Austinist Interviews The Unbearables

Describe the type of music that The Unbearables play. We want the elevator pitch.

Ian: I'm trying to think...

Marshall: 60s garage rock, heavier with dancy beats?

I: Eh, yeah, that's kinda it. That describes it. I guess what I would say is, we take kind of a love for old sixties style rock'n'roll, that originally was all about dancing, trying to make it a little bit louder, a little bit faster, a little bit more energy-packed.

M: That's not an elevator pitch. It's too long.

I: I mean...

M: What about, modern day pop earnestness? With more energy?

I: Sounds like emo.

M: I guess. Without the self-pity. Emo without the self-pity.

I: No. That's not it at all.

M: We don't pity ourselves.

I: I don't know, you come across as self-pitying sometimes, in your lyrics.

M: Yeah, but ironically. I'm self-aware enough to know that suffering as a white middle class American is really just a joke.

I: What about modern sock hop?

M: Isn't that what the Austinist said about us that one time?

I: Maybe, I don't know.

M: I'll send you the link.

I: I'm sure I read it at one point. The biggest thing that any description should have is a sense of energy. Wanting to catch people up in the...

M: The groove?

I: The energy and the joy of lettin' loose to rock'n'roll.

M: Yeah, I think that's good... joy. Nobody's happy anymore.

I: That's what I wanna be... it's like... I wanna be happy, man.

M: I think that puts you in a definite minority in the current music scene...you and Bright Eyes.

I: Wait a second... what did you say?

M: You and Bright Eyes.

I: Are the ones who wanna be happy?

M: Yeah.

I: Everyone wants to be happy. People just have different ways of going about it. Some people have to exorcise their demons by writing about them. Some of us just try and create things that are happy, let that wash over us.

M: I don't know. As someone who spends a lot of time working with teenagers, I get the feeling that there's a strong push for some people to just amplify their misery.

I: I think that's... I don't think that's entirely true. Some people wallow in their misery, but that's not their goal...their goal is not to be sad, I don't think so, anyway. It's a by-product.

M: Aren't we past the elevator pitch now?

I: Yeah. We went past that. I think the elevator pitch is somewhere in there. Just not the one that makes us sound like we're emo.

At one time, Ian wore a bear suit on stage. What happened to the bear suit, and was this a cause or an effect of the band's name?

M: The bear suit began when Ian said to me: "If you let me be in your rock band I will wear a bear suit on stage."

I: You might wanna add something about drinking at the time.

M: It was definitely a cause of the band name.

I: The bear suit came before the name. There wasn't really a band when I started talking about a bear suit. In fact, I don't know where the bear suit came from.

M: I actually started forming the band--you know, finding musicians and stuff--with the bear suit idea in mind. Harrison and (now ex-drummer) Tim entered after the fact.

I: As far as the end of the bear suit, it's just much easier to drink when you don't have a large snout in the way.

M: Also the car wreck.

I: My typical line is that the bear suit died a tragic and unnatural death crushed in the trunk of my car. Crushed between a suburban and a Mercedes.

M: You were fine, though.

I: Yup.

You just returned from tour. Tell us an exciting story of rock and roll debauchery from the raod.

I: We don't really have any exciting stories of rock and roll debauchery from the road. We're not really a debauched band.

M: I think the closest we have is that party in DC.

I: Party in DC? That wasn't very debauched, but we can make it out to be. A house party with strippers, and what else?

M: Well, I got really drunk.

I: It wasn't that debauched actually. It was kind of a boring party. With law students.

M: But I think the fact that we spent the night with the guitarist from Gwar, whose wife happened to go to college with us and is now a stripper is at least a decent story.

I: Yeah, I guess that has some... you know...

M: Right. And Harrison burned my hand.

I: It wasn't that night, was it?

M: No. The night before.

I: There was also the night we got really stoned and played Risk.

M: That was awesome.

Did people on your tour know about the cool stuff happening in the Austin music scene? Are we still king of the music hill?

M: Were we ever king of the music hill? What about New York?

I: New York doesn't really count.

M: Why not?

I: Well, I mean, I guess it does count... but, you know, it's... it's in such another realm, you know? Like, in terms of smaller cities that have stuff coming out of them... New York is always gonna have stuff happening there, but it's so huge and sprawling that it has no cohesive identity other than just being New York. You know what I mean?

M: Yeah. I don't think that answers the question, though.

I: I think the answer to the question is: basically, yeah. There was nobody that, when we said we were from Austin said "Huh?" or "Gee that's kinda boring." Basically the reaction was always "wow, cool." Austin's got a great reputation, it still does. People know that there are cool things going on around here, even if they don't know what, they at least have heard of it.

M: Yeah, I don't know if I remember getting a very intensely warm response because of where we from. I think people had heard of it before, but I don't know if they thought it meant anything...

I: It wasn't like, you know, they all of a sudden bowed down and said "Oh my god, you're from Austin..."

M: That's what I was expecting.

I: That's not to be expected anytime.

M: I guess.

I: People always were like: "Yeah, it's cool, I hear it's a great town." Can you ask for more than that?

M: Yes. You can ask for coke lines off groupies' breasts.

I: I guess you could ask for that. I don't think anyone would take you seriously if you asked for that. Be like: you want what? Put your glasses back on.

M: I guess it's better I didn't ask...

I: I was offered, you know.

M: Really?

I: Well, there weren't any groupies involved.

M: But the coke.

I: Right.

It seems that The Unbearables have sparked a little mini-scene at Trophy's on South Congress. What's going on there? What have you done to make it happen?

M: It really started when I got tired of trying to book at these Red River clubs and only ever getting offered Tuesdays at 1 am. Like that was the best they could do for us.

I: Well, we were just getting started, too..

M: Not exactly, I mean, we were a year old... and at this point where we were trying to build an audience, but they kept giving us these slots where nobody would show up even if one of us was sleeping with them.

I: The only problem I have with that is you make us sound like such losers...

M: Well, but if you're not Spoon, and you're playing on Tuesday at 1 am, nobody's gonna come.

I: We got people out sometimes. You make it sound like we, you know, couldn't get anything happening on Red River so we had to give up and go someplace else. Maybe that is what happened, I don't know. I think of it more as a choice, it was kind of annoying having to deal with all that crap and it seemed like there had to be a better way.

Just parking, and shit like that, half the reason why people didn't come to see us was they didn't want to deal with downtown. They still don't. People would prefer to come to Trophy's and have a great time than have to deal with the frustrations of going downtown.

M: Yeah, I think that's true, but there's also a... vibe that Trophy's has. Like, Matt's doing such a great job booking there because he can give time to bands that haven't been playing there forever.

I: Yeah, that's great. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it isn't in the midst of everything else, it's kinda a little bit separate.

M: I think that's true, but also there's the fact that Trophy's hasn't really been booking bands for all that long. And we kinda showed up at this point towards the beginning of Trophy's development, so it was really easy to break in as a relatively new band without a huge following.

I: Yeah, we kinda got in a little bit on the ground floor.

M: And this is what has really enabled us to build a following... the fact that we had a club that was willing to give us a good night early on, when we were still trying to get people to come see us. It's been a good partnership.