I heard they had Jason McMaster filling in for them on bass. Is that the same Jason McMaster that sang in Dangerous Toys?
Yeah. Sure is. In fact Jason McMaster is the one that told them to come get me.

Oh yeah. What were you doing prior?
I was playing in a band called Serpent.

How did The Union Underground get the attention of your record label?
That happened through making a lot of noise. No, our manager went to Kologners office and had a meeting with him and basically said " This is a band I think you are really going to need. " They were like "O.K." and they were checking it out. They knew we had been selling a lot of our CD in Texas so they flew to San Antonio to see a show and we already pulled in real big crowds in San Antonio. Then it exploded. We had a real good show, they label loved it and that's it!

So there wasn't a lot of crap you had to go through?
No not really. When you start getting into that situation were your begging a label to take you, you don't want to be in that position because then it's like it's a privilege for you to be with them ya know? Colombia was like, the other way. They really wanted us, they believed in the music and they kinda saw eye to eye with how we wanted to develop the band. They ended up begging us to go with them.

How did you come up with the name Union Underground, or was that prior to you joining the band?
It was prior to me joining, but, a lot of the music was recorded at a studio in Texas and we call it The Underground Union for about a week before Bryan realized that should be the name of the band.

Underground Union?
That was the name of the studio. Yeah. When he realized that should be the name of the band he turned it around and called it The Union Underground.

Who came up with the concept for the album cover?.
Patrick had the name floating around, "An Education In Rebellion", and the spurred June Car who did that photographs for that record and Bryan, our singer who had taken that title, and we weren't' sure that was going to be the name of the record. They got together and looked through this model catalog and found this girl. They idea was to have her dressed up in front of this chalkboard.

Like on the back of the CD?
Yeah, and it turned out we used something different on the cover, one of the different shots.

How do you guys approach song writing? Dose someone come up with an idea and bring it to the band?
Pretty much. Basically someone will put a song together, demo it, we demo the songs our self's and then bring it to the band. It's not like someone comes up with a guitar riff, It's like here is the guitar riff, here is the bass on it, the drums to it, ya know and we put together a demo that sounds really good. Then we just get together and see what happens.

How many songs did you have to chose from for your first album?
There was only like three songs that didn't make the record. We pretty much used our whole catalog.

Do you still have those three songs around?
Nope. They may come back or resurface again. I think when we were putting the record together with the way it was sounding and the flow of it, we felt those songs didn't need to be there. We haven't had the urge to play them live. We do play some new songs in our set. We have a new song called "All of Us" that we have been playing.

Has it been going over pretty good?
Oh yeah! It has been getting a real good response.

Do you write a lot on the road or do you wait to till you get off the road?
I write a lot on the road. I try to but it's hard. Usually the best stuff is written right when we get off the road.

How long are you going to be on tour? I know you have been touring for a while.
I think it has been a year. We're probably going to tour another six months.

Are you going to take a break or are you going to start working on the next record?
We'll start working on the next record. A break for us is two weeks. That's a break I guess.