STS9 Spreads Electro Activist Message Without Words (David Phipps Interview)

Writers are like musicians without music. And when your laptop crashes right before you're about to "go on," it can be nerve-wracking. Which is just what happened before Planet Green hooked up with David Phipps, who plays the keyboards and laptop for the Santa Cruz, California, electronic outfit known as STS9 (or Sound Sector Tribe 9 to the old fans). Phipps and STS9 are on tour supporting their new disc "Ad Explorata," a musical mystery of sorts. Once we rebooted, Phipps talked about treading lightly on the road, building a house for a family in New Orleans and helping construct a solar race car at a Florida high school.

PLANET GREEN: So you're an electronic band ... what's it like when your laptop crashes?

DAVID PHIPPS: It happens ... once a show, something stops working. We just kind of wrap up the song real quick or wing it until the reboot happens. I don't try to push my computer too far. I only ask half of what it can really do onstage. I try to play it safe.

PG: Will you always be an electronic band, do you think?

DP: At least for the last five or six years we've been heavy on the electronics. We just did our first acoustic show in Colorado ... Twelve years ago we started as more or less a funk band. We always played our instruments first and foremost.

We like to think that our roots are in traditional instruments and more and more are going back to that. I say that in a lot of interviews, so the fans are saying 'Like, so when is it going to happen?' We have more (acoustic shows) planned through the year. Artistically and inspirationally, I like to remind myself that I play the piano and not just computers and keyboards. My interest in synthesizers has gone kind of boutique and obscure as well.

PG: You guys are on tour through March 20, with a couple of festivals in May and June. Do you do anything to offset all those electronics? Electronic music is pretty carbon intensive isn't it?

DP: It's flabbergasting ... We're at the point now where we have a crew that carries all of our stuff and we have way more stuff than we need on the road: A tour bus, generators running 24 hours a day more or less, a tractor trailer parked next to us. Then, starting to see 1,000 or 10,000 kids rolling up in their cars—it's very much on my mind how carbon intensive it is, every concert we play. It's definitely not lost on us. We've had a sponsor help us offset a tour and that was really cool and a learning experience to be a part of ...

It's very much on our mind and I think that drives a lot of our other charity work. If we can't figure it out ... that's really been the attitude, 'How can we put the energy back?'

PG: 'Ad Explorata' has quite a story behind it, about hearing a woman's voice on a shortwave radio, then tracing it to a transmitter in an old bunker. How much of that is fantasy and how much is real?

DP: I'm going to go with a 'No comment' today. I don't have my hype machine turned on 110 percent. But man, there's so much of it that is real. And so many of the details, we tried to come up with something that had some details and what we were doing that summer and what we were interested in and reading about and a lot of that story is as true as any art is.

We really hope that that story is a first installment, or maybe it's not the season finale. We hope to add to what we've done since then ... My personal hope is to use this story and turn it into an activist league of people that are taking action and really inviting everyone to join us in this kind of mysterious story that's unfolding before us. So stay tuned.

PG: Why do you support causes like the Make It Right Foundation? (Last year, the band raised more than $120,000 toward the $150,000 cost of building a new home for a family in New Orleans displaced by Hurricane Katrina).

DP: For several years, we've done a dollar per ticket charity where everybody that buys a ticket, whether you like it or not, you're giving a dollar toward something good. There's even a choice to add more than a dollar ...

It's not us the rock star band writing a check, it's really the one-person-by-one person coming to the shows, making a dollar donation that adds up to this huge goal that is right there within reach ... We're stoked. The past years, we had hovered around $100,000, so it was taking it a step up.

I look forward to finishing the project so I can go back to my race team.

1320 Records/STS9

PG: Ah, the solar race team, the Solar Knights. Your brother, Allan, is a teacher at South Plantation High School, right?

DP: Right. We were in South Florida ... and the whole band went to the high school and got a tour of the high school and the shop. They've got two different race cars .. it was so inspiring to see these kids and to know their after school time on these things wouldn't happen without business people and other sponsors and people like us.

We can sell VIP tickets for $100. The money goes to the race car. Everybody wins. It also makes it all so worth it, the success that we have, to be able to pass it on.

PG: Back to the music. STS9 is an instrumental band. Why no lyrics?

DP: On Peaceblaster, there was actually a lot of singing done in the process of making that album. Not much of it made it to the final mixes. But I've got some hilarious rough mixes. We tried it out. It's kind of funny, 10, 12 years after being in an instrumental band, everybody all of a sudden wanting to sing. We're definitely open to it.

PG: If there were lyrics, what would they say?

DP: You've got Auto-Tune, right? If anything, it would be kind of like Bob Dylan-esque in the lyrics: Some element of rambling, but with a social commentary embedded in there somewhere.

PG: What else is in store for STS9 in 2010?

DP: Our big effort in the STS9 world is 1320 Records. All of our stuff is on 1320 and it's a digital music store. We hope to be branching out to some more short-run, limited-edition physical goods ... It's interesting and a lot of fun to, still in 2010, be trying to make it as a music store, with music stores closing around us, brick and mortar. There's still a good amount of people who love music and will pay to listen to it or grab all the free stuff and listen to it. That's fine, too.

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