*Skavoovie and the Epitones are fast becoming one of the premier 3rd wave ska bands. I was supposed to interview them back in November, but by the time the show was over, everybody was sweaty and wanted to go home. But I did get a hold of Jon Natchez at home, and once I loosened my grip, he answered obligingly. By Alissa

Bass Ackwards: Who does what in the band?

Jon Natchez: Well, there are ten of us, so there are a lot of people doing a lot of things. But basically…I’m Jon and I play alto and tenor saxophone. We have three Bens. One plays saw, one of whom is the drummer and one of whom is a trumpet player. We have another trumpet player named Jesse, we have a euphonium player named Joe, our keyboard player is Eugene, our guitar player is Dan, our bass player is Rob, and our ever-charismatic frontman Ans.

BA: Did you get your name from the Skatalites tour? [called Skavoovee]

JN: No, it’s kind of funny, we were together five or six months when that happened, and we immediately knew that there would be confusion…and there were my friends that would come up to me and go "Man, I saw you were on a big tour with the Skatalites." But I think that we got our name the same play they got the name for their album and tour. It’s an old Jamaican word, the word that "ska" comes from, at least according to one mythology. There was this bass player called Cluet Johnson, and he used to greet everyone with "Hey mon, peace, love, skavoovie!" kind of like screaming Hey, What’s up, How’s it going, Daddy-o, that sort of thing. And that’s the word that ska came from. Well, there are lots of different stories, but that was the one that we’d heard at the time, and that was the name we chose.

BA: Where’d you get the Epitones then?

JN: Well, when we were deciding names our tenor sax player Ben come up with Epitones because whenever he would read epitome, he would read it "epitooome". That [Epitone] was in the style of the soul groups of the 60s. First, we had a bunch of names floating around the band. Skavoovie was one, and The Epitones was another finalist. We were just going to be the Epitones. But then our first show was with the Allstonians and the former trumpet player for the Allstonian, Jeremy, who is now in the Slacker, got us the show. He’d been hanging around the band during practices when we were trying to decide between Skavoovie and The Epitones and a couple other names. So he was like "So what did you guys decide to call yourselves so I can put out the flyer for the show." So we said The Epitones, and he said "Oh man, I can’t let you do that, I really like the name Skavoovie, so you’re gonna be Skavoovie or else I’m not going to let you play the show." He kind of meant that half-jokingly, but he was also half serious! So we eventually just decided to keep both, calling ourselves Skavoovie AND the Epitones.

BA: Well, there are a lot of people that have heard you, but there’s also a lot of people who haven’t, so how would you describe your sound?

JN: One of the great things for us about Skavoovie is that we’re always going to try new things. So there isn’t one sound that we’re necessarily going for. We’re just trying to be as creative as possible. We try to do lots of different things, but we pay special attention I think, more than a lot of other bands today, to the instrumental side. We’re probably more than 50% instrumental songs entirely, and even when we do vocal songs we try to integrate all the instruments together and make it fun music to play for everyone, not just (blaring horn noise, bwa bwa bwa!!!) Reel Big Fish-style horns, you know.

BA: Has anybody ever tried to start a most pit at a show?

JN: Oh yes. It’s kind of scary but we’ve been to that place where we can look back and say "Wow, we’ve been together for a long time." I mean, when we got together, we were just kids in high school, and we’re still fairly young. I think most of the guys are still 20, 21, but we’re getting to the point where we can really, really look back, and we feel like we’ve seen a lot of stuff. People have tried to start that all the time, especially back when we started out, when ska was mostly still an underground thing. We try to discourage, always when…you know that Batman theme we do?…so that’s got a kind of heavy vibe to it, so occasionally people will start trying to most then, but we’re not really into that.

BA: We’ve always been wondering this: which is healthier, butter or margarine?

JN: (laughs) Personally, I’d have to say butter, just because I don’t go for all the processed stuff, so I think butter is definitely…although I’d have to say an excess of anything doesn’t do anybody any good. So keep your butter intake to a minimum if you want to stay healthy. But I’m definitely a butter man myself.

BA: Would you ever allow yourself to be played on commercial radio?

JN: Oh yeah, sure! I mean just because 1. Skavoovie’s music isn’t the type of music that right now is being played on commercial radio, so I’d be really happy if that sort of music with instrumentals, improvisation, that was being played on commercial radio, I think that would be great, but also in terms of it, we’re of course in sort of the underground scene based status that ska seems to have had in the last few years, because it bugs us, you know? I mean we’ve been touring for a while now and the reason we’ve been able to do that there’s been a scene, that we could go to a state we’ve never been to before, but say "Hey, we’re a ska band, can we get a show?" and there’d be another ska band who would set it up for us, and we can thank them for that. And while we certainly don’t write songs that we say "we’ve gotta write a hit, we’ve gotta make millions!" if we were played on commercial radio, we’d be able to make a living off Skavoovie. We’d be able to do it for a long long time. I think that’s ultimately what we want to be able to do. We’re not against opening up our music to whoever wants to hear it, if they’re really into it.

BA: Right, because I know you did a video too.

JN: Yeah, we did a video too.

BA: Where’d you first hear ska?

JN: Well, me personally…let me back up a little bit…when the band started, it was Ans the singer, Ben Jaffe the tenor sax player, Jesse the trumpet player, Eugene the keyboard player, and Rob the bass player. Those were the foundational members of the band. There might be a couple more people. But they all went to high school together in Newton [Massachusetts], where most of us are from. And Ans and Ben and Jesse especially had been listening to ska for a long time. Ans’ dad had been into it for a while, and Ans just started listening to his old records, so from the time they were in I think 7th grade, they were pretty much heavily into ska, first the 2-Tone stuff, then quickly moving on to more traditional stuff like the Skatalites. Jesse too, has a phenomenal reggae and ska collection. He’s been a record fiend for a log time, and they were listening to it for a while. Me personally, I kind of got picked up in the band just because I was a sax player, and I was at the other high school (there are two high schools in Newton) and through a series of people, they found out about me and that I play sax, and they needed another sax player so they gave me a call. I’d never heard ska, except for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ "Devil’s Night Out", probably the first ska album I had. When I hear that in 9th grad I really really like it. But I was very much of a jazz freak, I really listened only to jazz, and so I wasn’t really excited about joining a ska band at first. I’d never really been in a serious band so I wanted to do it for that reason, but I’d only heard the Bosstones and I didn’t really want to play that type of music. Then I went to a Skavoovie rehearsal and Ans handed me a tape and said "This is good ska, listen to it," and I did, and it really was good ska, and I really fell in love with it, and that was my introduction…and I’ve been listening hard ever since.

BA: What was the first show you ever went to?

JN: The first show I ever went to on my own was ZZ Top and the Black Crowes. In eighth grade, me and a friend went to the Woosta Centrum…but the first ska show…well, the first ska show I played was Skavoovie, which was with the Blue Meanies and Thumper, the Allstonians. Then I went to see, after I’d been in the band for a while, and started getting into ska, I went to see the Skatalites, the Scofflaws. I’m still very much of a jazz freak, so I like a lot of ska bands who do instrumentals and really do solo well.

BA: What would be your ideal show, either to see or to play in?

JN: Oh man, that’s a tough question. That’d be tricky because I really like a wide variety of types of music. So it’d be tough to get all of my favorite bands together to play a show because it would definitely be weird for the audience.

BA: They can be dead too.

JN: Oh that makes it even tougher! But one of my favorite bands right now is Shellack, they’re from Chicago. It’s Steve Albini’s band, the guy who made his name from producing Nirvana’s "In Utero", but Shellack is a fucking kick ass band. I’m dying to see them live, I’ve never seen them before. And I guess the best concert I’ve ever seen is by this jazz group called the Sam Rivers Trio so I guess they would have to be on the bill. And I guess of course the Skatalites, and something by this sax player named John Zorn [?]. I’d like that to be on the bill. I guess if you’re including dead, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley would have to be in there because, wow, I’d love to see those guys live. That would’ve been amazing. I could go on for hours! And of course I would like us to open the show, just to say that we’ve played with all these guys…yeah, I’ve played with Jimi Hendrix. (laughs)


Well, that's all I really want to stick on the page, so you'll have to buy a copy of #4 to get the rest. Sorry, but that's life.