Interview

Tobey Torres is the voice behind Snake River Conspiracy, a band that redefines the word "hard" while producing some of the catchiest music around. Her collaborator, Jason, formed SRC after ditching the uber-bland Third Eye Blind to do something quite a bit edgier. Since then, they've produced a killer album, Sonic Jihad, and one of the most memorable singles of recent years, "Vulcan", which can best be described as the sonic equivalent of swallowing razor blades. Peter Carbonaro had a chance to speak with Tobey recently about the band and its music.

Hi Tobey! How are you?

Fine, I'm shopping!

Shopping? What are you buying?

Um, I'm buying my new love toy a belt... what would you call him, my new fuck partner?? (laughs) I'm looking for a belt, because his pants are falling down! There's a really cool shirt here... (to love toy) hey, look at this shirt! It says "Sagittarian"!

You're in Seattle now, right?

Yep...

... But you're from California. Mammoth, California. What was it like growing up there?

It's beautiful there, but REALLY boring. I guess I can appreciate it now, because I'm older, but at the time, I just wanted out. I ended up moving to San Francisco, and then went to college in L.A. on a full volleyball scholarship.

How did you meet Jason?

We met through a friend of a friend. We were just talking about music -- he was an up-and-coming musician, not established like he is now! (laughs) -- and I told him I could sing. He had some music written and some lyrics, and the lyric sheet for "Love Song" was there, and we just put some vocals on top of it, and we knew we had something going.

(Editor's Note: "Vulcan" might just be one of the hardest songs on earth. Tobey screams "FUUUUUUUCK!!!!" in it with such conviction, and so often, that you'll feel like a slackjawed pansy everytime you use the F-word after hearing the song.)

You chose "Vulcan" as the first single from the album. Were you concerned that it wouldn't really get played because of the lyrics?

Oh, well, we KNEW that it wouldn't get played! But we didn't care we wanted to establish ourselves and our sound and establish an underground following. We didn't want to be known as a pop band. We wanted to be known for THAT song. That song has a lot of anger in it, and we wanted to be known for that.

Kind of like your "trademark".

Yeah! It's weird, you know, because radio stations actually started playing it anyway.

Over here, it seems that all you seem to hear is the Smiths cover ("How Soon Is Now?").

What's funny is that with "Vulcan", they play the edited version. You can edit it, but it loses everything. I'd rather they play the unedited version, because the whole song IS the cussing, you know?

Listening to the album, a lot of the songs are actually different from that one. Did you and Jason try to strive for that diversity?

It just kind of happened that way. We knew that we wanted the record to have a whole lot of different vibes and travel all over the place. There's nothing worse than having a record that has every song sounding exactly the same. We wanted to have our softer, ballad-y songs in there, mixed with our harder stuff. But even our softer stuff is kind of deceptive. It's sounds all sweet, but when you actually listen to it, it's kind of fucked up! "You And Your Friend" is a perfect example.

That's one of the poppiest sounding songs on the album, but the lyrics are kind of disturbing.

Exactly! (Laughs)

Now, when you and Jason are in the studio, there are a lot of electronics involved. Do you find that it's difficult make that translate well in a live setting?

Oh, yes, it WAS a problem, actually, because a lot of the songs were written on computers. We had to translate a lot of stuff and figure out the guitar part for it. Jason does a lot of stuff in the studio. He plays every instrument, and then we might get other musicians to play those parts for the record.

A lot of people have yet to hear of you, but you toured a lot in the past year.

Oh yeah, we played Limelight in New York recently, and opened up for Filter earlier this year.

(Editor's Note: We were lucky to get out of that Filter show alive. Flying bodies, absolute chaos, hell on earth... you get the idea.)

That Filter show was an... er... um... interesting show...

(Laughs) Yeah, well, so was ours!

So what's next for Snake River Conspiracy?

Well, we're touring now, so we're going to take a break, then head back into the studio.

Tobey, thanks for your time. You've been wonderful.

You're welcome!

Snake River Conspiracy's Sonic Jihad (Reprise) is out now.