Homedale is the man-cave of Idaho. It’s down in the basement, and so remote that you could never travel there by accident. Nestled in the rolling green Owyhees, Homedale is home to several vineyards and the most rock n’ roll crib I’ve ever seen. This house is comfortably dilapidated and liberally decorated with posters, records, and show notes. It has a practice space instead of a living room. A black dog named Apollo wantonly slaps beer cans around with his tail. The toilet is Jerry-rigged with a wire under the plunger so you can flush. This is where I met Absent Memories, where we kicked off the night enjoying some IPAs and heckling a wilderness survival show on the TV. I can’t think of a better activity to kick off band practice in this man-cave within a man-cave.
Izzy: I’d say it started with Mr. Cook, our teacher. We were part of a Guitar Club in high school. We all went to high school together, and we all played together at various times, and then in 2019 (almost 10 years after well all graduated from high school), it all kind of came together. 5 years for him [Riley ], he’s the young boy.
Riley: I am the youngling.
Izzy: At that time, Riley was learning how to play the drums.
Riley: But we needed to get better.
Izzy: That’s when we brought in the big guns [Conner]. Plus, Riley just has one of those voices that are like, superb.
Riley: Brian, who’s not here, you guys just knew him, really.
Conner: He was good friends with my little brother since he was like five. It’s a small town, more or less.
Izzy: It’s a small town, and like, how many people actually know how to play instruments?
Riley: 2500 people, this is it, right here.
Sal: Three out of five of us live in Homedale. We’ve all got roots here, connections. We all were born and raised here. I live in Nampa, and I didn’t realize how far out it is out here until I had to do the weekly drives. It’s like 35-40 minutes sometimes, and I’m just like “fuuuuuck.” If you really think about it, it’s like 2 hours every week.
Izzy: Well, like an hour and a half…
Riley: but it feels like 2 hours.
Sal: So we’ve always been connected. Thing is, [Izzy] never stopped playing music. He’s always been trying to be in different projects. He’s been in projects with Conner, he tried to get projects with Riley going.
Riley: Izzy and I have been jamming since like, 2015-16, ish.
Izzy: Funny story I want to tell about Riley. When I first met him, I think he was wearing a Def Leppard t-shirt or something. We were in high school, I think I was a junior. He was wearing a Def Leppard t-shirt and I asked him if he knew who that was. Not in a dick way, just like, ‘Ah, sweet shirt.’ And he’s like, ‘ I fuckin’ love Def Leppard. I’ve been to these concerts, and this and that.’ I was like “one day, we’re gonna make a rock video.”
Spud: I was obsessed with Def Leppard when I was in middle school.
That’s the thing to do, in Homedale in the summer. If you were in high school, you went to the pool.
Riley: Same. I went to their concert in ‘07, so I was like 12, at the Idaho center with Styx and REO. It was a fuckin’ real good concert. Made me a Styx fan, too. I’d never really listened to Styx before but after that I liked them a lot too. Early high school, yeah I was probably wearing that. I had a shirt from that show, that’s probably what I was wearing. I still have it, too. I didn’t grow after 8th grade.
I knew [Izzy] though, too, from the Homedale pool, before. In our town, you usually roll with your grade. Or maybe like a grade below or a grade above. Two grades above is what he was, so I knew him, but we didn’t do sports or anything together. I knew him, but we weren’t as close as we are now. But I knew him from the pool, because he’d go doing back-flips and shit off the diving board. I’m like, I’m gonna sit over here on the shallow end and just watch.
Sal: That’s the thing to do, in Homedale in the summer. If you were in high school, you went to the pool.
Izzy: I went to the pool, every day in the summer, since I was like 5. I mean, I stopped after high school, because after that it’s kind of like, weird.
Riley: I went down there through elementary school and middle school before they took the good diving board away. I’m pretty sure David broke it.
Izzy: I broke the first one.
Riley: Well, after that, the diving board sucked.
Izzy: Yeah, because Jackson’s brought one in and they put a chain on it so you couldn’t put it all back… We used to put that thing all the way back and we’d fly. We’d double bounce each other. We were able to do like double front-flips and shit. It was crazy. I belly-flopped so fucking hard that I think I got a concussion.
Riley: It was dude, it was wild. They were just fuckin’ crazy and doing shit that I was like, no way. I’m not trying that.
Izzy: I could do like a 720 fuckin’ front-flip…
Sal: Let’s reign this back in. Where do you want this to go, RJ?
What do you think is the weirdest part of your band?
Sal: We have a weird mix of people, like music tastes. I’m very much an acoustic-y, John Mayer guy.
Riley: booooo
Sal: Then we got Izzy, who’s a heavy metal player.
Conner: 80’s metal.
Sal: Then you’ve got Conner, who’s into prog rock, math rock, death metal.
Izzy: That’s why he said 80’s.
Sal: Then you’ve got Riley here, who’s like an eclectic of all music and Brian, who’s the masteroso of Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Conner: And Mormon hymns.
Sal: That’s the weirdest thing. We’ve all got different musical taste, yet we come together to just like, do what we do.
I noticed when you guys were practicing that this half of the room is drifting towards metal and this half was more, sweep picking and soft chords. It works though.
Izzy: That’s what I say all the time. Especially because of the way he plays, like he said he likes the John Mayer stuff. I like Motorhead, Sabbath, Motley Crue. When we write things, I’m trying to dance around him, or within what he’s playing, and trying to find those gaps. That’s the only way I can find that it fits, but I feel like it creates a unique sound.
Sal: As weird as it works, it works. It’s strange to me. Because, you would never think that this would work because he have so many different tastes. And we come from different backgrounds. You would think that it would just not happen, but somehow you get the metal and the heavier stuff meshing with the soft stuff, and it comes out.
Izzy: And then you’ve got Conner over here who does that crazy, beautiful drumming with awesome time signatures.
Sal: I always get yelled at because I’m trying to do too much John Mayer stuff.
Izzy: Nobody yells at you…
Sal: Yeah, Conner goes “We’re not doing John Mayer pussy shit!”
Izzy: No, he goes “We’re not doing that” and you go “Why you gotta yell at me?”
What is your dream band to open for?
Sal: John Mayer.
Riley: Most of mine are dead.
Conner: Queen.
Izzy: Freddie Mercury or Adam Levine Queen?
Conner: Is that even a question?
Riley: It’s hard because, how do you open for someone like that? That would kinda suck, almost. I guess probably Zeppelin at their peak would be the coolest. Just to be able to see that backstage.
Sal: I feel like we also have a weird Zeppelin vibe, too. We have such a sloppy lead. We have such a wide range of sound. We can be very acoustic-y and and then there’s the heavy stuff. I tend to associate… We’re rock, but we’re not soft rock, we’re not grunge rock.
Izzy: I know our music style would never fit it, but it would either be Motorhead, Black Sabbath or Dio. OR- this is a new band and they’re blowing people out of the water, would be The Warning. They’re three Mexico sisters and they’re kicking ass.
Conner: The Mars Volta would be my second choice. Or Cattle Decapitation.
Do you have any upcoming projects that you want to announce?
Izzy: We’ve got the single release on November 4th, then we go back to the studio this winter to finish up the rest of the album. This time, it’s going to be a full length album. We’ve got 11-12 songs, we’re gonna slowly release 6 in a span of…
Conner: Three years.
Sal: No. We’re still discussing on the singles, but we definitely have two singles coming up and ready. These will be available in the next three months. We’ve got 8 new songs, plus the four that we’re releasing, in the album, this coming summer.
Izzy: I think it should be done by early March.
Sal: Yeah, pending any delays, early March, late summer.
Do you think you’ll try to do a tour after the release?
Izzy: We’re trying, yeah
Sal: The problem with the tour is that we’ve got five guys living five different lives.
Conner: Some of us are married.
Sal: Yeah, some of us are in relationships, different work schedules, different lifestyles…
Izzy: I’m the only one that’s married to rock n’ roll. I’m ready to go whenever.
Sal: Conner’s got connections in Portland, Hawthorne Hideaway is somewhere in Portland that we keep getting asked to go play. In Vegas there’s this place in the Mandalay Bay that asked us to come play, but they never get back to us. I’ve gotta reconnect that.
Conner: Treefort would be fun.
Sal: Treefort would be fun, Conner has an in with Treefort guys. Last time we got feedback from Eric [Gilbert], he’s the guy who runs Treefort, I mean, he likes us but I guess we submitted our stuff late. Things are on the table, we can’t write it down on paper. We’re ready whenever they’re ready to have us.
Conner: I think it’s important not to play too many shows here. It’s such a small market. So we won’t be playing every weekend but you know, once a month. Twice a month.
Sal: Yeah, you don’t want to burn out the fanbase. Our hometown bar Fisher’s is where we had our very first show, was it 2021, June? We never promoted it, we never did anything for it, it was just word of mouth. Like, ‘Hey, we’re having a secret show at Fishers, June whatever.’
That’s the advantage of being in Homedale. We literally just kinda word of mouth… we set up at 7, the place is packed. I think there were like 80-something people in there. In a small dive bar. I’ve never seen that place that packed before. I’m not gonna lie, I was scared. I was like, ‘I’m gonna puke!’ and [Izzy]’s like ‘Stop!’
Even my dad, my dad lives out of town and drove by and he was like, ‘There were so many cars at Fisher’s, was something going on?’ and I was like ‘Yeah, I played!’ and he was like, ‘You never told me!’ and I was like, ‘I didn’t think you wanted to go hang out at a bar.’ That’s one of my favorite memories.
Conner: But yeah, I think a small Northwest tour would be feasible in the next year.
Sal: I feel like our style and everything doesn’t really mesh in this market right now. Nobody wants a ‘rock’ band.
Conner: Especially not the Tango.
Sal: Yeah, we got asked to play at the Tango, which is the fancy bar. We went out there, and it was not good. Their stage wasn’t great, sound was awful, and we got asked to turn it down. I was like, ‘we’re a rock band, turn it down?’ They had the audacity…
Izzy: They’re used to acoustic guitars, slide guitars.
One 80 year old in the corner doing his thing.
Riley (singing): “Don’t rock the jukebox!”
Izzy (singing): “There’s a tear in my beer!”
Riley: I mean, I don’t mind that shit, it’s just not what we play!
Sal: When I reached out to some places they gave us feedback like, if you guys want to strip it down and do an acoustic, we’d love to have you. I remember I brought that up one day and Conner was like, “Sal, we play rock n’ roll.” I was like, Yeah, good point, and that was the end of that conversation.
…some places they gave us feedback like, if you guys want to strip it down and do an acoustic, we’d love to have you. I remember I brought that up one day and Conner was like, “Sal, we play rock n’ roll.”
Spud media 