The Phoenix music scene is ever-changing. Bands come and go, but only a few manage to stay together for a decade. And that’s exactly what Valley band Mill’s End has managed to do. With deep roots in Tempe, Mill’s End is still rocking stages across metro Phoenix.
The Show’s Lauren Gigler sat down with lead singer Jeff Bump at Crescent Ballroom. He, for one, has performed in various bands in Tempe since its heyday, when bands like Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers and the Gin Blossoms were topping the charts.
But, he says, it wasn’t until a few years later that Mill's End formed with four guys and no name.
Full conversation
JEFF BUMP: Back in the day, I took several years off of being in bands to finish school and do all that kind of stuff like that. And I played some acoustic stuff around town, nothing major. And I remember just jamming with the original drummer at a party just for fun, and I still had a bunch of songs. And I was like ‘This is pretty fun. Let's start doing this again.’
And I got him interested in it and then a friend of a friend introduced us to Jeff Butce on bass and then we found an original guitar player and we started playing and because I knew some people they said they needed a band. They said, “Can you guys play?” And we needed to come up with a name. So the original guitarist and I used to write songs at a coffee house on Mill Avenue called Mill's End.
LAUREN GILGER: There you go.
BUMP: And so it was like that works for us. There you go.
GILGER: You just needed a name.
BUMP: We just needed a name. It's like, yeah, we had all these elaborate names sketched out. That one works. Let’s just use that.
GILGER: And it stuck for quite some time?
BUMP: Yeah, luckily they closed so we didn't get sued. So we’re happy about that.
GILGER: That makes it a little easier.
BUMP: Yes.
GILGER: OK, so what was the scene like? Like you had been in Tempe and at ASU kind of through its heyday, but this was a little after that. What was it like when you started?
BUMP: There was a lot of different style bands. There was still rock bands around, but there was a lot of people doing home-recording type bands and a little more dance bands and electronic bands, so there was quite doubled and tripled in size and everything you can imagine was out there, from acoustic to metal to everything in between. So I was, you were just taken aback by how much there was bands playing every night, every venue you can think of. So that was the big change for us.
GILGER: Who did you look up to at the time? Who did you wanna sound like? Where were your influences?
BUMP: We started to get to know people again, and there's always a lot of younger bands and we're older and we found some partners in crime, if you will, in Carol Pacey & The Honey Shakers and Doug Preston and Fat Gray Cat and all these guys who are our age and we help share resources and, “Hey, who did you ask to hire to get a gig there?” and “Hey, here I got a radio station, I'll play our music.” There was just such a great community that everybody's like just helping each other out. So those are the people we really looked up to.
GILGER: So in terms of the sound, I mean, you're clearly a rock band. I know you're playing a more acoustic version of this for us today, but there are some probably old country elements in here as well.
BUMP: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely, If you talk to Mike. our drummer, he is the biggest Rush fan you will ever meet in your life. So that's in there even though we can't play that style, but I'm a big, I love the Allman Brothers and I love newer stuff like Ryan Adams. But then again, I am a huge Pearl Jam fan and a lot of the ‘90s bands like I loved all the Seattle bands. I loved all that, so it's a mix of all those things. It's a big mix.
GILGER: OK, so you're gonna play a song for us, which one?
BUMP: We're gonna do “Drinking is Easy Living Is Hard.”
[MUSIC]
GILGER: Has your sound changed over the decade more that you've been playing?
BUMP: Oh yeah, absolutely, we're a lot more traditional, almost like an old school Wilco Jayhawks band when we started and that's still there, but the heavier stuff has kind of come out. We added Al a couple of years ago on guitar and he's just, he's, technically he's just so awesome and he has a huge sound of him so we just were able to take advantage of that and it really opened up a lot of new doors for us.
GILGER: Yeah, so sticking with it for this long is miraculous in lots of ways, but also because you guys are all just kind of regular guys. You all have jobs, lots of dads, kids, yeah, exactly.
BUMP: We just like doing it. I mean, some people play softball. We play in a band.
GILGER: This is your hobby?
BUMP: This is our softball. I mean, we take it seriously. We want to do the best we can do, but we don't really have any huge expectations that we just like doing it. It's fun. Writing and recording is a blast. It's so really, really fun to do for us. So, why not? And it's the best kind of therapy you can do. It's a stress reliever. It's just great. We really enjoy it.
GILGER: Yeah, what do your kids think of what you do here in the band?
BUMP: It's cool. They like it. Of course, the problem with them is like, I bust out the guitar like, “Dad, quit it, stop.”
GILGER: As somebody, maybe one of the longer running bands in the Valley, right? And you were in the music scene here before that, how have you seen it change and, and has it been in positive ways and negative ways? Has it become more difficult, easier?
BUMP: I would say the positive ways is the resources. It's definitely a do-it-yourself culture and you don't need a big power that be to get your music out there. We can put out a pretty good quality product for not the money you have to pay for it back in the day. Negative parts sometimes, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's like we talked about before, there's so many bands and I think sometimes for the general person out there you're flooded with stuff left and right. It's hard to get noticed. It's hard to get people to take a stop and say, “I'm gonna play that song.” So that's the challenge to us. So I mean you really need to make sure you're good. It's gotta be something worthwhile for them, but it's a lot harder to stick out.
GILGER: All right, well, why don't you take us out on a song?
BUMP: Yep, we're gonna do “Sightseeing.”
You can hear Mill's End's latest music on the band's SoundCloud page.
If you’re in a band or know of one you’d like to hear on air, send us a note at [email protected].
