What was the punk scene like in the 90s? If you were to set a scene.
Butch: Well, there were lots of people at the shows, whether it was Houston or Austin. Definitely in Houston, you could go to a local show and see more than 100 people there. I don’t miss a lot of the 90s. I like having lots of people there, but I didn’t like ‘this ain’t punk’ or ‘this is punk’ or weird rules that were happening. I miss the music. I miss lots of people being out. That was just a thing that happened. Lots of people were in the same mindset at the same time, so shows were huge, and scenes were big enough to have multiple genres with plenty of people to go to their shows. It was pretty sweet.
Is that something that separates that time period from now, in the punk scene?
Butch: It’s hard to say at 52, because I don’t know what the fuck is going on anywhere, except for what we’re doing. The punk scene, like the people we grew up listening to, they’re the same age as us or older.
Rubio: There have been a lot of noticeably younger kids. The children of the people who used to come and see us are now coming to see us.
Brian: With their parents.
Rubio: With their parents or without their parents. A lot of the young kids here tonight are parentless.
Butch: That is a thing. We’ve been playing long enough that people are bringing their kids who are now like fifteen.
Rubio: Some of them can drink now.
What do you notice in the smaller crowds compared to playing a larger crowd?
Butch: Well, this club in particular, whether it’s been a lot of people in there or a little, people are really attentive and here to see music. Everybody’s hanging, but everybody’s also sort of paying attention to all the bands, which is really nice. For us, if we’re out of town, maybe not Austin but a place we don’t play often, and there’s a small crowd, we have to work a little bit harder to achieve our ends because nobody knows what’s going on. We kind of have to make them care. It’s a fun, nervous thing when we don’t just have our old crowd to lean on.
Brian: Smaller shows, I think, are more intimate and easier to engage if you have at least somewhat of a fan base there. The bigger shows, sometimes there’s a little bit of a disconnect between you and the crowd, especially if there’s a huge barricade and separation.
How did becoming parents and grandparents change your- Brian and Rubio- musical ideals?
Brian: I don’t know that it changed anything other than that I remember bringing my kids to their first 30footFALL show. It was packed and we were signing autographs, and my son was like, ‘I don’t get it, Dad.’ He’s like, ‘You guys are good, but you’re not that good.’ I swear to God, he was five. He’s like, ‘I can’t believe this many people come to see y’all play. And then they want your autograph. I just don’t understand it.’ And he was totally being five-year-old serious.
Butch: What’s his review now?
Brian: He’s 16 now. It hasn’t changed much. What about you, Rubio? You’ve got grandpa duties now, right?
Rubio: My grandson is enamored by music. He loves the drums. I have a drum set for him. When he calls his grandmother, the first question is always, where’s Grumpy? Second question, or second statement, is, let me see my drums. So she has to go to the room and show him his drums. He’s four, but he loves music. The kids growing up, they were always coming to the shows and just loving it. We never really traveled after we had kids like we used to prior to kids, so we never really had to leave all the time.
Brian: I will say, I think both of my kids think it’s cool that I’m playing in a band. They won’t really tell me that. Every now and again, I’ll get a little hint of like, ‘you’re cooler than the other dads’ kind of thing. But they won’t say much about it. Just a little nod here and there. But I think deep down they think it’s cool, and later on, they’ll probably think it’s even cooler.
Rubio: My youngest started dating this girl, and she was like, ‘Your dad’s in a band?’ He says yeah. She goes, ‘Oh, man, my dad sucks.’
Brian: So there you go. That’s being in a band in your 50s, in a nutshell.
Butch: What about your kids, Chris?
Chris: I’ve got five nieces, and one of them, who is not directly related to me has shown aspiration towards wanting to become a rock star. It’s difficult because she thinks it’s overnight. It does not work that way.
Butch: You have to suck.
Chris: Yeah, you have to suck for a very long time before you get a little above sucking.
Butch: When’s it gonna work out for us?
Brian: We’re still working on it.
Do you guys think, and maybe this isn’t related to anything because you [Butch] said it’s not about the ideology, but do you think your punk ideals politically or emotionally have changed as you got more responsibilities?
Butch: I think that one of the attractions for punk rock and the DIY scene was basically having the opportunity to do things for yourself and for other people and with other people. Basically, learn how to be a decent human being. Even the last line of our song, “My First Show,” says, “if you’ve passed out of the scene, taken with you what you need.” That was the whole point. If they’re not in the scene anymore, but you’ve learned how to be a fucking decent human being, then it worked. I don’t think that has changed for any of us, because we were basically this, then. We’re just a little less cool, and we wear sensible shoes.
Brian: And the shows happen a little earlier. We get super excited when we go on at 9 pm or before.
Butch: We for sure requested not to be last.
That’s funny. But you still feel connected to all your own songs?
Butch: Yeah. That’s a good question.
Do you think people romanticize punk in the 90s?
Butch: Like they do anything, right?
Rubio: I haven’t heard anybody say that. It was a different time. Do you?
I mean, looking back, I’m like, ‘man, I wish I was there,’ it’s so cool.
Brian: I think there is a nostalgia element to it, right? We’ve still been playing all these years later. We still go do the shows, and people come out. It’s just like if we go see a band from the 80s. You kind of get to that point where you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m not sure how long they’re going to be playing. So, if they’re playing live, I want to go catch them.’ But I mean, do they listen to it, live it, and breathe it as they did 30 years ago? Maybe not.
Butch: If you have left the punk scene, or if you were one of our old fans who comes to see us, whatever it is: If seeing a band can reconnect you, can make your brain go to the place where it was when you were that person. And you can remember a thing that you liked about yourself, or that you liked about life, then that is a totally valuable thing. I don’t think going to see old bands or playing old songs or anything- sure, there can be a nostalgia component, but otherwise, you can call it like a touchstone to a time that was important. It can help remind you of the things you wanted, and you can reflect, ‘where am I’ and ‘what’s happened?’
Is there anything that excites you about the scene today that maybe didn’t exist then, or that you really didn’t see back then?
Brian: Being able to connect with people online in different cities, different places, and reach a different fan base.
Chris: The network’s a lot easier to do. There’s not so much blockage from attitude that people might have. Like ‘why are you talking to me?’ ‘Cause, you’re on the internet. I can talk to anyone.’
Brian: Butch is still the king of old school flyers on cars. Which is not, you know, it still happens, but not to the degree that it used to. But I think that was kind of the only way back then that you could reach people.
Butch: Or find out about anything. You actually collected the flyers and looked at them to see what was gonna happen.
Brian: I think the networking element has been great now compared to that.
Butch: I got to say, there’s a club in Houston called Trip Six HTX, and this is a club that was born near the end of COVID. It was put together by people who were a few years behind us. They’re younger than us. They’ve made a DIY, totally bootleg club in this warehouse part of town. We wanted to play a show not to our normal crowd, so we got on a show over there. We didn’t really have a lot of people there for us because we were everybody’s parents’ age, without a doubt. There were quarter pipes and people skateboarding, and you could see that they put it together with the intent for fun and having a good time. There were punk kids, there were not punk kids, there were trans kids, there were very openly gay kids. There was fucking everything happening and everybody hanging out at the same table, which was really fucking cool. That, afterwards, made my wife and I feel really good about this generation, because I’m like, ‘oh, they’ve accomplished a thing.’ This little punk rock scene was kind of made of everything, and everybody was easy. And I was pretty proud of them. But other than that, I don’t know what’s going on. Can’t wait to get home to my wife and dog.
You released an EP in 2024. Are you guys working on anything else new?
Rubio: Slowly but surely.
Butch: We have 10 songs tracked, and we’re just trying to- there’s so many people in this band. It’s really hard to organize and get together.
Brian: It’s like herding cats.
Butch: Old cats. Grumpy cats. But yes, we’re trying to finish up a song for a new single, but we have enough songs for a new album. We’re pretty excited about it. We think we’re going to be pretty happy with it. Remains to be seen if anybody else, you know, likes it.
What does success look like to y’all now?
Butch: Good shows.
Chris: Happiness.
Brian: Getting to break away from what we do day in, day out and come do shows like this, that’s also kind of a reminder that the things we did so many years ago still matter to people. We went to Europe in 2024 for the first time, and at least three times of the five or six shows we played, I heard from multiple people, ‘I’ve been listening to you since the ’90s. You’re a bucket list band. We never thought we’d see you. And then here you are.’
Butch: Hearing that from a handful of people was fucking awesome. We exist. We exist [chant].
Brian: To me, I think that’s a success, being able to get out and do this and be reminded that we did make an impact on certain people along the way.
Do you think your answers would have been different 30 years ago? If I asked the same question then?
All: Yes, absolutely.
In what way?
Rubio: In a way that I wish we could have done it full time and it have been our only job. And not having to have a regular 9-5 job. That would have been success right there. To be able to support yourself from playing music.
Butch: It was tough. It was scary. Our families didn’t have a lot of resources. So, if I didn’t have a job and I lost the apartment and if it didn’t work out, then what? Now I know, and I tell every young person who’s doing a thing, fuck it if everything falls apart. Fuck it if everything burns down, get more. Because it’s fine and it doesn’t matter. We were successful anyway. We never would have seen the whole country.
Rubio: I would have never traveled as much as we did if it hadn’t been for the van.
Butch: Our roadie, his first time out of Texas was on one of our tours. We stopped so he could jump over the fucking state line. All in all, it’s been great. It would have been great to live off of it. But we didn’t. But we didn’t stop playing. We’re still into it.
Brian: Now there’s no pressure. We get together more now than we ever have in the last twenty-something years. We get together because we like to get together. We get together because we like making new music together and there’s zero pressure, other than maybe finally finishing this record, there’s no pressure from any kind of anything. We just get to get together and hang out and make music and come do shows like this, which are fun because there’s no pressure.
Is that what you think keeps it going still?
Brian: That and the fact that I don’t know, for me personally, I just don’t know what else to do. I get bored. If we don’t play for like a month or two, I’m texting these guys, ‘What’s happening this weekend? Are we ever playing again?’ Because we’ve done it for so long.