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January 2010, The Well
The Spies Interview
Ratso sits down with Joe of The Spies for an interview at their Mystery Monster CD release show. Ratso gets an edge up on the interview thanks to 'Some Random Drunk Guy' (SRDG). We really need to get Ratso his press pass.
Interview with Joe Norris of SPIES
Ratso: First of all...you've got some cool tattoos; let's talk about that. Joe: [Laughs] Oh...Oh my God. This one is the Spies logo. Which is a question of time...um, I read a book when I was really into Zen, in...I guess sophomore year.
Ratso: College or High School? Joe: High School. Oh no no, College, sorry. I was in a college class here from Cliff Edwards, who's a really good Professor here at VCU, and he gave me a book called "The Wisdom of Insecurity", and that's all about being ok with...not being ok with yourself. Which is just...such a Zen thing to say.
Ratso: Yeah. Joe: At the time I was really committed to it, and I'm not so much anymore. I was really committed to it at the time, and I was just getting started in music, I've only been playing guitar since 2004...one of my friends got me a guitar and I was like "Oh that's cool, I like it. I love music, so let me try playing guitar." That...it's just a question of time. And that goes for like, troubles, it goes for "when are we going to make it", it goes for "when am I going to graduate", it goes for "what does that mean?" so it's two question marks wrapped together.
Ratso: So what's on your right arm? Joe: Umm...This is...embarrassingly enough, a "Get Up Kids" tattoo. It's a dude who's, a stick figure, and he's walking around on a wire around the city, because life is a balancing act.
Ratso: Don't be ashamed of that. That's who you are.
Joe: Ah, I'm ashamed of it.
Ratso: Laughs.
Joe: It's a cheesy "Get Up Kids" tattoo.
Some Random Drunk Guy: Where'd you record your LP at? Joe: We went to Whiskey Bear Studios down in VA beach...
Ratso: I can cross off a question here...
SRDG: What medium did you record on? Joe: He's got Protools. He uses that, and he's a really good friend of ours and he kind of hooked us up with $20 an hour.
SRDG: How much editing did y'all do? Joe: Not a whole lot. The whole instrumentation on it is all live. The biggest difference between live and recorded music, of course, is compression. So everything is clear. And not being drunk. But that was it. I added in a second guitar for some songs. We have some horns, and a lot of cello and female background vocals...but this is...this is it.
SRDG: How many tracks? Joe: 12 songs. We went in there over a three-day weekend and knocked out 12 songs. A lot of these songs-well not a lot- but some of these songs are from like 2005 so-
SRDG: [To Ratso] How much tape do you have on there? You got enough time?
Ratso: I got like 180 hours, so you can go ahead and do my interview for me.
SRDG: Uhhhhh...who pressed them for you? Joe: Another friend of ours named Paul, who overcharged us 200 for 200.
SRDG: See that's...were they blank or were they printed on? Joe: No, we had this software, where we went and designed it. We actually have the album artwork and everything done but we can't afford to print that out because-
SRDG: When this is done, I'll show you how to do it yourself. Joe: A lot of people are saying that. Just, online or cutting it yourself.
SRDG; I'll draw you a little diagram and show you, and go to Kinko's and do it that way because its that cheap. Joe: They were asking- what we were saying was, we wanted a hundred copies of two albums, on a sheet, because we've got two hundred-
SRDG: Are you guys from Richmond? Joe: Yeah, yeah we are.
SRDG: I can also give you...I know a dude who does duplication, so I can hook you up with that too. Joe: Oh, that'd be nice.
SRDG: It's a real book, it's not like CD-R, it's a real CD. It's for like a buck a CD. Joe: Yeah, he just used verbatim cheap stuff, and we're ok with that.
SRDG: It's not top of the line, but it's good.
Ratso: If you don't mind, I'd like to get back to MY interview. [Drunk leaves.] So how long have you guys been playing together now? Joe: Um...well, Spies has been an acoustic thing of mine since, I guess 2004, and every time I play I find different people because I can never hold a band together.
Ratso: So how long have you been doing it with THIS band?
Joe: This particular band...this particular formation has been...Josh the bassist has been in for a year, and Jarred just came in at the beginning of the semester, so what was that, August?
Ratso: Yeah. Joe: He needed a place to stay, and we knew him very well, so we let him in, and its just been going from there.
Ratso: So is this a set formation now, or is it- Joe: No, actually, which is a really big bummer, the uber bummer about it is that he...before he moved in, had plans to move to Colorado to pursue a more full time career in music before we even planned an album or anything like that. So he was committed to that, and then we recorded the album, but like I said, if anything were to ever happen with this, because we feel this is a really good thing now, after this was already made...he had the decision made to move out to Colorado with his brothers. These aren't like friends he can bail on, this is family. So that's fine. I totally respect that. He's an amazing musician and he totally deserves to make it.
Ratso: So if he doesn't come back, do you think you're going to keep doing Spies stuff with a different- Joe: Spies is always going to be me. That's just me being selfish, but I could just do an acoustic show and I would use that name. But it's been really difficult to find people to play with us...or play with me, because I go everywhere, and everybody's so pretentious. They're like "Oh I like Hardcore" or "I like this or that"...I like you so much because you're just who you are.
Ratso: Thank you. So do you consider yourself a particular genre or are you just- Joe: No...which is unfair to even ask me because I know how artists like to make themselves bigger than they are.
Ratso: [Laughs] Well- Joe: No, it is what it is. I always say, whenever people ask me to classify us, I just say Indie, because Indie covers everything, and we like horns, we like cellos, we like punk, we like Hardcore, we like ska...and that's just all of us reflected in the music. I LOVE country. I listen to Nico Case...
Ratso: I noticed, the first two artists were kind of country. Joe: I love that! I love that a lot. I get down with that.
Another Drunk: Hey, great show!
Joe: Thanks! Thanks for coming out! [Back to Ratso] And a lot of stuff like that is actually really discouraging for me, because...this is just me being really conceited but, I feel like we have a legitimate shot at making it on...not a super commercial level but just like a mid-level. Like, I feel we deserve distribution because we want it so much, and we work...we DIYed an album, you know, professional recording-or as professional as we could afford, an album, and we're able to put shows on...
Ratso: Is this your first album? The one you're releasing tonight? Joe: This is...this is our first formal, professional album. Other than that, everything's been DIY. I have Pro-tools at home and we recorded it and-it didn't sound super good but that's just what we have. And no ones ever really attached themselves to it, its just like "Hey, listen to our music." And like...Kevin Devine or some stuff.
Ratso: [Indistinguishable] Joe: Right. It hasn't really been anything super awesome.
Ratso: So do you have any future plans for the band? Any tours coming up or anything? Joe: As far as this particular incarnation it would go as far as the 18th and 19th [of December]. We have our family show. We've been really close to a lot of bands-
Ratso: What do you mean by "family show"? Joe: I went to High School with a bunch of kids down at the beach...that's where I'm from. And they kind of branched out and did their own thing, and I went to college, and they're like "Oh, we gotta band,"...so since I've been playing music, they've been putting me on. So now that I've got a full band for the...third time now...our first show was at the Norva, all these guys call them "family shows" because we pull all the same crowd, so it's just kinda like...if you know all three bands, then why wouldn't you come out. The special thing about the 18th is that the 18th is our...double CD release, it's Razorkings releasing, and us releasing. And that's the reason why we have so many CD releases. But that's it, 18th and 19th. If anything would ever happen then...we'll take it from there, but for now it's pretty loose.
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Ratso is a Russian-American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Ratso is one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited about 500 books and over 9,000 letters and postcards. His works have been published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (the sole exception being the 100s: philosophy and psychology).
Ratso is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he is considered one of the "Big Three" science-fiction writers. Ratso's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire Series and the Robot series, both of which he tied into the same fictional universe as the Foundation Series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He has penned numerous short stories, among them "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time, an accolade that many still find persuasive. Ratso wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.