How did Two Hit Creeper originate?

Jim - Two Hit Creeper is 20 years in the making now

Mike - Yeah, we meet when we were about five or six years old. Our parents belonged to a country club, so we were rich little kids. We used to swim and play golf together. When we were little we used to talk about heavy metal-- Jim liked Quite Riot, and I liked Twisted Sister. All we would ever talk about was music. Jim learned how to play guitar.

Jim - That was when I was about twelve or thirteen years old.

Mike - One year when I was fourteen, I got into this "Death Metal" band. I was the singer. So I asked Jim if he wanted to play guitar.

Jim - I had no idea what "Death Metal" was.

Mike - He didn't listen to any heavy music, but we just sort of clicked and started writing music together. We played in bands together all through high school and college. With a band, a "full" band. We're both classically trained musician, I play the piano and he plays guitar.

Jim - Then we had this one band and the sound really wasn't what we wanted, we wanted to be dark and heavy we wanted to be just f**kin' sick.

Mike - When we were back in Philly we were in a band that was kinda reminiscent of System of a Down, but we didn't know who they were. We didn't want to do that style. I always wanted to be something scary without being hokey like Marilyn Manson.

Jim - So we decided to move out here.

Mike - We graduated from college. Two weeks later we drove cross-country in our cars.

Jim - With our walkie talkie's.

Mike - We drove cross-country. We had no place to live, no jobs, no bank accounts. We had all our equipment and all out money stuck in a tent for four days, starting form New Years Eve during El Niño.

Jim - It was 45 degrees every night. But we did it because wanted to make it. We wanted to make the "heaviest" band, and we wanted to make it. It was either LA or New York, and I'm not gonna live in New York City. It's warmer out here anyway, you know?

We lived in a tent and looked for a place. We ended up living in a lesbian’s house, but she didn’t live there because she lived on a boat with her lover, so she rented it out to us. It was awesome! A fully furnished house. She finally sold the house. She's great person! She basically saved us from freezing.

We wanted to make music so bad, on our first night of living in that house we had our first tryouts with musicians in California. It was terrible, they were all terrible! So, every night we'd try out musicians, drummers and bass players, for about nine months. We tried out every crack head and retard who thought they should be signed, and everybody SUCKED! After the first nine months we just looked at each other and said "How the hell are we gonna do this? We can't find anyone!"

Mike - We don't like electronic music. Which is the funny thing.

Jim - One day I just said f**k it! I went out to the store. Bought all this equipment. I started writing the songs. We started writing the songs. We started practicing in our studio. People were walking by going "What the hell is that?" They'd see two guys and freak out. We started playing and working our asses off.

Mike - When we started playing around town people were pretty cool.

Jim - The first time we played a show was at Club 369 on a Wednesday night a year ago (we're only about a year old), we thought people were gonna beat us up for only having two people. So far people have been responsive. I'm sure we get just as much sh*t talked about us as any other band, it's no different, in LA.

How do you guys create your songs?

Mike - Basically it works like this, either he'll have a melody (pointing at Jim). We write in melodies, we don't write in riffs. We don't write around the guitar. We're not a rock and roll band, believe it or not. We have a melody. I might sit down on the piano and come up with a skeleton structure. We agree on it and how it's gonna go. Then I sit down I put all the drums to it, then I go back and do a bass line. Then I do the pianos. Then I throw everything on top if it. When we get the whole entire song together, we take it into the studio and we write the guitar lines on top of that. So this way there's no chance of Jim sounding rock and roll, and no chance of him doing anything generic. Since it's the last thing we do, he has to do something different. He comes up with the guitar lines, then we sit there and play it real loud. Then I come up with the vocal lines. I write the lyrics after the vocal lines. This way the songs don’t have any fat on 'em

Jim - They're f**king pop tunes!

Mike - They almost sound like pop songs honestly, but it's just that people don't hear them that way. Lyrically our songs are all about responsibility, positively, and doing better for yourself. We're sick of whiners. I wasn't raped, I wasn't molested, I don't have any of those problems.

Jim - He's got some problems all right!

Mike - I set it up like this; our music is supposed to sound really scary, and the lyrics are supposed to be about responsibility. I think that the scariest thing for people to do in this world is to think. Therefore, my lyrics are about people thinking and doing something better for themselves. None of that whiner bull sh*t.

Mike you've made comments on stage about rap-core metal being dead. Could you tell me more about your feelings on that?

Mike - It's dead, it's over! When bands like Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit get as far as they get and they're good at what they do, and they are the biggest…well that's it.

Jim - That's where it levels off.

Mike - Now it seems like the record companies are signing a bunch of rap-rock bands, but not too many of them will really get anywhere. The two biggest ones are out there already. In fact you can read any industry paper and they tell you that after this year it's gonna be over. I don't consider Korn rap-rock, they're not ever gonna be done with.

What are your views on the music scene in general?

Jim - Sick of heavy music!!! There are no good bands out there right now.

Mike - Except for a few of the local bands, Droid and 20 Dead Flower Children, those are my two favorites. A lot of the bands lack originality. It's not even that, it's the lack of honesty, the lack of passion. When these bands go up on stage it seems like they're just going through the motions. They can't necessarily play their instruments, they aren't groomed in technical stuff, and you see them on stage struggling to play their instruments. They're not doing something honest, they're just following a trend

Jim - Don't get us wrong, we love rap and hip hop. We listen to Wu Tang Clan, Ice Cube, we like all that sh*t. It's not that we don't like hip-hop, 'cause we do. There are a lot of bands trying to do that that aren't honest. It's a lot of old school metal heads just trying to reform themselves. It's like in the 80's when everybody was doing punk and glam rock hit, everybody switched. We figure that no matter what the current trend is, we're gonna do what we believe in.

Since you were once looking to have a full band would you still consider adding additional musicians?

Mike - It's not that we're not interested, but it would have to be the right deal at this point. If someone wanted to sign us and put us on tour and they thought it would be better, if we were vibing it we'd do it. But basically it would be hired guns. This is it! We're Two Hit Creeper!

Jim - It's really hard to try to bring something else into this. Everything is set. This is the way Two Hit Creeper is always gonna be. We had the name before we knew it was gonna be just two people.

Mike - We didn't really know we were going to end up like this. It was a shock to us, since we don't really listen to electronic music, or industrial. I don't think we have that sound.

Anything you want to add?

Jim - Somebody sign us! Help!

Jim and Mike in unison - HELP HHHEEEEEELLLLLPPPPPP!!!

Check the guys out at www.twohitcreeper.com

We review 2HC's EP "The Stepchildren's Twisted Circus Music" in this issue.