Second Shift Chat About Reunion

On February 20 one of Atlanta's best local acts will be reuniting for a one-off show at Star Bar. Courtesy of Team Luis, Second Shift will play after years of being apart, accompanied by fellow ace acts, Y-O-U (Atlanta), Hot Pipes (Nashville) and Lowry (Brooklyn).

We chatted to Wes Hoffman and Jonathan Baker from Second Shift about the impending reunion, what they've been up to since the band broke up, and basically the state of the whole music business. Phew.

 

AMG: Is this just a one off show or is Second Shift starting up again?

 

Baker: We’re not really getting back together. We just want to play a show. We had the idea because Luis [Sandoval, also of Team Luis fame], our partner in Pop Death Squad, needed some help putting on a show for our mutual friend Nikki Wing for her birthday at the Star Bar in December. Nikki kinda wanted a show with her favorite bands from back in the day, you know, Trances Arc, The Whigs, Y-O-U, bands from around 2003. So we thought, what about a Second Shift reunion show? Our bass player Craig [Nast] couldn’t do it, he was out in Arizona. But when there was an opening at the Star Bar, on the 20th, with Y-O-U, who are sort of our best friends in the local scene, we thought let’s do it. Let’s play a show. I’m not sure if we’re gonna play any more shows.

AMG: So probably no recording of an album?

 

Baker: I don’t think so.

 

Hoffman: I don’t know though. The situation with our bass player from The Redcoats [Ty Abernethy] is so off and on right now.

 

Baker: He’s starting back at school. So he’s been studying every night of the week for the past three months, getting ready to take the GMAT. So he’s very focused on that.

 

Hoffman: So I mean that’s stopping us from getting too busy with The Redcoats. I think we’re all super-excited about playing the show, so I don’t know, if Craig said, “Hey, I wanna join the band again, let’s just change the name to something other than Second Shift or The Redcoats,” then who knows? I don’t necessarily want to rule it out; I’m just saying it’s not something that we’re definitely going to do either.

 

AMG: What have each of the band members been up to since the breakup?

 

Hoffman: Myself and Jonathan, we’ve been doing Pop Death Squad stuff with Luis, putting on our Thursday night shows at Star Bar, Big Trouble in Little Five, putting together shows and events around Atlanta. I’ve also joined up with a band called The Constellations, playing bass with them, sold out The EARL in East Atlanta and sold out The 40 Watt in Athens Saturday night, so that’s a blast too. I’ve gotten involved, along with Second Shift’s guitar player, in teaching and organizing stuff over at Camp Jam, the rock ‘n’ roll day camp/summer camp, School of Rock thing. Certainly staying busy.

Baker: I got a job as editor of Citysearch Atlanta, that’s my “real job.” I write restaurant reviews and throw events and visit bars. It’s a good “not rock ‘n’ roll” job to have. Our drummer Jason [Nackers] had a production company with our guitarist [Beau Dobbin] called In The Red which had been going for a year now, but they recently decided to go their separate ways a few weeks ago, so I’m not sure if he’s going to try and open his own studio.

Hoffman: And I guess Craig is back in Knoxville. He’s getting involved with recording also.

AMG: What was the initial reason for breaking up in the first place?

Baker: I think it was a culmination of a lot of things. Craig, our bass player, wanted to leave. You just get tired, of sleeping in the van, trying to drive through the night after playing different shows, from Charleston to Charlotte. It’s hard. At some point in time someone’s going to get tired. We were also at that place where we were playing shows like the Warped Tour or Say Anything, and we were listening to Spoon, and you’re on stage at the Warped Tour and there’s these 15-year-old girls everywhere, all these middle school kids, and we’re 26, 27 at the time. At some point you’ve got to wonder. I wasn’t listening to a lot of bands we were playing with.

Hoffman: I hated them. I did not like them.

Baker: We had found our niche in Atlanta and were able to do a lot of really great things as far as being able to play Music Midtown, playing with Weezer, playing with Jet, headlining the Roxy Theater. But I think that it comes to the point where you want more. When you’re doing the same thing over and over again it gets stale, it gets old. You want to try a new sound. We’d been writing and playing the same material for four or five years. And after a while, you are forced to play this role. And when Craig said, “It’s time for me to do something else,” we said OK, let’s get a new band, a new bass player, write some new songs and find a different direction. I’ve really enjoyed what we’ve done with The Redcoats, it’s definitely been more my speed as far as the way the songs were.

Hoffman: We kinda backed up into the kind of band we ended up being at the end of the day. We wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll band and that was pretty much it. The only thing we wanted to do was write really good songs and play the best songs we possibly could. And we really started getting away from the fun of it I think. We started catering to what would make us successful in the eyes of the music industry, maybe sacrificing something by doing that. I think that at the end of the day we just woke up one day, and thought…

 

Baker: …“Where did the fun go?” There were some shows towards the end where it was almost like when I was up on stage I was impersonating myself; “Alright, here’s where I jump around like Mick Jagger,” or, “Oh it’s this song, I gotta spin around.” I think if you do something over and over again, like a routine, it looses its specialness.

 

AMG: Do you think, with the way that both the roles of major labels and the way the music industry have changed over the past year, that there is such a thing as “Making It” now?

 

Hoffman: I don’t really know what “making it” means. To me making it is to afford yourself just to not have to have another job, to do music full time. All of us completely cater our lifestyle around being able to do something really cool, but having to do something else in order to get to do that. You have this really, really great product that you think about, that you love, that you feel great about, and you’re confident about it. Some people might like, it might not be everybody though, but you have put your heart and soul behind it and you stand behind it 100 percent, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Would you rather sacrifice some of that, scale it back 20 percent, in order to get a bigger audience? And in doing that, making it where you don’t necessarily have to have another job on the side. I don’t think so. Not for me, personally. I would rather have something that I want to do and am going to do and this is the way that we are going to do it. If it requires a little extra work on side to push that forward and get the ball rolling then that’s fine, I feel better about that. I think we all do.

 

AMG: What are your aspirations now?

 

Hoffman: More than anything else, you just have to look at yourself think, is what I did today and what I’m going to do tomorrow and what I’m going to do for the rest of next week, something I can see myself doing in the exact same routine ten years from now. And if you don’t, then you’ve got to figure out why now. And if you feel good about what you’re doing, and it’s honest and it has some integrity behind it, then I feel like that inherently makes it success for me personally, whether or not people respond to it or not. Hopefully they will.

 

Baker: My goal has always been to have an influential role, whether it’s Pop Death Squad with free shows, or to work with bands that are out of town like Butch Walker, or bands that are in town like Manchester Orchestra or The Constellations, to me if I can have some sort of role to better the city, I don’t necessarily need to be in a band. It’s creative and it’s helping Atlanta.  

 

Hoffman: The name recognition thing is the best part, because that gives you a certain amount of cred that you can’t buy; it feels good. I’m the same way. I certainly just see myself as someone who inspires people to act, positive or negative it doesn’t really matter. You’re getting someone’s attention. I love being on stage, I’ve always loved being on stage, love being the center of attention, I’m good at it.