Where do you all live now?
Gabriel Hart: Feels like the practice space lately… I force myself to go there everyday after work and write. Anything…. even if it’s like ‘I will not go two months without washing my pants until they are so filthy that they somehow shine ever again!’ one hundred times on the chalkboard we have there. I am depressed.
Brian Waters: Hancock Park-adjacent Melrose/Western area just north of the Snooty Fox Motel.
Katya Hubiak: In my car which I bought for $300.
What was the first show you ever played as a band? Where was it and when?
GH: Que Sera in Long Beach—July 25th, 2007, back in the glory days when Katya and Tornado Jane harmonized like dying cats and Tony Love’s snare drum sprayed drool everytime his stick hit… But hey, the last night of the Echo residency will be our one-year anniversay show, so yeeeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh….
BW: I only played on the first 3 songs back. This current line-up’s first show was at the El-Cid in Silverlake in winter ‘07 and it was OUTSTANDING! The shows just keep on getting better, too. Jail Weddings are probably the most original band in the whole world right now. I—speaking for myself only—personally love the fact that whenever we are performing live, I am absotively pos-o-lutely 100% sure that there isn’t another band performing anywhere in the world that comes close to our caliber of taste, class, musicianship, songwriting and above all good looks! Have you seen us? We’re all so damn gorgeous! Now that makes me feel warm inside.
What’s the weirdest show you ever played?
GH: That one in my dream when my voice sounded like Barry White on 16RPM. The place was totally packed though.
BW: For me with Jail Weds, it was the Ink and Iron Fest with Warlocks and BRMC in Long Beach. Best one-word description: ‘UNSAVORY.’
Brad Caulkins: Altamont afterparty. Tough crowd.
Who was the first person you ever sold a record to?
BC: Huh? A Jail Weddings record? Yeah, like I work the merch table. That’s for vocalists.
GH: I am probably as much of a salesman as I am fucking purple. I misplaced $150 one time we played the Echo. As far as the band knows.
BW: I don’t know. Some kid—probably a very nice one with outstanding taste in music.
What song do you like to play last in your set and why?
GH: Right now it’s this song called ‘The Impossible,’ where I get to walk off in the middle of it and watch them finish from the crowd, and I get this rush where I feel like I’m Sylvester Matushka—that guy who would derail trains and watch them wreck as he hid in bushes and jerked off!
BW: I enjoy ‘The Honeymoon Loop.’ Why, you ask? I love dramatic endings and that song brings on the funk, the noise and then the drama.
BC: ‘Kasimir,’ and damnit, Gabe Hart won’t let me!
If you could cover one L.A. band’s song, whose would it be and why?
BW: I’ll say ‘Little Dreamer’ by Van Halen. Why? Just to fuck up the program a little bit more and because after all is said and done, Van Halen was the most triumphant band to ever emerge from L.A.
BC: Blindfold me and let’s play pin the tail on the Wounded Lion set list. Whatever song I hit, we’ll cover because it’s probably great.
What was the last song everyone in the band listened to together?
GH: ‘Happy Birthday’? I think Hannah screamed and she ran away.
BW: That has never happened as far as i know. There’s ten of us. I’ve had less people in drivers-ed classes. We aren’t even all in the recording studio at the same time ever.
What is the best album that everyone in the band owns?
GH: ‘Somebody Lonely’ b/w ‘The Honeymoon Loop’ 7″. I gave them all discounts on it.
BW: Nothing by Neutral Milk Hotel or Magnetic Fields or the Cure or the Stooges or even Lee Hazlewood—no, it’s gotta be Thriller by my man M.J.
What would you buy if we gave you $167 and why?
GH: I would buy back my band’s trust in me to handle money, then I’d buy a handle of scotch. For myself.
BC: One tank of gas for one of our vans so we could get half the band halfway to San Francisco. Shotgun!
BW: ‘Ain’t lookin’ for nothin but a good time!’ — Bret Michaels circa 1987.
KH: I’d call Jesse Camp and invite him to go on a mini shopping spree to buy scarves and glitter. I would also buy him some lotion from Bath and Body Works because I think he’d really enjoy a scented lotion.
What’s the best record any of you scored for $1?
BW: Velvet Underground and Nico unpeeled banana with upside-down torso in the back cover photo. Turned that sucker around for $400 on eBay. As for one I kept, probably Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis. It is scratched but no skipping so it sounds like the jazz record that In The Red never released. It is beautiful—just beautiful.
KH: The Specials record. I got that right after my house burned down when i was 15, which was convenient since my $3.99 copy of it burned in the fire.
GH: The band BEAST’s only 7″ single. It’s this total over-the-top goth band that Brian Gregory of the Cramps started after he quit and went nuts. They’re all dressed up as wood nymph creatures on the cover. You’d probably never even notice it if you did see it cause it looks like it sucks, and you know, it kind of does…