by Ida Griesemer
On Saturday, April 3rd, I went up to my (and a lot of LL's) alma mater, Sarah Lawrence, for a Fluffy Lumbers show. The plan was also to interview Luka Usmiani, bassist in the band and guy behind No Demons Here. It was a warm evening, we sat on the steps behind Marshall Fields, talked about fireworks and bad album names. We also talked about the following. The interview will appear in 2 parts.
View: Part 2
LL: How long has Fluffy Lumbers been playing together?
LU: I guess since last summer. At the beginning of the summer Sam asked me to play, because we were going to Miami. So those were our first shows. He didn't want to go alone, so he wanted to get a band together.
LL: So Sam was already calling himself Fluffy Lumbers, and he had something booked in Miami?
LU: Well, he had been doing Fluffy Lumbers for maybe a year and a half at that point, and it'd just been solo stuff that he did on keyboards. Then he released a 7” on Weird Hug Records, which is based in Miami and Chicago. They had a festival in Miami and they invited him to play.
LL: What made him decide to bring a band?
LU: I think he didn't want to drive alone. And I guess he wanted to try out the whole band sound. I guess that's the ideal set up for him.
LL: How did you meet each other?
LU: The summer prior to being in the band, we just had a lot of mutual friends, so we just started hanging out. And then we became internet friends through the year - he went to school in Boston, now he transferred here - but we would just talk all the time. We had a lot of interests in common, so he asked me to play bass.
LL: So this was just last year?
LU: Yeah, I finished my freshman year, and then I met him over the summer. Well, I knew who he was, I saw him maybe once or twice, but people always said that we were very similar, so it was weird to finally start hanging out with him. Because I still don't see it.
LL: You'd seen him play before?
LU: No, I mean I have seen him play in other bands he was in, like some pop/punk band he was in, and this band Frat Dad, I saw that. I knew who he was. And he liked a lot of the bands that were happening in Glen Rock.
LL: Can you talk about what Glen Rock is like?
LU: Yeah. It's a suburb in New Jersey near New York. I guess it's an average suburb. It's mostly upper middle class to upper class it's cool, I mean, when I moved there when I was in fourth grade it felt like a t.v. show, almost. I almost felt like I was in "Happy Days." The architecture of the schools was still in the 1940's. So it was very weird to come from - I had lived in another town over the George Washington bridge called Fort Lee. The school there was very 70's and 80's looking, so it was weird to go back in time like that. And just the general demographics of my home town changed, so I felt like I was going into this weird, fabled, New England American dream type thing. I hadn't really come into contact with that, other than t.v.
LL: When did you start playing music?
LU: I had taken piano since I was five till I was fourteen or fifteen. And then in between that I learned how to play guitar. But I didn't really start writing music till my sophomore year.
LL: Did you play in bands in high school at all?
LU: No. I played in one band briefly when I was in eighth grade. But I hurt my hand and they said they didn't want me to play anymore. I hurt my hand in volleyball in gym, and I said "I can't play today," and they said, "Well, if you can't play today, you can't play at all." They were trying to be serious about it.
LL: So you mainly just played on your own, took lessons…
LU: Yeah, I took lessons on my own in the beginning high school. Then I just faded out of doing music really until my freshman year of college. I was bored in my room so I just started playing again.
LL: What made you get back into it?
LU: I guess talking with Sam really helped. My friend Liam was doing four track recordings through high school and that was inspiring to me.
LL: Liam went to Glen Rock High?
LU: Yeah. And having the band Titus Andronicus loom over us in our town was like, "I wanna do this, I wish I could do this." And then by sophomore year, I would talk to Sam, and I guess he egged me on to try recording, and I recorded, and got better at it, and bought more equipment, and kept doing it.
LL: Did you go to shows locally when you were in high school?
LU: Yeah, I went to a couple local shows towards the end. I didn't really come into my group of friends until senior year of high school, so they know more about it. I hear stories about them. Pat from Titus Andronicus would have these concerts called Pat Stock, which was a response to Glen Stock, which our high school had to support yearbooks or whatever. So his band Seizing Elian would play, which was his band prior to the band that was prior to Titus Andronicus. The whole Glen Rock / Ridgewood music scene, quote unquote, like the guys from Real Estate and Titus Andronicus– I guess that all happened and went. So when they graduated high school they were doing their own things. So it almost segregated again. Cause there was a lot of shi- I don't know. Whatever the Ridgewood kids my age were doing at this point, was really not happening in conjunction with the Glen Rock kids. It was just that we weren't really hanging out with the guys in Ridgewood, in terms of music. And at that point in Glen Rock it was some punk bands that had their own scene that was kind of aside from us, and then my friend Liam was in a band called VCR with this guy Sarim who is in Liquor Store now. There was a metal band too, Cranial Damage. Not that it fell apart, but the towns were more separate communities then.
LL: So there was a period of time when the towns were more connected?
LU: I guess. I don't know, I was too young. I was a freshman in high school and I didn't really hang out with those kids. It was happening more when they were in high school, really in high school, and I was in eighth grade. And then freshman year they were all seniors, so they were finishing that up.
LL: But it felt like there was a crossover? People from Glen Rock would go to those shows?
LU: Definitely. There were house shows that people would put on, and it would be before kids had drivers' licenses. They would walk to the next town, which is kind of a hike, to get to the houses. That was a scene that I spectated, cause I wasn't really part of that group of friends yet. And it - I guess not fell apart, everyone just went to college and did their own thing.
View: Part 2
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