= Bands Like Rush

Ben: I’m here with Carl Schultz from the band Elf Project, and he is most definitely in a band like Rush in one sense or another. So Carl, would you mind just giving us a bit of your background and where you’re at, how you came to be in the band you’re in, and just a little bit about yourself and the band?

Carl: Yeah sure. Let’s see. Well, I’m located up outside Albany, New York, and I’ve been a musician for about 20 years. I started off like a lot of kids in high school playing in high school band, and then discovered progressive rock and it was basically all over from there. I had to play bass, so I’ve been playing bass for about 20 years, and we always had little bands that we had little cover bands and stuff like that and a friend of mine had a Four-Track, so we just started writing our own stuff, and this has gone back like I say about 20 years ago.

And Rush has definitely been a huge influence, not only with me but the other guys that are on the group, the other guys that play in Elf Project, Mike Cappadozy and Dave Wayne, they live here in the same town that I do, and they were hugely influenced by Rush and once we started playing together we kind of realized that the music that we were writing had a lot of the Rush influence. And we’ve basically just been kind of going in that direction ever since, it’s not a forced kind of thing, this is just the music that we’re writing.

And, of course, there’s also the Rush Tribute band, which was a culmination of playing in different Rush tribute bands over the years, Archives and Hemispheres. And we would play all these gigs, and I would try to record them with just like a room microphone or something like that, and it was always frustrating to hear these playbacks because it sounded like Doo-Doo. So we just decided let’s give it a shot, let’s do a studio recording.

And over the years, of course, we’ve certainly upgraded from a Four-Track and I’ve got a home studio. And so we’ve began recording here just kind of a fun really, so we could get a good recording and that was in ’05 when I started that project. And as we got going with it I brought in a friend of mine that is an audio engineer, and he helped out with it and it started sounding really good. So we’ve started shopping it around to some labels, and Eclipse Records picked it up and that came out the same day that the Snakes & Arrows CD came out, and we had a little bit of success with it. We’ve kind of dropped the Rush Tribute thing to focus in on our own stuff, and that’s where our attention has been out for the last couple of years.

Ben: So this is Elf Project we’re just talking about?

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: Okay. So Elf Project evolved from your tribute band’s Hemispheres, is that it?

Carl: Yeah, basically yeah, that’s basically what happened. I mean we always kind of write songs on our own and with different musicians here in the area, but the core that was the Rush Tribute band has turned into the Elf Project since ’06.

Ben: Right, cool. So when you were playing out live as the Tribute band, were you starting to slip into your own original stuff or it’s when you decided you guys had ideas of your own that you wanted a studio and wrote stuff fresh?

Carl: Well, we always kept the Rush Tribute. When we were going with that thing we had 3 sets of materials that was all Rush, so our hands were definitely full with that. That was a long performance so we didn’t do any of our original stuff and we figured, “Hey, if people are going to come out to a bar or a club or whatever and see the Rush Tribute band, they don’t want to be bothered with somebody’s original music.”

Ben: Right.

Carl: So that was our focus. But on the side we were writing our own stuff, and we’re all getting a little bit older, and we realized now, “Yeah, it’s a lot of fun to play Rush music, but we got to do our own thing.”

Ben: Right.

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: So when you said, and one curious thing you said earlier, you had to play bass, you fell in love with prog rock. Did you mean to say that you had to play bass? And I’m only asking you because you’re the vocalist and the bassist, and I don’t know if it’s conscious but I see this, I was the bassist and vocalist in a garage band on high school, and that we played a lot of Rush. And I’m interviewing this other guy in a few weeks, same deal. Is there something to that?

Carl: I don’t know, it’s weird. It’s weird like that, isn’t it? I don’t know, Geddy Lee definitely… I don’t know. I love the idea of the 3-piece and I think the first time I saw Rush I was like in tenth grade and I remembered it like watching him do all the stuff, and I was just like, “That is really cool.” I mean, vocals, bass, keyboard samples, foot pedals, everything, and I was really blown away by that. I’m also a huge Yes fan, a Chris Squire fan as well. And but I like the idea of the 3-piece, and I don’t know, over time it’s not like a hard thing to do at this point. You just kind of learn these different moves and it just kind of comes together.

Ben: All right. So what’s the label you’re on again?

Carl: The Rush Tribute is on the Eclipse Records label, and Elf Project is signed to 10T Records and they’re based out at Charleston, South Carolina.

Ben: Right, right, I knew there is a connection, so what I’ll do is check out your website which I’ll post on the site. Fluttr Effect is a co-band of yours on the same label.

Carl: That’s right.

Ben: And so they’re like the second or third interview I did for the site. I know they’re on the same major prog rock genre, and obviously not super-Rush clones, but I reached out to them mainly because I like their music, and they’re on the Boston area, and I kind of imagine I could just go down and catalog that label, which got some pretty good bands and just pick and choose, which one to interview with some pretty good music.

Carl: Yeah, they’ve got some different stuff on there. It’s not all progressive rock. They’re a well-rounded label, and that’s really their MO. Prog is a big thing for them, and they’ve got like some Christian stuff on there, and whatever you’d call contemporary. They’re trying to not just be a pigeonholed as the progressive rock label.

Ben: Right, right. Cool. So another connection and this is super-ironic. A friend of mine, Peter Richards, who I gathered you’ve heard or you know and…

Carl: He’s from my area.

Ben: Yeah. So a week or two before you even emailed me, which is cold email from a link on RushIsABand.com.

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: He knew what I was up to, and said, “Hey, I got this buddy who you might want to check out.” So when you emailed me I thought that Peter put you up to it.

Carl: No.

Ben: Isn’t that ironic?

Carl: Not at all. And when you said Peter Richards, I had to scratch my head, because I’m not really tight with him. He’s a good friend, actually, of my next-door neighbor. And last year, our guitar player in Elf Project, another friend of mine, Israel Stark, he quit the group, and I was kind of reaching out to people to see who would be interested, and I knew that Peter played and I know that he’s good. And he came over one day, and I gave him the music, we listened to the tunes. He’s like, “All right, you know, let me get back to you.” And I never really heard from him again, and my friend that was in the Rush Tribute band with me, Mike Cappadozy, stepped in, he’s like, “Yeah, I want to do this.” So he’s been with us ever since.

Ben: Can I just…

Carl: But it’s, yeah…

Ben: It’s a…

Carl: Small world..

Ben: I’m going to say that’s so Peter, he is super-talented. I didn’t go to school with him, but I came years after him at UMass Amherst, that’s where we met as a grad student. And he’s a talented composer. Are you still there?

Carl: Yeah, yeah.

Ben: Okay, yeah. He’s a talented composer and a good player, but he has inferiority complex to match no others.

Carl: I definitely sensed that? Like I say, he’s a good friend with my neighbor, and she introduced us a while ago, and she even said to me, she’s like, “Yeah, you know, it’s hard to get him out of that, you know, out of his comfort zone, and get him to do things.” And I thought, “Well, hey, maybe if he likes the tunes, that will be good for him to get him out, you know?”

Ben: Yeah. Well, try again if you ever lose another guitarist, give him another shot because he’s a sharp guy.

Carl: Because he called me like, I don’t know, a couple of weeks after we met and he’s just like, “Yeah, I’ve got all the stuff put together whenever you’re ready.” And I was, “Shit, I haven’t heard from him in so long, and the other guy has stepped up to the plate.”

Ben: Oh, shoot.

Carl: And this other friend of mine, Mike Cappadozy, I’ve known him a long, long time, and so I have some quite a lot of loyalty in my friend Mike.

Ben: Yeah, yeah, so stars will align again someday.

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: Cool. Cool. So that’s 3 degrees of bands like Rush, I don’t know.

Carl: Yeah, there you go. Now, if you don’t mind me asking where are you located?

Ben: I’m now outside of Boston area. I moved closer to the city.

Carl: Okay.

Ben: South of Boston and I still maintain contacts with folks out there.

Carl: Okay.

Ben: But yeah, I’m out here just doing my own thing and frankly this site started up kind of when I’m starting to baby steps to launch my own music career, so as you could imagine Peter and I and our friends have been footsing around for years after grad school. So…

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: This is part of a co-marketing effort, but it’s also because I love the music and like to in long term when I make acquaintances and friends in the industry versus trying to beat people over the head with some slick marketing campaign.

Carl: Right, right, right, right.

Ben: So that’s kind of my angle.

Carl: Are you near Medford at all?

Ben: It’s the same distance south of Boston.

Carl: Okay. I’ve got some good friends out there.

Ben: Now, it’s a hop in the city, lot of interesting music in the whole area.

Carl: Absolutely, absolutely.

Ben: So going back to your music, a couple of comments, I mean, you’re the lead singer, right?

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: Okay, so I really like the music, and it’s almost as though your original stuff, it’s almost as though if Rush came out with that, I would be like super psyched because it’s got elements of the old stuff that we like. It’s still a bit harder-edged as is the recent Rush.

Carl: Right.

Ben: And I don’t want to use this word pejoratively, but derivative in the best sense.

Carl: Yes, thanks.

Ben: And that’s just the fact and it must be just a product of you having been in the tribute band, Vain, for so long. What do you think?

Carl: I think you’re absolutely right. I think because it’s not the kind of music where I just like, “Hey, let’s play some Rush tunes.” I mean, you’ve got to sit down with this stuff. Everybody’s got to learn their parts before even getting in the room together, and then when you come together it all falls into place. So when you study that stuff, and it can’t help but rub off on your own writing, and it’s not like anything that we’re trying to cap, it’s just where we’re at. It’s like “Hey, I got a rep.” And it’s like “Okay, you play on it, and yeah, it kind of sounds like something Rush, but you know, so we just kind of roll with it.”

Ben: Although two modifiers to that. Well, before I try to contrast the similarities again, your voice, even the inflections in the way you say words ending with ‘I’. I don’t know if you can tell, but it’s all Geddy all day in a lot of phrases, and I like it, I love it. But are you aware of that?

Carl: No, because I’m just doing just what comes naturally, and being also the lyric writer I’ve got to find the rhythm of the words that make sense to me, and of course, when you’re playing bass and I’m also playing foot pedals and samples, all those things kind of have to fall in. So it’s not like I’m trying to sound like that. I’m just trying to fit things that are natural to me, and if it comes off that way, well, I’m sorry.

Ben: No, it’s not…

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: It’s not a criticism. Well, because I can imagine if you’re doing 3 or 4 things at once, you can’t be thinking too hard. It’s got to be an almost auto-pilot subliminal thing after all that requiring tons of rehearsal obviously to internalize it. But it’s…

Carl: Well, what we’ve been doing with our kind of deal is that we get together, we write stuff together in the rehearsal room and once we’re happy with the music, I’ll take a little demo and then I’ll work on the lyrics and I’ll demo the lyrics and make sure the guys like it, and once we’re all happy with that then we’ll go ahead and record it. And once we do that final recording, things change a little bit here and there, and then when we go to play live that’s what we’re trying to read, we’re trying to capture what we’ve recorded.

Ben: All right. So that’s a little different. You don’t go for super layering in production in the studio but then, you know?

Carl: Oh no, there’s plenty of that in the studio. There’s plenty of that because I kind of feel like if you’re going to take the time to record it, if you’re going to put some layers in there that you can’t do live, well, you’re going to compensate, and you might come up a little bit short but if you’re going to make a record and people are going to listen to it in their home or in their car or on their iPod, whatever, put the stuff on there to fill it out. And, there’s bass pedals and different synthesizers and stuff. I mean, we’ve tried to have keyboard players along the way, and it’s tough. It’s tough to keep people interested, so that’s why I like the 3-piece; it’s very easy to manage.

Ben: Low maintenance, right?

Carl: Low maintenance, and the drummer, Dave Wayne, he lives right down the road from me. Mike, he lives 8-10 miles from here. So it’s good that we’re all close, and we’re close friends too, so that makes a huge difference. It’s just not a business kind of thing.

Ben: Now that I hear it, that’s excellent. Although it’s interesting the first tune shows up on your MySpace page is this tune ‘Shine A Light’, and it sounds nothing like Rush at all. It hearkens to something like kind of almost hippie throwback, feel-good rock. How come?

Carl: Okay, I can tell you. One night I was laying in bed, and I heard this little chord progression, and I got up and grab my guitar. It’s just an acoustic guitar just so I could figure out what I was hearing, and I wrote it down real quick and some of the words came to me right there. So I just wrote it down. I didn’t think too much about it, I went back to bed. The next day I came home from work and I looked at it and I started playing. I was just like, “Wow, there’s a tune here.” And even though it doesn’t sound anything like Rush, I just went ahead and we recorded it anyway and we finished it, and we’re just like, “This is a pretty cool tune, you know?”

Ben: Wow.

Carl: And we’ve gotten a lot of compliments on that song and we’ve even joked with it, “Boy, we should just write a whole record like that.”

Ben: That’s funny. You could be accused of bait and switch if you lure people into that kind of tune and then throw the Rush-type prog stuff on them.

Carl: Yeah, yeah, you know.

Ben: The chord progression, I dig it. And it’s that weird step-wise progression which doesn’t follow the normal falling to this type of approach for most music. And it took me forever to place it. I knew I’d kind of heard it and…

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: ‘Melissa’, The Allman Brothers Band.

Carl: Absolutely, absolutely.

Ben: That key over there is probably subliminal.

Carl: I didn’t even realize that then until somebody playing that out to me, and I was like “Yeah, it’s that,” and it’s also the beginning of ‘Your Move’ with Yes.

Ben: It’s a couple of ones. Yeah, that one, too. Geez.

Carl: Yeah.

Ben: Well, I mean, at least it’s not like the EAD progression, which I can name probably 30 songs at the top of my head.

Carl: Yeah. Yeah, it’s got that jangly, it’s just an E major chord and then you go up 2 frets and then 2 more frets and then you arrive at A, and one more fret up and that’s basically all the chords that are in there. But it sounds really good, it’s got a good feel to it. And like I say, that was pointed out to me after we finished it. A friend of mine was like “You know, it kind of sounds like the Allman Brothers, dude.” And I was like “Well, it’s done.” Do you know what I mean? It’s not like I’ve woke up out of a sleep and ripped off the Allman Brothers. It just came to me and we rolled with it.

Ben: Yeah. Well, someone said, [18:15 [Noah Shamberg] said there’s still great music to be written in the key of C. This is from a guy who didn’t do a ton of music or so. And I’m sorry if I keep dumping like my impressions of the music. But before I do more, the whole subject of who sounds like what and your identity is probably something you think about a lot with the roots that your band has and tribute band for Rush. But aside from Rush, what other influences do you have? You’ve mentioned Yes so, I mean, other prog bands or what?

Carl: Oh, absolutely, Yes was a huge one. You know it was Rush and Yes right from the beginning. And now even, I think my grandfather, I said to him, “You know, I want to get a bass here.” And he was like super supportive of me because he was a musician himself. And he’s like, “All right, you know, let’s go down to the music store and get you a bass.” So the first base I got was a Rickenbacker. But other bands, it’s Genesis, Gentle Giant, of course, they’re incredible. I still listen to that stuff quite a bit. Personally, I like the band Camel. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them. And the other guys in the band always make fun of me for listening to them, but they’re really super-melodic band. I’m trying to think. Just like the classic progressive rock is really my thing.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: And I try to keep up with what’s going on around us because we’re in the present and we’re a band that’s here today. So I try to keep an ear to what’s going on and you mentioned that we have a harder edge, but to me I think that we’re still pretty mellow compared to some of the harder-edged stuff that goes on.

Ben: Oh, true, true. When I said harder-edged, yeah, by comparison these days is not that hard, but comparison to the classic days of prog rock, it’s pretty hard.

Carl: Right, right. So I think that those bands, Yes, Rush, Genesis, Gentle Giant, the other guys in the group are big fans of that music as well. So…

Ben: What do you think of kind of the new progressive music? There’s a lot of really, really cool and interesting stuff out there. It is tending to be more aggressive, the virtuosity, but I think particularly in the drum side. I mean, its nuts these days. Do you get in that at all or what?

Carl: I have.

Ben: No?

Carl: Well, a good friend of mine that I used to play with is Jason Bittner, and he plays in Shadows Fall, he is from Schenectady. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Shadows Fall.

Ben: No.

Carl: They’re pretty popular metal band, and they’re doing really great, and they’re touring all over the world and we used to play with Jason a lot, and Jason is one of these guys. He has column in Modern Drummer every month, and he’s like super, super good. And he was always trying to get us to like super double bass drum and trying to get us to like get into the metal thing and I’m just, “I don’t know. man. I have a hard time with it because it’s not really my thing.”

And another friend of mine who’s a very good drummer, Mike Mumblow. He played with us in the Hemispheres Band. He is a huge Dream Theater fan, and he lives with me for a while. And, man, he will play that stuff everyday, and I think he kind of turned me off to it. I would hear it, and it was more like a sporting event than it was music to me, but I don’t want to sound derogatory about that stuff because…

Ben: You can, that’s fine.

Carl: They’re a huge band and they have a huge following, so that’s just my opinion, that’s all.

Ben: Isn’t there a saying about them that 90% of their audience is other musicians as their fans?

Carl: I totally believe that. I totally believe that. But I think the same thing holds true with like Rush and even Yes, to a degree. I mean, I think that those music influenced a lot of people. I think people heard that music, and they were just like this is something that is different, this is not your regular stuff that you’re going to hear on rock radio, and I think it resonated with a lot of people. And I’m sure that Rickenbacker had sold a lot of basses based on Geddy and Chris Squire with people going, “Yeah, I want to play like that, you know?”

Ben: Is that what you play still?

Carl: No, I play a Fender Jazz bass only because it’s a little bit easier to get around down than the Rickenbacker, but I’ve got a Rick and I use it quite a bit for recording.

Ben: I’m sorry to do this again. I love your bass sound and in the production, in general, I think is awesome and it’s slightly distorted. It’s very heavy with the bass. It’s a third voice or a fourth or whatever. It’s a voice on its own in the song. What is that? Is that the production, is that the post-processing, is that the bass itself? How do you get that? It’s very Geddy Lee-esk.

Carl: Well, the bass that I’ve used, or my bass that I use is the Geddy Lee Jazz bass, the Thunder bass. So that probably has a part of it to get the sound tube head, tube mpeg into just the 4/10 cab. It’s not loud when I record. I just use a good condenser microphone and kind of close to the speaker, and it’s not loud but yet there’s just a little bit of front-end drive coming into it. I’ve got an Ashly preamp, so I preamp into the head, and there’s just a little bit of drive and it break up. You got to have a little bit of break up in there. I always thought probably want that clean sound.

Ben: Smooth…

Carl: But if you go for that super-clean sound, there’s no character to it. You got to have a little bit of dirt in there.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: Yeah. And it comes through, and yeah, that is something that I’ve been chasing ever since I started recording. I’m like, “How do these guys get this down, you know?”

Ben: Yeah, I record my bass direct, so I got to do something about it. I don’t know what, but if you have any suggestion on just put a little distortion on it afterwards, or what?

Carl: Do you have any amplifiers?

Ben: Well, no, I got rid of them all. I’m using pods all day. I mean, it’s…

Carl: Because I’ve got a pod as well, and I use sometimes off front end with the pod into the amp. One thing that works, and I’ve done this before and I’ve done it with other instruments like keyboards, you record direct. You’ve got a direct signal, send it back out of whatever you’re recording on and send that out into an amplifier, mike it.

Ben: All right.

Carl: Set up another track and reamp and when you reamp you can sit there and then the performance is done. You don’t have to worry about that and then you can sit there and hone in on the EQ. And you can hone in, if you want a little bit of dirt in there, and that works really well.

Ben: Yeah. I haven’t tried that, maybe mostly because I’m too lazy. But….

Carl: What format do you record on?

Ben: You mean, what software, what rig? Just through in an audio interface in the computer.

Carl: Yeah, okay. So if you just took an output for just that track, send it into your amp and then put a mike on it, and then have another track ready to go input, you might find that you can hone in a little bit better on the sound.

Ben: Thanks. Now, I’m going to try that because the sound you got is to be envied, for sure.

Carl: Well, like I say it’s taken me a lifetime to arrive with that.

Ben: I know, you should write up the recipe and post it online. I’m sure people would appreciate it. And if you send it to me, I’ll take care of it, I will put it on my website. When we called last week, we had to postpone as you got a close friend die, I don’t want to get into that. But was that someone within the music community?

Carl: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben: A guy you played with?

Carl: Well, he had played with us in various things over the years. He was then the first incarnation of our first Rush Tribute band, going back about 15 years. I’ve known him for well over 15 years. And yeah, he was a musician, he was a keyboard player.

Ben: What is his name?

Carl: His name is Dave Wetra, and he’s a local guy and my neighbor who knows Peter, she used to date David and that’s how she introduced him to all of us. And he was a musician, and he saw what we were doing, he was just like, “Wow, this is great, you know, can I get in on this.” And we’re like, “Yeah man, of course.” And he was a super, super great guy and a dear friend, and it’s been a week that he’s been gone and it’s been one of the toughest weeks of my life.

Ben: Took his own life, correct?

Carl: Yes, he did.

Ben: Well, I’m sorry. I wish you luck in dealing with it.

Carl: Yeah, it hurt a lot of people in this community because he was very loved by everybody because he was a super good guy. He was one of these guys that he went out of his way to make sure that you’ll like him. Not that he tried too hard, that was just in his nature, he wanted people to like him and everybody did, and nobody can say anything negative about the guy. He was a super good guy, and he was battling some things and he wouldn’t let anybody in on that. And he was trying to deal with it himself. And if he had just reached out to any of us and said I need some help, we would have been there for him. And it’s just been really tough.

Ben: Well, your last album has got some attention and success, so what shape is that taking, touring, sales, fans, what?

Carl: Well, 10T Records have been great. I got a hold of them probably about a year and a half ago because I did it independently. And I figured, “Well, you know, I will shop it around like I did with the Rush Tribute thing.” And Eclipse Records, they took that, but with the Elf Project thing, they grabbed on to it and they called me and they were just like, “Wow you know, we want to work with you.” And they’ve been really great, and we’ve been able to make a little bit of money off of it, not a lot.

But that’s not even the reason why we do it. We do it because we feel that we have to, because we need to be creative.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: And we just played a show last weekend and we’ve got a show coming up on June, let me look at the calendar here, June 17th at a club in Albany. We’re opening up for a national band called Moraine, they’re from Seattle and they are a progressive band that is like a cross between King Crimson and Mahavishnu.

Ben: Oh, cool.

Carl: I mean, it’s a pretty cool stuff, pretty cool stuff. So we’re pretty stealth on that and we’re taking some time away from all of this stuff. But another week or so, we got to get hustling to get our show back together, and we’re looking to make a good impact down there.

Ben: Cool. That’s excellent.

Carl: This area where we live, it’s kind of weird with progressive rock stuff. It’s weird, like I used to work over at this club in Troy called Revolution Hall and the club is still in there, a friend of mine was running it. And I used to do monitors there and we have all sorts of bands in there, but I’ll never forget right on this time when we first opened, we had the Carl Palmer Band, and of course, he was playing drums and he have these 2 kids, in their early 20s or whatever, and I guess they were from somewhere in Europe. But these kids were awesome. One kid played bass and the other kid played the guitar, and he mimicked all of the keyboard stuff on the guitar. And it was like this heavy approach to ELT, right? There was like 50 people in there. And it was like, here we are watching this legend kick serious ass with this young guys and it’s like a vortex. I don’t know, it’s weird.

Ben: So it’s not a huge area for prog?

Carl: Well, Saratoga Performing Art Center is right up the road. We’re only a half hour from Saratoga, and you go up there, Rush will play there this summer and that place will be packed, there’ll be 10,000 to 12,000 people there.

Ben: Well, that’s a destination for the whole upstate, right?

Carl: Right, right. You’ve got people coming in from the Adirondack. You’ve got people coming in from Western New York, over in your neck of the woods. People flock to that place, but it’s a nice place to be.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: It’s nice there. But even Yes played here. It’s like two years ago. I wasn’t on their last tour. It was a couple tours back and they played the Arena in downtown Albany and there was like 1,100 people in this huge hockey arena.

Ben: Oh, that’s tough.

Carl: It’s tough man, it’s tough.

Ben: Embarrassing.

Carl: Well, I don’t know. I just think that some of it has to do it like these classic bands like with Yes and Rush. It’s like people that like that stuff and if they grow up with it, hell, they are in their 50s now.

Ben: Yeah.

Carl: So it might be tough for these people to justify to go out. They’ve got kids. They got jobs and all this stuff. So it’s tough to feel like let’s go relive our youth, and go see this band and I don’t know.

Ben: Right, right, right.

Carl: I don’t know, but…

Ben: Well, you know, either you live in the area that we call the countryside and deal with it, or you often live somewhere else. So it seems like you’re after the creativity and process more than the hopes of fame and fortune, so…

Carl: Absolutely, absolutely. Any of that stuff is a bonus. I mean, we’ve made a little bit of money. We’re not taking nice trips anywhere with that money. But just a little bit of money here and there to buy equipment and just keep the thing going, that’s fine. That’s fine.

Ben: Cool. Cool, all right. So awesome. Well, good luck.

Carl: Thanks a lot, man. It’s been nice talking with you.