Doug: Go Justy!

Justin: A long time ago me and J used to go together, we used to play together and then a long time ago like 90, 91 or something, and then Doug and J used to play together, Doug used to play drums from like 92-93 or something, then me and J got back together in like 93-94 just playing cover songs not playing any real stuff whatever me and J we’d play some original material it was just, I don’t know what it was. And then Doug was our friend and he said well I’ll try to play bass for you guys cause we had been playing with out a bass player kinda, we had a friend who played bass but he was never really serious into it. So Doug was like I’ll try to play bass so he learned how to play bass and we were together for about probably half a yr., more than that maybe, we had 5 or 6 songs and then Doug had a friend named Pat from High School too & we tried him out and we were in no position to say if he was bad or good, if he keeps on time I guess he’s good. And then we just started writing songs and that was in like 94, late 94, probably 95 I guess, am I wrong on years?

Doug: No, 94 I think it was 94 cause there were songs about 94. Way back in 94, Old school

Justin: So 94 and 95 I guess we got together and played for about a year and recorded out first album I think in 96, for Theologian, that’s how we got together we were friends and we just played and didn’t take it too seriously and had a couple songs that we liked, and took it a little more seriously, and we were up in Santa Barbara at school at the time, me and Doug, and Jason would come and pat would come up to practice every once in awhile and finally we were done with school, and we got down here and started practicing some more. And that’s where we are today.

Josh: And now you’re here

Justin: Here we are

Josh: What were your biggest influences? Is it different for each person?

Justin: Yeah it’s probably different for every person. Probably I would say the Epitaph sound, probably Bad Religion, Pennywise, ya know, stuff like that probably our biggest influence I would say. Then each of us has our own little outskirts of, he probably likes different band then I do, Influences musically, we listen all different sorts of music, I guess for our band, we like the older, not too old, but we like the Gorilla Biscuits and stuff like that, more of the old than the new I guess. But we like AFI, we like a bunch of the new stuff too. We like both, we like everything.

Doug: What you listen to and what you actually find yourself writing songs like are two different things. And nothing that I listen to is what 98 Mute sounds like, at all. But as far as us as a band, as people, what we actually believe and what we grew up doing with our friends and stuff, those were the bands that we’d go watch and the bands that actually stimulated a little thought and beliefs and stuff, ya know band sing about things, and made us realize things, when you’re a kid you’re pretty impressionable. You hear a band sing about something and you tend to kinda believe it. Those type of thought provoking bands, anything like that, we were into.

Justin: Like one week I will be influenced by bands around here and then another week I’m like, Oh God, Minor Threat is the best. You change every week what your favorite band is. What you think you are influenced by changes every month.

Doug: Yeah like we don’t have any songs that sound like 2-pac but 2-pac kicks ass. I listen to 2-pac all the time.

Justin: And l love Neil Young but we don’t get any of those either.

Doug: OK next question, we could talk for hours.

Josh: OK how did you guys get hooked up with Theologian?

Doug: Mark Theodore, awesome guy known him forever, he’s a local guy from the South Bay here, he put out the first Pennywise record, which basically funded his label, probably is the only thing that still does, Mark had a little label going which obviously got some recognition from that first Pennywise record and he does well and is really just a great guy, and we had known him from around town, and he knew we were a band, and he knew us so right away he’s gonna hear us.

Justin: Before he even heard a song I think he knew we were going to put out an album just because we were all friends you know and why not?

Doug: It wasn’t like a big challenge, like to some bands say in like Santa Fe New Mexico or something, to be on Theologian would be awesome, and it is, but from our point of view it was kinda blurred, we don’t realize how lucky we really are to have been so lucky to have it handed to us.

Justin: We didn’t look for a record label, it pretty much just fell into our laps. Which its kinda maybe not a good thing, we are spoiled I guess.

Josh: That’s like every bands dream.

Justin: Yeah totally.

Doug: We take it for granted.

Justin: Yeah totally, I wish we didn’t get it so easily, as soon as we had 14 songs we were in the studio to record for Theologian is what it pretty much came down to.

Josh: Do you find that you like working in the studio more or being on tour?

Doug: TOUR, studio sucks. Not even a question, it’s just that simple, Personally, actually I shouldn’t speak for everyone.

Justin: I would say probably Pat likes studio better, I think the rest of us like touring better than studio.

Josh: Do you guys get along in the studio or are you ready to kill each other?

Justin: I think we all get along.

Doug: Its weird in the studio its like an individual effort, when your playing for the drums its really for the drums…

Justin: You yell at each other, but I’m not yelling at them because of what they are saying, I’m yelling at them because I’m fucking up so many times and I’m pissed off and who else am I going to yell at but them. We are never really mad at each other.

Doug: I think that we are pretty supportive of ourselves .

Justin: I would say so yeah.

Doug: We are excited in the studio, you’re hearing something and your totally excited, that’s the fun aspect of the studio. But the fact that you have to be really anal and perfectionist.

Josh: Do you have a favorite show that stands out in your mind? One show that you just played that just ripped?

Doug: Some Warped tour shows, one it Pittsburgh was awesome

Justin: Yeah, probably the whole Pennywise east coast tour was just great for us for some reason, Virginia I remember was a really good show, St Petersburgh was a really good show.

Doug: Local shows are always the best, local shows when you can play your own town, and 350 kids come, and you realize, wow these kids really like us, that’s pretty cool. For me personally, playing for local kids who are up there singing with us that’s the best shows. And that’s pretty much how it is every time we play around here. We should probably play more for their sake…and our sake. We don’t want to overdo it and be like oh 98mute again 98mute again.

Josh: 98mute every Friday night

Doug: Yeah

Justin: We would rather keep it as a little more of an event, not that it is a huge event, but rather an event than a weekly thing.

Josh: Do you guys have a worst show?

Doug: Worst show?

Justin: Yeah, SanFrancisco GBH tour.

Doug: That’s the worst, I would say yeah. We weren’t punk enough

Justin: We weren’t prepared…

Doug: For the 14 year old kids with Mohawks.

Justin: But not only that we rushed on stage, Jason’s guitar broke, we didn’t have another string, just everything that went wrong that usually could wrong it was that, Pat said Hey we’re from Hermosa Beach, CA or LA, CA and you don’t say that when you are in San Francisco THAT you are from LA. Probably was our worst show because we really didn’t have much fun on that show, sometimes we had a worse response maybe or not as many kids but we had fun

Doug: Yeah we had a terrible show but we sold quite a bit of stuff at that show. We had shows where it has been great and we have fun but we don’t sell anything

Justin: Its like what do you consider a bad show, I don’t know.

Doug: If its how much fun you have then…

Justin: I didn’t have too much fun that time, I was too busy looking at Jason and him whining about his guitar.

Josh: What’s it like working with Fletcher in the studio?

Justin: Its good, bad, He works with him more.

Doug: Fletcher I think is really good at getting people to do what he wants, and what he wants is usually what’s best, so he’s really good at getting the performer to perform, I think that it is really a benefit to have him around, if he’s not around I don’t think that I’m going to get pushed as hard by someone else.

Josh: You just kinda let it go?

Doug: Yeah I’ll just let shit slide

Justin: He knows what he wants things to sound like, he is good at what he does for sure, he knows his shit

Doug: Yeah, its always good with Fletcher, as far as him and funny things happening, it is always a side bar, like if someone brings a gun into the studio, pellet gun, Justin got blasted by one, his whole back…

Justin: Everyone knows the story…I tried to poke him in the eyes…

Doug: Justin cried.

Josh: What’s your relationship with the guys from Pennywise like? Do you guys just hang out all the time? Are you guys pretty tight?

Justin: We are tight with we just don’t hang out with them all the time, I hang out with Fletcher pretty much a lot. They’re on tour and then we’re on tour, different lives. Jimmy, he’s with his family. We don’t hang out that much, we talk,

Doug: There totally friends we call them, if there is something we needed, say like we get our music done and we’re going to do backups, we going to go hey Jimmy, They’re there as big brother type people to us, in a big way. Like I’ll be surfing and Jimmy will be out there, so me and Jimmy have a relationship around surfing alot, which is nice, its not all music this and music that with us, Justin and Fletcher have another business together, Justin is like his little brother. Byron is a friend of all of us and we party together, There just people, and we’re just like friends, it has nothing to do with music at all, They help us out and take us on the road which they have in the past, then we go out on the road with our buddies, and have a good time, its awesome. Its weird, cause we are getting older too and you’re at the age where you’re not cruising or skating around with your friends anymore. You’re always…everyone’s doing things, busy schedules, so the amount of time I actually see my friends, and hang out with them is a lot less than when you are a kid, its different. You get older you got to pay bills and do things

Josh: You gotta grow up.

Doug: Yeah, it sucks.

Josh: How many times have you been on tour?

Doug: Justin probably has the exact number of shows

Justin: I got it on my map: The first tour: Blink tour, Warped Tour, Pennywise Tour, Warped Tour, GBH Tour, PunkoRama Tour, and I guess that’s like six… and other little mini tours like 3 shows in a row. We really haven’t toured that much.

Josh: Sounds like a lot to me.

Doug: Well it is considering it is 6 over 3 years, its not bad. But if you really want to do it the bands that are making it and the bands that are kicking ass, are out there 6 months a year working their ass off, barely even ya know eating food, just sacrificing whatever, we can’t really claim that we have done that.

Josh: What do you guys think about the Warped Tour because a lot of people were giving it crap for taking on big sponsors and having Ice-T come since he’s not in a punk band. What do you guys think of the Warped Tour?

Doug: Its Awesome!

Justin: You gotta do what you gotta do!

Doug: You gotta change, you gotta have something different, you cant have the same tour every year, or kids are gonna go Well it’s the same as last year why am I gonna go to this shit, you gotta try sometimes you might make a choice that you think is going to be good and it not end up being good

Justin: A lot of bands are asking for a lot more money so if you don’t get the big sponsors, than sure, with no sponsors at all tickets will be $60, so you have to the big sponsors if you want the small ticket prices, you cant have both, so people that complain about big sponsorship its like hey, you don’t know what goes on everyday when we were on it, its like people getting there at like 6am building everything there is just a lot of stuff that goes on. Kevin Lime was doing it for people to get out there and you know he’s making money on it, but the first 3 years he probably didn’t make a cent on it. So he’s just trying to build up to it, get different acts get different people together, its all good in my book. You gotta change.

Josh: What brought your guys switch to Epitaph records?

Doug: Natural progression, it started out as a fun thing, made a record, and realized that people wanted to buy our music, realized that we could go on the road and people would come and see us, made another record, and became friends with a lot of people, we were at the same shows all the time, so epitaph people were at the shows around us, we party with them as friends, got to know them as people and they liked our band and asked us. As far as Theologian goes, its not like we dumped him to get with them, he kinda shoved us off, and that’s the way he’s going to hopefully, he doesn’t have the power to get our name out there like epitaph can the 2 records he owns are going to sell more again as soon as the epitaph one comes out, that’s why the pennywise one does so well he doesn’t advertise for that pennywise one, not very much, kids find it because they know pennywise cause epitaph made them, well pennywise is big because they are just that good, it helps to be on a label like epitaph,

Justin: If you have a chance to do that, any body who says they wouldn’t is either stupid or lying. I mean why wouldn’t you?

Doug: Epitaph is a great punk rock label, they are punk straight up. They got huge with the offspring, well what do you do, you have to when you start selling 8 million records for a band, you got money and you gotta spend it and put it back in your business and you are going to grow, and they have always been cool and true to their bands, and the punk industry.

Justin: Everybody’s thinks like they sold out, but how are they supposed to know that album was going to be big, they had no clue. Once you see all the inside workings, you understand that they are cool and they treat everybody cool, and its all like one big family.

Josh: What’s your new album called?

Doug: Slow motion riot. It’s the name of one of our songs, Pat wrote a song about it, I don’t know too much about it to get into it but I know what the songs about…the world is in

Justin: A complete state of chaos, Its just really slow though.

Doug: You gotta hear the song and then it will make more sense.

Josh: How did the recording of the new album go?

Doug: Long hard but very good.

Justin: Darian the engineer and Fletcher definatly got the best of us. While we were in there we were hatin it but after the final things ya know to see it all come together it made us play beyond what we thought we could play I would say, so we're totally happy with it.

Josh: When's it comin out?

Justin: Probably like March or April I would say.

Josh: Alright what does the future hold for 98MUTE?

Justin: No clue.

Doug: Put this record out. We're no gonna jump ahead. There's no master plan for 98MUTE(laughter.)We wanna put out a record and support it (Justin's phone rings)and see if people like it. Its like the Pennywise video dude. When the phone rings.

Justin:(On the phone) Hello?

Josh:Mr Popularity

Doug: OK go ahead.

Josh: The only question left is any shout outs to anybody?

Doug: Shout outs? To all the bands we've played with. We've never gone on tour and had a bad experience with some band and like "Oh those guys are dicks" ya know its always been like the most incredible experience. The people we've met the places we've seen and the bands that we've shared the stage with. Like the local bands around here we all support each other, like the Deviates and Im gonna bring it up again the South Bay has always had alot of bands and all the bands that came before us. Ya know Pennywise, AFI is just the shit dude I cant believe thier new record its just amazing. They're good. They're kinda doin something thats, its not like thy're making anything up but they're just doin it so good. and they're so gnarly I think right now. I give them alot of respect. Shout outs Justin. Who do you wanna give props too?

Josh: Does the list go on forever?

Justin: Yeah, Mark Theo. Jason Henry at Epitaph and everybody else at Epitaph, Kristen at Epitaph. Everybody

Doug: All our friends really. Whatever, parents

Justin: Every band around. Every band that I like there's too many to name

Doug: People like you who come to our shows and support us.

Justin: Exactly

Josh: I'm always there man I'm like a leech.(laughter) I've seen 98MUTE like 9 times. Well that concludes our interview with Justin and Doug. If youre reading this good for you.

THANKS