My first exposure to Prints of Apple Island was hearing to their soon to be relased e.p. "Robot Walking", and I was totally blown away. In the review I mention a bizarre and rambling (possibly drug inspired) letter enclosed with the CD. You never got to read that letter, but perhaps this interview might give you an idea of what it was like.

Tmilan Anderson (Drums) and Joshua Allen (Keyboards, Vocals) recently went through some lineup changes, and the band now includes Theo Weasel (Bass and part-time ninja) Eric Norris (Bagpipes & Spoons) and Robert Stewart (MC/Creative Truck Driver). Prints of Apple Island crank out awesome keyboard driven indie rock with great lyrics.

SCS: How and when did POAI form as a band?

Joshua: Excellent question, my friend. Well, our story begins on a dismal back alley. Tmilan walks slowly and silently down the alley smoking a cigarette, his black trench coat waving backward. He tips his hat at the passing window and on any other day he’d tip the homeless man in the box. This day, I was the one in that box. We struck up a conversation about our mutual interests in bacon and formed a rock n’ roll band. It was 1942.

Tim: I was writing with a Waterman ink-welled pen in a jail cell in Ann Arbor Michigan. The ink spilled all over my jump suit. I had a premonition like snoop dog in the murda was the case that they gave me video. No more indo, gin an’ juice and two months later I’m on my way out the prison. With one hundred and sixty four dollars and some odd cents in my trousers I purchased an idea from a man sitting crosslegged against the brick wall of the prison complex. Two knees ripped right out of the jeans. He flipped his cigarette, said "Yip yip, I’ll give you an idea."

Robert: It was in a wicked winter when our beards were lush and full that we happened upon the ‘parlay’ that led to our banding together. Our bellies were full and hard. We had a passel of fortunate vessels to pass around. Yes, what lolly times they were. Onward to the summit.

Theo: Prints of Apple Island first formed as a band in the Autumn of ought-two, when TMilan started hitting drums with sticks. He and Josh and Robert threw stuff around Seward awhile under the name Jackie-O. Ryosuke, a Japanese national started playing bass and I strummed an acoustic guitar with them for a month or so at the end of that school year before graduating, and before Ryosuke ended up in Gitmo. We played one house party and that was about it for Jackie-O. Subsequent name-changes (The Glass Family, The Quarrymen, Tom and the Tampons) and personnel changes (Johnmark, Tonya Harding, Stu Sutcliffe, myself, Eric) led eventually to today’s Prints of Apple Island.

SCS: I know you went through a recent lineup change, with your bass player leaving to have more time to pursue his girlfriend, but how have things been going since the departure of Jonmark, and the addition of Theo, Robert and Eric?

Joshua: Let me tell you a little story about Johnmark.

On one occasion, I believe it was the Schnitzel Sweaters tour of ’85, Johnmark and I were taking the red-eye to some unremarkable festival (Prawn Festival in Denmark, I believe) and a mighty wind shook our vessel like iced tea, causing an incredible turbulence and an ever growing pit in my stomach. I grabbed Johnmark’s arm with a look of sheer panic on my face as he calmly pulled his face mask over his mouth and then reached over to aid me in my disorder.

Johnmark always did stuff like that. Always thinking of himself first. He was greedy and selfish and it just wasn’t working anymore. So I tied him up. And Tmilan punched him a couple of times. And then I kicked him in the jaw.

But, oh yeah, those new guys in the band—they’re pretty good I guess.

Robert: The wiley wolf of our past will haunt us no more. As it has been.

Tim: I’d like to think there is no primary direction. I’d also like to think that all parts are interchangeable. And john mark didn’t just leave to peruse and pursue his girlfriend; he took up a few drugs and enjoyed them more than playing music. For a while, (and I don’t mean to use this as a platform to out him or anything, but) for a while, we tried to work with him as a means of utilizing his highs in order to fire some fat white lines of candy into the songs. It definitely “sped” them up a bit, if you know what I mean. And so that was that. We knew that sooner or later he would eventually retreat to his present state of sitting in his basement at a farmhouse near milford with militant neighbors in the vain of timothy mcveigh, holding a remote out from his body while slouched in a couch facing a bare white wall. So, we found Theo. A former Lutheran school teacher? Yes. A home brewer of stout beers? Yes. Tattooed? Yes. Yet, one thing remained lacking in this new find. Well, two things: the ability to grow facial hair and the coke addiction. To resolve the conflicts, we sent theo through some intensive facial reconstructive surgery that involved the timely positing of layers of hair attached by kindergarten gluestick stick. Whisp a hot comb dipped in oil through his hair. And WAZZZAMMME ultimate body makeover, bass player addition. Finally, we forced Theo to learn all of the druggish ruggish bomb bass “lines” by playing tracks to him in his sleep while hovering over him with our heads covered in pillow cases with smiley faces pasted upon, holding candles to drip upon his chest whilst in his rest he was beset to find the shadow of jm’s bass “lines” in his head. When he awoke several days later, his chest fully scarred and burned, an earthquake occurred: “The great earthquake of the Seward County Independent coverage area ’05”. Erupting from the arteries of Theo’s chest came the famed Robert-staff-writer-stewart, surely from the grave, with book and mic in hand. After licking himself clean, Robert removed the formerly-bridley-white-now- red top hat and out jumped two rabbits and Eric Norris. One rabbit pissed. One rabbit tossed the guitar.

Theo: I never saw Prints of Apple Island with Johnmark, as I was serving time, and my point of view is probably a bit biased as to how my bass playing affects the band, so I will exclude myself from any speculation on that matter.

SCS: If someone asked you "what does your band sound like?" how would you answer?

Joshua: Like a mouthful of fist-juice with an oddly satisfying papaya aftertaste.

Robert: I would say we sound like what the Beatles would have sounded like— if they had Jesus on the tambourine.

Theo: One of the more frustrating things about playing in a band (unless your name is the S-Dog and you play in a sixties’ cover band) is that people will invariably ask you, “So what do you guys sound like?”, or even worse, “So who (sic) do you guys sound like?” Personally, I don’t think we sound anything like John Vanderslice or They Might Be Giants, but am certainly not offended by the comparison. I think the closest comparison I have been able to reach is a cross between Rammstein and Jim Croce. But if people really want to know what we sound like, they should come to a show.

Tim: And then someone asked “how” I would answer one seeking a description of the noise that occurred. Of course, I would pick up a piece of straw from the nearby bales of straw, break it up into little pieces, tuck those little pieces between my lower lip and my lower layer of teeth, pick another piece of straw from the pile and place that between my top and bottom layers of teeth, only to be chewed over the period of several hours. Then I’d cross my legs after sitting down and tip my cap upward to look at and answer the one who asked me.

SCS: Describe a POAI show, what can folks expect when they come see you.

Joshua: It’s funny you ask, because we’re tyring to decide on that anyway, so we can put it on the release forms. Yeah, too many people have been coming to our concerts and have left with their actual faces rocked off. We’re kind of worried about lawsuits.

Tim: When an earthquake of this magnitude occurs again, one can expect to see much of this such. But, expect what you want to expect. But be prepared to cut a check, cut a rug, chug a jug glugg glugg glugggg. Oh, and, usually, mass orgies. In a pool. In a pool of hot, yellow, rabbit urine. Hot hot hot.

Robert: A full body massage, primarily focused on the mind. The sort of medicating music that rubs on your reason until you’ve succumbed to a roaring dance fever. The left back-hand of Arthur Ashe. The collapse of Cape Cod. A knock-down, drag-out struggle for the very quickening heart of the night. A lot of falling down. The occasional disgraced television star. Out of season ornaments. The unrivaled relaxing effects of seeing metal girders just where you expected to see them. An invisible waterfall. A torrent of broken phrases. Clapping. A fear of heights. A metropolis of perfect architecture. The streets we walk are of our own devising. The maps that we make are written in code. A gentle rain of secret decoder rings.

Theo: You never know what’s going to happen at a Prints of Apple Island Show. We never know what’s going to happen. Josh’s sister gave birth in Duggan’s a couple of weeks ago during a Prints of Apple Island show. We have a general idea a day or so before of what the concept is going to be, but it usually doesn’t begin to materialize until a few hours before, and relies heavily upon whatever Etcetera (our local Mennonite thrift shop) happens to have in their basement. But if you come to a Prints of Apple Island show there are a couple of things you can count on: 1) you will dance or be danced upon, 2) plastic animals will materialize (and often de-materialize), and, 3) you will very probably have your face rocked off.

SCS:What types of music and which musicians/groups influenced the band members?

Joshua: This is always a tough one. Do I cite my great dislike/beef with Rob Thomas? Or do I take the easy route and list my early DC Talk/The Pagemaster Original Motion Picture Soundtrack influences?

Tim: Then you’ll be under the influence, like Buddy Holly, like Matisse, like James Dean, like Marx, like Smith, like Stalin, like Churchill, like Big Boi and Dre three triple o ohhh!

Theo: I guess it’s easier to list some musical influences rather than enter an impossible description of our sound. I can’t speak for everyone in the band, but I know that TMilan is really into traditional Basque dirges, and Josh gets a lot of influences from Nabisco jingles and Ben Gibbard. I don’t think Eric really likes music much.

Robert: People we know. And people we don’t. Dead people. Living people. The undead, oh yes! The lilt of pan flutes and the thrum of a hummingbird’s tongue. We’re picking clean the bones of influence’s (influenza?) skeleton.

SCS: I know you're both in school now, but what are your goals for this band, touring, just playing around town

Joshua: We love playing around town. Lincoln’s a pretty great place with great people, but we’re also looking to sign not one, but fifty major label contracts before the end of the month. Beatrice Arthur from the Golden Girls is slated to do guest vocals on the new album.

Tim: Then the silliness takes over and you’re ready to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. Takeover the world and spread socialist propaganda through faultily contrived semblances of noise that some would call music.

SCS: What experience did you have in bands before POAI got together?

Joshua: To be honest, I don’t remember most of my earlier life. I grew up in a large human-sized hamster cage with a bottle and some food-pellets as my only companions. And an equally human-sized hamster wheel.

Robert: Jackie O. Long may her flag wave. Harking and barking to what has come before. Full circle on a pill box hat. The ships have sailed. But they have yet to be photographed.

Theo: Myself, I didn’t own a radio until I started high school, so my earliest musical memories consist of my grandpa’s accordion, and the times my brothers and I would wear capes and play air guitar on couch cushions to my dad’s old Beach Boys records. I suppose I would consider that my first band. We even made surfboards out of cardboard. My days of musical innocence ended fairly quickly when I got friends, and then when my friends and I started a band. The only real band I played in was called Backseat Driver with a couple of my friends from high school. I guess I also played in the short-lived “Jimmy K and the Canby Ferries,” but aside from a few tractor pulls we never really played many places. Backseat Driver played around the Portland area for about 3 years before I came home one day to find the other members moving their gear out of my basement and saying, “We’ll call you when we’re going to practice next.” We were a two-bass band, and me in my youthful idealism thought such a guitar-free arrangement would be attainable in this life – ah, those precious pre-911 days. Anyway, I believe it was the year 2000 when Backseat Driver drove me out into the country and threw rocks until I slunk away, and I became a callous, embittered bassist – entertaining only myself with 4-track musings until I learned to love and to trust again with Prints of Apple Island.

SCS: Where did the band's name come from?

Joshua: We stole it from a single-mother barely making enough to get by. I regret that action to this day.

Tim: it must be noted that the earthquake, the earthquake that marked the beginning of the assemblage that is prints of apple island, serves as a primary cause in the Aristotelian/Aquinas sense of the phrase. And I don’t know if you know of the ramifications of that earthquake upon the sounds which are created. Each new craft of song or noise or dance or play on words or play on stage or play with a tennis ball like a five week old puppy teething within the confines of a socialist commune for a period of ten weeks till his teeth have fully grown in is drawn from the earthquake. There is no individual to blame for the earthquake. Can’t blame God. God didn’t create sin. Can’t blame justice. Justice didn’t create sin. Maybe john Roberts? Of course, there’s an argument there. And just as no real blame can be placed upon a predator for the cause of the earthquake, so too can no attributive glory be given to what has come after the fact

Theo: I have no idea where the name Prints of Apple Island came from. Josh is kind of a literary snob, so I think he just made it up and tells people it came from some poem. I guess it kind of goes with the surreal lyrics of many of our songs. Josh comes up with a lot of those from his nightmares. He’ll wake up screaming, and then TMilan will put on a pot of tea and we’ll all sit around analyzing Josh’s dreams. That's where most of the songs come from too.

Robert: Lead singer, Josh “I make my living with my mouth” Miller, is deposed royalty from Chekov’s Russia. Forced into a life of drifting and grifting, dreaming of the luxury that once was. His cheeks get rosy in the cold.

SCS: How have you grown, musically and creatively, since the band first started?

Joshua: We’ve grown so much even since the Robots Walking EP. It’s like we’ve been injected with liquid dance and pop hook vitamins. Or maybe that was just me. Which would explain the extra eye I also grew in the back of my head. I don’t think it really adds to the music though. Just lets in more light.

Tim: Even the other mortals among us know this. Once a pawn has been moved ahead it cannot go back. Regardless of the year, the probability of that year’s providing a summer solstice of the sun can never be measured in terms of time and space. Probability does not mean potential. Thus, a weather forecast speculating on the change of rain, presenting a statistic such as 86 per cent is flawed, not the number, but the notion of potential existing within the speculative confines of probability

Robert: Leaps and bounds. Walls and crawls. A little bit of each & never none of neither one. Causing a palm tree to grow to maturity on stage in the course of show, attempts have been made in the past. They have failed. The pursuit continues. Something about a homunculus who is also a monk.

SCS: How do you guys work out your songs, do you write separately or work on them together?

Joshua: Usually both. Tim generally hashes out beats in a small rest area on the south side of Milford while I prefer banging my head on the piano at the local thrift store until I hit a chord. Then I go from there. After I’ve downed about three bottles of aspirin, Tim and I work out the songs. Then Eric, Theo and I. Then all of us. Oh. Theo also wears a large chicken suit when we practice. Nobody’s really sure why.

Tim: it’s true that songs exist, complete with titles. But it also may be true that songs do not exist. What is a song? Would a song still be a song, beautiful and melodious if it was called another name. would a song cease to exist if there was no human creator of the song? What of the birds of the trees and the lilies of the fields? Is it not true that their waxing and waning itself creates such beauty and melody? And is it not also true that man is much more precious than are birds of the air and lilies of the fields? And we can deduce that melodies from human hands and hearts come from a source not of their selves, devices, contrivances, orgasms, or sweet, charitable utterances. Inspiration for writing does not come in the form of the known, but from the shadows of what is now presently before us. And from these shadows the sounds of surrealism and straightforwardism bleed through syringes stuck serendipitously slow straight still so such symphony sounds.

Robert: The two of us, and everyone else. Then the train jumps the tracks. Into a flower garden, recently attended to. And coming up. Smelling like roses. Amongst the wreckage.

Theo: Josh blows the conch, and that signals us to meet in our secret lab. Josh will have all of our parts written out on sheet music for us, Rob taps the baton, and we commence to being taught the new material.

SCS: It's hard for me to pick a favorite off the e.p., I like all the songs for different reasons, but as I pointed out in my review the band seems to kind of have two different sides both musically and lyrically, the songs with the more straight ahead lyrics are the ones that tend to be less poppy and sound like John Vanderslice. The ones that sound more poppy also tend to have more surreal lyrics. Did it just work out that way coincidentally, or is it intentional, did the same person write all those lyrics?

Joshua: All of the songs have some sort of story behind them. They’ve been written over such an expanse of time, that I guess you could say that they were all written by different people. It’s intentional as far as that’s what the song called for.

Tim: Of course, these sounds come round about and all become favorites, taking human selves and mending their existence wholly within the form of body and flesh, mind and physiology. Thus, once human, they become favored above the lilies the birds and those symphonies which lack their full capacity for manifestation. Those which lack in the temporal, regain their reality at times and at times fall through the bridge crossing styx. Such is the variety and the vagrancy of life.

Robert: The process presents itself as an extension of the strands of cotton dripping out of a worn mattress. We sleep until the seeds take root. Formations are caused by erosion. Landscapes are caused by formations. Open fields are where we deduce our stratagems and stage our skirmishes.

Cooking has many real world applications. It creates smells, which can be used to stimulate desire. It throws grease onto your arms, reminding you there is an animal in the back of your throat that can howl and caterwaul and fill an empty room. The most real world of all these applications however, is the implicit ritual of charring things on an open flame, spinning them on a spit, while you induce hearty appetites with an endless barrage of courteous screaming. You take that fire into your collective lungs & when you whisper, dragons come a’callin’. Following a recipe, pieced together from an auto parts catalogue.

SCS: Are you happy with how the Robots Walking CD turned out?

Theo: Hmm, the Robots Walking EP….Honestly, I like it, but I’m not entirely happy with the way it turned out. Mostly because I don’t play bass on it, but I think it is also a bit rough in spots. But people should still buy it. Lots of copies. They make great Arbor Day gifts.

SCS: Are you working on a new CD yet?

Theo: We’re not yet working on any new recordings at the moment, but the plans are certainly in the works. Now that Josh has told Eric and I what to play on their songs, we’re devoting all our energy into new material, so even the hardcore faithful can look forward to some surprises at upcoming Prints of Apple Island shows.

SCS: Do you have a favorite song or yours to play live?

Theo: I think my favorite song to play live has got to be Test Rabbit. Not only is that a really fun song to play on bass, but at our Bunny Introductory Show one of our stage rabbits exploded in a blue flash during that song.

Robert: Burning Down the Crystal Palace. The prisms projected onto the night sky made aurora borealis blush & perched prominently over the birth place of our lord and saviour.

SCS: What was your first show and how did it go?

Robert: How did it go? It went with a silent bang and an ear-splitting murmur. It went gentle into that good night. It went like a safecracker’s barbeque. It made more money than a grandmother’s nest egg, we used that money to buy some friends.

Theo: My first local show with Prints of Apple Island was for Once a Pawn’s CD release party, July 16 at the Chatterbox. I think it went very well. It was the first Prints show in over a month, since Josh had just been released from juvie, and Once a Pawn was great, as always, too. We themed our show “King of the Apple Towns and his Catfish Bride.” Considering I had learned only half the songs, and our only practice as a full band had been that afternoon, I think the show went swimmingly.

SCS: What was your most memorable performance and what made it that?

Theo: Probably my most memorable live performance was our last one, because it was the most recent, and therefore easiest to remember. It was at the Chatterbox on August 6 (I think). One of the reasons why it was so memorable was because the rabbit exploded, of course, and also because people who had never seen us or heard of us before stuck around and were dancing like regulars. That was magical. Plus TMilan finally played a show with his shirt off – not quite as magical as the dancing, but magical nonetheless.

SCS: Have you learned anything in your experiences in a band that you feel newer local bands could learn from, or made any mistakes they should avoid?

Theo: Advice for other bands….I really don’t feel that I’ve been in a band long enough to be giving advice, but I guess a band is a lot like a marriage – except with several people at once, and more sex.

Robert: Avoid the pitfalls. Learning really only takes hold if it is the result of your own mistakes. Headlong carousing, with an eye to the total obliteration of sun-baked bricks can only lead to morning sickness & developing the ability to hear your silverware humming. If the lamp is mocking you, impulse control is a good way to avoid making enemies. Lightbulbs taste pretty much as you would expect them to. The Fenbergian Two-Step is a useful tool for extricating yourself from dust-ups. Look them in the eye, yes. Make eye contact, no.

Tim: If there is one thing to be learned from this, though there are many and the many are the few, the few the many, it must be that resiliency fails at every turn of the screw. Corks will be popped and opened, spraying liquid victory through concert halls and cd shelves and in pages of print when they are ready to be popped off. One must look to contain the power retained within the bottle with the hope that it might, on its own accord, spew forth into the void. Thus, there must be a void for it to fill. We can not allow ourselves to pour new wine into old wine skins. Indeed, the old will burst under the pressure and cease to exist.

SCS: What do you like and dislike about the music scene in Lincoln?

Robert: I like that Lincoln is named after the Great Emancipator. & a car that is popular with organized crime bosses.

SCS: Do you think living in Lincoln influences your music in anyway?

Theo: I really love Nebraska. Especially Seward. And Lincoln is alright, too. I am a Nebraska double transplant. I grew up in a log cabin in the Oregon Coast Range, and never thought I would leave. After the Merchant Marine, I decided to try a landlocked state. So I live in Seward by choice, play in Lincoln by chance, and have a great deal of difficulty understanding why everyone who grew up in Nebraska is always talking about wanting to get out – especially when I consider the music scene in Lincoln. There are a lot of things I love about playing in Lincoln. I love the people who work at the Chatterbox and Knickerbocker’s. I also love the people who come to shows – they’re not afraid to dance and have a good time. Going to shows in Portland sometimes feels like a contest to see who can look the most bored. I also love the lack of pretentious bands here.

Every band we’ve played shows with (at least since I’ve been with Prints) have been enthusiastic and friendly and unassuming. Some of my favorite local musicians are Once a Pawn, Skandy and Klaus, and The Zyklon Bees (I know the ADL pressured them to change their name, but as part of my German heritage I will always remember them as the Zyklon Bees).

I also really love Lincoln’s lax liquor laws. We are very lucky that we live in a place where the under-21 crowd can see all our shows, and the over-21s can still get wasted without having to be fenced off in a separate section. The OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission) nearly killed off the Portland music scene in the late 1990s because of their Draconian restrictions on alcohol in clubs. At bars in Portland I used to have to wait backstage, or even outside, until it was our turn to play, and then leave directly afterwards, until I turned 21.

SCS: What was the first album/CD you bought?

Theo: I guess every interview has to end with a discussion of our music collections, so take this for what it’s worth. My first CD purchase was a Portland Trailblazer rap starring Jerome Kersey, Buck Williams and Rasheed Wallace called “1,2,3, Go Rip City”.

SCS: Whose music are you listening to right now?

Robert: Scandy & Klaus. Straight up. Those boys be bustin’ some of the rip-roarin’est hero makin’est old school, born again ghetto rhymes. Enough to make you wish you was born an albino. Also a band named after a year. And a band named after a game. Herb Albert & the Tijuana Brass, for titillating us throughout the years. That whipped cream has a purpose.

Theo: At the moment I’ve been listening to a lot of Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, and would recommend “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” wholeheartedly to anyone, if for no other reason than the album art. I would also recommend the new Skandy and Klaus EP “If You Ever Touch Me Again…”. Great stuff.

SCS: List off your top five albums of all time.

Theo: