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The Band that Plays Together Stays Together
by Steve Baltin

"We�ve never actually done a three-way interview like this before, where we�re interviewed individually," saysCampbell2000, the guitarist for Hovercraft. "It seems like an interesting idea." Campbell2000, whose real name is Ryan, is the first of three successive phone interviews I am conducting with the members of Hovercraft. He is to be followed immediately by bassist Sadie7 (a.k.a. Beth) and then drummer Dash11 (real name Ric).

It is a technique not unlike that employed by detectives interrogating multiple suspects in a crime. The thinking being that this way you don�t give the suspects time to corroborate their stories. Not that the trio needs to worry about having time to make sure their answers are in sync (in fact, Ryan quips as we�re getting off the phone, "I was joking that I was going to call her [Beth] up and tell her to contradict everything that I said").

For one thing, Hovercraft doesn�t worry too much about their press and presenting an "image." Rarely will you find musicians signed to a record label, big or small, who are less pretentious. Ric answers the phone with music (the new Quasi record) blaring, Beth nonchalantly calls and when I tell her I�m running a few minutes late, instead of taking on attitude about being kept waiting, she offers to call back. But more than not being concerned about image, the three members of Hovercraft think so much alike that it sometimes seems as if they are communicating with each other telepathically. "Our brains sometimes think alike or we can finish each other�s sentences, things like that, because we�ve learned together so much and we�ve experienced so much traveling and playing music," says Beth.

For Beth and Ryan in particular the bond is unusually strong. He says it�s like a brother and sister thing, while she calls him her best friend. The two of them have formed a unique link that emanates from having played only with each other in their musical journeys. "Beth and I are very much a unit musically. We always have been. We started together and it was the first time for both of us," says Ryan. Beth backs that up by saying, "We met and started playing together, so it�s kind of been a musical relationship that brought us together and a friendship blossomed out of that."

While the friendship was born of music, it has, according to both of them, grown into something that transcends being in a band together. "We have just been playing for so long and known each other for so long it kind of goes beyond playing music together. Our lives are intertwined on all different levels," says Beth. "He�s probably my closest friend.We just have a pretty deep-rooted friendship."

According to one article on the band, Ryan and Beth formed Hovercraft as a direct response to the Seattle grunge movement of the early �90s. While that is just one report, it does help explain the singular way of learning music that Beth describes. "A lot of the way we learned to play music was together, so we have our own approach to it. It didn�t necessarily come from joining a band and learning the songs or learning cover songs; we had a different evolution than a lot of people have when they learn to play music."

Because Beth and Ryan started playing as a duo, worrying only about experimenting with making the sounds they wanted, and not any particular song structure, they weren�t immediately concerned about finding a drummer. As a result, the two didn�t have the best luck finding someone who fit in with their approach to music. "The drumming came after we had come up with how we wanted to play music," says Beth. "I think it�s harder when someone comes into that without being there at the inception."

After going through nine or 10 drummers, quite a few in just a couple of years, the pair finally came together with Ric, who, according to all parties, just fit right in with their dynamic. "We sat down and played [with Ric] and it was working, so we just stuck with it," says Beth. It helped that the three of them already knew each other, having been friends for almost a year before they began playing together. Even with the friendship, the union among the three was not automatic. As Beth says, "The only way we�ve ever found people is just playing with them. You can�t really tell until you sit down and play; there�s nothing you can really talk about, it�s just the way people approach their instruments."

For Ric, the prospect of entering into this well-established partnership was a little daunting. However, he says that they made it easy for him at the outset. "I was just glad that when I started playing with them they were definitely encouraging to me, from the very get-go." Also making the transition easier was that it occured quickly. "It just kind of happened one night that we were talking, their drummer was gone, so they just asked if I�d come in and play," recalls Ric. "And it just worked out. A week and a half later we went into the studio and recorded Experiment Below. It all occured really quickly."

The band�s instrumental, experimental sound, which lies somewhere between the space-rock of early Pink Floyd and psychedelia and guitar-heavy indie acts like My Bloody Valentine, is often perceived as cerebral. However, it is driven by a passion that both Beth and Ryan see as primitive, and includes such mainstream influences, albeit subconsciously, as the Doors and Primus, offering the perfect vehicle for Ric, who comes to the band with his own experimental background.

"I really have full control of what I�m doing," Ric says. "Nobody ever says, �Oh, don�t do that,� or �Do this.� I�m completely free in whatever I do with them and they�re totally encouraging that way." Ric has used that freedom to make his presence felt in Hovercraft�s music. "The dynamic has been changing since I�ve been in it. I�ve justpushed it a little farther and that�s what I think they liked about it," he says. "I�ve tried to take it a little faster, a little louder and make it a little more extreme, just to kind of speed up tempos and make each other work a little harder."

Nobody is sure how that new direction will manifest itself in the trio�s future work (though no one is as curious as they are). Right now, the group is preparing to record the follow-up to 1998�s critically lauded Experiment Below. They�ve spent much of the year touring, split between the States and Europe, and have only recently begun to consider Hovercraft�s latest flights of musical fancy and fantasy.

"We don�t have any real plans as far as a direction. It�s always been when we have gone into making music it�s been left open," says Ryan. "There�s no rules or boundaries and I�d like to think that we�re not bound stylistically in any certain way or genre that we have to live up to. We�re not really sure what�s going to happen as far as what direction we�re going to go in. And that�s just as exciting to us as to the people that buy the records or come to our shows."