Interview: Tony Molina (Tony Molina, Ovens, Caged Animal)

"Riffs."

As soon as we finished this interview Tony Molina said, "I thought it was going to be a funnier interview." The interview wasn't very funny. But how funny can one be when sitting in the presence of a guitar GOD?

So here you have it, a lot of questions about the history of Tony Molina and what's next after Dissed And Dismissed.

I just hope he doesn't make me take it down.

Painful Burning:
You're lighting a cigarette right now. Is that something you do when you're scared?

Tony Molina:
Yes.

Painful Burning:
Are you scared right now?

Tony Molina:
No.

Painful Burning:
But smoking cigarettes is something you do when you're scared?

Tony Molina:
Yes.

Painful Burning:
Which leads me to the most important question, why did you make me take down our last interview?

Tony Molina:
Because I thought that it could get me in trouble at work.

Painful Burning:
Later in the interview we'll talk more about that. For now, let's take a walk down memory lane. What are your thoughts on Dystrophy?

Tony Molina:
I don't have any.

Painful Burning:
What?

Tony Molina:
What are my thoughts?

Painful Burning:
Yeah. When you look back do you have any thoughts about the band you were in? Because that was your first hardcore band?

Tony Molina:
Yeah, it was supposed to be a hardcore band but when I hear it now it sounds like a fucking screamo band.

Painful Burning:
Why is that?

Tony Molina:
Because of my vocals and we were into Charles Bronson.

Painful Burning:
You're not down with Charles Bronson anymore?

Tony Molina:
I just don't listen to them.

Painful Burning:
What are your thoughts now on Sharp Knife?

Tony Molina:
Uh. I don't really think about Sharp Knife, man.

Painful Burning:
But if I put a Sharp Knife record on what would you think?

Tony Molina:
Why would you put on a Sharp Knife record in 2014?

Painful Burning:
Why would I? Because I'm obsessed with you. I'd put it on and ask, "Tony, what do you think about this?"

Tony Molina:
Yeah, I don't know, man.

Painful Burning:
What are your thoughts on Case Of Emergency?

Tony Molina:
Jesus Christ. Uhh. Case Of Emergency should've been a lot better than it was when I joined the band. I wrote the entire second record. Beau and I worked out all the songs. We had a pretty good set of songs and then Tom would make us add parts to them and stuff like that. He would be like, "That song's not long enough, make it longer." And I was like, "But this is how the song goes." So I didn't like that. I obviously don't have anything against Tom, Tom is tight. But I didn't like that and I didn't like how when we recorded the second seven inch, which is the only one I'm on, Tom mixed it by himself and he wouldn't let us go to the mixing for that record.

Painful Burning:
That's strange.

Tony Molina:
I know, I know.

Painful Burning:
Sounds like a real case of emergency. Is that a criticism that you hate more than anything, that your songs should be longer? Because all of your songs are so short.

Tony Molina:
I just thought for the Case Of Emergency seven inch they were better as they were.

Painful Burning:
I won't ask about The Peds or Sex Kittens.

Tony Molina:
Jesus Christ.

A candid photo of Tony Molina eating a taco.

Painful Burning:
Why do you think I'm so obsessed with you?

Tony Molina:
It's because you think I'm attractive.

Painful Burning:
No followup questions on that one. How many times have your glasses broken in 2014?

Tony Molina:
Three times.

Painful Burning:
And what were the three occasions?

Tony Molina:
The first time they broke, the first pair, fuck, I can't even remember. Oh, I stepped on them. It was after AK's wedding. Everyone was going to hangout at SK's house so I got dropped off after the wedding and I was really faded. Someone was going to pick me up to take me over to SK's. So I got home and fell asleep for five minutes. I guess my glasses fell on the floor. As soon as I got up I stepped on them. So that's the first time they broke. The second time they broke was in Boston.

Painful Burning:
On the tour with Against Me?

Tony Molina:
Yeah. I jumped out of the van and they fell off my face. When we got to the hotel, I was like, "Cool, we're at the hotel." I jumped out of the car, they fell and I stepped on them.

Painful Burning:
And the third time?

Tony Molina:
S.H.I.T. was playing at the Knockout. When they covered "I Against I" people were pitting. Some dude hit me. I didn't even see him hit me. All I know is that I was on the ground and three people were trying to pick me up and then my glasses were nowhere to be found. While they were playing I had friends looking around. When the show was over Anthony O BC found them in a place that was nowhere close to where I was. They were fucked. There was only one lens. They were completely flat.

Painful Burning:
Now if you hear that song, "I Against I," do you think "I Against Eye?"

Tony Molina:
Yes.

Painful Burning:
I know the answer to this next question but I'll ask anyways. Riffs or licks?

Tony Molina:
Riffs.

Painful Burning:
Why do you love riffs so much? You're obsessed with them.

Tony Molina:
They sound cool. They're fun. I don't know.

Painful Burning:
If you had a list of top five things that you love, would riffs be there?

Tony Molina:
No.

Painful Burning:
What?

Tony Molina:
I don't think so.

Painful Burning:
I have trouble believing that. Do you have a favorite riff of all time?

Tony Molina:
Uh. Probably a Crowbar song. The breakdown in "No More Can We Crawl." That's a riff. That's definitely a riff.

Painful Burning:
If someone were to ask you, "What's a riff?" you'd show them that?

Tony Molina:
Yeah. Or Obituary.

Painful Burning:
Why are you so enamored with ignorant music?

Tony Molina:
I'm not, I only listen to The Beatles.

Painful Burning:
That's not true.

Tony Molina:
It is true.

Painful Burning:
You love listening to E-Town Concrete.

Tony Molina:
That's true.

Painful Burning:
Most of are peers think it's silly music-

Tony Molina:
Those people aren't guitar players. Most of those people aren't actual musicians so it goes over their heads. So all they can do is comment on the singer wearing basketball shorts. They don't even know there's an insane riff. Actual musicianship. So that's probably what it is. People who don't like that probably aren't musicians. And they probably don't like music.

Painful Burning:
You're drawn to ignorant music because as a musician there's more you get out of it? Whereas most people hear it they focus on what clothing the band is wearing?

Tony Molina:
I'm not saying that, I'm saying when people make fun of bands like E. Town Concrete they're not really noticing the music.

Painful Burning:
What's your draw to it though?

Tony Molina:
I like heavy stuff. I like stuff with a groove. Bands that have cool riffs and are hard.

Painful Burning:
Why do you think people associate groove with ignorance? Do you think it's racist?

Tony Molina:
I don't know, man.

Painful Burning:
You're not going to say it's racist for the record? Classical music is all heady but you listen to dance music it's body oriented and originally from indigenous rural areas. People say body music is ignorant. Isn't that racist?

Tony Molina:
It is.

Painful Burning:
For the record?

Tony Molina:
It is. I'm agreeing with you, yeah.

Painful Burning:
Top three bands for guitar tone?

Tony Molina:
Obituary, Eyehategod, Crowbar, Fu Manchu.

Painful Burning:
That's a top four.

Tony Molina:
Yeah, that's my top four.

Painful Burning:
In your lifetime how many songs have you written? Complete songs.

Tony Molina:
At this point, probably just like two hundred, two hundred fifty.

Painful Burning:
Right now you're twenty nine, when did you write your first song?

Tony Molina:
When I was fourteen.

Painful Burning:
In fifteen years you've written about two hundred fifty songs.

Tony Molina:
I think so, yeah.

Painful Burning:
Of those, how many have been recorded?

Tony Molina:
I've recorded over a hundred songs at Bart's alone, in the studio at Bart Thurber's. Everything I write gets recorded, at the very least demoed. All the songs get recorded.

Painful Burning:
Of all those songs, do you have a top three?

Tony Molina:
My top three songs that I wrote?

Painful Burning:
Yeah.

Tony Molina:
"Ovens Theme Pt. 2," "I'm A Creep" and "Song For Friends."

Painful Burning:
Nothing written under Tony Molina?

Tony Molina:
I like the Ovens stuff more.

Tony Molina crushing riffs at a sold out show at the El Rey Theatre.

Painful Burning:
In all of your songs you talk about "you" a lot, is it always the same person?

Tony Molina:
No, never.

Painful Burning:
How many different people do you write about?

Tony Molina:
Not many. A couple. Not all of those songs are about someone in specific.

Painful Burning:
Are you sure? You sound hesitant.

Tony Molina:
Uh, yeah, man.

Painful Burning:
Now you sound confident. You recorded a bunch of demos for your next album, do you have a name yet for the next album?

Tony Molina:
Not yet. There's a couple names that we got but I'm not sure what I'm going to use.

Painful Burning:
What are the couple names?

Tony Molina:
No man, it's a surprise.

Painful Burning:
Come on, we're not going to hold you to it. What are they?

Tony Molina:
No, we're not.

Painful Burning:
Hey, come on, give them to me, Tony.

Tony Molina:
No.

Painful Burning:
Come on, please?

Tony Molina:
Dude, no.

Painful Burning:
For this interview, give one of them to me please?

Tony Molina:
No.

Painful Burning:
For your friend, I'm your friend.

Tony Molina:
I would tell you if you weren't recording this.

Painful Burning:
Please?

Tony Molina:
No One Told He.

Painful Burning:
No One Told He?

Tony Molina:
Yeah.

Painful Burning:
Okay, I stopped recording, what's another one?

Tony Molina:
No, you didn't.

Painful Burning:
You're right. Is there a different feel with these new songs?

Tony Molina:
It's more acoustic based. There's more different types of songs on it. It isn't just songs that are all the same. Not just really short pop songs that go into each other. It has a bunch of tracks that sound really different than each other.

Painful Burning:
Are you starting to mellow out? A bunch of Ovens songs are much more high energy than your newer stuff.

Tony Molina:
Things are getting slower and not as heavy. It's not going to be a high energy album.

Painful Burning:
Are you starting to get old, like you're becoming a weiner?

Tony Molina:
Yeah.

Painful Burning:
In addition to Tony Molina, how many bands are you in right now?

Tony Molina:
Six.

Painful Burning:
What are they?

Tony Molina:
There's Caged Animal, Scalped, Fraudulent Lifestyle, Provos, Opposition To Society, and Ovens if they count.

Tony Molina hanging with his pals.

Painful Burning:
There are two new Ovens seven inches coming out. One of them was recorded in 2005 and is finally being released on Melters. The other one?

Tony Molina:
The other one is eight songs from 2008. It's coming out on Catholic Guilt.

Painful Burning:
Which one is better?

Tony Molina:
The Catholic Guilt one for sure. The one from 2005... we didn't really find our sound yet. We were still trying to figure it out. I think the songs sound a little funny. It's kinda getting there. We didn't find our groove as a band until our third album that we did, which was our first done at Bart's in 2006. That's when we figured out how to track some stuff.

Painful Burning:
There's only four songs on the 2005 record, but you recorded more?

Tony Molina:
We recorded a whole album. It was ten songs.

Painful Burning:
The other six you weren't happy with?

Tony Molina:
They're not good.

Painful Burning:
Will they ever be released?

Tony Molina:
No.

Painful Burning:
Have you guys discussed doing a full discography of all the Ovens songs?

Tony Molina:
We lost the masters so I don't even know how we could even get the songs mastered for vinyl. I have no idea where the masters are for anything. I have all the actual tapes that are recorded on. I have all of them.

Painful Burning:
Just use those then.

Tony Molina:
I'd have to remix everything. I'd have to go to Bart's and I'd have to remix every Ovens song.

Painful Burning:
What you're saying is the Ovens discography will be released on vinyl as soon as you go to Bart's and do some mixing?

Tony Molina:
Remix over a hundred songs, yes.

Painful Burning:
Is there still beef between you and The Peels?

Tony Molina:
No, of course not. That was so many years ago. I don't even know.

Painful Burning:
They made you change your band from The Peels to the Ovens.

Tony Molina:
There's no beef. But we definitely hated them at the time. They're not even from SF, they moved to SF from I think Seattle, and then had our name. We'd been around longer than them and were from there. One time Beau and I saw the guitar player on the street. We were like, "Hey, there's the guy from The Peels." We were like, "Hey, man, we really like your band." He was like, "Thanks." We were like, "Have you heard there's a band from the Bay Area called The Peels?" He was like, "Yeah, our lawyer got in contact with them. You guys aren't in that band, are you?" We were like, "No."

Painful Burning:
So passive.

Tony Molina:
Yeah.

Painful Burning:
That was your opportunity to tell him off.

Tony Molina:
What do you say? I don't know. I didn't know what to say. I feel bad for that band because they got signed to Capitol. There was an article that I read in the SF Weekly or something about how they were in LA drinking from the mini bar in the hotel like, "Fuck yeah, we fucking rock 'n' roll." And their album didn't even ever come out. They just broke up. That sucks, man.

Painful Burning:
That's what happens if you fuck with Tony Molina.

Tony Molina:
I feel bad. No, man.

Painful Burning:
You don't think that's karma for what they did to you?

Tony Molina:
Obviously they were the better band because we didn't get signed to Capitol.

Painful Burning:
Not yet. There's just a couple more questions. How many years did you work at the movie theater, The Vogue?

Tony Molina:
Almost eleven years.

Painful Burning:
What was your job title?

Tony Molina:
You don't really have a job title, you just have to do everything there. A lot of the times I'd be there by myself all day long.

Painful Burning:
When you say everything, you mean you set up the movie, made popcorn...

Tony Molina:
Yeah, you show up. You get ready to open. And then you put the show in. You do the tickets and the concessions and start the movie. When the movie is over you sweep the auditorium, come back out and put another show in. You just have to do everything.

Painful Burning:
As a result, did you like movies a lot?

Tony Molina:
No. I mean, I like movies but I only worked there because my friend got me the job a long time ago.

Painful Burning:
Why did you stay there for eleven years?

Tony Molina:
I don't know.

Painful Burning:
It's a long time. Were you just comfortable?

Tony Molina:
Sometimes. I don't know. I don't know why I stayed there for so long.

Painful Burning:
Which leads to this next question, did the customers ever get on your nerves?

Tony Molina:
Yes.

Painful Burning:
Anything in particular?

Tony Molina flails his arms.

Painful Burning:
You don't want to answer this?

Tony Molina:
Yes, for the same reason before when I made you take the other interview down. It's the same thing.

Painful Burning:
I don't know, I didn't think you cared anymore because you don't work there. It seems like you'd have a lot of down time when working, what would you-

Tony Molina flails his arms.

Painful Burning:
You can't talk about that?

Tony Molina:
No.

Painful Burning:
Tell me about the squirrel.

Tony Molina:
Are you fucking kidding me? No! I can't. Dude.

Painful Burning:
Okay, how does The Vogue play into the history of the Ovens?

Tony Molina:
That's where I met AK. My first shift was with him. The first thing he said was, "Do you like Dinosaur Jr.?" Me and him were already buds the first day I met him. We just listened to all of the same music. He started playing guitar with us shortly after that. Then we got Max a job there too. I don't know. Pretty much everybody in the Ovens worked there, except for Beau.

Painful Burning:
That's funny because the first time I saw Ovens you guys played a Dinosaur Jr. cover. What were all the covers you guys did?

Tony Molina:
When we first started we'd always do Replacements songs. We did Flaming Lips covers a lot too.

Painful Burning:
Which songs?

Tony Molina:
We would always do "Color Me Impressed." We used to do "Bastards Of Young."

Painful Burning:
Do you think you could mention all the songs Ovens ever covered?

Tony Molina:
There's so many. It would take me a while. But a lot. Ovens did so many covers.

Painful Burning:
Then what about under Tony Molina, what covers have you done?

Tony Molina:
We did "Everything Flows" by Teenage Fanclub and "Jar Of Cardinals" by Guided By Voices. We covered "Wild One" by Thin Lizzy, "Soldier Of Fortune" by Thin Lizzy. "Fade To Black" by Metallica. "To Live Is To Die" by Metallica. "Pimple Zoo" by Guided By Voices. We did a Waste Management song. The first song on the first seven inch, "Dead Weight." We covered "Violence Sucks" by Larm. "I'm Broken" by Pantera. We did the Leeway intro.

Tony Molina in his natural habitat.

Painful Burning:
Plus the two recorded ones, "Orion" by Metallica and "Wandering Boy Poet" by Guided By Voices. You told me recently you got out of the hospital, what happened?

Tony Molina:
I got 5150'd. I was just having crazy suicidal shit so I got taken to the hospital in Santa Clara for three days.

Painful Burning:
Is that something you've been dealing with your whole life?

Tony Molina:
Depression? Yeah, absolutely. It's not the first time I've been 5150'd.

Painful Burning:
How does that affect your songwriting? When you're really down is it easier to write?

Tony Molina:
When I was younger it was but I don't know about now.

Painful Burning:
Now it's more of an obstacle?

Tony Molina:
Yeah, I don't know. I used to write a lot more songs when I was younger. I definitely don't write as many now. I don't have any big wave of creativity after my recent hospital stay. I didn't get out of there and write a hundred songs or anything like that.

Painful Burning:
It's not an inspirational thing.

Tony Molina:
Yeah.

Painful Burning:
No one I know is as good at guitar as you, I'm just wondering if the two do have anything to do with one another.

Tony Molina:
I really don't know. I think when I was younger... when I was really trying to start the Ovens and get it going and be a real band. When we started out, it was just like, "Let's see if we can record something." But in 2003 I was pushing it. I was really down at the time. I think the reason why I wrote a lot of songs was because being depressed and being broke, you got nothing really going on, I think I just did music because I didn't have anything else to do with myself. I do know I've struggled with depression for the past eleven years or so. A lot of the songs were written in not good times. I don't know if they have anything to do with each other.

Painful Burning:
When you hear about other musicians dealing with such fragrant depression like Townes Van Zandt-

Tony Molina:
You shouldn't compare me to him, man. Shouldn't do that.

Painful Burning:
When you hear about other musicians though, is there something comforting in knowing they have to deal with the same type of situations?

Tony Molina:
All my favorite songwriters. Townes Van Zandt, Gene Clark, Chris Bell, ya know? A lot of my favorite songwriters have problems or whatever. But I don't know if there's a correlation.

Painful Burning:
At this point the interview is over. Are you more or less scared than before?

Tony Molina:
More.

-Z