Hi guys, we’re here  in Bristol in the middle of a three day mini tour of the UK – this is the first time you’ve been over here right?

Don: Absolutely our first time in the UK – 35 years, and we’ve never been over here…

Brian: Yeah our first show in the UK was last night and already the Bristol show is shaping up to be way better. London was good, but skating down here, Bedminster…we’ve skated all kinds of DIY parks, we’ve skated, umm…

Carter: …Burnside?

Brian: Burnside!

Don: God Brian, how many fingers am I holding up?

Brian: (laughs) Four ciders? But yeah, we’ve skated San Pedro, Burnside, all the good California parks, but Bedminster? I could spend years there. The big hip is good, its downhill, then just the whole backdrop – it looks like where Tony Iommi cut his finger off!

This is actually the warm up gig for the Dean Lane Fun Day event at the park in Bedminster…

Brian: Yeah I wish we could be there for that! A lot of times we just do these tours and we’re in and out in one day, then it’s on to the next place. But I mean Bristol; I was standing out on the corner right here, I saw eight skaters coming down the street holding beers. I’m talking to Pigdog, saying ‘please let them be stopping here’, and they were. They were flying down the street you know, doing powerslides; these are our people. This is home for us, home away from home doing stuff like this.

So what are some of your favourite jams or contests you’ve played at over the years?

Don: The Etnies jams are pretty gnarly…

Brian: Yeah we play at the Etnies Skatepark they have out in Lake Forest every Halloween, the bands play right by the pool which is always good.

Don: Rumble in Ramona…Christian Hosoi comes out of retirement, does the fucking Christ air, that was so cool.

Brian: We’ve played at a few empty pools, we’ve played at the Nude Bowl – any time you’ve got skateboarding by an empty pool that’s good.

Carter: We’ve played the Apache Skate Blasts, playing on the Apache Reservation…

Don: So that’s kind of a whole story; the Apache Indians live on these shitty Reservations in the middle of nowhere where there are high instances of diabetes, so these guys built a skatepark. Brian and a bunch of dudes with industry connections got all these companies to put up a bunch of swag, so we had the skate contest and all these kids walked away with new shoes, backpacks, boards and stuff. Then we had this whole concert at night with us, Agent Orange and other bands, it was fun.

Brian: So the guy who puts it on, his name is Doug Miles and he’s a full blood Apache from San Carlos reservation – he’s an artist and he does this amazing art, paints on skateboards and shows it in galleries. He also started this company called Apache Skateboards which gets boards to all the locals. His son, Doug Jr., is a full on ripper! We’ve played it three or four years in a row and each one was better than the last. We did one, it was, what were you saying?

Don: Oh, they did the Red Rover thing!

Brian: Oh yea they did the Red Rover where, instead of a slamdancing pit, there were two lines and they ran towards each other…

Carter: Like Braveheart!

Brian: Yeah, a Braveheart. Talking of gigs, should we get back and see the other bands soon?

Corey: He has a lonnnngg list…(laughs)

We can cut down the list… so Brian has a wristguard on at the moment, and Carter has some Harrow roadrash. Have you guys ever had to cancel a gig because of skateboard injuries?

Brian: Nope, not yet – broken ribs, whatever. I’ve got a broken toe and a broken wrist at the moment and we’re still skating, so there you go…and my mind is in serious jeopardy at the moment (laughs).

Don: Yeah you got that football concussion shit going on…

Brian: I got all kinds of shit going on, just makes you stronger!

You mentioned The Damned before; when ‘Nowhere Blossoms’ came out it seemed heavily influenced by The Damned circa ‘The Black Album’ with its use of keyboards and changes of pace. Were The Damned the main influence behind, or were you also listening the similar changes happening with the sounds coming from the likes of TSOL and Government Issue?

Brian: The Damned were a huge influence, TSOL were a huge influence. TSOL were on that maybe a little bit before us… I mean when we started in Phoenix hardcore and slamdancing was a whole new thing, it was mostly new wave otherwise. So what we was doing was new, and scary, and we were getting kicked out of every place we played. Fast forward three or four years later and that’s a thing – hardcore is a thing, there’s a way to play and certain clothes to wear – and at that point we were like, well that’s not really punk rock if you’ve got the uniform and you’ve got the sound. So we started doing different stuff. TSOL-style stuff, looking to The Damned’s stuff…if you’ve come to just hear punk rock, the most punk rock thing we can do is not play punk rock, motherfuckers – how’d you like this? (laughs). So that was part of it, but we also liked…we liked loads of stuff, not just the punk stuff happening around us.

Yeah, I’d imagine there are a lot of surprise influences in the mix that people wouldn’t think of?

Don: Yeah, back when we started, the owner of the club would be freaking out and kill the PA. So we’d be on stage going “OK, the PA’s gone so let’s play a surf song”. So the crowd’s still going, trashing the place, and the guy would call the cops…we were banned for life from every club we played. James Booker, if you want to talk unexpected influences.

Carter: Mick Bronson and Bowie…

Don: Queen…I mean this was before punk, you had to listen to something.  I learned to play along to Black Sabbath, Geezer Butler, you can’t go wrong!

Brian: I was only 14 when I started…

Don: We played The Wipers single at the wrong speed! Listening to it going ‘Oh, this kind of sucks!’

Brian: My buddies at high school were Mormons and their parents threw out all their punk records because they thought it was devil music. So they called me telling me to go to their house, look in their trash can and get all their records out. Five minutes later I get there and that shit was already warped!

Corey: That’s Phoenix…

Brian: The Flyboys, their EP was a 12” but it was 45rpm. So when we first started, we were playing it at 33rpm because it was a 12”. “This guy’s got a real deep voice…kinda slow, but a real cool voice” (laughs). A month later we looked at it properly and it was a 45, then we really got into it!