Pollen. was a power pop band originally hailing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but later becoming a mainstay of Arizona’s music scene when they relocated to Mesa, Arizona in 1995.

They released four albums and two split records over their eight years together, including 1997’s ‘Peach Tree’ on Wind-up Records and 2000’s ‘Chip’ on Fueled By Ramen. Over the years, Pollen. toured extensively with bands like The Ataris, Descendents, Less Than Jake, The Stereo, Armchair Martian, River City High, Suicide Machines, One Man Army, Cooter, Scrimmage Heroes, and Co-Ed. Pollen. even played a show with Weezer – with just two bands on the bill, Pollen. and Weezer.

Originally released on Grass Records in 1995, Pollen.’s second full-length album, ‘Crescent’ is finally making its debut on vinyl, out via Double Helix Records, which is distributing the record.

You must have been very excited about the re-release of your sophomore album, ‘Crescent,’ for the first time ever on vinyl, right? How does the sound differ from the original CD version, and to what degree were you involved with Double Helix Records working on it?

Bob Hoag: We had done vinyl reissues of our 3rd and 4th albums (‘Peach Tree’ and ‘Chip’) for President Gator (label) and ‘Crescent’ was kind of the same process as both of those: both labels essentially let me remaster and supervise the entire process and were very supportive of whatever I wanted to do in terms of preparing all of these records for re-release. These records were kind of my babies back when each one was made, and they sort of became my babies all over again. Haha. I’m probably a better parent now then I was then. So I personally did all the transfers of the original mixes, fixed a few things I wanted to fix (usually just things like pops or clicks in the original mix that we weren’t fancy enough to fix, or once in a while, cleaning up bad analogue punch-ins or mix deficiencies).

For ‘Crescent,’ specifically, I wasn’t sure anyone would ever want to put this out, as it’s sort of our “lost album” and I felt like I was still figuring out how to write the kinds of songs I wanted to write. The original CD ran into trouble in mastering, and the released CD ended up having very little low end or treble, and a ton of midrange. In short: it was guitar city, but nothing else really sounded great. So going back to Stephen Egerton’s original mixes – those were really fantastic mixes, and there was a ton of fidelity there that none of us had heard since 1995. Then I eq’d and compressed it (I think I ran it through my Neve console) and that was it. I mostly did it so the band could enjoy hearing what it was supposed to sound like.

Then I was producing another record for Jeff of Double Helix, as ‘Peach Tree’ and ‘Chip’ were coming out, and he really wanted to do ‘Crescent’. So I dug out the remaster I had done in 2020, went back to just the EQ I added, and then sent that to Jason at the Blasting Room to fine tune it and prep it for vinyl. (The ‘Peach Tree’ remaster was about 70% Jason’s hard work, 30% mine, and the ‘Chip’ remaster was pretty much all Jason – though I did a lot of cleanup on the mixes to fix bad punches, or use vocal up or vocal down mixes for different lines to make the vocals sit better than they had in the original. But Jason did all the actual audio work on ‘Chip,’ and it came out amazing – I mean, I’m really happy with all three of them!)

Anyway, Double Helix were very happy to have me basically make this reissue the way I wanted, including being maniacal about reproducing the artwork *exactly* as it appeared in the CD. Which, as it turns out, is a real pain.

“We didn’t fit in perfectly anywhere”

Would you like to take us back to your teenage room and tell us what kind of records and fanzines we would find there?

I was actually a pretty big movie nerd as a kid, especially horror movies, so growing up, my room was mostly a lot of horror movie stuff. I still own a lot of the vinyl I had as a kid: ‘Halloween,’ ‘Evil Dead,’ ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ that sort of thing. Lots of Fangoria pull-out posters. I was (and still am) a huge John Williams fan – Temple of Doom is still probably my favorite of his, and I still have the record I had as a kid. All of my youthful vinyl is all soundtrack stuff.

But in my later teenage years, as I discovered punk/alternative/new wave, that was during the CD era, so all of that stuff would have been CDs. I was really into All and Descendents, and also really loved a lot of other SST stuff (Minutemen/fIREHOSE/Hüsker Dü), but at the same time, I also had a total obsession with all of the Boston bands – Dinosaur Jr., Blake Babies, Juliana Hatfield, Buffalo Tom, Lemonheads. And I loved a lot of the DC stuff – most especially Jawbox, who I think we’re really one of the best bands ever! (And are even better now in their reunion.). I liked Fugazi and Soul Side and Shudder to Think a lot too.

And of course I loved the Cure, the Pixies, that sort of thing. I can’t think of a lot of fanzines I had, though I certainly read Maximum Rock N Roll.

How did you originally meet other members of Pollen. and what led to the band’s formation?

Kevin and I went to high school together – we both transferred to the same new school from the same old school, so we became friends in the new school and he’s really the guy who turned me on to punk rock/alternative. Before that it was mostly all film scores for me. Kevin already played guitar and I really wanted to be in a band with him, and he always seemed to need a drummer, so I taught myself how to play so I could play with him.

I thought I couldn’t really write songs for a punk/alternative band because all I played was piano and drums, but an after-show hang with Scott Reynolds (of All), he revealed to me that he wrote all of his songs on piano, and he encouraged me to do the same, so I started writing some stuff for the band and eventually just sort of took over as main songwriter because I was more prolific than anyone else.

Kevin had played in an earlier band with Chris and when our original bass player left, Kevin thought Chris would be a perfect fit – and then we ran into him in the park that same day. We invited him back to Kevin’s to play and I think we just ran through side 1 of ‘Liveage!’ and we all just knew which songs were next and we knew he was The Guy For Us.

Kevin quit a little while after that and I don’t remember how we met Mike, but Mike replaced him. (At this point we still have revolving singers.) Mike was an amazing rhythm guitarist but struggled a little with lead stuff (especially because I was giving him weird complicated stuff written on piano with no real understanding of how tricky it would be to pull off on guitar). A year or so later, Kevin wanted to come back, so we tried to fire Mike, haha. But Mike was like “couldn’t you just have two guitars?” I thought that was dumb and I figured it would be obvious how bad it sounded…and it was actually better than a single guitar, and I found I loved writing for 2 guitars. Sooooo Mike and Kevin both stayed.

Next we had singer issues. My other high school best friend was singing for us but wasn’t really technically good enough to do the increasingly melodic vocal parts I was writing. He left, and the band encouraged me to sing instead, which was…not great. Haha. I’m pretty comfortable and happy with my singing voice now, but I didn’t really know my range, or how to use my voice then, although it had a cool character.

We did an album (which has never seen the light of day!) with Bill Stevenson and Stephen Egerton in Missouri, but it was clear that our songs were good enough that we needed a “real” singer.

Chris had played in a cover band in college with Dan, and although Dan didn’t have a lot of common musical interests with the rest of us, he was super into most of the stuff we showed him and he ended up joining the band. (I would not really learn how to write for his voice properly until ‘Peach Tree’.)

Ok, that was a lot, but you asked for details.

“Our songs kind of straddled a few different worlds”

What was the scene in Tempe, Arizona back then in the 90s for a band like yours?

We didn’t really fit into any scene all that well. I think we were maybe too polished as players for some punkers/indie rockers, and I think we were a little too loud and bombastic for a lot of the college rock alternative bands.

I also think our songs kind of straddled a few different worlds – it sort of had the Descendents caffeine-fueled energy thing, but then with all of the Boston stuff like Dinosaur Jr. and things like that influencing us (and me writing songs entirely on piano), it was just sort of a weird blend that didn’t really fit in great with any specific scene. We could play with a lot of different bands, and I am very proud of “how” unique we were at various points – but I always sort of felt like we didn’t fit in perfectly anywhere.

Additionally, in the band, there was probably not a consensus as to what scene we should be in. I only wanted us to play all ages shows, and didn’t care much for bar bands and that sort of thing. But the rest of the band really liked playing at bars, and booked us there often, and I tend to think we were maybe a little too high-energy for a lot of bars. So I don’t know.

We definitely had bands we loved playing with in town and who we thought we went well with – Jimmy Eat World being one of them – but I think I’ve sort of felt like an outlier in pretty much every facet of my life, and the band sometimes felt like one too.

What does the name “Pollen.” refer to in the context of the band name?

Not really anything. We used to be called Peach and had to change the name when we got signed to Grass, because there was another Peach, so we stole the name (partially) from our friends Liquid Brick, who had a song called ‘Pollen Factory’. We just thought it sounded good.

How did you get signed to Grass Records, and what do you recall from working on your debut album, ‘Bluette’?

We recorded ‘Bluette’ as a demo on an 8-track cassette in Kevin’s basement. We would rent stuff from a place called Pianos N Stuff in Blawnox, PA – you could rent all of the mics, cords, a mixer, some reverbs and compressors, and a cassette 8-track (later a 388 reel-to-reel 8-track, which I eventually bought and still own today).

We would have our friends’ bands pay for the rental of the gear, and we’d record them for free.

At night when the band went home, Pollen. would then work on our album on their gear! I think ‘Bluette’ is mostly recorded on Liquid Brick’s equipment (probably my drums but I know I used his ride cymbal).

We mixed it three or four times because we didn’t really know what we were doing and it took that long to get it “right” (as right as we were capable of getting it at that time).

About a year later, I had written all of the songs for ‘Crescent’ and I liked that so much more that I was like “we better get ‘Bluette’ out so we can make ‘Crescent,’” although we had no real clue how to do that.

I just sent tapes with a piece of notebook paper that said something like “hey we made this record and you don’t have to pay us, but if you could put it out, that would be great, and we have another ready to go.”

I don’t remember who all I sent the tapes to, maybe just 4-5 labels. But Grass was the only one who responded. They called and offered us a 2 or 3 record deal right on the spot. They loved ‘Bluette’ as-is and paid to have it mastered, and that was that. (We used the advance to buy our first van.) We also insisted that we had to record ‘Crescent’ immediately, and they were somehow ok with that. I remember finishing recording ‘Crescent’ and then leaving a week or two later for our very first tour supporting ‘Bluette’.

‘Crescent’ was much more complex than ‘Bluette’. What was the concept behind it, and what do you recall from the creative process you had for it?

We got a lot of positive reactions to ‘Bluette’ and I just always like doing different things and trying to not repeat myself, as a writer. I always wanted it to be our Empire Strikes Back – I wanted it to be darker, moodier (I was a very dramatic teenager and I was going through a lot at the time).

Everyone always rose to the occasion to play whatever weird stuff I came up with on piano, so I just worked super hard to make something really unique and challenging for us to play, as well as something that had a lot of interesting musical choices.

Everyone else in the band was in college but me, so while the others were off at school, I was at home, working and writing like a madman. I would write with a piano and a 4-track – one piano for each guitar, another for bass, and then I’d add my own (bad) vocals which Dan would then make legit. Then I would teach them the songs when they were home on breaks.

How would you compare it to later albums like ‘Peach Tree’ and ‘Chip’?

Well, ‘Crescent’ is an interesting record. I learned so much from working with Stephen, especially about how I didn’t really know how to write for Dan’s vocal range.

I don’t know what happened, but pretty quickly after ‘Crescent’ was finished, I started writing ‘Peach Tree’ songs, and they were clearly better than anything I’d written before. Plus they were written specifically for Dan’s range (ok, almost all of them). So I feel like the ‘Crescent’ songs kind of fell by the wayside pretty quickly. I’m not even sure how many of them we were playing live by the time the record came out, because we were playing all of these ‘Peach Tree’ songs.

I think those are probably the best songs I ever wrote for Pollen. (I mean ‘Peach Tree’ songs) – and it’s certainly Dan’s finest performance as a singer for Pollen.. I love his vocals on all the records, but there’s something special about ‘Peach Tree’ that’s hard to explain.

I am proud of and love a lot of ‘Chip,’ but I was listening to a lot more Rocket From the Crypt (whom I still love) and simpler stuff, and I feel like that record is probably our most straight-forward rock record.

‘Peach Tree’ is a nice cross between those worlds – not as complicated as ‘Crescent,’ not as straight-forward as ‘Chip’.

But I will say that, even though we didn’t really think about ‘Crescent’ much (I don’t think we played any songs from it at our final show!), this reissue process has really given it a special place in my heart.

For one thing, it sounds fantastic now.

For another – it was kind of a weird time in my life. For whatever else was going wrong or I was having trouble dealing with – the fact remains that that record’s existence is an act of sheer will, haha. We went from recording my weird little songs in Kevin’s basement on an 8-track cassette, to working with our heroes, in a real studio, being paid for by a real label. I have to be proud of that. Maybe the record was a little overly ambitious, and maybe we didn’t nail everything we were going for, but I can’t help but admire the intention and the ambition. People liked ‘Bluette’ and we could have just made another ‘Bluette’ – but we didn’t. We pushed ourselves, and we really made something that sure doesn’t sound like anything else. (It’s also my daughter’s favorite Pollen. record, so there’s that.)

It definitely ended up being the very best record we could possibly have made at that time in our lives, so it’s really become kind of special to me.

At the same time, man, some of the lyrics are not my favorite. I get it, Young Bob, you’re sad and lonely and no one understands you. I get it. You can shut up now. Haha. At least they’re very honest and sincere, so I guess I can’t knock them too hard.

Would you like to share what currently occupies your life?

I have been producing/engineering/mixing records for about 20 years now, at my studio, Flying Blanket Recording, in Mesa, AZ. The mixing board I’ve been using for the last 15 years is the one from the legendary Fort Apache in Boston, where so many of the bands that influenced me made records, so I feel very very lucky.

I’ve played drums in a bunch of bands since then, and have session drummed on quite a bit.

Is there any unreleased material by Pollen.?

There’s enough for a 2xLP! I wrote and demoed a lot of material in the “Peach Tree/Chip era” (although there is one b-side from ‘Crescent’ that has never seen the light of day, which we also had remastered with the album but haven’t figured out what to do with yet).

There were 4 b-sides recorded with the actual ‘Peach Tree’ album, and maybe 6-7 “Chip-era” b-sides as well. If the other reissues sell well then I’ll start thinking about how to release the b-sides – if I can find all the materials. I don’t really know how to do anything half-assed, so if we do decide to release all of that stuff, I need to feel like we did the best we could to make it all sound as great as it possibly can. Some of those demos are really great and I’m really proud of a lot of them.

Looking back, what was the highlight of your time in the band? Which songs are you most proud of? Where and when was your most memorable gig?

Going from recording on cassette in your basement to being in a real studio with your heroes (and then continuing on from there) was pretty special. Making the ‘Peach Tree’ record with our heroes was really special. Getting to work with John Hampton on some of the ‘Peach Tree’ mixes was magic.

Just making a band function – especially with songs that started out on piano! – That is really something I look back on and I’m like “wow, we really did that – it worked – we made stuff exist!” is still kind of amazing to me. Because the songs were probably a little unconventional, our approach to certain things didn’t really fit into a lot of what other people were doing (for better or worse) – it makes it feel even more implausible that it would reach people, that folks would connect with it, and that record labels would spend money to make more of it. I don’t want to be like “in the old days it was harder” because there are still a lot of challenges that bands today have that we didn’t, but it seems like the band and our records even existing took a lot of effort and determination, and a refusal to give up, and I’m really proud of that.

I think I’m most proud of ‘Peach Tree’ as an album – but as mentioned above, the ‘Crescent’ era was really special too. My favorite songs of ours would have to be ‘Tiny Shoes,’ ‘A Clear Complexion,’ ‘Hyperventilate,’ ‘Chalkboard Dust,’ ‘Girls Love Robots,’ ‘Wishbone,’ ‘Vanilla,’ ‘Olive-Eyed’.

We played the Celebrity Theater once, on its revolving stage. That was pretty cool. We did a show that was just us and Weezer, which also was pretty cool. I was a little more of a studio guy than a tour guy, so a lot of the tour stuff blends together to me a bit.

Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?

My favorite artist of all time has ended up being Juliana Hatfield, so I will always heartily recommend pretty much any record she’s done. Her last few have been some of the best she’s ever done. I feel like she’s only gotten better as a songwriter and performer with age.

I also love a lot of weird instrumental music, so I also recommend any of the three Sven Wunder albums, or any of the Surprise Chef records (though I haven’t heard all of the new one yet; what I’ve heard is terrific though!).

I love the new Yotam record, though I am biased, because I produced it and played on it. But it’s great! I love Yotam.

Thank you. Last word is yours.

Oof, I think I’ve said plenty thus far.

But I guess I’d like to add: this band was really a labor of love for me. I never wanted us to be the biggest band in the world – I just wanted to do our thing and find our people. So I’m really thankful that anyone cares about this many years later. Anyone who’s ever enjoyed our music, or bought a record, or even just really got something out of our weird little songs: thank you. It means a lot.

Klemen Breznikar

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