Mates of State

Good friends, good tunes, good buds, good times. It was like an episode of Martha Stewart’s Living. Aletta was making her now infamous “Mates of State” bean dip, I was busy rolling up a party favor and the birthday boy Ron had disappeared across the Bay Bridge to pick up our guest of honor, Mates of State. “That’s not going to print, is it?” asks Jason Hammel of MOS a few weeks later as we loiter on a bench in front of the State Capitol. “What going to print?” I ask. “You know, certain aspects of that night,” he replies. If I was sober, I might have thought Jason was asking me to compromise my journalistic integrity. Luckily, the stormy night he’s recalling in Berkeley is a little fuzzy to me; okay, so every night’s a little fuzzy, but that’s beside the point. That said, I’ll tell you this: Mates of State isn’t a band. In fact, Mates of State is a mere two people: Aquarius born clinical cancer researcher Jason Hammel plays drums and sings better than Don Henley, and Gemini born first and second grade teacher Kori Gardner plays not one, but two organs simultaneously and manages to belt out beautiful harmonies to boot. During this interview Jason farted a lot and a couple times he tried to throw his famous “Cup o’ Fart” at me. He failed. –Brad Oates

What came first the sex or the music?
Kori: We were a couple before we were a band.
Jason: It all sort of happened together.
Kori: We were like, “Should we try playing together? Oh, it could really suck, and be really awkward.”
Jason: And it could ruin the relationship. We were like, “Ahhh…let’s just try it.”
Kori: We got to the practice space the first night we ever played together and we pulled out our guitars and they were matching guitars.
Jason: Same guitar, same shape, but they were complementary colors. Hers was black, mine was white.
Kori: They were like positive negative. So we were like, “This is meant to be.”

Does being in love make music easier?
Jason: I think so. A lot easier. I played in bands with people I wasn’t in love with and there was always some conflict.
Kori: And if there is conflict we’re close enough that we can solve it.
Jason: It’s like, if you can get through a relationship fight, then you can get through a band fight, piece of cake. \

How long have you guys been playing together?
Kori: Three years.

You guys ever notice that Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, Snowballs, Ho Ho’s, and Suzy Q’s, all snack cakes marketed to young kids, have sexual undertones in their naming?
Kori: Totally. I never noticed that.
Jason: Who is Suzy Q?

Suzy Q is the biggest slut on the block, we all know that.
Kori: Nobody wants to eat the snowballs.

I like the snowballs.
Jason: You do?
Kori: You ever had the green snowballs?
Jason: Those are like the Dad Hostess cupcakes.
Kori: No one wants to eat balls.

Well no one does eat balls. Nowadays they don’t call it eating balls, or licking balls, they call it tea bagging.
Kori: I’ve been tea bagged by someone once; not Jason.

Do you have balls? Most women I’ve met don’t have balls.
Kori: No, I’ve been tea bagged. Don’t you know what tea bagged means?
Jason: Well let’s hear what your version of tea bagged is, Brad. You don’t even know what tea bagging is.

The new millennium version of tea bagging is when you get your chocolate salty balls sucked on like a bag of tea.
Kori: No, no, no.
Jason: It’s like a male stripper coming and….
Kori: Whacking you with his balls under your forehead.

That’s horrible! You’ve been tea bagged, Kori?
Kori: The slinging tea bag? Yeah. It was at a bachelorette party and they made the male stripper come over and tea bag me because I was all embarrassed.

All you guys write are songs about sex, huh?
Kori: If you think about it, all our songs really are about sex. Nobody knows that, though.

You ever try to light your farts on fire?
Jason: I got Kori to do it and she got so scared.
Kori: It was scary! It actually burned. I’ll never do that again, that was just a one-time thing. There is a serious danger in lighting farts because there is a natural sucking reflex when you light your asshole and some people actually suck it in and singe their assholes.
Jason: If there is gas in your intestines, it will all ignite.

You ever had diarrhea on-stage?
Kori: Not on-stage, but I get diarrhea just about daily, and actually Jason shit his pants on-stage two nights ago.
Jason, you shit your pants? What happened?
Jason: It was an accident. I was going to hit the crash, and I stretched just a little bit too far. You lose control of other areas when you’re concentrating on drums.
Kori: He was like, “Oh oh, I just farted, oh shit, where’s the bathroom!”
Kori, are you a hypochondriac?
Kori: I am not really a hypochondriac, I really do have a lot of things wrong with me.
Jason: You really are a hypochondriac.

What’s wrong with you?
Kori: I have stomach problems, and I get really bad headaches, and I need massages everyday because my back hurts. Right now I have sore calves.
Jason: She’s a hypochondriac.
www.matesofstate.com