Our Interview with PAPA

Around these parts, if we review your album, feature your video and do an interview with a band we consider them to be family. It is part of the SYFFAL community outreach program. Well my friends, I would like to introduce you to the newest member of the SYFFAL family, PAPA.

PAPA is more or less two guys who may or may not be conjoined by choice. They have a few adopted Filipino kids who they record with and keep chained up in their studio, the subjugation really creates a nice use of sound and space. Anyway this whole group is now part of the SYFFAL tribe, and I expect you to treat them accordingly. They are after all sensitive musician types and not used to daylight and manual labor.

SYFFAL: Most of our readers are either in prison or work release and don't have time to read bios on bands, so they turn to us to give them the skinny. So can you please tell our readers the following:

• Who are you?
• Who does what in the band?
• And why do I have to change my delicates after hearing you sing?

PAPA: My name is Darren Weiss, I play drums and sing in PAPA, Danny Presant plays bass, Alex Fischel plays keyboards, and for now anyways, my big brother Evan (sometimes known as "real big diesel cheese") plays guitar. As for you changing your delicates, my guess is, it has to do with the amount of guava juice and horchata I drank as a child.

SYFFAL: A Good Woman is Hard to Find is so fucking great. I even broke my rules about driving with no shirt while listening to it. What was the process of making something so wonderful like and was it your intention to have 30-something fat men tooling around town in BMW's in Autumn?

PAPA: This EP took a little while to record. We never had money or circumstance to bring us into a studio and work the way we wanted to, so this recording, like all of ours have been, was a bit like bootlegging at a bodega. We had to basically sneak into recording studios when their work day was done, and work as late as we could stay up to get things done, because we knew if we were lucky enough to get one night in a studio, lord knows when we'd be lucky enough to get a second. It's hard to remember all of the intentions behind making this recording, but I am having trouble finding "30-something fat men tooling around town in BMW's in Autumn" in the bands subconscious frame work. But, I'd never try to speak on behalf of my band mates. This could have been Danny's intention all along. It probably was.

SYFFAL: I met my SYFFAL partner in crime Joel back in 2003. He was working as a grease trap on an all you can eat taco truck on the outskirts of Bayonne. It was the sad look in his eye that broke my heart and had me bring him into the fold. How did you guys meet and at what point did you know you had something special?

PAPA: Heavy. I met my brother when I was born. My parents brought me home and woke his sleeping ass up, put me in his arms, and said Evan, this is your little brother, Darren, say what's up to him. Danny and I met when we were seven or eight. My closest friends from elementary school (twins), lived down the street from him, so we'd walk up a block and hang with Danny. He is a comic mastermind, and also a complete psycho. I kind of can't escape him. I've tried over the years, but playing music keeps bringing us together, so I guess it's meant to be, huh. I only met Alex somewhat recently. I like him pretty hard. He's so quiet. We've been playing together for a couple of months now, and having spent that time with him, and touring together, he never once mentioned that could sing. When we came off tour, I went to see his other band play, where I was shocked to learn, he is the lead singer. His voice was like milk on fire dripping out of a tigers mouth. That's how I know he is special.

SYFFAL: Serious, the woman on your cover... She might be the sexiest thing this side of me driving around shirtless. Who the hell is she and can I have her number?

PAPA: Ha. She's awesome, a friend of mine. She's also a really cool musician, under the name Cillie Barnes.

SYFFAL: 5. Which era Motley Crue is your favorite era Motley Crue (there is no wrong answer, with the exception of no answer)?

PAPA: I haven't read their biography yet, though i've heard the book reveals in the early days, while they were poor and living with various strippers or whomever, they would go out and sleep with other various strippers or whomever, and to disguise the scent of one woman from the other, they would buy egg and cheese burritos, bite off one end, and stick their penis' into it. Surely, there has to be a better way.

SYFFAL: I used to be a recording artist myself, I spent a lot of time on the road, one time when I was in New Orleans I drank so much that I rode a mechanical bull with no shirt or shoes in a lesbian bar. What is the wildest thing you have ever done on the road?

PAPA: That's a tough one for me. Much more wild things happen inside my head than through my body. There have been nude performances, entering a strange Gypsy's van to play didgeridoo with him, tour vans covered in mustard. None of this feels wild though, only necessary in moments of my past.

SYFFAL: Every song on A Good Woman is Hard to Find feels like you are hitting on me. What is your writing process and is it as romantic and sexually charged as I imagine it?

PAPA: Well, I was pretty badly broken hearted when these songs were written. Coming out of this long and beautiful relationship, the verity of things I was experiencing (including new women) was like drinking a slightly poisonous cocktail of assorted insanity. Men do crazy things for women, not always kind or poetic. But most this group of songs, is really me singing to specific people, or from the perspective of specific people (in the case of "Song for Mike Gilgliotti) so if it feels romantically, or sexually charged, that's because it very much is.

SYFFAL: SYFFAL started as a small group of friends sharing the music they love in order to avoid turning into the type of people that think Pearl Jam Ten is the last great album dropped. Who are three bands, not including yourself, that you think people should be checking for?

PAPA: Two Gallants out of San Francisco is one of the hardest working and realest bands around. One of my favorite bands to play with while we were living in New York, was Grand Rapids. They're have a really cool and special east coast way about them, and they don't care. The Secret Sisters sing the most beautiful harmonies of anybody I've seen. I'm desperately trying to get Lydia (one of the sisters) to sing a duet with me on this next PAPA record. Her voice is so good it gives me stomach aches.

SYFFAL: I often dream of working with my influences and creating beautiful works of art and genetically perfect children. Who are your top three influences, and if you could make an album with them what would you call it, and if you could make a baby with them would you keep it?

PAPA: Somebody once referred to us as Joe Strummer and the E Street Band. That was wrong of them, but it made me smile. I would love to make an album with Nick Cave, or Brian Eno, or David Byrne. Leonard Cohen could hang at the studio too, and we could drink tea or coffee, and talk about women, and he could whisper and growl some real shit at me to get pumped up before vocal takes.

SYFFAL: Please promote anything you would like.

PAPA: Itaru the Radical Thinker and his Boosnap Annette. Also Shel Silverstein.