Name: The Sea Devils

Genre: Instro Surf

Geographical Area: Brooklyn/Queens NYC

Interview by email with Mike Sandlin on 3/26/08

1. What is the current line-up of your band?

Todd Martin on drums, Andrew Wendel on guitar, Martin Tune on bass, Mike Sandlin guitar. Rick Wakeman on keyboards. Just kidding.


2. How and when did you get started with your band?

The band began in 1998 or so as a vocal cover band, doing garage and punk tunes. Then I'm told the singer became a God-complexed demagogue, so the rest of the band decided to quit and then reform sans singer as an instrumental combo. The four-square all-instrumental band took shape in summer 1999 when I ran into Andrew Wendel at the Brooklyn Ale House; he asked me to join the group as rhythm guitarist and the all-important
fourth jerk. We all hated one another immediately, so I knew I was in the right place. We played our first gig at a bohemian wedding in 1999 pre-Billyburg Williamsburg playing with the Belmont Playboys and White Collar Crime. 
 

3. What bands or music have influenced you most?

Wendel and I have a lot of the same old-school influences: everything from the Feelies, Fleshtones, Television, Velvet Underground, to Link Wray, Ventures, Beatles, Johnny Thunders, Dick Dale, Jimmy Bryant, Glen Campbell, etc. I'm from Houston, so naturally I was conditioned to love country music and urban blues. Although I came of age during Reagan, I was never into hardcore or metal much. Our bassist Martin has the most advanced musical mind in the group and listens to stuff like Zappa and Pat Metheny; he
brings to the table a technical sophistication that props up belly-scratching musical primates like Wendel and me.   


4. What is the breakdown of cover vs. original material in your live shows and/or recordings?

At this point, about a third of our set is original material. We've got more originals in the works and hope to up that percentage considerably in the coming months. Our current set list still contains a couple of covers that were on our very first set list in 1999. Pathetic, eh?
 

5. What recording have you done?
 

Well,we've done a fair amount of live and studio recordings, none of which we could rightly say are anything beyond demo quality at this point. We hope to bang out an EP this summer sometime. But we've just been plagued by personnel problems over the last few
years and it's rare we can get a full band into the recording studio at any given time.
 

6. What kind of gear do you use?

Cheap, rugged, reliable. I've used the same $400 Fender Hot Rod DeVille and $550 G&L S-500 gold-sparkle strat since 2000. Wendel, on the other hand, is a walking vintage guitar shop: he's got pristine Gretsches, Mosrites, Gibsons, Teles, you name it. I think he usually plays either a Gretsch hollow body or a homemade Tele through a Fender Blues Jr. or Vibrolux. Depends on what week it is.  Martin has a fancy-pants Fender bass of some sort. Todd our drummer is so new to the band that I'm not even sure what brand of drums he plays. All I know is they're sparkly, jazzy, and they fit in your pocket.
 

7. What is your band’s favorite food/beverage?
 

Fine Dining. White Oak 2001 Russian River Chardonnay, Makers Mark bourbon, sauteed calf's liver, Chilean Sea Bass, rabbit, pheasant. We don't romanticize diner food and PBR. Personally, I invest in cheap musical equipment so I don't have to eat at Denny's on the road.
 

Well, back when we were a really sloppy inconsistent fledgling band, paid gigs seemed to come out of the woodwork in NYC, and we had a nice consistent neighborhood following. As we've gotten better, getting gigs in NYC has become harder. Nowadays you just email venues with your MySpace credentials and hope for the best. And of course we're asked to play Unsteady Freddie's Surf Rock shindigs every so often and those are always a blast. We used to play a lot of private parties and we do corporate events and weddings now and again--usually by word of mouth.
 

9. What are the difficulties you find playing your kind of music in your area?
 

Well, our neck of the woods is very trend-conscious, and surf/garage music hasn't been the sound du jour in Brooklyn/NYC since the late-90s. The neighborhood scene has changed drastically since we formed in 1999: Whiny beard bands and rich-kid mumblecore folk rock
rules Brooklyn these days, like some sort of fake neo-hippie Laurel Canyon redux or something.
 
 

10. What positive attributes does your band have that sets you apart from other bands (of any genre)?

We play mis ake-free at cartoon-fast tempos; anything slower than 280 bpm and we start messing up.
 

11. What have you found to be the single most effective promotional tool you’ve used to further your band’s musical path?

Honestly? For four years having a connected-up socialite girlfriend who guilted her many well-heeled friends into repeatedly seeing her boyfriend's band play. When she left, it was back to ineffective flyering and annoying MySpace-bulletin spamming.
 

12. What’s the most interesting performance experience you’ve had?

When the Sea Devils played at a junior high graduation ceremony in the South Bronx in 2001. No kidding.

 

13. What do you hope to get out of being a NESMA member?

Well, we've already gotten temporary shelter and free car repair from being a member of NESMA. What else could we ask for? Dental insurance and a modest pension, perhaps.