sandiegopunk.com

Mike - You want me to tell the arrest story?
Joel - Sure.
Mike - Should I tell the whole story, like leave out anything or what?
Joel - Whatever you want.
Mike - We got pulled over in Texas in some little Podunk town. We were running around getting gas, and this cop kept driving back and forth. Finally, I get in to drive, and he (the cop) pulls out to follow us and then light turns yellow, as I'm pretty much in the intersection. So I go through it because it's totally legal, he lights us up, pulls us over, pulls me out, gives me a warning because I quote unquote ran a red light, and then asked us to search the van. So we had some contraband, some fireworks and some other things in the van, and had a drug dog and everything sniff the van. Luckily we got off and the dog didn't find anything. We were driving around for like three days after that saying 'Wow that was so cool! We should be in jail,' but we weren't.
Gaylord - While we were sitting on the curb, Ron and our roadie that came with us, Dayn, asked me if I would bail them out of jail. They were 99.9% positive that they were going to be thrown in jail-
Ron - 110% positive we were going to jail.
(Laughing)
Mike - The dog was literally inches from the drugs and fireworks and everything else. It wasn't a matter of being afraid at that point, we were sure we were going to jail.
Adam - The whole time we were sitting on the curb, Mike was like, 'I'm scared Adam, what are we going to do?'
(Laughing)
Mike - No it wasn't like that, it was more like (in a calm voice) 'Dude, I'm scared Adam, what are we going to do?'
Dayn - First thing I said to Gaylord was 'Dude, will you bail me out,' cause I knew I was going.
Ron - The reason why we had to have the cops search the van was because he said (in a sarcastic, joking voice) 'We've got a weapon in the van.'

Joel - Alright, lets talk about Change, just in general and the song. I think the meaning is pretty self-explanatory, I see some Holocaust references in there-
Mike - Just a little.
Joel - Just a little, and ah, what do you guys have to say about that, and just your whole political stance that's portrayed through your music?
Mike - Personally, that's my favorite song lyrically, like the meaning and stuff. I don't support racial prejudices or anything like that, I try my hardest to stay away from that, I think most of us do. I think it's a really cool song because it has a lot of cool meaning to it, and it helps people realize that I guess, I don't know.
Gaylord - We started out as a band, well I did at least, I was the main lyricist, listening to bands like Propaghandi and Fifteen and stuff, so all of the lyrics I wrote were influenced by bands like that, very political bands. We've slowly gone away from being 100% political, but I'd say our songs still have meaning whether or not all of them are politically motivated or not. That song specifically is just how nothing much has changed. In reference to the Holocaust, it's been fifty years and nothing much has changed, people still have the same attitude whether it be to races, or sexes, or anything else. It's basically just more of an awareness thing, we try to talk about it before we play it.
Mike - When I was in bands growing up, I always hated political bands, always hated them. We'd sit around at shows and give out cat calls like 'Quit Preaching!' and stuff. So it's kinda funny that now I'm in a pretty political band, and I'm actually getting into it a little more. I've always had these views, but I never liked to preach about it. But I don't really feel like what we're doing is preaching, it's more of like this is what we're talking about and there you go.

Joel - Are there any other songs that have interesting stories or anything like that?
Gaylord - Should we talk about "My Son?"
Joel - That's what I was thinking of.
Gaylord - Alright, I'm living in an apartment complex in Santee, and some kids are outside fighting, and I knew one of them. So the kids are fighting out on the street, maybe 100 yards from my house. After the fight, one of kids comes up and asks to use my phone, well one of the neighbors had called the cops, I let the kid in my house to use the phone, and the cops show up. So the cops come, they take me outside, they tell me how they're going to ruin my credit by getting me kicked out of the apartment, I'm never going to amount to anything, I'm never going to have a job, basically acting like a complete asshole with no respect. At the time, I was driving a brand new truck, so I pointed to it and said, 'Hey, see that truck over there.' And he said, 'What, did you're mom buy it for you?' And I said, 'No, I bought it myself, and you know what, I probably make more money than you too.' And the cop looked at me funny, and him and four other cops just turned around and left without saying anything. It wasn't about me bragging about how much money I had, I was just kinda showing him that he was putting me down the entire time and being an asshole, I guess I said it more for shock value and the whole time he's calling me 'son.' You know like, 'Hey son,' 'You're going to go nowhere son.'
Joel - How old were you at the time?
Gaylord - Nineteen years old.

Joel - Next question, do you guys have any new material right now, are you thinking about putting together a new album sometime in the near future, or have you not been writing songs?
Ron - Well we have two songs, and we're looking at like a five song EP.
Gaylord - Our unofficial plan right now is to record two or three new songs then take 4 songs, both old and new, picking the ones that represent us the best right now. Put together a new promo kit with the demo and some other cool info and start talking to labels in hopes of someone picking us up to put out our next full length. At that point we will start writing songs more vigorously…
Adam - We write songs really slow.
Ron - Really, really, really slow.
Adam - And even sometimes we don't like them enough so we just drop them.

Joel - So do you guys go through any type of process when you write songs?
(Laughing)
Mike - Lots of yelling, no.
Gaylord - Lots of fighting.
Mike - There's a lot of fighting, but a song will never be a good song unless we all have had a big argument over it, at least once.
Mike - You know if you're having an argument about the song, you know when you walk out of practice, you're going to be happy because it's going to be a good song. We write really weird, we bring usually just one or two riffs into practice, and just go off of it.

Joel - So what about the Spare Chang message board?
Gaylord - I created the website about, in 1998 I believe? Yeah, I started the website in 1998 and back then I had our first message board ever. Back then it was just Santee kids only, basically just our friends. It had nothing to do with the band, just our friends would get on it and talk shit with each other, like what's going on this weekend kinda stuff, it slowly turned into more and more people, hecklers, a lot of hecklers-
Joel - That's on every message board.
Gaylord - Yeah, we went through stints of heckling. It kinda evolved into a place where all our friends 'hung out' on the internet. I took it down for a short period of time about a month ago, and people actually e-mailed me, within five minutes of taking it down, to ask me where it was. Every day I got tons of messages asking me where is the message board, so I finally brought it back… I don't know, it's kinda just like a community of friends, and people we meet on the road. I will probably end up taking it down because it just doesn't represent the band well.
Adam - There's lots of garbage on it. There used to be a lot of cool discussion, a little more political oriented, sometimes religious discussions and stuff, now we have people that dominate those type of discussions and ruin it, because they totally just base on everyone and bring them down.
Mike - For me it's not that interesting anymore, it's not as cool. It's a little more of a high school drama thing now. That's how it's always been though, huh?
Joel - That's how most message boards are; I know that's how the one on my site is.

Joel - Those were all the questions I had, so if you have any closing comments, now's the time.
Gaylord - Ron likes Morbid Angel.
(Laughing)
Gaylord - We'd like to thank Dayn, for coming with us on tour.
Mike - Dayn is forever going to be a part of Spare Change, that's the reason he's sitting in the van during the interview.
Dayn - Dayn wishes he had something creative and funny to say right now.
(Laughing)
Ron - That was good enough.
Mike - Thanks Joel by the way-
Joel - Thank you guys.
Mike - Anyone who reads this, should check out some more local bands. Rochelle, Rochelle, which our illustrious Gaylord is a part of now-
Gaylord - (joking) Check us out before we're on MTV-
Mike - They're getting huge quick. Counterfit is awesome, not only are they amazing guys, and some of my best friends, they're an amazing musical band, Jack's Broken Heart is really good too.

(At this point, we ran out of tape, so we decided that instead of breaking out a new one, to just end it because the interview was almost over)

http://www.sparechange.com
http://www.mp3.com/sparechange