Jake Welliver and Patrick Foss arrived early at Billy Ray’s Dive. As we sat at a table, the waitress teased them for coming in as often anymore. They’ve been spending more time at B Side’s when they’re not playing shows (“We hardly ever practice,” Welliver says) as Pure Country Gold, a garage rock duo, profiled and reviewed by Sam Soule and Amy McCullough here and here.

How did PCG form?
Foss: When Jake and I met, we were in other bands and we played a show together here, and that’s when we met. We started playing about two, two and a half years ago, played our first show a year ago. What else…did we answer that question?

Would you say you were part of a bar, or garage rock scene at the time?
Foss: I guess…I don’t know. It’s a small town. We just kept seeing each other and became friends. When Billy Ray’s was at its heyday of doing shows, we both played here a lot.

Is playing a duo limiting?
Foss: You have to compensate for certain things not being there, but in a lot of ways it’s so much easier. Any decision that needs to be made in the writing process can be churned out a lot faster. As long as you’re aware of what you need to compensate for, you can make it work a lot more efficiently than a band with four players in it.

Foss: We didn’t set out to be a two piece.

Welliver: Absolutely not.

Foss: Originally, I had this idea…I wanted to start a big beat R&B review. I started to remove myself from writing for the guitar and tried to think bigger, and think for horns. I don’t play horns so it was really hard. I just had to kind of whistle and get stuff in my head. At the same time me and Jake started playing I was still looking to get to that point. We tried out bass players, I think three or four. A couple of them were friends, a couple just people from Craigslist, and nothing really gelled so we just picked a name and started doing it anyway.

Any plans to add members now?
Foss: We haven’t really talked about it or thought about it.

Welliver: No one knows what’s going to happen in the future, but this is the way it is for the time being.

Foss: I think more likely I’d like to do some recordings that have some extra stuff and maybe something would come out of that. I was in a band when I was in college, like a 50s cover band, and we had horns. It was crappy as hell, but it was kind of a garagey, drunken party band. And we did a reunion show right before when I quit my last band, the High and Mighty, and I thought I’d try to do something with the same spirit, as far as getting people to dance, but also writing originals. Just about every song on the record was in our first group of songs that I came to Jake with at our first practice.

Welliver: All that shit came together really fast.

Foss: We don’t focus on it a ton, but we do put some time into arranging everything we do because there is an extra challenge, I think, in creating something full enough. Certain guitar parts just loose all the power in the songs; I kind of have to keep it going. But it’s neat. Some songs we don’t have to worry about it at all, we just play ‘em and they gel. Some of the songs…we have to be extra focused on the dynamics and that sort of thing.

Welliver: (Laughs.) We decided that in our next interview we wanted to talk a lot about dynamics. Dynamic musical landscapes. (Laughs.) That’s what we’re all about.

Foss: We don’t take ourselves seriously at all.

Welliver: We’re much about having fun…(Shrugs.) Hey, we’re just fun guys having fun!

Foss: I don’t think I could write a song that would be totally serious because I don’t think I’d be able to sell it. Some deep emotional thing…that’s just not the way that I am.

Do you guys have day jobs?
Welliver: I’m a mechanic.

That makes sense.
Foss: I’m an unemployed quality assurance engineer.

Is that even a real occupation?
Foss: I test the quality of software.

I thought you were pulling my leg again. You guys seem tight like that…do you hang out outside the band?
Welliver: Yeah all the time.

Foss: We didn’t before we started the band. We’d see each other and we were always friendly for years.

Welliver: We’d have a good time laughing over beers and shit, but I never had his phone number.

Foss: We’ve definitely become best friends, at least I think so.

Welliver: Absolutely.

Links:
WW’s Best New Band feature
Pure Country Gold-space

Photos: (top and very bottom) whoopin’ it up on tour, by Howie Hotknife; (below) playing the Dive, by Suzy Day