California-based rockers Deadly Syndrome [ tickets ] are finishing up a headlining tour in support of their recently released debut album, "The Ortolan."

LiveDaily contributor Stacy Fuller caught up with The Deadly Syndrome before the tour got underway to discuss the group's chemistry, their catchy MySpace videos and more.

LiveDaily: This is a LiveDaily podcast and we're here with the band Deadly Syndrome.

Chris: Hello.

How are you guys doing this morning? Warmed up and ready?

Will: Sleepy.

Sleepy?

Chris: Doing well, very well.

So why don't we go ahead and introduce each other to the LiveDaily viewers and just tell me a little bit about the Deadly Syndrome and how you guys got started.

Chris: Well again, we are the Deadly Syndrome. I'm Chris.

Mike: I'm Mike.

Will: I'm Will.

Jessie: I'm Jessie.

Chris: And we are a complex in short.

Will: We're also a band though first and foremost. We started as a band and then became a complex. We've been playing for a year and a half....

A year and a half?

Chris: Right, and then performing for about a year.

Are you guys L.A. natives or...

Will: No, none of us. No.

You all met together at university, right?

Chris: No, though we all went to college. Jessie and Will both met at college. Mike met Jessie through friends, through a girlfriend. Jessie and I met through work.

Oh, okay.

Chris: They were sharing a girlfriend for about a week. (laughs) No no.

Jessie: We had two totally different girlfriends!

Chris: So Jessie's girlfriend had introduced he and Mike to each other and then I met Jessie through work and then...

And then you guys just started jamming and the rest was history?

Chris: Yeah, it kind of started out as like a mini-recruitment, right?

Will: We were playing a lot of like Doobie Brothers covers and we started our own wedding band.

Nice.

Chris: Fraggle Rock somehow ended up in there.

Will: Then we started writing original stuff.

Chris: Maybe that's a genre we should be...fraggle rock.

Will: We're all based on TV themes and Doobie Brothers.

So how did you guys go from just playing and then all of a sudden getting your first deal?

Chris: I have no idea.

Will: We just decided it was about time to start playing shows and half an hour later we had a record deal. (laughs)

That's hard to come by in L.A.

Jessie: It was pretty quick like that though.

It was really quick. I know so many guys out here who pound the pavement and it's tough. It's a tough place to be.

Chris: My personal thing...I think it's that none of us were really reaching. We were simply doing what we love with a group that we finally felt like "oh, this makes sense-there's chemistry, we're meshing well."

Will: After like two months of our practicing, I was still applying for an online marketing position.

Wow.

Will: I was gonna move home but I decided to stick around.

So what happened? Were you guys all...obviously you weren't sure that this is what you were going to be doing.

Will: Yeah, I'd come down here for school and I was pretty intent on doing something with that because I didn't ever go to school for music.

Mike: William has a Master's in print journalism.

Wow.

Will: Thanks, man.

Mike: Hey anytime.

Chris: He's the smartest of all of us.

What did the rest of you guys study?

Jessie: His Bachelor's and ours, we're both film studies. Mike went to Brown University.

Nice.

Mike: I studied history and then I worked as a construction worker for two years.

Chris: And you were not really a jock but you played sports, but not a jock.

Jessie: All-American lacrosse, top scorer on the East Coast right here.

Chris: Until they knocked his noggin.

So how did you guys start playing music? Were any of you formally trained as musicians or did you just kind of pick it up?

Chris: No, we're naive artists I think.

Will: I took piano lessons until I was five, no, from five until I was ten.

Mike: My dad bought me a guitar and really wanted me to play and I didn't for a long time. He bought me a full-size guitar when I was seven.

So you guys are going to be playing a couple songs for us. What song are you going to play first?

Chris: We wanted to play our first song, "I Release You."

Live performance of "I Release You"

So how do you guys creatively come up with your music? I know you guys all collaborate on writing, is that correct?

Chris: Yeah. I think that's what makes it sort of different every song. I think it's one of the hardest questions we've faced just because it's...

It's different every time?

Chris: Yeah, we just try to stick with the ideas we love and then you know, everyone kind of pitches in and we never know what we're going to end up with, we just know we want to love it and so that's really it.

How was it the first time in the studio recording?

Jessie: It was awesome. We worked with two really good producers Nico Aglietti and Airin Older. It's in Nico's house, in his basement and so it was really comfortable to just be there for two months straight.

And they are from the band Sugarcult, right?

Jessie: Airin is.

Chris: And Nico is simply a...what did we call him? A music calculator. They're just both exceptional musicians and we really trusted their direction and any of their input. It was kind of their first opportunity to work on a full-length I think, right?

Jessie: Yeah, they've done a bunch of stuff but it hasn't ever been like, "this is real." It was just them doing cool stuff.

Chris: Yeah, but it was great. I think they're amazing people.

Jessie: And they're working on Alex from I'm a Robot's solo project.

Chris: Yeah, what is that...Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros?

Oh cool. I have a crazy story. The first show I went to was actually Sugarcult and it was probably seven or eight years ago and my girlfriend's roommate went to school with Airin.

Jessie: Oh, no way! In Ventura or at UCLA?

UCLA. So we go way back. (laughs) He has no idea who I am but I remember.

Jessie: Airin is an ethnomusicologist. That was his major, ethnomusicology.

Chris: Nice. We can't wait to get back in there and start recording and working on some new material. It felt really good and the guys even had a lot of different approaches, like going from tape to...we had a lot of different options.

Jessie: And the three songs that we're playing today were written while we were in the studio.

Chris: Yeah, they all were. Sure were.

Jessie: I just realized that.

Chris: We were just like," oh, we have to do 12 songs? Uhh..."

Jessie: We were talking to my friend, "yeah, we've got 11 songs, no problem," and then we were like, "guys, do we have that? We've got this one we've been working on and this..."

How long did it take you guys to write the whole album?

Chris: To write it or record it?

To write and record.

Jessie: Well, like "The Ship That Shot Its Selef" was written three years ago now, but that just kind of existed and disappeared.

Chris: Yeah, that was well before the band was even together, that was before anything. We've been together for a year and a half...

Jessie: Yeah, and the writing started happening then...

Chris: What a vision Jessie, what a vision.

Jessie: ...and there were three or four songs..."This Old Home," "The Ortolan" was written before....like four songs were written while we were in the studio, so yeah, I guess as long as we've been around, we've been writing.

You guys have been getting a lot of great press and buzz. I've listened to your album and it's really good. I'm very excited to have you guys here.

Chris: It's tricky because I don't think I've ever been in a position where you're working in a...your bosses always tell you how you're doing in any other job, and with this, we just kind of do what we do and then we put it out to the public, into the hands of the public, and I don't know, it's really weird. We don't know...

You don't know until you get feedback...

Will: And you can't get promoted. You can get fired!

Chris: Right, you can fail. There are no job evaluations. We could really use one of those from like Rick Ruben, if you ever want to...(laughs)

How exactly did you guys get hooked up with Dim Mak Records? How did that happen?

Will: It was a couple of ways I think. My friend John Anderson knew and has worked with them before, I think he manages a couple bands that are on their label and then another friend, Jana, also is friends with Ana so then they kind of got double-teamed and got it from both sides and so Luke was hearing about us and Ana was hearing about us. They wanted us to come play CineSpace and so we did and then Steve was there...

How's Kid Millionaire (DJ Steve Aoki) doing?

Will: He's well.

Chris: He's busy! He's so busy!

That dude's everywhere. I don't know how he does it.

Chris: He is. I can't wait to do it myself though. That's the truth.

I think it's going to happen for you guys.

Chris: I mean, he's doing well. He's got a lot of great people.

Will: It's crazy. I don't know how he does it either. I never knew this but he went to Santa Barbara too. We share the same alma mater, and he was doing it then too. He was just trying to find bands anywhere. We went on a little tour with Hot Hot Heat and the drummer was telling us how back when they were all in hardcore bands, Steve was having them come to Santa Barbara to play shows there way back in the day, way before Hot Hot Heat and any of that stuff. So yeah, Steve's just been doing it forever. Now he's getting tons of notoriety as a DJ worldwide. He enjoys a good music party.

Chris: Which is cool. Knowing that he's done it for so long, you know you can trust that he knows what he likes.

Will: I think he gets a bad rap too. Him having so much positive passion for music and just doing as much as he can and like wearing bright clothes and just being out there, people love to judge that. People love to get on his case for being, "Oh, you're on Dim Mak," but it's like yeah, you know what? He has so much positive energy and there's a lack of that right now.

I just feel like people like to judge anything that's out there. It just kind of comes with the territory.

Chris: Yeah. I personally don't like the bright color thing...

But your shoes are pretty bright...they're bright green.

Chris: Dang! No, Steve's great. His headphones are pretty cool too. I got a close look at those last night. They were awesome.

Will: That's the tough part about the first week of the release was for us to finally be out there and it was just like, "wow, people are listening to things that we've thought," just so deep, or not just deep, but they've been a part of us.

Mike: And then they go on MySpace and write comments about it.

Chris: They're judging us...

WIll: They're giving us our job evaluations.

Well, let's get back to the music. What's the next song you guys are going to play?

Chris: "Winter In You"

Live performance of "Winter In You"

So I was checking out your MySpace page...

Chris: You're a MySpacer, huh?

I check out all the music on MySpace, you know? I was checking out all your little You Tube videos you've got going on. Those are great. Who came up with that idea of doing all these shorts before your album came out?

Chris: How did that happen?

Mike: We wanted to do them and then it really started happening when our roommate and our other close friends who are all in film and video and stuff were willing to help us with them.

Will: So we didn't have to do anymore work. Our roommate Jason Green and our friend Barry Smoler.

Who came up with the crazy Asian game show?

Mike: It was originally going to be like an MTV thing where...

Will: It was going to be like TRL meets Cribs but we were still going to be dead.

Mike: But then we were like let's take it to next level.

And you guys did - it was great.

Chris: I think that one is collectively our favorite. It's pretty awesome.

I love the editing too.

Chris: Those shows are fast.

Will: The bear in that was the editor.

Chris: Yeah, Matt Kaczynski’s pretty amazing.

Jessie: And that's his girlfriend, the hostess, Erin, and what's funny is that chemistry you see on screen? That's real.

So are there going to be any more shorts to come?

Mike: There will be, but I think we're going to take our time....

Take a break?

Chris: Yeah, we want to do drama next.

Will: We really want to explore the depth of our characters. No, there will be more but we want to start upping production value I think so we're going to wait until we can do that.

Take it to the next level.

Chris: Thanks for watching them, though.

Will: Well that was the point. They're commercials for the record.

It was a great idea. They're really funny.

Chris: Did you leave us a comment?

I'm not a comment leaver.

Will: Are you our friend on MySpace?

I will be.

Chris: If you will leave us a comment under like Betty Brown and we'll know it's you. Fair enough?

Alright, I will do it. Well it was great that you guys showed up today.

Will: Thanks for having us.

Chris: Yeah, it's been fun.

Best of luck with the year and I think there's going to be a lot of good things coming your way. It'll be fun to see what happens.

Mike: If it's in a good way!

Where can we see you guys next?

Chris: We'll be at the Detour Festival, L.A. Weekly Detour, downtown L.A.

And then are you going out on tour?

Chris: After that, we're hitting the road. We're going to be playing in spots in between here and New York.

Will: A little Denver, a little Omaha, some Chicago. Maybe Cincinnati.

Chris: While we're at it, check out Daytrotter too. We just did a bookery recently for them and it's pretty fun.

Will: If you love Toby Keith, you'll love us on Daytrotter.

Chris: Or if you love Tobias King...and then we're also going to stop there and do a session so we'll have some music up there soon hopefully. And then we'll do CMJ. We're finally going to be on the East Coast. We're really excited about that, getting a lot of invitations so that and then the tour back, passing through Canada and Chicago. It'll be great. Can't wait to hit the South.

I also have one quick question...quick because we have to wrap it up. For Jessie...so in the cyber world, there's rumors that you once appeared in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs video, "Cheated Hearts." What was the inspiration to put on those leggings?

Jessie: I'm an uber-fan...no, I'm a big fan of a lot of things and...yeah, I'm wearing them under my jeans...and I don't know, that was such a cool opportunity and I was like, "yeah, I own a video camera so let's do it."

I think you could be her stand-in. He had it down!

Jessie: Well the funny thing is I had the first line in the entire thing and it was like...we shot Jason again, one of the guys who directed and produced our shorts, he was shooting it, and then my girlfriend was playing Brian and then a friend of ours, Frank, was playing Nick. So we had the whole shot planned out, we had the cameras coming up and it's like legs and whatever I was wearing was just like, "Dude!" and we didn't think they'd actually use that as their first reveal of Karen O but they loved it! But it was cool because one of the guys we worked with directed it and when it came out, we were showing it around the office and he was like, "I thought you looked familiar."

Chris: We're all pretty envious of Jessie and his fame after that.

Jessie: I've been on MTV, ask Karen O, as a cross dresser. That's the highest form of lowbrow humor. I've been on MTV.

It was awesome.