You Me & Us

Ignacio Caniza: Carlee and I started this band about a year ago, a little bit over, and a couple months later we went on a U.S. tour. When we got back, our original…I was originally playing bass, she was playing guitar, and then the drummer at the time said ‘I have to continue school, I can’t do this anymore,’ so then we called Joseph, and he lives in Louisville, Kentucky.
Carlee Hendrix: We met him on tour.
Ignacio: We met him on our first tour, and I said, ‘Hey, come—‘
Joseph Goode: I was living in Chicago, they were on tour—
Ignacio: —I said, ‘Come living in California and play in our band.’ And that’s how it happened.
Joseph: Like three weeks later, I packed up everything into my little Dodge Grand Caravan, took out all the seats, brought all my equipment—
Ignacio: They have to type all this shit!!
DJ: Thanks for looking out for me.
Joseph: Hi, I’m Joseph.
Ignacio: So, this is Joseph, I’m Ignacio, this is Carlee.
Carlee: Yeah!
DJ: …So, Joseph moved to California, and then you started playing the same songs you had before—
Ignacio: Yeah, yeah. I moved over to drums, because that’s actually my first instrument, and I had played bass, so I taught him all the bass parts.
Carlee: We worked a lot of new songs into our set for this tour, too.
Joseph: I think that this set has half new songs, half old songs…
DJ: How do you write new songs? Is it really collaborative, or does one person write them?
Ignacio: Carlee usually sort of has…She’s a beast, she just writes things all the time. Little parts here and there, lyrics. She usually comes to us with a guitar part in a very basic form, sometimes in a whole different sort of…she starts at a very basic level, almost…We always make a joke that all of our songs start out as surf songs, and then they progress into garage-y or just…
Carlee: Yeah, they kind of add their own…
Ignacio: So, she usually starts it, and if there’s any like, structure-tweaks and stuff, it’s usually me or Joseph or…yeah.
Joseph: It’s all collaborative, really, after Carlee writes it. From that point on, it’s collaborative.

Ignacio: Socks.
Joseph: Dental hygiene…stuff.
Ignacio: Carlee? Serious answer so we don’t look dumb.
Carlee: An extensive amount of music equipment. It’s ridiculous how much music equipment we have for three people.
Joseph: And no one’s with us on tour, so…
Ignacio: We choose the biggest. I have the biggest bass drum, the biggest snare…
Carlee: Yesterday, we had the weekend off, so we played at this coffee shop. Our friend was doing this barista competition and we just wanted free coffee, so we were totally those guys bringing a 610 bass cabinet into a coffee shop, and they were just like, ‘Oh gosh, what are they gonna do?’
Joseph: We laid it down though. We were all really wired. We were all incredibly wired.
DJ: Yeah.
Joseph: Really wired.
Carlee: I didn’t crash from the caffeine until like 8 this morning. Anyways…
Ignacio: We got caffeine wasted.
Joseph: Schwasted…
DJ: But your set was OK?
Ignacio: Yeah! It was like a lounge-y feel, like, it was smooth, and then we realized, ‘Dang, we play really intense at shows. We should find that like…medium point where it’s good energy, but still focused. I feel like we represented that today while doing this.

Ignacio: Oh, let me tell you about that!
Joseph: First time I ever shot a gun. First time me or Carlee ever shot guns.
Carlee: Yeah!
Ignacio: I’m an Eagle Scout. I’ve shot guns.
Joseph: This guy…
Ignacio: I said that in a braggish way. I never shot crap. Guns…We shot a .22 revolver, a .22 semi-automatic, a .9, like sort of Glock-ish kind of, and I personally shot two .40s, one of which was a 1917 World War—
Joseph: No no no!
Ignacio: You didn’t get to shoot it! I shot it! Wade, the guy that took us, he pulled me aside and said, ‘Look, son. I’ve got this gun here. It’s been passed down…’ I was like, ‘Crap.’ He said, ‘Now, this is a .40…’ And the .9 millimeter was intense on the recoil, so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll try it out.’
Joseph: We also shot a 12-gauge shotty. That was…the bullets were bird bullets or whatever, so it wasn’t super intense…
Ignacio: It was pretty intense.
Joseph:…It wasn’t super hard.
Ignacio: It was hard.
DJ: I’m guessing you don’t do a lot of shooting in California?
Ignacio: No. None.
Joseph: BB gun.
Ignacio: I want a gun now, though. I want one real bad.
Joseph: We were in Oklahoma City, and we got…My shoes tore because we were playing dodgeball, so this kid gave us…he gave me this pair of shoes, and—
Ignacio: He gave us two BB guns. Awesome BB guns. One’s a seven-pump, one’s a Red Ryder single-pump. Classic.
Joseph: One of them’s this gnarly one, seven pumps. It’s got a scope on it.
Ignacio: It’s got a scope. Real life.
DJ: So, you guys are travelling armed around the country?
Ignacio: Joseph bought a knife on the way to California, and we’re like, ‘That’s cool.’
Joseph: Buck 110. Des Moines, Iowa.
DJ: I have a knife just like that.
Joseph: It’s a good knife.
DJ: It’s a great knife, yeah.
Ignacio: So, we started getting into knives, and then we got BB guns, now we’re into guns…
Carlee: Who knows what we’ll be doing by the end of tour!
Ignacio: Maybe a bazooka. In three weeks of tour, we have progressed…
DJ: You guys keep moving up in technology.
Joseph: We had knives for a while, but we went from BB guns to real guns in like two days, so…