By GREGG KIRK
December 1994

It’s been no secret about how Wilmington band, Smashing Orange, arrived at their current level of success — they avoided playing the local bar circuit. And after more than three years of going straight for a record deal by strictly playing high-profile gigs and label showcases arranged by their manager Bert Ottaviano, the group landed a multi-release deal with MCA two summers ago. Ironically, since they’ve been signed, they’ve played more local gigs than ever before.

In the meantime, the single “My Deranged Heart,” from their own independent release The Glass Bead Game, reached No. 2 on the Rockpool indie charts, and they were voted “Best Unsigned Band” by the readers of CMJ. Last month, they released No Return in the End, their major-label debut, which will be supported by a video in the ensuing months.

While they may be the envy of every so-called alternative band breaking guitar strings in basements from Newark, DE to Philly, it’s not all limos and in-store promotions, according to guitarist Rick Hodgson. We talked to him on the phone, while the group had a stopover in Milwaukee, WI, during their six-week tour of the U.S.

Big Shout: Let’s go all the way back to when you guys first got signed. How did that come about?

Rick Hodgson: The South by Southwest show two years ago in Austin, TX was definitely the show that got us signed with MCA. They’d been looking at us for a little while.

BS: How soon after that show did you actually get signed?

RH: It took about four or five months to actually sign the deal. We were going through the negotiation process for a little while.

BS: How did you decide on what studio to go to?

RH: Well, the studio was actually recommended by a friend of ours who was living in Minneapolis at the time. And he knew some of the people who worked at the studio and said it was a really cool place and everything. We were looking for kind of an out-of-the-way studio to get the proper frame of mind. That studio (Pachyderm Studios) seemed like the one that we wanted to work with. It was out in the mountains in Minnesota, and it had a nice house adjoining it. So, you just stayed in this little studio complex, if you will. It was great. It was surrounded by woods, and mountains, and it snowed every day.

BS: When was it you were out there?

RH: We started recording in November of last year, and we were out there for about three weeks. It was a great studio, though. It was where the last Nirvana album was recorded, so it kind of has a good reputation.

BS: So, I heard you ran into a few problems while you were there.

RH: Yeah, we had to fire our first producer (Carl Plaster, who produced The Glass Bead Game) and our drummer (Kevin Wiggins) in about the same week. It worked out that we had to fly two people home in the same week (laughs). It just wasn’t working out. It was the typical artistic difference situation.

BS: About how far into the game were you when all this happened?

RH: About half way through. So, we had to scrap a lot of stuff. We basically had about a week to re-record everything. It was definitely a stressful, hectic situation.

BS: How did Jack Endino (Soundgarden) come into the picture?

RH: Well, after we got everything recorded, we got back and finished some stuff up in Philly at Studio 4 and the Warehouse. When it was time to mix down, we were throwing names around, talking to different people who wanted to do it. We wanted somebody who was really into the music as opposed to just somebody that we were paying to do a job. So we talked to Jack Endino, he heard the stuff, he really liked it, and we flew out to L.A. to mix down in Hollywood. We’d never met him before, but we got along very well with him, and I think we’re definitely going to work with him in the future.

BS: When did you finish the project?

RH: I think everything got totally finished in April of this year, and it finally got released about a month ago. It’s a lot longer process having a major label put your record out as opposed to doing it yourself.

We just got done our video about two weeks ago. We filmed it up in New York — that was a whole new experience. It was definitely something we’d never had to do before, but it was a really cool atmosphere, and I think it turned out really well. We did it at some sound stage in New York. It’s pretty much straight forward. It’s not live or anything — no hippy story line (laughs).

BS: Who produced it?

RH: This guy, Drew Caroline. He did the Urge Overkill video for the Neil Diamond song that’s on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. That was, like, his latest project before us. And he also did a couple Dinosaur Jr. videos. He was real easy to work with and had a lot of good ideas.

BS: Speaking of working with people, what happened to you guys and Luscious Jackson? You were out on tour with them, and something happened.

RH: Well, it was one of those deals where we were going to go out with them for a week, and if we got along with them then we would go on an extended tour with them. — which meant the West Coast and Europe possibly. We pretty much found out that they were trying to use some of our tour support money to pay for some of their expenses, and they basically were being pretty bitchy about everything and weren’t easy to get along with, and didn’t want to hang out. So we didn’t have a good meshing, I guess. But the shows were cool. We rocked them off the stage every night, so that’s what counts. We stole a lot of their fans from them — they saw real guitar playing and no samples and stuff (laughs).

BS: We did an interview with Velocity Girl for last month’s issue, and in the press stuff they sent us, there was this article in Alternative Press where they were asked the question, “What’s your funniest road story?” or something like that. Somebody from the band answered something about one of the members of the band Smashing Orange being so drunk he couldn’t stand.

RH: Right, exactly (laughs). We did a few shows with them a while ago. We thought that was pretty funny.

BS: Does anyone want to claim responsibility for being the fallen band member?

RH: It could’ve been anybody that night (laughs). It was weird playing with those guys. We were sitting around at the little bar next door to the club, and we had about 10 pitchers in front of us, and they were all contemplating whether or not they could drink one beer and they weren’t going on for about three hours. It’s funny how many bands don’t like to partake of the alcoholic beverages before playing, which we are finding out on the road right now.

BS: Who are some of the cooler partying bands who can hang with you?

RH: Aaaaah. I don’t know, we out party all of them. We just like to have fun and mix business with pleasure, if you will.