I interviewed Mike Miller, guitarist for the Chumps, in October of 2004. I found him by accident--I bought a record from Scott Leak, and he mentioned that he knew someone from the Chumps. I jumped at the opportunity asked if he could put me in touch with him for an interview. Scott agreed, and Mike was willing, so I gave him a ring...

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SCOTT: Hello, Joe's.

THUD: Hi, is this Michael Miller?

SCOTT: No it's not, can you hold one second while I get him?

THUD: Yes I can.

SCOTT: This is Scott here. By chance this isn't the fellow from the internet, is it?

THUD: Well yes, as a matter of fact, it is.

SCOTT: How ya doin'?

THUD: I'm doing pretty good, how about you?

SCOTT: Pretty good. Let me go get Mike for you. (background) This is the fella I told you about from online, Mike. He's interested in the Chumps.

MIKE: (background) A little bit of history then.

SCOTT: He's just ringing somebody up, he'll be right with you.

THUD: Okay.

MIKE: Hello.

THUD: Hello, is this Mike?

MIKE: Yes.

THUD: I got your info from Scott, I'm interested in doing an interview with you about the Chumps.

MIKE: Okay, sure.

THUD: Is now a good time?

MIKE: Umm, I guess so.

THUD: Well, I don't know that much about the Chumps, so I don't have that many questions. Could you just tell me for starters where you were born, where you grew up, that kind of stuff?

MIKE: Okay, I was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the Maryland suburbs.

THUD: How did you first get into music?

MIKE: I've always been a music fan from my exposure to radio and TV basically. Part of the sort-of baby boom generation that took to the Beatles when they debuted in America. I wasn't directly involved in music until I was well out of high school, though.

THUD: And when did you first get into local music?

MIKE: Well, I'd been a music fan for a long time, but not directly involved until punk rock came along and the do-it-yourself kind of credo.

THUD: And that would be the Chumps?

MIKE: Yeah, the Chumps were originally d'Chumps.

THUD: Yeah, that was one of my questions, Chumps or d'Chumps, since I've seen it both ways.

MIKE: I think on :30 Over DC the D is still there.

THUD: Yeah, it is.

MIKE: And then after a while they dropped the D part.

THUD: What was the lineup of the Chumps when you joined?

MIKE: When I joined the lineup was Rick Dreyfuss on drums.

THUD: Would that be the "Ruki" that's listed on the back of :30 Over DC?

MIKE: Yeah. Same lineup. They were actually a band before I joined. I joined at the invitation of Rob Kennedy. I'm not sure how he's listed on that--Sirhan's Victim was his punk rock name.

THUD: (laughs) He's just listed as Rob. And there was a "Dav" on guitar.

MIKE: Dave Findley

THUD: And John on sax.

MIKE: John Dreyfuss.

THUD: Were they brothers?

MIKE: Yeah, the drummer's brother.

THUD: How did you meet Rob Kennedy and what impressed him so much that he invited you to join the Chumps?

MIKE: Well, he was just a friend of mine from--a customer really--from a record store I was working in then.

THUD: What record store was it?

MIKE: Kemp Mill records in Georgetown on M Street. They eventually had two in Georgetown. One was on Wisconsin Avenue. I was in the one on M Street, which was a lot funkier.

THUD: And when he invited you into the band were you already familiar with DC punk like the Slickee Boys and the Nurses?

MIKE: Yes, I was acquainted with the Slickee Boys through Kim Kane, a friend of mine from before he formed that band.

THUD: So this goes back a ways. Were you friends with Steve Lorber, and Skip Groff, and that crowd who were into the more sixties thing?

MIKE: Yeah, yeah. I knew all those people. I think I met Kim Kane through Steve Lorber's radio show.

THUD: Mystic Eyes on WGTB.

MIKE: Yeah.

THUD: When you were in the Chumps what kind of influences were you operating under? That sounds really bad, but...

MIKE: Actually, a very powerful influence on the Chumps was Richard Hell, especially for Rob, and James Chance.

THUD: Were you guys going for a particular sound, or was it just whatever came out?

MIKE: I think it was just whatever came out, and what came out was pretty industrial sounding, but people weren't using that word at the time. We had a saxophone player for one thing.

THUD: Yeah, that's something that really stands out.

MIKE: And that made it a little different from the Ramones-phase bands, and I think the No New York sound was pretty much an inspiration.

It definitely was a No New York kind of influence thing. We made a healing journey up to see Richard Hell once.

THUD: Did you ever see Lydia Lunch, Sonic Youth, the bands that were on No New York?

MIKE: I never saw them myself. I did see James Chance--we did a show with them at dc space. Early on dc space used to have music in this room upstairs, it was kind of small, and we opened for them up there. The other guys in the band used to go to New York pretty often.

THUD: What was the general reaction to the band? Rob says you guys were kind of looked at as trouble-makers.

MIKE: You talked to Rob?

THUD: No, I just read excerpts of an interview with him that appeared in American Hardcore, a book by Steven Blush. He's on my list of folks to find though.

MIKE: Well, he was more of a trouble-maker than me. He got arrested once at the 9:30 Club, actually it wasn't even the 9:30 Club yet, it was the Atlantis Club. It was a disturbing the peace kind of thing.

I think he sassed a policeman or something like that when they came in for one of those "turn the music down" kind of things.

We never integrated very well with the emerging punk rock scene, I don't think.

THUD: What about with the Bad Brains? Rob said that you guys snuck them into the Hall of Nations show, they invited you to a house party, and then you gave 'em a gig at a VFW hall in Towson.

MIKE: Yeah, they were doing those basement shows in...not Upper Marlboro...I think they were in the Forrestville area--deep PG County--and I didn't attend any of those myself, but Dave Findley did, and I think Rob. They made friends with them then, and they also were in touch with Half Japanese.

THUD: Do you have any memories of VFW show with the Bad Brains?

MIKE: Well, that was the only time I've had beer cans thrown at me.

THUD: That sounds like a lot fun.

MIKE: Fortunately they were empty. I thought that was kind of cool that we could get that kind of reaction.

THUD: Do you know what provoked it?

MIKE: I think it was just...well...punk rock shows were still a new thing then and...

THUD: People didn't know how to behave?

MIKE: Yeah, I don't really know if it was a bunch of drunken locals who happened into the show or if it was just people working out how they were supposed to behave at a punk rock show. I just chalk it up to the zeitgeist of the moment.

THUD: How did that compare to the Hall of Nations show you did with the Cramps where there were windows smashed, tables and chairs thrown around, and so on.

MIKE: I think the Cramps incited most of that. I felt that we were kind of misfits there. They had the Urban Verbs, which were like the leading new wave band, and the Cramps, who pretty much started their own genre of music, and then us, this sort of industrial sounding band...

THUD: ...doing a noisy new wave thing...

MIKE: ...who were somewhat organized, but not at all like either of those other things. I'm not sure how we even got on that bill.

It was exciting, you know, especially to share a stage with the Cramps.

THUD: How much recording did the Chumps do? You guys only released the one 45 and the track on :30 Over DC, right?

MIKE: Not a lot, because we just did the EP, I think it's three songs, maybe four, and the cut on :30 Over DC. We did tons of boombox recordings in the basement, where we used to rehearse.

I really wish we'd done more recording. Because when you're in a band and they've run their course after a few years or ten years, that's really all you have left, the recordings and your memories. So I really think it's a good idea to do as much recording as you can.

THUD: How did you get your track on :30 Over DC?

MIKE: Skip was just looking for bands to put on this project that he had going and he didn't have a whole lot of bands to choose from. We were happy to do that of course.

THUD: Do you have any thoughts on the song, Jet Lag Drag? One of your better, one of your worse, happy with it, unhappy with it?

MIKE: Well, I think it was pretty typical of the sound we were working on. I do know that that was the first song that Rob wrote, and he wrote it the first day that he had his bass, so it's all on the top E string.

THUD: Kind of a rudimentary song.

MIKE: Yeah.

THUD: And what about the 45 on Round Raoul--that was Mark Hoback's label, right?

MIKE: Yeah, he had his band going. I guess he decided that he wanted to start this label. We played a few shows with him.

THUD: What do you think of the 45? Are there any songs on there that you think are particularly good or particularly bad?

MIKE: (laughs) Well, it is what it is, really. I have an affection for it. I don't know how to really judge it in the over all...whatwasgoingon...I like it fairly well.

THUD: When did the Chumps split and why?

MIKE: Pretty much 1979 or '80. It was primarily because Rob was moving back to New York.

THUD: Oh, he was a New York native?

MIKE: Actually a New Jersey native, and he moved back to New Jersey, but he moved to Hoboken, so I tend to think New York.

THUD: After the Chumps were you in any other bands?

MIKE: Well, after the Chumps split I tried to get something together with the Dreyfuss brothers, Rick and John, and it was such a rotating and ever-changing bunch of people that would show up for practice that it didn't really ever gel. We had an interesting practice space in Rick's wood shop, where he worked. He's always been sort of a cabinet maker, and also an artist, so it was his sort of studio that looked more like a wood shop.

THUD: It was his creative space.

MIKE: Yeah, he was kind of like an artist--sculptor--who also built shelves. He would be an interesting guy to talk to.

THUD: Are you in touch with him?

MIKE: Yeah.

THUD: 'Cause I'm interested in talking to just about anyone who was involved with the DC scene.

MIKE: Yeah, I could put you in touch. I don't think I have his number with me, but I could get it to you.

THUD: That would be great.

MIKE: Have you talked to Skip Groff?

THUD: Yes, I did a huge, two-and-a-half-hour interview with him--it was great. I can send you a copy of that. It's an interesting read.

MIKE: And how about Kim Kane?

THUD: No, the only people I've talked to at this point are Skip Groff, Boyd Farrell, George Dively, and I'm in touch with Howard Wuelfing, as well as some of the hardcore people like Jay Fox, Derrick Hsu, the DSI crowd...

MIKE: I see John Stabb now and then.

THUD: Oh, yeah, I did a real short interview with him about Black Market Baby since he's such a huge fan.

MIKE: I'm trying to think who else...Rob Kennedy wouldn't be too hard to get in touch with. he has a website for the Workdogs, which is a band he had in New York.

THUD: That's not the Workdogs with the guy from...uh...Pussy Galore, is it?

MIKE: Yeah, yeah it is. Basically the Workdogs is Rob Kennedy and Scott Jarvis, and whoever else they can find. They did a show down here where I was supposed to be the lead guitarist. It was interesting, I'm not that much of a guitarist.

THUD: (laughs) Well, you played guitar in the Chumps.

MIKE: Yeah. And I played guitar in the Rhomboids, but mostly singing.

THUD: So you're just a vocalist in the Taildraggers?

MIKE: Yeah, vocals and harmonica. They're pretty R&B oriented.

THUD: There's nothin' wrong with that.

MIKE: That's what I always wanted to do. Even when I was in the Chumps, I always tried to work in my favorite garage punk elements, but that was a little incongruous in the Chumps format, but we had that anything goes feel.

THUD: Did you guys do any garage covers? No Joe did a great version of Strychnine by the Sonics.

MIKE: Um. We didn't really do many covers at all. That was one of the premises of the band--we were all these song-writing geniuses, everybody in the band wrote songs. I think that from their inception, from before I was even involved, they'd decided to do their own music.

We only did a couple covers. One was This Wheel Is On Fire.

Sometimes what I would do was just steal things from songs that I would like. That was my undercover way of doing covers.

THUD: That was a GI thing too--take the Rolling Stones and speed 'em up or slow 'em down and you've got a new song.

MIKE: Yeah, which is what people do anyway, subconsciously. Personally, I always prefer to know where I stole something from, rather than to think that I thought of it, rather than realize a year later that, yeah this is from such and such, or have someone else point that out to me.

THUD: Actually, Boyd had that happen to him once. He wrote a song that used the vocal melody from a British Christmas carol, and the band played it for years before Mike Dolfi said, "Hey, what's up with the Christmas song?"

MIKE: I'd rather know up front where I'm stealing something from. One of my favorite occurrences is where you steal something from one place and someone says you got it from somewhere else. That's fairly awesome. I feel that, well, that's public domain then, since I didn't even steal it from that song.

THUD: Your current band is the Taildraggers.

MIKE: Yeah.

THUD: Is there any product out there, an EP, a CD?

MIKE: Yeah, there were some benefit CDs coming out every Christmas called Hungry for Music. Hungry for Music is a charity that promotes music education in the form of lining up instruments for school music programs.

THUD: Well, that sounds like a worthy cause.

MIKE: Yeah, I think it was. It was fun to do those CDs. Hungry For Music is still putting out CDs. There's one series that's baseball oriented, because the guy that runs it is sometimes a newscaster for sports, mostly baseball, and he initiated these baseball oriented CDs. Then he did the Christmas ones. I participated in a lot of Christmas ones, and some of 'em are actually the Taildraggers and some of them are precursors to the Taildraggers.

THUD: Are the Taildraggers currently active?

MIKE: Yeah.

THUD: Are there any plans for releases or recording?

MIKE: Oh yeah. It was a band that was originally put together with the hopes of playing this blues festival--the Baltimore Blues Festival, and after about three attempts, we finally did. Not this year, but the one before. 2003. And the band has sort of hung together. That name was only supposed to be for that one show, really.

THUD: But it's had a staying power that you didn't expect.

MIKE: Well, no one bothered to think of a different name. The guys in the band like it...well enough.

THUD: (laughs)

MIKE: The Taildraggers are related to the band I had after the Chumps, the Rhomboids. That was a sixties oriented garage band.

THUD: Like the Slickees, or harder edged, or more psychedelic?

MIKE: Like the Slickee Boys but more harder edged, more R&B oriented. Pretty much part of that mid-eighties garage rock that Little Steven liked to talk about--the first wave of the second wave, you know?

THUD: Did the Rhomboids manage to do any recordings, play any notable gigs?

MIKE: No, not really, we did some recording, but not much releasing. About the only release is on a Brutarian magazine sampler which includes one of Kim Kane's bands, I think it's Date Bait. Monsters From the Surf are on that, and one other band I can't think of right now.

THUD: Well, I've pretty burned through my questions and then some. Is there anything I didn't ask but should have, any gaps that need to be filled?

MIKE: Oh, well there's tons more ephemera. I'm not really sure what was important about the Chumps. There wasn't anybody else really pursuing that kind of music--at that particular time--around here. I can't say it ever really clicked with audiences.

THUD: Too abrasive, too out there?

MIKE: I think so.

THUD: It's been a pleasure interviewing you.

MIKE: I don't know if I had much of interest to say about it, but I have some pretty fond memories.

THUD: I think you did.

MIKE: Other people could tell you a lot more about the Bad Brains connection or the Half Japanese connection.

THUD: Yeah, well the Bad Brains was just a way to get a little more information, jog the memory, since it's about the only thing I knew about the Chumps--something I could latch onto, since you only did the one song on :30 Over DC, and an EP, otherwise I'd just ask you about them, and that would be the interview.

THUD: I'm working on a magazine at the moment, and I also have a website called 30underdc.com where I'm trying to put together a pretty comprehensive history of DC rock, flyers, records, tapes, and so on.

MIKE: I have a lot of that, especially for the Rhomboids--the Rhomboids lasted almost ten years despite their small amount of releases. I used to get a lot of pleasure out of making flyers. It's something that's not done too much any more. Certainly the format has gotten a lot smaller.

THUD: Well, I'm having a lot of fun putting my magazine together--x-acto knife, rubber cement, black spray paint.

MIKE: Yeah, that's the stuff I like--and xeroxing.

THUD: Yeah, it's craftsmanship. It's something that people don't do much any more.

MIKE: It is something that people don't do much any more, cutting and pasting with real paste (laughs).

THUD: Computer printouts, just on their own, look like crap.

MIKE: Oh, I think so too. I think that anything that creates a lot of possibilities, say synthesizers, mostly creates a lot of possibilities for bad taste.

THUD: Yeah.

MIKE: And I think there's a whole world of computer-oriented graphics that are just atrocious.

THUD: And it encourages laziness. You don't have to put effort into making a straight line or a straight cut.

MIKE: And it encourages pretty bad overlaying of images and pretty bad fonts being used and that sort of thing. I'd be glad to send you some flyers that...I don't think they're great, but I certainly had a lot of fun making them.

THUD: That would be great. Thanks again, and I'll be in touch.