Steve Wynn
Suspects & Dream Syndicate
KDVS radio interview

Edited to portion focused on Davis 80's music
Complete and unedited interview lower on page here
 
Interview by Larry Rodriguez
Transcribed by Andy Pastalaniec 
Photos by Photo Robert/text links go to photos on this site
 

Larry Rodriguez:  What years were you here at UC Davis and were you majoring in anything during the time you were here?

Steve:  I was here from 77 to 80, which was a really crazy time to be here because that was during the height of punk rock. I was a big music fan, I played in bands as a kid but something took over in high school and I said “I want to be a sports writer, that’s it.”  Then around Jan of 78 I got the assignment to go cover the Sex Pistols last show at Winterland in San Francisco.  About that time it became clear that sports writing was not for me and I had to be in a band; that was that.

Larry:  So would you say that was the gig that changed it for you?—

Steve:  It was a lot of things.  When I was here there was a guy named Peter Afterman who was in charge of booking shows for the campus and he had a really good sense for bands that weren’t quite that big yet but were really good and might get bigger.  He managed to book all these great acts into the coffee house.  The bands I saw at the coffee house in around 77-78—I was trying to remember all them—Iggy Pop, The Ramones, Elvis Costello (with nobody there), Rockpile, Devo, The Police.  More mainstream things like Dire Straits and Emmy Lou Harris.  So many things—the Talking Heads a couple of times—all these great shows.  I was getting into all this new punk rock new wave (all the imports), I was driving to Berkeley every weekend to go record shopping and bring stuff back because you couldn’t get stuff—you could get some at Zapple Records which was the store down the hall from here—unless you went to the bay area.  We were so excited about that period of time; all these great bands; the Clash, The Jam and all those bands were just getting started and then being here and playing this stuff on the air and then seeing these great shows at the coffee house it was just—that was all there was.  I was driving around with my band before the show and I said, “you know, I couldn’t tell you were any of the good restaurants are, or where we saw movies, or any good bars because really, all my friends and I did back then was music, music, music.  We were just crazy about it.

Larry:  So how did you get involved with KDVS and what was the atmosphere like at the station back then?  I heard it was kind of rowdy.

Steve:  It was kind of rowdy I guess. Yeah, there were pretty crazy times (pause).  Actually I found out recently that one of my old friends Gary Saylin who was a DJ back then is still here.  When I was starting out in 77’ he had been here and he was still sort of the guru to us back then.  He was playing all this cool reggae and world music and folk stuff and outside things we didn’t know about.

Larry:  You know what he calls the five of you guys—the ones who brought the punk and new wave to the station? He says that you guys were the first to bring punk and new wave to KDVS which is incredible.

Steve:  Yeah, Kendra, Russ—

Larry:  —He called you guys the “Gang of Five.”

Steve:  Oh that’s funny.  Well it felt a little bit like a political coup because the ‘old guard’ when we came in was playing very hip stuff, a lot of prog stuff a lot of things which I love now—folk stuff, blues stuff—but at that time we were like, “man, that’s all cool but we want to play punk rock.  We want to play this new stuff that’s exciting us.”  There was, you know, a little bit of resistance.

Larry:  Well people don’t realize today—you know, the new generations from the last fifteen years—that in the late seventies and even the early eighties if you were into punk or new wave uh, you were liable to get your butt kicked sometimes—

Steve:  Oh yea, yea—

Larry:  —and there was a lot of resistance.  It definitely just was not cool.

Steve:  It took a lot to get your butt kicked in Davis (laughs), it’s pretty mellow here but it would get you a lot of dirty looks and a lot of people saying “What are you doing?!”  A lot of people going “this isn’t music” you know.  And I’m telling you there were the fifty people—maybe fifty people—in town who were into this stuff and a lot of them ended up in bands.  Guy Kyser who was in Thin White Rope the people from Dream Syndicate, True West, and Scott Miller who was in Game Theory.

Larry:  Alternative Learning—

Steve:  —Alternative Learning.  Take those people and then about thirty other people and those were the people.  And I’m telling you, the guru for everybody was a guy named Tom Gracyk, he was the music director back then.  He now runs a record store in LA; he’s still a very good friend of mine.  He was my roommate and he was the guy who was turning us on to everything.  He was the guy who was a little bit older than us and he was the one to tell us about the New York Dolls or the Flaming Groovies or things just before punk and then all the punk bands too.  The funny thing I notice about coming down here is the KDVS shirt you’re wearing—I remember he designed that!  That was the logo he came up with back then and I’m amazed to see that.  So yea, it was definitely a tight-knit group.  It was great.  This was my education.  I mean I can look back and say, “Well, I know I took a few literature classes and some philosophy classes and I kinda remember what I learned there but I definitely learned a lot of stuff about the history of music by hanging out at KDVS.”

Larry:  So what was your radio show and what kind of music did you end up playing?

Steve:  It’s funny, it was called “Three-Minute Rock and Roll,” which was kind of a rebellion at that time because again, you’re coming in here and there’s a lot of prog and stuff like that on the air and psychedelic music.  I played no song over three minutes—that was my thing for my show.  It was mostly punk, new wave and the things that came right before it.

Kendra I met around the time we were talking about. I said “Well let’s form a new wave band, that would be pretty wild.”  Russ Tolman was a DJ here and he played some guitar and we started playing together.  So the three of us had the band The Suspects here for a long time.  

 We just thought we liked this kind of music, nobody else was doing it.  We wanted to hear it so we figured we’d play it ourselves.  All of a sudden all the misfits and kind of people hanging out in every nook and cranny, crawling out from under rocks like we were said “hey, this is my kind of music too.”

Larry:  It’s like you created your own scene.

Steve:  We created a scene that existed but we had no idea.

Larry:  You know I’ve been listening to a bit of The Suspects recently and I’ve got this rare recording.  I guess you guys played a reunion at the coffee house in about 81’ and you opened up with The Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”

Steve:  —Oh yea, I know the track you’re about to play and this would definitely be the link between the Suspects and the Dream Syndicate.

Larry:  What were some of the other bands you played with when you were here in the area with the Suspects?

Steve:  Well a lot of shows back then would come through Sacramento.  We played with a lot of the more underground bands.  I can’t remember now—I mean, bands who you wouldn’t—The Comateens from New York.  The Readymades were a big one from San Francisco but we didn’t get a lot of big opening slots.  The one—probably our biggest—show we were most excited about was when we opened for the Specials at the Coffee House. And that was a big deal for us.  I think this was about the time their first record was out and they were coming through town.

  It’s amazing the bands that played in that room.  They were fantastic and that was the biggest one.  But we would on a regular basis drive out to San Francisco and play shows—probably once a month.  We played with the Avengers, Crime, and a few other bands like that.  I mean, it was us and the Twinkies and another band called the Mumbles—from which one of the guys became True West—

Larry:  —Frank French

Steve:  Oh, okay.  Is Frank around?

Larry:  Yea, Frank is around.  He’s living around Sacramento.  He’s still drumming; one of the best drummers out there.

Steve:  No kidding, he was great back then, I’m sure he’s still great.  In fact the Mumbles were the band we all looked up to because they could really play.  Frank was a great drummer; Richard McGrath was a great guitarist.  But the Twinkies were doing this insane psychedelic stuff that still sounds completely ahead of its time.  We were of course doing our powerpop thing.  And those were the three bands in Sacramento or Davis playing anything remotely new wave or punk rock, I mean even close to that.  We would play together all the time in different configurations and different places—really anyplace you could.  I think was it Putah Creek lodge or something like that.  I mean anything with a room that held more than fifty people.

Larry:  Yeah, what kind of venues did you guys have cause I know a lot of underground bands that come through town now are playing in a lot of living room shows—

Steve:  —That’s what I heard about.

Larry:  The DAM house, Charred-Dog House, Pirate House.  We’ve had some problems with the police.

Steve:  That’s so cool, that’s a great thing.

Larry:  Oh yea, it’s still going down.  I think the Pirate House used to have shows there back in the early eighties.

Steve:  Wow.  Yeah, we were looking for that because I was determined to play Davis because we recently recorded about a week ago—my band the Miracle Three.  We recorded the record in Tucson and we’re going to Austin next week for South by Southwest so we had a week to kill.  We had a show in San Francisco, a show in Oakland and I said, “Look, I really want to play a show in Davis.  I’ll play anywhere, I just want to do a show here.”  We were looking around, looking around and we heard about the house parties and then G Street Pub came up and said they wanted to do the show and so that was that.  We used to play, I think a place called the Antique Bizarre not far from there—I think G and second or right around there.  Like I said, most of the places were in Sacramento and this was the thing I remember.  I was about eighteen, nineteen years old and we were playing in a place called Slick Willy’s—it can’t be around anymore—

Larry:  It’s not.

Steve:  It was a biker bar but being sort of outlaws themselves they would book punk rock shows and all that.  That was probably about the main place we played but they were so strict about the age requirements there that I had to spend the entire evening back stage and I had to get the escort from the club to walk me to the bathroom when I wanted to use it.

So I would never see bands play because I would be locked back there you know, reading textbooks or whatever waiting to play.  One day I got a fake ID, and then everything changed.

Larry:  We’ve got a single here; I believe it’s a project called Fifteen Minutes on your own label out of LA, Down There records.  That was in your father’s basement, is that correct?

Steve:  What that was is, when I left Davis and I decided I was going to make one last record so I could have it and you know, call it ‘Fifteen Minutes,’ one side was just me playing everything and an early version of That’s What You Always Say, the Dream Syndicate song.  The other side was actually recorded here in Davis with Scott Miller of Game Theory in his little studio with the band Alternate Learning.

Larry:  That’s a great single.

Steve:  Scott got lumped into Big Star and when I first met him I said, “My god, this is like the second coming of Big Star, you’re just like Alex Chilton,” which at that time nobody had ever heard of and he had never heard of him.  He was into the Beatles and Pink Floyd I think that was it.  So I got him his first Big Star record.

Larry:  Whoa, he had no idea.

Steve:  He had never heard of them, he just happened to sound like them.

Larry:  Wow.  Well if you don’t mind we’re going to play Last Chance For You from Fifteen Minutes—a little blast from the past.  This came out in 81’?

Steve:  Recorded here in Davis

Larry:  Alright, here you go, Fifteen Minutes

[Song plays]

Larry:  Alright, we’re here at KDVS in Davis talking to Mr. Steve Wynn.  That was a project he had called Fifteen Minutes.  The flip side is an alternate version of That’s What You Always Say.

Steve:  With me just making words up on the spot.

Larry:  I always heard you were quite the ‘free-styler’

Steve:  I still am.

Larry: That’s great man.  We’re going to play the flip-side to this for those of you out there who never heard it; Fifteen Minutes: That’s What You Always Say.

[Song plays]

Steve:  Yea, I think everything you hear on that guitar you hear on Interpol records now days.

Larry:  I agree.  I heard that after you graduated from Davis you went on a road trip.  You went on a quest to locate Alex Chilton.

Steve:  That’s true.

Larry:  What happened with that?  Alex Chilton of Big Star for those—

Steve:  —Right.  Again when I was talking about bands that are big now and are sort of common knowledge, back then nobody knew Big Star.  Here at KDVS there are a few of us who really love the first few Big Star albums and Big Star’s Third just blew us away.  It came out in I guess 77’ or 78’ and it went out of print two days later.  That was just my record.  You know how you have that record that just makes you crazy and obsessive, you know telling your life story?  That was Big Star’s Third for me at that time.  So when I left KDVS in about 1980 and went back to LA I decided to take a road trip.  I took a Greyhound bus to Memphis just to do it but also to meet Alex Chilton.  I said “I’m going to go there and meet this guy;” it’s like stalker material you know.  So I got on the bus and I had this record, by a band called the Panther Burns and it was their first record, it had just come out.  It was a single with no credits and had an address in Memphis but I just knew that Alex Chilton was in the band so I figured this must be his thing; who knows—it was a really low-fi thing.  I took the Greyhound bus to Memphis non-stop straight there, didn’t get off the bus.  I got off the bus, went to the address and it was Tav Falco’s house and I walked up to his door—you know, brazen twenty year-old—saying “I’m looking for Alex Chilton.”  He said in “Well I know where you can find him,” and took me down to this bar and there was Alex and I spent a week in Memphis hanging out with Alex Chilton buying him cigarettes and beer, talking to him and he couldn’t have been nicer.  One night Jerry Lee Lewis was on his death bed—he actually survived this as he does every time—

 
 But we went to the hospital, had a pilgrimage and sat outside, had a few beers, and we hung out.  He took me back to his folks’ house, we talked all night.  He was a great guy unless you wanted to talk about music.  The second I said, “You know Alex, that song, Big Star, you know, second album,” he said, “Man, I don’t want to talk about that.”  You could talk about philosophy, you could talk about movies, you could talk about anything at all but the second it came to music, it was all over.

 
 I think he was very discouraged and bitter.  I mean at that point he was really not happy.  Now it’s a great thing, you know, Big Star.  But when you think about it, he was sixteen when The Letter, Cry Like a Baby or all these big hits and then, in his mind it all went downhill; Big Star was a loser band, it was a failure.  Now we know otherwise.  It was incredible.  So at that point he’s thirty and thinking it’s all over, so to talk about his career bummed him out.  But I read that as bitter and I left Memphis thinking my hero, the guy who made this great music was bitter about his life and in a way it discouraged me because in my mind success had nothing (still doesn’t) to do with numbers of records sold or numbers of people you’re playing to; it has to do with how good your music is.  This guy was making the most beautiful music on earth, he was successful.  It kind of turned me around but in a way it was an inspiration too because I sort of looked at it and said, “I’m not going to be like that.  I wanna make the music I wanna make and no matter what happens, as long as it’s good I’ll be proud of it.”  I mean, he was at a low point.  Things might be different now; his life has turned out okay and he’s gotten the recognition he deserves.  But at that point, it had to be kind of a shocker to have nobody care about what you were doing except for some crazy kid coming off a Greyhound bus from LA.

Larry:  Well, you probably made his day for a while.

Steve:  Kinda, maybe for a while.  The funny thing about this story in a book about Big Star that just came out is actually—you know don’t mind me I’m just a kid out of college working at a record store— I said, “You know, Alex, I really can’t afford to keep buying you beer and cigarettes”—

And he said, “Well you don’t have to hang around either, do ya?” I knew it was time to go.

Steve: Thin White Rope was doing that heavy, more psychedelic, I guess a little bit of country too.  I’m really disappointed because Guy Kyser still lives around here and we were e-mailing because I was hoping to get him down to play with us tonight but he is out of town in Vancouver for a weed convention.  But it’s agricultural.

Like I was saying during the session when we were playing back there that KDVS had a huge, immeasurable influence on what I’m doing now.  Just getting together with Kendra, and Russ and people like that and making the music we did, and then also being an education place; a place to learn about so much good music.  I’m just glad to be here again.
 
(full interview below)

Steve Wynn of
Suspects, Dream Syndicate and Miracle Three
UNEDITED KDVS radio interview
Interview by Larry Rodriguez
Transcribed by Andy Pastalaniec 
Photos by Photo Robert/text links go to photos on this site

Larry:  What years were you here at UC Davis and were you majoring in anything during the time you were here?

Steve:  I was born and raised in LA and I wanted to get out of town.  I didn’t want to go to UCLA, which was the obvious thing and I wanted to major in rhetoric and the only campus that had a department like that either Davis or Berkeley.  Berkeley seemed to have more of the same, like LA.  So I decided to try Davis and I was here from 77 to 80, which was a really crazy time to be here because that was during the height of punk rock.  I came here wanting to be a sports writer; I was actually a sports writer for the Aggie, which was kind of the thing I was into when I left LA.  I was a big music fan, I played in bands as a kid but something took over in high school and I said “I want to be a sports writer, that’s it.”  Then around Jan of 78 I got the assignment to go cover the Sex Pistols last show at Winterland in San Francisco.  About that time it became clear that sports writing was not for me and I had to be in a band; that was that.

Larry:  So would you say that was the gig that changed it for you?—

Steve:  It was a lot of things.  When I was here there was a guy named Peter Afterman who was in charge of booking shows for the campus and he had a really good sense for bands that weren’t quite that big yet but were really good and might get bigger.  He managed to book all these great acts into the coffee house.  The bands I saw at the coffee house in around 77-78—I was trying to remember all them—Iggy Pop, The Ramones, Elvis Costello (with nobody there), Rockpile, Devo, The Police.  More mainstream things like Dire Straits and Emmy Lou Harris.  So many things—the Talking Heads a couple of times—all these great shows.  I was getting into all this new punk rock new wave (all the imports), I was driving to Berkeley every weekend to go record shopping and bring stuff back because you couldn’t get stuff—you could get some at Zapple Records which was the store down the hall from here—unless you went to the bay area.  We were so excited about that period of time; all these great bands; the Clash, The Jam and all those bands were just getting started and then being here and playing this stuff on the air and then seeing these great shows at the coffee house it was just—that was all there was.  I was driving around with my band before the show and I said, “you know, I couldn’t tell you were any of the good restaurants are, or where we saw movies, or any good bars because really, all my friends and I did back then was music, music, music.  We were just crazy about it.

Larry:  So how did you get involved with KDVS and what was the atmosphere like at the station back then?  I heard it was kind of rowdy.

Steve:  It was kind of rowdy I guess.  Is it still?

Larry:  It can be sometimes.

Steve:  Yeah, there were pretty crazy times (pause).  Actually I found out recently that one of my old friends Gary Saylin who was a DJ back then is still here.  When I was starting out in 77’ he had been here and he was still sort of the guru to us back then.  He was playing all this cool reggae and world music and folk stuff and outside things we didn’t know about.

Larry:  You know what he calls the five of you guys—the ones who brought the punk and new wave to the station?

Steve:  What?

Larry:  He says that you guys were the first to bring punk and new wave to KDVS which is incredible.

Steve:  Yeah, Kendra, Russ—

Larry:  —He called you guys the “Gang of Five.”

Steve:  Oh that’s funny.  Well it felt a little bit like a political coup because the ‘old guard’ when we came in was playing very hip stuff, a lot of prog stuff a lot of things which I love now—folk stuff, blues stuff—but at that time we were like, “man, that’s all cool but we want to play punk rock.  We want to play this new stuff that’s exciting us.”  There was, you know, a little bit of resistance.

Larry:  Well people don’t realize today—you know, the new generations from the last fifteen years—that in the late seventies and even the early eighties if you were into punk or new wave uh, you were liable to get your butt kicked sometimes—

Steve:  Oh yea, yea—

Larry:  —and there was a lot of resistance.  It definitely just was not cool.

Steve:  (pause), It took a lot to get your butt kicked in Davis (laughs), it’s pretty mellow here but it would get you a lot of dirty looks and a lot of people saying “What are you doing?!”  A lot of people going “this isn’t music” you know.  And I’m telling you there were the fifty people—maybe fifty people—in town who were into this stuff and a lot of them ended up in bands.  Guy Kyser who was in Thin White Rope the people from Dream Syndicate, True West, and Scott Miller who was in Game Theory.

Larry:  Alternative Learning—

Steve:  —Alternative Learning.  Take those people and then about thirty other people and those were the people.  And I’m telling you, the guru for everybody was a guy named Tom Gracyk, he was the music director back then.  He now runs a record store in LA; he’s still a very good friend of mine.  He was my roommate and he was the guy who was turning us on to everything.  He was the guy who was a little bit older than us and he was the one to tell us about the New York Dolls or the Flaming Groovies or things just before punk and then all the punk bands too.  The funny thing I notice about coming down here is the KDVS shirt you’re wearing—I remember he designed that!  That was the logo he came up with back then and I’m amazed to see that.  So yea, it was definitely a tight-knit group.  It was great.  This was my education.  I mean I can look back and say, “Well, I know I took a few literature classes and some philosophy classes and I kinda remember what I learned there but I definitely learned a lot of stuff about the history of music by hanging out at KDVS.”

Larry:  So what was your radio show and what kind of music did you end up playing?

Steve:  It’s funny, it was called “Three-Minute Rock and Roll,” which was kind of a rebellion at that time because again, you’re coming in here and there’s a lot of prog and stuff like that on the air and psychedelic music.  I played no song over three minutes—that was my thing for my show.  It was on every Wednesday from six to nine and it was mostly punk, new wave and the things that came right before it.  The funny thing is that I ended up being in a band, The Dream Syndicate that kind of specialized in playing twenty-minute versions of those one short songs (laughs).  So I guess I got it out of my system.  I heard you play East-West earlier and that was a big influence on what we were doing.

Larry:  Yea, it reminds me a lot of the interplay that you and Karl did.  How did you end up meeting Kendra Smith and Dennis Duck and Karl Percoda?

Steve:  Well they all came later.  Kendra I met around the time we were talking about.  I remember very well, we had a class together and I can’t remember why it came up but I was desperately trying to find somebody who would give me a ride to see The Jam in San Francisco and she said “I’m going to that show” so I said “Great.”  So we ended up seeing The Jam together and we starting going to all these great shows all the time and at one point—I’d been in bands as a kid and she’d sung in choir I think it was— I said “Well let’s form a new wave band, that would be pretty wild.”  Russ Tolman was a DJ here and he played some guitar—he had a nice little mustache back then—and we started playing together.  So the three of us had the band The Suspects here for a long time and in 1980 I decided to move back to LA, I kind of felt it was time to get back there.  I was playing in a bunch of bands that were going nowhere.  I was kind of thinking about giving it up, you know, I was getting old, I was about twenty-one I think (laughs).  So I had met Karl; he answered an add I had placed for a bass player and we hit it off.  We would just sit around in the basement of my Dad’s house and jam on guitars and play Credence on “Susie Q” for about three hours (laughs), and we thought that was a good time:  “Okay I solo for the first twenty minutes and you solo for the next twenty minutes then we’ll see what happens next.”

Larry:  There’s definitely a groove element to the Dream Syndicate that’s not found in other bands from that era—well maybe but I think more so with you guys than any of the other bands I had heard from that time.

Steve:  Yea I think you’re right.  That’s very perceptive.

Larry:  Was that a common denominator between everybody in the band—that you all had certain influences that were groove oriented?  Like you said, like “Susie Q,” maybe the Credence stuff?

Steve:  Yea, We were into psychedelic bands and into psychedelic music but if you think about bands like Credence or the Velvet Underground or the Stooges they were all groove bands—

Larry: —Oh yeah.

Steve:  You know I couldn’t call the Byrds for example a “groove band” even though I’m a big Byrds fan but those other bands, the Velvets and the Stooges and the Credence were probably three of our biggest influences.  More than noise bands or psychedelic bands, they laid down the mean grooves and that was a huge part of what we were doing, taking a good groove, minimal chords and playing it for a long time with a lot of noise.  That was our thing.  We really felt that no one would be into that kind of music.  We figured—again you were talking about this kind of music getting your butt kicked—if you wanted to play music that was like the Velvets or like these bands you were almost begging not to be liked.  Now it’s so funny because if you say, “I got a band, we’re like the Velvet Underground,” they’ll say “Oh hey, you and about five thousand other bands.”

Larry:  (laughs)

Steve:  But back then, that was just an invitation to be hated.  We thought no one would like us.  We just thought we liked this kind of music, nobody else was doing it.  We wanted to hear it so we figured we’d play it ourselves.  All of a sudden all the misfits and kind of people hanging out in every nook and cranny, crawling out from under rocks like we were said “hey, this is my kind of music too.”

Larry:  It’s like you created your own scene.

Steve:  We created a scene that existed but we had no idea.

Larry:  I think that’s important for artists to remember.

Steve:  Right.  You follow the thing you’re hearing in your head.  I’ve always felt that if you play the music that you like and you don’t compromise; if you think “this is the best music in the world,” you’ll probably find a bunch of people, maybe a hundred, maybe a thousand maybe a hundred-thousand (who knows), but you’ll find other people who say “Yea, me too, I like that kind of music too!”

Larry:  You know I’ve been listening to a bit of The Suspects recently and I’ve got this rare recording.  I guess you guys played a reunion at the coffee house in about 81’ and you opened up with The Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”

Steve:  How do you know all this?  (Laughs)

Larry:  [under his breath] I try to do my homework.

Steve:  You sure did (laughs).

Larry:  It’s got Kendra Smith singing in German.  With this recording you kind of get a foreshadowing of what was to come with the Dream Syndicate—

Steve:  —Oh yea, I know the track you’re about to play and this would definitely be the link between the Suspects and the Dream Syndicate.

Larry:  All right, well we’re about to play—it might be the debut version here on KDVS—the Suspects’ version of All Tomorrow’s Parties live.  Do you remember where that was played at?

Steve:  I remember; that was at the Coffee House in 1981.  It was our reunion show one year after breaking up (laughs) just because we wanted to come back and see our friends and play a show.

[Song plays]

Larry:  Alright, that was the Suspects in 1981, live at the UCD Coffee House.

Steve:  I see you’ve got a picture of Hunter S. Thompson here on your screen saver and I remember we had all these station ID carts that were my favorite.  I remember I used to play them all the time and when he died a couple weeks ago I thought about this.  For some reason it just flashed on (playing that all the time).

Larry:  Yea he’s a great man.

Steve:  Oh absolutely.  When he spoke here—a few times when I was here—I think he was in the full ‘gonzo’ mode.  I think there were a lot of ‘whip-its’ involved (laughs).

Larry:  Oh man (laughs), I can imagine.  He didn’t come down to the station did he, huh?

Steve:  He did!  He came down to do the IDs here.  I didn’t meet him, but he did come down here to do the station IDs.

Larry:  Wow.  We’re going to have to dig those up and put them in rotation.

Steve:  Yeah

Larry:  What were some of the other bands you played with when you were here in the area with the Suspects?

Steve:  Well a lot of shows back then would come through Sacramento.  We played with a lot of the more underground bands.  I can’t remember now—I mean, bands who you wouldn’t—The Comateens from New York.  The Readymades were a big one from San Francisco but we didn’t get a lot of big opening slots.  The one—probably our biggest—show we were most excited about was when we opened for the Specials at the Coffee House.

Larry:  Whoa.

Steve:  And that was a big deal for us.  I think this was about the time their first record was out and they were coming through town.

Larry:  I wasn’t aware they even came through town.

Steve:  Oh they came through town.  It’s amazing the bands that played in that room.  They were fantastic and that was the biggest one.  But we would on a regular basis drive out to San Francisco and play shows—probably once a month.  We played with the Avengers, Crime, and a few other bands like that.  I mean, it was us and the Twinkies and another band called the Mumbles—from which one of the guys became True West—

Larry:  —Frank French

Steve:  Oh, okay.  Is Frank around?

Larry:  Yea, Frank is around.  He’s living around Sacramento.  He’s still drumming; one of the best drummers out there.

Steve:  No kidding, he was great back then, I’m sure he’s still great.  In fact the Mumbles were the band we all looked up to because they could really play.  Frank was a great drummer; Richard McGrath was a great guitarist.  But the Twinkies were doing this insane psychedelic stuff that still sounds completely ahead of its time.  We were of course doing our powerpop thing.  And those were the three bands in Sacramento or Davis playing anything remotely new wave or punk rock, I mean even close to that.  We would play together all the time in different configurations and different places—really anyplace you could.  I think was it Putah Creek lodge or something like that.  I mean anything with a room that held more than fifty people.

Larry:  Yeah, what kind of venues did you guys have cause I know a lot of underground bands that come through town now are playing in a lot of living room shows—

Steve:  —That’s what I heard about.

Larry:  The DAM house, Charred-Dog House, Pirate House.  We’ve had some problems with the police.

Steve:  That’s so cool, that’s a great thing.

Larry:  Oh yea, it’s still going down.  I think the Pirate House used to have shows there back in the early eighties.

Steve:  Wow.  Yeah, we were looking for that because I was determined to play Davis because we recently recorded about a week ago—my band the Miracle Three.  We recorded the record in Tucson and we’re going to Austin next week for South by Southwest so we had a week to kill.  We had a show in San Francisco, a show in Oakland and I said, “Look, I really want to play a show in Davis.  I’ll play anywhere, I just want to do a show here.”  We were looking around, looking around and we heard about the house parties and then G Street Pub came up and said they wanted to do the show and so that was that.  We used to play, I think a place called the Antique Bizarre not far from there—I think G and second or right around there.  Like I said, most of the places were in Sacramento and this was the thing I remember.  I was about eighteen, nineteen years old and we were playing in a place called Slick Willy’s—it can’t be around anymore—

Larry:  It’s not.

Steve:  It was a biker bar but being sort of outlaws themselves they would book punk rock shows and all that.  That was probably about the main place we played but they were so strict about the age requirements there that I had to spend the entire evening back stage and I had to get the escort from the club to walk me to the bathroom when I wanted to use it.

Larry:  (laughs)

Steve:  So I would never see bands play because I would be locked back there you know, reading textbooks or whatever waiting to play.  One day I got a fake ID, and then everything changed (laughs).

Larry:  We’ve got a single here; I believe it’s a project called Fifteen Minutes on your own label out of LA, Down There records.  That was in your father’s basement, is that correct?

Steve:  What that was is, when I left Davis and I decided I was going to make one last record so I could have it and you know, call it ‘Fifteen Minutes,’ one side was just me playing everything and an early version of That’s What You Always Say, the Dream Syndicate song.  The other side was actually recorded here in Davis with Scott Miller of Game Theory in his little studio with the band Alternate Learning.

Larry:  That’s a great single.

Steve:  Scott got lumped into Big Star and when I first met him I said, “My god, this is like the second coming of Big Star, you’re just like Alex Chilton,” which at that time nobody had ever heard of and he had never heard of him.  He was into the Beatles and Pink Floyd I think that was it.  So I got him his first Big Star record.

Larry:  Whoa, he had no idea.

Steve:  He had never heard of them, he just happened to sound like them.

Larry:  Wow.  Well if you don’t mind we’re going to play Last Chance For You from Fifteen Minutes—a little blast from the past.  This came out in 81’?

Steve:  Recorded here in Davis

Larry:  Alright, here you go, Fifteen Minutes

[Song plays]

Larry:  Alright, we’re here at KDVS in Davis talking to Mr. Steve Wynn.  That was a project he had called Fifteen Minutes.  The flip side is an alternate version of That’s What You Always Say.

Steve:  With me just making words up on the spot.

Larry:  I always heard you were quite the ‘free-styler’

Steve:  I still am (laughs).

Larry:  (laughs).  That’s great man.  We’re going to play the flip-side to this for those of you out there who never heard it; Fifteen Minutes: That’s What You Always Say.

[Song plays]

Steve:  Yea, I think everything you hear on that guitar you hear on Interpol records now days (laughs).

Larry:  (laughs) I agree.  I heard that after you graduated from Davis you went on a road trip.  You went on a quest to locate Alex Chilton.

Steve:  That’s true.

Larry:  What happened with that?  Alex Chilton of Big Star for those—

Steve:  —Right.  Again when I was talking about bands that are big now and are sort of common knowledge, back then nobody knew Big Star.  Here at KDVS there are a few of us who really love the first few Big Star albums and Big Star’s Third just blew us away.  It came out in I guess 77’ or 78’ and it went out of print two days later.  That was just my record.  You know how you have that record that just makes you crazy and obsessive, you know telling your life story?  That was Big Star’s Third for me at that time.  So when I left KDVS in about 1980 and went back to LA I decided to take a road trip.  I took a Greyhound bus to Memphis just to do it but also to meet Alex Chilton.  I said “I’m going to go there and meet this guy;” it’s like stalker material you know.  So I got on the bus and I had this record, by a band called the Panther Burns and it was their first record, it had just come out.  It was a single with no credits and had an address in Memphis but I just knew that Alex Chilton was in the band so I figured this must be his thing; who knows—it was a really low-fi thing.  I took the Greyhound bus to Memphis non-stop straight there, didn’t get off the bus.  I got off the bus, went to the address and it was Tav Falco’s house and I walked up to his door—you know, brazen twenty year-old—saying “I’m looking for Alex Chilton.”  He said in “Well I know where you can find him,” and took me down to this bar and there was Alex and I spent a week in Memphis hanging out with Alex Chilton buying him cigarettes and beer, talking to him and he couldn’t have been nicer.  One night Jerry Lee Lewis was on his death bed—he actually survived this as he does every time—

Larry:  (laughs)

Steve:  But we went to the hospital, had a pilgrimage and sat outside, had a few beers, and we hung out.  He took me back to his folks’ house, we talked all night.  He was a great guy unless you wanted to talk about music.  The second I said, “You know Alex, that song, Big Star, you know, second album,” he said, “Man, I don’t want to talk about that.”  You could talk about philosophy, you could talk about movies, you could talk about anything at all but the second it came to music, it was all over.

Larry:  I wonder why.

Steve:  I think he was very discouraged and bitter.  I mean at that point he was really not happy.  Now it’s a great thing, you know, Big Star.  But when you think about it, he was sixteen when The Letter, Cry Like a Baby or all these big hits and then, in his mind it all went downhill; Big Star was a loser band, it was a failure.  Now we know otherwise.  It was incredible.  So at that point he’s thirty and thinking it’s all over, so to talk about his career bummed him out.  But I read that as bitter and I left Memphis thinking my hero, the guy who made this great music was bitter about his life and in a way it discouraged me because in my mind success had nothing (still doesn’t) to do with numbers of records sold or numbers of people you’re playing to; it has to do with how good your music is.  This guy was making the most beautiful music on earth, he was successful.  It kind of turned me around but in a way it was an inspiration too because I sort of looked at it and said, “I’m not going to be like that.  I wanna make the music I wanna make and no matter what happens, as long as it’s good I’ll be proud of it.”  I mean, he was at a low point.  Things might be different now; his life has turned out okay and he’s gotten the recognition he deserves.  But at that point, it had to be kind of a shocker to have nobody care about what you were doing except for some crazy kid coming off a Greyhound bus from LA.

Larry:  Well, you probably made his day for a while.

Steve:  Kinda, maybe for a while.  The funny thing about this story in a book about Big Star that just came out is actually—you know don’t mind me I’m just a kid out of college working at a record store— I said, “You know, Alex, I really can’t afford to keep buying you beer and cigarettes”—

Larry:  (laughs).

Steve:  And he said, “Well you don’t have to hang around either, do ya?” (Laughs)

Larry:  (laughs).

Steve:  I knew it was time to go.

Larry:  That’s great.  So when you came back, you went to LA.  You brought Kendra up or she came and stayed with you or something or you guys?—

Steve:  No, we both went back to LA independently.  She went back there to go to UCLA.  I went back—same thing—to go to UCLA and it wasn’t like we said “let’s move to LA” at the same time but we just happened to do that.  We stayed friends down there, went to a lot of shows together and you know she had sung in Suspects and I think she didn’t want to be a singer anymore.  She wanted to do something else; she started playing bass and that was more exciting for her.  I had been a guitarist since I was a kid and I kind of wanted to be the singer—I had been doing more writing, wanted to sing my own songs so we kind of switched roles at that point and started playing together.  She was more than happy to play repetitive bass lines behind my singing and I was more than happy to kind of get up there and scream my guts out.

Larry:  So when you guys got together with Karl and Dennis was there an apparent Chemistry from the beginning?

Steve:  There was.  In fact on that re-issue of Days of Wine and Roses there are a couple songs from our first rehearsal and that’s kind of a funny story.  Kendra Smith and Karl Percoda and I had been jamming in the basement and we needed a drummer.  Kendra said I know this guy Dennis Duck.  Dennis was in a band called Human Hands, which at that time was a big band.  They would play the Whisky-a-Go-Go and the Roxy and real places headlining and they had a following and a couple records out.  To us they were you know, a big—

Larry:  He was part of the L.A. Free Music Society—

Steve:  —Exactly! That’s right.  So Dennis came down, set up his drums in the basement, brought his boom box and we recorded the whole thing.  He’s not a very demonstrative person so at the end he said, “Okay, thanks a lot” and drove off.  We thought, “Well, he’ll never be back here again,” because we were just playing (again) Susie Q for an hour.  We were jamming on E for a half hour—just playing—and playing a few of my songs too but we weren't trying to be kind of a hip band; we were just doing our thing.

Larry:  (laughs) So you guys thought you blew it or whatever.

Steve:  Nah, we didn’t care if we blew it—

Larry:  (laughs).

Steve:  We just didn’t care about anything; we thought “well he won’t be back.”  But he calls back a couple days later saying, “I have been playing this tape non-stop, it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”  And that tape, the first rehearsal ended up being a couple tracks on this re-issue.

Larry:  That fifteen-minute version of That’s What You Always Say?

Steve:  Well, here we go, well if you look, Too Little Too Late and Definitely Clean—two tracks from his boom box that we thought he was probably going to take back and burn the tape when he got home—ended up on the re-issue.  Like you’re saying, from the very beginning we had this thing (like you said) based upon this groove and the noise, and repetition and—

Larry:  You guys felt it though.  There was definitely a connection going on.

Steve:  Well we knew we liked it.  In fact we went three weeks after our first rehearsal to record a demo just to get gigs.  We made a hundred dollar demo of Some Kinda Itch.  I think you played that track.

Larry:  Right.

Steve:  That’s just a hundred-dollar-demo all live.  We took it home and we really felt without any kind of cockiness, or anything, we felt this was just the best thing we heard.  We loved it.  We didn’t think that other people would, but we liked it a lot.  So we figured, “Let’s take a chance and press a thousand copies and see what happens.”  And we did; it was popular and got great reviews and sold out in a couple days and that was that.

Larry:  That’s great.  Did you feel telepathy playing with the band?

Steve:  Oh yea.  A lot.  You can play with some bands where you have to rehearse and practice every part and work hard to make things work and then if you do that it will pay off.  And other bands, it’s all effortless—and the band I have right now, The Miracle Three, is really that kind of band.  When you have a good band that knows how to play together you just have that telepathy.  We have that and the Dream Syndicate had that as well.

Larry:  Andy came in and said that if I had any requests the band knew like a hundred songs or something?  Is that true?

Steve:  Oh yea.  In fact this line-up that I have now, I’ve played more shows than with any band I’ve ever had.  We’ve played pretty much non-stop on tour for the last five years and that is the best thing you could do.

Larry:  Well let’s see to wrap up this last ten minutes I had some questions about the recording sessions for the Days of Wine and Roses and the first EP.  Pretty dark stuff, what kind of headspace were you guys in and, what kind of drugs were involved?  If you don’t mind me asking—

Steve:  I don’t mind you asking at all (laughs).

Larry:  (laughs).

Steve:  We were definitely all drinking a lot.  Um—we were young, you know it’s just something you’d do.  I think that’s something we would do to get over the nervousness of playing live.  For me it was the nervousness of being a singer and also to loosen up and kind of get into that space.  There was all different stuff.  Various members of the band—myself included—had enjoyed hallucinogenics, speed, weed; you name it, anything at all.  I don’t think that’s necessary for playing this kind of music but for us at that point it kind of helped us get into that frame of mind.  It was just—it was all there.

Larry:  (laughs).

Steve:  But I have to say the biggest thing beyond that was we did everything quickly and without any fear and I think you could say that’s because of chemicals or whatever but I think it’s also just about attitude.  We had no fear.  I think the biggest thing we had going for us is that we really thought there was no way people wanted to hear this stuff.  So it didn’t matter what we did.  If anything, once we knew people were paying attention that put the pressure on.

Larry:  (laughs)

Steve:  You know popularity.  That’s the worst thing that can happen to you sometimes.

Larry:  Way to get rid of your freedoms, doesn’t it?

Steve:  Let’s put it this way:  anything you want to imagine was probably happening at the time.

Larry:  A lot of the songs on Days of Wine and Roses seem to be written about a girl.  Was there a specific ‘muse’ at that time in your life?

Steve:  (pause) There were some about certain people—I’m trying to remember.  I think some were about certain relationships and frustrations.  I was kind of a nerdy kid who sort of internalized a lot of things so songs were a good way to get them out.  There are a lot of songs with frustration on there.  But also—this is sort of college student stuff—I was very into a lot of philosophical books.  I was big on Thomas Carlyle of all things who wrote about—and it’s been twenty-five years so someone’s bound to tell me I’m way out of line— the glory of being a leader or a follower, of action or inaction.  To reduce it to sort of new age stuff, to seize the day, take the bull by the horns, or you know, get out of the way.  So I think there are a lot of songs on there like that—sort of that desperate, hungry, ‘get-out-of-my-way-I’ve-got-things-to-do’ attitude mixed with ‘my-relationships-are-messing-me-up’ (laughs).  It’s a good combination.

Larry:  (laughs).  Who came up with the term Paisley Underground?  Did you feel comfortable being labeled that?

Steve:  You know it was actually tossed out by someone in an interview.  It sort of made sense.  The scene you were talking about, with Green on Red, the Bangles, and Salvation Army.  It was a great scene.  It was a scene that in 1982—you know, no one was playing that kind of music—was crazy!  You know everyone back then sounded like Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen which, my god they do now as well!  Wait a second!  (Laughs).

Larry:  (laughs).

Steve:  We were just trying something different and people liked it.  And we were always sort of the freaks of the paisley underground.  Everybody else had their um—revolver haircuts and paisley shirts and playing nice kind of three-minute Monkees-ish pop songs and we were up there trying to be more like Quicksilver or the Grateful Dead.  So they all kind of thought you know, we were the freaks of the scene.

Larry:  Culmination of the Two by Big Brother comes to mind.

Steve:  Oh that’s a great one.  Great guitar sounds on that one as well.

Larry:  I would say that you guys were the most out of the whole bunch.  Yea.

Steve:  We were all mutual fans and friends but I think we were kind of the freaks.  When you ask about the various lifestyle excesses it was coming more from us.  And not really lifestyle excesses but song-length excesses and noise excesses.  So we were sort of the freaky older brothers of the scene.

Larry:  You know Danny and Dusty had a record with Dan Stewart from Green on Red— kind of drunken country songs.  I remember having that in high school.  I read that some people credit that as kicking off the whole No Depression scene.  What do you think about that?

Steve:  I think if anything the Long Ryders—who were a great band in that scene—were most responsible and in fact I know that Mark Olson from the Jayhawks tried out to be in the Long Ryders so I think there was some influence in the Jayhawks.  Also, a few people have told me that Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy from Uncle Tupelo and well now Wilco and all that were big fans of Danny, Dusty and the Long Ryders as well.  So I think it was kind of a very early cow-punk scene.  Danny, Dusty and the Long Ryders, I guess Rank and File, a couple other bands—

Larry:  —Thin White Rope, True West, Gun Club.

Steve:  Yeah, and Thin White Rope was doing that heavy, more psychedelic, I guess a little bit of country too.  I’m really disappointed because Guy Kyser still lives around here and we were e-mailing because I was hoping to get him down to play with us tonight but he is out of town in Vancouver for a weed convention.

Larry:  (laughs)

Steve:  But it’s agricultural (laughs).

Larry:  Well Steve, we’re really happy to have you here, back home with us at KDVS.  Anything you want to say before we head out?

Steve:  Like I said, I hope that coming here will clear up those nightmares of the non-cued up record thing.  Maybe this will finally get this out of my system.

Larry:  Let me tell you Steve, that’s not a nightmare for me; it’s a reality (laughs).

Steve:  Well, that’s not to say it didn’t happen to me all the time anyway (laughs).  Like I was saying during the session when we were playing back there that the station had a huge, immeasurable influence on what I’m doing now.  Just getting together with Kendra, and Russ and people like that and making the music we did, and then also being an education place; a place to learn about so much good music.  I’m just glad to be here again.