by JEFF DIXON
Lamar University Press

Who Needs Love Songs

Houghton Michigan isn’t exactly what you would call a music city. It’s not even what you would call a city. But this tiny town is the birthplace of the band Squint, a group that has been flying below the music industries radar since 1993, and is planning on becoming more than a mere blip by the end of the year. Squint's sound can be described as the Pixies, mixed with Dashboard Confessional, with a little twist, and I don't mean lemon. Dane Adrian the bands lead singer and songwriter say his main musical influences are "the Pixies, Jane’s Addiction, and a lot of punk rock." I had the opportunity to chat with Dane about the band's history and the upcoming concert at changing times on September 6th.

Because of the virtual nonexistence of a music scene in Houghton, Dane and the bands lead guitarist Matt Fredrickson took a road trip about seven years ago down the East Coast and then along the Gulf Coast to Louisiana. About a year later the band picked up and moved to Ruston LA, home of Louisiana Tech and now adopted home of Squint. And so they started touring in several old beat up vans most of which had nicknames and one, The White Van, that the band hated so much "we didn't feel it deserved a name, I mean we hated that damn thing." The self promoting worked and landed that band some pretty choice gigs." Hands down my favorite show has to be playing with the Goo Goo Dolls in front of a sold out crowd, that was insanely fun."

"My songs start out as ideas." says Dane of his writing style. "Like the song Poster Girl is just about girls you see and fall in love with right there, like that girl at the record store who says such sweet things." When asked about the writing process Dane says "Matt would write the music first and then from there I would try and arrange it into verses and a chorus." Dane says his girlfriends all request songs written about them. "Sweetie you don't want me to write a song about you, if I write a song about you then that means you've hurt me."

Dane says of the bands odd name "We choose Squint because I like one word band names, and I love the letter Q because the letter Q can never be alone." Now it was time for my trademark questions. What were the last CD’s you bought? “Pete Yorn and Bottle Rocket.” What band would you remove from the music scene if you could? "Puddle of Mudd but I really don't have a reason for that so let me say Saliva, because I feel that their first single was a step backward for music as a whole." Well to quote the bands tour journal at squint.com "If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, say it to somebody else that agrees with you.”

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