Experimental pop band Sool stopped by our studios to chat all about their music in advance of a show at Stage 33! DJ Erin spoke to them about their life in music.

Erin: You are listening to WWOL 91.5 FM, Bellows Falls Erin here. We are coming to you live from our fantastic studios here in the heart of Bellows Falls, Vt.

Kevin: All right.

Live in the studio we have the band “Sool”. Hey, guys. Thanks for coming in. (band applauds)

Pete W: Yeah. Now where’s the applause?

Thanks for having us.

Erin: There may be hecklers so I don’t know. Let’s see.

No, hopefully thanks for having us. By the way.

Fun to be here. Yeah, we love this town.

Definitely thanks for visiting our little hamlet.

Oh, heck yeah, we love it.

Erin: Well, let’s see. Let’s start off with introducing the band. So, in any order, maybe just say hi, who you are and what you play in the band.

Kevin: Right. I’m Kevin. I play the bass.

Ken: I’m Ken playing the drums.

Pete: This is Pete talking. I play guitar.

Neil: And I’m Neil. I also play guitar.

Kevin: And we sing.

Pete: And we all sing. We all sing most part.

Erin: Perfect. Perfect. All right, so first question that we’ve all and you’ve probably been asked this before, but what’s the meaning of Sooll? We have a hunch that it’s something about being out of luck, but it rhymes with so many things.

Neil: So with that. In fact, I only learned of that acronym later. That’s right. About 15 years ago, I saw somebody write that on a copier that wasn’t working at work. It said S.O.O.L. with the dots in between. I’m like, why did somebody write Sool on that copier here?

Pete W: That’s what my father thought it was.

But the origin. Do you want to? Who wants to explain that story?

Kevin: How to how to make it a short and sweet story?

Pete W: Well, it’s basically in the inception of our meeting each other. Pete was a fan of the band The Dead Monkeys that we were in, in high school, which is these three guys. It’s basically Sool without me.

But a friend of ours and a friend of his went to college at NYU together, and our friend brought our cassettes to college. His roommate became a fan. Brought it home to Pete. Pete became a fan of our band and Pete was a budding producer, and we were excited about maybe knowing somebody who could actually get us into a studio at some point other than o a four track in our basement.

Pete: I feel like I should jump in. Yeah, I got this. This cassette of the dead monkeys of you guys, this was in the mid 80s. Pre-Internet, obviously and  I couldn’t believe how much I loved the music, and it was so mysterious. I didn’t know who you guys were there. There was no visual, and I listened to the cassette. You know, it was maybe an album length thing and it was very Lo-FI, but the music was beautiful. The songs were great and it was funny too in places, but not too funny. And I became obsessed with it and it became it went into my regular rotation. I sort of treated it as like, well, let’s see, there’s The Rolling Stones album, there’s this like Beatles Revolver. Oh, there’s the Dead Monkeys, of course, and you know, Astral Weeks or something like that. It was just, it just became like this ultimate classic rock staple. 

Erin: That’s when you know you’ve made it…

Pete W: Yeah, yeah. But soon it became sort of problematic, though, because I was so intrigued and mystified. Who are these guys? I finally got in touch with them, and I was learning how to become a recording engineer and I had an internship at a recording studio. So I thought well, I’ll lure them into the recording studio and do a higher fidelity recording for them.  I got their contact information, and had a somewhat uncomfortable phone call with these strangers. It was Kevin and Neil. I think you guys were just

Neil: We were each on different extensions, you know, talking.

Pete: Sharing the line or something? All landline stuff. I was nervous because in my mind they were, you know. They were, you know, rock gods or whatever.

Neil: And we were nervous because he was a producer. (laughter)

Kevin: Yeah, you’re scared.

Pete: And we went, we’re all like, we’re all, like, 19 years old and we don’t know anything really but…So I had a chat with them about like, well, you know, we could do this. We could do it kind of on the cheap. You guys got to get up to Hartford, CT, where I was, we’ll spend a couple days on this. It’ll be great. You could, you know, we could record an EP. And I sort of..

Neil: So let’s just now reenact that part of the phone conversation here. So it’s like, oh, that sounds great Pete, all right, so we’ll talk to you later. You know, you got our number give us a call. 

Pete: You don’t sound nervous enough… Let’s  reenact the nervousness. 

Neil: Great Pete, we’ll give you a call back.

Pete W: Ohh OK great. No it’s really good to talk to you guys. Great to talk with you, Kevin and Neil, thanks for making the time to talk.

Neil: Great 

Pete W: OK. I guess we’ll be in touch. Yeah, alright, alright, Sool. Sool. So…

Kevin: So that’s the origin, he said Sool instead of cool.

Border Pete: Oh wow

Erin: Oh wow

Pete W: I was,  I mixed up “See you later”,  and “Cool”. I was trying to be kind of casual.  I was like, “Do I say, see you later,” or do I say, you know, “Cool”. And I just said Sool and I and I hung up 

Kevin: And so we were like, Sool? Did he say Sool? (laughter)

Erin: There should be a word for that, because everybody does that. There should be a term when you do that. 

Pete W: Yeah, you know, that’s it.

Neil: And that that was it. And he didn’t know for years that that’s how we referred to him because we had, we wouldn’t need him actually for another couple of years after that. All the time it was, “Like we got to get up there and record with Sool. So then, Ken, when did you move to Japan?

Ken: Well, I moved in ‘91, but I thanks to Pete. You know, he really encouraged us to continue with music. So that was after university.

Neil: Right. You moved to Boston?

Ken: And I moved to Boston. And you know, Pete and I played a couple of times and then I was playing with Berkeley students. And then I started teaching English at the Boston School of Modern Language and Roslindale, and then that got me to Japan because I wanted to teach. I’d been to Spain, so I thought I’ll go to Japan and people were saying, “t’s a good place to teach English”. And then I went there in ‘91 and that was kind of…we all kept in touch. But Kevin and Neil really followed through with Pete.

Neil: We moved to Boston, we ended up moving to the Boston area and then went to his studio, Zippa, in Boston.

Kevin: Yeah.

Ken: Hmm.

Neil: And we just showed up and recorded a bunch of tunes and realized like, well, it’s not really the Dead Monkeys because Ken’s not here. So let’s come up with another name.

Kevin: Sool…

Pete W: And then of course since I was involved, it became Sool.

Border Pete: Were you playing with them by then, I guess?

Pete W: We were in this lineup. In the studio, I think it was like let me try a little guitar part here and it was like it was nice. It was a really good like collaborative…

Kevin: Yeah.

Pete W: …vibe that nervousness was gone, and we had been pen pals for long enough before that, you know, we were legit friends.

Kevin: Yeah.

Neil: And you did record the Dead Monkeys in the mid ‘90s. Once at Zippa?

Pete W: Yeah, yeah. So it became much more comfortable and intuitive and just a fun collaborative thing.

Neil: Once we got drunk together, we were… (laughter)

Ken: Yeah.

Kevin: Right.

Pete W: I don’t remember that. 

Neil: Oh I do.

Erin: That must have been a good one. Alright.

Pete W: We’ve talked far too much. Sorry about that.

Erin: No,  you…you’ve answered like the first five questions. (laughter)

Neil: Oh.

Erin: That that wraps it up here….

Border Pete: That was enlightening.

Erin: To anyone listening out there, you are tuned into WOOL 91.5 FM Bellows Falls. Erin here with you, and we have the band Sool, live in the studio here with us right now doing a little catch up. A little talk, learning more about the band before they go on stage here at Stage 33 Live. Come on down. Show starts at 6:00 PM. It’s going to be a fun one. It’s going to be a loud one.

Border Pete: It’s going to be Rock and Roll. 

Kevin: Absolutely

Erin: So how many releases would you say? What do you want to call them? Albums, releases, records? What are the kids calling it these days?

Pete W: We have we have three full…I would say full length albums, and then the Dead Monkeys has one official, full length album, 

Neil: …like digital pressing of an album…

Pete W: …but all the rest of the stuff is old cassette stuff that we haven’t really mastered or done anything with but.

Kevin: And then a couple of EP too 

Neil: EP’s as Sool..has two EP’s. 

Pete W: Yeah, we did a collaboration with the author J.R. Lennon maybe 10 years ago or something. We did an EP with him where he..he kind of joined us and co-wrote songs and recorded together.

Erin: All right, well, OK. Let’s get a get a tune on from you guys and play a track. This is your big hit, “Autobahn”.

Neil: Awesome.

{song plays}

Erin: That’s music from Seoul, with “Autobahn” there, and we were talking a little bit while the track was playing and everybody in the band trades off on vocals, right? Everybody sings?

Ken: No, no, I don’t sing. No. So I’m just on the drums, a lot of freedom there.

Kevin: The drummer doesn’t sing.

Neil: We used to put him to work back in the early Dead Monkeys days but but.

Ken: Yeah, California Dreaming.

Neil: We we would have him, but we had a really bad mic that was problematic and it kind of got in the way of..monitors

Ken: Steve Forbert. Yeah. So yeah, they’re good experiences generally, but it’s something, you know to not sing. And I could enjoy what they’re doing. I look around and so…

Erin: Yeah. And how’s your Japanese? Are you now like, fluent in Japanese?

Ken: It’s OK, it’s my own style so. (laughter)

Neil: Say something in Japanese, Ken.

Ken: {speak a phrase in Japanese}

Erin: That sounds like Japanese.

Ken: I just said this place is great, so thank you very much.

Erin: Very cool, very cool and singing bass players aren’t always…they’re not the most common thing, like bass players who play, and who sing lead vocals.

Kevin: Yeah, I guess. My favorite bass players all sing, so there was no option and I have to thank Neil for teaching me how to play bass, so.

Neil: You know.

Kevin: Yeah, I I wouldn’t be playing in a band today if he didn’t. He was  patient.

Ken: Neil was on bass to begin with.

Neil: Originally I did play based in the junior high days. Yeah, yeah.

Erin: So what brings you to Vermont? Is it our beer, our cheese, our syrup, our fine agricultural products or what?

Ken: Wonderful people

Pete W: It’s just the syrup.

Kevin: It’s all the all the above.

Erin: Good answer, good answer.

Kevin: And of course, Pete, Pete is our Vermont gateway into Vermont.

Perte W: I would say I have some roots here. I ran Verdant Studio for 18 years and just down the road in Athens where some of this has been recorded. I recently relocated back to Boston, but. During my time here we we played in various configurations we played at like PK’s and yeah..

Border Pete: The Block Party?

Pete W: Yeah. Right. We played the Block Party. A bunch of Block Parties.

Border Pete: Yeah, but now I’m pretty sure I saw you in here.

Erin: But maybe the Weisstronauts?

Pete W: Ohh yeah, so it gets confusing because I yeah, I have another band called the Weisstronauts and Kevins in that and you’re sort of in it sometimes.

Neil: Yeah. When Kevin can’t make it, sometimes I’ll fill in.

Pete W: Yeah. So there’s some, some overlap, but yeah, that was that was a while ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Border Pete: Oh my, I remember. You played “Turpentine”, and I brought my son who was very young at the time. And he he was like I love that song.

Pete W: Cool.

Border Pete: I bought the album that you played. Now he’s 17. I tried to get him to come today and of course he’s like, “that’s little kid music”. (laughter)

But you get you get broadcast on the air every once in a while during my show, because I played Turpentine or something. So I like the Weisstronauts, I like Sool.

Pete W: Alright, thank you. That’s awesome.

Neil: That’s awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I love it. Nice. 

Kevin: Are we gonna do that tonight?

Pete W: Yeah, I think that’s on the list for sure.

Neil: Yeah, we’re doing that. You wrote that one way back. It’s one of the first Sool songs, actually.

Pete W: That’s an old one.

Erin: So I understand you guys are all busy in your own way doing things, but does anybody want to talk about what they’re working on? In addition to Sool?

Kevin: I’m trying to grow grass and a little patch in my backyard. That’s one of the things.

Erin: Let me know how that works out.

Kevin: Yeah. 

Pete W: Is that legal in your state?

Kevin: Yeah, just like lawn grass, Pete. Ohh, but it is legal. And I could if I wanted.

Pete W: Lawns are legal. I’m going to start with that kind of grass and. See how I do.

Erin: Or keep it Blue.

Kevin: Yeah. As far as other projects, I’m not really, other than just honing my own songwriting for my own ears in the basement. 

Erin: Nice.

Pete W: And the Agnes Moorehead stuff you do. Fantastic. 

Kevin: Yeah, I do. That’s a kind of Internet sharing file stuff project. We actually did a Weisstronauts album that way, and Pete made a, made magic happen by making it sound good, because usually if you’re not in a room together, it’s tough to sound like a cohesive band. But during the pandemic we couldn’t really get together like the other record.

Erin: The Internet is an amazing thing, but that’s still kind of a tough one, latency and all.

Kevin: Yeah. Well, no, we didn’t play it live. We all just literally played to clicks and and lined it up. Is that OK to say?

Erin: And Pete put it together?

Kevin: That Pete. Yes. OK, yeah. 

Pete W: Don’t tell them, it’s all lies. No, it’s it’s actually magic.  (laughter)

Erin: Pete looked very confused for a second there. OK, so that’s very cool. Thanks so much. OK.

Ken: Yeah. Well, for me on this trip, well, I live in Japan. And and there I play with different bands. And the Texacajuns a mix of like Texas Blues and Louisiana Cajun music. We have an accordion player, so that makes a difference having that accordion. It’s a little distinct, but coming back there’s another project in Millbrook, NY friend has a group or organization Millbrook Session Players and they do different original music and try to market it, it’s. But it’s great to be involved, to have something to look forward to and work on throughout the year and come back during the summers so…

Erin: Absolutely good. Nice.

Neil: Yeah, we’re we’re trying to keep, you know…We’ve been talking this week just about generating more fresh music and get back to get a new project together for Sool. We have one new song that we’re playing on this tour. And we have a variety of other things. Pete’s got a song about the Dewey Decimal System we want to work out. Is that recorded?

Erin: Wow.

Ken: We don’t want to let that out.

Erin: That’s deep.

Pete W: Yeah, that was like, 20 years ago. I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be funny to have a song about the Dewey Decimal System? And then time just went on, and a couple weeks ago, I was like, “Well, I think it’s time to write that song about the Dewey Decimal System”. It’s catchy, but yeah, we’re not going to do it tonight. It’s not quite ready. For yeah, publishing.

Erin: The world is not ready. So Pete, you know you’re doing a lot of remastering work and production work stuff.

Pete W: Yeah, yeah, mastering, mixing and production. Yeah. During the pandemic, I was doing a ton of remastering. You know how it during the pandemic we were all isolated and it was like vinyl records became very popular again. People were sort of hunkering down and like, really enjoying that process of listening to music that way. So a lot of the labels were scrambling to shine up older recordings and get them re-released and bolstered. 

Kevin: Yeah, bolster them.

Pete W: Bolster them, as it were.

Erin: Yeah, my son is also a radio DJ, and we had a conversation about the difference between mixing and mastering. So can you give us 50 words or less on that?

Pete W: Oh cool. Yes. Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah. Well, mixing is generally considered to be controlling different instrumental portions of a recording and blending them in an artistic or a pleasing way. In other words, bring the snare up, bring the snare down, bring the guitar up, bring the guitar down, vocal needs. Echo blah blah blah. So that’s mixing. Mastering is when something has already been mixed, and perhaps there’s a bunch of songs that need to be assembled together into an album, and it’s basically the last creative and technical step that can be taken before a record is released. So I consider mastering maybe making it sound like an album, you know, assembling songs, whether that means EQ’ing them so that they flow better together, or making sure the levels are appropriate. You know, one song isn’t too loud or whatever, or maybe enhancing them a little bit to make them sound a little bigger. Basically, whatever it takes. But different mastering engineers have different philosophies. I’m kind of a light touch guy. I don’t want to do any harm. I don’t want to change the recording too much from the artist’s intention.

Erin: You make the band sound like the band.

Pete W:Yeah, I hope, yeah. Yeah. But they have to approve everything. So I’ll do whatever they want me to do.

Border Pete: Does that include putting the songs in a particular order also or is that something else?

Pete W: Yeah. Yeah,  I mean, that’s kind of a mundane part of it, but it’s kind of cool. You know, they an artist or a label will give me 20 songs and say, here’s the song order. Put them in this order and make them flow. And maybe figure out the timing between them. Maybe clean up the fade, fade in, fade out. It’s just all of that stuff is it’s just kind of the last thing that can be done before it becomes a commercial recording. It’s kind of funny talking about it, just hearing myself describe it, It sounds like that’s the most boring thing ever, but I actually really like it. It’s…I feel like it’s kind of a responsibility, you know, a great responsibility. You know, I I want people to enjoy the recording and I want it to sound like a record.

Erin: Makes sense. All right, we can go over to Neil. Neil, what have you been up to?

Neil: What have I been up to? Well, I’m kind of the musical hermit of the band. I really have not been up to too much. Although Kevin’s thrown me some tracks to overdub vocals and guitar on recently for his project, Agnes Moorhead, which has been kind of cool. I’m known to do the odd fill in for Kevin on bass with the Weisstronauts. But as far as my own thing, these guys just keep me in the game. The little bit that I am these days keeps me connected so…

Kevin: Neil used to also play bass for the band called The $2.00 Pistols, who are quite a draw back in the day.

Neil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that’s what. Why? I’m kind of like withdrawn a little bit because that was such a wild ride, playing out a lot and and doing, touring and all that. But you know, thanks to Ken and and Pete and Kevin, they they get me to come out of my shell every Summer and pick up the guitar and do it all over again. So it’s kind of nice.

Kevin: It should be noted we owe a lot to Ken just for making putting the effort to come all the way back from Japan…

Ken: No, no, no…

Kevin: On a yearly basis and…

Ken: I live off this for the rest of the year. Memories, good times, and I retain it.

Kevin: I don’t know that we’d have the chance to play without Ken.

Erin: That’s very cool.

Pete W: Also, just the pure camaraderie of it getting together for this is really just like what, four days together? But it’s just it’s just… awesome

Kevin: Yeah. We’re actually having a sleepover this time, which we’ve never had before, which is a really awesome pajama party.

Ken: Yeah.

Erin: Ghost stories and smores?

Kevin: Tonight. (laughter)

Erin: All right, well. Let’s play one more song from Sool. This one is called, wait for it…”Handball”.

{Handball song plays}

Erin: Well, there you go. That is Sool with Handball. You are listening to WOOL 91.5 FM, Bellows Falls. Erin and Border Pete here live in our studios with the band Sool. They’ve got a show coming up in 20 minutes. You can come and catch them live. There are still some tickets available here at Stage 33 Live. Come on down. It’s only $10 at the door. We’d love to have you. So guys, that was a song called Handball. Handball, sport of the future forever, right? Did we watch the Olympics or?

Border Pete: Yeah. Is it in the Olympics yet?

Pete W: It is.

Kevin: Yeah, it’s just that’s why the song we were commissioned to actually write the song for the Olympic event. That’s not joking. That’s.

Pete W: London, the London Olympics.

Kevin: Yeah. No, for real. Yes. The two thousand, 2012.

Pete W: Not a joke. Maybe the London Olympics in London?

Kevin: Yeah, yeah. Whenever it was in in London, yeah.

Erin: You guys need to lead with this this.

Border Pete: Did they? Did they pay you for that?

Erin: It’s really good.

Pete W: No, no. There was a couple…It was an indie pop compilation put out by a British label. The labels called,  “Where it’s at is where you are”, great name, and they were fans of Sool. They’d been aware of Sool for a long time and reached out to us and said, “Hey we have you know, something like 25…We want to get 25 bands to each do a song about individual Olympic events. Are you guys up for it?”. And we said yes and and then we said, well, you know, what are the events that are available, and then they said well actually most of the most of the well known sports have been taken already, but here’s what’s available: Handball. And like you know, Paragliding or something. So we jumped on handball?.

Kevin: Definitely

Border Pete: OK. 

Pete W: Yeah, we never really heard of handball, but like, research research.

Erin: You missed artistic swimming?

Kevin: I didn’t write it. I mean, I just wrote the the lyrics you guys said or no, maybe. I guess I came up with, like, a a rough instrumentation, but then you guys honed it.

Pete W: I don’t think I would. I know I played on it, but I…

Kevin: I don’t know. I feel like I feel like you guys had some musical input on that.

Pete W: …don’t think I wrote it. I feel like I was working it out with Kenny. Yeah.

Kevin: From the Weisstronauts also.

Neil: And I remember playing those tubular bells on Handball.

Border Pete: Is that because Mike Oldfield is in that Olympics too? (laughter)

Erin: Well, that that’s a great story. And there you go. That is the story of Sool and Handball. Who knew they had an Olympic linkage like that? Fantastic. Well, so we talked a little bit about, you know, you’re here in Vermont and why you love Vermont and your connection to Vermont, but where else are you going to be playing?

Kevin: Neil?

Neil: Tomorrow night we are playing in Jamaica Plains, at the Midway Cafe in Boston at 10:00 PM, I think the show goes on around that time.

Kevin: t’s at 10:00 PM.

Neil: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s tomorrow night, Friday. The 16th and then this. Then we head on down to New York the following day, Saturday to play our old Dead Monkey stomping grounds in New Paltz, NY, at Snugs. Snug Harbor Bar and Grill and affectionately referred to as Snugs. And that’s been sort of an annual mainstay for us so.

Erin: There’s a fantastic community radio station there too, 98.1, so maybe you can…

Kevin: Link us up!

Erin: Tell them, “Hey, WOOL had us on”.

Kevin: I wish WOOL rhymed with Sool better. It looks like it would, but it doesn’t.

Erin: Yes, today we actually are woo-l.

Border Pete: And I thought it meant sheep out of luck.

Sheep outta luck. (laughter)

Kevin: 98.1, we will put it on the dial when we’re down there.

Erin: It is a pretty good radio station down there.

Kevin: Similar kind of vibe for you guys?

Erin: Similar kind of vibe. Yeah, totally your deal. Check it out. Yeah, I don’t know, anything else that we didn’t cover? RoboCop? Was there a RoboCop period.

Neil: There’s a major RoboCop theme from that period.

Pete W: Oh, yeah, yeah. RoboCop has just been this underlying sort of like our mascot, I guess, right? Yeah.

Kevin: He shows up or just the the theme shows up. Every now and then and can I just say the origins of that came from a show that we did right when we started playing live as Sool, and Neil was in still in North Carolina. So we did a show called satellite Sool where Neil was beamed in live via satellite and we performed. But actually Neil had just pre-recorded a videotape of him playing and we treated it like it was a link up, and people believed it. But anyway, he was just kind of strumming, getting a sound. He goes. He just improvised this RoboCop thing.

Neil: We called everyone. Yeah, had nothing to do with actual RoboCop. It just fit.

Kevin: No, he just did. And then we, we. Kind of. It became something that we couldn’t let go of, even though none of us had seen the movie,  RoboCop. And we just it’s, it has since pretty much appeared on every Sool album since, in some way.

Neil: Yeah.

Erin: It’s like the unofficial mascot. Or it is your spirit animal. (laughter)

Neil: Kind of it’s the in joke of Sool, I guess. 

Erin: All right, well, you guys have a show. I know you want to get some water, maybe a bite to eat before you go on. But thank you. Thank you so much. Kevin, Ken. Pete. Neil, thanks so much for coming.

Sool: Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks.

And thank you for having us.

Border Pete: Thank you very much.

Erin: And again, come check out the band tonight. 6:00 PM right here at Stage 33 Live, plenty of room in the room. We’d love to have you come on down. Thanks guys.

Border Pete: Yeah.

Sool: Thank you. Thank you, Erin.

Erin: We’ll put some music on from Sool.