After a little research (i)[X]press Magazine(i) found out that one of the guys in Nirvana died a few years back. So we dug up an equally prolific three-piece band (Ammo Eisu, Danniee Murrie, Andy Tisdall) from here in San Francisco – Little Teeth. They make pee-pee noise. They have a lot of instruments and are pretty weird.

So, what are your guys’ superpowers?

Dannie: Oh, mind control.

I feel it right now.

Ammo: I can become pregnant at will.

Dannie: Andy can miscarry at will.

Your own, Andy, or Ammo’s?

Andy: Ammo’s.

It’s a kind of a battle there. And you control the mind.

Dannie: And the invisible forces governing the universe. I can channel their power.

Andy: I age backwards. I started at 80.

What is pee-pee noise?

Dannie: I know I’ve had to explain this before. What kind of bullshit did I say before?

Andy: It’s not literally a label though.

Ammo: Labels are generally limiting.

So what have you guys been labeled?

Dannie: We’ve been labeled freak folk.

Ammo: I thought pee-pee noise was from peeing as a bodily catharsis that you can’t really restrain yourself from and you have to subject yourself to. Pee-pee noise is the noise of pure humanism.

So your music is like a release of bodily fluids?

Ammo: Yes, hopefully it comes from that which makes us living.

Dannie: It’s a testament to humanity.

Ammo: Pee-pee noise!

Andy: Animals pee too.

Dannie: But animals don’t create art.

Andy: What about the shellfish, with those animal shells.

Dannie: They don’t create art though, they’re pretty but… That’s what I said to the TV access guy.

TV access? You guys were on TV?

Dannie: We were on public access. They were asking me what pee-pee noise was and I had some bullshit that I…

Andy: That guy was pretty freaked out by you.

What did you guys do?

Ammo: We just played a set and then he asked us questions. He was like “Oh, what are your influences?” And Dannie was like, “Oh, pee-pee noise and Alanis.”

Alanis?

Ammo: Alanis Morisette. And then she said that Andy was our lesbian love child. I never told my parents about the episode so they wouldn’t happen to peruse cable access.

Dannie: We did acquire a fan.

Ammo: Two!

Dannie: Two fans from the show, surprisingly enough.

How long have you guys been a group?

Ammo: A year, thirteen months, something like that.

Dannie: Our first show was March 19th, and we started practicing a month before that. That was February and it’s now April, almost May? About 14 months.

How did you guys meet?

Dannie: I met Ammo on Craig’s List women for women personal ads.

Andy: It would be funnier if you meet on the women for women ads.

Dannie: But I was kind of desperate when living in Sacramento.

You guys met in Sacramento?

Dannie: I was kind of stranded in Sacramento. And I had just moved back from Portland.

Ammo: I had just moved here from the East Coast and I had like no friends.

Dannie: She had no friends. She just graduated from Yale and she was traumatized from the institution… that committed her. I was traumatized from a three year long depression, mental breakdown and coming out of the closet and all that stuff. I was registered for school and I had six long months ahead of me to endure. I thought since Sacramento was the capital of the state, it would have a little more to offer culturally but it didn’t. And I was really depressed by it, so I started mad posting on Craigslist’s women for women. I was just looking for friends, maybe lovers, whatever.

Andy: A woman, basically.

Dannie: A woman, y’know. I got some really scary responses. The only people who wanted sex would be like 40-year-old disgruntled housewives. I pretty much gave up. But before I completely threw in the towel I posted one last ad that was called… what was it called? “Smart, young, and hot.” HA! HA! I sent a picture of myself looking a little bit questionable…

Andy: Smart, young, and hot?

Dannie: I just put “looking for young, queer musician friends,” and lo and behold, Ammo responded. And after that, I knew it was all over. I had visions of the future.
That’s how it happened. Then I moved in with her in a warehouse in San Francisco. After that we moved out, and I enrolled in City College – that’s where I met Andy.

Let’s talk about your instruments.

Ammo: All of our stuff is in Dannie’s garage. We converted it to our little studio.

Dannie: The jam room has evolved. It started out at Ammo’s house, then it moved to Andy’s, and now it’s finally at my house. We’ve got like 20 to 30 instruments.

Ammo: That’s including little gadgets. We have a lot of gadgets.

Dannie: But as far as things that we actually tour with, like, eight.

Ammo: No, 12.

What do you mean by gadget?

Dannie: Like the Freak’n’Spell. It’s a gadget that Andy invented.

Ammo: It’s like a little Speak’n’Spell.

Oh, that’s on “Applegate,” right?

Andy: That’s actually a normal Speak & Spell, cuz when you circuit bend it, you do weird things to it. It doesn’t do A, B, C, it kind of goes “rworerer.” So that’s going to be on subsequent recordings. I like instruments that are basically like the banjo. That sound really good, and they sound really good without much effort. If you know how to finger stringed instruments, strum it, you can make it sound good. People think it’s an accomplishment to be able to play it, but you can strum it without playing a chord and it sounds good.

Dannie: Like the harpsichord.

Andy: It’s things like that where it sounds like we’re doing something, but we’re not.

This is getting better and better for the Fake theme.

Andy: We’re a bunch of phonies.

Dannie: Creating the guise of being multitalented.

Andy: Who gets their hands on a cello, and doesn’t know how to play it? Most of the time when you hear a cello, someone is playing it who knows how to play. But when I sit down and play, I make sounds that I have never heard out of a cello, because when you hear a cello you don’t hear fucked up sounds from it. That’s not how it’s supposed to be heard.

Dannie: But it’s kind of premeditated chaos. That was the plan all along. I’m not going to ever learn to really play all these instruments, but I’ve been collecting them all my life. I know I’m going to get with a bunch of people, or two, they’re going to be curious enough that they’re going to fuck with it. It’s kind of like backwards reasoning.

Do you guys want to talk about live performance and the performance spectacle in general?

Dannie: All three of us have a taste for the performance spectacle aspect of going and seeing a live show, but we definitely feel that technicality is important. We’re really concerned that everything sounds the best that it possibly can. I definitely concentrate more on playing than putting on a “show.” It’s just too much for me to balance personality and performance.

Ammo: A lot of the shows that we enjoy and appreciate and respect are those that the artists’ passions are evident. Their intensity of feeling is there. And so I feel we try to do that.

Your performance and your art aren’t separate? There’s no disconnect?

Andy: You would hope that someone rolling around on the floor would be doing it because they can’t help it. If they’re doing it on purpose, you could probably tell. And if they’re not, then they’re not really doing it on purpose. It’s not really a performance. It is but it’s coming from something genuine.

Ammo: The Lite-Bright and the big pot. Dannie and me will be wearing shirts that have man’s hairy chest and balls and penises. And Andy’s wearing a boob shirt. We like the humor of it and whatever conversation that instigates, but it’s definitely about the music.

Dannie: As far as what’s important with performance is that passion and intensity are at the core and foremost importance, but one of the reasons we have such an elaborate set-up is to keep it interesting live. It’s important because people are paying to see you.

Ammo: It also relates to the kind of bands we play with are really diverse. Like the Fucking Ocean. They’re not at all like what we sound like but yet we can still play with them.

So do you guys want to talk about the album?

Ammo: We’re looking for album names. Any ideas? We’ll accept them. E-mail ideas to littleteethmusic@gmail.com.

Andy: You’ll win a snakeskin guitar case.