Catching Up With... Apollo Sunshine

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Paste: Do any of you guys have art backgrounds beyond music? 

Sam: Not formally, but everyone’s always messing around with stuff. 

Jeremy: I have my own recording studio. [Oakland’s Coyote Hearing Studios] 

Jesse: We’re artsy people. [laughter] Also, we just got our school bus converted to run on grease again—it’s a new system. So this tour will be the maiden voyage of that. 

Paste: Have you figured out how you’re gonna get fuel for it? Are you gonna have to go knock on restaurant doors? 

Sam: Yeah, there’s some improvisation to that. I’ve got my hookup in Brooklyn and can get enough there for anything in the Northeast. If it was just four or five dates, we could probably bring enough just from here. I don’t think it’ll be too tough, actually. It’s got a big tank, so when you find some you get to go for a while. And a lot of these clubs, they serve French fries and stuff like that, so they have oil in the kitchen, you can just get it at the club. I’ve actually been finding really good grease at a wide range of places—Mexican places, pizza places. We used to always stick to Asian places, but you can find a pretty versatile load of stuff that’s usable. 

Paste: That must make touring that much more affordable, not having to pay for gas, right? 

Sam: Oh, yeah. It’s huge. 

Jesse: It’s the only way we can survive touring. You know, you go out and work, and do all this shit, and you come home and can barely pay your rent. It’s like, “What the hell? I just worked my ass off.” 

Jeremy: Probably about 70 percent of what we made used to go to gas. 

Paste: It’s crazy. Sometimes I wonder how bands can even survive now. I’ve heard a lot of people have had to start touring regionally because they couldn’t afford to drive across the country. But this seems like a way around that. 

Sam: Yeah, it’s the only way I can see. I’ve gone about 500 miles since the conversion was done in D.C., and just driving back, it’s amazing—you just watch your diesel gas gauge not move for hundreds and hundreds of miles. It’s a real joy. 

Paste: Is it expensive to get it converted? 

Sam: It is, but it’s resourceful because it pays for itself. 

Paste: How much did you have to pay to get it converted? 

Sam: Well, for this one, we got a lot of equipment—we got a portable filtration system so that we’re good to go on the road. There were a lot of extras, so it was $5,000 overall. Actually, our label head fronted us the tour support to get it converted, so now touring will be much more affordable.