Muen Magazine

July 8, 2010

THE STONE FOXES

Shannon Koehler (Drums)

San Francisco, California

Myspace.com/thestonefoxes

By: Shauna O’Donnell

MUEN: HEY SHANNON, THANKS FOR TALKING WITH ME.

Oh, you’re welcome!

MUEN: I WENT TO YOUR CD LISTENING PARTY BUT YOU WERENT THERE. APPARENTLY YOU WERE PRETTY SICK.

Yeah, my appendix started acting up. It was a little bit of bad timing because I was on vacation in London, but their healthcare system is awesome. I’m feeling good; we are playing a private party tonight. I need to get my activity back up. It’s too bad I missed that party and the shows.

MUEN: HOW DOES IT WORK WHEN YOU GET TREATMENT IN ANOTHER COUNTRY? DO THEY MAKE YOU PAY BEFORE YOU LEAVE?

I think the deal is that if you are not a citizen you have to pay, but it’s a flat rate, so it’s a lot cheaper. It was $4000 for me to spend four or five days in the hospital. If it was here, it would be $25,000 easy. I’m thankful and excited I can play again. When we had practice, I was like “Let’s play now!”

MUEN: LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR SECOND RELEASE BEARS & BULLS. FIRST OFF WHY THE NAME BEARS & BULLS. IT REMINDS ME OF SPORTS TEAMS.

It’s kind of an inside joke. A lot of us were saying like Bears and Bulls for the Chicago sports fans. The sports fans on Saturday Night Live, we love that skit. We were sitting around thinking of album names and we were already saying that for no apparent reason anyway. Bears, bulls and the Stone Foxes, it’s just a bunch of animals. All of our songs are so serious; the content is usually pretty thick and you have to have some kind of fun with it. You try to balance your serious aspect with something else and I think that is our way of doing it. I think what I love even more is that Aaron sent over this drawing of the album cover where we look absolutely disgusting and we are called The Stone Foxes. I think that is fantastic.

MUEN: I KNOW, IT DOSEN’T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE YOU.

Yeah I know, we have all been saying that Spence looks like a sea witch on that thing. It looked intriguing to us, maybe not so much to anybody else.

MUEN: IT MAKES YOU WANT TO LOOK AT THE COVER.

That’s the point. Aaron and Spence do all of our designs. Aaron did the album stuff and the website.  Spence did the posters and t-shirts.

MUEN: THE ALBUM HAS BEEN OUT A COUPLE DAYS NOW, HOW IS IT DOING IN ITS FIRST WEEK SO FAR?

Yeah, we are excited about it. I think we are doing good. The reviews are good except for two or three. We are getting a lot of good word of mouth. ITunes gave us the “New and Noteworthy” section on their rock page so they liked it.

MUEN: I REALLY LOVE THE CD. YOU GUYS HAVE SO MUCH TALENT.

Oh good, a positive review. We had two reviews in the same day. One guy wrote “Nothing original” and the next review said “Completely original.” It’s all opinions so we did our job, we put it out there and if people like it then they like it.

MUEN: YOU GUYS BUILT YOUR OWN STUDIO?

We did it in our practice space. We did it before so we knew what to improve on. We did a lot more mics and we did very little over-dubs. If something needed a little more power we weren’t afraid to throw another guitar down on it. We did all of our recording and producing at home. Alex Newport did the mixing and John Cuniberti did the mastering, we are happy with the way it sounds.

MUEN: I READ THAT YOU USED OLD-SCHOOL ANALOG, DOES THAT MEAN YOU USED TAPE AS OPPOSED TO PRO TOOLS?

Our practice space is down in our garage. There is a picture of Mother Theresa, Bob Dylan and a bunch of mattresses to make sure the cops don’t come. We put carpet down and brought Aaron’s computer down. We recorded it all digitally that way, but everybody is playing live on it. It is two guitars, drums and bass being recorded together on all of the tracks except for “Easy” and “Stomp.” When we went through the mixing process he dubbed it all onto tape to get a fatter sound on it. That’s where the tape comes in. It sounds better, it gets your drums and your bass to sound fatter.

MUEN: ONE THING I WOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT I HAVE POINTED OUT BEFORE IS THAT ALL OF YOU PLAY DIFFERENT INSTRUMENTS AND YOU CHANGE IT THROUGHOUT THE SET. DID YOU CHANGE IT UP WHILE RECORDING AS WELL?

It has to be able to translate live and the cool thing is we have been playing a lot of these songs live before we recorded them. There are only three or four of them that we hadn’t played live first. We wouldn’t play all those songs the same nights. We’ve been out there trying to get it down. We play it while we recorded it the same way we would do it live. It’s just not as hectic when you record it as you do live. You have to put the set together in a way that flows and it’s not just what sounds best going into something else, it’s “You don’t have that guitar on right now, let’s do the two songs that have the same guitars.” Recording is a lot easier in that respect.

MUEN: THE VIDEO FOR “STOMP” IS GREAT! I WATCHED IT IN 3D. THAT IS SO FITTING FOR TODAY BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS COMING OUT IN 3D.

It’s better than Avatar.

MUEN: TELL ME ABOUT THE MAKING OF IT.

Heather and Stacy from this company called Clean White Lines had approached us about doing a video for “Young Man.” While we were getting the ball rolling it seemed like “Stomp” was the track that people were hitching onto. We thought we would do a video for it so we asked them to write up a script for it. They wrote the script and it is kind of one of those things where the song is really serious, but were not going to have a music video where we are all sad looking at trees being cut down. We decided to have fun with it, so they made this goofy video. We had a good time doing it, we were all on green screen trying to act. It was pretty funny. It’s kind of funny that it is such a goofy video for a serious thing, but I think that is okay by us.

MUEN: I NOTICED YOU GUYS DO NOT DO MAJOR TOURING. WHAT IS THE REASON FOR THAT?

Our booking agent is realistic with our financial needs. We have day jobs and living in San Francisco, rent is pretty high. Doing weekends all the time is good until something happens and we can latch on to a bigger band or if we get enough opportunities. We are getting really close, which excites all of us. We have been doing it for a while and we are hoping to just be a band rather than something else too. That is a credit to our agent, he is smart about it. A lot of people lose money on tours. When we go out, we don’t lose money and we are able to pay bills. We’re not rolling in the dough that’s for sure, but at least we can buy groceries. None of us need very much and we do play as much as we can. It’s just cool that we are not pressured to get out on the road and take our chances.

MUEN: I READ YOUR EMAIL UPDATE AND IT SAID THAT AARON WAS  ELECTED GOVERNOR OF OHIO.

He may be like the state gnome or something. A mascot or something, I don’t think he’s the Governor.

MUEN: ON THE 14^TH YOU WILL BE PLAYING LIVE ON BLIP.FM.

Yes, we are excited about that.

MUEN: WHAT ELSE HAS BEEN HAPPENING?

We are playing a private thing tonight and then we are going to do our CD release show on the 17^th in San Francisco. We are going to play in Tahoe the night before and get loose. There is a string of shows after that.

MUEN: YOU GUYS ARE DOING REALLY GOOD AND I’M REALLY PROUD OF YOU.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

MUEN: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE INTERVIEW SHANNON, I’M GLAD YOU ARE DOING BETTER. BEFORE I LET YOU GO WAS THERE ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO ADD OR SAY?

Thank you for helping us out, we appreciate it.