It has been a year now since the release of Heavy, the sophomore album from Arizona reggae punk band RAC. Since then, the desert punks have been hard at work promoting, creating, playing shows and taking over the Southwest.

The Pier (KB): Heavy was definitely one of my favorite summer albums last year, how has it been promoting the album?
Taylor “Juice” Hawkins: Promoting the album this past year has been great. No matter where we played there were always a few people coming up saying they’ve never heard of us before, but they need the CD because they loved the set.

The Pier (KB): What are some of the most fun shows you guys have played this past year?
Thomas O’Brien: All the shows have been great, some of my favorite ones are whenever the guys from The B Foundation roll through town, they are just so down to chill and talk and make our vans smokey ha. Also playing shows with local heroes Authority Zero has been very cool, especially after all of us grew up going to those shows.

The Pier (KB): You guys added a new member (Thomas) to your lineup shortly after Heavy came out, was there any particular reason for that?

Ben Florine: We were wanting someone who could solidify our sound to allow us to write and perform more creatively. Luckily for us, Thomas can do all of this and sing as well. It has transformed our sound slightly, but for us we feel we are tighter with punk and reggae along with our overall energy.

The Pier (KB): Although you guys have been busy playing shows and promoting Heavy, have you had anytime to start working on a new album or new songs?
Matt Roberson: Yes, after a few months of releasing Heavy we were already working on some new jams. As we recorded some parts of Heavy @ our home studio Fertile Panda, we have been able to record any ideas that we have and just go off from there.  Right now we have been messing around with some Dub tracks and some punk songs.

The Pier (KB): How do you go about writing your new material?

Thomas: It really depends where we are at, Derek and Matt live together at our home studio so a lot of our stoney dub songs get started with them just throwing around ideas and recording whatever crazy sounds they can think of; then Ben, Taylor and I live together and a lot of our punk songs have been written with Ben looking for chords he hasn’t played before and us just sitting around jamming together and arranging the songs.

The Pier (KB): With two albums now under your belt, is there any plan to start to get out on the road outside AZ at all?

Matt: California, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado right now are places that we plan to be hitting up throughout the Summer.

The Pier (KB): What has been the most significant step that you guys have taken this past year?

Ben: We got our asses down to an auction in south Phoenix and started bidding it up on a tour van. We ended up winning it to our surprise. Since then it has been awesome actually not having to use our own cars and riding to shows together. It has also been great having a resource to get us around the region more.

Matt: Beyond having a van we have been working more and more with our home studio and starting to record more.

The Pier (KB): Things seem to have really gone well you guys since the release last year, what’s next for RAC?

Ben: We’re messing around with the idea of doing a mini-project with some new RAC music. Kind of like a small EP with a underground sound to it. We might do something like all punk and instrumental dub, or we might just write whatever comes out natural. We’ll definitely keep everyone posted.

By KB