NEW YORK - PIERCED ARROWS

If you liked Dead Moon then you’ll probably like Pierced Arrows. If you don’t then you probably won’t, since Toody and Fred Cole are two-thirds of both bands. Writing about seeing them is making me feel like a kid running into the house to babble excitedly at his mom while she is busy, like "Mom! Mom! Fred and Toody from Dead Moon formed a new band called Pierced Arrows! And they played at Mercury Lounge and the door guy let me in for free! And I found ten dollars and a lot of my old friends that I hadn’t seen recently were there! And Fred and Toody were as nice as you would want them to be! Mom! Mom! Mo-om! Mom? Are you listening to me?” The Coles and drummer Kelly Halliburton let me interrupt them while on tour to ask them some questions about what they’re up to. Before we got started Fred inserted his hearing aid.

Vice: Dead Moon broke up in fall 2006. I thought you were done with touring and then you started this new thing.
Fred: Toody and I got bored. At first we were going to maybe do country and then we thought it would last a month before we got sick of it.
Kelly: We kinda tried that at first.
Fred: "Caroline” and that kinda stuff was the vein of country we were thinking of going into but we just want to stay in rock. We met Kelly over in Germany two or three years before then. I’d actually played with his dad in a band in 1972.
Kelly: So the first time we met was when I was two or three years old in the ’70s.
Fred: We ran into him backstage at a festival in Austin and he mentioned that he was playing drums for a band in Germany for a while. I got home and I thought about putting Pierced Arrows together and I remembered that Jerry Halliburton’s kid Kelly plays drums. I knew he was a bass player in all these different punk bands and Toody said "Fred you’re dreaming. He’s a bassist for hardcore punk bands.” I said that I could have sworn that he had said he was a drummer. Toody said, "Well, whatever.” And he’s renting a house from Stan who’s the bass player from Kingbee, which I used to be in. I got the number and I called him and I said, "Was I dreamin’ or did you say you played drums at one point?” And he said, "Wellll I play drums.” I said, "Are you game for coming over and jamming with me and Toody?” and he went, "You mean like rock and roll or what?” And I went, "I don’t know just whatever we come up with.” He goes, "Well it’s been about eight years since I played so I’ll give it a try. I don’t have drums.” I said we got ’em at the store. We just fucked around a bit but we liked the chemistry. He was just floppin’ through stuff and saying that he couldn’t remember things. So he went home with a snare drum and some other stuff and said, "I’m gonna go home and practice and let’s do this again.” And we did it again and he just got better each time we did it. About the third or fourth time we did it I said, "Let’s start workin’ on this thing and we’ll get some gigs.” I’m not one to waste a lot of time practicing. I like to get something on stage in a hurry and see if it flies.
Kelly: That’s an understatement!
Fred: We got 30 minutes of material together, went out and played our first gig on the 20th anniversary of Mt. Saint Helen’s blowing its top and it was great. We’ve been doing it ever since.

Why Pierced Arrows and not just continue with Dead Moon?
Toody: It was a time in our life when we needed something new and refreshing. Kinda to get back to the way it was when it started. I think everybody needs that. It’s awesome to be nervous about what you’re doing and incredibly excited about it. Kelly gives us a whole new energy. It just got to a point where Andrew wasn’t able to tour anymore and that’s what we love. We love meeting new people, new places, new faces. It’s a big part of who we are and what we do.

I heard that you guys were building a shopping center.
Oh, we already did that, baby! It’s done!

I’m behind the times.
Fred took almost six years touring with Dead Moon to build this big Western looking place in Clackamas. We’re using the main building for ourselves, mainly for storage and the rest we’re leasing out to a convenience store, a little deli, and office space. Yeah, it’s still there.

You did all the construction yourselves?
Hell yeah. We had someone put in the parking lot, the underground, the basic slab. Everything from there, we built. Fred did 90 percent of it.

How do you guys know how to do so much?
Like Kelly says in the DVD, Fred’s the ultimate Renaissance man. He wants to know how to do a little bit of everything and he learned a lot of stuff along the way. He’s got a great logical mind. One of the things he wanted to do with his life was build something grandiose and just the way he envisioned it, and he got it.

How old are Fred and Toody?
Kelly: Fred’s 60. Toody’s going to be 60 in December.

How come they get so much done?
Rock and roll keeps you young.

What’s it like traveling around with them?
I’ll be diplomatic here. It’s interesting. It’s like any tour. Tour’s rough. I’ve been on tour with tons of bands for twenty years and no matter how you cut it, tour fucking sucks. People who tour a lot are designed to be on tour. When I’m at home all I want to do is be on the road. When I’m on the road all I want is to be on tour. When I’m on tour all I want to do is be at home. It’s extremes of discomfort. Fred and Toody are like anybody else that I’ve been on tour with. They’re other entities that you’re sharing this misery with. But it’s great. You spend 23 hours of your day in extreme discomfort for one hour of rapture.

I thought it was really sweet to see you all hug after the show.
We liked that too.

NICK GAZIN