FIXER IS A PISSER And so, lo and behold, I braved my first true New York winter to attend a performance of the rock quartet known as Fixer at Castle CBGB. They playe with so much courage, even this knight was impressed. After many ales and a Japanese quintet, Fixer relieved themselves verbally (and physically) to your rock'n'roll scribe. Thus spake my interview: chuck: So -- how's everybody doing? Evan: Alright, chuck, we're doing well as long as the women keep coming down here... chuck: Just for the record, can you state yer names and yer ranks and yer serial numbers? Wilson: I'm Wilson, I play guitar in Fixer. Evan: I'm Evan, social relations, frontman... J: I'm J, the general sergeant of this group and bass player as well. chuck: And we're missing Tim [drummer], right? Wilson: Yep, Tim had to go out with his brother on his birthday. chuck: So what have you guys been doing lately? You've been playing a lot of shows... Wilson: Touring like mad; writing a lot of songs we're putting together on the road... J: Tracking down stolen property... Wilson: Yeah, we bought a van and it got stolen before we even got to drive it one time... J: We had it one night... chuck: What kind was it? Wilson: 79 Ford Econoline, all pimped out with some nice velour interior, a big couch in the back... Evan: We even had invitations from several women to christen the van. They wanted to in it before we even rode in it! And it fucking got stolen! Wilson: And not it's gone, so now we have to in taxi cabs. chuck: Where'd it get stolen? Wilson, Evan and J: Williamsburg... Wilson: We've been through it before, we got tons stolen from us, we'll just track it down, but you know, they giveth and they taketh away. We won twelve thousand dollars worth of equipment in December. J: First they giveth... chuck: What was it for? Wilson: We won a Future Rock Stars Battle of the Bands sponsored by Sam Ash in Long Island. We beat out ninety-six bands over three rounds. We're the Number One Band. chuck: What was your grand prize? Wilson: About twelve to fifteen grand of equipment: mics... Evan: Everybody got laid... Wilson: Yeah, several hookers... J: Some guy tried to pick us up, which is great, but... Evan: Hangin' out with the cool kids! chuck: What kind of equipment? Wilson: Guitars, amps, mics, multitrack recording stuff, a drum set, bass. It's sort of ironic because in order to win this kind of a contest, you need to be fully outfitted really, and you win this kind of contest and they fully outfit you. It's a catch 22, really. We're making our way on the road, despite the van. We got equipment; we're gonna put together a full length album with Jason Corsaro. The van got stolen the very next day... Evan: We hit the road. We just went to Ithaca, New York which is a five hour drive, six hours even... Evan: Through a FUCKING blizzard. J and Tim were sleeping in the band, Wilson and I in the front seat, we hit black ice on top of a mountain and the fucking car goes completely out of control. Wilson got it back onto control from the passenger seat... Wilson: From the passenger seat! Evan: Basically, we haven't slept, we all went to work today, we're running about thirty-six hours and we just played this gig tonight at CBGB and kicked some fuckin' ass! Wilson: We're pushing ourselves as far as we can. That's what we've got to do really at this point. chuck: So do you all have day jobs? Wilson: We do, we don't like to talk about it, special agency, special assignment. Evan: Never mention it again. Wilson: I kill for the government, mostly homeless people. J: Let's just say my ass is real sore... (Laughter) chuck: How have you been enjoying life on the road other than hitting black ice on top of a mountain? Wilson: It's good, we're trying to push ourselves as much as we can. Last Friday we played two shows in one night in DC. We played a show at ten and them immediately left to play a show at eleven. It was great actually. The venues were literally down the street from each other. J: Two very different crowds and both were in love. One was a very straightforward DC crowd and the other was an S&M party and both crowds were great. Evan: For the record, we enjoyed the S&M a lot! The guy in the rubber siut at the S&M party was awesome. And the transvestite made both Jay and I shiver. Every city we go to, we're really starting to get a good thing going now. We're past the initial stage, I think. Everytime we play, we're getting good venues, we got a residency thing going here at CBGB, Grape Street Pub in Philadelphia. We're doing really well down there, they're plugging us on the radio. And it's just a fucking good time, man. I mean, it's such a struggle being in a rock band and I think we're getting such good response from the fans and the clubs up and down the east coast right now. It's phenomenal. J: It's all we want to do... You sit at work all day and you're like, "Is it almost time to hit the road?" We just wanna go. chuck: You have a new cd out? Wilson: Yes, a new ep, we recorded it with Jason Corsaro in September. It was reviewed by your comrade Starr. She enjoyed it, I believe she called it "Dirty metal music for late-night drinks or a tree day bender. We enjoyed that. Wilson: And we're about to record some more with him [Corsaro] because with the winnings from that last Battle of the Bands we now have a fully outfitted recording studio. We won a ten track digital recorder, but we didn't even need that, it's just sort of superfluous because we have a ProTools setup in our studio as well. But we were lacking some mics and pre-amps and stuff like that. We won most of that so now, Jason Corsaro with some of his equipment, he can plug it in and we basically have everything we need, do whatever we want. We've got about twenty unrecorded songs at least and so rather than pour over our set list of songs and try and figure out what the fuck they want to hear, we can just record them all. Evan: We have a really good dynamic with Jason Corsaro. We liked the way we sound on the Bend ep. We love working with the guy and he's really helping us get to the next level as far as out dynamic with him, like talking to him. He digs our music and we love working with him, so we're gonna put out another fucking kick ass record. J: We've all learned a shitload from working with each other as well, and he knows now what's going to be far superior to the last CD that we did with him even though that was amazing. He's like, "This idea for this," and it's a great dynamic. Evan: He's a little more aware of everybody's tools, that's the bottom line. When you first come into a band whether you're a fan or a producer, you're analysing an overall sound but now he's getting each of us and he knows our tools and our strengths and he talks like that in each song, you know, "You've gotta bust it out here and you gotta bust it out here." It's really good. J: We did that last cd in three days and it was bang, bang, bang... chuck: How many songs? J: Four songs, but all the tracks were laid down in two days, then mixing and mastering. Actually the mising was four hours. Wilson: Now we have a lot of time, which an also be a curse, but I think we're good. I think it's good and we've gotta try it. Everything with Fixer we gotta go into and it's a new experience. Just because we were doing it quickly, we'll try it slowly. We've got the material, the ball's rolling, we're writing songs on the road, and that's cool too because I think we've all gotten to a comfort level with each other where we can do that, and, man, that's awesome. chuck: Yeah, it sounds like you're pretty tight. What brought you together? Wilson: Well, we're sort of two pairs of people... Tim and I have been together for ten years. Tim, the drummer, and I went to high school toghter and played throughout college together. We had a variety of bands... chuck: Any notable ones? Wilson: No, not really at all. We were just learning out chops, we played in jam metal bans and to anything basically. We were just there to play and rock out, that's all we were there to do. We stumbled upon Evan, and he joined the band, then we ended up losing our bassist for various reasons cause it just wasn't working out, and he brought in J, with whom he went to college... Evan: Evan brought in J, not the old bass player. Wilson: Evan brought inJ, they played together for years, so the band is a beautiful pairing of two pairs of old friends, and we all get along together as well so it's really about as ideal as you can hope for. chuck: What colleges did you go to? Evan: J and I went to Skidmore. Wilson: Time went to Trinity, I went to Columbia. Random Girl: Is there a party in the girl's room? Evan: Yes. J: You may pass. Wilson: Are you a girl? Just checking. So yeah, it's great, we have old ties going back and so, it's really good. Now we're all friends. This incarnation of the band has been together for over a year, year and a half, so it's fucking nice. J: And as Evan has said on the road, if we were all gay, it would be even better. (Laughter) Evan: Okay, look, we were on the road and I was like, "Guys, I'm so frustrated. If we were gay we could just be sucking each other off back here. It'd be fucking phenomenal. Wilson: You know, you really didn't need to elaborate. Evan: Sorry, sorry. But I mean you know, the van days are long and hard and now that we're... chuck: No pun intended. (Laughter) (A girl walks up the stairs...Evan looks up her skirt) Evan: That's great...Having an interview under the stairs. chuck: What do you plan to do for the future? Evan: World domination is on the horizon. First, we'll play Trenton, that's next Wednesday. And keep recording, writing and rocking! We're basically an indie band, we're unsigned, we have day jobs which I can't really talk about now and we're doing anywhere from ten to thirteen shows a month which is fucking absurd. But we've got so much fire inside of us, so much music ans so much love for doing this that we're just gonna keep the ball rolling. J: And keep the rock hard. chuck: You're one of the few bands i can see going somewhere. Your stage presence is great. You work really well together. Evan: It's better than ever, man, it's better than ever. I just felt so powerful tonight. We didn't fucking sleep tonight and I felt like this was one of our top five shows tonight. I felt so good... J: You keep saying tonight. You mean last night. (Laughter) chuck: Do you have any opinions on the current scene in New York? Do you keep up with what's going on? J: We definitely keep up. Evan: We go out and we see a lot of bands. We like lots of different artists, but I think the bottom line is, nobody's doing what Fixer's doing, we fucking love what we're doing and we're gonna keep doing it. We like a lot of music that's out there right now... chuck: Any particular bands? Wilson: I'm in love with Coldplay. J: Audioslave is a phenomenal band and Soundgarden in general. Evan: Radiohead. I'm a big fan of Radiohead. Wilson: Tim loves Queens of the Stone Age big time. chuck: Well, I definitely wish you all the best of luck and I will be seeing you again in the future. There you have it, my bretheren. Tis the word of Fixer from their own mouths. Sir Evan wishes to remind everyone to visit fixermusic.com to see the tour schedule, join the mailing list and purchase new stuff (thongs and other clothing). But for now, that is all. BACK TO HOME