First of all, please, tell us one thing is June of 44 the side project of rex, him , boom, shipping news and sonora pine members, or are these bands side projects of June of 44 musicians ?

All of these 'projects' are priority. When June of 44 got started, no one knew what to expect from three weeks we had given ourselves to write, record, and play a series of seven shows. For all we knew, after those three weeks were over, June of 44 could have no longer existed. However, things went quite well, we all became good friends, and we were all quite pleased with the music we were making. From that point on, June of 44 co-existed with all the other projects happening in our lives as an equal.

Without the past there would be no present, or future. I think its very important to take what you know, use a few things within what you know, and abandon the rest, but not forget about it. With whatever amount of success we may have experienced within our former projects, or even current ones, rather than trying to replicate a sound we may have captured before, all of us prefer experimenting. If we just hung around, played the same stuff we always played, we wouldn't grow, and we would essentially become a cover band to our own music.

One more question about history - why, in your opinion, so many trends in today's indie rock were born in Louisville, Kentucky?

Louisville is a beautiful, small city. Many people have a theory that the water there makes you crazy, therefore you create many original, creative things. I am from this school of thought. I have had lots of water from Louisville, Kentucky, it is delicious, refreshing, and gives you a slight sense of insanity. Perfect for writing songs.

A few different ways really...
-Method 1:
We will take a small piece of something that evolves from a jam, recreate it, and then structure a full song around it.
-Method 2:
Fully develop a song in the studio, take bits and pieces and assemble them by cutting tape together, using samples, or even creating the whole thing in electricity.
-Method 3:
Someone will present an arranged idea on guitar, then everyone else will write parts to go with it.

Which of your records captures the essence of June of 44 in the best way? How the idea of the band has changed or developed over the years?

I think that each record captures us for what we are at the time. Our first record captures us for what we were 4 years ago, as our latest record captures us for what we were a year ago, and the newest recording is even a departure from all that.
When we first started playing, nobody had ever really met each other. We just went at it, and tried to figure the music, as well as each other, out as we went. So the first recording, in my opinion, is a bit more manic and intense in some ways then the following recordings. As time went on, and we managed to work in a tour or two, release a record, and write more music, the sounds gradually became a bit more cohesive and understood, from all sides within June of 44.

My lyrics are pretty much rooted in reality, or at least my understanding of reality. The direction the words take usually depends on the tone of the song.

The words are about people who are so secure, so intense, and so smart, that they forget how, or are afraid to express emotion, for whatever reason. Its all kind of hypothetical, posing expectations of yourself, or your situations, that you could never live up to, and then crawling into a hole because you are intimidated by the world you have created. Relax, relax.

We all like to read books are an amazing source of inspiration. Its also common ground, if your trying to come up with a title with someone, and you both enjoy the writing of a particular author, why not use he or she as the source for your title search. Less stressful in a way, someone else wrote the title long before we ever set eyes on it.

Favorite authors and books:
Katherine Dunn, geek love
James Baldwin, another country
Paul Auster, leviathan
Gabrielle Garcia Marquez, strange pilgrims, one hundred years of solitude, love in the time of cholera
Henry Miller, tropic of capricorn
Cormac McCarthy, all the pretty horses
Michael Leonards, sylvia

I never really pay any attention to the terms that people use to describe us, we kind of feel like our music is all over the place, and to try and put a label on it is impossible. We constantly change. To put a term on your music is a limitation, if you say you are post-rock (whatever that means) you will always be post-rock, no evolution.

I don't really follow today’s trends in music.
I like the dirty three, freakwater, talk talk, radiohead, rachels, rex, lungfish, ray charles, johnny cash, jimmy cliff...

My friends and contemporaries are all very much into the ideas of doing it yourself, trying to keep as much of the stuff that we do personal, and avoiding the middle-man. Our label is one of the only true 'independent' labels, of its size, left in the United States. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with them within the realm of the record industry. Very honest, and come from the same perspective as we do.

We hope to come to Poland sometime around September next year * . This I am looking forward to!!!

Best of life,

Mueller