Sunday night's show at the Sapphire Supper Club was admittedly not one of Aloha's best. The four-member instrumental rock band arrived late, made a mad dash to set up, and then without the benefit of a proper sound check, quickly launched into a quick set of their lush, intricate blend of jazz influenced post-rock. The twenty people in attendance listened appreciatively and watched in amazement as Eric Koltnow bent over his vibraphone like a mad scientist. The small crowd's applause was barely enough to fill the club. But Aloha plugged on, barely pausing between songs from their latest Polyvinyl Records release, That's Your Fire. Each song revealed itself much differently than on the album -- the pace was quicker, and the instrumentals were much more intense. Having a time limit probably had something to do with the band's tight set. After the show, lead singer Tony Cavallario greeted me with a shy smile; "We have to apologize. This is like, our fourth interview ever. They don't come too frequently." "But we like interviews," said drummer Cale Parks. Bassist Matthew Gengler and vibraphonist/percussionist Eric Koltnow joined us outside of the club. It was warm and humid, even at 9:00 at night. We relaxed around a small plastic table on the sidewalk as cars and the occasional ambulance sped past.

Splendid: I noticed the songs tonight had a really tight feel to them.

Matthew Gengler: I prefer to refer to the songs in this case as being "air conditioned." When we play in air-conditioned places, it's hard to get started.

Eric Koltnow: It's good for longevity, but it's tough at first.

Matthew Gengler: It's hard to get the heat up.

Eric Koltnow: If I could do it my way, I would either jump rope or go hang out in a sauna before every shot.

Matthew Gengler: (laughs) Sit in a hot room drinking espresso. I would be pumped. We played this tour two or three places where it was so awful hot and it's very interesting in those times where you're just exhausted but there's 50 people who are also exhausted standing there too. It's like an obligation to keep going and play as hard as you can. We've played in this basement with no windows or anything. It was 90 degrees down there and humid…

Splendid: Best show ever, right?

Matthew Gengler: It was a great show. I felt like I was going to black out most of the time.

Splendid: What else makes a good show?

Tony Cavallario: Good sound. A good sound check

Eric Koltnow: A good sound system. When we have the energy of interacting well. Usually the better the sound is, the easier it is for us to interact.

Tony Cavallario: I would say in some occasions, a not-so-good sound system could be supplanted by people acting crazy when we're playing, which is another way to build momentum.

Eric Koltnow: Sometimes when there's really bad sound it's good because we're forced to use our acoustic ears and listen more. It makes it sort of a game sometimes and not just going through the motions.

Matthew Gengler: I always like the opposite in certain situations. When there's not enough room on stage, or the sound isn't right or there's some weird feedback that none of us can figure out. They're all obstacles that add to the music. Every show is completely different.

Tony Cavallario: We try to jump on as many other shows as we can because we're not really established everywhere. Some people come out of curiosity, but not many. Our most successful shows are those where we get to play in front of a bunch of people who have never heard us. I think that's what touring is all about, exposing yourself to new people.

Splendid: Are there any cities that you look forward to playing at when you're on tour?

Tony Cavallario: Ann Arbor is our home away from home. It's where we record, and we have a lot of friends there.

Cale Parks: Houston is rad.

Tony Cavallario: There's this guy in Houston named Bucky who works at a record store there and wears cowboy boots. He heard our first seven-inch, before Cale was even in the band. And to me, that's just unreal. By the time we went down there, it was three years later and people we waiting for us, saying, "We can't wait to see you guys." Word of mouth -- it's a beautiful thing.

Splendid: Do you enjoy recording or playing live more?

Cale Parks: They're two completely different things. Performing is a live interaction. If I hear something that Tony sings and it's a different melody than I'm used to, and I can play it on the vibes, and we're creating off of each other. We do that in the studio also, but it's not the same because it's not as focused. We're not doing it for as long of a period of time.

Splendid: When you're recording, how much of your music is freeform?

Tony Cavallario: Depends on the song. There was one song that we did that we didn't even really rehearse it much, we just improvised a couple takes of it. And then there are others where we rehearse for two years before we record it. I always try to add elements of improvisation in all of our songs, every time we do them. Even if they're songs that we've been doing for a long time. That can not only end up being cool on the record, but it definitely sets us up for being a different kind of a live band.

Splendid: Let's backtrack a little bit. I read that you've been together for over four years. How did you guys originally get together?

Matthew Gengler: I chased Tony around for a summer trying to get him to play with me. And he finally came over two or three times and I tried to play guitar with him and it didn't work.

Tony Cavallario: I didn't have a good guitar at that point.

Matthew Gengler: And I had a very good guitar. Which I had to get rid of then.

Tony Cavallario: We had one song.

Matthew Gengler: Yeah, we had one song and we never ended up using it either.

Tony Cavallario: Because by the time we were done with it, it sounded kind of like Modest Mouse.

Matthew Gengler: And then we saw Eric at Columbus Fest in '97. And he said he would do it, but he had to play vibraphone. And we had our old drummer, Anthony, who -- he was tapped, I believe. We tapped him out.

Tony Cavallario: He was probably the only drummer in Bowling Green at the time --

Matthew Gengler: -- who wasn't engaged in a full-time thing. But he just kind of fell through things.

Splendid: So what's he doing now?

Matthew Gengler: Living near us. He lives out in the country, near Cleveland. Not so much the country, but the woods -- the forest.

Splendid: (to Eric) So your condition for joining the band was that you had to bring your vibraphone?

Eric Koltnow: I had just bought a set of vibes and was really into playing them. I got into it through school. I started playing marimba and xylophones. I was a percussion major and you're pretty much required to play everything. And then I started getting into jazz and I wanted to be a jazz vibraphonist. So I bought a set of vibes and worked my ass off. And this was before vibes were cool. (laughs) This was 1997.

Splendid: You're right. Vibes are everywhere these days. Have you heard Mercury Program?

Eric Koltnow: Yeah, we're friends with them. Cale and I were actually thinking of doing an improv project with the drummer from Mercury Program.

Cale Parks: Yeah, write that down.

Eric Koltnow: Yeah, get the hype started now: "Possible side project with Mercury Program and Aloha." (laughs)

Splendid: What's the music scene like in Ohio?

Tony Cavallario: As far as Cleveland goes, there's a few bands. Pretty much if you're a Cleveland-based band and you want to play at out at the clubs you get a show with a touring band. We play with Shield Bound, Six Park Seven. Party Helicopters are big. Party Helicopters is a good example of one of these bands that's more popular outside of Ohio, which is pretty interesting.

Splendid: How often do you guys play shows locally?

Tony Cavallario: Roughly about once a month. But we'll skip a month every once in awhile. We try to play Bowling Green and Pittsburgh and Columbus, basically anywhere we can drive to on the weekends.

Splendid: Is there a Cleveland sound?

Eric Koltnow: Yeah, it's heavy metal.

Cale Parks: Garage rock too.

Tony Cavallario: It's not us.

Eric Koltnow: When I think of Cleveland I don't think about interchanging guitar and vibraphone licks.

Tony Cavallario: There's a lot of great clubs to play in Cleveland and a lot of great people. But it's almost like it's too much, there's too much going on. It's not a very grass-roots punk scene either, it's all over the place. Columbus is always been a town that has supported underground music, they have a lot of all-ages places to play.

Cale Parks: I feel inspired by a lot of older Cleveland bands. In the late '70s and early '80s Cleveland had a lot of weird, experimental bands like Devo, The Pagans. Before the Velvet Underground were totally huge, Cleveland was one of the ten cities they actually went to because they actually had a following. I find that very inspiring.

Splendid: So not all of you grew up in Ohio?

Matthew Gengler: No, I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Eric Koltnow: I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I lived there for awhile and spent elementary and junior high in Georgia, south of Macon. I was always going into Macon, taking drum lessons, that type of thing. My dad went back to college for grad school when I was 15 at the Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. So that's how my family ended up in Ohio. We all met at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I had no idea where that was when I lived in Georgia.

Splendid: Do you think that coming from different parts of the country influenced your backgrounds in music, or at least your different tastes in music?

Cale Parks: Totally. Living in Georgia, I was into a lot of southern rock at that time.

(everyone laughs)

No, no. Not bad southern rock. The drummer for the Allman Brothers, Jaimoe (Jaimoe Johanny Johanson), he's been with them from the beginning, and being from Macon, he taught my drum teacher, who I trained with for five or six years, when I was little. So, I'm a third-generation student of the Allman Brothers' drummer.

Tony Cavallario: That's kind of crazy. It's like you're purebred.

Splendid: What did you listen to growing up in high school?

Cale Parks: I didn't just listen to Southern rock. In high school I grew up In Cincinnati, so I listened to a lot of Cincinnati bands like Lazy. The Afgan Whigs.

Tony Cavallario: I was lucky when I was in high school, I had a friend who pretty much bought every indie rock record that came out. He schooled us pretty good. I was into Polvo and Pavement before I got into punk and hardcore.

Matthew Gengler: My brother was in college, and even when I was younger, I started listening to punk rock music in sixth grade. But I didn't see any difference between the Dead Kennedys and Van Halen. It didn't make any sense to me why I should not listen to one band with a metal-sounding guitar and not listen to another band. I liked that Van Halen song "Jump" a lot.

Tony Cavallario: I think you were about eight when that song came out.

Matthew Gengler: But you know what I'm saying. As I got older, he came home from college and was like, this is Big Black, this is Skinny Puppy, this is Sonic Youth. And that was actually the one thing that changed everything for me, hearing Sonic Youth for the first time. But I had the U2 albums, I had Ice-T.

Tony Cavallario: So now Eric's about to tell you that his favorite band was Gorilla Biscuits.

Matthew Gengler: He was hardcore all the way. We have tapes. The band goes, "DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! HEY!"

(Eric laughs)

Splendid: What are your day jobs?

Matthew Gengler: I make copies. I work for Xerox.

Eric Koltnow: I work at a copy place.

Cale Parks: I am a student, still. I study jazz studies and music, and I'm coming up on my senior year. It's senior recital time -- 20 hours a semester.

Splendid: Is that going to cut back on your touring?

Cale Parks: No, I'm a machine. I'm Robo-Cale. So, I will do it all.

Tony Cavallario: I work for a newspaper.

Splendid: Oh, cool. What do you do there?

Tony Cavallario: I'm a news editor, copy editor, page designer. It's for a suburban Cleveland newspaper called the News-Herald. It's funny. From time to time, we'll be playing a show and people will either be surprised, or ask us if we have jobs.

Splendid: I ask knowing that yeah, you guys probably have jobs. But you never know. Rainer Maria is on your label and they're not working.

Tony Cavallario: Yeah, they're a little bit farther down the road than we are, but they did stop working. And I did think they stopped working before they were actually financially able to do it. It's nice to see though. It's very encouraging.

Splendid: Did you sign to Polyvinyl before or after the first EP?

Tony Cavallario: We recorded the EP, as a demo. We were into it, so we sent it off to a bunch of places. PV was looking for a band, and we hadn't toured extensively. We didn't have any real allies in the music scene. We were just kind of playing around. But something worked out and I've read interviews with people from other labels, and they mention our demo as the only demo that they've ever considered. It's really great because I don't really know what got people to listen to it. Because that's the hardest part, not so much listening to it and keeping it or rejecting it, but getting it into the tape deck. So he was interested in putting the demo out, and we went in and finished it.

Splendid: Were they your first choice, or the first label that really responded?

Tony Cavallario: It was totally random. I had no idea what to expect. I just sent it out to a bunch of labels I could find addresses for that I thought would be interested in a band that hadn't done much. I really didn't think a bigger label would be interested because we were an unproved band. There was no real buzz about us or anything.

Splendid: So do you think you've pretty much found a home with Polyvinyl?

Tony Cavallario: Yeah. Especially by watching other bands on the label. Like the way Rainer Maria has been able to build an empire basically out of doing what a punk rock band does. It's really nice to watch.

Matthew Gengler: It's turned into kind of a mentoring process with them and us. We've played these shows with them and they've slowly brought us to doing more of the larger shows. It's really helped us. You watch them and how they do things, and they do very well with what they do.

Splendid: I wanted to talk to you guys about your songwriting process and how you put songs together. They are all so multi-layered, how does a song normally come together?

Tony Cavallario: There's a bunch of methods, actually. It might start with me writing a chord progression with a vocal melodies and a general melodic theme and also a lyrical theme sometimes. And then everyone basically arranges it with their own instruments. And then there's a series of rearrangements after that. The songs don't sound anything like how the sound when they began. That's the scary part and the really amazing part of it.

Cale Parks: A lot of things just come together when we're just jamming for two or three hours. Just playing and trying to juxtapose different themes.

Matthew Gengler: We have a track now that we got ready for tour by Cale and I badgering Tony to just let us try it because he didn't like how we played it the last three or four times.

Tony Cavallario: I just didn't like the way it sounded. In general...

Matthew Gengler: He didn't like what we were doing.

Tony Cavallario: No, no, no. I thought it was a lousy song.

Splendid: Oh, the truth comes out.

Matthew Gengler: He called me names... (Tony laughs) But we finally tried it. And apparently something clicked the fifth or six time we tried to make a go at it.

Splendid: What song was this?

Tony Cavallario: The song that we didn't play tonight. (laughs) No point of reference!

Matthew Gengler: We probably would have played it if we hadn't of been late. It was a short set.

Tony Cavallario: One more song, it would have been there.

Splendid: (to Tony) So, are you the main lyricist?

Tony Cavallario: Yeah. Matthew contributes. He's a poet. I'm the journalist.

Matthew Gengler: I am fully aware of my poetry, thank you.

Splendid: Truthfully, the first few months I listened to That's Your Fire, I wasn't paying attention to the lyrics because the instrumentals really stand out. Is that intentional in any way? Are you trying to create subtlety through your lyrics?

Tony Cavallario: Sort of. Even more now, I'm trying to write stronger vocal melodies and vocal themes. Especially at the beginning, we would write this music and it was just what I wanted to hear. It was almost intimidating to sing the vocals I already had on it. But I was also not real accustomed to singing in a studio environment. So I think that all contributed to it being really…mellow, I guess. No over the top vocal stuff. I don't want to necessarily pin the songs down to what they're about and what you're supposed to feel when you're listening. I'm sure that in the future there will be some songs like that. But I think that you have to let people take whatever they want from the music. That's not to say that you should cop-out and not write songs that are topical.

Splendid: Sometimes a little ambiguity is a good thing.

Matthew Gengler: I think the vocals add another level of instrumentation. A lot of times the words. Usually a lot of times, the words drift on the same vibe as what the rest of us are doing. And it's almost like he's a guide to what everything's going on. Giving more of a mental picture of the sound that's coming out.

Tony Cavallario: A lot of these bands that do mostly instrumentals, their song titles will either be really important or they won't be at all. And it's really frustrating sometimes to hear a song that's gut-wrenchingly beautiful or something really inspiring, and look at the song title and it's something really dumb. But at the same time, if you listen to some minimalist composers, they don't name their songs. It's not like "Trip Through a Riverbed", it's like "Music for a Quintet."

Matthew Gengler: I like that. But I don't think I'd want to ever be the sort of band that has instrumental tracks where you can hear where the vocal line would be. If you've got four or five people in the band making that music, there's got to be one person whose hand isn't doing that much stuff. A lot of times you hear it and you're like, "No!" when there's a song where you know in your head where the vocal line is coming over.

Tony Cavallario: Room for another melody. Which is what a lot of bands have. Another thing lyrically that's important to think about is that between the four of us, there's so much musical interplay and I think there's a lot of expression coming from each instrument laying on a track. I don't think it would be right for me to be speaking too much for myself or too forcefully. That's the way I think bands go in general. You might have a frontman singer, but you tend to write for a band rather than writing for what's on your mind.

Cale Parks: We were talking about this in the van yesterday on the way to Boca Raton, about when you write music. Sometimes I write some kind of progression and the lyrics always define what the song is about, but can't music itself be about something? So often in the studio I won't know what Tony's singing half the time, until the record comes out and I read the lyrics. So as far as us playing any inspiration behind the lyrics, it's also an inspiration behind the music also.

Tony Cavallario: It goes back and forth. If the mood to something that I write changes when there's more parts added to it, then lyrics will change too. Unless there's some reason to have a contrast between the two.

Splendid: So songs are always evolving?

Tony Cavallario: Definitely.

Eric Koltnow: It still evolves as we're playing.

Matthew Gengler: The way things are sung changes over time. Depending on the night, certain songs may take a looser feel. Or songs within a set -- if we play six upbeat songs, and we find our way into "Ferocious Love", sometimes it has a more swinging feel to it. And I think Tony plays with his placement a little more at those times. It's interesting.

Splendid: So after this tour is over, you're going to go back to Ann Arbor and record the new album?

Tony Cavallario: You got it. Nice research, way to go! (laughs)

Splendid: Thanks, I try. Who's producing it?

Tony Cavallario: Some guy with pigtails named Drew Peters.

Splendid: Pigtails? Have you worked with him before?

Tony Cavallario: Yeah, he did the last album. He's done everything. Well, he's mixed everything.

Splendid: Do you have a title yet? (everyone laughs) Why do you laugh?

Tony Cavallario: Wait until February.

Splendid: Is that the last step?

Eric Koltnow: Exactly.

Matthew Gengler: Last time we were an hour late getting the title in. So two places had it listed as: "As yet untitled."

Splendid: So how did you decide on That's Your Fire?

Matthew Gengler: Lottery. Drew was given a vote to be a tie breaker.

Tony Cavallario: It's hard to have a democracy. You never see a court that has four people voting on it. It's going to be tied every time.

Matthew Gengler: In a lot of situations, we give Drew a pretty nice leeway as far as being our outside, unbiased observer. It's a god thing because I think when you get the four of us going, it's like four horses going in different directions.

Splendid: So are all the songs written?

Tony Cavallario: Some of the songs are written. We're not planning on finishing the record in our next trip to the studio, we're just going to go in and see how it goes. We've got a gazillion ideas.

Splendid: So what does the new stuff sound like so far? I'm very excited.

Matthew Gengler: A lot of it is Wurlitzer piano-based.

Eric Koltnow: There's a couple piano songs. There's also a lot more percussion, like African-inspired percussion.

Tony Cavallario: I think we're already written all the rock songs.

Splendid: So no release date yet?

Tony Cavallario: Probably March.

Splendid: So March-ish?

Eric Koltnow: Maybe Valentine's Day.

Tony Cavallario: We'll shoot for Valentine's Day, but we might not be able get it. That would be nice.

Cale Parks: I should be graduating next May if everything goes well within the next year. So with my pending graduation in May there'll be some extensive touring and a lot to follow up this record. We'll set it up to get out of Bowling Green, Ohio, basically.

Tony Cavallario: We're looking at Japan. We don't know if anyone likes us there.

Splendid: It must be strange to play your music in a foreign country and see how the audience reacts differently.

Matthew Gengler: We've been talking to the drummer from Skilled Labor, and he's been giving us some ideas about what we could do. He said the most important thing is on your record is if the vocals are in key and they sound good. He was like, Modest Mouse is really popular. And I thought, he sings good, but sometimes he's singing off key!

Splendid: So what have you been listening to on the road?

Tony Cavallario: Ted Leo.

Eric Koltnow: Fela Kuti, he was the pioneering Afro-beat musicians. James Brown flew his entire band to Nigeria to hear them play school them. On the way up, we were listening to a compilation called Om, which is all early experimental electronic music.

Cale Parks: Some booty house. We were listening to DJ Funk.

Tony Cavallario: Rufus Wainwright.

Cale Parks: The new Sigur Rós. I've been listening to that a lot.

Matthew Gengler: We made a move this tour. In a way to kind of get to know fans better, we asked people to bring mix tapes for us to listen to on the road. So far we've gotten six or seven tapes.

Splendid: That's so great. What's been on them?

Matthew Gengler: Some people are really good. They check up on you or see who you're playing with. So we've gotten Album Leaf tracks or some Helms tracks because we were playing with them. Somebody must have known that Toy's vocals are repeatedly compared to the singer from Lotion, who we've never heard. So they put a Lotion track on, somebody put Tony's favorite song on there. It's great to interact with people like that. Yeah, okay, so we play music every night but more than we meet people every night and that's what's really important to me -- to connect with people every night.