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Swnnq Ran Real Estate: Guitarist Dan tioerner Clears The Air' I nfluential Seattle rock band Sunny Day Real Estate has seen its fair share of drama in recent years. Through the mid-'90s, singer- guitarist Jeremy Enigk, guitarist-singer Dan Hoemer, drummer William Goldsmith and bassist Nate Mendel played music so emotive and driving that it spawned an entire sub-genre of emotion- fueled punk rock, then broke up after Enigk's full- scale religious conversion treated a musical and metaphysical crisis in the band. The group had signed to Seattle's SubPop Records, released Diary in 1994 followed by LP2 in 1995 (often referred to as The Pink Album, after its monotone cover art), and suddenly dissolved. In the years following the breakup, Enigk released an impressive solo album; Goldsmith and Mendel played in the studio and on the road with Dave Grohl's popular Foo Fighters. Hoerner moved to a farm in rural Washington and worked for Atlantic Records. Then, in 1998, Sunny Day decided to reunite. In response to constant ques tions and letters of support from a fanbase that still mourned the band's passing, Jeremy and Dan got together to discuss compiling a collection of rarities and live tracks. According to Hoerner, once they were in a room together, the two decided to jam a little bit and work on some new stuff, instead. They invited Goldsmith and Mendel, but the bassist decided to stay with the Foo Fighters. The trio recruited a session bass player, then recorded How It Feels To Be Something On, which the band released on Sub Pop. Then it embarked on a highly successful tour and has since fully-committed band again. Two years later, the group hit the studio again, dropping the session bassist and writing as a three-piece. The trio used the studio as a "fourth member," overdubbing and layering for its richest, most sonically polished record to date, the recent The Rising Tide (Time Bomb). Flagpole spoke with guitarist-vocalist-lyricist Dan Hoerner over the telephone as the band began its promotional junket for The Rising Tide. Flagpole: I've heard Jeremy Enigk was planning another solo record after the first reunion album, and had even recorded some tracks with Will Goldsmith. Have you guys decided to be a full-on band at this point, or is he going to resume the solo gig when this tour is over? Dan Hoemer: I have a feeling—although this is pretty much a question for Enigk—that Sunny Day is gonna be 24/7 for the next, well for the next long while. We wrote 30 songs just for this session, so there's lots of material there that we're all excited to get back to once we've toureJ this record. Although I'm sure we'll probably tour this re-ord more than we've ever toured a record in the past We'll take at least a year, maybe two, trying to break it We think it's really a good record, and I think it's time for Sunny Day to move to kind of another level. FP: So you guys are writing and recording as a three-piece now? DM: Yeah, session bass players just didn't work out Sunny Day has a very specific sound. We kind of have our own little thing, and it's kind of hard to let an outside presence into that thing. That's why we wrote this record as a three-piece, which was so mu^ fun, by the way. We jammed with me on guitar, Jeremy on bass and Willy on the drums. FP: In the press for How It Feels, you said that you aren't really aware of this whole musical thing that started after Sunny Day. Have you heard or seen anything since then, and how do you feel about your influence? DH: Well, I'm still kind of out of the loop as far as what's going on right now. But I know that I'm the same way as a lot of bands and musicians. I have bands that I love that totally influence me. When I started out, I wanted to be in The Clash. I think that's just natural that if people dig it and they want to do music, they'll be influenced, and that's rad. I got a question from an interviewer the other day who said, 'Don't you get pissed when you hear all these Sunny Day rip-off bands?* and I'm like, "What?!?" That's the greatest compli ment, if somebody likes your sound that much. Everyone takes from somebody, and I think it's rad that anybody has liked Sunny Day enough to con sider us an influence in their music. FP: How did you end up on Time Bomb Recordings for the new album? Was that a con scious decision on your part, or did you just kind of end up there? And what happened with Sub Pop? DH: It was definitely a conscious decision to move to Time Bomb. We completed our contract with Sub Pop when we delivered How It Feels, but they were maintaining that they owned Sunny Day, so we didn't want to have anything else to do with them. It was a really brutal, hard move to leave them. You know, Sub Pop just put out that live album as a way to milk Sunny Day for money. That record didn't have anything to do with us! Things were okay with them early on, but we didn't know what the hell we were doin' signing that contract with them. We definitely, definitely got shafted. But now we've got such a great deal from Time Bomb this time around, and Time Bomb has really good people, with excellent backing, so we're really stoked on this new label. FP: Who wrote the lyrics on this record? DH: Lyrically, for this record, Enigk would come up with the melodies and the phrasings, then I would take the tape and go to a different place and write the words. That was really cool, something I haven't done in the past, and I was really happy to get to write so much on this one. Brandon Butler WHO Sunny Day Real Estate, No Knife WHERE: 40 Watt Club (No Smoking show) ^HEN: Saturday, July 15. 10 p.m. HOW MUCH $10 advance, $12 door committed to being a full-time, ►n n ti o 1 r sen GO *-h >*JO fHF M GO m “Award Show 2000“ pretend you were there... 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