In a short amount of time, Ty Segall has provided us with so much musical goodness in the recorded form that it’s hard to believe he’ll be releasing two (well, two-and-a-half-ish) albums this year. He’ll release a mini album on In the Red in June under Ty Segall Band, recorded with his touring band, which includes Charlie Moothart guitar (“He’s a complete shredder and dominator, he taught me everything I know about playing guitar,” Segall says), Mikal Cronin on bass and Emily Epstein on drums. The record will be mixed in Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios — where Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded, Segall points out — and recorded with Eric Bauer, who has recorded with Segall several times, including his most recent studio album, 2011’s Goodbye Bread.

A regular full-length also is due on Drag City under his own name in the fall. On top of all that, he’s releasing a collaboration LP with White Fence on Drag City in April, which he’s currently touring behind. Ty Segall and White Fence appear together March 3 at the Troubador.

I took some time to speak to Ty, who’s S.F.-based but was born in Laguna Beach, about his upcoming tours, release schedule, and how many songs he’s recorded.


PST: Last year, around the time Goodbye Bread was released, you said you wanted the next album to sound like Satan in Space, Hawkwind meets Sabbath and that sorta thing. Is that the direction the new material has ended up taking?

Lots of very cool shows happening this weekend for Halloween. On Halloween, Zola Jesus is playing at the Echoplex and Abe Vigoda is playing Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, with DJ sets from Air France and The Field. The day before, on Oct. 30, Tijuana Panthers take the stage at the Ukrainian Cultural Center with fellow garage rockers The Soft Pack, Thee Oh Sees and Total Control. Three-piece Tijuana Panthers, with drummer Phil Shaheen, guitarist Chad Wachtel and bassist Daniel Michicoff, play a kind of punk-influenced surf rock that shows the line from The Ventures to The Buzzcocks to Jay Reatard is a short one indeed, seamlessly combinging straightforward, clean-but-not-clean-cut guitars, alternatingly bratty and crooning vocals and old school rock-combo rhythms — check out their gorgeously bummed out "Summer Fun" below for a fine example of what they do. I took a minute to talk to Shaheen about their sound.

PST: Are you guys working on new songs yet? If so, how is the sound shaping up?
 
Shaheen: Yeah, we have steadily been coming up with new ones, playing them live at shows and then recording them. They shape up well this way, playing them live then recording has always helped us to tight'n them up. Just need to record a few more next week and we should be on our way.
 
PST: Are you guys surprised at all by the recent resurgence of bands playing garage rock and surf rock?
 
Shaheen: No, not really. It seems to come in waves, this one seems a lot larger. 
 
PST: Do you guys mind at all getting lumped in with other bands that play that kind of music? I could see it being frustrating, but also there seems to be a camaraderie among bands like you guys, Audacity and Ty Segall.
 
Shaheen: Yeah there's not a perfect fit for us there but, we get along pretty well with all those bands. Joe Walters from the Redwood Bar use to call us “Barbershop Surfpop,” I always liked that.
 
PST: One thing I feel like sets you guys apart is your vocals. They’re really great, I love that they're spread out among the members and that they’re often nice and croony, rather than full on garage all the time. Is that something you guys consciously tried to do, make sure the vocals actually sounded like real singing?
 
Shaheen: Yes. We have always kept it pretty clean for the most part. Chad croons, I whine, Daniel croons and whines.
 
PST: I lived in Long Beach for years, and I love that you guys represent it so well. It definitely captures the place somehow, although I can’t quite put my finger on how. If there’s a sound to Long Beach that you guys help embody, what do you think that is?
 
Shaheen: Long Beach has always had a pretty steady stew of counter culture, it's a port city. Maybe we rep a little piece of that.
 
PST: Do you have any favorite venues to play?
 
Shaheen: Shows that FYF put on are always rad, where ever they may be. It’s great getting to play these halls like the old timers use to.  
 
PST: What's the craziest thing you’ve seen at one of your shows?
 
Shaheen: We got to play with The Dead Milkmen at Alex's Bar in Long Beach. Seeing those guys in person was really crazy and the fact that we got to play with them blew my mind. I still can't believe that went down.
 
PST: Stock question, but what bands did you guys bond over, and who are some artists people might not expect you guys to be into?
 
Shaheen: The Dead Milkmen, Suburban Lawns, X, Circle Jerks, Link Wray, The Cramps, TSOL, Dead Kennedys, The Pyramids, Sade, Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker, Ian Dury.

It’s been an unusually chilly and ridiculously gloomy summer in San Francisco but the lo-fi, garage, surf punks in Wavves ushered in a bonafide sunny summer day when they played an instore at Amoeba SF yesterday. The band’s youth-addled fans cascaded from the outer reaches of the world music section all the way to shore break at the front of the stage, staring with mouths agape when they weren’t singing along to their new summer anthems. 
 

The San Diego-based band is touring behind their new release King of the Beach, which is the third Wavves album but the first featuring the current lineup of o.g. creator and front man Nathan Williams (guitar/vox), Stephen Pope (bass), and Billy Hayes (drums). Williams has slightly refined the slacker self-loathing he imperfectly trumpeted on Wavves’s previous bedroom productions by entering an actual studio and enlisting the help of Dennis Herring who has produced albums by the likes of Throwing Muses, Camper Van Beethoven and Modest Mouse. Pope and Hays (formerly the late Jay Reatard’s rhythm section) match and ratchet up Williams’s stoner thrash both in the studio, where they share a few song-writing credits, and on the stage, where they flail on flying V’s and bang kits in a mess of hair and crushed beer cans.

Before Jay Reatard passed away earlier this month, he did a trifecta Amoeba instore tour, hitting all three of our stores in the month of August. At the San Francisco stop, he took the time to tell us what was in his bag! There's one shocker (or is it?) -- he chose ABBA! Check it out below:

It's been just over ten years since that was filmed. On the first cross country jaunt by (a just old enough to drive) Jay and his make shift band. As whip fast and damaging as that daytime instore was, that night's gig has gone down in Seattle’s punk rock history books. A local oaf was heckling the Reatards as they played at the downtown venue The Gibson House (RIP). Jay, not one to take lightly these jabs at his character, watched as the drunken punk walked out the door. As he waited to cross the street, Jay threw down his guitar, opened the sliding window (stage left), jumped out and ran to the intersection. The crowd watched in awe as the band continued, not missing a damaged beat…and acting as though this happens all the time. It does. Jay laid a few steady blows, a few crazy man arm swings, wrestled about, and then came back in to finish the song.

This left a lasting imprint on me.

Not as much an imprint as it did on the pulpy, drunk outside, but…

This was art as terrorism. Band vs. crowd. He was the rare kind of frontman that does this not for the audience's sake, but for himself. This was his release. A tension breaker. Therapy. Jay was in it deep. If he hadn't been, he'd prolly have been a criminal or something. I dunno.