STREET EATERS
Interview by Spenser CooperSTREET EATERS, the duo of Megan March & John Mink, have a familiar yet fresh take on the East Bay sound they were raised on. While keeping the standard “woahs”, “heys”, and conscious lyrics which they print out and disseminate during their live shows, Megan & John’s dynamic keep their music from falling into the formulaic realm. John’s fuzzed-out bass lines and Megan’s explosive yet controlled drumming are catchy as all hell, yet weird enough to keep their songs interesting, raw, and even a little artsy. I recently got a chance to talk with STREET EATERS about their backstory, as well as their views on bands in the scene, recording and touring.
How did you two originally meet? Was there an immediate spark or did it take a little while to warm up to each other?
John: Megan and I originally met at 924 Gilman Street, where both of us were volunteer shitworkers – She was a sound engineer and I was helping out with booking. Around the same time, our bands (FLESHIES and BEFORE THE FALL) played shows together pretty frequently and we all hung out with the same crowd more or less; I was really into her drumming. I was just so stoked how she played so hard and with so much heart, crazy and almost arrhythmic sometimes, just like most of my favorite drummers. I knew I wanted to play in a band with her someday.
Megan: It took us years to warm up to each other in terms of being so involved, but we were always a part of the same small scene which often doubles as family. I did sound for FLESHIES and Geek Fests when they played Gilman, and one of my best friends when I was a teen, Clayton, would write me letters while on the road with FLESHIES. I remember seeing John at shows and we always said hi. It would have been super weird if we’d dated then, but I left the country to live in Italy in 2005 and when I came back we reconnected at a Halloween party. I was dressed as Amelia Earhart (zombie version of course), and John was a dead Evel Knievel.
When did you guys decide to form STREET EATERS? How does it differ (in terms of interpersonal dynamics, goals and message) from your other projects?
Megan: Originally, John had mentioned that we should play in a band, even before we started dating. But we were both busy with our own bands doing tours and being wildasses. Then we fell in love, and still played in our own bands, being wildasses. It didn’t take long for us to get bored and decide to start making noise together. I was really excited about singing and playing drums, and writing songs from the drum set.
John: STREET EATERS is a band that requires an absolutely minimal number of compromises, which has been incredibly gratifying to me and a refreshing change. This is due to Megan and I being only two people, but we are also life partners with a lot of the same goals and aesthetics both personally and musically, as well as a pretty strong mutual interest in message-driven music. Both of us really miss the lyric sheets that bands used to pass out in the 90s and early 2000s, when punk was still synonymous with having something powerful to say, and I am talking about punk here as a set of ethics and values rather than a bunch of musical rules. That all said, we still have plenty of arguments and butt heads, but that has more to do with us both being independently critical and fierce by nature than with any substantive musical differences.
What bands/philosophies influence your music? Are you mainly guided by an array of punk bands or do you pull from other genres for inspiration too?
John: I think we both have a different idea of punk than most people do; as mentioned in the prior question we feel punk is grounded in a specific set of ethics and values, all tied up in a strongly-expressed force of purpose and an irreverence to established conventions. This means that punk, for us, isn’t necessarily tied up in music that sounds a certain way or fashion that looks a certain way, but that it’s kind of like what Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964 after struggling to define hard-core porn – “I know it when I see it”. X is punk, so is THE EX even though they sound nothing like each other, you know? But they have the same heart. One of the best punk shows I ever saw was at Gilman, with TILT and KARP both playing the same bill. So weird, so rad. BUTTHOLE SURFERS and THE DILS – that’d be a killer show.
Are there any local bands you are really into right now that we should know about?
John: SONGS FOR MOMS. PIGS. WILD ASSUMPTIONS.
Megan: ……and GRASS WIDOW, YI, and THE REACTION…
You guys recently released a couple really awesome music videos for your songs “Useless Eyes” and “Frigid Digits”. Where did those songs come from and can you speak to the process of creating the videos for them?
John: The “Useless Eyes” video was simmered on for a long time; I had a master plan in mind for the stop-motion animations, and Megan co-filmed and contributed some great ideas like the dollar bill being eaten by the roaches. The footage shot in the Utah and Nevada deserts was totally off-the-cuff. We were driving towards Reno on tour and we realized how totally amazing the backdrop looked so I framed the shot and Megan just sung the lyrics – it matched up to the recorded track pretty well! We frequently take footage of things we encounter on tour or in everyday life that look interesting, usually documenting them from a number of different angles and distances to give us more potential raw footage to work with. The Frigid Digits video used a lot of this kind of footage we both shot, and the editing was entirely based around a specific color palette and lyrical themes from the song.
Megan: John and I write our lyrics collaboratively, but when I came up with the concepts for those songs I was trying to grasp something more ephemeral than our usual. “Useless Eyes” is about the eventual death and destruction of humankind, quickly followed by the victory of cockroaches. It’s spooky to think about how our civilization is a blink of any eye within the history of cockroaches. “Frigid Digits” is more dreamy in the sense that it’s about hunting after something that doesn’t want to be caught. You’re searching and searching for happiness, or death, or love, or something else, and when you think you see it, you’re not sure what it really is. Deep.
You guys have been doing a lot of recording recently. Do you see recording as a necessary evil to being an active band or do you guys enjoy laying down tracks in the studio?
John: I have come to really, really love the studio, especially with STREET EATERS. Maybe it is because I am totally comfortable with crazy overdubs these days and because I only need to be locked in a room with Megan and our awesome engineer, Matt Waters. He really knows how to make STREET EATERS recordings sound GOOD.
Can you tell us about the show in Japan you recently played?
Megan: Japan is amazing! FLESHIES rocked it around Tokyo, and the last show of their tour was a festival that our friend Jin (who is the biggest hero ever) set up in a rehearsal studio. There were 15 or so bands that played back to back in two packed rehearsal rooms. We’d made a bunch of friends by that point and were excited to show them what we’d been talking about. I was really juiced on that fest because there were several lady bands that blew my mind (especially Elmoc) and Jin’s band TEENAGE SLANG SESSION were rad too. We had a blast.
At the end of January you’re touring the West Coast as main support for Blake Schwarzenbach’s new group FORGETTERS. How did you guys get hooked up with them and what are you most excited about surrounding that tour?
Megan: STREET EATERS played with Blake’s previous band, THORNS OF LIFE, and we were really stoked. We’ve both known Caroline for a long time (our old bands played with BITCHIN’) and we’re also huge fans of her artwork. Kevin is a kickass drummer who’s drumming I’ve always really liked in the early AGAINST ME! recordings and DEUCE BOLDLY. As for the tour, I’m mostly excited about the pleasure of seeing FORGETTERS every night, plus the ease of touring with buddies.
John: Come by and see us on the road! www.streeteaters.com has all the dates, and lots of other stuff to boot.
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