Sophomore Slam

The Mooney Suzuki first started to gain recognition at a national level when word of their incendiary stage show spread through the country's network of small rock clubs. This New York City four-piece - Sammy James Jr. (guitar, vocals), Graham Tyler (lead guitar), Michael Bangs (bass) and Augie Wilson (drums) - delighted fans and other gape-mouthed spectators with high-energy rock 'n' roll music and an explosive stage personality that was only bolstered by their debut release, People Get Ready (Estrus Records).
In 2002, The Mooney Suzuki emerged from the studio again with Electric Sweat (Gammon Records), and solidified their place in the ranks of rock's up-and-coming. Though the vibe on the band's sophomore release is a bit more soulful that the hard-charging People Get Ready, The Mooney Suzuki hasn't sacrificed any fire, and is currently blowing the mind and eardrums of fans all over the world with their nitro-charged take on blues-based and revved-up '60s-mod-style rock. The Mooney Suzuki's Sammy James Jr., on a very short break from a series of American and European tours, discusses the band's New York City roots and how things have changed in the last few years.

You're very much described as a New York band, a tag that alludes to much more than just geographic origin. Is that a description that you're comfortable with or would you rather be seen as a national rock act?
We are trying to become an international sensation, but we're still a New York City band, that's just what we do. I consider ourselves as a band that plays New York City music in the same way that Woody Guthrie played Americana folk music, you know? It's just to be aware and have a great passion for the music that is specific to your region and to have that inform the art that you do.

So what about your music is specific to New York?
Besides the musical history of New York City music - and that's just one of our influences but definitely a large one - I think that biggest way that New York informed our music is that there are so many bands here…and it's not just that there are so many bands here, but when the average person in New York says, "What am I going to do tonight?"…I mean, do you know how many things there are to do here in one night? I don't just feel like we've got to come up with something that's better than any band in New York. That's just the first step of that battle. I'm thinking that we've got to come up with something that someone would rather go to than, say, the MOMA. We've got to create something better than Picasso. With everything going on in New York, we've got to be the best thing possible. And so with a band, you go into the club, you glance at the band for two seconds and you walk out. We know this, we're from New York and we're conditioned to give things about 30 seconds of our attention before moving onto the next thing. So what we do every 30 seconds has to be the most explosive 30 seconds anyone's ever seen, otherwise you don't stand a chance. So our performance and the music that we write to accompany the performance - that's where it all comes from.

So which came first, the music or the mission to impress every 30 seconds?
It's weird 'cause I write a lot of music, and a lot of the music I write isn't suitable for The Mooney Suzuki because the music we perform has to be music that is a vessel for what we do live, for the energy and for the performance. So now that is part of the writing process - imagining performing it. But that's also because we've never had money to be in the studio for very long. When we have the opportunity to be in the studio for more than three days, we might be able to explore what we'd do in that scenario, but right now, it's all about the live performance, so that is definitely where the music comes from.

What do you do with the songs you write that The Mooney Suzuki can't perform?
Well…I got 'em. For me, it's like, after they're a year old I can't even listen to them any more. But you never know…who knows. I mean, there're a couple that I was thinking didn't originally seem appropriate for The Mooney Suzuki, but we've added a few new tones to our palate with the new record, so if we continue in that direction, there are some songs that I really would like to do that might be appropriate now or in the not-too-distant-future.

There are some songs on Electric Sweat that seem to explore the more soulful side of blues-based rock, as opposed to the near-constant hard-charging vibe on People Get Ready. Is that a result of a conscious drive to expand the band's musical boundaries?
It wasn't a drive to change it as much as it was just the material on Electric Sweat is stuff that we hadn't been touring with for a long time, it was stuff that we put together in the rehearsal studio. Also, for me it's a struggle to keep that palate I mentioned limited, and that's a struggle that we lost on Electric Sweat. With songs like "Natural Fact," I really wanted to record that song, even though it's a lot more of a baroque kind of folk-punk style. The song "Oh Sweet Susanna" was the one where we were like, 'Should we put this on the record?' It's very different and I thought maybe it wasn't a Mooney Suzuki song. Then I thought we should put it on the record, but all the way at the end, but then I was like, 'You know what? Fuck it, let's just put it up front.' And now that we've put it up front and said okay, we realized that, yes this is The Mooney Suzuki, and I guess that's just where we're at now.

What's the main difference between the two albums?
They're completely different in the sense that, if you look at them as photographs, they're just documents of where the band was at a certain point, and they could've [been] made by two different bands. With People Get Ready, nobody knew who we were, we had been playing for two years and had no attention, nobody wanted to do anything with us, nobody would book us - it was a constant struggle. So yeah, that record was an explosion with a vengeance. Electric Sweat came after another two years of constant touring and difficulties, and ended up being almost a rebirth record. But for me there are definite themes: The themes for People Get Ready were immediacy and action, and the themes of Electric Sweat are energy and explosions. And also the other big difference is the amps. My Fender Twin got stolen on a tour, so I replaced it with two late '60s 80-watt Orange combos. When you're playing through that kind of wattage, you're drawn to writing ridiculously enormous guitar parts.

How do those newer, more ballad-y songs translate live?
We've never done "The Broken Heart" live. I really enjoy playing "Natural Fact" live, and "Oh Sweet Susanna" has really turned into a great thing live. You know, with other musicians, you can say, 'this song is in B-minor,' and they know how to play in that key. But with us - and I think this is just as valid - we'll say, okay, '70s Stones' and that's the key. It's not necessarily a selection of notes, but you know what feel it is, so when you say 'heroin Stones,' you know what key we're playing in. We realized that, if we play "Oh Sweet Susanna" in the heroin Stones key, it would go over well live, and that seems to work.

Does The Mooney Suzuki have a mission?
To state a mission would imply that…well, yes. We want to become an international sensation, but to state another mission is to imply that we're not succeeding at what we're doing now, which isn't true. The fact that people come out to see us and that every time we play a city, there are more people there than there were the last time we played, means that we're fulfilling all that we set out to do. We're reaching people, word is spreading and we have an amazing community of fans and friends. I mean, that's why you pick up a guitar.

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