San Diego Punk - Punk rock and indie music from San Diego, California

Courtesy Blush

SDP:How did you all get together and decide to start a band?

Ben: Jon and I (Ben) have known each other for a long time, and pretty much ever since I started playing drums, and Jon the guitar, we've been playing together because there's a great

musical chemistry there. Stan, Jon and I were playing in a punk band when we were 14. When that band broke up, Stan started his own band called Kissing Broken Glass, while Jon and I were playing in a new band called Stratus Pattern, which included Pedja on guitar and two of our friends by the names of Craig Saltz and John Cheng. Pedja left the band and we remained a four-piece, but things weren't really moving forward as much as Jon and I had hoped; the same sort of thing was happening with Stan's band. So Jon and I left Stratus Pattern. Pedja was also in a band at that time which he wasn't really into, and he left that band as well. Simultaneously, Jon and I had classes with a guy named Mat Wronski, and Mat said that if anything happened with our band he'd gladly play with us. When we told him that we had left the band, we started jamming and coming up with really weird shit, some of it ending up on the track "Love, Love". So that's pretty much how the four of us got together and started playing.

What sparked the decision to add Stan to the instrumental 4-piece?

Well, we always knew that we wanted a singer. We were looking for vocalists that we could click with musically and personally, and that never really happened. All the while Stan was at our band practices just hanging out. And so one day Stan sang one of his poems entitled "The Video is a Tightly Kept Secret" over Pedja playing his guitar part, and we all sort of knew that Stan was the only one who could be the singer in Courtesy Blush.

What was the writing process like for "Sweet Modern Fairy Tales?"

It's funny, because we had five of the songs on that album instrumentally, so the only thing that needed writing was vocals and lyrics. The other three songs came together very smoothly. We would usually just convene every weekend to write and see what would come out. We just sort of said, "This part is cool, this part is cool, this part is cool, let's just have them come one after the other." We didn't really think, "Well, what are we trying to accomplish with this song? Do all the parts sound like they should be there?" We were just playing whatever the hell we wanted and we just put all the music together.

It is a great album, who would you say your main influences are?

Thank you very much! We all listen to different types of music. I'd say, initially when started the band, we were all listening to a lot of Glassjaw, At the Drive-In, Poison the Well, Thursday - that sort of thing. Now we're listening to all sorts of different music - Jazz, classical, rock, punk, anything really, I don't think any of us care what type of music it is, as long as we love it. I couldn't really say what each member is listening to the most right now. Personally, I get influenced by the emotions that music gives me. It can be Bjork, Django Reinhardt, or Blonde Redhead... It's the fact that these artists inspire us to give a certain song that we're working on a kind of feeling that moves us emotionally, hopefully leaving those who hear it feeling the same way.

How would you compare your Canadian tour to the European Tour?

Well, Europe is amazing. People really appreciate that we're there playing music and they really show us their support. We haven't toured Canada extensively, we've only really played around Ontario. Pretty much all the shows we play in Canada are awesome... playing shows anywhere is awesome.

Finger Eleven has been a favorite Canadian band of mine since they released "Tip", what was it like opening for them?

It was pretty cool! I don't think the crowd liked us, though! Well, I don't know, it was kind of half-half... Like, "Booo, yeah!! booo!!!" Finger 11 is a pretty straight-forward rock band, and their fans expect that from them. When we got onstage there was nothing really for the audience to latch onto, because our songs move so quickly, they didn't really know what to think of it. Meeting Finger 11 was cool though, they're nice guys. Musically, our bands are completely different, but the whole experience was neat. There were a lot of people. It was actually a contest to open up for them, and Jon signed us up without any of us knowing. Then he told us that we were opening for them and we were like, "Oh! okay, let's do it."

What do you hope for out of your U.S. tour?

I suppose all we hope for when we go out on any tour is to play almost every night and to totally enjoy the experience of being on the road, no matter how bad the conditions are. It's amazing to get onstage every night and play music in front of people who have never seen or heard of us before.

Are you going to hit San Diego?

We'd all love to play in San Diego, I really don't know where we'll tour when we go! It's far from us, but hopefully we'll get there.

Courtesy Blush interview conducted via e-mail August 2005 by Scott Toepfer.
Pictures courtesy of courtesyblush.com.
http://www.courtesyblush.com