Built to Spill.

WHAT IS EMO? Is it Jerry Hsu? Cairo Foster? Tim McKenney singing Moody Blues? For months now, all I've heard is "Emo rock sucks, emo rock rules... Built To Spill this; Modest Mouse that..." First, Cairo and MJ used BTS for their video parts; then their music started popping up in every skate video and was playing in every car I would get into. It really hit me when German shredder Veith Kilberth came to the US and insisted we get some BTS CDs. So after hearing Built To Spill was playing four--count 'em FOUR nights in a row in SF--I decided to go and see what this hype was about.

Where are you from?

A couple of us live over here in Idaho and a couple of us live in Seattle.

You don't have any roadies; is this normal?

Yeah, I never thought about using a roadie...we can move our gear, it's easy to do. Van Halen has roadies, bands on our level don't.

Do you get a feel for what the crowd likes after playing night to night, and change your set to what you think is received the best?

We don't care too much because the people that are most vocal are not the best indication of what everyone wants to hear. You'll hear people shout out "The Car," but if we play something like "When Not Being Stupid is Not Enough," which is a song no one has ever yelled out, there's gonna be a few quiet observers who will appreciate a weird song like that, something more obscure. At the same time, I know that everyone likes the "Car" song. It's one of our best songs. I want to play stuff that people want to hear. A lot of it too is what we want to do... I don't mind "Car." There was a period where I just didn't like the song, it bummed me out so we didn't play it. Now I like it and I don't mind playing it at all.

What were your early musical influences when BTS started?

A bunch of SST bands from the mid- to late-'80s: The Replacements, the Butthole Surfers, the Smiths. Kind of early alternative rock.

What inspires you today?

Lately I've been listening to a lot of reggae, soul music and stuff, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. I mostly listen to compilations. My friend just made me three really great 70-minute reggae compilations and I don't really pay much attention to who is on them.

How do you come up with the lyrics to your songs? I read somewhere that your girlfriend writes some of them.

First I write the music, then I try to find some lyrics that will go to the music that I've written. I'll take random words out of a book and put them together in a way that makes sense and all fit the meter of what I'm working on. My girlfriend is more of--its not like she sits down and writes things for me. She'll tell me an idea and I'll use it sometimes. It's really informal though. It's not a set thing. I steal things from other peoples' songs or whatever.

Do you have an album that you're most proud of

I'd have to say Perfect From Now On.

Why's that?

Are you an Internet surfer?

I hated it at the time and it kind of symbolizes to me that if I work hard on something I will eventually be able to persevere--it has that meaning to me.

Not at all. We don't even have Internet access. We had it for a while and we just weren't too interested in it. And we were terrible with checking our e-mail.

What are you doing besides music?

I'm not doing much of anything. I bought a Dreamcast. I'm really into basketball. I've been playing a lot of basketball. I'd watch everything that was on TNT, TBS--anything available with regular cable.

NBA 2K1?

I'm playing that right now. I hope you don't mind.

I got a Dreamcast too.

Nice. I was gonna get the PlayStation2, but this thing was 100 bucks 'cause they stopped making 'em or whatever, but they still have tons of games and there's still 100 more to come out. But this game and Soul Caliber; just one of those fighting games. It's so beautiful and such a great game--straight forward fighting game.

Does your son have a skateboard?

No, but he wants one. I think we're gonna get him one pretty soon here. He talks about grinding and ollieing and stuff.

Did you ever own a skateboard?

No, I never skated at all. I have a couple of friends though that are my age, like 30-ish, that just started skating again. I think it's strange. I just started playing basketball and that's why I think its strange that they're skating 'cause I'm always hurting myself, so they've got to be hurting themselves. It's hard to do when you're that old.

Your music is in skate videos. Are you aware of this?

Yeah, I did known that. I thought that was really cool. I haven't watched any of the videos, but I have copies of a couple of 'em. I'm totally psyched about that. I like the idea of skating. For some reason, I was never interested in it; I always had tons of friends that skated.

Do you know who Cairo Foster is?

I don't. Is he a famous pro skater?

I don't know how famous he is, but he's into you guys.

Awesome.

How has success and being on a major label changed your life besides the increase in cash?

I don't really think it has changed. I think that if we were on Up we would still be as famous as we are. We sold nearly as many records on Up and we've been just touring. I don't think we've gotten very much exposure through Warner Brothers. There hasn't been anything that they've done that Up couldn't do. They don't have greater distribution than Up really, and they don't promote us any more. We do about the same amount of interviews and touring, so I don't think Warner has gotten us much more famous, but I think over the years we've gotten more well known 'cause we've been around for that many more years. That's fine. I like the level we're at. That's exactly what I wanted when we signed with Warner Brothers--get enough money to make really good records, spend some money in the studio and be able to quit my job and still have a pretty small following and make the records that I wanted to make. It's all really worked out pretty well. The people at Warner have been really cool and let us do things the way we want.