14 Questions for The Bottom Dwellers

Subject: Re: Bottom Dwellers

Hey Bob,

Below are our answers to your questions...

Ivan Sohrakoff

Bottom Dwellers

www.bottomdwellersmusic.com

Who are you?

Four young boys who live on I-5 that sing about trucks, drinking and George-fucking-Bush.

Where are from? (originally/now)

Mark is a native Woodland American, and remains so.

Adam is a native San Somethingerotherian, but escaped the city bustle for a twangier country lifestyle.

Chris is a native South Bay boy who jogged all the way to Woodland and stayed there.

Ivan is a native Humboldt-Countian (Fortunan) who left for school and never came back.

We all live within a 4 or 5 block radius of each other in Woodland, California. It's better coverage than the WPD and WFD are able to provide combined. We personally take pride in the level of service, and quality of swampy tonk we are able to provide to our town, even if they don't know they want it yet.

What do you do?

We bring honky tonk to where honky tonk is needed. We live, breath and eat pickin', strummin' and stickin'. We drink lots of high quality beer.

Why do you do what you do?

We love to play music, and probably because of our varied musical backgrounds, landed on the "twang" genre, with some swamp thrown in. However, most contemporary "country music" doesn't sound very good, probably because of commercialism, confusion and bad taste. We're trying to do our part to take country music back from its ugly mainstream state.

What are you working on?

We are working on a new album, mostly writing and working out songs at this point. We made our first album by making songs while recording for the record, but this next one will be just about the opposite. We already perform many of the songs which will appear on the next record, so they'll be seasoned a bit.

What’s next?

LA, Seattle, Winters, the usual. We're opening for the Derailers at the Palms Playhouse in Winters, California to kick off our tour de Humboldt. After Humboldt, we're going to focus on our new recording and get that completed. We've done the Indian Casino circuit, the dive bar circuit, and we're planning on doing some festivals next summer.

When will you be here? With who?

We'll be in McKinleyville on Friday, August 25th at Six Rivers Brewery and on Saturday, August 26th at Blue Lake Casino. We'll be cramming as much blistering twang into the sets as we can muster. Be ready to dance, and wear your shit-kickers. We'll be the only band both nights.

Who's that?

Where? Did you see someone? It's just you and me, right?

MySpace? Website?

http://www.myspace.com/thebottomdwellers

http://www.bottomdwellersmusic.com

Bonus question round:

What's up with all that twang?

We feel that most modern "country" music is lacking twang, and that is a bad thang, mang.

Did your Humboldt upbringing have any influence on the Bottom Dwellers?

Maybe. I (Ivan) really detested country music while growing up in Fortuna, and in fact, was a bit infamous for my opinions on the subject. I wrote articles for the Fortuna High paper voicing my opinion on the awful commercial country music played during on-campus lunch. I later discovered that country music doesn't have to sound bad. Thanks to musicians such as Wayne Hancock, Neil Young, Junior Brown, Buck Owens & Willie Nelson, I gained an appreciation for twang.

How's the propane-fueled van working out?

The propane part is fabulous. It takes a little more effort, but it feels good to make sacrifices for the environment. Other things like the broken door, rear air conditioner, and wonky seat belts are just like any other band has to put up with.

Car Talk?

It's a fact. A song from our debut album called "Company Truck" was featured on an episode of Car Talk. We submitted it, and they played it. I guess people who like cars like the Bottom Dwellers.

Anything else you want to add?

Thanks for the interview. We appreciate the support. We'll be selling our debut CD "Twang Americana" at our shows, and we'll be featuring a great pedal steel player (Dave Zirbel) those nights as well. Dave is from Sebastopol and regularly plays with Johnny Dilks, The Mother Truckers, and just finished recording some steel tracks on (believe it or not) Sammy Hagar's new record. We decided we needed some star power to take on HumCo.