thereivers.net:
Are there any unreleased songs or anything new, or any cover
songs you’ll be doing at the show, apart from the
one you played at soundcheck?
Garrett: Just the one.
John: It’s supposed to be a surprise.
thereivers.net: It’ll kind of be
a post-surprise, because it’s not gonna be on the
website ‘till later anyway.
Garrett: (laughing) You mean you’re
not gonna post it right now?
thereivers.net: Yeah, I’ll run outside
and…
Garrett: Before tomorrow morning…you
never know…
thereivers.net: So, the new song –
what’s it called?
John: “All the Drunks Say Amen”
thereivers.net: Are you going to record
it?
John: Maybe eventually.
thereivers.net: You could put it on your
MySpace site maybe – Internet-only download or something.
Garrett (to John): Is it on your record
that you’re working on?
thereivers.net: Oh yeah, you’re working
on a solo record, aren’t you?
John: Yeah.
thereivers.net: How far along is that?
John: It was…you know, I had done
everything and I was gonna get some other people to play
on it but I’m not sure what I want to do with it now.
We’ll 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 don’t know if we’re
the “spirit of the age” right now…
thereivers.net: Of all the bands you toured
with over the years, which ones do you have the fondest
memory of?
Cindy: I can’t think of any bands
we played with – well, I can only think of one band
we played with that we didn’t like – but everybody
else was really fun.
Kim: Which one?
Cindy: I won’t say!
thereivers.net: There wasn’t one
band, more than any others, that you really enjoyed touring
with?
Cindy: It was just a lot of really nice
people – the Fleshtones were really nice….Uncle
Green…
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: I’m an assistant manager at
a book store – I’ve 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 don’t 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 haven’t
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, I‘ve
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 “You wanna start a band?”
Cindy: Yeah.
thereivers.net: So it was good timing for
the Reivers reunion.
Garrett: Yeah, I was definitely itching
to start a band – and I didn’t have to learn
hardly any new songs!
thereivers.net: How come you took so long
to reunite?
Cindy: People hadn’t really started
dying off…
Kim: I don’t 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 – people in my
peer group. I wanted to start doing things that I wanted
to do, like “hey, let’s put the Reivers back
together for a reunion show!” I mean, I don’t
want to die and not have stuff taken care of like that…it
seemed important.
thereivers.net: Yeah, it’s important
to a lot of people, I mean, tonight’s show sold out
in less than 24 hours, so it’s obviously important
to a lot of people.
John: It’s very humbling.
thereivers.net: So I guess you were pretty
surprised?
Garrett: Yeah.
Kim: Very.
thereivers.net: I know I’ve been
getting lots and lots of emails through the website since
the reunion was announced.
Kim: Awwww…
thereivers.net: Do you have any personal
favourite Reivers songs or albums?
Kim: I don’t know about albums –
um, I really love the first one and then Saturday…I
like them all really.
thereivers.net: Any particular songs?
Kim: I really love “Translate Slowly”,
“Baby”. I’ve got a lot of favorite songs.
Garrett: I think actually my favourite
record was Saturday, but I like them all.
thereivers.net: I think Saturday’s
got a real cohesiveness to it – the songs flow together
really well.
Garrett: I really couldn’t 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 I’m saying is, I don’t
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 we’d 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 “Baby”…”Dragonflies”
is another one – I like that one a lot. I like “Pop
Beloved” a lot…I don’t know if that’s
my favourite, but it’s got character.
Cindy: Yeah, I think that’s my favourite
album.
thereivers.net: Any favourite songs?
Cindy: There’s some songs I really
don’t like…
thereivers.net: Ah, what are they?
Cindy: I won’t tell you what they
are! (laughter)
thereivers.net: I’m sure we won’t
be hearing those tonight….
Cindy: No, you won’t. I put my foot
in and… (band laughter)
Cindy: I like “Translate Slowly”
a lot, the song. You look out in the crowd and everybody’s
singing and you understand why big rock acts step back from
the microphone and let the crowd sing because it’s
really…
Kim: Great!
Cindy: Yeah, really neat.
thereivers.net: I’ve often wondered
about the leftover Pop Beloved tracks, I mean, there’s
something like 9 or 10 songs. Have you ever thought of releasing
them?, because they’re really good songs.
Kim: Like what?
thereivers.net: Let’s see, what are
some of them?… “So Exciting”…
Kim: Yeah, that was a really good one!
thereivers.net: “In My Neighborhood”
– I always liked that one a lot.
Kim: I don’t even remember that one!
thereivers.net: (sings a little)
Kim: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah…
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 “Tell Me So”…
those were mostly abandoned. There’s one that I don’t
think we even got to the demo stage which I would like to
redo…
Cindy: Which one?
John: Uh, it was originally called “What’s
My Job?” I was working on the song and my daughter
walked in the room and I said “How do you like that?”
and she said “I like it! Is that called “What’s
My Job?” So I said, “It is now – do you
want to sing it?” So she sang “What’s
my job and I sayyyyy, What’s my job and I sayyyy”….
(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 that’s something…I
think we should sit around a table with a bottle of rum
or something and…talk.
Garrett: Maybe that’s not such a
good idea…(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 – the first
few tours we took, something would go catastrophically wrong.
I remember thinking “Are we ever gonna be able to
do one of these without something major happening?”
‘Cause like, one, we went and we took two cars and
we had a wreck. We had to return in a Tercel – all
four of us and all our gear…in a Tercel.
Kim: But we did have…
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 driver’s 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
“My…hair…is…touching…the…windshield”.
(band laughter)
Garrett: It was freezing outside and the
window was fogging up…
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 wasn’t plugged in…
Kim: Oh my God…
Garrett: The heater worked, we just didn’t
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, “Hey cowpunches”
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 weren’t making
a lot of money. We slept one night in a rest stop in South
Carolina somewhere. We’d sleep on people’s floors
when we could. But, we were finally getting to the last
stretch of it – we were getting ready to go home and
we get in the car and it won’t go into gear. I think
it would only go in reverse.
thereivers.net: So you’d have to
drive backwards the whole way home.
John: We probably considered it.
Garrett: Fortunately, Kim had a credit
card with her…
Kim: “Mom? Can I put a transmission
on the credit card?”
Garrett: We’d probably still be there
if not for that.
Kim: My parents tell this story often.
Garrett: They had to call a bank and get
‘em 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 “We’re going home.”
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, well…
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, that’s 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: It’s been a blast.
thereivers.net: Do you think you’ll
do other shows or recording after this?
Cindy: Certainly not as The Reivers.
John: Yeah, I don’t think we’ll
be The Reivers anymore, in my opinion, but we haven’t
decided anything yet.
We’re still talking about it.
