Chapter 1: How did Nate and Sam meet at a Weezer concert?
I'm Nate and I sing. I'm Sam and I play guitar. I feel like you've known each other for a while now. 30 years this, this later, later this year. Wait, you've keeping track of the official like amount of years? I mean, it's December. If it was like, if it was like. You got the month too? Well, I mean, we know this because it was, there was a show.
It's a very, you know, prominent show in our life or at least in mine. I mean, I met you there and it was also just a great show. Yeah. But, but I still don't remember when that was. I know the day. Yeah. Wait, so what show? It was a Weezer show on the Pinkerton tour, December of 1996. Do you remember, what were your first impressions of each other? Obviously, it's a very memorable day for you.
It was brief because we just were both there and I went with, we have mutual friends. We have mutual friends. He was there with one friend, I was there with a couple of friends, and then at some point in time, there was just like, oh, hey, what's up? What's going on? I have a situation. But well, Sam ran the official Weezer fan club website. Oh, okay. And so he got to go backstage.
I was coding in 96, you know. So I was just like walking by just being like, what the fuck? How did he get to do like... Wait, I love this. So wait, how did that work? You're a kid, you're obviously good on the internet. Yeah, my dad had a computer, so I just... You were homeschooled as well. I was homeschooled, which helped. But how old are you in 96? 16. 16, okay.
Did you reach out to them or did they find you? I reached out to them. When the first Weezer album came out in 94, I just was obsessed with it, as I think a lot of us were in that time.
um and i really started getting into computers and i started just trying to discover more music so i started finding all these music sites and then i realized you could just look at the source of it and you could literally just take like a block of the code and put it in a text editor and then just like change stuff from there you know it was like pretty basic at that point so i just started making websites so i made a weezer website and i was like hey
you guys don't have a website for your, I was in the fan club. It was 10 bucks, which was awesome. They'd send you a zine every quarter and like a little merch item.
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Chapter 2: What was growing up in Arizona like for Nate and Sam?
And I love merch. So I was psyched and I was like, Hey, do you guys need like a, like a fan site, like an official fan site? And these two girls, Michael and Carly ran it. And they were like, yes, that would be awesome. We don't know how to do this. We'll, we'll just send you stuff. We'll send you my mom or my, yeah, my mom had a fax machine for some reason.
They would like fax me tour dates from the management. And like, they just sent, I was just like, Running a little website guy. As a fan, I mean, Weezer's amazing, but as a fan at that age, what was that like? Was it just very normal and final? Were you sort of going, oh my God, this is crazy? No, I was more interested in being able to do it than I was in the fandom part.
I learned a lot, I think, at that time, just sort of how... That was my entry to sort of how... accessible the music industry could be because you realize like, oh, I'm just like communicating with the manager. And so then I started, a friend of mine, we started making these like fake press passes because I saw what they looked like. And I was like, we could just make these and like go to shows.
They started going to shows and
like just walking in and being like oh we're with you know whatever and they'd be like okay cool we had a very similar uh teenage yeah i was making websites and t-shirt design and doing like myspace coding yeah there you go bands yeah i was i was always that was like a leveler wasn't it between like the people and these like inaccessible bands you think that bands are some you know put them on like a huge pedestal but then you realize they're just
mean some people i guess are probably living like crazy bougie lives but most people are just like we go to punk shows and we'd see these bands that we loved and i and in my mind i would even at that time would think like oh they're probably like rich and whatever and then they'd roll up in like the shittiest van imaginable and you could just tell like oh these guys are just
scarfing down the fazoles because they haven't eaten all day because they're broke so the internet was so pure back then my god if only we could go back to that time i loved that version of the internet it's kind of where it died for me no i love message boards like late 90s early 2000s message boards was like internet for me that was our jam for sure we had we had a local uh the local punk rock club had the message board and that's where we like we lived on that message board
Yeah. You met your wife. I met my wife on that message board through him. Like amazing. Yeah. I was the moderator of course. Cause I got a job. You were absolutely mod. I didn't even remember that. I got a job at the venue because I knew how to make websites. I was modding hard for sure. So you guys ended up meeting at the Weezer show. How soon was it till you were sort of making music together?
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Chapter 3: How did Sam start running the Weezer fan club?
How did that work? Probably like a year into it. I feel like it was about a year. Yeah. I think the next time we like, I went to your house and played basketball in your driveway with it. And then I discovered that you had, you were just starting, attempting to start a band. Yeah. Yeah. At that point. I play guitar. Yeah. Yeah. This was the format at that? No.
This was, we had a couple of, we had like a pop punk band. Then we had kind of like a emo type of band. Yeah. And then we had the format. Yeah, just different iterations. Really just like the same people too. Yeah, really. Really just like recycled. And still even 20 years later. Yeah, Marco and our band was in all three of those bands as well. Yeah.
And did you have any idea at that moment you'd still be friends and still making music together 30 years on? I mean, obviously there's been all sorts of morphing and changing, but here you both are. I mean, most people don't have friendships that last that long.
Whatever we had in Phoenix, including like Marco, just that old group of friends have found a way to kind of stay together in one way or another. I mean, even one of our other friends had just sent us photos from our guitarist Marco's wedding like 10 years ago. So yeah, I mean, and there was no talk of the format reuniting or anything like that at that time.
So yeah, we've all just found a way to stay in each other's lives for better or for worse. What was that Arizona music scene? So I grew up in Chicago around like the rise of Fall Out Boy and all those bands of that era. The Metro was the place to be. Metro, Knights of Columbus and Arlington Heights. What was, because you guys had Pedro the Lion around? No, we had Jimmy Eat World.
Jimmy Eat World, okay. We had Jimmy Eat World and before that we had the Gin Blossoms. But we were, I think Jimmy Eat World came for us just a little bit later. We, right after Weezer, we really got into like punk and like pop punk.
And we had a friend who started, he dropped out of high school to start booking all the punk shows at like 16, like all the major shows, like, you know, 1,000, 2,000 seaters and stuff like that. And Sam, being the homeschooled kid, just ended up getting a job and doing all the graphics and running the door and stuff like that. Yeah, I was working like 80 hours a week.
I'd get there at 10, I'd make every flyer, every poster, doing the website, and then I would work the door and then sometimes work goth night afterwards. It was crazy. I begged for a job and I got hired to pass out flyers, but I just kept them in the trunk of my car. No one would show up. Like Newman and Seinfeld just never delivering. That's exactly what I did. Wait.
So I just, I don't want to skip over this, the homeschooling thing. Cause I was homeschooled till I was about 12. Oh really?
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Chapter 4: What was the impact of the Arizona music scene on their careers?
It's a trip. You know, I think there's really amazing aspects to it and sort of quite weird aspects when you look back. Yeah. But how was it for you? And were you, where did you go to school? I was public school. You were public school. Okay. So quite a separate kind of a. Yeah. I, my mom pulled me out of school in third grade.
what was uh racing for i actually don't remember i think it was she just had some issue with the school like some personal issue and that i don't know like something with the principal somebody yeah some some sort of beef that i never even bothered because i don't even care i didn't even bother to ask but um it was super weird at first when i was really young i did not like it at all if you'd have to do the basic testing and they would we'd all go to the school and i was just like these are not there's a lot of like very super religious like
post hippie kids and stuff and it just didn't was not my scene i did not like engage with i couldn't i couldn't figure out how to connect with anybody in that world but then i had a the kind of the thing that made it great for me was a friend of ours another nate in our life um moved in across the street from me and became my best friend and he what what do you like play tennis with you or something how did he know how did he we went to we went to school we went to school together but didn't you do something like what was the what was your connection
he was into music um we i think we i think we like played tennis and stuff like that as like an aside okay like that was later on but so i just i mean he was my best friend so then all of his friends that he was meeting at school i just started hanging out with he was like the conduit in he was definitely like yeah i had sam darling he was my one friend lived up the road and he was like my conduit into the rest of the world right yeah because otherwise yeah you're like what if he goes to g1 mom mommy yeah yeah do you call your mom mommy like he does no i don't um
But yeah, and also I was a little bit older, so I got the car first and just started driving everybody to all the shows. As soon as I had a car, I was just like, we're going to shows every day. We went everywhere. We really went to Jack in the Box a lot. Yeah, and Taco Bell and record stores. Somehow my parents and your parents let us go to L.A. to go see shows.
Yeah, we started coming out here really early. Amazing. Yeah, we were still in high school, like driving up to L.A. from Phoenix to go see shows. Yeah, I have a 16-year-old daughter right now, and the thought of just letting her get in a car and drive out to Anaheim is... I guess different time, but also it is kind of outrageous anyway. Yeah. Yeah. My parents. Yeah.
I was 16 driving into the city to the Metro and like fireside bowl. And yeah, I'm jealous of that time. I bet that was awesome. A lot of cool shows there. I'm sure. I wasn't allowed. I couldn't go anywhere. I had a pet goat called Frisky. I'd go hunting on the weekends with my dad. Very different existence. You brought the goat hunting?
The goat was actually, my dad shot its mother, which was so sad and awful, didn't realize there was a kid there. And we brought the goat home. And then I had a pet goat. Wow. So it was quite a sad origin story. And then he shot him. Yeah, and it was a revenge story. And then we ate Frisky. No, we didn't eat Frisky. I had a goat growing up. Get out. They're the best. They're so loyal and so fun.
Hard disagree. Before we moved to Arizona, my family's from Iowa, and we had a farm. And my earliest memories was the goat would just not get off the fucking car so we could leave. Yeah, they love climbing. They want to be on things. They're awful. They make crazy noises. Yeah, they eat everything. They tear shit up. My least favorite animal, if it weren't for their milk... Or their cheese.
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Chapter 5: What memories do they have of their early music experiences?
Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. No, I love my little, it was just my best friend. Homeschooled. So like frisbee was my friend, you know, it was friendship. Applesauce was not, was not. Applesauce? Yeah. Applesauce was evil. And I'm talking like, this is probably like, I weirdly, I remember being born. Yeah. Sorry, say it again? We're going back. Like the coming out? Yeah, I remember being born.
I remember the lights turning on. Are you serious? Yeah, and being like, time to go. This is blowing my mind because my memory is so bad. My memory is awful too. The lights are on and then do you remember people looking down at you and whacking your ass? Basically, and I remember just screaming. And then it kind of went dark again.
And then the lights came back on when the fucking goat wouldn't get off the... Those are your two core memories. That's amazing. Yes. That's amazing. Yes. Like if you were to see it from as a scene, you'd like blurry and you'd see like a doctor. I just remember it unconsolably. It was just like bawling. That's all I remember. That's extraordinary.
Because we obviously all have that in us, but we don't remember it. I assume because it's too traumatic because it's too right. You're in this beautiful womb and then you're fuck. You're out. Awful. I looked it up on the internet and there are, yeah, there are a few people who have very similar like stories. You want me to have on a message board and talk about it? That's how I met my wife too.
She also remembers being birthed. Yeah. But then the goat applesauce was my next big memory. I don't know what to do with that. Were you joking before your wife also remembers her birth? Or are you serious? She's like, okay, I'm just checking. Rob's always doing a deadpan and I can't understand. No, no, I'm not. I'm not that good. Wait, so what was the memory after the goat?
That just continued then? The memory was on from goat onwards? Or did you blink out again for a while? No, I feel like it blinked out again and then it started. Then that's when it was like... The Weezer show where you meet Sam. No, then it was probably like a year later and then it was like a month later and then it just became whatever we have now. I don't know where to go from there.
Phoenix, maybe back to Phoenix because I'm going to Phoenix for the first time to see a Nine Inch Nails show this Friday. It's my first time in Phoenix. What is Phoenix? What am I meant to do? My dad threw away our Nine Inch Nails tickets my senior year of high school. I was like, it was Nine Inch Nails Perfect Circle. Me and Mike Lentz, shout out Mike Lentz.
We're going to go also still a friend. We're going to go. And I was like, I had the tickets. I put them in my dad's drawer thinking that that would be the safest place. Yeah. And my dad threw them out. That's horrific. No. Okay. I don't know how any of this happened. The story blows my mind and he will, and Mike will not forgive me like to this day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you find out.
Like, show day? The day of, the day of. And I have a friend, one time we were talking, he's like, the best show I ever saw was Nine Inch Nails and Perfect Circle. I was like... Way to go, LJ. Yeah, way to go, LJ. That's rough. So, yeah, so congratulations on being the first to go to... Thank you, I'm going to check my dad's drawer. So I'm just going to check all his tickets.
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Chapter 6: How do Nate and Sam view the current state of America?
I do. My best friend in first grade moved to Scottsdale from Chicago. And I remember coming out to visit him and I'm like, Scottsdale is a very different place. That's like, that's like another world from where we grew up for sure. We also have a lot of Chicago trans, but it's a bit like I'm from Iowa. It's a weird Midwestern hub. Well, you got Portillo's and Lou Malnati's there, right? We do?
I think. Yeah. Pretty sure you do. The bump-in one, the Lou Malnati's just closed. But is there a Portillo's there? I think so. There is. Yeah. We went during COVID and got a bunch of Portillo's. I can't believe I moved. I don't know how you're going to take this back. I don't like a deep dish pizza. It's not for me. You're having the wrong kind. It's a bread bowl. It's not good. It's a lot.
It's a bread bowl. It's soup. It's basically soup. I used to think that it was my favorite until I tried it. The idea of it was really good. Conceptually, it's phenomenal. Well, what deep dish have you had in Chicago? I want to say probably Luminati's. We went to Grimaldi's or something. Okay, representations. You got to do like Pequod's. I'm not doing any of them. Sorry.
Those were the two strikes. I like the thinnest of thin crust pizzas you can get. That's my jam. Yeah. Well, Chicago food is, and I do love Chicago food. Um, Rick Bayless is my like favorite person of all time. So I'm literally looking forward to going to Chicago and going to a bunch of Rick Bayless restaurants, which is funny because being from Phoenix for the Mexican food is amazing.
But, uh, but I've just gone on an internet like trip of like looking at Rick Bayless stuff. Wait, so what did Phoenix give us? Like what are Phoenix's things? Cause I, my brain is completely empty. Desert. Jimmy World. There's a format. But the fact that it's taken... That would sound like an aggressive question. Like, what did it give us? Phoenix is a weird place.
We got the big Charlie Kirk funeral. Oh, God. We got the Charlie Kirk freeway. Yeah, we got Turning Point USA. That's our big win. Oh, is TP USA? It's in Phoenix. Toilet Paper USA is Phoenix? It's in Phoenix. So it is big Christian town. It's a very rural suburban sprawl. We have a lot of mega churches in the East Valley, West Valley.
It's turned, but it's also turned fairly progressive since we've been there. In the center, yeah. We now have a pretty good sort of central downtown core. When we were kids, the downtown area was just abysmal. Everything would close at 5 and There's one venue down there that we would go to where we actually saw someone get murdered at across the street. You saw it happen? Yes. Yes. Sorry.
Horrible. It was like a beating with a brick situation. I just watched someone get hit with a brick, but we're not going to describe this, are we? We didn't know what was happening. It seemed like it was very strange. It seemed like they were friends. They were. It was strange. We didn't get it until it was too late.
Weirdly, Marco, who we've mentioned a few times, the other day he explained, he told the whole story because I have like blocked it out of my mind. Right. You've got your birth and the goat. But I stop at death. Yes. Yeah. But we had that venue down there. But other than that, it was like downtown was terrible. But it's recently, like we moved down there.
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Chapter 7: What led to the reunion of The Format after 20 years?
It's like stamp and repeat of this, a neighborhood, and then once the next one's built, no one wants to live in this one anymore. So people move into that one and then this one just gets kind of abandoned and they just keep doing that until you get to California, you know, at this point. And really like, it's crazy how much it stretches out.
Even I hadn't driven from, we used to make that drive when we were kids all the time, uh, or even early format days living in Phoenix, driving to California to make a record or whatever it was. Um, and yeah, the houses would just get closer and closer to California. Like you'd be driving in from California, from California and being like Wait a second.
Like I was just here two months ago and it seems like we're like three miles ahead. Three, like three extra miles of houses have just like, has just sprawled out. Now it's insane. And California is doing the same thing. So they will eventually meet. They'll kiss. Yeah. Yeah. Like the lady and the tramp. Yeah, exactly. It's one giant spaghetti noodle.
There's no sane segue into this, but these coffees are sitting here. And in every episode, I encourage guests to bring in something sort of iconically American that I perhaps have not partaken in. Is this iconically, it's about to be. It's about to be. There's some finger on the pulse type of stuff. I have been staring at these for a while and I'm curious what these are exactly.
I think it is a Japanese coffee shop, but in America. Yeah, I'm trying to make this an American thing. I mean, I heard peanut butter and I thought that sounds fucking American. Yes, this is an iced latte with like peanut butter, like actual peanut butter in it that has been kind of like liquefied and squirted into the coffee. Okay. And then stirred. It's very delicious.
Is this a recent discovery of yours? This is in the last year I discovered this. And I've been trying to turn everybody I know onto the peanut butter latte. My favorite, it's my favorite treat. Okay. I'm going to have a, you guys have one. Yeah, Rob and I get to share this. I think you tried to turn me on to this about... A few months ago or something. A few months ago. Yeah, give it a stir.
Oh, yeah, that's peanutty. Peanut butter on the bottom, I think. Oh, yeah, we need to get that peanut butter up. Really settled down there. Yeah, these have been sitting for about an hour now. Yeah, I get a lot of these. So this is not new to me. Oh, delicious. It's great, right? Yeah, I love peanut butter. Big fan. Been about 15 years. 15 years? Oh my God.
That's right, you've been off for a long time. Can you? It's probably a bad idea. Are you a recovering coffee junkie? Are you just going to set you back? I'm always a tea guy. Yeah, so it's not the caffeine so much. It's... The matcha's got a lot of caffeine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good. That has got a lot of peanut butter flavor. The peanut butter is a great flavor. I'm into this.
Yeah, I'm into it too. There's not enough peanut butter for me. You want more? It's a bit watered down. Yeah, the ice has melted because it has been sitting here for a little bit. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Yeah. But it is absolutely delicious. Do you guys think you'll still be friends in another 30 years? Well, the hope is that we're still alive. Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What songs did The Format perform during the episode?
We sell our merchandise as low as possible. Amazing. Great. Accessible to people. We're enjoying this. We want people to be able to come and experience this with us. Now we don't want to gouge those people. We want this. We live to break even. Like that's all, like that's all we can ask for in this situation. Yeah. Doing this.
Um, and because you watch, you just watch how much people just get ripped off by like musicians. Yeah. And by rich musicians, that's the other thing. I understand if you're a band and you're just trying, this is your living because it's become harder and harder because the music industry has taken everything away from everybody. So it's hard for a band to make money.
So I understand in some ways, but if you are privileged enough Like hardworking people are paying money like these, like, and you're taking everything they have so that they can come watch you live. Like when we went, we're kids, like it was an outlet, like going to concerts was like an outlet. Now people have to like take out a fucking mortgage just to go see a show.
Like that's, that would not be enjoyable for me to, to also have this feeling like I just paid 80 bucks for a t-shirt. you know, like after a hard day's work, it's just awful the way that people treat the, like how, how the music industry works specifically from the top, um, which is like anything in life.
But, but, uh, I just look at how much these artists just charge an arm and a leg for everything. And it's just so disappointing. So for us to, for us doing this, it's like, okay, we just, if we make anything extra, that's nice. But I can't imagine because we really just want to be able to pay the people that we work with. Are you running the website? Sort of. In many ways, I am, yes.
It's gotten much easier. No, we actually did get a little help. They asked me if I was running the website, and then it had to be kind of revamped for the new album, and I was like, I'll let somebody else do it. What are you using for it? We're using, are you guys sponsored by Squarespace? Sometimes. Well, you are now. Wait, we have a website? What the hell?
I mean, it's just, what even is a website? What is a website? Yeah, it's just like a modular stuff. It's just like a link me page. I mean, most people's websites are just that now. It's just a place to, you have to have so many different, yeah, it's so ridiculous. Friendsband just got a website and it's very funny.
They made it like almost, do you remember that game Myst where you're like dragging the mouse around in a room? The whole website, like you're in a room and you're sort of like dragging the mouse around to like find tour dates and stuff. The least user-friendly website imaginable, but very fucking funny. We had a video game. That's awesome. We had a video game back in 2010.
We had a video game website. Oh, really? Yeah. Incredible.
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