Volcano, I’m Still Excited!! is an up-and-coming trio from Brooklyn who’ve recently signed to Polyvinyl Records. Lead singer and keyboardist Mark Duplass used to have a solo act selling homemade albums from the back of his touring van, until a case of tendonitis made it impossible for him to play guitar anymore. After learning to play a relatively pain-free Casio, he formed Volcano, I’m Still Excited!! with drummer John Thomas Robinette III and original guitarist Byron Westbrook. The three of them home-recorded a five-song EP called Carbon Copy. Soon after, Byron left the band; Craig Montoro (who just recently played trumpet on the new Mates of State album, Team Boo) took over the licks. The new lineup has been generating incredible word of mouth from their tour, which features songs sung in rounds, exercise routines, and two kick drums with two different pitches, not to mention plenty of spontaneous, bombastically catchy music.

I was a little worried about interviewing a band based solely on two songs, and without ever seeing their stage show. But I loved the songs, and they were in town playing PS211 in Winston Salem, NC, so I did it anyway. After meeting the band, and seeing their show, I can now confirm that this is a very special act, and they’re certainly going places. They're modest, sincere, funny, inventive, and hugely entertaining on stage. I highly recommend checking out the self-titled debut album when it comes out in February (2004), which is also around the time they'll be kicking up their tour again.

So, here then is PCP's discussion with Mark, John, and Craig of Volcano, I'm Still Excited!! on the eve of the release of their Polyvinyl debut.

PCP: A lot of your success comes from curiosity about your name. Where did it come from?

Mark Duplass: Craig, any thoughts on this?

John Thomas Robinette III: As the new guy, he has the only definitive answer.

Craig Montoro: See, now I’m put on the spot.

J: I always thought it was a joke, like if you listed the five worst band names, that might be one of them.

M: I always loved it.

J: Oh, did you?

M: Yeah, everybody else seems to hate it.

J: I thought it was great when I heard it in the song…

M: Yeah, that’s sort of what solidified it, we were tossing around the idea and then we made a song in rounds with it, and that sort of locked it down for us.

PCP: Why two exclamation points?

M: Byron came up with that, our other guitar player, and nobody questioned it. It’s like one of those things where we get excited talking about a tour. “Oh, we’re going to do this, and oh yeah, that will be cool, and we’ll have sandwiches between the seats, so that way if they have to get food-oh, and definitely-two exclamation points.”

J: We played a show, it was our first tour, very early on, and we played a show with I Am the World Trade Center, and when we first met them before the show, it was this big pow-wow with these three Kindercore bands and us. We totally didn’t fit in. We were just kind of mingling and just trying to get to know each other and Dan, the guy in I Am the World Trade Center was joking that we should have this whole movement called Grammarcore, just all bands with ridiculous names-[And You Will Know Us By the] Trail of Dead and I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness and Pretty Girls Make Graves-well those are just wordy names. (Laughter.)

[At this point, one of the managers from PS211 cluelessly wanders up and asks the band if they’re ready to load in their equipment before going back upstairs.]

M: We gotta keep the fans happy. This is happening everywhere we go.

J: People always approach us asking if we want to “load in.”

PCP: You’ve had kind of a rocky road to success. Could you talk a little bit about losing your first guitarist, the tendonitis, etc.?

M: Well, the Volcano road has been pretty easy. I personally had it bad when I was doing the singer/songwriter thing for a while, and so I basically had to stop playing guitar because I had tendonitis. So I went to music school for a year and started studying stuff that kind of informed the Volcano music and then the Casio I play is really lightweight so that allowed me to do it. But I’m not a very good keyboard player so minimalism came out of that. That was the hardest part, in 2001, switching over and making the songs in my apartment in Brooklyn. Once I got in with John and Byron who started the band, the three of us, we had it pretty textbook easy. Byron left the band ‘cause he was doing his own thing. He’s got a band called The Winter Pageant that John plays in as well. That was a totally amicable split, and Craig was more pumped to be in the band and we were more pumped to have him, and it was just more Volcano spirit all around, so we just went with it. We started in the summer of last year and we booked three tours ourselves, then we hired Fanatic to do promotion for us on our third tour and sort of went in the hole a little bit for that, but that kind of brought us around to Polyvinyl. You know, to be an average band who is still struggling; to be with Polyvinyl and have our record in the can less than a year and a half from when we started, we feel pretty blessed.

PCP: So did Craig playing trumpet on Team Boo make it easier to get on Polyvinyl?

C: I think it was already settled at that point. It was just kind of coincidence, ‘cause they were making their record in Austin and the engineer on their record is the engineer and producer for our record-a good friend of mine, Andy Sharp. And they wanted a trumpet player, and I was a trumpet player, so they called me up.

J: That was actually how we hooked Craig up with this band because we finished our first tour in Austin because we were still based in Austin at that time, and Craig and Andy and I played in Andy Sharp’s kind of home-band that never plays out but is kind of there. It’s five people from five different bands, kind of the pseudo-all-star group, and we shared a bill with them and that was the first time Craig and most other people had seen us play in Austin.

C: I wasn’t even drunk yet and I all of a sudden found my new favorite band. John was deathly ill and I didn’t even care. Snot running down his lip and everything.

J: I was lapping it up while I was playing…

M: And Craig actually came up to us after the show and said “I want to be in your band.”

J: The fourth member of Volcano, I’m Still Excited!! Craig was a bass player first and foremost so he was like “Yeah, these fuckers need a bassist.”

C: So, yeah, I pushed them for like five, six, eight months, and then finally Byron opted out and I was like, “Woo-hoo.”

J: Basically Craig was like, “You don’t want to play in this band anymore, do you?”

C: It was less of a figurative gun to his head; it was more a hammer to his knuckles. I was going to smash it right across the top of his hand, keep him from being able to play ever again.

J: He got his inspiration from The Piano.

PCP: So Craig took over guitar, and now there’s still no bass…

C: Right.

PCP: …but two bass drums instead.

J: The double bass drum is actually a new addition. The original concept was to have the biggest bass drum we could find and so Byron found this marching bass drum, it was 26 inches, from e-bay, and we paid no more than 50 bucks for it, so we just figured out that if you mike that thing, it will fill the room, so that’s what we did. And then we made it even more ridiculous with the second kick drum.

M: They actually have a 40-inch bass drum but you wouldn’t actually be able to see more than John’s forehead.

J: Yeah, it’s an orchestral drum, and it would be totally gimmicky and I would actually have to rig a pedal to hit it anywhere close to the center. But it was a consideration. I think eventually we’ll all have bass drums and we’ll have four bass drums on stage. We already have the two different pitches now, the big one and the small one.

PCP: Out of the few things I read about the band online, all of them mention Elvis Costello. I personally hear a lot of XTC. But what would you say are your actual influences in writing and recording the music?

M: Well, I wrote most of the songs and I don’t listen to any of that stuff. The only Elvis record I listen to is that really schmaltzy Burt Bacharach one, which I love. Influences while I was writing the stuff was a lot of Jim O’Rourke and Sam Prekop. I conceptualized this band to be a lot softer when I started writing it. It was going to be more cello/trumpet/guitar/drums. But then, of course, I wasn’t going to be able to play guitar anymore and I started re-working ideas and stuff, and I stole a lot of drums beats from Death Cab [for Cutie]. And music school stuff. Conceptually, I would be in music class and be like, “Oh, this is a really cool idea, how they work this in rounds,” and I didn’t know quite how to do it exactly so I’d try to fake my way through it and it would inevitably end up being a pop song, more because of my lack of knowledge than anything else. And that was Philip Glass and Debussy and stuff like that.

PCP: Your live show gets a lot of attention because of stuff like the singing in rounds and the double bass drum…

C: And the guitar solos.
(Laughter.)

PCP: Well, my point is that it’s very pleasantly gimmicky [Note: I hadn’t even seen the show at this point, so I didn’t even know yet about the mid-show exercise session done to a Muzak version of “Venus”], so my question is what do you think is the place of gimmicks in rock and roll?

M: Good question.

C: It’s entertainment. You’re there to provide a service. Do you want people to stand there cross-armed or do you want them to do this a lot? (He shakes his hands joyously in the air.)

J: Then you have an even bigger question: art versus entertainment and can the two co-exist? What ends up happening is that you are in a club and most of the people are just going to stand there and just kind of say, “Impress me,” and then we go out there and we make fools of ourselves and it totally loosens the mood, and even if they don’t outwardly say they like it, they’re at least amused by it. So it makes for a better environment, kind of in contrary to a lot of the seriousness. And if you want the serious music stuff, it’s all there. Most of the songs are actually pretty serious in nature.

C: If at least one person leaves feeling that it is okay, or at least a little more okay, to make an ass out of himself in public, then we’re happy. We try not to be too cynical and sarcastic. A lot of the gimmicky stuff comes from, “We’ll poke fun of this and we’ll make fun of that.” And we’ll have fun with it.

M: Or it’s an homage. It’s goofy, and we’ll sing in rounds, but I love those songs. And some of our lyrics are kind of corny and the average sarcastic person would say, “Oh, it’s so cool, he’s making fun of it,” and on some level I am and on some level I love that stuff.

C: It’s funny because it’s true.

M: We’re working a lot now on pacing our set correctly too. It’s just like a movie, trying to get the best comedy you can get in there before it comes time for your drama. Your audience will trust you at that point.

PCP: This is kind of a standard interview question at this point, but it’s interesting to ask you, as a band who knows what it’s like to be small and on the rise, and who sort of lives and dies based on your Internet popularity, what are your opinions on music downloading and the RIAA?

M: Guess we’d better go individually on this one.

J: We all burn CDs avidly. We kind of did it haphazardly and now we’re at this point where we’re trying to recoup all this money that we spent on our CD, and you know… We want people to buy the album now because it’s become our livelihood but at the same time, I’m personally of the opinion that the people that are the fans of the music are the ones who are just seeking the easiest route to the music, and I don’t think they’re the ones that should be punished for just wanting the music, and in the end, people are just doing it because they love it and they want to know the latest stuff. And in theory, it should make for better show attendance, better buzz and word of mouth. I don’t know that anyone complained when people started making mix tapes.

C: That’s very similar to the way I approach it. If I’m going to copy something then it usually leads to me attending the show, and then from my share at the door they make more than they would if I bought four of their records at the store. And if I’m there and I decide I like it well enough, and I become a fan, I’ll buy the merch at the booth, and bands usually get to keep their merch money. So then I’ve made it okay for ten or fifteen other people to burn their CDs. I’ve gone to so many shows based on burned CDs from friends that said, “Get a load of this,” and I see nothing but good coming from it. Sure there’s bound to be the underbelly element of it all that you really don’t want to have to think about, but I guess those are the people that are getting sued.

J: But people are still buying CDs and it’s the major labels who are getting hurt, and that’s why you see Michael Green, or whatever his name is, the Recording Academy president, out there every chance he gets making a speech and saying how downloading is bad, but to a certain degree, the music industry and the major labels kind of brought it on themselves.

C: The iTunes concept is also going to be a step in the right direction. There’s a chance for someone to go ahead and pick and choose which songs and which albums they want for trial purposes, for a buck a piece. I’ve stayed away from it ‘cause I’m afraid of getting in over my head. Lord knows I’ve got enough credit card debt already. If it could catch on, it would be cheaper, more for the artists, and maybe it could solve the problem from the inside out.

J: I read a really interesting article in Wired and it was basically all about this and it interviewed the major lawyer who sued Napster. And one of the interesting things about this was that it brought up the issue of Sony being one of the largest record labels in the world, but also being one of the largest manufacturers of disc-burners, and the contradiction inherent in that, and how the industry never actually prepared for the encoding, the copy protection, where as the film industry, for example, did.

M: I basically agree with that. I’d rather have a hundred thousand people have my CD and make no money than have five thousand people that bought my CD and have fifty grand. That’s clearly what I’m here for.

PCP: But also, in theory, if someone downloads something and they’re enough of a fan, they’ll buy it if they can. If they don’t, then they either weren’t interested enough to have bought it anyway, or they’re in college and don’t have enough money, and they’ll be able to buy future albums when they do. But in your case, most people wouldn’t even know about you if it weren’t for the free MP3s on your site. I mean, that’s all I’ve heard and it was enough to get me here, so if it weren’t for me downloading the songs-

M: --Then we wouldn’t be doing an interview with Rolling Stone.

PCP: The leading rock and roll source.

M: The leading rock and roll source today!

C: You know, another good thing coming out of all the downloads is it’s providing an impetus for bands to create more interesting artwork so that you want to go buy it.

J: But even still, what do you put into an album that makes people want to go buy it? The lyrics don’t really cut it anymore.

C: Nudie photos.

M: I don’t want packaging at this point, personally. I live in an apartment and I have a small room and I prefer to burn CDs honestly, because I don’t like making trash. I don’t keep any cases anymore.

C: I don’t have anymore CDs. I just have one hundred and sixty records in my iPod.

J: An interesting case came up when we discovered the Langley Schools Music Project, and that was a case where all of the text and the history and background behind it all made sense, and I actually want that. I want to know about all this and I want to have a record of it.

M: It’s like a good preface to a book. If there’s a really good story about the “making of” then it justifies it.

J: Granted you could probably just go online and print out the pages, but it’s nice to have it there as a reference source. But how often does one of those come around?

[Note: These guys are no hypocrites-they gave me a free burned copy of their album.]

PCP: You’ve been booking shows wherever you can around the country, so you’re basically playing night after night with all sorts of different bands you know nothing about, including local acts who bring in their own very specific local fanbase. What’s it like playing with such a variety of bands to such a variety of audiences and expectations?

J: It’s fun. You get to meet all these amazing people. And if they start to progress, you’ve kind of gotten in on the grassroots level, and you develop great friends, and you can share shows hopefully, and sleep on their floors.

M: We haven’t really done that though.

J: Well, yeah, the Paper Lions we’ve done that with. We met them before their album even came out.

M: It all depends on our mood too. Sometimes we’re grumpy and we drove a long way and we’re just like, “I really wish we were playing with our friends and the good bands.” And then sometimes we’re like, “Man, this is amazing; we have this opportunity to meet all these new people,” and “There’s something great in every musical experience you do!”

C: We’ve been booking our own tours for the last year and a half, and now we have a booking agent who will be booking the rest of the stuff for us, but that’s just part of that game, too. You get on where they put you on most of the time. See where it falls.

M: We’ll play with the locals, even if they’re shitty bands, because they’ll have forty friends out there. So it works out alright.

PCP: So talk about your debut with Polyvinyl. Where is it at this point, how do you feel about it, etc.?

M: It’s hot shit. It’s in the can. It’s done. It’s mixed and mastered. We did it with Andy Sharp, the guy who did the Mates record. Basically, John and I drove down to Austin in the van with all our equipment.

C: We should clarify. Andy engineered the record…

M: The Mates album.

C: …with two other big names producing it, Jim Eno [from Spoon] and John Croslin. Andy ran the knobs on that one, but produced and engineered ours.

M: He did the whole kit and caboodle for us.

J: Craig hadn’t played with the band before we had gone in to record, so we trained up. We had a week of rehearsal when we got to Austin, and we pretty much plowed through and recorded the whole thing in two weeks.

M: About two weeks, yeah. We went a lot quicker and a lot more by instinct with this record than with the EP. This one was a little glossier and a little more conceptual. The arrangements and stuff were a little more indicative of our live show; a little less brainy.

J: With the EP, we hadn’t even figured out how we were going to make the live show yet. So the album’s got a lot more stuff on it than the EP did.

M: Also, John has the best drum sound I’ve heard on a record in twenty years.

J: Thanks to Andy.

M: It’s incredible.

J: When we finished down there, we moved Craig up to Brooklyn. And as soon as we got back to New York, the first show we had was CMJ.

C: My first show with the band was CMJ, and now I’m up to…six shows?

M: Yeah. “So we’re going to play with Mates of State and Rainer Maria…”

J: “Don’t be nervous.”

PCP: The EP was all home-recorded, right?

M: Yeah, we did it in Byron’s house over the course of like a month. We did five songs. That was like a writing/recording kind of session. We wrote a couple new songs. The new one was fast. We had drums, keyboard, and vocals done within like a few days and then we jumped in, did Craig’s guitar a few days after that, and then just…

C: All that was just the first four days at Music Lane Studios down in Austin. Then we put it all on tape, dumped it into ProTools on Andy’s laptop, went to his house, battled the dogs…

M: I think there are some dogs on the record if you listen close.

C: There are some barks on there somewhere. It all took something like six or seven days.

M: Ten-to-twelve-hour days for most of that.

C: Guitar and back up vocals, other little overdubs here and there at the house, then back to the studio to mix it, and mix it, and mix it...

M: Two weeks.

C: We finished at like 5:30 in the morning.

J: We left at 6:30.

C: We sent it off on the fourteenth day.

M: We sent it off to John Golden in San Francisco to master it. He did an awesome job.

C: We’re very pleased with how it turned out. Except the guitars and the background vocals aren’t near loud enough. (Laughs.)

J: Yeah, my singing should have come out a lot more.

PCP: So what about the changes in ease and creative freedom, doing the EP in-home with minimal equipment versus doing an album for Polyvinyl where everything’s at your fingertips but you’re on somebody’s clock?

C: Well, it was pretty much half and half because we did so much at the house.

M: Plus most of the stuff was already written. We pretty much knew what we had to record and we arranged it beforehand and had it all sketched out.

J: And Mark and I had been playing the songs for the last year and a half or so. We pretty much knew what was going to go on there, so we just tried to make it as comfortable as we could for Craig to get the stuff down, and give him as much time as he needed. In the process, Craig was learning the guitar parts, recording them, trying to figure out how to move, and not to mention that people have lives outside of all that stuff. Personal social lives.

PCP: So there’s two different dates floating around online, could you clarify when the album’s coming out?

M: February 3rd. It got pushed back a couple weeks to give more time for promotion.

PCP: Well, hope all goes well.

Band: Thanks!

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