Buck-O-Nine Interview 09/20071) "Sustain" is your first release in 7 years, what has been going on in the meantime?

Since we stopped being a full-time working band at the beginning of 2000, we’ve continued playing shows just for fun – mostly on weekends with a few mini road trips thrown in. We also went to the UK back in 2001, and Hawaii in 2006.

During this time, we’ve written lots of songs, and discarded most of them. Finally, about the beginning of 2006, we decided that we had some new songs that we were pretty stoked on, so we got serious about putting together an album. At one point, we were going to just record material ourselves and release it for download on our website. We realized that after not having new material in 7 years, we didn’t want to carry on simply playing the same old songs. We wanted new material to give the live audiences something to get excited about besides “My Town.” As the the new songs came together, we realized we had strong enough material to warrant a traditional album release.

Other than that, we’ve all either started our own businesses, or got jobs, started families and worked on other musical projects.


2) I was at the SD release party and I thought it was great. How has the response been elsewhere?

The response has been really good overall. We did CD release shows in Hollywood and San Francisco, and the energy and enthusiasm of the crowd was amazing. We also played several Warped Tour shows this summer and most of those went really well.
Actually, we’ve been getting so many show offers recently, including offers to go to Europe and Canada, that we’ve had to turn stuff down because we’ve been so busy and it gets hard for us to juggle work, family life, and the band. We want to keep it fun, first and foremost. Luckily, we’re in a position where we can pick and choose what we do so it doesn’t get to be too much like hard work!


3) Asking questions about influences always seems a bit trite to me, so I'm curious, who are you listening to right now? (as in current favs)

There is a lot of good music coming out right now, and it seems that ska and reggae are experiencing a bit of a renaissance, which is very exciting. Mostly listening to the new Bedouin Soundclash, the latest from Mad Caddies, new Bad Brains, Tim Armstrong, Aggrolites, new Dropkick Murphys (don’t ask how we got it before the release date!), Big D and the Kid’s Table.


4) Buck-O-Nine is one of only a handfull of Ska bands that made it through the 3rd wave fall out. To what do you attribute your staying power?

Basically what has happened is that we decided to stop trying to make a living at making and performing music. We took a bit of a break between 2000 – 2001, and this allowed us to step back from the whole music industry and re-discover what motivates us to play together. We found that regardless of the status our band holds in the music world, we truly enjoy hanging out and jamming together. We compare it to a bunch of guys who get together to play poker, or form a softball team. We get together and play music and have a few beers and laugh a lot, and it’s a very positive thing for all 7 of us.

We also realize that we are not a huge band, and that most people (outside of the core ska scene) only remember us for “My Town”. And that doesn’t really matter to us. Fortunately the whole third wave thing in the 1990’s raised the awareness of ska music enough that it never completely died out. There will always be a core audience of ska fans in America now, and that is awesome.


5) Traditional media has changed a lot over the course of the last decade. What is Buck 0 Nine doing to keep up with the changes?

We are definitely trying to keep on top of all things related to the Internet. We launched our very first website back in 1995, when it was hosted on a server at UCSD before we even had our own domain name, so we’ve always been pretty-much in tune with the Internet.

Now, our guitar player designs and maintains buckonine.com, and a couple of us keep the myspace page up-to-date. In addition, we’ve been shooting video blogs at some of our shows and posting those on youtube.

For a band like us that doesn’t tour the country, using the internet to reach out to fans is very important. It’s also really cool in the sense that back when the band first started, if someone far away wanted to find out about you, it had to be either through printed fanzines, college radio, or by the band touring in their area. Now, there are people who may never get to see us live in concert, but they can at least hear our music, watch videos, look at photos, and even communicate with us – all via the Internet.


6) What is the most stand-out memorable moment in the career of Buck-O-Nine?

That’s a hard one to answer, because there are different moments that stand out from different periods of time. I’d say from the old days it would be our first trip to Japan. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Lost in Translation” I think the feelings that Bill Murray’s character experienced would sum it up, although on a smaller scale, because we weren’t huge stars over there. Your first time walking the streets of Tokyo is complete sensory-overload. I’ve never been to Disneyland on acid, but I image it would something like that.

I think more recently, the stand-out moment would be when we first got the mastered copies of Sustain in our hands and were able to listen to it. We couldn’t believe how good it sounded, and it felt really good to know that we can still produce music that lives up to our standards. We hold it up against any of our previous releases and consider it to be perhaps our best album yet.


7) Seeing as you've already made some major milestones timeline wise, what does the future have in store for you?

If things go our way, it will be more of the same. We plan to start working on another album fairly soon, and continue playing regional shows (mostly California, Vegas, Arizona, and maybe Mexico). If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to return to places like Hawaii, Japan and Europe – but we’re really stoked just to be able to perform in front of an audience. We feel fortunate every time we have a good show and it’s in front of perhaps hundreds or thousands of people – many bands work very hard and never get to experience that kind of rush.


8) Any final thoughts?

We just want to say that any time we get to play live, do interviews, have someone take our picture with them, etc. that we are really appreciative. We’re stoked that people will take time out of their lives to pay attention to the band and listen to the music. It’s hard to describe the feeling that gives us – it’s not a “we’re rockstars” feeling – it’s more like, “Wow, people actually like this stuff!” It feels good to know that it’s not just the band members who enjoy what we do.

Also, going forward I hope that ska musicians will stay focused on producing quality music that has integrity, and that if ska does again achieve mainstream popularity, it will be due to high-quality music. Many great bands from the “third wave” never got mainstream recognition, and I think the overall lack of quality in ska from that time period helped lead to its quick demise.

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