How did you guys start out as a band?
Lincoln: We were like, well, it’s sort of more legitimate to be playing at our own houses if we have another band there too. So we played with [campus band] Thrillzilla for a while and now we haven’t played at any of our own houses for a long time.
Mark: Lincoln and I got together probably a year ago in January and Jim and Peter joined in September.

Do you feel like that makes you more successful as a campus band if you’re not playing at your own house?
Mark: I don’t know if it’s a judge of success, but it makes us feel better about not having to clean up afterwards. It also makes us feel like we’re in demand because people are like, “We’re having a party, can your band play?” and it’s neat instead of us being in need of a venue and throwing a party at our own house, which is basically how we got started out.

How would you describe the band’s sound?
Jim: Indie pop.
Lincoln: We’ve sort of been trying to come up with a genre because, you know, that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Jim: People who listen to us can more easily categorize us. Actually I had a professor – which makes it that much more valid – tell me that he thought we sounded like early Seattle, pre-grunge, like Screaming Trees or something. I don’t know if that’s the best [description], but that was the one I appreciated the most coming from somebody else.
Lincoln: Most of our things that we’ve written are pretty poppy, but our covers are generally pretty off-beat. We try to cover stuff that’s not covered.

Do you write most of your own songs or do you do more covers?
Mark: We have three originals that we play regularly and probably two or three more in various stages of completion. About two-thirds of what we do is covers, but we try to do our own take on things.
Lincoln: For example, we do this Magnetic Fields song. If you’ve ever heard the Magnetic Fields, it’s all composed on a Mac Classic and the guy has this ridiculous bass voice and stuff. We took one of those [“I Have the Moon”] and made it into a ’60s, pop surf song. It’s one of our most popular songs along with the original “Paper Wings,” which people request all the time. It’s kind of all over the map. We try to give things our own spin and that’s where we try to derive our sound.
Peter: Yeah, our cover of [“New Partner” by] Palace blows the original out of the water.
Jim: I think, overall, in terms of our sound, we’re just trying to make music that people like listening to, more than anything else. Whatever genre that falls into, we just want to make music that people can get up and dance to.

What are your plans for the future?
All: Groaning sounds
Mark: I don’t know. We’ve talked about this off and on and come up with different plans. None of us is willing to put our lives on hold for the band as of right now, so next year, anyway, will be a sort of hiatus, but we have, in vague terms, discussed if we’re all able to move into the same city or something like that eventually, trying to keep playing.
Lincoln: It sucks, though, because we function really well musically together and we all enjoy hanging out with each other, so as a band it’s a great combination. We’ve got chemistry and we can read each other very well.
Mark: I know, between here and high school, I’ve been in five or six bands before this one and this one is, by far, the best functioning band that I’ve been in.

What do you think makes this band so successful?
Jim: I think what makes it works best is that none of us are necessarily the most proficient on any given instrument or even in songwriting, but when we come together, we put what we can in to make the song sound good. We don’t have that instrumentalist ego mixed in with it.
Lincoln: There’s an acknowledgement of everybody’s part in the group and nobody has their own personal agenda.

Who are your influences?
Lincoln: We come from pretty diverse musical backgrounds. Mark and Jim come from more metal, which is not really a sound you hear in our music that much.
Peter: It’s muffled. Muffled metal.
Lincoln: I come from more folk or indie rock background.
Mark: I know Lincoln and I both have [had] formal jazz training and Peter’s classical and Jim plays guitar and bass in addition to drums and he sings. Everyone does a lot of stuff and brings a lot to the table.

So if your band had a motto, what would it be?
Mark: STATION. This was decided a couple of weeks ago and we are still getting used to it.

What would you say is the best part about being in a campus band?
Jim: It gives you an excuse to go to parties and not have to do it like everyone else does. It gives us a way to be connected to the campus besides just kind of another faceless person walking through a party. It’s something different that’s not exactly organized, but still organized.
Mark: And to speak specifically to being a campus band, rather than a band trying to make it, for example in Cleveland or something like that — the majority of our shows are still in the basements of houses with maybe 20 to 30 people there, which is a lot of fun because it’s really immediate. I mean, the audience is literally a foot away from you, which takes some getting used to.
Lincoln: I don’t know if there’s necessarily a rivalry between campus bands or anything like that, but everybody is — at least we — are always interested in what other people are doing.
Jim: Again, it’s a nice little, localized community of people.
Lincoln: I think, in terms of crafting your sound, becoming a good band or whatever, it provides even more of a challenge because you want to jar people that are used to hearing campus bands. “Campus band” has a connotation to it that’s not quite synonymous with crappy, but sometimes…
Mark: There’s a reason there’s a difference between campus band and professional band.
Lincoln: Being a campus band, that’s something we’re really conscious of. That’s why we don’t just play anything if we don’t feel like it has a certain polish to it. We want to try to be a good band, but also be a campus band.

Where do you typically perform?
Mark: One of the most fun shows we ever played was in the basement of a house — when we got down there, it was about 50 degrees and everything was dirty and I couldn’t believe we were playing there, but it was great just because a lot of people came.
Lincoln: By the end of the night, the whole basement was packed.
Mark: It got really warm down there both in temperature and feeling.
Lincoln: And we felt like we were going to get electrocuted the whole time, so there was an element of danger there too.
Jim: That was one of the first live performances we recorded and we didn’t get us so well, but we did get this girl who was standing right next to the mike talking about how much she hated Irish people.
Lincoln: She was also picking out who she was going to make out with in the audience and there was this awkward guy trying to get himself named in that list standing right next to her.
Mark: I feel like we’re less likely to get that kind of thing being out in a club and that’s one of the things that’s nice about playing small, localized things.

Where will you be playing next?
Mark: We’re possibly playing on May 3. There’s two or three things that are up in the air right now.
Lincoln: If you’ve got a party…
Mark: Yeah, if you’ve got a party, we’re self-contained and we bring our own sound and everything else. Just make sure your neighbors aren’t going to call the police on us too early.
Jim: And if you’ve got an event that’s not a party, we’d also like to play that. We’ll sell our souls.

Is there anything else you want to add?
Mark: We do maintain an e-mail list and we always e-mail before the shows so that people will know about them and come, hopefully. That’s the idea. If you want to get on our e-mail list, send an e-mail to any of us, but probably I am the best one because it’s saved on my computer.

Interview conducted by Arts Editor Julie Sabatier