From Omaha, Nebraska’s fertile creative soil spring forth the famously awesome scene’s next platoon of punk, Capgun Coup—a raucous, energetic bunch of youngsters out to prove to the world that they can throw down with the best. Or prove to the world that they suck. Or prove to the world that they’re just a bunch of garage-punk rockers out to have a good time and make some noise. In the truest spirit of punk, this is what makes Capgun Coup so irresistible: ultimately, they just don’t give a shit. The band is based around a history rife with tight bonds of friendship, drinking, debauchery, and loud, noisy house shows—pleasing a specific audience is the least of their worries. The music the band makes reflects these sentiments and more. When frustration gets fun and self-respect leaves any sort of vanity or conscience at the door, the world gets Capgun Coup.

Inyourspeakers: You guys have been playing music together since high school. When did you decide to form a band?

Sam Martin: Me and Greg started playing music when we were in high school and kind of formed a band. But we’ve had a couple different members in the early stages, and then this band’s been around—like this current stage—for like a year or so.

IYS: How many of the original band members are still part of the band?

SM: Two.

IYS: How many years out of high school are you guys?

SM: I’m 22, so, three I guess? Almost four. Everyone else is, shit, I don’t know. Greg’s like 24, and Jesse’s 25, Eric 25, and Roadie’s 27-26. So it varies.

IYS: How did you hook up with the other members that later joined your band?

SM: We all grew up in a suburb of Omaha, except Roadie who grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and we just all moved to mid-town and all met each other through living in midtown Omaha, hanging out with the same group of people and going to shows.

IYS: I love the band name: Capgun Coup. Who came up with that?

SM: Me and Greg came up with that. I don’t remember exactly how, I think we were just talking in my mom’s basement and it just kind of happened.

IYS: It’s got child-like spirit in it; it reminds me of toys, and boyhood—does that say anything about you as people, or is it more about your music?

SM: We try to have that, definitely. I mean, the name isn’t really that important, we don’t really think about it, but I think when we came up with it, that was why we liked it, because it’s kind of playful. We like to have fun, that’s the reason we’re in a band—to have fun.

IYS: It seems like a lot of people want to talk about you guys in terms of lo-fi indie folk, but I hear a lot more of the rawness and emotion that comes with punk music. Is there a gray area between the two that you are trying to reveal with your music?

SM: Not really. We all like punk rock music, and pop music, so I guess it’s just those influences melding together. I mean, people describe it different ways because it’s eclectic, maybe. The songs are really different, so it’s hard to put a finger on it.

IYS: What’s the story on the album cover?

SM: Well, we were going to do art—like a drawing or something—and then, I don’t know, we were just like, “Fuck that.” You know, bands in the ‘60s and shit, they all had a lot of photos of themselves on the cover, and we always thought that was cool. We wanted to look tarred and feathered, so we covered ourselves in Hershey’s chocolate and feathers. And this house that we all used to live in in Omaha, we turned the main room into a scene and painted the walls and put all kinds of crazy shit in there.

IYS: Who’s the rabbit?

SM: That’s a friend of ours, Kelly King. Yeah, he’s not in the band, but our friend Aaron Gum who helped with the photo, he has all kinds of props—three rabbit costumes and all kinds of other stuff—most of that stuff around the room is his, so, we thought it would be funny if someone got in the rabbit suit and held the moonshine bottle. I guess we’re making a music video for every song on the record, so we’re going to try and have that bunny rabbit suit in every video too. Repeated imagery.

IYS: What does the title “Maudlin” say about you guys?

SM: I think it’s a good title, kind of making fun of ourselves a little bit for getting drunk all the time. We play a lot of house shows, so I guess it’s kind of about being drunk and sappy. It speaks more to the album than our band.

IYS: Tell me about the recording process at Hotel Frank. What is Hotel Frank?

SM: We didn’t record it at Hotel Frank. We wrote some of the songs when we lived there. Hotel Frank is just this huge house. It’s got like 23 bedrooms separated into three wings. A bunch of people have always lived there, like musicians, and there’s always been house parties and house shows in there. We used to practice in the basement, and me and Greg did a lot of recording for the first record in that basement. This record was recorded at a studio in Omaha called ARC studios. We recorded it all live, except we overdubbed vocals, but all our amps and everything were in the same room. To save time and to do it like it used to be done.

IYS: Is there a rawness you’re getting from the live recording that is lacking from tracking?

SM: Definitely, that was a big purpose for doing it that way. When you track things everything is separated. It’s a bunch of sounds rather than one sound. It’s got a nice quality to it. We did it on tape too; there weren’t any computers involved. We wanted to do that . . . because we could. It does sound pretty lo-fi. We use old amps, and I use this really old 60s guitar. It really sounds pretty shitty, but I really like the sound of it. And we use this mic I have from the 50s—a Shure Ribbon mic. And we use that for all the vocals, and it gives it a really nice kind of distortion or punch to it.

IYS: Do you take that on tour with you?

SM: No, it feeds back too much, it doesn’t really work that well live. We have used it live before, but it’s not a great live microphone. But a friend of mine has a microphone that sounds pretty similar to it that is a good live microphone, and I was actually talking to Greg yesterday about maybe bringing that on tour, but for now we just use whatever they have at the venue.

IYS: Tell me about the song “Wish I Was a Fag”. Did you write that?

SM: It’s about girls breaking your heart, and hanging out with your dudes, and thinking about how sweet it would be if you could date them, because there’s not as many problems, you know?

IYS: Is being in your band kind of like being in a relationship?

SM: Yeah! Definitely.

IYS: “When I’m Gone” sounds like a warped sort of surf tune. Were you listening to anything specific that inspired that particular song?

SM: We were practicing and me and Jesse started playing “Wipeout”, and I started playing this off-kilter harmony to it. So the beginning riff is pretty much “Wipeout”, except there are two guitars, and one of the guitars is playing a dissonant harmony to it. But the chord progression is kind of the same as “I’m Your Venus”. I don’t really like that song particularly, but I kind of found out after we started playing it that it was the same kind of chord progression.

IYS: You guys are from Omaha, which is pretty famous for having a creative explosion at the beginning of the decade with the whole Saddle Creek label. Were you guys going to a lot of those shows and seeing that scene develop as it was happening?

SM: Yeah. It’s kind of still happening. Not with that label, but with other labels and bands. There are some amazing bands in Omaha right now, and it’s sweet to watch that grow. There’s still not much help from the city for music. There’s more venues than there used to be, but it’s kind of still pretty close to the way it was back in the day.

IYS: Did you meet any really important people that helped you get a leg up with the Team Love label at an early stage, or did that happen later?

SM: The way we got on that, is our friend Derek Pressnall from Tilly and the Wall and Flowers Forever gave our CD to Conor [Oberst], and he liked it, and they asked us if we wanted to re-release our record on their label. And we said yes. I didn’t really know anyone from the label. We’d seen them around, but we were talking with Derek a lot, and we know a lot of the people from now and are friends with a lot of people that work with the label, but before that we didn’t really know them that well.

IYS: What the hell is the Nebraskafish?

SM: It’s this art project that my brothers do, where . . . have you seen the Nebraskafish? The state of Nebraska with the eyes and the fin?

IYS: I saw it on MySpace somewhere, but I couldn’t really find a lot about what it was.

SM: It’s just a street art project. We’ll go put up huge banners on crosswalks and shit, and put stickers everywhere. It’s kind of like a tag-name, but a collective one. It’s died down a bit, but it’s still around, you’ll see them from time to time around town. It represents a collective, but not really a proper one. There’s not like a space, and it’s not really the name of a collective. It’s not even really about anything come to think of it. It’s just stickers and banners around town that have the little cute-cute fish on it.

IYS: Do you guys prefer playing rock clubs, or more like house show parties?

SM: House shows. Definitely. I think the reason we like house shows is because we’re on the floor, and the size crowd that we draw can make it look packed. And it’s always nicer to play to a packed crowd than a sparse crowd. And you don’t have to worry about playing well when you play a house show.

IYS: Why is that?

SM: Well, in Omaha people knew all the songs and would sing along to them even if we played them shitty. I mean, you can’t play incredibly shitty, but you don’t really have to worry about how you’re playing, you know? You can be unpracticed and play a house show and it’ll be amazing.

IYS: Did you book any house shows for this tour?

SM: No, every day we are playing with Cursive, so every day is pretty much booked. But, you know, we’ve played house shows out of town before—not that many—but in upcoming tours, if we have days off, we should probably try to book house shows.

IYS: Is money ever an issue at these shows? Do you go to venues knowing you have a guarantee, vs. playing a house show where you’ll maybe sell a record?

SM: You can’t tour if you don’t get paid. Well, not for very long, anyways. You can get paid pretty well at house shows. People just pass around a jug and put money in it. People who set up house shows and go to house shows are pretty supportive of bands that come through town. And so are we—like when we lived at [Hotel Frank] we had bands come through all the time that we’d never met.

IYS: Are you guys going to plan your own tour after the Cursive tour, or are you guys going to take a break?

SM: We’ll take a little break. It sucks to tour the Midwest in the snow because it’s dangerous. I-80—you hear horror stories about people flipping their vans and shit. So we’re wary of that, but we’re working on some stuff with our booking agent. I don’t know what it’ll be like—like another supporting tour, or just our own, you know? But we’ll definitely be back out soon.

IYS: Any crazy road stories that you guys want to share?

SM: Jessie and Eric got into a fight in Orlando. Some dudes were being assholes . . . somebody got a bottle in the face. I guess that’s a pretty crazy road story. [laughing] That doesn’t happen very often.

IYS: What was the problem? Did someone just hate your band or something?

SM: No, this was outside of the venue when we were just loading out, and this area was like, a super frat-dude area of town. These dudes were smoking weed out back of the venue and Eric asked if he could hit it, and the guy called him a faggot or something, and being an asshole, and I think he just punched Eric in the throat or something. I wasn’t there, but I think that’s what happened.

IYS: Is there any of that you don’t want me to print for whatever reason?

SM: Uuhhmm . . . no.

IYS: So you guys went down through Florida—what has that been like? Have people been pretty receptive to you down there?

SM: I don’t really know about what kind of music’s going on down there, but some people were really nice—most of the people were really nice. Some people either like our band or really hate our band. It was kind of funny, like the first week of the tour, every night some young girl would come up to us and just make a point to tell us how we sucked. Which is kind of funny.

IYS: Every show?

SM: Every show, just one girl at every show. It was really bizarre. Other than that, people are pretty receptive. People make a point to come up and tell us that they like our band too, you know? But for a while there, one girl would come up and say we suck for some reason. You know the song “Bad Bands” on the record? We played that last at a couple of shows, and it’s really horrible, you know—on purpose. And people don’t like that sometimes.

IYS: So you go into some shows knowing that people won’t like some of your songs? Why do you play them?

SM: It’s just our set. If we had songs I knew everyone was going to like, we’d play those ones. But that’s never going to happen. People either like your band, or don’t like your band. And people are there to see Cursive. We’re there to see if those people who are there to see Cursive like us, and want to listen to our music too.

IYS: Any other weird stage antics you guys do?

SM: Well, you never really know what’s going to happen at one of our shows. I think that’s most bands . . . but, sometimes during “Bad Bands”, I’ll be really drunk and pick someone out in the crowd and yell at them about how I like their glasses or something. I don’t know if that keeps people coming back . . . I think that might deter people from ever coming again. But either way, it’s kind of fun.

IYS: I read that you guys sing through telephones in your live show.

SM: Greg made them. It’s pretty much just a microphone, if you do a little re-wiring you can plug them into the PA. We’re not using those right now. Greg has to put XLR’s into them instead of 1/4”s so they can be turned up louder. But they sound really sweet. I really like that, I wish we were still doing that right now, but I’m sure we’ll do it again. It sounds really cool.

IYS: Do you guys make it a point to drink at every show?

SM: It just kind of happens. When they give you free beer . . . I mean, when you’re on tour and poor, whatever’s free you’re gonna probably do, you know? So yeah, we drink every night. I had one night off, and that was really good. I was thinking about maybe doing that tonight too . . . but . . . probably not.

IYS: Any plans for recording in the near future?

SM: We’ll probably record in three or four months, tops. If we can record sooner, we’ll probably record sooner. We’ve got songs, and it’d be good to record them. Make another record—what we like doing.