Following their recent, rocking West Coast tour with The Horrors, local surfers Andrew Atkinson and Nolan Hall of Japanese Motors agreed to share with Wax On, Wax Off a bit about their trip. They just got back yesterday, and answered a few questions about their travels and their upcoming album.
OC Weekly: Let's just start with the obvious. What was the highlight of the trip?
Nolan Hall: Probably Seattle. Actually, no. The highlight for me was I bought an American Jaguar in Portland. It's sunburst. I got it at this place Old Town Music there. They have sooo much rad stuff there. Last time we were there, Al [Knost] bought his Musicmaster.
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OCW: Did you guys do any surfing on your way up the coast? Maybe just on the SoCal leg of the tour?
Andrew Atkinson: There was some surfing intermittently. I'm pretty sure Al was the only one who actually made it out in the water. In Southern California, I was working at Hurley every day right up until sound check or whatever. I think Nolan was doing some work, too, and Nick was working at the Army Surplus store some days.
NH: We had plans to surf with our friends in San Francisco, but it just didn't work out. We were too busy.
OCW: You guys traveled to Canada on this one. How was that? You've been outside the U.S. before as a band…
AA: Yeah, this was our second time to Canada and we had a blast. We had plenty of time to hang around, shop, whatever. We ate pizza. It's hard to get pizza wrong, but they definitely got it wrong. It was pretty bad. The first time, we went to Toronto like more around Thanksgiving time, and it was butt-cold. We've been out of the country before, too. Last year we spent the whole month of December traveling in Australia and New Zealand, which was rad. One other cool thing–the guys left at pulled a straight shot from Vancouver all the way home and did it in 18 hours. I took a flight back, but they all showed up at my door at 10:30pm to give me my drums.
OCW: So what's next? How's the new album doing?
NH: We're feeling good; we're all happy.
OCW: Where are you at with it, if I may ask?
NH: It's been recorded. We'll send it to mastering soon, and we're working on a sequence. You know, an order of songs.
OCW: And have you named it?
NH: Yes. We're calling it “In Teenage Drag.”
