Full Service's Blog

Adventures…

fullservice — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:13:18 +0000

January 27, 2009
TourSaw with Scotty Don’t and Badfish
(visit www.fullservicemusic.com/media-videos.php to catch all videos!)

There have been many an amazing tour in the history of this here band. There was, of course, Toursaw I; “the first” always has a special place in the heart. The Takeover Tour, too, was memorable for obvious reasons. But this last tour definitely ranks high. Our friends Scotty Don’t (who moonlight as “Badfish: A Tribute to Sublime”) invited us to play 4 dates with them in Baton Rouge, Dallas, Houston, and Austin. As the following videos will attest, one of the reasons these shows were exciting was because of the venues and the large crowds (House Of Blues in Dallas and Houston, Varsity Theater in Baton Rouge, and Emo’s in Austin). But perhaps more importantly, the shows will forever go down in history because of the bond we formed with a band who proved to be, by the end of our little run with them (they continue on for months after last Sunday’s Austin date,) our kindred spirits.

They were into playing soccer, they had a trumpet player who was kind enough to sit in with us for “Trumpets,” their merch dude was one of the kindest, funniest people we’ve ever met, their drummer greeted us at our first show with them in Baton Rouge holding an ice bag to his ridiculously swollen black eye (something about defending Pat Benatar against an angry drunk bully after their show in New Orleans?), their singer pins a photo of The Fonz on his amp and skates around on his ripstick inside the venue before shows, and their bass player repeatedly challenged Bonesaw’s manhood with competitive banter on and off the field. And not only this, but they work harder than any band we’ve seen and they play their hearts out every single night. So, many thanks to these guys for the opportunity to play those shows with them. We made a boatload of new fans and we are greatful for that chance.

Some highlights from the mini-toursaw:

1) In Baton Rouge, the microphone on my tom-tom fell off after the very first hit, prompting me to call over to Smell for assistance. The mic had landed on my snare drum and I needed him to take it off to avoid further catastrophe. As the following video shows, poor Smell thought he had found a spot in the song where I would lay off the snare for a few seconds so that he could sneak his hand in and clear the mic away. However…I ended up smashing his hand as he was doing me this courtesty. He doesn’t react much in the video, but rest assured he layed upon me a series of vitriolic epithets that shook me to my very core. I’m sorry Smell.

2) Also in Baton Rouge, we happened to catch Bonesaw on video at Subway making one of his notoriously awkward requests for special treatment because of his food allergy. (He’s allergic to wheat.) Enjoy…

3) At a rest stop near Dallas, we had trouble with Twink causing unnecessary delays…

4) In Houston, my bass drum kept sliding away from me. I offered anyone in the crowd $5 to jump the railing in the front row and sit on stage to hold my drum in place. Between the time it took me to say that and reach down for a drink of water, somebody had appeared, seated in front of my kick with his feet holding either side. As we started the song, I yelled “ARE YOU WITH THE VENUE??” He said “NO!, I JUMPED THE RAILING!” I said “COOL!!” After that song, security took him back out onto the floor and replaced him with two 45-lb plates. Bummer, but I met up with him later and made good on the reward.
So, great tour. New friends, new fans, good times.

What’s next for El Service? We’re heading out on tour again in early February, and the album is coming out in a few weeks (CD Release show at Ruta Maya on Feb. 28th). We also have this, the name of the new album… THE EARTH STILL WANTS YOU
Stay tuned for artwork and track-listing… Love, Vitamin Hoag

Hoagman interviewed about inspiration, the upcoming album, and more. . .

fullservice — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:07:42 +0000

Below is the complete interview Hoag conducted with our loyal FanSaw “The Joker.” Look for an article based on this interview in the local press soon!

Joker: What were your goals when you started FULL SERVICE? How have those goals changed and/or remained the same over time?

Hoag: There are career goals and there are artistic goals. Career-wise, we went into this with the hopes of one day being as big as bands like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or 311 or The Police. We’ve always believed in ourselves and our artistic capabilities, so in that sense we look at the big boys as our peers, as bands to compare ourselves to. Sure, they’re big and famous, but when it comes down to it they’re just dudes that make really good music. We know other bands on the small level that we feel are just as good as the big fish, and it’s just a matter of getting discovered and getting that chance. Through hard work, intelligence, and perseverance, those small bands can increase their chances or getting that chance. So our goal has always been to take this thing to the biggest level we can, while at the same time preserving our independence in terms of musical integrity, not “selling-out” to radio, being as self-sufficient and in control of our own operations as possible. What we’ve learned since the beginning is that this is a lot harder than we thought it would be. Talent doesn’t automatically give you a chance, there’s business saavy, marketing, and luck involved, too.

Artistically, our goals have pretty much always been the same. To continue to expand our musical vocabulary so that we can express ourselves to our fullest potential. This means always trying to improve our individual skills on our instruments, and opening our mind to different approaches to music. One of the best ways to do this is not to think of yourselves as “Full Service” all the time. It helps to sometimes sneak in a new identity so that new sounds come out. Like instead of Hoag singing this one, I’m going to be a fisherman from new england singing this one, or a green shrike bird from the rainforest. This was the idea behind “Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” They gave “The Beatles” a new identity, and new sounds came out. It wasn’t “Paul McCartney” or “John Lennon,” it was “Billie Shears.” Brilliant.

When writing a song, where do you feel more emphasis should be placed? (ie. Lyrics, music, groove, etc.)

Hoag: An equal amount of attention and love should be given to lyrics, music, and groove, without question. Otherwise there’d be a weak link, right? Lyrics and melodies, however, seem to have the biggest impact in terms of taking a song to a new level. Often times we’ll have the music and the groove locked in but no lyrics, and we think “well that’s a really cool tune” and then when we put vocals on it we think “well that’s a REALLY cool tune. Damn.”

All of you decide to go by nicknames. Was that a conscious decision? If so, why?

Hoag: I think subconsciously because it helps with that sort of alter-ego identity thing. Tim doesn’t play the guitar, BONESAW does, and he’s a baaaad man. I’m not sure Tim could come up with some of the stuff that Bonesaw does.

In a relatively short period of time, you have released a number of albums that it takes some bands decades to record. How do you manage to come up with new material so quickly (As in, where do you draw inspiration? Nature, politics, etc.) and continue to keep your sound?

Hoag: Who the hell knows where inspiration comes from. Out of thin air I guess. But yeah, seeing something or reading about something or experiencing something that is beautiful or terrible or funny or thought-provoking in some way, that definitely helps trigger some synapses. A lot of it is just searching your imagination to find different ways of looking at things or expressing things. Like “Hotter in the House” came about because we were hanging around the house one day talking about how hot it is in Texas, and we started joking about how it could almost cause a hallucination or a citizens revolt. Something like “Hi-Ho” came from a fascination with the ocean and with the lifestyle of pirates, so we wrote about a mutiny on a ship. For one of the songs on the new album “Eyes Like Snow,” I wanted to tell a winter-wonderland kind of fairy-tale, so I created some characters and took off with it.

What are your thoughts on your own musical output, especially in contrast to current major label releases, especially the new Axl Rose solo release(aka Chinese Democracy), that take years to record?

Hoag: Well Axl is sort of a strange, atypical case. Like Brian Wilson taking all that time to finish “Smile” (which is amazing). But I don’t know, we just love to create. We feel bored if we go long periods of time without making something new. This is how we know we’re in it not just to “get big and make a lot of money” (there are far easier ways to make a lot of money.) If we were in it for that, we wouldn’t be making new songs all the time. It’s more of a personal journey, to peel back the layers and see what we can do that is new and exciting for us and for the world. That being said, we don’t force it. We never sit down and try to write songs. Everybody know that never works. As we say, “the guitar tells me when to pick it up.” Sounds kind of new-agey, but it’s true. It’s very odd actually. Like “The Force.”

In a world of online downloading and myspace, y’all take music to the fans with your Takeovers. How did these performances come about?

Hoag: Well, the internet connects you to a lot of people, but it can also bring you farther away from the people. Promoting your band exclusively behind a desk, with myspace messages or whatever, has never been our style. We prefer to combine this with real, face-to-face interaction. Takeovers are so empowering. We don’t need to book a show or corner ourselves in a particular time-slot, we can just find a place where there are lots of people gathered (concert parking lots, parks, art festivals, etc) and set up and jam. Also, the fans we make from playing takeovers become such hardcore fans, because they’ve really been a part of something spontaneous. They go home and tell their friends about the crazy stunt they saw that day. They offer to help us unload and hand out demos and all that. Plus, we can talk to them face to face, and we establish a more meaningful connection than the one that exists in the virtual world.

In terms of musical diversity, how does each band member bring something to the table in terms of musicality, performance, and/or musical tastes?

Hoag: Bonesaw has an odd combination of sensibilities. He’s a balladeer but also a shredder. I’m sort of the same way. I also have a deep interest in improvisation (especially vocal) and different melodic traditions, such as jazz (nina simone, billie holiday), qawwali (nusrat fateh ali kahn), even stuff like john denver and old French singers like edith piaf. Twinky-P is very well-versed in funk lines and syncopation. Maybe because he’s half Colombian. And smell, like me, brings a sort of primitive approach to performance and music-making. He has a very keen ear for what’s interesting and what’s sort of normal or stock or unacceptable.

Bonesaw writes songs with only his guitar, he rarely writes vocal melodies or lyrics. Because of this, his compositions really could exist without any other accoutrement. His melodies are IN the riffs and the guitar parts. Then I’ll go ahead and bring put some vocals on top. I like to think of it like the vocals are hidden in there somewhere, and I have to coax them out. I’ll just listen to his parts for a while and wait for the melody to reveal itself. It’s always buried in there, and when it peeks it’s head out, I put words to it and sing it, and the song rises to a new level.

When I write songs on guitar, I write more traditionally in the “chord-changes” kind of way, which leaves way more room for creation of melody. I like both ways of doing things.

We’re sort of like Voltron. Each individual is great, but when we get together and morph into one huge individual, we become super.

You have a large repertoire of videos online. How did that come about?

Hoag: Videos are a great way to involve people in the process. They can see what it’s like making an album, touring, etc. We just thought it’d be fun to give our fans a glimpse of our life and journey as a band. We also use it to make commercials for our shows, and we’ve even staged mock press-conferences to announce big news, like the Takeover Tour.

Where do you see yourself in the history of music?

This may sound egotistical, but I think we all really believe in ourselves, and believe that we have something amazing to offer the world in terms of musical expression. We’re not in this to party, we’re in it to inspire people, make them move, make them feel, make them think. But I mean, if we never get this music out there to the large number of people we hope to, then that doesn’t really change the fact that we made this music. It exists in the world now. We dug deep within ourselves and made music out of thin air. It didn’t exist before, and that’s kind of cool to think about. Also, it’s all about the process…the process of making the sounds and the melodies and the beats and the words, so in the end, no matter what happens, we engaged ourselves in that process, and it will have been a personally fulfilling journey regardless of whether we have an impact on the history of music.

A Eulogy for “Genny the Generator”

fullservice — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:54:33 +0000

Full Service regrets to inform our fansaws that on October 23rd, 2008, our beloved generator, “Genny,” was laid to rest in Amherst, Massachusetts. The circumstances of her passing are somewhat mysterious. The story goes like this…

On October 21st, we staged a Takeover on Boston Commons. Genny did wonderfully, powering us for 5 songs before a policeman on horseback ordered us to stop. We packed her into the Whale and went to the “The Middle East Club” for our official show that night.

On our way out of Boston after the club show, somewhere on Interstate 90, we noticed the smell of gas coming from the back of the Whale. When we arrived at our hotel, Twink and Smell unloaded Genny to see what was wrong.

Nobody was prepared for what came next. A tube connecting the gas to the engine had been severed, and poor Genny had become a victim of the generator equivalent of “bleeding to death.”

We rode with Genny to our show in Amherst, where we took a closer look at our options. After this follow-up inspection, however, it became clear that Genny’s time had come. Repair was not a feasible option. We would have to move on and purchase a new one when we returned to Austin.

It seems callous, we know, to simply have left her on the side of a random road in Amherst, Massachusetts. Genny is surely deserving of a proper burial, but touring leaves little room for doing anything “properly” (eating, showering, etc.)

Genny’s life was one of dedicated service. I can still remember the day Smell brought her home from the hardware store. In anticipation of doing a Takeover during the 2006 Austin City Limits Festival, Bonesaw had given Smell the job of finding an affordable generator in the next week or so. We didn’t expect Smell to find one so quickly, and at such a bargain price of $250. Bone and I were sitting in the living room of FS headquarters when we saw Smell walk through the front yard with a big box in his arms. I ran over to open the door for him and he carefully set it on the ground. He popped back up, his hands on his hips; the stance of a proud parent. “Look what I got!” he exclaimed.

Since that day, Genny has been the MVP of such historic FS Takeovers as Austin City Limits (2006 and 2008,) the Barton Creek Greenbelt, NC-State, Auburn, Providence, Boston Commons, and of course the entire Takeover Tour.

She wasn’t perfect. She blew a spark plug at our first Takeover Tour stop in Philly, and a few weeks ago her gas meter became permanently stuck at half full. While she was alive, these failures were annoying; her blown spark plug in Philly cut our set short and made for a rough start to the tour, and her broken gas-meter was an obvious inconvenience (how were we ever supposed to know if we were running low on juice??) but in her passing we can look back on these shortcomings with a laugh. And honestly, her deficiencies probably had more to do with improper management on our part. We pushed her to the limits of what she was able to handle, and considering her demanding schedule, it’s hard to remember her as anything but a true warrior and a role model for young generators everywhere.

Though we will soon replace her, she will forever be remembered as The Original Generator of Full Service Takeovers. Rest in Peace, Genny.

Who is Bill Smith?

fullservice — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:54:10 +0000

Let me tell you some things about our man Bill. Some interesting tidbits.

For one, he goes by several names, depending on the day and situation.

Bill. Bill Smith. Bootstrap Bill. Dolla Bill. Bitch. Biiiiiiiiiitch.

Why those last two names? Well one second tidbit about Dolla Bill is that he LOVES to curse, often at the most hilarious and unexpected of times. Dude has one of the filthiest vocabs I’ve ever heard, and it’s totally unexpected and not the least bit offensive. Somehow he manages to call me “Bitch” and not offend me. In fact, he calls our whole band collectively “Bitches.” Some examples would be “ARE YOU READY TO ROCK BITCHES?!” or “STOP BEING A PUSSY YOU BITCH!” Tremendous.

Bill also loves to talk. . . a LOT. A Lot a Lot! And much of what he says would be excellent stand-up material. On Saturday night on 6^th street after our show at 2:45am he commented, for example:

“They’re everywhere. . .”
“Who?” I said.
”HOOCHIES!!!!!!!!”

Bootstrap also works from home, and has frequently bragged that he gets to wear a wife beater and boxers all day, solving giant corporations’ financial problems from the comfort of his couch in order to “pay for all this recording CRAP I own.” Which leads me to my last little tidbit about Bill. . .

He’s making the FULL SERVICE LIVE ALBUM – recorded over two shows (June 28^th and Sept 27^th) at the Flamingo Cantina -

And it’s gonna be BAD ASS. . . BITCHES!

Apparently you CAN do a takeover in the rain…

fullservice — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:58:06 +0000

The Takeover Tour continues to roll along, on our way to Atlanta right now in face and hoping that the rain in the forecast holds off for a few more hours. But at least we know now that we can, indeed, still rock out even when mother nature decides to pee on our parade.

Hoagman writes all about our sloppy Raleigh, NC takeover and much more on our updated TAKEOVER TOUR DIARY that i just uploaded a few minutes ago. Check it out!

FS feature article by Austin.com!

fullservice — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:18:17 +0000

Big feature article by Sarah Machi on the www.austin.com website. Here’s a snip and a link to the full article:

Local band launches guerilla concerting campaign outside 311/Snoop Dogg shows.

“Being invited on a big-ticket summer arena tour is every bar band’s ultimate dream. Austin-based Full Service is doing just that with one small exception: they were never actually invited. “Oh no. We’re not at all affiliated [with 311],” drummer/ vocalist Hoagman (born Dave Kepner) says.

Full Service’s parasitic Takeover Tour is part gimmick, part grassroots fanbase builder. The premise is simple. They are following the 311/Snoop Dogg tour as it sells out large arenas throughout the country. At each city, Full Service sets up an impromptu stage (to use the term loosely) in the parking lot, guerilla-style, and plays their own concert. Until they’re shut down, of course.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

TAKEOVER TOUR Reports: Philadelphia and Brooklyn, NY

fullservice — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:30:14 +0000

Hoagie outdid himself on these. . . and oh boy did we get into some shit!

TAKEOVER TOUR UPDATES 2 (Philly) and 3 (Brooklyn)

New York, New York!

fullservice — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:24:09 +0000

Before we knock this TAKEOVER TOUR outta the park we’re starting off with a killer club date in New York City this coming Saturday July 12th at Sullivan Hall. Who doesn’t get hyped up for a visit to NYC? Considering how bad ass our recent shows there have been and also that Pukey and Chito (the two dudes with us on this tour) have nevery been there, it’s sure to go OFF.

If you haven’t had a chance to peep Hoag’s video flyer for the show, it’s rather funny. “These vagabound shoes. . .” I love that part.

I hope all y’all New Yorkers can make it and we’ll see you Saturday!

BONESAW

Here’s what you out-of-towners missed. . .

fullservice — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:06:26 +0000

Hoagman is always right on top of getting video footage of shows out. In this black and white highlight reel, see if you can spot yourself in the crowd shots. if ya missed the show, well as B Real says “here’s a little sample, just an example.”

FS in the NY Times, NY Daily News, and more

fullservice — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:22:01 +0000

This past weekend we had the incredible good fortune to be able to play a full concert at the Houston Astros v. New York Yankees game during batting practice. The whole show was broadcast on the Jumbotron and there were thousands of people there! It was especially cool because Bonesaw and Hoagman’s older brother (that would be my older brother) Tyler Kepner is the Yankees beat writer for the NY Times. So of course he and all his writer buddies wrote about the show saturday.

Check out what they had to say (and the funny comments people left)! FS IN THE NEWS