someone, about 10 years ago, it might have
been through the Cracker guys, and they participated in the first Brute
record.

Kevin: I met Dave out on the street in College Square when I was a freshman
here (at the University of Georgia), and I used to go see them play on
Mondays, and I met Ben when he joined Clamp, my roommate at the time was in
Clamp, and that was Ben's angular math-rock band, and very heavy and
abrasive. That's how I met him and we lived together not long after that.

Kevin: It was kind of incestuous in every way. We all played together and
the bands all meld together and the roommates all come and go.

Dave: We'd stay at community houses and people would come on through.

David: So when he came back ya'll were just playing together some or was it
a conscious decision to start a band?

Dave: I don't know if it was a conscious decision to start a band. It was
just a jam. Kevin had been hanging out at my house taking care of things for
a couple of years. We pretty much turned the basement into a big playroom
with drum kit and PA, and minor-league recording gear so we jammed down
there with whoever, and I guess right around Christmas or New Year's last
year Ben started coming over and we just started playing. One of the best
things to do is play riffs you already got and it was just so natural. Ben
and I had a good chemistry. Ben and Kevin had a good chemistry. And Kevin
and I had a good chemistry. And the next thing we knew there were three
original songs that just sort of happened. And then bam, 12 original songs.
Most bands struggle to get the first one out. We played a few covers by
bands that we thought were funny or fun, but mainly we pretty much knew real
fast that it was great. With the originals right away.

Kevin: A bunch of leftovers from different bands. Things that we had from
different bands, songs that Hayride never quite learned. We all flushed
things out well between us. That's how it just ended up being 10 songs in a
couple of months. Pretty much the first album was done.

Dave: We wanted to call ourselves The Orphans briefly because the all scraps
we used to make ideas were orphan ideas from various bands that we'd been in
.

David: How would you describe Acetate? I listened to the CD a couple of
times yesterday. Every time I turn it on I keep hearing a little riff that
reminds of my teenage years in the '70s. Everything from Grand Funk to the
Eagles to Black Sabbath.

Kevin: (Without hesitation) He's (Dave) Grand Funk, Ben's the Eagles and I'm
Black Sabbath. (Laughing) I'd describe it as just diverse. Hayride's the
same way, and Panic's the same way. There's so many different influences
that each person brings to the table and so much in common that you don't
want it to sound like the same thing all the way through.

Dave: That's the one thing I can't stand about modern bands, that they seem
to write themselves into such a narrow spectrum that they run the gamut
within two records and then they're forced to either give up, break up or
take that daring leap into trying to do something different. I mean, why not
just follow your heart musically and write whatever comes out. A lot of the
riffs that I was playing at the time were pretty much Govt. Mule influenced,
because that's who I'd been playing a lot with. They were originally a
three-piece '70s based band. But we all love ZZ Top, we all love Cheap
Trick, a pretty heavy dose of pop. That's one thing we did intentionally,
try to come up with hooks and things that we could blend a really cool hook
in with a pretty heavy riff and rhythm. That's kind of different. That's
cool.

David: There's some nice harmonies on it, too.

Kevin: That's the Sunshine Fix influence from my side. A lot of the pop
songs that I'd written that were sort of Beatles influenced. I'd been in
Sunshine Fix for four or five years now, and learned a lot about harmonies
and never been able to pull them off in Hayride. Ben is really into that as
well, so he's helped turn a lot of my pop songs into complete songs.

David: He's got a good voice.

Kevin: He does. (Sarcastically) We don't usually let a drummer sing, but he
does a pretty good job.

David: Do you (Kevin) do any of the lead vocals on it?

Kevin: We try to switch off.

Dave: A lot of the vocals switched in between writing the songs and actually
recording the record. And I don't know why. Maybe a different reason for
each one. Certain songs that were sung by other people got switched around
going into the studio, maybe it was because someone wrote some new lyrics
and felt more comfortable about singing them. One song Ben was supposed to
sing but he wasn't there.

Kevin: It's also easier to sing someone else's lyrics and not feel
self-conscious about it. So I'd write a song and have Ben write the lyrics
and melody and sing it, and in this case I decided to take it over and do it
myself.

Dave: There's another one where he wrote the words and was singing it and
wasn't happy with them so Ben rewrote the words and then I wound up singing
it.

David: I was going to ask about the song writing process. It sounds like
it's a little different on every song.

Kevin: It is, because I have the recording setup and I would a lot of times
get drummers to lay down the drum beats and make up songs and have pretty
complete songs to present to the band. And then maybe Ben would write some
words or something. I'm usually pretty short on the words. So that's where
Ben would come in and complete a lot other things would be completely
between the three of us making it up from a riff and then different people
throwing in ideas. It does come every which way. And Ben has a lot of
complete songs that he brings in too. (Jokingly) All about his wife
(laughing).

Dave: Or the street that he lives on (laughing). (Editor's Note: These were
references to "Nantahala.")

David: I haven't really listened to the lyrics on the CD ...

Kevin: (Laughing) Oh, don't bother.

David: Is there a theme to them or is just whatever was coming up?

Dave: It's kind of song by song. I guess one thing that we did pretty much
intentionally hammer pretty hard was the first song "Can't You Can't You"
where we really did intentionally try to take the idea of a dumb pop song
with meaningless lyrics and empiricize that to the point of almost stupidity
where every verse and every chorus became such a small little catch phrase
that we would achieve our point. I remember reading in the '70s all these
really talented musicians who would try to do really talented music and then
they hit it big when they said, "Dang it, I'm going to write a silly pop
song. I'm going to dumb it down and write a silly pop song." And it turned
out to work. But a lot of the music that we really like, that influenced us
from the '70s, were silly pop songs. It's really hard to write something
truly meaningful and deep in the pop song thing. Very few bands actually
achieved it. The Beatles is one that all three of us agree is a huge
influence on everything. Not just us.

David: They're my biggest influence.

Kevin: Probably everyone's.

Dave: Any band or genre of music that's getting waved around at any point
since the Beatles there's most likely one song the Beatles did that's the
kernel of that whole genre. Even like the sort of heavy metal thing, just go
back to "Helter Skelter."

Kevin: Or "I Want You She's So Heavy."

Dave: You know, they did it at least once. And that's my excuse for when
people say the album sounds like a Whitman's Sampler of styles. I say, so
what. Go put on the "White Album." Go put on "Sgt. Pepper's."

David: Acetate sounds like that? I thought it sounded consistent.

Dave: A lot of people say that, yeah.

Kevin: I've heard that complaint. I've heard that about Hayride all the
time, we were described as a totally schizoid band. But it all sounds the
same to me.

Dave: It's because people are so used to artists being pigeonholed or
narrowly niched.

Kevin: The Ramones or AC/DC. Those are good examples of a band with a sound
that stays consistent.

Dave: But that's kind of the point of that sound. Heaven help us if AC/DC
ever tries to make a jazz record.

Kevin: Two great quotes from the AC/DC brothers, when someone said you made
the same album 10 times and Angus said, "No, we made the same album 11
times." Malcolm said, "Most bands progress, they just progress up their
ass." It's true.

David: One thing that kind of struck me with your shows at the Caledonia,
especially Dave, in your case, with several years of having a huge road crew
moving all your equipment around and getting you set up and there you guys
were hauling your own amps up on stage between acts, and it hit me then that
you guys must just be doing this because it's really fun.

Dave: That's the whole point of the whole thing. Kevin always thought it was
very, very important that I move my own gear.

Kevin: He's getting soft.

Dave: I'm getting old, soft, pear-shaped.

Kevin: I move my amp and he stands there waiting for something to happen and
I tell him you have to move it, man.

Dave: Thank god the bass rig has wheels.

Kevin: You shouldn't have an amp you can't set up yourself. Unless you're
Jimmy Page and you're just too frail. We're all big guys. We can move these
amps.

David: Do you have a label? Is Widespread Records going to get involved in
this?

Dave: No, you know, the plan was ... there's just so many reasons to not
have a label right now. First and foremost the music industry has no idea
what's happening what their new media will be. How they will continue to
exploit artists and keep three sets of books and all the things they do. It
just seemed kind of silly to cut demos and shop them in a traditional way
because it is fun. This whole band is trying to sort of wave a DIY thing. It
didn't cost us anything, especially with the process we used to make the
record. A pretty moderate outlay of cash to record it. Enough for a couple
of two-inch tape at Dave Barbe's. Kevin engineered all the vocals and
guitars. And any overdubs were done in my basement.

Kevin: We should explain this. The drums, bass and original guitar were
recorded by David Barbe at Chase Park on two-inch tape, bounced that to
digital and take it home and I did all the rest in the basement.

David: What do you call the name of your studio, I saw it on the credits...

Kevin: Featherwood Hospital is the name of his basement.

David: Is that your basement?

Dave: Bloodkin recorded a record there. Sunshine Fix recorded a record
there.

Kevin: It's all done on the Hayride mobile system. But anyway, it's the best
way to record, just do the basic tracks in a real studio get really good
drum sounds in the studio then do the rest at home where you can take your
time. I spent the whole summer staying up all night just doing it myself and
it was really great. Then mixed it with Andy Baker.

Dave: We went back to the two-inch and the digital and dumped both of them
into the Pro Tools system and mixed it and recorded it.

Kevin: This is the technical sidebar.

David: So it was pretty easy to put together?

Dave: Yeah, and I think we made a really pro sounding record for basically
next to nothing. So the long range plan if there was one was to complete the
record for ourselves and make sure all of our friends and the people who are
interested could get a copy and then at that point I maybe had some minor
league plans about back dooring it through the Sims Alliance which is a
coalition of independent music stores. I have some friends who run it which
is all the stores like School Kids, the mom and pop gossipy stores that are
cool. They're not in the big food chain of the majors. And just sort of
break the model. And I haven't given much thought at all to what obviously
is on the horizon with the new music delivery system, which is the Internet.
This is a cool project and everyone has other things and lives that are
going on, now were at that point where we're going to have records to give
to our friends, to people, sell to people and start sending them around and
seeing if anyone is interested. The great thing about having done it
ourselves is that it's all paid for. No one's going to have a hook in us.
"We'll give you the money to record your record and then you sell your
soul." This is a good way to find out if anyone is really, really
interested.

David: So do you plan on touring with it?

Kevin: Well, Dave is pretty busy right now. Out of the three of us, he's the
busiest. And I don't really see any tour happening, but playing around
whenever Dave is around, and I don't really know what Ben is planning on
doing with his band. And I don't know what my other bands are planning right
now, so it's all up in the air. We'll just do what we can, which is the way
it all came together, and the way we've done it all along. Dave has been in
and out, we recorded the basic tracks then you (Dave) went on tour, what,
was it with Panic?

Dave: Yeah.

Kevin: Panic did their fall tour or summer and fall tour.

David: So you recorded it that far back?

Kevin: Yeah, it was done at the beginning of summer. The basic tracks were
done in June, and then I did the rest of it while Dave was gone. When he
came back we mixed it together and he did his vocals, then here we are. So
that's how it'll continue, when we have all have time to do it.

David: What other projects do you have going? I assume Hayride is still
going.

Kevin: Hayride is still together. We play together about once a month and we
still have some unfinished recording that we try to do a little work on
every couple of months. We all have tons of different bands.

David: Sunshine Fix still...

Kevin: The Sunshine Fix is going to have an album out any day now. It's been
done for quite a long time. It's a great record. It was done the same way
the Acetate did, doing the basic tracks in School's basement, then Bill
(Doss) finished up a lot of it and mixed it with Andy Baker. I don't know
what's going to happen from that.

David: So you're not thinking about any radio airplay to promote the music?
Just get out there and see what happens.

Dave: Yeah, it's natural and like I was telling you earlier it would be
pointless to push any of the traditional buttons that I could push via Panic
because it's just a mistake to lure people to gigs through that. Because
then they show up expecting one thing and when they don't get it they're
disappointed.

Kevin: Probably out of all the side projects that Panic members are involved
in this is probably the most different, besides maybe Slang. Which is
totally out in left field. But as far as generic Panic fans I don't think
they're into this kind of stuff. Well, the more open-minded ones might be,
but some of those people are such pigeonholed listeners that they only
listen to Panic tapes or Grateful Dead or whatever.

Dave: Yeah, this stuff has to leak in slowly. Using those strings, it just
backfires. I saw it happen with Brute. I've seen it happen. I've seen it
happen with influences of Panic that we've tried out on stage and to sort of
go, "Hey, here's one of our heroes," and people are like, "Who's that guy?
Who's J.J. Cale?" "What do you mean?" "I don't know who J.J. Cale is. Just
this old guy on stage." He's a big influence.

Kevin: (Sarcatically) NRBQ are confusing me.

Dave: Yeah, you know NRBQ opened for us. And we just learned through
experience and I really think things do take a hold when seeds are sort of
scattered into the wind and a couple of them find a nice place to grow. The
people who are in the Panic scene that do like Acetate will get word out
faster to like-minded people who could ever imagine, through making live
recording or through word of mouth or grapevine. They tell people when they
hear something they like, they tell people and that's a great thing and that
sort of happened naturally. So we have one fan with a taping rig who records
every show we play.

David: Sloan?

Dave: Yep, that's the guy.

Kevin: But he also records Hayride and the Tom Collins.

Dave: But we still groove, and this will be right up some peoples' alley. To
me I hear a lot of the ZZ Top boogie influence. We go through these phases
where right now we're writing a bunch of new heavy stuff, but I can sense...

David: Who's we? Acetate?

Dave: Yes. There's already six new songs. Most of them are really heavy but
there's one we're working on right now that's pretty much power pop so that
pendulum is starting to swing back again into the harmony, catchy, short
power pop we were trying to get Ben to try to play drums like Dev Bevin from
the Move.

Kevin: We try to teach Ben to go against his instincts and just tell him to
overplay and just play fills during the vocals and he's (in a sarcastic
tone) "That's not what a drummer should do."

David: I'm going to play this tape for him...

Kevin: We've said it all to his face before. (Laughing) He knows. He's
hiding right now writing songs about it.

David: So there is a future for Acetate? This isn't just a one-off thing.
You're going to do another CD...

Dave: Sure, why not. Because every time we do something, like writing a
genre that's unfamiliar to us, it hones our skills. You know, every time
Kevin can engineer some recordings, he gets better at it. Every time we can
practice singing three part harmony we're going to get better at it. Every
time we play we get better at the songs. Every time we get together and jam
we go in a direction that we can go in. But basically it's a boy's club,
that we're three friends who have known each other for more than 10 years
and this is really cool. It's like our significant others don't really mind
because they know that there's something creative happening and the heaviest
drug we're going to do is coffee. Were a coffee-oriented band.

David: I think you just gave me the lead to the article. (Laughing.) I've
got to throw in a couple panic-related questions if that's OK.

Kevin: I'll answer them (laughing)

David: Has any date been set for getting back? I had heard of March (of next
year).

Dave: I think next March is the date set for deciding what to do next. We
really want two years off and we really had to sort of ironclad that message
to our management that when we say a year off we mean, don't call us in
March and ask us if we want to play Bonarroo in June. We mean a year off.
And we finally got that through. It was interesting because we had to plan
all these album releases (Note: The band has scheduled three CD releases
this year from their performances last fall at the House of Blues in Myrtle
Beach, S.C.) in order to not have to have conference calls and things and I
can already feel like it's one of the best decisions we ever made. If
anything, it's just going to improve the originality of the band. It's been
a long three years.

Kevin: You've been going non-stop ever since I've known you.

Dave: It went real fast from the leave-on-Tuesday-and-come-back-on-Sunday
kind of touring to go out for 16 weeks, current touring.

David: You were playing 250 shows a year for a while.

Dave: Yeah, we were really the hardest working band in the country at the
time. Then markets began to consolidate and it got down to where we were
doing 60 shows a year, then Mikey got sick, then we decided rather than stop
then, we needed to rebuild and prove to people we were going to make a
change and continue to do it. That was really hard work for about a year.

David: With all of you all off doing a lot of side projects and not playing
Panic stuff, it should be interesting when you get back. Kind of different
influences and sounds since you're all playing with different musicians.

Dave: Yeah I hope so. It's always good for the band. The thing about me
playing with Govt. Mule was that it was good for the band because it gave me
some different things to bring back to the table. JoJo playing with the
All-Stars and Smiling Assassins was good for the band because it sent JoJo
in a different direction and he came back with fresh ideas. Same with Todd
and Barbara Cue. And whatever J.B. does, you know, I know that he's got a
home studio that he loves to build cool sounding demos in because I've heard
some of them. I know that he'll come back armed with a sack full of
interesting things. Some of the coolest bass lines I've played in Panic the
last few years probably stemmed from a riff I heard J.B. play on one of his
home-made demos.

David: Really, that's cool.

Dave: It's just a different way of thinking and that's always good for the
creative process.

David: Even though you're on sabbatical, it's only March, three months in,
and you're going to have four records out. That's not exactly a sabbatical.
You're not taking it easy. What all do you have going on?

Dave: There's the Slang record, which is the second of those with Layng
Martine and myself. A little more mature, more song-oriented stuff. Vic
Chesnutt composed some words and sings one song, Lori Carson sings one.

David: Is there going to be a little less looping?

Dave: It's pretty organic. But most of the loops on this record were created
out of a four-piece jam session with myself Matt Abts from Govt. Mule on
drums, Ray Paczkowski, who is Trey Anastasio's keyboard player, and Knox
Chandler, who is a guitar player who plays with Siouxsie & the Banshees. We
just went and jammed as a quartet and the hope was to get a "Bitch's Brew"
type of loopable whole group thing. In a few cases that happens. Layng, he
just gets better and better at making convincing sounding loops from
organically created things. It's still loop-based, but it's more
song-oriented.

David: And Stockholm Syndrome?

Dave: Stockholm Syndrome is a new band with Jerry Joseph and myself. We
wrote the majority of the songs and we found some great talent in Wally
Ingram on drums, who plays with David Lindley. Eric McFadden is the guitar
player. He plays with P. Funk. The keyboardist is a guy named Danny Dziuk
from Germany, who's a real soundtrack classically-trained oriented guy,
really into sort of synthesizers and different modes of playing. And Jerry
and I wrote a bunch of songs right before Thanksgiving and then we brought
the band in to rehearse those songs for two days, then went down to Compass
Point studios in Nassau, Bahamas, and recorded 12 songs in seven days with
Terry Manning engineering.

David: Is that the big studio down there?

Dave: Yeah, Bob Marley recorded down there. AC/DC made "Back in Black."

David: That's where R.E.M.'s recording right now.

Dave: Yes, R.E.M.'s down there now. So we came back and I spent all month
with Kevin and Jerry and John Keane's mixing, and then last week I went back
down to Compass Point to master the record and the R.E.M. guys are down
there writing some really psychedelic sounding music, by the way. It's
really cool. It sounds like some of the best music I've heard in a long time
out of those guys.

David: No kidding? Good.

Dave: But it's done and it'll be out June 29th.

David: You have "Night of Joy" (Widespread Panic live CD) coming out next
week. And Acetate. And you're going to take some time off now?

Dave: I'm going to take about four weeks off.

David: Well good for you. Then it's back into the fray.

Dave: Back into the fray. Stockholm Syndrome tours Europe in May. And then I
get back and I'm going out with J Mascis and the Fog. And a drummer to be
named very soon. And that's just to play some of the J material to see if
him and I want to attempt a collaboration. Which would be new ground for him
to collaborate at all, but we'll see how it goes.

David: Sound likes a fun year away from the band.

Dave: Yeah, well I, you know, if I don't stay busy I get in real trouble.
That's the great thing about Acetate. You know it was ... it kept the hands
from being idle.