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INTERVIEW: Admiral Twin, Tulsa's Own
Welcome to Tulsa, best known as the place where Hanson
first got their start. But now, more talent has been
discovered in this southern city! They're called
Admiral Twin, and they are currently on tour with
Hanson doing shows across North America. The band of
four (Mark Carr, Brad Becker, John Russell, and Jarrod
Gollihare) have received both critical acclaim and also
have many fans in their newsgroup at
alt.fan.admiral-twin. They have also gone through a
name change, which took place late last year (they were
originally called the Mellowdramatic Wallflowers).
We caught up with them late last month in Toronto,
Canada, where they were scheduled to perform, and asked
them a few questions...
Q: How would you describe Admiral Twin?
Brad: It's power-pop, it's pretty eclectic.
John: It's a mixture of Rock'n'Roll and Pop, it's
upbeat, usually. Fun,
Energetic.
Q: You have been playing together for 8 years. What has
kept you together for so long?
Mark: The desire to make music, and hopefully make it
our career. It has
been a good 8 years, working out the kinks and passing
lots of test along the way. We still haven't graduated
yet.
Brad: Or you could call it pure stubbornness.
Q: How did you first meet?
Brad: We all met at different times, but we were in
various bands back
in the 80's, in Tulsa. Those bands, of course, did what
bands do best... which is break up.
John: We played around the scene, we all knew each
other. There are two
different scenes in Tulsa, the cover music scene, and
the original music scene, and ironically we all came
from the original music scene...bands that wrote their
own music.
Jarrod: Our bands broke up at just the right time, and
we all came
together as we all knew each other, and we became a
band. None of us were ready to quit because our first
bands failed, like we said before, we are all too
stubborn for that.
Q: What are some other bands that inspired you?
Brad: We all were inspired by The Beatles. And then,
after that, I
think there is a lot of variety in what we each
individually like. I know John and I both listened to
classical music when we were younger. I didn't listen
to pop music until I was probably in 8th grade. So I
was probably more influenced by composers and musicals
when I was young. Then later, discovered rock'n'roll
The Beatles, The Police, The Eurythmics, and whatever
was going on in the 80's, the New Wave stuff.
John: It varied through the years, I liked everything
from Van Halen to
Prince to the Police, Jazz music, Rush. I really try to
feel a little bit of influence from all of the great
music that's out there. The nice thing is that we're
all guys that are open to all kinds of music.
Brad: An interesting note is the bands that we were in
previous to
this, I was in a Techno band, John was in a kind of
Art-Rock band, Jarrod was in a Pop band, and Mark was
in a U2-type rock band.
Q: You changed your name from the Mellowdramatic
Wallflowers to Admiral
Twin last year. What was the reason?
Jarrod: There's that other band, that Wallflowers band.
Mark: Yeah a lot of people did like [our original
name], we had it for a
long time, and we're very well known around our area as
the Mellowdramatic Wallflowers, but outside our area
people didn't know...We'd go out of state sometimes,
and there would be a few people who actually thought
that it was The Wallflowers coming to play.
Brad: ...and it's hard to spell, we've spelled it wrong
ourselves, and
everybody else misspelled it further.
Q: Where did you come up with the name Admiral
Twin?
Jarrod: Mark was driving along one day and...
Mark: ...saw the Admiral Twin Drive-In theater. It's
right off the
interstate between my two jobs. We've all known this
theater, and have been there throughout out lives.
Brad: We thought it would make a good band name.
John: I thought it was the day that I said "Admiral
Twin" to you in the
kitchen. When I said "what's the number to the Admiral
Twin?" That's why I never understood, we've got two
stories going, so maybe you drove by and you had that
thought prior, and I triggered it.
Q: Are you big movie fans? Any favorites?
Jarrod: We love going to see movies. But asking for a
favorite movie is
like asking me what my favorite Beatles song is...on
any given day, it's going to be something different,
depending on the mood I'm in.
Mark: We did go to see the opening night of Spiceworld.
Jarrod: It was boring.
Q: Can your fans get ahold of the music videos you have
made?
Jarrod: We've made two videos, but one has never been
seen by us. The
very first video we ever made was for a song off of our
first album. A friend of [our manager] Craig was a film
student, wrote it along with us and filmed it for a
project, for a grade, and then she took off and we
never saw it...still haven't seen it. Anyhow, it was
supposedly really cool. The second video was made
because we played a show in Tulsa one summer, and this
lady named Vicky Dawkins happened to come see us. She
really thought the music was good, got the CD, decided
she wanted to make a video for one of the songs on
there, because she and these other people she knew
wanted to start doing some music-video work. They
thought they'd use us as their guinea pig, and let us
use the video for our own promotional use. So we made a
video for Bridges that Cross Over Dryland, which is on
[an earlier album titled] Continental Breakfast. But,
it's not airing on TV, and we don't really sell things
like that.
Q: When you went on stage for the first show of the
North American tour
(in Montreal), what was going through your head?
Mark: Wow is the word. It was totally overwhelming.
Jarrod: It was 12,000 girls all screaming at once,
which is an amazing
sound, completely amazing sound.
Brad: Some were screaming and yelling that we were the
king of the world
or something. They were a very attentive, and
supporting crowd.
Q: Any new projects? Like a new album...
John: We've got several songs we've recorded, in hopes
of creating a new
album. We're kind of getting a rough layout of an idea
for a new record. We have a lot of things that may
happen in the next few months.
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