OLD MAN ARMY

OLD MAN ARMY

by Jason K. Walsh

Dedicated to Richard Alfrey Sr., Christian Walsh, and anyone else who inspired someone to drop in…

Every skater has a story of where it started, and in many cases, where it ended. For me, skateboarding began at a young age in the 70s, when my grandfather cut out a plank of lumber, bolted on some roller skate undercarriage, and took me atop a hill in Glendale, California. My christening was a push and the helpful advice, “hold on.” I crashed, got up, and climbed back up the hill. That’s what separates skaters from the rest of the world. They get back up again and climb the hill.

In my small world, skateboarding wasn’t a hobby or just something I liked to do. It was a lifelong obsession and part of who I was and what defined me. I was never good enough to consider it a profession, nor did I care. It was just something I did without thought, like eating, drinking, breathing. As time passed on and life became more demanding, as it does, I skated less and less, until one fateful night when a miscalculated frontside air spun my knee 270 degrees and tore my ACL beyond repair. In 1999, at 29 and now barely able to walk, skateboarding left my life. Loss…a part of me died. For a decade, I struggled to find myself without that void ever being filled.

It was my son’s 15th birthday, shoveling snow and breaking ice at a concrete public skatepark in the ghettos of Kalamazoo that skateboarding refound me. Showing my boy, who had now taken an interest in boardriding, how to carve on wet and treacherous transitions, I took a backside kickturn high on the slippery cement quarter pipe. That long forgotten feeling of momentum and motion was back, and in the dark, reckless corners of my brain, I thought, “I can grind that.” A couple runs later in the frigid Michigan conditions, I did. I’ve been hitting metal on metal ever since. I am the OLD MAN ARMY.

“We are a skater owned and operated business whose focus is on the older skater. We don’t claim to know dozens of professional skaters, nor do we care to. OLD MAN ARMY could care less about the name on the bottom of a deck. We have more respect for the old guys and underground rippers that are true to the roots of real skateboarding. Our goal is to unite the older skate crowd, the one’s who grew up when skateboarding and punk rock walked hand in hand. If you’ve had to spend an hour cleaning out a ditch or pool to skate for fifteen minutes before getting kicked out, or better yet, arrested, then the OLD MAN ARMY is for you. If you were skating parking blocks and park benches for hours on end and never got bored, you’re already a soldier. If you can’t stand the sight of a swimming pool full of crystal, clear water, then get off you ass and “join the army.” Our mission is to unite the lifers and soldiers of skateboarding. Other companies pour money into their designs with hopes of luring younger skaters into buying their products. Let’s face it, that’s where the money is. Chances are, if you’re 30 or older, you didn’t start skating last week. Let’s join forces and take back what belongs to us. We are the few, the proud; we are the OLD MAN ARMY! 30 TO LIFE.”
-Mission Statement/ Company Profile, OLD MAN ARMY

During the 90s, with the fall of the corporate giants in the skate industry and the rise of the “independent” company, anyone had the opportunity to start their own line of boards. However, as time continued to pass and skateboarding progression evolved technically, the boards got smaller and the “DIY” companies became corporate again. Skateboarding is now a billion-dollar entity, a far cry from the early days when some hooligans from Venice were first charging backyard pools. Now, the new designs shooting out of assembly lines and warehouses are tiny, freestyle-sized decks, which does absolutely no good for the bigger, more aged rider.

Enter OLD MAN ARMY. Long time session friends from Arizona, Brian Bullis and Mike Furst, decided to turn their crew’s nickname, derived from the derisions by younger groms at their favorite local spots, into their own company. Catering towards the more antiquated shredders, their board designs are bigger, their products more appropriate and functional, and their message of soul is on point. OLD MAN ARMY is for the 30+ crew. I had a chance to talk with OMA veteran, co-owner, and founder Bullis about how the Army was formed.

I’m going to start at the beginning. When did you get into skateboarding? When did you find skateboarding, or when did skateboarding find you?

Skateboarding kind of found me in like ‘79 or so. I went to a bowling tournament with my parents in Germany and there was a guy doing a demo on the roof of the building and I just kind of discovered it by watching him. It was kind of like a barrel jumping type thing, you know, just stuff like that. I got my parents to buy me a board that day and that was pretty much the birth of that for me.

Have you been riding ever since?

You know, I was riding like down the street to school and stuff but I wouldn’t say I was a skateboarder at that time. Until I moved to Arizona in ‘79, and then I kind of started picking it up a little bit, like in the early 80s.

Very cool. But up until this point now, have you been riding pretty much continuously ever since ‘79?

Yeah, pretty much been riding ever since then. Once I got the feel of it here, you know. In Germany, it was a different situation, but here people actually skated and kind of getting into it like that.

Tell me about how OLD MAN ARMY came about?

OLD MAN ARMY started as just a bunch of guys going out to the park, constantly being the oldest guys out there. All the kids would always call us the “old guys” or “grandpas” or whatever and that was in like ‘99, so we weren’t really old, but as far skating goes, I think you’re getting old once you get into the late 20s (laughs).

How did this turn from being the crew at the skate park, or wherever you guys were going to, to an actual company?

It was kind of like everybody was always interested in it, like, “oh, cool, OLD MAN ARMY.” Everybody wanted stickers and shirts and shit like that and everybody wants it for free. My partner Mike (Furst) finally convinced me to just try to make a company out of it and put out more boards, put out more stuff, create a website, and all that crap that goes along with it. So, it was pretty much Mike that kind of the only one who expressed an interest and was willing to shell out a little bit of money to get this thing going.

When did you guys start it up?

Started about five years ago I’d say. 2005.

Now the thing about this company, myself being a 40-year-old guy whose son got me back into skating after a bad injury ten years ago, I’m out riding with him, finding myself doing a kick turn, then a grind, then looking up skateparks and finding terrain to ride again, ditches on the side of the road.

I see a lot of that.

So, the thing about this company that’s appealing to me and people like me is the fact that it’s geared towards the older skater. They’re not the little toothpick decks that progressively the skate industry only puts out now. You guys put out stuff for the older guys. Tell me about that.

Yeah, we’re geared towards older guys. You know, we like to try and put a little bit of soul back into it. It seems like a lot of it got sucked out when it all turned into “popsicles.” By no means are we limited to old guys. We got some younger guys that are into it as well. We just wanted to try and get back into doing some little bit older style shapes that are still functionable, you know, with the nose and stuff like that. We’re just trying to keep it fresh and a little bit kind of unique, as opposed to just the standard “popsicle” stuff. Trying to do some wider shapes, trying to bring back good graphics, and we’re just trying to keep it going.

Five years down the road, has this been a fun project for you guys?

Oh, it’s been the best. It’s our passion. I still got to go to work and shit but I come home every day and look at my emails, check out the website, and just try to keep in touch. Like I said, it’s my passion.

One of the things I did notice about the website is your forum section has a huge following. There’s tons and tons of people on there, corresponding back and forth about skating, selling gear, whatever.

Yeah. It’s bringing a lot of people out of the woodwork. It’s kind of a community, you know. It’s more than just a company. Of course, not everybody on our site rides our boards and everything, but the site brings a lot of people out.

Now you’ve been alive for four decades now, it’s 2010, in the next ten years, man, do you think you’re still going to be doing this?

I’m going to do it as long as I can walk, man. I want to continue to do it. I’ve blown both my knees, broke some ribs, fractured shit here and there, rolled my ankle last weekend…still went skating this weekend. It’s just something that I’m going to do, you know, until the wheels fall off.



Anyone who remembers Tony Alva, Jay Adams, Stacy Peralta, and the Z-boys contribution to skateboarding is of the OLD MAN ARMY. Anyone who was stunned the first time they watched videos of Tony Hawk and the Bones Brigade is of the OLD MAN ARMY. Anyone who’s swept a ditch, built a ramp, or scoped parking lots, industrial complexes, and backyards while driving around is of the OLD MAN ARMY. Anybody who gets back up again and climbs the hill is the OLD MAN ARMY.

www.oldmanarmy.com

CEREMONY

by Jason Walsh

For the past few decades, the Bay area has a long standing tradition of spawning original and memorable punk and hardcore bands, and as time has grooved along, the sound has transformed as well. CEREMONY is one of those bands that infuse these different styles and influences, while making their voice unique and ultimately their own. Formed in 2005 under the name VIOLENT WORLD, the guys from San Francisco’s suburbs have put together an impressive collection of music to date and made quite a name for themselves. “Rohnert Park,” their third full-length release, drops this June on Bridge 9 Records, and sees the band continuing to experiment with phrasing and elements rather than cranking out clones of their previous efforts, “Still Nothing Moves You” and “Violence Violence.”

As word of mouth spreads, certain bands begin to experience more appreciation, which in turn creates more responsibility. The rigors of recognition can take its strain as a once beloved project with roots in a garage transforms into an all-encompassing entity. I had a chance to talk with CEREMONY frontman Ross Farrar about the new record, “Rohnert Park,” how it was influenced by their hometown, and how as time moves along, things continue to change, but not necessarily for the better.

Tell me about this new record you guys have coming out on Bridge 9 Records.

It’s called “Rohnert Park” and the title of the record is the town that all of us grew up in. It’s a small town, 45 minutes north of San Francisco. It’s a suburb and since most of us have lived here our whole lives we decided that it could be a good title for the record. Most of the stuff that we’ve done thus far has been about Rohnert Park pretty much.

So what is about that area that’s special for you guys and the for the band?

Well, that’s the weird thing about it. It’s not special, per se, it’s more of something that we’ve kind of loathed for a long time. Growing up here, there wasn’t much to do and pretty much hated growing up here. But now that I’m getting older and I had to move back to Rohnert Park from the city, I’ve kind of figured out that I actually like living here. It’s quiet, nice, and just now recently I’ve found the pleasure of living in the suburbs. I used to hate it but now I like it.

That seems to be a classic ongoing theme, in a lot of punk and hardcore bands from back in the days, talking about growing up some where that you hated and when you finally went on the road, went to the big cities and all that, you kind of return to that place and realize, “hey, it wasn’t that bad to begin with.” The alternatives can be worse.

Yeah, definitely. Before I moved back to Rohnert Park, I was living in West Oakland and it was really crazy. The neighborhood I was living in, there was shootings happening all the time, a house burned down right next to me, just all kinds of crime, violence, terrible shit happening all the time. So, when I moved back to Rohnert Park, it was kind of like a breath of fresh air again.

And it’s funny how you draw inspiration from this place that you didn’t really like but now it seems it’s come full circle for you.

Yeah, definitely. I didn’t think it was going to happen like that but a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing lately, a lot of the writing and all that, is kind of a muse for Rohnert Park, just growing up here.

So what drew you to music? How did you get involved in music?

I got into music because of punk and hardcore. I wasn’t into music before that. I’d kind of listened to, I don’t know, bands that my friends listened to or my parents or whatever it was. About a year before I got out of high school, I met these kids that were into hardcore and they started taking me to shows and that’s when I started getting into music. I think that was in 2001, 2002, and right after that, about a year after I got out of high school, I started some bands. Started a band called HAMMER TIME, and then a year after HAMMER TIME I started CEREMONY and just been doing that ever since.

What is it for you about performing music, writing music, and going out and playing music…what about that calls to you? What makes you wake up in the morning and go, “Man, I love doing this. I want to keep doing this?”

Well, that’s the thing. I’m not too sure about that because I still haven’t figured it out. When we started CEREMONY it was just a little punk band from Rohnert Park and we were playing shows and things started to escalate from there. And as far as it being my passion or thinking about it when I wake up in the morning, I don’t really do that because I have so much other stuff that I’m going through and dealing with right now, and we haven’t really been doing much as a band lately. We just finished the record, we haven’t been touring, we haven’t really done much. We’ve only done that AFI tour and that was for two weeks but besides that we haven’t really been doing much lately. As far as what drives me to do it, as of right now, just doing it because it’s all I’ve been doing for so long now. I’ve been doing it now for about six years so. It’s kind of weird.

So is it not fun for you anymore?

No, it’s still fun for me but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as when I first started doing it. It’s gotten bigger now, we’re doing bigger stuff, things are more demanding. It’s not as fun as it used to be. It’s still fun but it’s a little more daunting now than it used to be.

So is it just you’ve been doing it a while, you’ve got kind of a bigger following, bigger reputation now, do you think that’s taking away from when you guys first started? You know when you guys first started, you were like, “we’re going to start a band…we’re going to have fun, have a good time doing this,” and now you guys are at a different point in the band’s career. Is that possibly what the problem is?

Yeah. It’s probably a mixture of that and like just being an asshole. A jaded little asshole. Yeah, it’s been a long time and I don’t really know what’s going to happen next. We just wrote this record and we’re going to tour on it and then probably fucking happen again and again or maybe not. I don’t know. Kind of one of those things that I’m not too sure about I guess.

So have you had a chance to go through the record, now that it’s finished, listen to it top to bottom? What do you think about it?

Well, whenever we record a record, there’s always a lot me listening to it over and over again, trying to figure out if I like it or not, and with the new record I would say there are parts that I like but like anything else, I’m still unsatisfied with it. After I listened to the record, I feel like there could be more things I could have added. Could have made things better. But all in all, I feel like it’s pretty good.

The record comes out in June. Before that happens you guys have a few shows in California and then you guys are heading over to Korea and Japan. Tell me about that.

Well that’s an interesting story because one of our friend’s band has been to Japan numerous times. A lot of people have gone there and said, “hey, why aren’t you guys going there, what’s going on?” We’ve had a problem with that for a while because we put our record out on a label in Japan. There’s only two labels in Japan that put out the hardcore records and one of them went under. That was the one we put our record out with so we couldn’t tour because the guys that put out the record also bring the bands over. So he was out of business, he wasn’t doing tours anymore, and since there was only other guy out there that was putting out American bands and bringing them over, we were kind of screwed in that situation. So, we just now got hooked up with they guy who does tours in Japan so this will be our first time going there. It’s really exciting.

I was going to say, this being the first time, have you ever been over to Asia before?

Defintely not and I fell like it’s going to be a definite culture shock for me. I’ve heard lots of crazy stories about Japan and it’s going to be interesting to say the least. I’m going to bring my camera and take lots of pictures. I think that’s my biggest concern at this point, just taking pictures when I get there.

And that’s good because you’ll have those memories when you come back, this being the first time you guys go over there together. It will be cool. I think it will be a good experience for you and hopefully a good tour for you.

I know. I hope so.

After that the record releases and you have some East Coast dates. Who are you going on the road with that, do you know?

Not really sure yet. We might go with a band called PUNCH which is also from the Bay area, a punk band. Besides that, I’m not really sure. As far as East Coast bands, I’m not sure who we’re going to be touring with yet. I have no idea.

So do you guys still do a lot of shows in the Bay area?

We haven’t been doing any shows because we’ve been doing the new record lately. I guess the plan is not to play any shows until the new record’s out. That’s been a long process to say the least. We haven’t put out a new record in about a year and a half, so we’ve been playing shows here and there, but as far as playing a ton of shows, we definitely haven’t been, which would be good. We’re actually are going to be playing a kid’s 18th surprise birthday party. It’s going to be fun. I guess he’s a big fan of CEREMONY, it’s like one of his favorite bands so we’re going to show up at his house before he gets there and as soon as he comes in, we’re going to start playing. That’s the consensus right now.

18th birthday party, you guys are just going to crash his party and play a show. This is going to blow this kid’s mind.

Yeah, he’s going to be really pumped about it hopefully.

Very cool. Like I said the record comes out June 8th, you have a lot going on. What would you say to people out there that read this, why should they check out the new record from you guys?

Well, the biggest reason I think is just to hear it because it’s much different than anything else that we’ve put out so far. There’s all kinds of weird things on the record that people wouldn’t expect. We have about three interludes that are tied to each other in a certain way. I can’t let it out yet but they’re tied out in a certain way. You’ll find out. And, it’s not as fast and aggressive as the other records. It’s more punk, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-esque songs. There’s also some mellower songs. Even mellower than punk verse-chorus songs, if you can imagine that.