PHOTO CREDIT: WINNI WINTERMEYER
1. Thanks for your time, and welcome! Would you please introduce yourself and say what you do in the band?
Jim: I'm Jim, and I play guitar and sing. Kelly and I started the band in San Francisco in the early 90s.
Kelly: I’m Kelly. I also play guitar and sing.
2. A lot of time has transpired since the band was last active, but I want to go backward to go forward. Tell us about your upbringing and musical background, and how you first discovered alternative music.
Jim: I grew up in San Diego. I taught myself to play starting around 14, mostly by playing in bands with friends. I listened to a lot of 70s and 80s rock, reggae, and punk. San Diego in the late 80s and early 90s was a fantastic scene. Not many touring bands came through, so the local scene developed on a wide range of influences and bands tried to differentiate themselves from each other creatively. We all went to each other’s shows. Andee was in that San Diego scene, too, though we only really got to know each other later in SF.
Kelly: I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in LA. I started playing guitar at about eight years old, when a cousin gave me her old acoustic guitar. I started playing in bands in high school, and continued in college at UCSB. I moved to SF in the early 90s.
3. How did P.E.E. come together, and what were the mutual interests—musical and otherwise—that served as the “glue” ?
Jim: Kelly, Andee and I all independently moved to San Francisco after college [in] 91 and 92 or so. Tiber was born and raised in SF, though we didn't find him until later. When I moved there in 92, Kelly was one of a few musicians I knew in SF and shortly we started playing together. I had some guitar ideas and half-finished songs, and she right away brought a different sense for melody and harmony, and the back and forth between us became the core of how the guitars and vocals sound. The first lineup had a different bassist and drummer. Then Andee joined on drums in late 1993 and introduced his particular sense for rhythm, bashing, arrangement, and absurdity we all spun around. Tiber joined on bass in 96, after the first album was recorded. And right away his bass playing and the backbone that he provides behind our two dueling often contradictory guitars and vocal melodies became more distinctive and punchy, and pulled the whole sound together in a way that, well, works.
Our sound is less directed by a shared vision for a kind of sound and more about a shared way of working. Nobody tells anybody else what to play, though opinions flow freely. We were all DIY people in the 90s: screenprinting our own shirts, hand-drawing record sleeves, playing whatever show sounded cool and would have us. And we liked hanging out with each other, which is still true.
4. How did you settle on the let’s call it unusual band name?
Jim: We didn't have a name until we had to. Our first show was with Inch at Morty's in North Beach SF. I pitched a few names Kelly vetoed (I don't remember them), then I said "pee" and she agreed. It was short and a little punk, a little playful and innocent, a little self-deprecating, and everyone does it. We were writing some songs about childhood at the time, so it fit. By the time we seriously thought about changing it, we had some singles out and a small local following, so it stuck.
A few months after Andee joined, he joked in a small zine interview that maybe it stood for "Potentially Egregious Error." We never made that official, though we added the periods around 1997. The phrase came back up in a band chat during this reunion, somehow got out into the world, and now it feels like part of who we are. Also, if you turn it upside down and read it backwards, it's 666.
Kelly: A recent reviewer described Potentially Egregious Error as a “backcronym,” which is a pretty hilarious and accurate description.
5. Your debut LP Now, More Charm and More Tender was recently re-issued. What went into the writing and recording process of that album three decades ago, and what were some of the major highlights of the band from the formation through this era?
Jim: Before the LP we'd mostly done singles. Our first 7" we pressed ourselves and hand-drew the paper sleeves, mostly because we didn't have money for printed jackets. We also recorded twice with Gar Wood at Box Studio, his garage in San Diego, in 1994 and 1995. Songs from those sessions went onto a bunch of singles and compilations. Skippy (Jack McFadden) from March Records saw us play in San Diego around 1995 and asked to do a 7". When a couple of other label offers for a full LP fell through, he stepped up, and we went down to LA to record Now, More Charm and More Tender for March. We spent about a week with Bill Sanke at his studio in LA. A lot of the songs had been road-tested at shows for a while by then.
Highlights...in the first era, playing with Cheap Trick at the Great American Music Hall. Other times there, too, with Drive Like Jehu, and separately Jawbreaker. Playing with so many friends’ bands in San Francisco small DIY venues. Touring the US a few times. In this era, discovering that there is a whole new generation of fans for our weird band, and having the privilege to play for them when we can get together.
Kelly: My highlights: writing songs about my bandmates and my childhood. Writing a song and then fucking it up. Routing tours around visiting roadside attractions. Recording Now, More Charm and wandering around the garment district in LA during breaks. Meeting people at shows and sleeping on their floors (I don’t sleep on floors now because I would DIE).
6. Ultimately the group dissolved following LP number two, The Roaring Mechanism, at the twilight of the second millennium, but you’d briefly re-kindle the project about a decade later. If you’re amenable to discussing it, what went into deciding to disband, deciding to briefly reunite, and to ultimately put the band on ice again for another decade-and-a-half?
Kelly: There was never any animosity in the dissolution. It was more like, we were just doing other stuff. We rekindled in the 2000s mostly for Tiber’s wedding anniversary, which was fun! But we were kind of in the middle of other lives at that point. Now we’re all in a different place.
7. So with this context established for readers, why re-activating now?
Kelly: We decided to reunite for a Noise Pop show in San Francisco early this year… It was the 30th anniversary of our first record, Now, More Charm and More Tender, and the club we were playing at (the legendary Bottom of the Hill) announced that they were closing at the end of the year (they are not now, under new ownership). When we played that show we realized we had a whole new audience that we hadn’t known about. So we figured, why not just keep playing?
8. In addition to the LP re-issue, you’re on the road throughout November. What can you tell us about this?
Kelly: We’re in Chicago right now, about to play our first show of the tour. We’re playing 11 dates on the east coast in November, and then we’re playing Los Angeles and Mesa, Arizona in early December.
9. Are there future plans for P.E.E. that can be revealed, is it just we’re just enjoying things in the moment and haven’t crossed that bridge yet…?
Kelly: So much! We’re writing new songs, which is really fun. And Now, More Charm and More Tender is getting released in Japan and the EU within the next few weeks. We also dug up our old tapes from our second album, The Roaring Mechanism, and we remixed it. It sounds so much better. So we’re excited to re-release that in the next year, too. And now that Texas has been liberated, we’re planning to head there in the spring.
10. Thanks again! Any last words for the readers?
Tiber: Be kind to each other.
