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Marcellus: Yeah.
S: And just found out that she was a drummer?
Marcellus: Well, yeah. She was asking us if she could drum with us, and
we were kind of reluctant, and then we gave her a try and it turned out
great. But it's funny, I didn't pick her up - it wasn't legitimate because
she was so drunk that she didn't even know who I was or where she
was when she woke up. She didn't know where she was, and I told her
where she was, and she started calling me Richard.
S: Did you pick up Dave in a bar?
Marcellus: That didn't happen. He tried to pick me up.
S: Why did she leave?
Marcellus: Uhh....
Tony: She moved to Germany to start a T-shirt company. She quit the
band at that point, and when she didn't like what she did, she came
back to New York and we had already found another drummer.
M: How did the rest of you meet?
Tony: Me and Marce met at the same time that he picked up Jez in the
bar, and then we went through a few miscellaneous drummers and
guitar players.
Marcellus: Bill Berger recommended Alec to us.
Tony: He played on Raise the Plow. And a guy named Tom Green-
wood played on that, and they both did like one live show each. At that
point we were just in flux.
Marcellus: That's when we had tension.
S: So what was all this tension stemming from?
Marcellus: Uh, the flux
Tony:Yeah. Youthful angst.
Marcellus: You know how we met Dave? We were searching kind of
desperately for a drummer and we asked somebody at Matador - it was
Dan (Varenka) - he said, "My brother."
Tony: He has Walt Records. That was about two and a half years ago,
when Dave got into the band. Alec was about three years ago. We were
so incredibly lucky. When we were searching for new guitar players
before the second guitar player came into the band, we put an ad out
and we sifted through all these people. We put in the ad, "Influences:
Robert Johnson, the Fall, must not have looks." For Dave, we just had
Railroad Jerk Interview 45