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Stream: The Hunches “Static Disaster”

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(from Yes No Shut It out now on In The Red)

The Hunches are doing their last tour—and last show ever—tonight in L.A. They just released their last record a few months back and decided to do a few shows before waving the flag of surrender. Guitarist Chris Gunn recalls the good times and the bad while doing duty in the bowels of a hospital’s basement in San Francisco. This interview by John Henry.

What’s up with the dungeon you said you were sitting in?
Chris Gunn (guitar): I’m stationed right now in a medical library and it’s way in the bottom of a building. Archives for medical journals. There are a couple of windows but I don’t see too much natural sunlight. Unfortunately.
What finally killed the band?
I think it just got to a point were it wasn’t fun anymore. I think any creative band or whatever gets to a certain point were they run out of ideas—at least this one did. We kind of hit a dead end. There are a lot of different factors. We aren’t a band that can really tour that well. No one wanted to really go for it and make it big or anything. Touring was always hard for lots of different reasons. As far as writing the songs and working together, it just started to unravel to where a lot of that original enthusiasm was gone. Definitely for me—I’m not trying to speak for anybody else, but it kind of seemed that way. I think if we kept going it would seem formulaic. I don’t know how much we could have expanded without starting to sound monotonous or repetitive. I think these are all good songs and I’m glad we put it out. I think if we would have kept going, we would have started to suck. And I moved to San Francisco—I guess that was a factor as well.
And you play in the Hospitals, right?
I’ve known Adam since the beginning of that band but the first In The Red album is him with a different guitar player. I started playing with them a couple of years ago. We did that new one—Hairdryer Peace. I play on that one. I’m recording with him now and it’s been nice to expand and be recording a different type of music or different approaches to songwriting and recording. I think if I stayed in the Hunches I would have probably quit music. There all really good people—I think we just hit a wall.
I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing to realize when a band needs to call it quits. There are a lot of bands that should have stopped a long time ago.
I kind of saw that. Some of our live shows were getting to that point where it was just running through repetitive motions. It just didn’t feel right anymore.
What kind of responses did you get from playing live? Some of the recordings are pretty blown out and it seems like that it would be hard to replicate live.
We try and approximate that live as best we can. Definitely each show is its own thing. A lot of people are disappointed when they see us live. I know that. Some like it a lot. Our singer definitely is a unique front person—that’s a good way to put it. Depending on what mood or how much he’s had to drink, he definitely performs differently. Sometimes I don’t know if better or worse applies. He can definitely be confrontational. Sometimes he doesn’t sing and people get annoyed by that, but if you’re going to come see us and you want to hear the record, you probably shouldn’t come because you’re going to be disappointed. We play our songs but it’s definitely not polished.
When I heard you guys were coming to town I was surprised because I thought you had broken up. What has the band been doing lately? I haven’t heard any records since Yes No Shut It.
Another album came out after that and all these were on In The Red. Another one came out called Hobo Sunrise and then we did a 7-inch, I believe, and now this is the last one—the one that just came out. Larry Hardy put out this last record knowing we were going to break up. It’s been out since February. It’s called Exit Dreams. Yeah, we’ve been together pretty much—ah, it’s weird.
Where did you record the new record? I know you’ve recorded in Costa Mesa with Mike McHugh at the Distillery in the past.
We recorded it with my friend who has a nice studio up there in Portland. It’s called Old Standard Sound. He’s just getting started but he’s got all really nice analog equipment and he’s really good at what he does. It was really cool to be able to work with him at his house—I lived up there while we recorded. We tried recording a lot of different things—a lot of backwards stuff. We recorded showers—popped fifty balloons at the end of one song—but there’s so much shit in there I’d have to take it at a song-by-song level. We did a lot with backing vocals this time too, which is different. I don’t think we had done that before. Recording this was a lot of fun. It was a drawn-out process but I think it worked well for the album. It sounds a little bit different than the Distillery—but recording with Mike is awesome also. I did it on the weekends and whenever we could. Then we had to practice and learn like six songs, so I think overall it took over a year—but if you consolidated it all it would be a couple of weeks.
But this show in L.A. is going to be the band’s last show ever?
Definitely. We haven’t been playing regularly for maybe five years or so. We would play the occasional show but we all pretty much agreed that we wanted to call it quits—but we also had a bunch of songs so we wanted to do this last album—which we did—and it took forever to do. So then after that we decided it would be worth it to maybe do a west coast tour just for the hell of it. It seems kind of ridiculous to just put out an album and not play any shows. We’re going to play four shows—one in Portland, one in Sacramento, one in San Francisco and then this last one in L.A. It’s in East L.A. I tried to get a show down there but most of those clubs wouldn’t get back to me so we weren’t even going to play there. These kids from some band down there that I had never heard of e-mailed us and I guess they’re affiliated with that band the Fuse? So they e-mailed us and said, ‘When are you coming down here? We’ll set up a show for you.’ So we just went with that. My little brother’s band is actually going to be touring with us and they’re really good. They live in Eugene and they don’t really get out. They’re definitely really good. It’s very heavily influenced by Captain Beefheart in a good way. As we extinguish or as we burn out, maybe someone will offer to put out a record for them.

THE HUNCHES WITH THE LAMPS, GOLDIGGERS, BLIMP AND DE HOMBRES ON SAT., JUNE 27, AT A HOUSE PARTY IN EAST L.A. 8 PM / $5 / ALL AGES. MORE INFORMATION AT MYSPACE.COM/THEHUNCHES OR MYSPACE.COM/DEHOMBRES. THE HUNCHES’ EXIT DREAMS IS OUT NOW ON IN THE RED. VISIT THE HUNCHES AT INTHEREDRECORDS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THEHUNCHES.