Brett, Dan, and I were in a hardcore band, and Phil was in another band. I was always able to book shows locally, but Phil was somehow able to book shows outside of California. So, I had a meeting with him about booking shows. We were all sitting down, and we just decided we were going to drop all our respective bands at the time and create a band all together to get what we wanted to accomplish out of music (which we didn't feel we were getting out of our bands at the time).
Joe

[...] One of us will have a riff or a complete song and bring it to practice, and we'll jam it out. I usually go back and listen to the song and get an idea for what I want to write about or ask the guys what they want to do, and then we go and work on the melody. It's kind of like a three-part project. That's the way we've been doing it forever, and it just kind of works-and pretty damn well.
Joe

I guess it's weird for me to say, but I'm interested in Kurt Cobain more than [I am in] anybody. Not that I idolize him, but I'm intrigued by him. He was a special person and a special soul. I love the way he writes lyrics. All of his lyrics are contradictions. I felt kind of dirty recently because I went out and bought books on him, and I ended up buying his journal and reading that. It made me think, "I can't go into this guy's life and read his personal stuff. That's not fair for somebody to sell that to the world." Reading it made me feel that I had gone into his head a little more than I wanted to.
Joe