Thee Fine Lines are a rock ‘n’ roll trio from the mean streets of Springfield, MO.  Actually, the streets aren’t so mean- perhaps covered in Hardee’s cups, but not mean.  Thee Fine Lines aren’t mean either.  They are perhaps a rare, interesting musical oasis in the culturally barren wasteland of Southwest Missouri.

After a year and a half of existence, the group that consists of brothers Jason (drums, 25) and Justin Kearbey (vocals, guitar, 23), and Trista Winn (vocals, bass, 20) is starting to scratch and claw its way to notoriety.  Clad in matching black Chuck Taylors and striped shirts or sweaters, they look almost as good as they sound.  They’ve already spread their scrappy, Brit garage/mod style of rock to other Midwest states, and made an immediate splash in the St. Louis scene, and have a split 7-inch out with a band from Lafayette, IN called the Jim-Jims. 

Thee Fine Lines are planning to take on the rest of the country this summer on their debut tour where nicer, newer avenues will likely open for them.  Interview by Tom Brouk and photos by Chris Foresman. 

MRR:  What’s Thee Fine Lines sound?

Trista:  Heavy Billy Childish influence- heavy.

MRR:  Isn’t there a more vintage sound in your music?

Jason:  Yeah, but we’re not psychedelic.

Trista:  I think we have a little bit of the required garage subgenres mixed in, but we definitely lean towards Mighty Caesars, Heatcoats, Heatcoatees type of stuff.  Of course, we listen to stuff like the Wailers and Link Wray a lot.  We draw from it, but I think it comes out more like Billy’s music.

Jason:  We might like the Sonics a lot, but I think our music is a lot more like Thee Heatcoats than the Sonics.

MRR:  Do you hear yourselves in newer bands?

Trista:  I think we’ve got a goofiness about us and a little bit more of a pop quality that makes us kind of more like…

Justin:  A little more like the Ne’er Do Wells or the Hi-Fives.

Jason:  I think we tend to be a little darker than the Hi-Fives.

Trista:  Right.  Our lyrics are almost always negative- not on purpose, but we’re just a very depressed band I guess (laughs).

MRR:  Tell me about the history of this band.  How did it start up?

Jason:  They came up with the name before we had the band. 

Trista:  Justin did.  At the time, we were in another band called Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmares and another band called Trixie and the Merch Girls, and I was in an all-girl band called the Kidney Infections.  Justin and Jason were still doing what they’d been doing for the past six years in Fugue.  I guess in all of the different bands, we kind of were all individually wanting to do this sort of thing, but the other band members not so much.  With the Kidney Infections, I was getting frustrated because the other girls didn’t really know what I wanted to do. 

Jason:  All the other bands fell apart at the same time, so it was a perfect opportunity to start something new.  We already had the name.  We had practiced a few songs just for fun.  I played bass at first.

Trista:  I played drums.

Jason:  But, that lasted like three practices or something.

Trista:  Yeah.

Jason:  We practiced for two months before our first show, Halloween 2001.

Trista:  I hadn’t played bass before that really.

MRR:  What makes a good Thee Fine Lines live show?

Trista:  Crowd participation.

Jason:  Yeah, at least people being there and not sitting down.  They can just be standing there.  That’s fine to me.  I usually don’t look and see the crowd very much.

Trista:  They don’t have to dance, but if they do, that makes it a million times better.

Jason:  We had a really good show in Springfield, which is surprising, where people were dancing.

Trista:  Shows are better when there is a wide spectrum of ages.  If it’s all young people, or all 21 or over, it’s not as good.  When you have a mix of people of all ages, it’s so much better, because older people like us but younger people bring the energy.  But, younger people in Springfield don’t know as much about what we’re doing.  It makes for a good mix. 

Jason:  Sometimes I think younger people don’t like us as much. 

Trista:  But I’m saying that mix rubs off on each other and makes the energy positive.

Jason:  It seems of all the bands we’ve been in, this one’s the one older people always like.  I’m getting old.

MRR:  Me f-ing too.  What’s this label you guys own?

Jason:  It’s called Wee Rock Records, and we’ve been doing it from ’95.  Mostly local stuff.  CDRs and vinyl.  We used to do tapes, but no one buys them.

MRR: Their loss.

Trista:  More for us.

Justin:  More tapes!  We just make them for us and when we’re done listening to them we throw them out the window.

MRR:  The 7-inch came out last Halloween.  Any plans to do any more recording?

Jason:  We’re not playing any shows in April, and we’re going to record four songs.  We have about half the money for a 7-inch.  Hopefully, we’ll have it out by tour.

Trista:  If it wasn’t for the money, we’d be putting out records every day, but it’s just too damn expensive.

MRR:  Are you guys interested in doing a full-length  on CD?

Jason:  We’re not interested in doing anything on CD.

MRR:  Are you guys in any side projects right now?

Justin:  I guess Trixie and the Merch Girls.

Trista:  We still record, and we play private parties.

Justin:  Once a year.

Trista:  We play upon request, but we don’t book shows on our own.

Justin:  Actually, Thee Fine Lines never really go out of our way to book shows either.

Trista:  Sometimes we get four calls in one day of people wanting to book us.  It’s really odd.

MRR:  Is it hard to be in a band like yours in the Midwest?

Trista:  I wouldn’t say the Midwest, just Springfield.

Jason:  Springfield’s not good.  We try to play out of town more, but it’s hard.

MRR:  Why is Springfield not good?

Jason:  It’s not that it’s not good…

Trista:  We’re just not very well received in Springfield.

Jason:  Yeah, we don’t have a lot of friends.  We’re all really depressed.  No one loves us (laughs).

Trista:  We have a couple.  We have, like, three.  I think that for what little scene there is in Springfield, there are a whole lot of bands.  Since everybody seems to know somebody who’s in a band of very varying degrees of popularity and experience, saying that you’re in a band is not impressive at all.  It’s like, “Oh, well, my brother’s in a band who plays in the basement.”

Jason:  You’d think that’d be a good thing overall.

Trista:  But that numbs them instead of inspiring them.  A lot of places, when everyone’s in a band, everybody’s interested in it; but it’s like everyone is sort of jaded.

Jason:  Springfield’s just big enough to have bars to play and places to play and bands, but not small enough where it’s a big deal.  And genre wise, there’s a lot of emo and Christian.

Trista:  And punk either means being a drunk bigot or Sum 41.  There’s no in between.  You have to be so offensive that nobody can really relate unless they are actually this actual redneck or racist, or you have to be a 12 year old with a guitar.  I’m going to make a lot of friends with this interview (laughs).

Jason:  The country rock thing is Springfield is pretty cool.  But I don’t get out very much.

Trista:  Yeah, I don’t think we’re really involved enough to make a really fair assessment.

Jason:  In the past, we’ve been really involved, but in the past year or two we’ve been not nearly as involved.

MRR:  What about touring?

Jason: It’s tentatively planned for Aug. 8 to the end of August.  We’re going to go to the Southeast and East and Midwest.  I want to play in Memphis and Nashville.  Then we’ll probably head east up the East coast and then back.

Thee Fine Lines related websites:  http://www.weerockrecords.com/