Backstage interview done for this website after soundcheck for Feb. 9, 2008 reunion show.
thereivers.net: Are there any unreleased songs or anything new, or any cover songs youâll be doing at the show, apart from the one you played at soundcheck?
Garrett: Just the one.
John: Itâs supposed to be a surprise.
thereivers.net: Itâll kind of be a post-surprise, because itâs not gonna be on the website âtill later anyway.
Garrett: (laughing) You mean youâre not gonna post it right now?
thereivers.net: Yeah, Iâll run outside andâŚ
Garrett: Before tomorrow morningâŚyou never knowâŚ
thereivers.net: So, the new song â whatâs it called?
John: âAll the Drunks Say Amenâ
thereivers.net: Are you going to record it?
John: Maybe eventually.
thereivers.net: You could put it on your MySpace site maybe â Internet-only download or something.
Garrett (to John): Is it on your record that youâre working on?
thereivers.net: Oh yeah, youâre working on a solo record, arenât you?
John: Yeah.
thereivers.net: How far along is that?
John: It wasâŚyou know, I had done everything and I was gonna get some other people to play on it but Iâm not sure what I want to do with it now. Weâll see what the future holds for it.
thereivers.net: Maybe a Reivers album?
(no conclusive answer)
thereivers.net: So, on the radio interview the other day you mentioned that the Zeitgeist name might be re-adopted. Is that a possibility?
Kim: I donât know if weâre the âspirit of the ageâ right nowâŚ
thereivers.net: Of all the bands you toured with over the years, which ones do you have the fondest memory of?
Cindy: I canât think of any bands we played with â well, I can only think of one band we played with that we didnât like â but everybody else was really fun.
Kim: Which one?
Cindy: I wonât say!
thereivers.net: There wasnât one band, more than any others, that you really enjoyed touring with?
Cindy: It was just a lot of really nice people â the Fleshtones were really niceâŚ.Uncle GreenâŚ
Kim: Big Dipper
thereivers.net: How about Downy Mildew?
Garrett: They were great.
Kim: Yeah, they were great.
thereivers.net: Are you still producing and engineering, John?
John: Not too much, mostly just doing my day job.
thereivers.net: What are your day jobs?
John: I work at the law school of the University of Texas.
Cindy: Iâm an assistant manager at a book store â Iâve been there about 10 years now.
Kim: I teach kindergarten and first grade.
thereivers.net: I had heard about you teaching at a school called the Phoenix School.
Kim: Yeah, Joe McDermott and I started that in 1985, but I donât teach there.
thereivers.net: Garrett, you do something with computers, right?
Garrett: I do software quality assurance and test Internet applications to make sure they work the way they should.
thereivers.net: Garrett and Kim, you havenât been involved much with music at all since the breakup of the Reivers. Do you ever wish you had stayed with music as a career instead of doing something else?
Garrett: No, I mean, I miss it, but I also enjoy the fact that I can pay the mortgage. But, Iâve definitely missed it and I enjoy doing it. Even before we started talking ideas, I was trying to find somebody to start something. It started about a year ago when I saw Cindy at the Dog and Duck and we started talking and it was like âYou wanna start a band?â
Cindy: Yeah.
thereivers.net: So it was good timing for the Reivers reunion.
Garrett: Yeah, I was definitely itching to start a band â and I didnât have to learn hardly any new songs!
thereivers.net: How come you took so long to reunite?
Cindy: People hadnât really started dying offâŚ
Kim: I donât think we were ready too, I think it happened now because we were ready to.
Cindy: I personally needed the kick in the pants of seeing my friends die â people in my peer group. I wanted to start doing things that I wanted to do, like âhey, letâs put the Reivers back together for a reunion show!â I mean, I donât want to die and not have stuff taken care of like thatâŚit seemed important.
thereivers.net: Yeah, itâs important to a lot of people, I mean, tonightâs show sold out in less than 24 hours, so itâs obviously important to a lot of people.
John: Itâs very humbling.
thereivers.net: So I guess you were pretty surprised?
Garrett: Yeah.
Kim: Very.
thereivers.net: I know Iâve been getting lots and lots of emails through the website since the reunion was announced.
Kim: AwwwwâŚ
thereivers.net: Do you have any personal favourite Reivers songs or albums?
Kim: I donât know about albums â um, I really love the first one and then SaturdayâŚI like them all really.
thereivers.net: Any particular songs?
Kim: I really love âTranslate Slowlyâ, âBabyâ. Iâve got a lot of favorite songs.
Garrett: I think actually my favourite record was Saturday, but I like them all.
thereivers.net: I think Saturdayâs got a real cohesiveness to it â the songs flow together really well.
Garrett: I really couldnât tell you why, but if I had to pick one that would be it.
Kim: It was a really good time, too- everything was just wonderful. And writing all those songs was great.
Garrett: Well, a lot of that record was there from the beginning as well.
Kim: Exactly.
Garrett: We did the first set of songs, but we were already doing a lot of the stuff that ended up on Saturday. I guess what Iâm saying is, I donât look at it like we finished the first record, then we wrote a bunch of new stuff and went into the studio again. I mean, it was like the first few years we were just doing this stuff and we put one set on the first record and then a large amount of songs on the second record weâd been playing almost since the beginning.
thereivers.net: And you had a lot of notoriety going into the second release too.
Garrett: Till we changed our name!
(band laughter)
John: I really like the song âBabyââŚâDragonfliesâ is another one â I like that one a lot. I like âPop Belovedâ a lotâŚI donât know if thatâs my favourite, but itâs got character.
Cindy: Yeah, I think thatâs my favourite album.
thereivers.net: Any favourite songs?
Cindy: Thereâs some songs I really donât likeâŚ
thereivers.net: Ah, what are they?
Cindy: I wonât tell you what they are! (laughter)
thereivers.net: Iâm sure we wonât be hearing those tonightâŚ
Cindy: No, you wonât. I put my foot in and⌠(band laughter)
Cindy: I like âTranslate Slowlyâ a lot, the song. You look out in the crowd and everybodyâs singing and you understand why big rock acts step back from the microphone and let the crowd sing because itâs reallyâŚ
Kim: Great!
Cindy: Yeah, really neat.
thereivers.net: Iâve often wondered about the leftover Pop Beloved tracks, I mean, thereâs something like 9 or 10 songs. Have you ever thought of releasing them?, because theyâre really good songs.
Kim: Like what?
thereivers.net: Letâs see, what are some of them?⌠âSo ExcitingââŚ
Kim: Yeah, that was a really good one!
thereivers.net: âIn My Neighborhoodâ â I always liked that one a lot.
Kim: I donât even remember that one!
thereivers.net: (sings a little)
Kim: Oh yeah, yeah, yeahâŚ
John (coming back into the interview): We had leftover songs?
thereivers.net: Yeah, there were quite a few that have circulated in the trading circles.
John: Oh yeah, like âTell Me Soâ⌠those were mostly abandoned. Thereâs one that I donât think we even got to the demo stage which I would like to redoâŚ
Cindy: Which one?
John: Uh, it was originally called âWhatâs My Job?â I was working on the song and my daughter walked in the room and I said âHow do you like that?â and she said âI like it! Is that called âWhatâs My Job?â So I said, âIt is now â do you want to sing it?â So she sang âWhatâs my job and I sayyyyy, Whatâs my job and I sayyyyââŚ.
(band laughter)
Garrett: I think you should tell that story from stage tonight!
thereivers.net: How about a good story or two from the old days, maybe a road story?
Cindy: I think thatâs somethingâŚI think we should sit around a table with a bottle of rum or something andâŚtalk.
Garrett: Maybe thatâs not such a good ideaâŚ(band laughter)
John: I would be into that, but the recorder would not be there.
(band laughter)
Kim: So what kind of story do you want? Like the worst night or our lives or?
thereivers.net: Sure! What was the worst night of your life?
Kim: The whole thing in Bethesda when we lost our transmission, that sucked really bad.
(John chuckles)
Garrett: Yeah, it did â the first few tours we took, something would go catastrophically wrong. I remember thinking âAre we ever gonna be able to do one of these without something major happening?â âCause like, one, we went and we took two cars and we had a wreck. We had to return in a Tercel â all four of us and all our gearâŚin a Tercel.
Kim: But we did haveâŚ
Garrett: Yeah, we did have a U-haul on top that we got through some friends in Atlanta.
Kim: The backseat of that Tercel had one person on either side, with all our guitars stacked underneath our feet and a whole big drum between us.
Kim: The driverâs seat was all the way forward and John drove it a lot and it was really really cold. His forehead began touching the window. He was going âMyâŚhairâŚisâŚtouchingâŚtheâŚwindshieldâ.
(band laughter)
Garrett: It was freezing outside and the window was fogging upâŚ
thereivers.net: Was that the story where you were scrapping the ice off the inside of the windshield with a cassette case?
Cindy: No, that was a different one. That was when we discovered that the van we were in actually had a heater
Garrett: But it wasnât plugged inâŚ
Kim: Oh my GodâŚ
Garrett: The heater worked, we just didnât know how to work it.
thereivers.net: What about the one where you had to sing the song to the state troopers in Pennsylvania to prove you were in a band?
Kim: Oh yeah, âHey cowpunchesâ
John: Hey cowpunches
Garrett: The second tour we took in a station wagon was when the transmission went out in Bethesda, Maryland. Oh my God, that was bad. It was a rough tour. It was our first real whole east coast tour and we werenât making a lot of money. We slept one night in a rest stop in South Carolina somewhere. Weâd sleep on peopleâs floors when we could. But, we were finally getting to the last stretch of it â we were getting ready to go home and we get in the car and it wonât go into gear. I think it would only go in reverse.
thereivers.net: So youâd have to drive backwards the whole way home.
John: We probably considered it.
Garrett: Fortunately, Kim had a credit card with herâŚ
Kim: âMom? Can I put a transmission on the credit card?â
Garrett: Weâd probably still be there if not for that.
Kim: My parents tell this story often.
Garrett: They had to call a bank and get âem to approve the amount, because it was, like, $800.
Kim: I think it was $500, but still a lot of money.
Garrett: So we spent all day waiting for the transmission to get done and when it was done we were like âWeâre going home.â
John: I think we had a few more shows and we cancelled them and just drove home.
thereivers.net: Things could only have gone uphill from there.
Garrett: Yeah, wellâŚ
Kim: And then we found that cat for Melissa.
Cindy: Oh!
Kim: Remember that cat in Bethesda?
John: I thought that was the shorter tour. That was the long tour?
Kim: That was on the way home.
Cindy: Oh, thatâs right!
John: Of course!
Cindy: Everything bad happened in Bethesda.
Garrett: The cat puked all over the floor.
Kim: Good times!
thereivers.net: What were the best times?
Kim: The best times?
thereivers.net: Yeah, were there any certain really good shows?
Cindy: Practicing again after 16 years has been so fun.
Kim: Itâs been a blast.
thereivers.net: Do you think youâll do other shows or recording after this?
Cindy: Certainly not as The Reivers.
John: Yeah, I donât think weâll be The Reivers anymore, in my opinion, but we havenât decided anything yet.
Weâre still talking about it.
The Reivers 