Zlam Dunk Interview: SXSW 2010

Zlam Dunk! It's a name that demands attention, both with the force of the action implied and it's misspelled goofiness. It's what you get when you take a group of college kids from central Texas, mix with big guitars, electro-pop keys and screaming vocals, small-town kids looking to start a big-city fire. This ebullient band of young twenty-something guys kicked out an EP, 'We Are All Dead,' in 2009 and started 2010 on the road, touring any place without a Texas zip code. Before kicking off their Zlam Dunk SXSW experience, guitar player Brett Thorne took a quick minute to talk about the letters "S" and "Z," influences he hates and Josh Brolin.

How did you form the band?

Well, we all go to Texas State in San Marcos, which is about thirty miles south of Austin and we had all been friends. I had met a few of the guys through a church group, a couple of them I met through friends of friends. Me and Taylor [Hughes], the bass player, we had talked about starting a band, like a dance-y band and then one day we all decided to take our instruments down to our friend's dorm room and set up. At the time, there were eight of us in the room and we decided, "OK, everyone who's in the room right now is in the band," and so it started from there.

What are your influences?

Like I said, there were eight people in the room when we first started and we've trimmed it down to five now, but with that many people, it's going to be very diverse. I guess one band we can all agree on is awesome is Me Without You, I'm actually listening to right now. Taylor loves hip-hop and remixes, [keys player] Ross [Bennet], I would say Portugal, the Man is one of his favorite bands. [Drummer] Daniel [Vega], he loves Manchester Orchestra. Charlie [Day], he's really into hardcore, which definitely influenced the sound a lot, considering he's the vocalist.

How would you describe your sound?

That first time we all jammed together, we were all trying to figure out what we were doing, why it all sounded so strange and we kind of ended up with dance punk, which is the description we give people. It's aggressive music that I think people can dance to, you can cut a rug to it and hopefully you are yelling along with us at the shows. It's kind of chaotic, we've had a lot of people tell us that we sound like different things; we heard everything from Lostprophets, which I think is crap, to U2 to the Rapture. The U2 comparison came because I use a lot of delay in my guitar riffs. Lostprophets, I don't know, I don't know if that person was trying to piss us off or what, but I don't know where that came from.

How did you come up with your name?

That also hearkens back to that first epic jam session in the dorm room. We were saying, "It's dance-y, it sounds like punk," and as I remember it, our drummer Daniel stood up behind his kit and said, "It sounds like dance punk, it's dunk! We should be "Dunk"!" And then somebody else was like, "We should be "Slam Dunk"!" But then Daniel was like, "No, the letter "S gets way too much attention, we should be "Zlam Dunk"!" And the rest is history, as they say.

Your MySpace page says you sound like Josh Brolin, your blog is called Josh Brolin's Mouth -- what's with Josh Brolin?

What is with Josh Brolin, why is he so awesome? He is a great actor. You know that movie 'Thrashin''? He is in that movie and he plays a thrashing skateboarder and we are very into that movie.

Do you have any festival survival tips?

Check the web. Google "free SXSW shows," you can always find some really great bands without having to break the bank because there are always great parties going on. And if you're lucky, you'll show up at a show where there is free food and, for the older kids, some free cocktails.

What's your biggest vice?

Probably our song called 'Vice.' But if you want a literal vice, I'm kind of addicted to 'Lost' right now, it kind of takes up a lot [of time]. I don't know what it is, it's something about Jack, he's a cutie pie. I definitely watch too much 'Lost' and it affects my work.

You put out an EP in 2009. What are your plans for future records?

Full lengths. I'm not sure, I guess we're kind of waiting to see in a couple weeks how South By goes, see if anybody wants to throw a whole lot of money at us, we'll go from there. As far as future recordings, we just got back today from being mastered, three new songs which we'll be handing out to press people at SXSW, like a sampler teaser, and we'll definitely use those songs.

What are your best tour memories?

We were in Chicago for New Year's, that was pretty wild. That was halfway awesome and halfway not the best thing that has ever happened to me. New York, I think would be my favorite because the sandwiches there and the cheesecake were so good. I had this sandwich called the Woody Allen at Carnegie Deli. Oh, my goodness, I kid you not, it was seven inches tall, about half-an-inch on the bottom and half-an-inch on top was bread and everything in the center was just meat, and it was amazing.

Beatles or Rolling Stones?

I don't know how everyone else in the band would answer, Daniel and I would definitely say Beatles, I think Charlie would say kill them all, but, yeah, definitely the Beatles. They're the second best band to ever come out of the UK, behind Oasis. Just kidding.

Carl Atiya Swanson is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.