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He does?
Well, he probably doesn't really care either way. But it was a good thing we were prepared, because we had a lot of songs and we didn't have a ton of time.
Is his style more like an engineer in terms of getting sounds, or did he take an active role in shaping the songs?
He'll do whatever the hell you want. If you want him to produce your record, I guess if he felt inclined to do so, he would. But we weren't really interested in that. We just wanted him to hit "record" and take us down really good, and that's what he did. I think there were like a couple moments where we might have asked him to put in on something, and usually he just shrugged. [Laughs] We didn't really ask that of him.
Was he intimidating to work with?
Not really. He was really nice. Charming. Liked hanging out with him.
You're pretty fearless about including guitar solos in your songs, which tends to be a rare feature in independent rock bands. What's your philosophy behind that?
I think that my philosophy for making songs is that I don't have a philosophy. I just do whatever I want, and it just so happens, I guess, that I like playing guitar solos. They're fun. I like listening to them. I like bands that have guitar solos. I like bands that don't have guitar solos. We all listen to a lot of different music. And we never had a pow-wow at any point where we were like, "Well, here are the rules for Screaming Females: You can't do this - there will never be a xylophone on one of our songs." You don't even have to have rules. Someday there might be a xylophone in one of our songs. There aren't any rules. Because rules suck. Every kid knows that.
Which guitarists' solos do you particularly enjoy?
A lot of the bands I like don't really have [them] - it's not like I listen to Van Halen or anything. But I would if it was on the radio, I would turn it up. When I was a little kid I really liked Smashing Pumpkins for a lot of the guitar solos. I just like guitar rock. Like X... Sleater-Kinney. I like guitar-driven bands. I like bands that are full of interesting personalities and everyone plays an important part. I like bands that would kind of fall apart if they didn't have particular members, and I think Smashing Pumpkins are a great example of that.
I know at least one member who would disagree with you about that.
Yeah, yeah, He might.
You call yourselves a punk band. What does that mean to you?
We kind of call ourselves a punk band for lack of a better word. I think a lot of it was borne out of the way that we operate, the way we tour, the way we channel our business, and the way we don't assign ourselves any kind of rules. To me it's not really a musical thing, it's more of like a frame of mind in that you do things for yourself because it's satisfying, because you want to make something interesting, because you want to make friends and be part of a community. I think that's what that word means to me.
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