The Union Suit: A Perfect Fit

Dan Tanner, Cory Greene, Jerry Davis and Jason Griffith

One of Paducah’s hottest bands is steaming up the summer. Catch The Union Suit at Maiden Alley Cinema June 25, the Sanctuary Lounge July 3 and the Paducah Summer Festival, July 24. Is it that hard rock-n-roll lifestyle they crave? Nah, they just like making the music they love.

We posed a few questions to band members Cory Greene (bass), Dan Tanner (guitar) and Jason Griffith (drums). Jerry Davis (guitar) was unavailable for comment.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND
Where is everyone from, and what are your day jobs?
Dan: Lived here my entire life, aside from six years in the military. I’m currently a computer geek.

Jason: I’m from this area originally, and I’ve been back here for about seven years. I run a small systems integration company.

Cory: I grew up here in Paducah, moved away and then moved back about three years ago. Nobody ever stays gone forever from this town. I love it here though. Jerry grew up in Sicily and California and moved here in high school.

I’m a bartender and I love it. We’re a busy bunch of dudes, which can make finding time to practice kind of difficult.

How did you meet, and how did you start the band?
Dan: We’ve known each other since high school. Cory, Jason and I all went to Lone Oak. Jerry was a Heathen. We all ran in pretty much the same skater/freak scene though, so we’ve been friends since we were kids.

Cory: I’ve known Dan the longest since we were both art dorks in high school and spent every possible minute in the art room. We’ve played music together for years but not all together like we are now. Jason, Dan and Jerry played in a band called Meanson in high school. I later played in several bands with Jerry and played with Jason a little bit. This is my first band with Dan.

Dan: The Union Suit didn’t start until late 2006 but we’ve been playing music together, in one form or another, since the beginning.

How did you come up with the name, The Union Suit?
Cory: When we first started playing, we were really excited because this was kind of our dream lineup for a band. We considered it the perfect union. At one point we were going to call ourselves “The Reunion Tour,” but I think there was already a band with that name.

Usually in band naming everyone comes up with a list of possible names. I had been holding on to the name The Union Suit for a while and it seemed fitting. Only later did the other guys find out it was actually a form of long underwear. It kind of has different meanings for us.

How did you know you’d be such a good match?
Cory: I had no question we would mesh well together from the get-go. The biggest factor is our taste in music. For the most part we all listen to pretty much the same kind of stuff. Very rarely do we disagree on music. Plus we’ve been friends for a long time and being close like that allows us to communicate more freely.

Do you have formal musical training or has it all been your fabulous natural talent?
Dan: None. Mom taught me some guitar basics. Slayer took it from there.

Cory: I have never had any real training other than just playing in bands and playing at home. Any technical stuff I’ve just learned along the way. Jason’s the only “real” musician among us!

Jason: I was in high school marching band and orchestra, and I took guitar lessons for a while when I was a kid. Funny, the drummer is the only one here who has taken guitar lessons. Everyone else is pretty much self-taught.

It’s pretty funny because we have a fairly limited knowledge of what we are even doing. I personally understand time signatures and rhythm-based things from being in high school band, but most of us do not technically know how to count out what we’re doing. We have some songs with maybe three or four different time signatures, which can be somewhat complicated. I have no idea how it works, it just does.

What are your hopes for the band?
Dan: What a great question with a complicated answer, from my perspective anyhow. We love making music together and started this thing for no other reason than to have fun — maybe relive our youth a bit. I couldn’t really ask for much more than what I have right now: Four childhood friends, still pretty close, still playing with toys and still making music that we love.

Cory: I’m pretty realistic about things. We’re in our 30s now and the dream of “making it” really isn’t there anymore. We simply write to make ourselves happy and luckily it seems that a lot of people like it. If an opportunity arises that allows us to take it to the next level we’ll cross that bridge if it comes but we’re not actively looking to achieve anything special.

Jason: Have fun, that’s it.

THE PROCESS
How do your practice sessions go?
Dan: When shows are looming, we do nothing but go over our current material. When nothing’s booked for a while, we write.

Cory: Lately it’s just been running through the set list a few times since we have so many shows coming up this summer. It’s pretty laid back. We joke around a whole lot and there are usually adult beverages involved. When we’re writing it’s a little different. We try to just focus on what we’re working on.

Where do you practice, and how can you tell that you’ve hit the right sound?
Cory: We keep our practice space a top-secret fortress because some of us have had the misfortune of being robbed of all of our equipment before, so we keep our whereabouts extremely confidential. It’s weird but we always seem to hit the right sound together. A lot of time we’ll start practice with a little improvisational “jam,” and a lot of the time it almost sounds like a real song. We’ve thrown away or simply forgot so many cool songs in that way that it almost makes me cry sometimes.

Jason: Our practice space is a SUPER SECRET.

Dan: We try to practice twice per week. As far as hitting the sound: For me, it’s the point when we make very few mistakes, but when we do make mistakes, no one can tell.

Describe the song-writing process. Do you collaborate or write songs individually?
Dan: It’s almost exclusively a group process. Usually we’re just jamming, tuning or waking our fingers up. Someone plays something cool, someone else says, “don’t stop,” and it builds from there. Occasionally someone will come in with a pre-written part, but rarely. No one ever writes an entire song on their own.

Cory: We write around each other. Regardless of instrument we sometimes make suggestions to each other to what we play. Jason even writes from behind the drum set sometimes by telling us what notes to play. It’s also a VERY long process. We’ve got one song that we’ve been re-writing for almost three years now. It’s frustrating sometimes when we hit a roadblock but eventually we find something that works. Writing is definitely my favorite part of being in this band. It’s so much fun!

Jason: Sometimes we actually sit down together and try to write something. No one really writes songs and brings them to practice to learn. They’re all collaborative. In any case, the songs usually evolve radically from start to finish. It’s personally hard on me, because I start to think this is not going well and start getting bent out of shape about it. But it usually ends up as something everyone is happy with.

Which of your songs are your favorites?
Dan: New songs usually seem to be the favorites.

Jason: Illinois Central and Sunday Clothes right now, just because they are somewhat challenging and fun to play.

Cory: I think we all have our favorites but I think as a group our favorite songs to play are Tune In and Illinois Central. Tune In simply because it’s one of our more rocking songs and also the first song we wrote together. I don’t really know why we like Illinois Central so much. It’s hard to explain but it’s just FUN. New songs are always awesome too because they have that fresh smell. It’s like a pair of new socks.

Which comes first — words or melody?
Dan: I don’t recall ever in my life writing lyrics first. Our music has never been straightforward enough to allow the lyrics to come first. Besides, I write my lyrics based on how the music makes me feel — or what image it puts into my head. I just don’t believe in lyrics before music.

Cory: The music ALWAYS comes first for us and is the most important part of the song for us. We don’t even think about lyrics until we’re happy with the complete song. The word placement may later change what we’re playing in the song but for the most part the song stays the way it was before lyrics. Song subject matter is usually up to the writer. Dan’s lyrics tend to be more political in nature and Jerry mostly writes about life experiences be it relationships or deaths in the family. We usually give them input on their lyrics as well.

THE PERFORMANCES
What are your favorite venues?
Cory: My favorite places we’ve played are di Fratelli’s and the KC Hall. I like playing in bars and all but we all started out playing hall shows and those are still a sentimental favorite. Even though most of the attendees are young enough to be our kids.

Dan: So far, Fratelli’s was my favorite local place to date — but ask me again at the end of this summer.

What do you love about performing?
Dan: Personally, I love the fact that I’m making music with no regard to whether or not the crowd likes it, and that they like it anyway. That’s such a great feeling. My favorite moment in any show is when I can hear a crowd scream at some point in a song, before it’s even over. That gets me every time.

Cory: I think the crowd reaction is a big part of how much fun I have at a show. If the audience is into it, it makes it that much easier for us. The di Fratelli show was awesome because everyone seemed to be having a good time and people were dancing and singing along. It’s always awesome to see people enjoying something that we’ve worked so hard at.

What’s the worst part?
Cory: What I least like about playing live is hauling our stuff around. We’re getting older and the equipment seems like it’s getting heavier. And since there is no real venue in town, it usually means we have to bring our P.A. equipment with us, which is an added pain in the ass. A good example of this would also be the di Fratelli show. It was NO fun carrying all of our shit up those stairs!

Dan: Ugh. We so need roadies. My back isn’t what it used to be.

Jason: The physical harm that seems to come to me when I play. Example: I’ve “enhanced” about six pairs of jeans with my bloody knuckles.

You guys have some awesome shows coming up!
Cory: We’re super pumped about the Maiden Alley show June 25! I love that theater so much, so playing there and watching a great film (Anvil) afterward is going to be a real treat.

We also have the Sanctuary (inside Bobby’s Inkslingers) show on July 3 with Jerry’s other band, The Hi Fi Ninja, and Roscoe. It’s a new venue and we’re excited about that sort of thing being in Paducah.

After that we are playing the Paducah Summer Festival, July 24. That’s a little different kind of show for us but we’re pleased they asked us to play this year.

We play at The Dairy in Metropolis on August 15, again with The Hi Fi Ninja and other bands to be announced. I think we’re going to do another derby fundraiser soon, too, at KCs.

SEX, DRUGS & ROCK-N-ROLL
OK, let’s just get right to it. You guys are married or in relationships — how do you react when you’re performing and you look out and see women TOTALLY flirting with you?
Jason: Holy crap, is that what girls are doing up there? I can never see because Cory is standing in front of me.

Dan: I just don’t notice. I’m really too focused on what I’m playing to notice things like that.

Cory: Honestly I don’t pay much attention to the people in the crowd. I’m too busy trying not to screw up and look cute, cute, cute.

You’re TOTALLY cute, cute, cute! Come on! You don’t notice?
Dan: Not in the least, actually. I think that we have quite a different perception than most people of what it means to be in a band. And we definitely don’t fit into the “rock star” persona. We do what we do for no other reason than to make music that we love. Personally, I’ve never tried to get a girl using the “I’m in a band come home with me” method. Just not my style.

Cory: I won’t lie and say it hasn’t been a perk over the years but nowadays we’re playing just because we love it so much.

I suspect adult beverages help fuel performances. Do you have any sort or rule about that? Or does anything go?
Cory: Jerry and Jason don’t drink much but it’s pretty safe to say that Dan and I are near professional drinkers. Booze helps calm the nerves quite a bit but we never get annihilated before we play a show. There’s no real rule about it but we don’t want to embarrass ourselves.

Dan: I’m incredibly shy by nature. So standing in front of a crowd is kinda tough already. So a little liquid courage eases that a bit. Besides, we’re up there to have fun. If we’re having fun, the crowd will usually follow. We do have to keep it in moderation though. We won’t allow ourselves to get “drunk” before a show. Lubricated, but not drunk. We playing some fairly fast and complicated parts up there — brain farts and loss of muscle memory are not acceptable.

OK, I’m just gonna ask — and ear muffs for our younger readers. Is being in a band better than sex?
Jason: I would say DURING a performance can be better than sex. Afterwards I just want to throw up and take a nap.

Dan: Having a wife, this is a slippery slope. I’ll say this: It’s a totally different kind of high for me.

Cory: I don’t know if it’s better than sex but for me there isn’t much I’d rather do. There’s certainly an adrenaline rush that comes with performing live. Especially when we’re playing well and the crowd is having a good time. I’d at least put it above masturbation.