Nina Diaz of Girl in a Coma (October 7, 2015)

This interview is the source material for this article at WAMU's Bandwidth.

National Hispanic Heritage Month is in full swing in DC and throughout the US. The National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, which works to advance the presence of Latinos in the media and entertainment industries, recently held its annual gala, welcoming a range of speakers and performers, including musician Nina Diaz.

Alison Mosshart of Discount (Fall 1996)

My first question has to do with how Discount really seem to be taking off right now in terms of popularity. I’m wondering if you’re noticing a difference in the number of people at your shows and the general interest in your band? I think that, basically, the number of people is kind of the same, except when we play shows with big bands. Like when we played with Less Than Jake, millions of people show up. But I think it’s almost the same. I don’t talk to a lot of people usually, so I don’t know.

Chris Mereschuk of Age of Reason (Spring 1996)

Firstly, who’s in the band, who’s been in the band, and when and where did Age of Reason start?

Currently in the band is Mike Poorkid on drums, Burton Legeyt on guitar, Aaron Lazauski on bass (who has replaced original bassist Ryan Wilhelm), and me, Chris, on vocals. Age of Reason started up in Canton, Connecticut, in an upstairs room in my house on Halloween of 1992.

Billy Bragg (April 13, 2002)

Were the new songs mostly written after the recordings of the Mermaid Avenue albums?

Yeah, they were.  I’d written some songs, but getting together with these guys (The Blokes) showed me a different way of writing songs.  I’ll be very interested in writing about identity.  The music that they make is very multi-cultural.  Their backgrounds, particularly Ben and Lu, playing in African bands, and Turkish and Arabic music, has really fed into me to write songs about identity that come from a multi-cultural space rather than writing rock songs about identity.  I can write songs that sound multi-cultural in themselves to start with, which makes it easier to write about identity, because when you want to write about identity, particularly national identity, it can easily be misconstrued, like Morrissey was when he wrote things like “Bengali in Platforms.”

Jenn Alva of Girl in a Coma (July 2012)

You seem to be touring non-stop lately.  How has spending so much time traveling and playing shows grown your connection as band mates and as friends or sisters? 

We do tour a lot and luckily, we love what we do. The girls and I have always been great friends from even before GIAC had begun. That was an advantage in becoming band mates. We were able to communicate calmly about band decisions and writing. The amount of time we spend touring has really helped as well. We are a tight team. We are family.

Jay Bentley of Bad Religion (April 20, 1996)

What was it like writing this record knowing that you would have to do it without the person responsible for virtually half of the Bad Religion catalog?

At first, it wasn’t a question, but it was a “you’ve gotta tighten your belt” theory, tighten your belt one notch. And Greg knew full well that that meant that he was going to be writing everything. He asked me to help, and I said “I’m not that songwriter guy.” Brian stepped up and came up with four songs. So it was okay. I think, in losing a songwriter like Brett, we gained a guitarist like Brian. You know what I mean? We traded off a songwriter for a better guitar player, and in that sense he was able to take really small ideas and really blow them up into cool things.