An Interview with Chas "Cmez" Messmer of the Seattle Band Goondocks

Goondocks are Seattle's funk band. They represent what is right and true in American popular music. Their live shows will separate your mind from your spinal cord and make you wiggle uncontrollably, dancing left and right with increasing fun as their show goes on.
I sat down with Chas "Cmez" Messmer, one of the two lyricists (the other being Jeremy "Jmic" Miller) that have been the backbone of the band since they funked up the Seattle's scene seven years ago. We discuss the creation of their new EP and the substances involved in the process.

How long did the EP take to make? Where?

Chas "Cmez" Messmer: Surprisingly, for only a five song EP, it took a year to complete. We had a contact (Vadim) at the Seattle Art Institute that was studying audio engineering and was able to score us free studio time. We spent about a month going in for random sessions for a couple hours and laying down the music tracks. During that time, we were doing a lot of live shows and in preparation for the performances; we changed a lot of how the songs sounded. In addition, we stopped playing some tracks we initially recorded as we replaced them with songs we liked better. So, we ended up only keeping one song ("1st & Yesler") that we recorded at the Art Institute. The rest of the EP, including all vocals, was done at EMC's funk bunker of recording love in Georgetown (South Seattle) by EMC and Vadim.

What were your goals?

The Goondocks' sound has morphed significantly over the years and with this collective of musicians, we wanted to capture everyone's skills and generate something that was not "predictable". Sure, you have two guys rapping, but what I, personally, really dig is that all the musicians come from different backgrounds with different influences. It was important to try to showcase that while making the tunes sound coherent and not a miss match of style. Plus, our live shows are really energetic and dancey, so we wanted to try to maintain that. I don't know if we succeeded, but that was the goal.

What were you trying not to do, not to be like?