I first met Nate Robards in the early ‘90s at a punk show at the old Elks Lodge out on Lake Mead Pkwy in Henderson. That night he handed me a copy of his new zine, “Equal,” and I was stoked because I was also in the process of starting my own little mag called “Help.” As fellow “zinesters,” we had a unique bond, and we continued to trade zines with each other as we pulled each new issue hot off the presses (aka the copy machine at Kinko’s).
At that same time, we were both members of fledgling punk/HC bands, and we became fast friends while playing numerous shows together over the next few years. In fact, I consider Boba Fett Youth and Tomorrows Gone to be brother bands for many reasons: we formed around the same time, we were on a compilation record together, we did a mini-tour together, we played a last show together, and we did a reunion show together. I also had the fortune of tagging along with BFY on their west coast tour in the winter of 1995 as a roadie, and Nate and I shared in many a crucial conversation during the long hours spent driving from city to city.
Following the demise of Boba Fett Youth and Tomorrows Gone, Nate and I would go on to play in various bands and write for different zines, and although we lost touch from time to time, we somehow always managed to reconnect. This punk rock music we discovered as teenagers is obviously ingrained in our very being, and even as we close in on the ripe old age of 40, we are both still involved in the underground through our music and our writing. What follows is part 1 of an interview I did with my longtime friend, Nate.
Boba Fett Youth live at The Caves.
Tell me about your introduction to underground music. Who were the first punk bands you heard? Did you immediately fall in love with punk rock, or was it an acquired taste? What kind of music were you listening to prior to discovering punk and hardcore?
I was right around 12 or 13 years old, 1986 or ‘87, listening to Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Iron Maiden in Los Angeles. Every once in a while Headbanger’s Ball on MTV would play some hardcore band or even crossover like Suicidal Tendencies and DRI. Everyone around me listened to Motley Crue, Poison and that sort of stuff. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t even like music until thrash metal came out. I really liked the fact that it was kinda underground and it became my own personal thing (possibly a hint of my future in punk rock). The punk rock that I had been exposed to by friends back then was The Ramones, 7 Seconds, Social Distortion, Dead Milkmen…to me it was tolerable, but just not as heavy as the stuff I really liked. Then Deicide came out and after that Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse – Oooh Boy!
That went on for a few years. My affinity for punk came from local bands and local shows after I moved when I was 16. I would go to see metal bands like Papsmear and be treated to bands like Polluted Views, Leper Bureaucracy, Symptom 7, Substance D, and Intentions of Hate. I went to Basic High School in Henderson, idolized Fried Green, and absolutely fell in love with punk/HC. I learned about Black Flag, Misfits, Bad Religion, Minor Threat and others around that time and all the other punks I’d get to know at school would be my main influences with the genre.
When did you decide you wanted to play guitar? Did your desire to play music come secondary to finding the punk scene, or were you already playing? What was your first guitar and amp setup?
I bought my first guitar from a pawn shop on Water Street for a hundred bucks when I was 16. It did not have a brand name on it but resembled a Gibson GK-55 which is a very stripped down Les Paul. It was missing a string and I did not have an amp so I played through my mom’s old stereo. I just plugged in through the input and played along with Megadeth and Misfits songs.
Eventually I acquired a small Crate amp and for years, even in Boba Fett Youth, I just didn’t have the means to afford any decent equipment. Regardless, I played every waking minute of my youth after getting the first guitar. It all just kinda happened around the same time (finding the punk scene and playing guitar). This age of 16 was an evolutionary milestone for me.
Nate & Vader. Boba Fett Youth live at the Henderson Jaycees.
Talk about your early bands a bit. I know Boba Fett Youth was probably the most popular band you played in, but were you in any bands before BFY? Did any of those bands play live or record anything?
Even before getting my guitar I used to dream of band names, make flyers, draw imaginary album covers for my imaginary bands. Death and Destruction, Vicious Circle, The Purple Heads, Grey Mayonase, Corporate Punk Rock (CPR)…so many. We used to record by overdubbing tracks on a dual cassette recorder – a poor man’s 4 track. Tons of little home recordings that no one has ever heard. Jason “Wurm” Dean who now lives in Reno has posted some of the better songs – like on Facebook or a blog. I also started doing zines around the same time, and many of those first articles were just me and Jason and friends goofing off.
A version of CPR once played a Battle of the Bands at the old Club Rock. There were like 20 bands playing short sets that night and since it was 21 and over only, we had to wait outside for hours until it was time for us to play. It was Chris Hunt (the first Boba Fett drummer), our friend Wynn on bass, and me on guitar. We did not have any songs (Chris was the only one who knew how to play really) and planned on just going up and making a ton of noise Sonic Youth style. Chris really got into the punk spirit by putting down all the long haired “New York Dolls fans” in the crowd just to get them riled up. We started playing and all of a sudden club equipment starts flying everywhere. It took about 20 seconds for security to pull the plug and drag us off the stage. As we were led off the stage and brought through the club the crowd just looked stunned, almost in a positive way. We played for less than 30 seconds and Clay from Fried Green and The Mapes got it all on video for us! The shocker was that the club actually called us the next day and asked if we were interested in coming back to play a whole set the next week!
You mentioned doing a zine. I actually remember meeting you for the first time during a show at the Elk’s Lodge when you handed me an issue of Equal. What was your main inspiration for starting a zine? What kind of content did Equal contain, how many issues did you “publish,” and why did you stop doing the zine? Were you involved with any zines other than Equal?
I was the kid in school that was always drawing. My first thought about putting something together was a collection of drawings that a friend and I worked on called Torture Tactics for Friends and Family. In class we would do all these doodles that had to do with modern and ancient torture tactics like impaling, burning, and bamboo under the fingernails. We had dreams of turning it into a twisted coffee table book. Looking back on the past 20 years I think we could have had a hit, but we were bored kids, not ambitious entrepreneurs.
Then I met a kid named Daryl Geerts who did this really awesome punk zine – the name escapes me, but he did quite a few different titles after that. He really inspired me to do something with content and commentary and opened me up to the underground zine world. Gaslight was another local zine with huge influence. I was in awe with Gaslight! Cometbus, although not local, inspired my personal writing style.
My future wife, Gina Moultrie, and I would go to Café Espresso Roma and hang out during poetry reading nights and there was a Kinko’s right next door that had everything we needed. Glue sticks, paper cutters, staples, copy machines, etc. So we would write things out by hand (political, scene reviews, fun stuff), draw pictures, and include show flyers and make the zine during the poetry session. An Equal packet was on the table and that became the cover of the first issue, thus the zine was called Equal. By the end of the night they were printed and passed out to folks at the café. It was all just our opinions but people seemed to dig it, always asking when the next issue was coming out.
After maybe 7 issues I wanted to do something different, more punk rock oriented. I did a couple of issues of It’s Not a Crime to Love Yourself named for Pee Wee Herman. I did an art zine called Happy Happy Joy Joy. Finally I did a zine called What’s Up With That?!? The latter is one that mostly resembled what I wanted to create: a zine oriented around the Las Vegas music scene, promoting bands, other zines, and venues and contributing to a culture that so many of my friends worked to build.
Nate and Boyde live in Portland. BFY winter tour 1995.
Let’s get into Boba Fett Youth now. First tell me a bit about the origins of the band, and then expand a bit on each of the band’s releases in chronological order (demo, 7”, LP, and compilations). Did you write most of the music for the band? What would you say were your greatest accomplishments with BFY, and on the flipside, do you have any regrets now that you can look back on the experience?
That’s a big question. And forgive me if I miss the chronology of something.
So much happened around the same time (’93-95)! The night that I passed out Equal at the Elks Lodge might have been the night BFY formed. I was with my friend Chris Hunt and we met Boyde Wenger and Andrew Kiraly who we knew from their own zines. They told us they were looking for a drummer and Chris played drums so that basically meant he was in. Unfortunately for me they already had a guitar player named Andy Bullock. So for a couple weeks Chris would go to band practice and I would grill him about how it went. I begged him to get me in the band.
Turns out that Boyde, Andrew, and Andy had decided to do a band although none of them had ever really played an instrument. I started coming to practice, taught Boyde some blues scales, and we became a 5 piece. We practiced most nights of the week in this warehouse that Boyde used as a crash pad and an art gallery. Don’t remember why, I have fond memories of that version of the band, but Andy stopped playing before we did our first demo. It was a tape called If This is Living, Freeze Me in Carbonite recorded by Bil with one ‘L’ on a 4 track. “Unsigned,” “Bar None,” “Kill Me With Convenience,” “Beer Song” and “What Is This Thing” were some of the song titles on the demo. You will hear the Buttafuoco and Op Ivy influences in my playing on that tape. The title was a play off the Star Wars reference in our band name. We never set out to be a Star Wars themed band or anything, it was just funny to us, and the joke just kept going.
Our 7” was next, and that was also recorded by Bil, I believe, and it had a really neat cover designed by Greg Higgins. It was self-titled and the songs were “American Nihilism,” “Steal Shit,” “Irony Street,” “Anthony Robbins Tribute,” “Maim and Employ,” “Make-up Mike” and “Bike Power.” Each of these songs has its own story… I guess I could write a small book. Boyde and Andrew had just started a DIY record label for local bands called Bucky Records. The Wholes 7” was the first release and BFY was the 2nd. The cool thing about the label was that you basically had to be a touring band to be on it, which I think inspired a lot of bands to go play out of town and did some great things for the scene. “Bike Power” received a ton of college radio play and hit the top 10 at a few different stations like UCDavis.
During this time we played so many awesome shows. My favorite part was seeing all the other bands, local and out of town bands. I started booking out of town bands after Ron from Benway Bop asked me to find a place for Citizen Fish. Having no idea what I was doing, I rented a generator and did a show at the caves with Citizen Fish, BFY and Life of Lies. Citizen Fish loved it and my phone number started getting around to bands in need of a place to play in Vegas. I did shows at houses, parks, and out in the desert at the Tubes, Pabco, or the Caves. I collected donations and gave every penny to the touring band, also providing them with food and a place to stay. Some of my favorites were Citizen Fish, Naked Aggression, Harriet the Spy, Tito O Tito, Fuckface…so many more!
After the 7”, our drummer moved and we had a couple fill-ins while we played some out of town shows including Tom Stone from The Wholes and Mark Simmons from Leap Frog Society. One of them played with us in Phoenix with FYP and the singer of Propagandhi was playing drums for FYP. The venue was a church, and there were all these anti-religion punk protesters outside with signs boycotting the show. Since the drummer was new and didn’t know all the songs we improvised a lot, made tons of noise, broke stuff and created havoc. Incredible night!
Milo Tafoya became the new drummer and after a 2 week tour we went into the studio to do a full length. Milo was so cool, he loved death metal, had the long hair and black tee shirts, and introduced double bass to the band. We recorded our full length, which was also self titled, at 12 Volt Sex’s recording studio over several days. Some of the songs on this one were “The Day Punk Ran Out of Things to Say,” “Pablo,” “Crush Kill Destroy,” “This Vegetarian Is Gonna Kick Your Fucking Ass,” “Whitewash,” “Yearn For Mandalore,” “Ska Bus” and a bunch more. The cover was again drawn by Greg Higgins and had each of us drawn as our Star Wars alter egos with a funny little word bubble coming from each one. Again we played so many cool shows – this is around 1995 – it is all a huge blur for me. There was so much energy surrounding the band. FYP and Naked Aggression were big supporters and we played The Whiskey in Hollywood with them. Turn-outs at Vegas shows were awesome and the local bands we played with kept getting better and better. Our sound was progressing and we were actually starting to learn how to play our instruments!
There were tons more shows and we did a recording right before our last tour of 5 songs which were never released. I think those were our best songs and I get goose bumps whenever I hear them. We did 3 radio shows during our time together (2 at KUNV and 1 at UCDavis) and there are recordings of those circulating around. Chad Simmon’s blog (keeplaughinghahahaha.blogspot.com) has a bunch of things archived. He is a champion of all things ‘90s Vegas punk. We were on a multitude of compilations: “Punker than You” was on One Big Happy Slampit on Spider Club Music with other bands like Ill Repute, White Caps, and Blanks 77. There was a Bucky 7” with local bands and a Bucky full length called The Blue Whale. We were on a few David Hayes’ compilations (Too Many Records). We had an alter ego band called Ceylon Raider Youth which was on some Benway Tapes. The tours were incredible! We toured with Braid, Naked Aggression, Submission Hold, Tomorrows Gone, and FYP! Just amazing times.
Our progress was really our downfall. It got to the point where we had to decide if the band would be our career as it became time consuming. A full time band was not in everyone’s best interest and we ended up with a fill in singer, Roll Hardy – who was awesome, on our last tour. At the end me and Boyde just looked at each other, sighed deeply and walked different directions. Boyde had so much energy, and always a million different projects going. He was definitely my main inspiration, and without him I would not have accomplished half of what I did.
As far as regrets, the macho answer is to say I have no regrets but…I just want to say that punk rock has a built in paradox. It is about non-conformity, questioning authority and thinking for yourself. Yet it is, or at least was, very tight knit and a bit elitist. I used to think that I was offsetting that paradox by not having tattoos, nose rings, and mohawks. But it was still a conscious decision which was based on the idea of not conforming instead of true individualism. Furthermore I would find myself not liking certain music and saying that they were sell-outs which is a bit close minded. In essence, the spirit of punk rock is individualism and open thought – something I did not have mastered.
-Lance Wells
Check back soon for part 2!
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