First things first, this flyer to my left matches the site well don't ya think? And second, Division Day will be on-air at Little Radio today with the always controversial and surly duo of Sylvia and Todd. The show airs from 11AM-1PM.Next, I finally completed the second portion of my interview with Rohner from Division Day, my apologies for the tardiness. This post focuses on the history of the band, they are one of the few that actually have one. In case you've been living under a rock, the quartet are playing their Beartrap Island record release show next Tuesday, October 2nd at The Echo with The Mae Shi, Eulogies and Todd & Sylvia spinning the hits.
Scott: I don’t think I have the full story on this but I remember that you guys had met in college...or earlier? Did a couple of you guys attend the same University?
Rohner: Kevin, Seb and I met in Middle School in Northern California. Kevin and Seb have actually known each other since they were 2, like their whole lives basically. We’ve been playing together since we were in Middle School. Seb was a pretty hot bassist at that time and strangely enough I started singing, not sure why. When we played we had like 4 practices at this dude's house in Palo Alto. We never played a show, just played some covers of Pearl Jam, Nirvana and STP, and a few songs that we wrote...which are hilarious.
Scott: I wish you had some recordings of those.
Rohner: Man, we have some shit from high school that will make you shit yourself it’s so hilarious. Kevin was playing guitar when we started in high school and I was playing drums, then we kind of stopped for a while. Some dude from the jazz group at school was singing at that time. We were more like a Tool knock-off band than anything else.
Scott: What was the name of the band?
Rohner: That band was called Flood, we had a really sweet logo. So I was drumming at that point. I have a cassette of some recordings in this really shitty studio. I’m sure it’s best for everyone if it remains under lock and key, but rest assured it is pretty fucking amusing. We played through High School,and I’m a year ahead of them so I left for college, and they were still in high school and that’s about when we formed Division Day. I was still a drummer looking for a singer at school and couldn’t find anyone. Seb was the singer for a little while and I after that I sort of made the switch to being the singer. I felt like it was what I wanted to do and everyone was cool with, and I also started writing a lot more songs. Kevin was still playing guitar at this point.
The next year Kevin and Seb went down south to go to school, Seb at Pitzer and Kevin at UCLA. Kevin met Ryan at UCLA and convinced Ryan to move up to Santa Cruz for the summer. Ryan moved up, we just wanted a band at that point. We looked for a drummer for a while and couldn’t find one. Then Kevin became the drummer, Ryan was going to become the bassist and guitarist, and I would fill the dorky keyboard-playing-singer spot. That’s when things fell into place finally...in 2001. But it wasn’t until 2004 when everyone was done with school and I moved to L.A. and we were all in the same city.
Scott: That’s quite a story. You don’t come across too many bands where the members have known each other almost their entire lives.
Rohner: It’s pretty cool. I don’t think I could be in another rock band like this again. I’ll always do music don’t get me wrong, but bands are kind of a pain in the ass and when you’ve known the people and they’re you’re best friends...it would be too hard to do again. We all feel lucky, it’s more like a family or three-headed girlfriend.
-Scott McDonald
"Hurricane" taken from their new album Beartrap Island (Eeenie Meenie)
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