Get to Know a Houston Band: GTRS

Stacey: We sat out a hurricane together and did an electricity-less recording.
JD: Well, it was battery-powered.
Stacey: A battery-powered laptop and some cigarette amps.
JD: ... one single these little cigarette amps that run off a battery, but they'll also run a cabinet decently.
Jonny: It's .5 watts, but you can push a cabinet with it and it sounds good.
JD: We came up with this totally way different, Mogwai, Godspeed type dramatic build-ups and stuff.

HTR: Does this exist off in a corner somewhere?
Jonny: Yeah, I could see that being on a B-side thing, eventually... a better recording of it would've yielded a proper release.
Stacey: It was good foreshadowing of the living situation we are about to enter into.
Jonny: Yeah, we can definitely put up with each other's shit pretty well.
JD: Literally.

HTR: That's something very necessary when you're in a band.
JD: Yeah, it's the first band I've gone on two tours with and didn't quit, and don't wanna quit.
Jonny: It's the first band that I didn't want to come home from tour... We're basically moving to North Carolina because it's geographically much closer to our "hotspots" we like to tour a lot: DC, Brookyln.
JD: We can take a weekend and go to New York now, whereas [here] we need at least a week and a half to get there and back.
Jonny: It was just so expensive and time consuming to get out of the South, without very many places to play.

HTR: So why Asheville specifically?
JD: Mainly, we wanted to be more east. If we were all rich as shit, we'd be living in Brooklyn. But we want to play Brooklyn a lot, so we wanted to be east. [Stacey & I] had been there with the previous band we were in... Besides Brooklyn it's the only city I've been in that I didn't ever want to leave... It's a very hip, artsy city... It's just a really well-rounded, cool, hippie but not too hippie city.
Jonny: And it's cheap. We're two couples living together, and we're finding places for like $750 a month.
JD: We're actually gonna live in Hendersonville, which is about 15 miles south from Asheville, so we're not far, but every house out there is on at least an acre... We're planning on doing a studio out of the house.
Jonny: And with that kind of isolation, in a completely new setting, with the mountains - I think it's just going to be ideal for writing a second record. It's almost a first record - the first Guitars we were a five-piece, we were going by Guitars completely spelled out.
JD: We're still kinda Guitars, but we're going by GTRS.
Jonny: There's a band from Brooklyn that was already going by that name, and they've already built themselves a reputation that we don't want to be mixed up with.

HTR: So tell me about the insert [in White Night White Night]. Was that a Hands Up Houston discussion?
Jonny: It's basically a collage of a bunch of e-mails that we got from this dude. Should he remain anonymous?
JD: Jay from Woozyhelmet!
Jonny: We'll do some background. Basically we were kind of a new band, but we were getting on some parties for SXSW... We were going to play this show that he was curating.
April: He said we were boring.
JD: What happened was someone said something about our posters [on HUH] and he said, "well I've never listened to [GTRS], but their promotions always seem boring.

HTR: Which is a great way to judge a band...
JD: It was a bit of a slap because we do all our own posters, we do everything ourselves.
April: So I emailed him and basically said, "well come see us, and then tell us we're boring." And I start talking to him, and he was telling me about the show at SXSW, and he was going to put us on it. In the meantime -
JD: He had a solo show coming up. Jay was going to play at The Mink with some other bands... So he put this poster on Hands Up, and I go "Haha, that poster's boring."
April: He lost his shit.
JD: Five minutes later we were kicked off his SXSW show.

HTR: That's a great dry humor response, though.
JD: Everything you read in [the liner notes] are basically the emails between [April] and Jay.
Jonny: So of course we just started picking on him after that.
April: He told us we were terrible members of the Texas music community.
JD: We're just the kind of band that if you f*ck with us, you're going to get f*cked back way harder.

HTR: People should expect that, though
Jonny: And we're joking like 90% of the time anyway.
JD: It was all a joke putting it in the insert. "Haha, you're stupid, you said a bunch of stupid shit." Let everybody see it.

HTR: What is going to be your favorite memory from the Houston music scene?
April: Mine is going to be Secret Saturday shows. That's how we met y'all.
JD: Honestly, for me it's going to be Godspeed You Black Emperor, at the Engine Room, because I asked [Stacey] to marry me... right before that show. I went in a t-shirt that said "Will you marry me?" and she wore a shirt that said "YES or NO" and she circled yes. It was pretty awesome.
Stacey: You're a good man.
Jonny: I'm hoping that this Saturday will be my favorite.

HTR: Is there any surprise we should be aware of [for Saturday]?
JD: There's going to be a lot of surprises. Some that probably shouldn't go into print.
Jonny: There's going to be a piñata full of suprises.
Stacey: It's going to be an adult show. Very adult... There probably will be topless women.
April: We're hedging our bets on that.

HTR: It's at Big Star, right?
JD: Yeah, and the two other bands are really really great, too.
HTR: You've got Airon Paul Dugas playing, whom I love.
JD: Have you seen him with The Religion?
HTR: I saw him at The Mink, a couple months ago.
JD: I was there, that was the best I've seen him yet. He played on a couple songs on our album.
Jonny: He's somebody we actually tried to get to move with us.
April: Well, he says he's allergic to North Carolina... And Sew What - they're kinda my favorite.

HTR: So while we're talking about Houston bands, what's one band in town you think people should really attention to?
Stacey: Listenlisten.
JD: And Airon.
April: I'm also gonna say Sew What, because people really need to pay attention to them... I'd say Muhammid Ali, but everybody knows they're badass.
Jonny: Homopolice are really great.
April: Oh, and Passengers.

HTR: What's one thing that you want people in Houston to remember about GTRS?
JD: That we don't take shit.
Stacey: That we were right.
Jonny: I'd like them to remember that in a month or two we'll have our next release out - a split 12" vinyl with a band from Melbourne, Australia called Spider Vomit. There's gonna be 50 here and 50 there, in each hemisphere, so I think that's cool.

HTR: So how are people in town going to be able to get their hands on that?
Jonny: They'll probably just have to email us, 'cause I think its only going to be available at shows.
JD: Or hope to god that when we roll through around SXSW time, that we still have some.

HTR: So that's when we can expect you back?
JD: Pretty much. I don't know if this should go on the record, but when we come back we should be playing at Ray's Franks. We were going to stick around and play one last show on the 6th or 7th, with a band that was trying to get down from California. But that band didn't want the $100 guarantee, free beer and free hot dogs and awesome time...

HTR: The hot dogs are worth it themselves! I'm all about the Freddy Kreuger.
JD: I will say that Ray's Franks is one thing I will miss about Houston.
April: Can we add that to our favorite list?
JD: This'll be our Ray's Franks plug. When they first opened, we ate there like four days a week. I got fat during those few weeks.
April: We all did.

HTR: That'll be your Houston legacy: "GTRS - got fat at Ray's Franks."
Jonny: We'll have to change our name to G-U-T-S... My favorite thing about that place is that they are living proof that you can follow your dreams.
JD: I don't know if it'll make the cut, but I just want to say that Aaron Danger is one of the coolest f*cking kids in this city, if not THE coolest. He cares about people and music, and furthering them and helping them. He's one of the few left, genuine kids in the scene that actually care about it all.

HTR: So you have the split coming out, you have White Night White Night - is that LP only?
Jonny: It's 100 LPs, which are almost all sold out. We have CD-Rs left. We'll probably repress later, but once we're in the mountains, it's gonna be all about that second record.

HTR: That's pretty much all I have left, is there anything you want to throw in before we stop?
April: Prank calls...

HTR: Do you have a long-running one?
Jonny: Um, ask us what we like to do on tour, when we're wasted.

HTR: What do you like to do when you're on tour and wasted?
GTRS: Prank calls.

HTR: Oh, and what's the drink of choice for GTRS?
JD: [laughs] I don't want to say it! I'll put it this way, there was a review of us that compared us to the Miller Lite of bands.
April: Some people love it, some people are ok with it, but everybody will drink it.
Jonny: We haven't been drinking it lately, though.
JD: I'll have to say Brooklyn Lager.
April: Or Tito's...
Jonny: When we get paid in it... We prank called this guy Ryan, and we called him about 30 times that night, and he changed his phone number. I really wish we had recorded those. We're married, we're not gonna go out and do drugs with single people, we're gonna get drunk and make prank calls. One of the best calls was [JD] calling the Ripcord. He basically told them that he had been there earlier, and he left an orange butt-plug by the tables. "By the tables over on the left, it has a Clone Wars sticker on it."
JD: And the guy on the phone literally goes, "Anybody see a butt-plug over by the table?" Without even a hesitation, like [he] gets that call 40 times a day.
April: Should we, uh, the picnic table number?
Jonny: So we found this thing online, that's amazing, in that you can call somebody, and you enter in a number on this website...
April: It calls you, and then you pick up and it connects you.
JD: You put in who you're calling, your phone number, and whose phone number you want it to look like your calling from...
Jonny: So there's this guy, we found his phone number at a rest stop right after we crossed into Oklahoma. And he has like, "I suck dick, this is my number, call me." So we call people from this guy's number a lot.
JD: Give the number, let anyone call it. 206.984.8138
Jonny: He won't answer, but it sounds like he's someone's gimp in a f*cking closet.

JD calls the number and it goes to voicemail. We listen to a dirty voicemail requesting really raunchy messages.

JD: You can call, he won't answer because he wants you to leave him a message... It's kinda amazing, and we've kinda left him everyone in the Houston scene's phone number... So I guess that's all we do, is play music and prank call people.