Though The Gary are relative newcomers to the Austin scene, this band consists of three seasoned musicians who take a long view regarding music creation.
Mistaken identities and dim lighting kept MadeLoud from actually meeting with The Gary [from left: Paul Warner (drums), Dave Norwood (bass/vocals), and Trey Pool (guitar)] at the right time, but after nearly an hour we finally sat down and got to talking about the band, Austin, severe weather, and airbrushed horses.
Thanks for agreeing to the interview and for waiting around after the mix up. Here’s your consolation prize: a MadeLoud sticker and guitar pick.
Dave Norwood (bass, vocals): Y’all wanna wrestle for this?
I saw on your latest MySpace post that you’re thinking about going into the studio to record an EP this summer?
Dave Norwood: Next week! We’ve got a handful of songs we’re going to record, and gradually through the summer we’re going to work toward an LP.
Paul Warner (drums): We did the other EP all in two days, we just want to work slower.
Wow, that’s a compressed schedule. You guys work quickly, don’t you?
Paul Warner: It was a brain fry to do it all. We had fun, but we’d like to have a little more time. It came out really well, though. I think it has a good soul to it. It was kind of a surprise when we were done recording because we were still kinds of figuring out the songs.
Dave Norwood: We didn’t know what we sounded like before we recorded. We just went in and did it and were pleased enough with the outcome to put it out.
Trey Pool (guitar): We’ll keep doing it. We’ll spend a little more time trying to get a full length. We’re old, but we’re still talking about getting two weeks to go from here to DC or Chicago this year. Over the years you have friends in bands in these cities and we’re hoping to put a little tour together, the smartest one we can. The idea of just heading out in a van and doing a tour is kind of gross. It’s so often bad. At this point in life it’s so hard to get time off, and you cherish it. It sucks so bad to have three or four nights in a row with just nobody there to see you. Drive all day, and nothing! If the little stars align and we can get some things put together we want to head out in a big rented Winnebago this year.
Dave Norwood: (laughs) With airbrushed horses! We decided it’s not going to happen unless there’s airbrushed horses.
So you’re past the Econoline stage?
Dave Norwood: We’re airbrushed horses now!
Trey Pool: Winnebago all the way. I was on the website the other day and you can enter what size and how far you’re gonna go and it tells you how much it’s going to cost.
You’ve definitely been working on this!
Trey Pool: I’m not sleeping on people’s floors, and I’m not showing up and trying to find hotels. We’re going to stay in that parking lot, or maybe there’s a park and we can stay by a lake. You don’t have to worry about all your shit, it’s right there with you.
Dave Norwood: And I’ll cook y’all breakfast. Want me to cook breakfast?
Trey Pool: Yes. But it might be kind of hard to get the thing in New York City.
That’s a haul. But if you had places to go along the way it’s a pretty drive.
Trey Pool: [pointing to Paul] He just got back from his first NY trip.
Paul Warner: I couldn’t believe I’d never been there before.
Trey Pool: I’ve never been.
Paul Warner: I liked it. It didn’t amaze me. I lived in San Francisco for a long time so it just seemed like a bigger SF.
Trey Pool: I’d like to go at some point. I like San Francisco, too. We almost moved there.
Paul Warner: It was the first time I saw a $250 fine for honking in a certain neighborhood. Honk and pay $250!
Trey Pool: If you do it twice is it $500?
Paul Warner: It’s good, since most people honk for no reason. I just thought it was ridiculous. And it was only in the ritziest neighborhoods.
Dave Norwood: Space is very important to me, so I don’t have a New York City bone in my body. I came here from Arizona, my wife and I lived there for a long time and the openness there—
Trey Pool: He craves it.
Dave Norwood: It is important to me. I take issue with the lack of public land in Texas. I was in Big Bend over the weekend and I climbed up Emery Peak, the tallest peak in Big Bend, and it was grueling and rough. Once we got to the top there was a transmission device. You work hard thinking that you’re going to someplace truly remote and there it is, the human imprint. That was pretty disappointing. There’s this whole issue with guns in a national park. I don’t see any need for guns in a national park, but I saw a need when I came upon that transmission tower.
Trey Pool: You wanted to shoot it?
Dave Norwood: Fuck yeah I wanted to shoot it! I wanted to put it out of its misery. How could a state this big have so little public land?
Trey Pool: There’s money to be made instead of public land. I grew up in Galveston, and now there’s hardly any beaches that’s you’re allowed to go on. It used to be from East Beach to Jamaica Beach there was so much public beach. Now they let people build their houses on it and you’re not allowed to go there on that strip of beach. The open parts just get overrun. The city is just broke. You can’t get to parts of the beach you used to be able to drive through. Now it’s like you’re in somebody’s yard.
Dave Norwood: His uncle died in the storm.
Sorry to hear that.
Trey Pool: He got afraid when the water was coming in the downstairs so he took off. I was down there two weeks after and it was bizarre to see sailboats lying all over the road. The boats just got picked up and dropped everywhere. Crystal Beach, those neighbors are gone.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens down there.
Trey Pool: Yeah, The Gary is going to do an album about it.
Dave Norwood: (laughs) Is this a fact?
Trey Pool: The hurricanes and the hail storms.
You came from different places and have worked in other bands—I’m guessing different things drive you than when you first started playing. There are a lot of bands of 19-year-old kids trying to make the scene.
Dave Norwood: We’re all pushing 40.
Trey Pool: I’ve pushed right through 40. I went through about five years of not playing. My wife and I had our daughter. You just do it because there’s too big of a hole if you don’t. Time is made to be wasted.
I like that.
Dave Norwood: I kind of went through the same thing too—Trey and I both have 6-year-old daughters. I moved from Texas to Arizona to be closer to family, but I left behind my musical connections over there and went through a long stretch of not getting together with people and playing music. You begin to go crazy after a while and begin to understand why you did it in the first place. It’s a strategy of health, and that’s really become apparent to me, especially at this point in my life.
Do you mind if I ask what you all do, as the Japanese put it, “to eat?”
Paul Warner: I’m a web programmer with a video game company, but I’ve worked at several places in Austin—The Austin Chronicle, Whole Foods.
It’s a good town for that kind of work.
Paul Warner: I moved here from San Francisco because my wife and I wanted to try somewhere else. We wanted a liberal environment, tech industry for me to get a job, and a good music scene. Not so much to join a band, but to be able to see bands on tour. We narrowed it down to Chapel Hill and here.
Dave Norwood: I deal with print grade plastics. Fascinating, I know. It’s what I do to put food on the table. (turning to the band) You’ve been here about the same time?
Paul Warner: Four years.
Trey Pool: Yeah, I moved here about 4 years ago. I was living in Houston and just couldn’t take it any more.
Dave Norwood: There’s much to take. It’s a good place to leave!
Trey Pool: At my shop we fix the hail damage on the cars. You know where Top Notch is? My shop is next door. We’re swamped right now, that last storm was hellacious. I told Paul when he moved here from San Francisco that he’d never seen storms like they are here. Every spring! I moved here because of it.
With three guys in a band, I can’t resist the comparison to the Minutemen. Do you run it like a democracy, or does someone take the lion’s share of writing and composing?
Trey Pool: Dave plays bass and does all the lyrics and pretty much comes in with the bones of songs. We work everything up together. We’ve all played long enough that we don’t about it, we’ll just start playing on something and stop and say, “Is that something you already had?” We try not to have anything that’s too fully formed but it’s Dave’s core for the songs and all of his lyrics. Paul drums and plays guitar and sings. We’ve all been in bands and played different instruments. It’s fun, I really wanted to do a little three piece with them. I really sought these guys out to do this band, their other band had broken up.
I noticed that you took the honorable road of semi-spoken lyrics.
Dave Norwood: I’m really into Smog, Bill Callahan, so I learned from listening to him and Peter Jeffries, a guy from New Zealand I’m really into.
Trey Pool: Plus your voice just comes out how it comes out.
Dave Norwood: A lot of the songs we play, there was a period of time where I wasn’t playing in bands or anything when my daughter was born. I had an extra room and I set up my recording gear. When you have an infant in the house you take whatever opportunity you can get to do anything that isn’t involved with the child. After she’d go to sleep I’d run into that room, spit out a song. I really had a song a day thing going there for a while.
