The past two issues of Valley Frequencies Magazine featured part one and part two of a three part interview with Chase Stain, a strong supporter of the independent and local music scene in Phoenix.
Stain is the founder and president of Bad Stain Records, and has owned and written for several fanzines, worked as an engineer recording local bands, produced albums for local artists, owned and operated Laundromat Productions, an independent booking agency for local acts that was responsible for the Arizona Ska Punk Awards, a Grammy’s inspired awards ceremony that praised local musicians, venues, and other staples that are part of the local music scene, and is probably best known as the bassist and co-frontman for the punk rock band, Numbers On Napkins.
Stain has also performed in several other bands over the past two decades, including the pop punk band, Yars Revenge, the post hardcore screamo band, Forever Falling, and the comedic skate punk band, Dirty Laundry. Stain also performs as a solo artist, and recently started a high end custom guitar company called, Bad Stain Noise Weapons.
Stain and I discussed a variety of things in the first two parts of the interview, which you can read in issues #84 and 85.
Part Three
STAIN: So wait....what was the question? Oh no, I remember. Uhhhh....
ASHLEY: No, it’s okay, I’ll go ahead and repeate the question. I was asking about your solo stuff. None of your solo material is available to download online, or even to listen to streaming I think. I was wondering why. Ohh, and I noticed Dirty Laundry doesn’t offer any digital distribution either.
STAIN: well I’m not sure why I haven’t released any of my solo stuff online yet to be honest. I originally didn’t have any digital distribution available for my solo stuff because each CD was a limited edition pressing of only 500 copies, and I didn’t want to have the music available to download, and wanted it to be only available to those fans who bought the CD. Otherwise it would have been kinda fucked up. But after I released “The First Quarter”, that didn’t matter anymore. Oh wait, so...to be clear for anyone reading this that is unfamiliar with my solo project, I guess I should probably explain things a bit. (Laughs) Okay, so I have my “Month” series of solo CD’s, and each CD is an EP with between 5 and 8 songs, and had a limited press run of just 500 copies. The first CD EP was titled “January”. The second was “February”, and the third was “March”. I didn’t offer digital distribution for the CD’s because I wanted people to have an exclusive CD with songs that nobody else could hear. I eventually released “The First Quarter”, which features all of the tracks from all three CD’s, and that album is not a limited edition release. I have struggled with making up my mind on whether or not to have digital distribution for “The First Quarter”, and I eventually decided that I would do it a few years down the road. So I guess enough time has passed that I should probably get on that. (Laughs) Man! Time fucking flies! Yeah, I will probably make that an option pretty soon. (Laughs) Look at what you’re doing! (Laughs) You’re somehow gonna convince me to release everything online by the end of the interview! (Laughs) And you were right with Dirty Laundry. We never released anything digitally because we wanted to keep the band in the underground. Cuz we were so punk rock.
ASHLEY: Don’t think that I was trying to manipulate you into offering all of your music digitally. I don’t have shares in I-Tunes or Spotify or anything! (Laughs)
STAIN: (Laughs) Oh no, I know what you’re doing. Sneaky little vixen. (Laughs) Nah, I just thought it was funny that you asked why I didn’t have digital distribution, and I’m like, “Yeah, good question...I’ll get that tomorrow!” (Laughs) But actually, what’s even funnier is that I’m about to tell you that I’m gonna be offering digital distribution for Dirty Laundry here pretty soon too! (Laughs)
ASHLEY: (Laughs) Really? (Laughs) Like, for real? Cuz with Dirty Laundry that would be like, I don’t know.... (Laughs)
STAIN: (Laughs) No, I’m serious. (Laughs)
ASHLEY: (Laughs) That’s too funny. So hold on, what is making you do that? Cuz I know that fans have been asking for Dirty Laundry and Bad Stain to offer some way to get Dirty Laundry’s music, whether it’s repressing out of print albums or making the songs available online. So that’s awesome! I am guessing it has to do with the new box set Bad Stain is releasing here in a few months.
STAIN: (Laughs) Yeah, I jumped the gun a bit. So anyway, I’ve talked about repressing old Dirty Laundry releases for awhile, and I’ve also said that we are gonna put out an album full of all of the songs that the band recorded, but never released, but it never happened. So after thinking about it for a bit, I decided that it would be cool to release a box set featuring everything that Dirty Laundry ever released, plus all of the bands previously unreleased crap. I talked it over with a few of the former members and everyone liked the idea, so I moved forward with the plan. It’s taking some time finding all of the bands recordings, and putting together all of the stuff, like writing the biography. I think the end product will be really cool though. The box set will contain three CD’s worth of music, which is virtually every Dirty Laundry recording out there. Each box set comes with a biography about the band, and it’s a pretty long biography and goes into a lot of details, which I think some fans will really like. It also comes with a booklet that has the lyrics for every song, which was important for me to include, because I really want to make sure that I get song lyrics when I buy a CD. I can’t stand it when I buy a CD and the insert and packaging layout is nothing but photo’s, or even worse, just blank space! (Laughs) I just like to have the lyrics included, so I wanted to make sure that the box set had lyrics for sure! Ohh, each set also has a booklet that lists all the information about every Dirty Laundry release during the lifetime of the band, and it also contains a booklet with information about each band member, plus a timeline of band members. We are also including a small poster in each box set as well. The name of the box set is “Harmonies from the Hamper”, and we also decided to make the box set a limited edition release, and we are only pressing 2,000 copies, with five different pressings. Each pressing will have a different cover, and the earlier pressings come with extra bonus material, stickers, posters, patches, shit like that. The first pressing is gonna have a red cover and be a limited pressing of just 100 copies.
ASHLEY: (Laughs) Only 100 copies!
STAIN: Well yeah. I mean, come on, not very many people are huge fans of Dirty Laundry anymore. (Laughs) Shit, we didn’t have a lot of fans when we were active! So 100 copies is totally cool. It’ll just make it more rare for the fans who do care.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I guess you’re right. It just seems so small. But anyway, sorry. Go on.
STAIN: Okay, so the second pressing will be limited to 200 copies, and have a blue cover. The third wil have a green cover and be limited to 300 copies, and the fourth will be a yellow cover with 400 copies. The fifth and final pressing will be 1,000 copies and we are still deciding whether or not to have a different cover, or to change the whole format and release it, well, I can’t say anything about that yet. (Laughs) But the box set is still a ways out. It won’t be released for another year or two.
ASHLEY: Why wait so long? I know your fans have been waiting awhile, so why make them wait another couple years?
