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Lee Joseph's name ought to be pretty familiar to people who've been following the garage punk scene through the eighties. He's the guy who runs Dionysis Records, one of the better indie labels in the country today, and he's also played in a number of bands including the Unclaimed and Thee Forgiven, but most importantly Yard Trauma. I hooked up with Lee for a phone interview late in the summer and pumped him for details for a good long time; the conversation dealt primarily with Yard Trauma but we also talked about his label affairs quite a bit.
Yard Trauma have been around a long time and have gone through a huge evolution during their existence. If you haven't heard them in the last two years, it's time to try again, because the band sounds totally different. The current line up is a hard driving monster with a huge guitar sound and some intense songs, most of which rock like crazy and are catchy as hell.
But it wasn't always like this at all. Yard Trauma started in Tucson at the end of 1982, with just Lee and singer/guitar player Joe Dodge. They'd been playing in another band called Johnny 7 and had achieved some level of popularity. But hardcore was starting to gain hold, and as a reaction to that, Yard Trauma played a lot of noisy stuff with rhythm machines played through fuzzboxes and shortwave radios and tape loops with poetry read over the top of it. They did a couple shows like that as a two piece and then added a drummer and borrowed a keyboard player from another band. They put out a single with "Some People" and "No Conclusions", and kept on like that until January of 1984 when they played their last gig. The next day they recorded an album that Lee calls The Red Album, and then Lee moved to Los Angeles.
After the album came out there was a good amount of positive response, so the band decided that they should do another record. They developed material by swapping tapes in the mail, and eventually they all congregated in a studio in Phoenix and hammered out the Must Have Been Something I Took lp. Following this, Joe moved to Los Angeles and he and Lee tried to make a go of the band there. Says Lee: "We had a lot of rough stuff, getting members, having members quit. Joe wasn't really that social, so he didn't really do much in the way of helping to get other people in the band and what not. We borrowed members; the guy in the Untold Fables, we borrowed Rich Coffee, and we played some pretty lousy shows and then...didn't really break up; we broke up in the physical sense but not in the spiritual sense, because there were all these records that came out in Europe, posthumous records. We were alive in paper because we were getting all this press in Europe. It was pretty funny; while the band wasn't functioning we were getting this press."
Lee kept up the image of the band as a functioning unit, continuing to do fanzine interviews and pushing the band while he looked for new members. Finally, at the end of 1988 they found a drummer. "A weird kid from Texas", says Lee. "He had played with GG Allin. He was going to the DIT; that stupid Drum Institute Of Technology. Moronic stuff he was learning. But he was a good drummer. He was weird enough to where it was OK. We let him in the band. But he'd come over to our house and drink one beer and pass out on the floor, or leave without telling anybody. He recorded that Face to Face album, and we didn't have a fourth member so we borrowed all these people. In fact, on the first side of that album the lead solos are each done by a different person. I did some, Brett from Bad Religion did one, Danny who used to be in the Unclaimed with me played, Rich Coffee played on it. And we did some shows as a three piece. Joe's a pretty great rhythm player but he couldn't play lead. So we played these songs as a three piece. We did some OK shows, but then the drummer split and never told us. We didn't see him for two weeks, so one day Joe called his parents up in Texas and he answers the phone. What a mess, huh?"
"Yard Trauma has gone through times that would break most bands up. We could go through what would break most bands up three or four time in a week and stay together. We've got road nightmare stories and breakdowns, but the most recent story is that we almost lost half the band...Joe and Dave, their normal job is to work on airplanes. And somebody that didn't normally work where they worked and was hired out by some guy, didn't put a hydraulic brake on and dropped a jet, and the jack went through the wing dumping inches of highly explosive fuel all over. It covered everything, all the electrical outlets and everything. That's why you'd never survive an airplane crash, because that fuel is so highly explosive. Nothing happened...luckily. They were both in there working on the plane. They had to call the hazardous waste people in, but that whole place could've gone sky high...the stuff went into the drain. The firemen were really surprised that it didn't."
On Face To Face you can hear Yard Trauma starting to head towards the sound they've got today. It's not as fast as they've come to be, and although the guitar leads are done haphazardly, they're done well throughout. The record's tight and rocking and the songs are real good. The record shows the cool sense of vocal harmony that the best Yard Trauma stuff all has.
But this three piece version of Yard Trauma wasn't meant to be. They picked up another drummer who used to play with Lee in the Unclaimed; his name was Scotty. Then they found Walter to add to the guitar attack...he still plays with them today and has a lot to do with their harder, gutsier sound. This line up didn't last long, though...soon Scott had quit and through an ad in an LA fanzine they found their current drummer, Dave. He'd been in hardcore bands in New York City in the early 80s, but said he was sick of that and wanted to do something different. He may have backed off from his old style, but for Yard Trauma the net result was definitely an increase in the speed and intensity of the music. Dave plays with a wild hammering approach that gives the band a feeling of being on the edge of control during live shows, and on record he gives them an extra punch that pushes them to a new level.
"It's funny how things change like that", says Lee. "We're playing a lot faster than we used to. And the funny thing is that when Dave joined the band he was totally sick of all the hardcore stuff. We had no intention of sounding like we sound right now. It just kind of happened."
This is not to say that Yard Trauma have become thrashy...they certainly are not that. Listen to their Lose Your Head album and you'll get the same feeling of melody that's in their early stuff, but the speed is just jacked up a few notches and if anything, everything's tighter and more precise. It's really cool. Best thing yet is their new single with "Pressure" and "Alibi", two really driving songs that feature the best ingredients of Yard Trauma songs. Lee really likes this one, too...he says it's the best thing they've done.
This fall, in fact probably before this issue prints, Yard Trauma are due to record a new album with the same lineup. It should include the new single, and if their recent live shows are an indication, it's going to be their most driving record to date.
As keeps happening with good US independent bands, Yard Trauma have found it hard to get together much of a tour in the US, but they've gotten over to Europe and had a successful tour there. Lee in fact has been there three times; he's also been there with Thee Forgiven and the Unclaimed.
But with their continuing improvement the band is starting to produce a good LA following and things are getting better in the US. "LA was such a fucking struggle", says Lee. "We're not a bunch of socialites, and there's so many bands in LA that if you don't hang out and have a lot of friends nobody comes to see you. So we had a problem for years with people not coming to see us. Either people thought we sucked because of a bad show that they saw in our older incarnation, or they just didn't know who we were. I probably go out more than anybody else, and I don't go out that often because between the label and the mailorder I work twelve hours a day, so when a lot of people are having fun I'm sitting behind a computer."
"But in the last year we've been starting to get a good following. It used to be a thing where we'd do a weeknight show and play for two people. When we were in Europe we decided we wouldn't do any more weeknight shows. Except that we did one a few months ago; Bad Religion booked a last minute show at Al's Bar. That was cool. The funny thing is that this was at Al's Bar, and Bad Religion had just sold the Palladium out a few months before that. I was sitting there with Jay the bass player and he said, "Well we need a show", because their singer goes to college on the east coast and he was in town so they could record an album and they were going to tour. And Jay says "We need a show, even a small club", so I gave him the number of Al's Bar. So they call Al's Bar and the guy answers the phone and Jay goes "I want to book my band there". And the guy says "Send a tape". So Jay goes "Well don't you want to know who we are"? And the guy goes "Who are you?". And Jay goes "Uh, we're Bad Religion". And the guy goes "Send a tape!". And then the guy goes "Where have you played", and Jay says "Well, we just sold out the Palladium"."
"And the guy goes "Send a tape!"."
"But then the other booker called back and booked the show, and it was a cool show. I was expecting a riot, 'cos Al's doesn't hold that many people and it's downtown. But it worked out pretty good. I thought their following was going to eat us alive, too, but they really liked us."
Yard Trauma songs are readily identified by Joe Dodge's vocal style...he has an ultra-American accent; he sings the way Europeans or Australians sound when they try to imitate Americans speaking. But his voice also has a good feeling for melody. The lyrics are often fairly brief and rather than being complete sentences might be snatches of phrases stacked up in succession. I had the impression that maybe lyrics weren't that important from the way they went together, but Lee wasn't having any part of that: "I'd disagree with that...like "Eyes" is about being an insomniac. Each one of our songs represents a piece of our life. Like "Alibi" is about people destroying the environment and "Pressure" is about living in LA. Each song represents something. Some of the songs have goofier lyrics like "Gator Bite" or "Mondo Bondo", but even "Mondo Bondo" is a true story. It's about some woman in a big Cadillac that was tailgating Joe on the freeway going about 70 miles an hour. So the lyrics and the melody play pretty important roles."
The second part of the Lee Joseph story is about his record label, Dionysis. The roots of Dionysis were in a tape label that Lee ran in Tucson, putting out local music. Through his job in a record store there he had contacts with indie distributors like Rough Trade and worked out deals so that his tapes were sold out of state. The first Dionysis record was the first Yard Trauma single in 1983. When Lee moved to Los Angeles he got to know Bomp! Records mogul Greg Shaw, and Shaw set him up with a deal where he could put out records using Bomp's credit, and distribute with Bomp's distribution. This got the label rolling, and in 1985 Lee switched to Mordam for distribution as a result of his connections with a former Rough Trade employee who had moved over there. The first record through them was the Untold Fables album. Since then, Dionysis has put out about 38 singles and 22 albums, and that doesn't count other labels that Lee runs to put out reissues of 60s garage music. Despite all this, the thing that really makes Lee his living is a mailorder business, much of which he stocks by trading the fruits of his own label to other small indie labels. So Lee is obviously a very busy guy, especially since he's in yet another band with his wife.
I asked Lee to list off his favorite Dionysis releases. "Oh, the latest Yard Trauma single for sure", he said. "The Girltrouble mini lp. The Lance Kaufmann "They Dug Up Elvis" single. The Axel Grinders single. I like the Zebra Stripes album a lot. I like the first Forgiven album. The Wretched Ones single...I actually like most everything I've put out a lot. With my budget I can't afford to put out something I don't like that much."
Forthcoming releases you can look forward to are a new Marshmallow Overcoat lp, an American Ruse CD, and an lp by Treehouse, and of course, the latest by Yard Trauma themselves.