Audioholic Media

The Crash Engine is the band you want to see make it big. Made up of three guys from Oregon who believe in music just as much as you want them to, the trio is traveling the Pacific Seaboard in their van, Ron VanBurgundy, to introduce the Left Coast to their first album, Extravagaria.

All of the members of The Crash Engine seem genuinely nice. Calling members of a rock band “nice” is probably a lot like telling a dude that he’s “pretty”, but it works for them. They aren’t typical. They don’t have rolled-up twenty dollar bills dangling from their noses, and trashing hotel rooms doesn’t suit their style– which is promising because they may need to crash on your futon the next time Ron VanBurgundy rolls into your hometown.

Audioholic Media: Tell me about the band’s backstory. How did The Crash Engine get started?

Tom Dawson: Well, randomly, both Alex and I– before we went to college– we marked a little box on our dorm forms that said “Music Hall”. So we ended up in the dorms together, on the same floor. Just three doors down from each other.

Alex Heller: And that’s why we call ourselves Three Doors Down.

TD: [Alex] started a band with this guy, Garrett, and I heard them playing one day and I was like, “Shit, I gotta play with these guys. These guys sound good.” About a week or so later, I was playing with them and we had an acoustic trio. The guy across the hall from me was a drummer. He was a percussionist at the U of O music school and so he became our drummer. We asked him if he wanted to play drums for us and he said sure. He flew his drums out from Alabama and we became The Crash Engine, basically. We played shows and were hanging out in Eugene for about four years; we graduated from college and it was time to… get on with things [laughs] and Alex and I wanted to pursue the band as a career. Our drummer kind of already had his percussion career going. He was playing with symphonies and he was going for his Master’s degree, so [Alex and I] moved to Portland and made the full-length record, then we got Dana and we’ve been playing with Dana for the past seven months and it’s been fantastic. We’ve finally found the right combination.

AM: When you’re looking for a new member of the band, how do you know when you’ve found the right fit?

Dana Rapley: Actually, I was in a band a couple years back and we had all played shows together so I knew what they sounded like when they called me up and said they were looking for a drummer. I kinda dropped everything and moved to Portland but before I did that, we had a jam in a practice space in a warehouse and I was drumming on an electric drum set. With the first song that we jammed out on, we all looked at each other and we knew that it was gonna work.

AM: What prompted you to move The Crash Engine from Eugene to Portland?

AH: Well, Eugene is a cool place to live when you’re in college but once you’re out it kinda sucks.
I’m from San Diego so I didn’t go down to San Diego every summer but we’d still be playing shows around town. In Eugene, the population decreases by like 10,000 people in the summer because everyone goes home. We couldn’t get anyone to come out to our shows. We had a few too many depressing shows and we were like, “Let’s get outta here.”
Another reason was because we wanted to make an album and there weren’t enough opportunities to do that, not enough quality recording engineers in Eugene, so we had to go elsewhere.

AM: Do you guys have day jobs or is The Crash Engine your number one priority?

AH: We’re technically homeless. We don’t have an address.

DR: The I-5 is our address.

AH: We did have jobs up until a few months ago when we sorta realized, you know, we can’t just sit around and wait for it to happen for us, we just gotta get out there and go for it. We sold a bunch of stuff. I sold my truck and bought a van and Tom sold his car and bought the trailer and we just put a lot of thought into it. It wasn’t just spur of the moment, “Let’s just do this and see what happens”, it was like, “How can we actually do this and survive and pay for gas and live, you know, relatively comfortably?” So far it’s workin’ out.

AM: How was that last day at work? How was the last day before you knew you were leaving work to live the life of a musician?

TD: It felt so good. It felt so good. I knew I didn’t belong there, at my day job. I just had one to pay rent and it kinda sucked because when you’re working just to pay the rent, you feel like you’re just wasting time. I really knew that if I could put 100% of my energy into this that we could really make it happen, so the job had to go. The only way to do that was to not pay rent so we just had to be on the road. And that’s cool because everywhere we go, we usually have friends. If we don’t have friends, we make friends.

AH: It’s an adventure. I kinda realized this after being out here for a few weeks, but it’s like, when you’re just staying in one place doing the same routine, time goes by really, really quickly. Just a week seems like such a long time when we’re out here touring because we’re in a different place every night and we’re meeting all sorts of new people, and freezing our asses off sleeping in the van. [laughs] It’s been really, really fun and it’s been difficult… but more fun and exciting than difficult so far.

AM: Just out of curiosity, since The Crash Engine was born within a collegiate setting, what did everyone go to school for?

DR: I started the drums when I was five. I didn’t really go to school for drums or music or anything. I just graduated high school and that’s it. I didn’t really want to go to college. I knew this is what I was gonna do.

AH: Tom and I both went to the music school at U of O and got music degrees.

AM: So everyone was pretty much on the music path the whole way.

All: Yeah.

AH: All of us have known that we wanted to play music for a really, really long time.

AM: What is everyone’s background in music? Dana, you’ve said that you’ve been playing drums since you were five…

DR: Yeah.

II: Were you self-taught?

DR: I got lessons for about two weeks and then [the instructor and I] ended up just kinda sharing beats with each other and BS’ing around and I think my dad saw that and was like, “No, I’m not gonna pay for this”, so he pulled me out of there. I’ve pretty much been listening to my favorite drummers and trying to jam with them. That’s how I learned.

AH: I didn’t originally play bass in this band, which is sort of an interesting fact. I started out writing songs before I ever played an instrument. I started playing guitar when I was ten, then basically started a band immediately and have just been doing that thing ever since. I switched to bass just because– it’s kind of a long story, but– we went through, like, five different bass players and we just kinda got fed up with not finding the right person and we just figured out that we can put on a better show when it’s just the three of us.

AM: You’re like Destiny’s Child.

AH: [laughs] Destiny’s Child. The power trio, I guess you could call it… That sounds cheesy.

TD: Alex plays the bass like a guitar. He can get a really full sound out of his bass.

AH: A pretty mean sound.

TD: Most of the time he’s playing the bass line and the rhythm guitar part at the same time.

I always was interested in music. I loved Michael Jackson when I was really little, like five. I had the red zipper jacket from the “Billie Jean” video. I used to wear it to school. But I kinda had to fight for my right to play guitar because I had to buy my own guitar with my own money. I was always into different stuff. I was into sports a lot when I was growing up and that’s always kinda how my parents steered me, so I had to really stand up for myself and, you know, say “Hey, this is what I want to do”. I bought my own stuff and I was in a punk band in high school and that was… that was crazy. It was weird, but fun. That was my first band. The feeling of doing that was something I never forgot and something I still love. It’s like a terrible disease that you never want to get rid of. I kept playing, took some lessons and got better, then Alex and I formed The Crash Engine in college and just took it from there, just kept going with it. It just kept going and going and here we are.

AM: You were given the chance to work with Loren Israel through his Music Mentor Program. How did you come into contact with him?

TD: He contacted us first, actually.

AH: Found us through MySpace, I think, and basically said that he’s interested in our music. Loren Israel was actually the same person who discovered the band Jimmy Eat World and popularized the Plain White Ts, who are pretty big right now…

TD: We’re not exactly proud of working with Loren Israel. We think of it as cool in that it happened and we learned a lot but we’re not one of his bands. We’re not like the Plain White Ts or something like that. But it was a valuable learning experience because his point of view is the point of view of many, many people in the music industry and it’s a pretty cynical point of view.

AH: I mean, he tells you a lot of things you don’t want to hear which kind of sucks at the time, but it’s a good thing to know.

TD: It’s good to understand his perspective ’cause that’s the way it is. I mean, he was an A&R exec. for Capitol for quite a long time and, you know, they’re there to make money. They’re there to sell records. They’re there to put out stuff like “Hey There, Delilah”. That’s what they exist to do. It’s a business, so that was his point of view and we really got to understand his point of view and then take a hard look at our point of view, too, and kind of get a better sense of where we’re at.

AH: Which definitely didn’t mean compromising what we were doing and that was sort of the struggle with him. I think that’s what a lot of bands go through when they start working with, you know, big shot record people. They expect you to compromise your music to fit this certain mold and we didn’t want to do that but we took a look at the aspects of our music that we thought were really catchy, and really important, and really different about us and we sort of amplified that and tried to make it even more… I mean, it’s hard to explain but we sort of condensed our sound into what it is now.

TD: We went through a really experimental period in college. College was kind of a safety zone. There’s a comfort zone there because it’s kind of a regular thing so we wrote some songs during that period of time that were pretty far out. We were going to music school at the time so we were, like, analyzing Beethoven’s symphonies and all this shit. We were putting motives in our rock songs and repeating shit and doing crazy structures and just going really far out. And then you take a look at that and you’re like, “Woah. Who’s gonna listen to that?” So we came back to where we started, basically, which was just being a rock band.
We love pop music. We love Nirvana, we love Weezer, we love all that stuff, too.

AH: I think most bands wouldn’t really admit that they like pop music but we respect it. Not necessarily the pop music that’s out there right now but it’s a lot of work. Being able to actually pull off a good pop song is quite a feat.

TD: One of our favorite bands of all time is Soundgarden because they never compromised their musical integrity but they still wrote songs that were extremely accessible to anybody. And they were pop-structured. They had AB form and they had catchy melodies but the sound of the band was still really, really unique and really, really awesome. And that’s kind of the direction we’re going right now.

AM: I read that you recorded your first demo using Tom’s computer and a pirated copy of Cakewalk. Did having the opportunity to be completely hands-on with your demos and first EPs have any influence on your studio experience with Extravagaria?

TD: Absolutely. Yes. We’ve never worked with a producer. We produce everything ourselves right now– not that we don’t want to work with a producer in the future. We’ve always been in charge of our own recordings. From the very get-go we made a six song EP, all acoustic at the end of our stint in the dorms to kind of remember the songs we were doing, for one thing, and also to get the music out there.

AH: We pissed off a lot of people there too. Recording anything in a dorm room isn’t… [laughs]

AM: How collaborative is the creative process in The Crash Engine?

AH: It’s definitely collaborative. It sort of differs with each song. It’s either me or Tom that comes up with the original seed for a song and then we sort of balance it on our own to a certain level and then we’ll bring it into practice and work on it together at that point. We don’t usually write songs just improvising in practice that often but once something is there, then it’s definitely a very democratic process. Some of it was pretty interesting, how it turned out, especially the lyrics and melody. Usually if I’m writing a melody, I’ll just sort of sing nonsense words, the sounds of it, judging it on sound and what’s gonna sound the best there. With “Weary Anthems” in particular, I sang a melody with some fake words and then Tom took that and listened to it and figured out what the words were in those sounds and it actually ended up making sense, which is really strange and crazy.

TD: I just sat there with headphones on, listening to the vocal track that Alex put over the song. You listen it and you’re like, “Wow, that’s right. That sounds right.” It all sounded really natural and it sounded like he was saying something. It sounded like he was really saying some words there so I just kind of figured out what words to put there and it ended up being a cool song.

AH: To me that seems like one of our most lyrically deep songs on the album. [laughs]

AM: Between the local radio play and the extensive amount of shows you book in the area, the local community really seems to have embraced your band. With so many other local bands trying to put their names on the map, what do you think sets you apart in the music community?

DR: Some people might not have the common sense of what sounds good and what doesn’t, and a lot of bands are doing the same thing. I don’t want to bad mouth bands, but you have to be different. We have a lot of catchy riffs that are undeniable and will get stuck in your head and you’ll be singing them at work. We have really good songs and we have all of the elements; people will definitely pick up on that– and they have. I think that’s what mainly sets us apart. The live show’s really good too. All the time, it’s really high energy and when we get done, we can barely pack up our stuff. We just put our heart out and it’s just all the way.

TD: A lot of bands seem to have, like, almost everything together but I really think, at this point, this band has it all, which is real exciting for us. I mean, we’re smart, we understand how things work. We wouldn’t be out here doing this if we didn’t think we couldn’t actually make it. [laughs] We’ve got it all, we’ve got the killer live set, as a trio we have a full sound, everybody in this band is awesome, I think. We’ve got catchy songs that have mass appeal, we’ve got a full-length record that’s all packed up and packaged and looks great, we’ve got a van and a trailer and we go around and we play shows. That’s what we do.

AM: The one thing I hear consistently about The Crash Engine is that you have “It”, even from the people who would never say something so cliché about a newer band.

TD: That’s good. It’s pretty rewarding for us to go around and be preceded by a reputation.

DR: A lot of it’s dedication, too. A lot of people don’t want to get rid of their jobs because that’s their security. Usually bands are something they do after work, but man, if you wanna do it, your job is your life, it’s gonna be your career. If you put everything into it, you’re gonna get everything out of it later on and I think we all have the same mentality about that.
We all get along too, that’s another thing. I’ve seen a lot of bands where all of them just butt heads.

TD: It’s fun being in The Crash Engine. [laughs] It’s nice.

AM: You’re signed to the new indie label, Minute Morning Records, and your album was the first to be released by them.

AH: Yeah. Minute Morning is a magazine that was started by this guy, Andrew Young, who is a good friend of ours. It’s mostly a music magazine. He reviews bands and live shows and stuff like that and various writers write up little short stories and stuff. He got interested in us two, three years ago and it was a long time coming. He wasn’t really intending for it to be a record label from the very beginning. He basically started the label so we could release our album and he just paid for us to get 1000 CDs printed up. He actually designed our cd cover too, so he’s actually a very multi-talented guy.
Minute Morning is actually going to be releasing another CD from a band called Muke, out of Eugene. Those guys are cool, too.

AM: Given the current state of the music industry, was it a conscious decision to be part of an indie label?

AH: It was a conscious decision. We’ve talked to major labels in the past but the reason we’re doing what we’re doing right now is that we want to put ourselves in the position where we’re not being like, “Please sign us!” We want them to be knocking on our door and fighting over us. If we can get to that point, then we’ll be good. Because basically what we’re doing right now is everything that a bigger record label would be doing for us anyway. We’ve recorded our own CD, we bought our own van and trailer and we have our own equipment. Basically, we want to get to a point where we can say “What can you do for us that we can’t do for ourselves?” We’re not opposed to major labels but we want to have leverage.

TD: I mean, a major label is really the best way to get your music out there. They have massive promoting power and tons and tons of money and all this stuff, but we’ve been doing this for so long that we just want to do it on our terms. We’ve always been always about the music. It’s never been about “Let’s just get famous” or “Let’s just do this for money”, it’s always been about “Let’s just make the best music we can” and we wanna do it on our terms. We know we can succeed doing it on our terms so that’s the way we wanna do it. We really have a lot of respect for bands that do it this way, too. There are tons of bands who do it this way. You know, the DIY way. [laughs] Lots of punk bands do it like this.

AH: We’ve met a lot of bands so far on the tour who are doing the same thing, who are making it work. We learn from them and we pick their brains about, you know, how they keep rollin’ and keep doing it.
… Lots of vitamin C is important.

TD: Lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

DR: Trail mix… And you gotta not hate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

AH: Cold soup.

TD: You have to have a sleeping bag. [laughs]

AM: You guys have a show at the Roxy in L.A. on February 19^th, which is a pretty legendary venue and it seems to be pretty universal: everybody seems to think you’re on the verge of something big. Do you guys feel that within the band?

AH: Yeah.

TD: Oh yeah. But on a day-to-day basis, no. Not at all. [laughs] When you wake up in the morning in the van and your face has crust on it and you’re trying to find something to eat…
Whatever kind of success seems really far away but we just love what we do and we’ve always wanted to get to this point. Right now it feels fantastic because we’re actually living the dream, or whatever, and life is good. Life is good right now. It could be a lot fuckin’ worse. Holy shit. I’m glad we live in the United States and not Afghanistan or somewhere because we wouldn’t be able to do it. Would just, flat out, not be able to do it.
We take care of ourselves. We have a lot of fun. We’re not starving or dying.

AM: Do you have any plans or goals for the next album yet?

TD: Well, Dana’s gonna be on it so that’s a definite plan.

AH: We’ve got new material we’ve been working on. It’s hard to practice when we’re on tour. Right now we just sort of have a vague image in the back of our minds of what it’s going to be but it’s gonna be something awesome.

TD: It’s gonna sound quite a bit different from the first record.

AH: Probably more live-oriented. That’s probably gonna be the biggest change because the whole writing process of the last cd, we weren’t playing live and our drummer wasn’t even in town so we have a lot of low-key songs that we don’t even play live. We only play six out of the ten songs on the cd live so the next cd is gonna be more rock ‘n’ roll and I think that’s a good thing. I look at a lot of the bands that are out there and it’s like there aren’t rock bands on a smaller level. There are hardcore bands but people are either afraid to turn up their amplifiers or they’re afraid to turn them down so you can actually hear the melody. We’re somewhere in the middle.
A lot of other bands try to be as good as their favorite band. We have our favorite bands and everything, but we want to be as good as we can be on our own. We’re not trying to sound like anybody else or follow any trends whatsoever. We’re not gonna have a keytar player just because it’s popular right now [laughs].

AM: Have you learned anything specific from this tour that you plan to be aware of on the next?

TD: We’ve learned from everywhere we’ve gone, and everywhere we go we learn more about how to do it better next time. We’ve made some mistakes but you just take it on the chin when you’re starting out. We expected that. I mean, we planned for it.

AH: We’re just gonna keep goin’ till the wheels fall off this thing.

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Official Website: crashengine.com
MySpace: myspace.com/thecrashengine