Averkiou—pronounced ave-er-queue—are five dudes from Gainesville, Florida, playing toe-tapping steamroller stoner jams who have just released one of the best albums of the year, Throwing Sparks. Before you start saying that's a stupid name you can't spell or pronounce so fuck them, they named the band after Gene and Nicole Averkiou, a brother-sister duo who are very much tight as shit, and naming your band after tight siblings who you're friends with is gold genius. I talked with bass player Chad Darby because he's one of my favorite people and hands down the best player of bass and guitar around (sorry everyone else).
Band portrait by guitarist Jay Shuster.
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Chad Darby: Fuck Szechuan Panda.Got a gnar'd stomach, huh?
You have no idea, pissing venom out of my ass.Sounds…venom-ass. Get it?
I'm pretty sure it was the bacon shrimp roll.So you guys have a show tonight?
Yeah, we're playing a Mountain Dew-sponsored show with Matt + Kim and the Cool Kids. Some cash and a case of beer is tight.That's an odd show.
Yeah, I'm into it. I'd never heard either band till yesterday. I watched a pretty funny Matt + Kim video last night. They look like they can't stop smiling.So you've got Chinese food sickness, [singer and guitarist] Matt's hung-over and fell off his bike five times last night (in probably a five-block radius) and you've got a show tonight. How are the rest of the guys holding up?
David's finishing up school right now and Jay just got fired.Where'd he get fired from?
He was pissing at work with the door open at American Apparel, so his boss canned him.Perfect. Who are your favorite bands in Gainesville right now?
Chris Wollard and The Ship Thieves's new record is retarded good. It's Chris and George from Hot Water Music, and Addison from Quit.Oh shit! Is there any acid in Gainesville?
Yeah. There was a bunch around a few months ago. There are a few kids around town that eat tons of acid and make really cool tape loop stuff.Yeah, seems like there's some weird analog tape loop scene happening there. I remember shrooms used to be all the rage in G'ville but the locals started salting the fields because all of the hippies were prowling the farms every morning like zombies in the mist.
Whoa! Yeah, I worked with this dude that ate mushrooms everyday. He would come into work and just be trippin' balls. But he was one of those "functioning" stoner kids. I'd be looking for a goblin in my underpants, couldn't find the puppy, you know?
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Yeah. Two homes! Three actually! Shit. We recorded a bunch of stuff in 2006 at the ghetto pool house. Then when we all moved into Averkiou Manor, we tracked a lot there as well but we were evicted as we were trying to finish the album so we were simultaneously moving all of our possessions out of this huge two story house and tracking guitars and vocals. That's when John Harris [our sound engineer] came in because we literally had a couple days to be out of the house when the eviction notice was served.Sounds like a reality TV show.
It was fucking chaos. We would be recording vocals, and you'd hear shit falling down the stairs like a couch getting dropped, doors slamming.Well, the record is incredible and you can't hear the chaos behind the recording session. All of the tracks flow nicely one after another and it's so poppy, happy and catchy.
The new songs are a little different, just not so happy, more "South Wall.""The South Wall" is my favorite.
That was the last song we wrote. It wasn't even going to be on the record, I had to force Jay to play the drums for that song. There was so much arguing over it and then Jay quit but came back to play guitar and then revived the song.Your sound, it's not new, but it sounds totally different and better than anything else around right now. It's the perfect mix of shoegaze, super heavy stoner guitar, and pop. Polished pop. Torche have a stoner-pop sound and you have a pop-stoner sound.
You know, I can't remember where it came from, but someone called Averkiou "a teddy bear with fangs." I like that, maybe we came up with it.
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It's about someone having sex with this girl in the room next to her grandfather from Holland. [The grandfather] hated this guy and bitched him out so he got back at that mean old man from Holland by nailing his granddaughter right next to him.The grandfather was in the same room??
Possibly. How sick ya wanna git?Very.
I'm verrry naughty.Um, okaaayy….
OK. I gotta go.All right, have a good show tonight. Hope you stop shitting soon.
Oh dude, I cannot wait. I'm in pain.Work it out.Have a listen to "The South Wall" on us.JOHN MCSWAIN