CBS SF Talks To Psychedelic Punk/Metal Outfit Hot Lunch

By Dave Pehling

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- When word surfaced earlier this year that not one but two members of local heavy rock favorites Hot Lunch were leaving Bay Area, there were some understandable concerns among fans that the change could mean the end of the band.

A force on the San Francisco underground for 13 years, Hot Lunch was founded by singer Eric Shea after the split of his potent retro-rock outfit Parchman Farm in 2006. Shea managed to put together an all-star quartet of talented players, including former Mensclub guitar hero Aaron Nudelman and the pulverizing rhythm section of drummer Rob Alper -- ex-The Sermon (he also played guitar with Sacto garage-punks SLA) -- and bassist Charlie Karr, who was best known for his work with the Alternative Tentacles band Harold Ray Live in Concert.

Hot Lunch soon became a fixture in S.F. clubs with their fiery live performances and expanded their audience with the eventual release of the group's self-titled debut in 2013. Unlike the many acts who do little more than mimic the sonic template of influential early '70s proto punk/metal bands like Blue Cheer, Grand Funk Railroad and the MC5, Hot Lunch wove in elements of skate punk, psychedelia and prog rock into their unique sound.

Issued on independent German label Who Can You Trust? in Europe and Tee Pee Records stateside, the album led to sponsored recordings and concert appearances for Scion A/V and Converse, considerably raising the band's profile. Over the next few years, the quartet issued a number of singles and EPs, including the five-track Scion A/V collection Slappy Sunday that was released for free download in 2015 and a 45 featuring the new tracks "Haul of Meat" and "Pot of Gold" last year. Earlier this year, the band announced plans to release its appropriately titled sophomore album Seconds on Tee Pee Records in March.

Expanding the group's sonic palette, the effort finds Hot Lunch embracing an ever-widening dynamic range with the haunting middle section of "Smoke Ring" and the sprawling prog epic of album closer, "Skulled to Neptune." But fans of the group's burly proto-punk attack will be pleased by the hefty crunch of "Human Reissue" and the energetic fury "Black Angel's Curse" kicks into following Nudelman's acoustic introduction.

The band went through a seismic change shortly after the album's release with two members moving out of the Bay Area as Shea relocated to Georgia for his job with online radio station Pandora, while Alper ended up in Tuscon, Arizona. Despite the obstacles presented by half the band departing the region, Hot Lunch seems more intent than ever to continue developing the band's unique approach to heavy music.

Last September, when the band was last in town to play the all-day Bar Fight Bonfire II festival in Half Moon Bay, CBS SF sat down with the group to discuss the creative process behind some of the more ambitious songs on Seconds and how the quartet planned to adjust to the geographical challenges presented by Shea and Alper moving out of the area. This Friday, Hot Lunch returns to the stage to celebrate its 13th anniversary with a party at the Bottom of the Hill featuring like-minded Bay Area hard-rock acts Banquet and Ovvl.

CBS SF: First I wanted to talk about the new album for a bit. There were some far more extended and complex tunes on Seconds than on your debut. How did you piece a song like "Skulled to Neptune" together? Was it lots of bits and pieces that you gradually realized could work as a whole?

Eric Shea: I think each one was a little different. Rob would come up with this really cool part. I think "Skulled to Neptune" was originally something that you wrote...was it on a 12-string?

Rob Alper: Yeah, I wrote it on electric 12-string at 5 a.m. in the morning in my kitchen.

Eric Shea: And that was the intro to the song?

Rob Alper: That was the basis for the sort of revolving, elliptical flow of that jam.

Eric Shea: The parts were written kind of separately, weren't they Rob?

Rob Alper: There were like six or seven parts that were strung together from start to finish, for sure. And then I played it six months by myself before I brought it to you guys. And then, as with everything in Hot Lunch, it undergoes this metamorphosis of everybody's contributions. But that was one of the songs were didn't do the kind of same old Hot Lunch way. There was a lot that we left to chance and a lot that we kind of figured out on the fly in the studio.

Which was also part of what became the intention of that, allowing for spontaneity and just saying, "What would it be like if we did this?" I think we actually recorded like 27 minutes worth of music and then edited it down to whatever it ended up being, 14 minutes or something. But a lot of it, I had a sense of how I wanted it to feel. I remember talking to you guys about colors and shapes as opposed to music and trying to establish this visual counterpart to it. Conceiving it as more of a cinematic piece.

CBS SF: So you're telling Nudelman, "Play blue!" Or maybe chartreuse?

Rob Alper: No, what I'd say was more like, "The feel of this is wobbly." Or "The texture of this is as if you're running your fingers over something that's uneven." You know what I mean? I don't remember what the specific thing was.

Aaron Nudelman: We made of it what we will and somehow got to where each little section became it's own little song. But that song in particular I'd say happened maybe 40 percent on the fly in the studio. We were making decisions like which part should we record first to create the proper workflow, because we're trying to get things done. But the process was good. We knew it was going to be worth checking out.

Rob Alper: We knew it was going to be different, for sure.

CBS SF: There are a couple of other longer songs, but those don't seem nearly as complex as "Skulled to Nepture," Did those come together as presented on the album where the gestation was a little complex?

Charlie Karr: More or less. Our normal process that Rob was alluding to is basically we start out with fragments or more or less complete song structures. but we probably spend a lot more time editing and re-piecing things together and stretching and squeezing.

Eric Shea: Just following every idea. Especially with the material on this record, where the stated purpose was let's be as free about this as we can.

Charlie Karr:  I think it's fair to say that every other song on the record we did the normal full editing distillation process. It takes us quite a long time. But that one, certainly Rob spent a lot of time with it, and then we spent a fair amount of time with it. But due to the length and complexity and differentness of it all, we set out to do sort of a studio version of our process where we were a little bit forced by the compressed timeline rather than having infinity practices to do it. There was time on the clock and also the availability of the studio and great input from Donny Newenhouse, who helped us achieve some of the sonic stuff that we certainly aren't completely able to replicate live.

CBS SF: That was another thing I wanted to ask about. Having seen the record release show at Light Rail Studios where Donny stepped in to play drums so Rob could play second guitar, I was wondering if in all practicality that was something you'd try to perform regularly with a second drummer? Will you try to play an abbreviated version of it? Or is it something you'll just do on special occasions?

Aaron Nudelman: Probably just Thanksgiving and Christmas for that one [laughs].

Eric Shea: We never really talked about it after the album release party. I'd be fine with it being a one-off, just because it was so special and it was such a centerpiece of the evening. I can't imagine doing that again, not that it would be that difficult now that we've done it. But I do kind of like the idea that you had to be there.

Rob Alper: It really is an album piece in a lot of ways. I think for us doing it live was going to be a challenge and we wanted that. We wanted to celebrate it, but I also think having put so much time into the record that for the actual record release show, it should be something beyond just another Hot Lunch show. It should be extra special. And it took a lot of work. Donny rehearsed with us for several weeks.

I think it came off well, but there are so many parts to that song, that this feeling that we're trying to elicit in listeners might not translate live. Like we shouldn't expect it and we shouldn't be arrogant enough to think that we could pull that off, because it is a different experience. There's a part in the song that's 60 seconds of silence. We were like, "How's that going to work live?" We did it. I don't know what the effect is, but I bet it's different than what it's like listening to the record.

Eric Shea: The thing I love about that 60 seconds of silence is that you can still hear the rhythm in that silence in your head. That was one thing I was wondering, "How are we going to pull that off live?" When it came to that point, I still heard the beat in my head and thought, "OK, this is still working."

CBS SF: Another thing I wanted to discuss was the major adjustments the band has gone through recently with two members moving away. In the Bay Area, there are always people leaving due to financial hardship or housing issues. I already knew back in May when you played the Heavy Psych Sounds Festival that Eric was heading to Georgia for his job at Pandora, but then over the summer learned that Rob was moving to Arizona. Plenty of bands have proven you don't have to be in the same city or even the same region to make it work, but I wanted to ask about what trepidation you might have had going into such a big change? What was your initial reaction?

Aaron Nudelman: We've all had different reactions. Personally, mine was...I felt pretty unsure there for a minute, but I think we were all open right off the bat to keeping the band going. We like it and we have stuff that we're doing and new material and things going on. Definitely for me it too some getting my head around, the idea that I was going to be in a band with people who were in another state. I've never done that before. And so far so good! We haven't perfected our writing process in terms of sending digital files across the country and having them added to and sent back...

Eric Shea: But we did write a new song...

Aaron Nudelman: Yeah, we got some new ones. We're getting there. And then when Rob split it was like, "Whoa! Now it's really...whoa!" But we kind of just went through the same thing and everyone wanted to keep doing it regardless.

Charlie Karr: The thing that's been consistent is that we all still want to do this. Technology affords us some pretty good options that, like Aaron said, we haven't fully realized. We're not doing remote multi-tracking at this point. But we're sharing and digesting and when we do come together, we resume our normal process.

Aaron Nudelman: And we're digesting the new situation too still, I think.

Charlie Karr: We'll probably find some better things to do to make it work a little more fluidly, but we're still writing songs. We're still making new material.

CBS SF: There was a sizable gap between the first album in 2013 and this new one. I imagine you probably already had some stuff written that didn't necessarily make it onto Seconds...

Aaron Nudelman: Yeah, maybe a few things, for sure.

Rob Alper: When Eric split in the first week of April, it was just me and Aaron and Charlie for three months before I left at the end of June. Every Thursday, we were writing new stuff. So before I left, I don't know how many things we had on the midburner, but there are a lot of riffs and a lot of things that are two, three, four or five minutes worth of music. Some of them even resemble songs. We did a lot of work in a short amount of time as a trio.

I felt pretty confident leaving that we have a lot to come back to every time we get back together. There's a lot to work on. And we were all -- out of the gate and having spent so much time working on the most recent record -- adamant about keeping the flame burning. So before the new record was even out, we were working on new stuff. We hope to have another record out in the next year or so.

Eric Shea: The biggest difference for me that I've noticed is that the baking process is different and less. But I actually feel that can be a welcome change to our next crop of music, because it will have different effect on it.

CBS SF: Cook it at a higher temperature, maybe a little faster?

Eric Shea: Exactly. Or keep it sort of lightning in a jar, you know? And see how it changes and grows from there.

Rob Alper: And I think you can do that when you're in a band that's been playing together for 13 years. You can kind of trust that when you throw something into the middle of the floor; that it's going to fly and we're going to figure it out. One of the things that excites me about this that Aaron and I were talking about last night, I have probably problematized -- unnecessarily at times -- forcing certain dynamics in the band so each thing we do is different. I think we share in this, but I've been the one to be like, "We should not do the same thing again! This resembles this too much, so we should do something different. What are other ways that we can think differently about our composing process?"

There was a period a couple of years ago, where -- quite by accident -- one of my bass drums broke. And I was just like, "You know what? Let me use this as an opportunity to just play single kick drum for a while and see what happens differently in our songs as a result of that." So it was necessity is the mother of invention stuff. Eventually I'll be playing this on my big kit, but maybe it will make writing different.

And this [members moving out of the Bay Area] I think is an opportunity to think differently. It is absolutely different from any other period of our past where we're not all in the same room, so it's going to be different. And that excites me. Now what are Aaron and Charlie going to do on a Thursday night without direct, immediate input from me and Eric? The next time we set foot in a room together, it's just inherently a different experience and that, I think, is a good thing for writing music and taking it to a different place.

Aaron Nudelman: Yeah, it feels fresh.

Charlie Karr: At the same time, we have this familiarity. We have 13 years behind us. So we can -- more or less, like Rob was saying -- sort of anticipate where things would go or might go. Aaron and I can take things a little further than we ordinarily would have. When we're all in the same room, we're super collaborative and inclusive.

With time and space being what they are, we'll take our arrangements a little deeper than we would have before, still with the full understanding we may all want to tear it apart again and rearrange for different reasons. I think we're a little more inclined to push it more towards the full arrangement. But I still love the process where we get together and dissect everything and pull out all the fat, whatever you want to call it.

CBS SF: It does seem like the kind of jobs you guys have, you have the flexibility to get together as much as necessary. I guess it isn't that much of a hardship...

Rob Alper: Once a month, we can all be here for a couple of days. And in some ways, this week has been more intensive. Except for when we're on tour, we never spend this much time together. But this week, we spent every night together. That's something we rarely did when we were all here. Maybe we'd practice twice a week, sometimes if we had a show. But we just spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night just playing together. I don't know if we've done that in how many years, if ever. So I feel like these more intensive blasts are going to change the dynamic of the band, but it's also a positive.

Aaron Nudelman: The whole thing feels positive to me. I'm expecting it to lend itself to some fresh new rock, for sure. I feel good about it.

Eric Shea: Like Rob said, he's always been really on top of making sure that we're not spinning our wheels and that we're not going to just rehash something that we've done before. Nothing against that, because some of my favorite bands kind of make the same record over and over again. But this isn't that and we're not really happy unless we're evolving and changing. I think what we're really good at is finding the opportunity, in the middle of any situation, and pulling it out and using that opportunity to drive the creative process in a different direction. It's always going to make something different, but it's always going to sound like us.

Hot Lunch plays it's 13th anniversary show with Banquet and Ovvl the Bottom of the Hill on Friday, Dec. 13, at 8:30 p.m. $13. Tickets and additional information here.