The history of bands from Minneapolis playing rock and roll with a punk energy and perfect pop hooks already long and legendary and now you add Private Interests to it.
Adopting a sound akin to British power poppers like Graham Parker, The Jam and Bram Tchaikovsky, Private Interests ramp up the pace, dirty up the jangle and make music for cruising in that Z-28.
Featuring members of Mystery Date, Cozy, Thee Rugs and Southside Desire the band have released an EP and a split single with Chicago rockers MAMA. The songs are blessed with Gorham/Robertson guitar licks, sneering Kinks-vocals and a sugar rush of melody. This is Triple A power pop.
Give us a short version of Private Interest’s history.
We all live in Minneapolis. Johnny Eggerman and Cam Soojian met at a gig that their previous bands were playing and discussed starting a new band that would fuse their obsessions with early 80’s power-pop and the harmonized riffing of Thin Lizzy. Johnny asked me (Damien Tank) to try playing drums with them, and eventually Trevor E joined on bass. We released our first cassette EP on Forged Artifacts in October 2016, followed a few months later by a split 7″ with MAMA from Chicago.
Tell us about your hometown scene and how the band fit into the scene…
The Twin Cities have a really great rock music scene which is practically utopian in its variety of styles. We have great examples of hardcore stuff, noisy stuff, poppy stuff, rootsy stuff, spacey stuff, sloppy stuff, tight stuff, it’s great. Most in the scene are good at arranging bills with at least one act that is not just straight white males, which makes everything better (note: we are all straight white males). We try to play any fun show we get asked to do. My current favorite local bands are Cult of Percolation and Joust.
Tell us about your gear….
Johnny plays an Ovation Breadwinner guitar that’s fucking awesome, even though he snapped the neck in New York and had to get it fixed there while he toured Europe with Cozy on a cheap fake Strat. Cam switches between a 1985 Japanese Tele with Duncan Broadcaster pickups, and an early 00’s American Deluxe Strat modded to coil tap the bridge pickup for a single coil sound. His fave pedal is a Fulltone OCD. Trevor has a P-Bass with a wad of foam rubber jammed under the bridge like James Jamerson. I play Slingerland drums from the early 70’s, and the floor tom chronically falls down due to crappy leg clamps.
Describe your sound as a cocktail – what would it be called and what would be in it?
City on the Rocks – vodka, Passionfruit LaCroix sparkling water, juiced lime with the rind tossed in, four ice cubes.
If you could pick any time and place to travel back to for music, where would you go and what year would it be….?
Hamburg, 1960. I mean come on. The Savage Young Beatles at the Kaiserkeller, not to mention all the other beat bands no one heard of, and the washed-up American stars on the Euro club circuit.
If you could tour with any band/artist right now who would that be and why?
Dan Rico (his album Endless Love is fucking killer). He’s a really nice guy, he knows how to party, and he knows how to care for himself (AKA when not to party). Also his band is sooo good.
Give us your 10 song playlist for the tour van/bus/plane?
“Language School” by The Tours
“Cowboy Song” by Thin Lizzy
“Saturday Night (is the End of the World)” by Firestarter
“Private Joy/Ronnie Talk to Russia” by Prince
“Bespolezen” by Grazhdanskaya Oborona
“Walking out on Love” by The Breakaways
“Handa Wanda” by Bo Dollis and Wild Magnolias
“Keep Yourself Alive” by Queen
“Don’t Ring Me Up” by Protex
“Small Town” by John Mellencamp
Give us two essential books to read.
The Looking Glass War by John LeCarre (nihilistic and incompetent cold war spycraft)
Up and Down With The Rolling Stones by Tony Sanchez (biography of the early Stones as told by the guy who got drugs for them on the road)
When you’re not playing and have some time off, where could we find you…
Johnny is a Union man, working across the midwest for the Millwrights Guild as a welder and crane rigger/signaler. His free time is immediately eaten by his many other bands (Cozy, Real Numbers, Mystery Date, Беломорканал). Cam will be in his apartment writing riffs and recording demos with his four-track and an electric drum kit. Trevor and I each have two sons and one wife. If we have free time, we usually stand around in Trevor’s backyard to talk about music and drink beer.
What’s up for the rest of 2017?
Hopefully getting Johnny back from his jobsite in Kansas so we can resume playing rock concerts! We had high hopes to book a spring tour, which then became maybe a fall tour, which is now optimistically going to be a winter tour. We’ll see. We also have a bunch more songs to record and release.
