May Birthdays 
Hi friends, I wanna share with you an interview that I did with Ted, the Satan's Pilgrims drummer. I almost can assure that they are one of the best and most influential bands of surf music.
You can read the spanish version in my website Música Inclasificable but here's the english version:
How did you discover surf music?
I think all of us grew up as Beach Boys fans to a certain degree, starting at young ages. I think they were my favorite band starting when I was about 6. Other than that, some of our parents had Ventures and Fabulous (Tacoma) Wailers records and oldies radio had exposed us to classics like "Wipeout" by the Surfaris and "Pipeline" by the Chantays. Sometime in the late 80s or very early 90s, we all saw The Phantom Surfers, The Untamed Youth and Jackie & the Cedrics when they came to town. Seeing these bands really inspired us to get the right equipment (very important) and try our hand at it.
Can you tell me about the house parties hosted by the members of the band in the early 90’s? What does it consist?
We formed by accident. We were all housemates in a big band house in SE Portland. We were all playing in an assortment of other bands that ranged in styles from soul to hardcore influenced pop punk to grunge y folk punk. Around 1991, we all started getting together on Sunday afternoons to fool around with surf and other related 60s style music for fun. We were intrigued by reverb and the vintage equipment used, and already had some of these amps. We were listening to a lot of Ventures, who were from the NW and exploring the more obscure surf stuff. On New Year's Eve, 1992, we hosted a party at our house, where we played for the first time for our friends. I'm not sure we even had our name yet. We played a few more parties until eventually, we were playing in clubs around town and things took off from there.
One of the main characteristics of the Satan’s Pilgrims is that you have 3 guitarist and there’s no many surf bands in the world like that, why did you decide this?
We never consciously decided this. There were 3 of us in the house who played guitar and it seemed to work right away. Of course, The Astronauts, who were a very well-known surf band had three guitars, but I also had a copy of Bob Dalley’s Surfin’ Guitars book, and as we read more and more about the early, somewhat obscure bands, we noticed that more than a few of them also had three guitars.
Which the main difficulty of have 3 guitar players in a surf band?
I can’t really think of any difficulty other than fitting 4 Showman cabinets (including one for bass) into a vehicle to do a gig! Based on our musical personalities, it has just always worked, and I feel like all three of them are good at coming up with parts that are all interesting and go toward making the song as good as it can be, instead of worrying about who is the most prominent. Everybody has their own times to shine, based on the song and doesn’t mind pulling back when someone else is out front.
In what consists or how did you describe the pilgrim sound?
People have often told us that they can always tell that it is us when they hear us in a mix or on a radio show, which we take as a high compliment. We are what we are. I would say what makes us stand out is a little 60s garage influence, so maybe garage surf is a good description? Or maybe just the Pilgrim sound? We like to fool around with all of the sub genres of surf. I should also mention that as far as the original California “birth of surf” sounds that influenced us, that we were more in line with the South Bay bands than the Orange County sound, but also equally influenced by non-California bands that sprang up all over the country like The Trashmen, Astronauts, The Ventures, of course, who were from the NW, and the countless lesser known bands like The Toads from NJ, for instance.
Probably one of the most famous covers in surf music is your version of the Godfather’s main theme, did you remember how born the idea of make that version?
All I remember is Scott playing the main melody over and over in his bedroom until we got out the record and figured out all of the parts we wanted to use, put it together and added our own touches, like Dave’s guitar at the beginning, he added that in.
If you can record the main title of any movie, which song will choose?
Chariot of the Gods music by Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra. The entire soundtrack.
What’s your inspiration to put the titles to your instrumental songs?
It ranges. It can be difficult to think of a good title for an instrumental song. Sometimes it’s based on the feel of the song, a lot of them are also kind of inside jokes things that happen to us.
How was the surf scene in the 90’s in the United States? What’s your best memories of that era?
The MUSIC scene in the 90s was fantastic. Alternative (indie, grunge, underground, punk, college radio, whatever you want to call it) music in general was getting a lot of notice and it seems like there were more people aged 18-40 who were going out and seeing all kinds of live music and buying records. I can’t really say what the “surf scene” was like back then, because we only visited it now and then. We did a tour with The Bomboras and a few other shows here and there with surf bands, but we actually played and toured more with garage influenced bands that had vocals and other types of bands where surf fit into the bill. The result of that was we have lots of fans all over the world that may not follow other surf bands or any kind of surf scene, and we are proud of that. I think that now in the 2010s the surf scene has insulated itself too much, and the bands all want to play with other surf bands all of the time. It doesn’t expand the audience at all, it mostly reaches the same people over and over, without attracting people who don’t listen to surf all of the time.
BUT, I have to say that since the 90s ended, we have been very appreciative of what has become the present “surf scene”. Thanks to the SG101 website, social media, and North Sea Surf radio, and festivals like the SG101 Festival and The Surfer Joe Festival, we feel more included in what is now a scene that really didn’t exist in the 90s and love all of the surf aficionados who still like us or have found out about us since the 90s thanks to these outlets. I guess the Cowabunga forum existed in the 90s, but we were blissfully unaware of it, and from what I’ve seen, that was probably for the best.
My favorite memories of the 90s include touring around the US, playing festivals like “Garage Shock”, playing big shows at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland with our heroes The Ventures, Link Wray, and The Fabulous Wailers, and meeting so many great other bands and fans, many of whom, we are still friends with to this day.
In my personal case, I think Psychsploitation’s is one of the best albums in the history of surf music and I love all the psychedelic sound. Can you tell me about the process of create that album? Cause definitely sounds different to all you recorded before.
Thank you very much, it was a lot of fundoing that record. The process was called “luck” ha ha! I say that because Scott shared a practice space with Eric Hedford, who recorded and helped produce the album, so there was recording equipment at our disposal at any time and we didn’t have to pay him much. If that hadn’t been the situation, it would have costus a lot more money to accomplish that album. As you may know, I no longer live in Portland, I live 2,000 miles away in Tennessee. So, we had to share ideas via email and write and practice the songs without being together, so the internet had a hand in doing that. But all of these things allowed us to work on the album over a longer period of time, whereas, all of the albums from the 90s, we practiced the songs, went in and recorded the mover a fewdays and boom, it was done.
Since 2009 you haven’t released a new album, did you have plans to record a new album soon?
YES. We are writing songs right now. Hopefully the new record will be done in the next year or so.
Last year the band release a compilationto celebrate more than two decades of Satan’s Pilgrims, in all this time what was the more complicate to keep with live the band?
Probably me living so far away. We have to plan a lot in advance to play live and then I usually arrive in time to practice two or three times before we are playing in front of an audience. But in many ways, I think this situation has prolonged our years together and made us appreciate the band more and try to make the most of it when we can.
There’s rumors about a possible Mexican tour of the band, did you think that will be possible? Cause you have many fans in Mexico and I’m sure they would love to see you live here.
We are in negotiations to try and come to Mexico! The hardest part is coordinating the time to be able to do so, but we really want to see it happen!
Finally, any message for all your mexican fans?
On Facebook, we have more fans in Mexico than any other country, including the US! We love all of our fans in Mexico and thank you for remembering us all of this time. I wish we had been able to come in the 90s. Viva Mexico!
—Música Inclasificable
Music journalist
http://musicainclasificable.blogspot.mx
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