MORGAN Y. EVANS: Ok. We’re rolling. First question, the album name, Before The Sun…I was wondering the meaning of the name for you, since you named your whole album that. The title track is one of the more raw tunes. How did you choose which song to name the record after? Also, how many shots of booze did you do in the video? It seems like about 800.

EVAN R. SAFFER: Yeah. Well, “Before The Sun” was a tune that was written out of angst, and it’s basically that we’re a decadent band that seems to come alive at night. Our original album cover before we got picked up by Riker Hill Records was all these creatures going nuts while the sun was coming up and that was signaling the end of the party. I guess that’s what it meant to us. We better get indoors before the sun comes up because the party is over.

REV. SWANK: Not that this party is over by any means! [laughing]

MYE: That makes sense. The artwork you did go with is great, kind of a ghost kid running in a weary looking field out in the country with a run down house in the background and dead grass. I was wondering what’s behind that.

ERS: We liked the artist’s modern twist and liked stuff he’d done for other groups. It had a creepy vibe, which I think suits Fixer because we’re really an alternative band. It’s hard to put your finger on what exactly we’re about. That little kid in the ghost outfit, if you look at his hands, we call him, like, alien ghost ‘cuz he’s got three fingers on each hand and his arms are kind of long. It’s one of those secret hidden things you’ve got to look closely to find.

MYE: Very cool. It almost reminds me of a warped kind of American Gothic vibe, like that old, famous painting.

ERS: Definitely. When you look at it you don’t really know what it is at first and you’re kind of wondering what the hell is going on there ‘cuz it does have a spooky aura about it. The more people think about it, the better.

MYE: You know, the director Terry Gilliam who did 12 Monkeys, Brazil, The Brothers Grimm and Time Bandits, he has this newer flick called Tidelands which rules. It reminds me of that too. Jeff Bridges is this fat, junkie dad and he takes his kid away from the city out to the country and he OD’s and is like dead and bloated in the house the whole movie and she thinks he’s asleep, it’s warped! The kid spends the whole movie playing around in a field with a retarded kid she meets who wants to blow up trains. It reminds me of the funny side of that. Kind of someone freaking out all alone out in the middle of nowhere and using their imagination.

ERS: Tidelands sounds like it might have to be the concept behind our concept album, that’s a pretty cool story there! [laughing]

MYE: How does it feel after all the hard work you’ve done to finally have national distro and to have your music featured on TV on The Hills and whatnot?

ERS: It feels very rewarding. We just pushed off for a tour and it is very ambitious. It’s two and a half months and I’ve seen a lot of bands that are bigger than us who don’t even stay out that long. We’re definitely ready for the challenge of growth and getting our music out there.

MYE: Well, you guys are New York City, so you’re used to staying up later hours and probably have a better tour ethic for that also.

RS: True, true but life on the road and life at home are two completely different things. Life on the road, we sleep on floors and go to bed whenever the person you’re staying with decides you wanna go to bed. They wanna party with us and it definitely wears you down and you’ve gotta have the stamina to stick with it. Another good thing about being a New York City band is we’re used to living in small spaces so being in a van together with all our equipment is par for the course.

MYE: Yeah, man. You’re known to have a real rowdy live show and you can tell from the “Tell No One” video with the kind of scummy New York City scenes juxtaposed with footage of snooty rich bitches. I heard the Pianos show for the CD kick off was really good. How’d you feel it went?

RS: Great! People were getting turned away at the door, which is unfortunate, but it is also a good thing for us. A good sign for the show. We went on a lot later than we were supposed to, through no fault of our own, but everyone had that many more drinks before the show [laughing] so…

ERS: We were supposed to go on at 10:30 and we didn’t even hit the stage until one o’clock in the morning and by 2:00 I felt it was like a marathon to see who could get to the end first, us or the fans. Everybody was so hammered and so letting loose. It was definitely a legendary show. Everyone has been talking about it for days and on the website and it was one of our best city shows ever.

MYE: Vampire shows like that are the best though, even though they are bruisers.

ERS: We definitely have a reputation for that, y’know, not because we’re pulling an Axl Rose and not showing up until three hours later, but for some reason we’re always scheduled on the second half of the bill and it always runs late and our fans always end up staying in the club for three and a half hours.

MYE: Take off work the next day, yeah. So “Dirty Girls” is an older tune but it made the record.

ERS: It’s one of the few old songs that made the record, and we collaborated with Brain Howes who has done some pretty well known stuff now. He has credits on the song.

RS: “Dirty Girl” has that sleazy decadent vibe that we’re known for and it’s always a rager in concert and people go nuts for it. We even have t-shirts that are our hottest seller for it and it works on a lot of levels for us.

MYE: “Tell No One” reminds me almost of The Offspring mashed up with like, Beatles harmonies and melodies but it is really rowdy with some gutter stuff also.

ERS: That’s awesome. I love the Offspring. They are just good, high energy, rowdy, catchy goodness! That song is also trying to be one of those things.

MYE: That’s awesome. Yeah man, I love the Offspring too. One of the coolest things that ever happened to me was I got to be on the stage at Randall’s Island when they played a few years ago. It was crazy to see from that perspective.

ERS: Oh yeah?

MYE: Yeah, but anyway…when I heard that song of yours it was right away probably my favorite, but it sounds like your own band too, for sure.

ERS: Yeah, it is.

MYE: New York City, I was wondering what are some of your favorite rooms to play besides Pianos? I always thought Don Hill’s has a pretty great sound system.

RS: Yeah, we’ve played Don Hill’s. Not for a couple years or so. We had a really cool CBGB’s thing going for a couple years before it closed. That was our hot spot. People loved coming there and it was 16 and older so younger kids could come, so it was great because that’s hard to do in a lot of places in New York. So now we’re looking for a new place to replace that as our sort of “go to” venue. We had some shows at Mercury Lounge and actually did the Bowery Ballroom recently for the first time, which was really good, so we’re psyched to move it up and play the bigger rooms and see how it goes.

MYE: Yeah, Bowery must be great for you guys. It seems like a lot of places have earlier curfews these days, which sucks.

ERS: Bowery is definitely one of those rooms where we can get a younger age limit because it is a more national room. We just sold out a 200-person room and the natural evolution is to keep getting into Bowery. That’s an 800 person room and there’s a big jump between 200 and 800 and I always tell the guys we don’t wanna get to big…that’s not what I wanna say…

MYE: [laughing]

ERS: I mean, we wanna keep the vibe that our band is known for and brings to the table which is you wanna be comfortable and feel rowdy which you don’t if it is spotty and empty, so I wanna grow proportionally with the clubs.

MYE: Right, right, right. That song “Mixing In With My Blood”, I was wondering if it was about eating pussy, doing drugs or falling in love. [laughing] It is kind of interpretive.

ERS: [laughing] It’s kind of all of the above, take it was you will. It’s one of those "messages" from Fixer.

RS: And you put it very colorfully too, I like that.

MYE: I think one thing that’s great about you guys is that I could hear your music on the radio, but I think, Evan, that you have a more powerful vocal range than a lot of vocalists and a lot of the songs are cooler or have more grit.

ERS: I agree. I think it is everything from my voice to the actual tone of the group and the way we sound. I think we can compete on the radio because the songs are catchy and great, but I don’t think we fall into one pool or category. There’s a huge crop of modern rock bands on the radio right now and I can’t tell one from the other. I think with Fixer that’s definitely not the case.

MYE: Yeah, I definitely agree and could pick you out from a group of bands on the radio. A lot of those bands I don’t like. You can be, not modern rock in as shitty a way, but have your own textures also. I’m glad you got on the Theory Of A Deadman gig, for example, but I think you guys are gonna, like, blow them offstage. [laughing]

RS: I agree completely. Finally after a long period of everyone using whatever moniker is in, I think after a long period the moniker of alternative really applies to us because we are not doing quite what everyone else is doing.

MYE: Oh, the drummer of my band wanted to say what’s up to you guys. He used to be in this band Apolline who used to play with you guys like 5 or 6 times.

ERS: Oh yeah.

RS: Tell him “Hi”.

MYE: They lost a battle of the bands to you guys at Downtime. [laughing] But yeah, what’s next for you guys? You’re doing this tour and I know you just started.

RS: We just left. We are actually leaving New York City right now going through traffic. The main tour is starting now where it is the two and a half months straight.

MYE: Oh, ok. I thought you were a few days out already after the Piano’s show.

RS: There are stretches in there where we’re gonna do eight or nine shows in a row and I feel like the tour is definitely front loaded for us. Yeah, we just came off the Pianos show and we have Theory of a Deadman coming up. We also do great in Michigan. We’re getting a lot of radio play there in addition to just pounding that state and after that we’ll be in Ohio with direct support to BobaFlex, in another market where many shows are sold out. Then there’s a long trek South like North Carolina and Florida where we have a good following, but that’s also where we have to have stamina and get those fans from nothing in some places.

MYE: And eat your Wheaties, you know. Did you guys all grow up in New York and in the same boroughs?

ERS: I grew up in New York and our bass player J Brown and I met in school and have played together for years even prior to Fixer. Tommy Z, our guitarist, he is from Florida and came up North. He was playing in a different band and we stole him out of there when we lost our first guitarist. We’re psyched to have him on board. Rev is right here and can answer for himself.

RS: I grew up in Maine. I came down here and we all sort of found each other.

MYE: What part?

RS: Augusta.

MYE: I was just up in Maine. My sister Cambria got married in Bar Harbor, so I was curious.

RS: Oh yeah, that’s a real nice area.

MYE: That’s cool, man. So how did you meet the guys when you came to the city?

RS: It’s a long and convoluted story. I went to high school with our old guitar player and we’d auditioned singers and Evan came in. He met J. and had another bass player who we’d fired. We got J. and it worked out perfectly.

ERS: I think what happened was Rev. and our old guitar player could really play and had something and they had a bass player who was ok and then when I came around we knew it was good. Those guys could play and we knew we had something but the other bass player wasn’t working out so I brought in J. and he is a total, awesome pro. Great backing vocalist. One of the best songwriters I know. Die hard on the road.

RS: And he’s a pretty good bass player. [laughing]

ERS: [laughing] He can hold a bass up. But yeah, we knew it was so good and we got an all-star team, and it was really good. We were together about seven years in that line up and it was a big blow when our first guitarist had to leave the band because he didn’t like the touring lifestyle. Then when Tommy Zamp came aboard on guitars it was the final step. It went from really good to unbelievable. He’s everything we needed. It brought it to a whole new level. He’s a great guitar player.

RS: Biggest dirt bag I know.

MYE: [laughing] With all the influences in the band how do you draw on all of them and focus it down to still make a coherent record?

ERS: I think the best way to answer is we just let it happen. You write a song and people have ideas form a certain point of view and everybody tweaks it. It might not be what the original person envisioned, but that’s what it ends up being. We each come from different degrees of poppiness or classic rock or metal or aggressive or light, whatever. That’s how you get a sound that’s a group. You end up having a combined sound.

MYE: Yeah, it’s almost like accepting, “Hey, this is who we really are,” you know?

ERS: Definitely. Exactly. It takes a lot of years to figure that out and to be loose enough to talk through it and understand everybody’s egos. I think after eight years we are there and I am psyched that we are able to do that and, not to get ahead of ourselves, because our CD just came out on Riker Hill Records, but we are halfway through writing the follow up and it is unbelievably awesome. We’ve road tested a few songs here and there and we can’t wait to do the next record with Tommy on guitar.

MYE: Alright. I’ve got one more question, probably the most important one in some ways. As real New York dudes who have spent so much time in the city, what is the best place to eat in New York City?

RS: [laughing] The best place to eat?

ERS: Damn! What kind of food do you like?

MYE: Oh, I have my preferences, like this Mexican place, Acapulco, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, but I was wondering. We talked about venues and you guys fuckin’ represent the city and stuff so you gotta give some recommendations and help the tourist trade, dudes.

RS: We can’t really afford to eat at the places I think are the best. [laughing] Actually a friend of mine is actually a celebrity chef who is doing really well. His name is Dave Chang. He opened the Momo Fuku restaurant, which is doing really well right now. It’s got four stars and is doing great. He’s like the new Mario Batali, but of Asian food. It’s affordable. It’s really hard to get in because there’s no reservations but it’s worth it.

ERS: Nice one, Rev! I’m not gonna answer. I was gonna say Chinatown.

MYE + RS: [laughing hard]

ERS: [laughing] There’s a really good McDonald’s on Canal Street.

MYE: Alright, thanks you guys. Good luck and kick ass out there for us.

ERS: Thanks man, you seem like a really cool guy, and I really hope you can make the next live show in town and put the experience in your words.

MYE: Yeah, I was in the studio and so couldn’t make Pianos but I’ll definitely catch you guys when you’re back to the city.

RS: Awesome, cool, man.

ERS: Excellent, alright, we’ll be out on the road, man.

MYE: Have a good one.