IL: Is grunge still prevalent?
Rev: No, grunge is dead. We cycled through that whole indie thing……
El Barto: The whole indie acoustic, eclectic shit. There’s a good metal scene in Seattle.
Walrus: Doom metal like Neurosis. Believe it or not, Tad’s bringing it back.
El Barto: Straight up hard rock? Nada piñata!
Rev: There’s like the Spitting Cobras
El Barto: Spitting Cobras and ourselves. That’s about it.
IL: Is it hard to get a gig out there?
El Barto: Not at all. That’s our town.
Rev: We have a good draw and our fans fucking drink a lot. Our people drink beer and do shots of Jager all night long.
IL: That’s the thing. It’s good drinking music.
El Barto: Yeah, you’re right! It’s party music man.
Rev: If you hire a reggae band and everybody is getting high and drinking water the bartenders aren’t doing any business. It’s our secret weapon; we have a bunch of alcoholic fans.
El Barto: Camaro rock
Rev: Camaro rock baby!
IL: You guys mentioned lady GaGa as far as influences, but why did you cover Paparazzi when there are a lot of other songs?
Rev: You have to ask Bart and Princess, because they were the ones that turned me on to Lady GaGa, and they were like we should either do Poker Face or Paparazzi. But it was their idea.
El Barto: Princess and I tossed ideas around between those two tunes. I came up with a version of that song [Paparazzi] and he [Princess] came up with a version. We took the verse from one and the chorus from the other and that’s how we came up with it.
Princess: That’s how we get rock n roll!
El Barto: That’s how we write most of our stuff…..it works. It’s a different version and people respond to it well.
Rev: Any time when you’re putting stuff out there and you can get a reaction, hopefully it’s a positive one, that’s kind of what you want. We just want to connect with people, you know?
El Barto: Chicks dig it too…..
IL: Yeah?
Rev: Fuck yeah! We want all the chicks at our shows man, because if the chicks are there the dudes will follow.
IL: How do you guys do your writing? Do you come up with a riff……?
El Barto: Generally Princess and I will bring the core idea to these guys, generally to Rev and let him do his thing. We have a pro tools studio of our own which enables you to…..
IL: Is that how you guys did…..
El Barto: That’s how we did the whole record, yeah.
Rev: I’ll come up with some ideas on vocals and we’ll maybe say, make this the chorus or make it longer or shorter…..it’s just levels of commitment. And then he’ll come back and say, oh, I have this vocal idea to add to it….Then we’ll take it back on the floor and try to play it live. It’s kind of a train wreck at first, but it starts to come together. Then we’ll record that core idea and we’ll listen to it and decide if that’s something that warrants further attention, and if it is, then we’ll start looking at writing intros, outros and solos. Then it’s, how can we make the arrangement cool? Then it’s done. Then we just record it right there, because we record everything where we rehearse. It’s all in house, except for the mastering. We have Black Belt Mastering and Seattle Disc Mastering that master it at the end, but everything is recorded, mixed, engineered and produced right in our fucking rehearsal space, which is just a little room in a basement. And we have a toilet too!
Our last space didn’t have a toilet.
El Barto: We had to go to Starbucks. They hated us there.
Rev: We used all their toilet paper, so……They started making us use the cup insulators and they’re really abrasive. Macho wipes!
IL: If I write that is Starbucks gonna come after you?
Rev: Sure, I hope so!
El Barto: I hope so!
Rev: Any publicity is good publicity.
El Barto: Right!
Rev: At this level we’ll take what we can get! Nobody knows about us!
El Barto: Amen!
Rev: So thank god you’re here! (laughs)
EL Barto: Thank god for you two!
Rev: We’ve got two people that know about us now!
IL: What’s an average day on the road for you guys?
Rev: Bart usually gets up at eight, starts making coffee and then usually gets us up at nine. We start milling around; then we’re usually out the door by ten at the local “shit n git”. We load up on fuel, donuts, cigarettes and coffee….
Suzuki Sixx: Gas station food….
Walrus: Hot water.
Rev: Hot water, because the Walrus likes to make his own coffee. And then we drive from about eleven to four or five. We come here, wait for Tantric to get done with their sound check; then we load all the gear on and do our sound check. Then we either try to run to the hotel to take a shower, or we just play as is. We stay until the end of the show, about two thirty, get back to the hotel at three, sleep for like four or five hours and it starts again at eight o clock.
IL: How long have you guys been doing that?
Rev: Three weeks. We’re going on the fourth now. Actually it’s five weeks because we have over a week of travel time on both sides of the tour. We’re gonna do 13, 494 miles. We got a budget. Princess has to whore himself out for our gas money sometimes.
El Barto: I’ll tell ya, things have been running lean…...
Suzuki Sixx: Profits have been going down.
Princess: I’ve been losing weight so…..
Rev: Business ain’t what it used to be!
IL: Here in Denver we have Colfax. Anyone can get business on Colfax.
Princess: Sweet!
Rev: (singing) Put on the red light!
Walrus: I played the Lions Lair on Colfax. I was telling these guys there were crack heads and everything hanging out there [on Colfax]. Man, it was crazy.
Rev: So we’ll take Princess down there with his dog collar, chain and his thong, and we’ll run him up and down the street until we get some takers.
Princess: That’ll be our next video campaign.
Rev: That’s right! That’ll be our next video, and our gas money to get to Oklahoma.
IL: What can we expect from a live show?
Princess: What can’t you expect from a live show?
Rev: There’s boredom, sadness, depression….
El Barto: It’s supposed to be fun right? We try to make it fun. It’s always fun for us, but sometimes I question whether it’s fun for the audience. Content can be questionable at times.
Princess: Sometimes they don’t get it.
El Barto: Sometimes they don’t think cocaine and hookers is as funny as we do, but you know…..If it’s offensive you’re too old.
Rev: We’ll it’s definitely adult entertainment but…We only get twenty five minutes on stage, and in response to your earlier question, one thing I didn’t include is, then we play. All of that stuff that happens is all for twenty five minutes. So, if those twenty five minutes sucks….? Then why are you doing it? That’s the only time, except when I get to spoon our latex G Bear, that’s the only fun that we really get to have.
El Barto: To play the gig. That’s what it’s about for us. It’s coming out here and entertaining, and you know….
Rev: Connecting with rock fans.
Suzuki: That’s the fun part. The other twenty three and a half hours sucks.
IL: What do you say to people that have heard your CD, never seen a show, but are thinking about it. How do you get them to come down?
Suzuki: Stop thinking about it.
Princess: Get the fuck out here!
Rev: If you come to a show, and you don’t like the show, you come see the Revenator at the end of the show…money back guarantee. Personally, I’ll give you your fucking money back, but you’re leaving the venue at that point.
IL: Well, that’s pretty much all I got for you guys!
Rev: Excellent!
Just by the interview it should be easy to tell that these guys are all about the rock n roll. They are a fun bunch to be around, and they can be a bit crude at times but like they told me a few times……It’s fucking rock n roll man!
Click HERE to read our review of Underride's Album Distored Nation
For more information on Underride visit:
Westminster, Colorado
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A few words with Seattle hard rock band Underride
by Tom Walsh
Posted on December 11, 2011
Seattle hard rock band Underride had to drive seventy one hours to St. Petersburg Florida just to start the first leg of their tour with Tantric. “Go to L.A. and take a left”, said singer Rev when talking about their drive there. They didn’t want to have to deal with the cold and snow, so that’s exactly what they did. They headed south into California and then turned left towards the east coast for what the guys called the most boring drive ever. “Yeah, it’s boring drive. There are only two turns”, states El Barto, the bands bass player and one of the original members, “You turn left in L.A. and right in Florida.” Their adventurous drive sounded more like a movie script along the lines of “Due Date” than reality that included a crazy bus driver that was trying to kill them and a wicked drug checkpoint in El Paso, Texas complete with drug sniffing dogs and a narrow escape. “We were sweating a little bit”, said El Bartolo of their escapades.
The current incarnation; vocalist Rev, bass El Barto, lead guitar Princess, guitar Suzuki Sixx and temp drummer The Walrus; and the only one that matters as far as they are concerned, was formed late 2008, early 2009. Underride’s main objective is to bring hard rock back in to the spotlight and make music fun again.
They played in Denver at the Marquis Theater this past Tuesday and were kind enough to kick back and talk to us for a bit about their adventure, the new album and how Underride came to be.
Interstate Live: how long have you guys been together, and how did you form?
Rev: This iteration of Underride, which is really the relevant iteration, formed right around the end of 08, beginning of 09. This was about six months after we released [first album] One Of Us. The two guitar players that were the founders of the band decided they didn’t want to go out on the road and promote the record. Bart (El Barto) was like, man this is a really good record. We need to go out on the road, and they were more like, hey let’s stay local. So we [Rev and Bart] decided we wanted to head out on the road.
Princess was in a band called Love On The Rocks, and they were just fucking great and over the top. So we just went right to him and I said man I’d love to be in a band with you, because he’s a great front man on stage and a great guitar player, and he fit in with what we were trying to do. He was like Fuck Yeah I’ll do it!
Princess: I was like Fuck Yeah I’ll do it!
Rev: So we started writing songs and shit, and we cycled through about twenty other guitar players. We knew Suzuki from a band in Tacoma. He ended up becoming a free agent and Bart ran into him at a mall. He was like hey, what’s up fucker? Suzuki was like hey, I’m a free agent. He walked in the first audition and played the whole set. He played the whole damn thing. We were like dude, you’re in. Then we started writing Distorted Nation which is the record we’re promoting now.
IL: When did that come out?
Rev: That came out in April. I’m gonna say it was technically made available in April.
IL: Are all of you guys from the Northwest?
Rev: No! There’s just a lot of good fishing up there (laughs). El Barto is from Big Sky country, not Mexico as a lot of people believe, Walrus is actually from ummm….
Walrus: Cali. Northern California. Redding….
Rev: Right! Redding California. Princess is from Green Bay….
Princess: What what!!
Rev: And Suzuki Sixx is from Mars.
Suzuki Sixx: Alien Nation!
IL: So, your music is just straight up hard rock. What are your influences? A lot of newer bands now don’t play hard rock. In fact, a hard rock band is hard to find.
Rev: It’s true. We can’t find it either and that’s one of the reasons we do what we do. We love straight up hard rock and that’s the main reason why we make it. We’re finding on this tour that there are a lot of people out there that still want it too. It’s pretty crazy. We get out there and people go crazy for it. It’s like a new thing to a lot of kids, you know?
El Barto: We put on a show and entertain, you know what I mean? I don’t know, I guess there’s been a lull in the entertainment business. We’re trying to bring back show business man.
Rev: We’re putting the ‘show’ back in business baby!
IL: What do you guys listen to when you’re not playing?
Rev: Well, one of our big influences is Lady GaGa. The whole thing is well crafted songs that have this fucking bombastic show. Of course we don’t have the budget or the stage to do that stuff, but with what we have, we try and go in that direction, you know what I mean? It’s very high energy, it’s very interactive with the crowd, it’s very positive, and what we want is…we want our crowd to have fun! Come to the show and have a good time. It’s almost like it’s a party and we’re the band playing at your party.
IL: Is that where your names come in also?
El Barto: It’s fun man! It’s supposed to be fun right?
Rev: It’s kinda like a gang, and everybody’s nickname came up as a kind of joke at one point or another. We don’t force em’. Sometimes they come up right away, sometimes they take time. I mean fuck, do you really want to call me by my birth name which is Doug Bohorowitz (laughs). (Changes to a nasally voice) Hi, My name’s Doug Bohorowitz, and I’m the lead singer of Huhunderride (laughs).
IL: How did you come up with the name Underride?
Rev: You know what? In the fifties they had those….movies for drivers ed. In one of those movies was a scene called Underride where people slam in to the back of a truck and it decapitates everyone in the car. And we thought, we’re not metal and shit like that but we kinda wanted to have that kind of impact on our crowd. Not in a negative way, in a positive way. Instead of losing your head, we want to get head. But that’s where it came from. Drivers Ed…..fifties…. I think you can even see them on youtube.
IL: so you guys all basically ended up in Seattle right? Is there much of a hard rock scene there, even underground?
Rev: No, not at all.
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Click album cover to check out Underride - Distored Nation on iTunes,
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