For the uninitiated mortal, what magazines do you work for and what is your function on each one?

Lisa: I work for AMP and for Hails and Horns Magazine. I’m the editor of both and also handle the advertising, since we’re a small staffed operation over here.

What’s the difference between AMP and Hails and Horns?

Lisa: AMP covers all genres in the underground from Punk to Metal.. Hails and Horns is exclusively dedicated to ‘all things heavy’. Both cover a wide net, and we really can cover so much between the two magazines.

Isn’t there a third? Loud Fast Rules?

Lisa: Loud Fast Rules is currently on hiatus. It covered 77 inspired Punk/Oi/Thrash/Hardcore/Pop Punk and the like. It was a real labor of love for us and when print took a nosedive with the economy we just couldn’t afford to print it anymore. Hopefully at some point we can revive it and do another issue.

Hip Hop seems to be the Rock and roll of today. Has there ever been talk of doing a Hip Hop magazine?

Lisa: Only jokingly, when the economy tanked because I said we could be selling our gold teeth and grills to pay the printing bill. I don’t think that’s in the umbrella of things we could do well enough. Though I do love some of it, just not enough of it. I think Public Enemy is as much of a Punk band as Minor Threat though and was as influential to me growing up. One of my favorites of all time.

How did this all begin for you?

Lisa: Brett (owner and publisher) was making a different magazine at the time called “Hit List” and wanted to branch out with a new magazine that covered more bands and wasn’t as limiting in what fit. He called me up and asked if I’d like to come and handle the ads. I moved to California and we started AMP. It was a free, monthly regional, distributed throughout CA at the time. We then started the national version of it, which was bi monthly and combined the content of the two issues and was shrink wrapped with a CD in it. We got a wild hair a few years later and started Loud Fast Rules Magazine to appease our love of true 77 inspired Punk Rock. The next year, after that, we wanted to try out a gloss magazine and expand content even more, so started Hails and Horns. Over the course of those years, my job description expanded from booking ads and doing accounting, to lining up the content and absorbing the editorial duties as well.

How did Bill Ward come to write for the Hails and Horns?

Lisa: He got in touch (through his royal mouthpiece, the wonderful Liese Rugo) to take out an ad for his radio show. We asked if he’d be into writing for us and he was excited to and has been ever since. I have not met him, but he seems like a wonderful British gentleman and is always amazingly gracious to us – like we’re the ones giving him an opportunity, when we think it’s the other way around. It’s incredible to have him in the magazine.

Have you ever met any of your heroes/ heroines though doing either mag? What was that like?

Lisa: I’ve met quite a few people that the 15 year old me would be floored to know, but at this point in my life, I view them as artists and accessible I guess? Our music scene, for the most part, is very accessible in comparison to popular music. Where seeing someone like Lady Gaga up close would be a trip, my musical heroes look like you or me (well me, haha, generally not like you!). All have been down to earth. I did get starstruck seeing Blake Schwarzenbach (Jawbreaker, Jets To Brazil, Thorns of Life, Forgetters) and didn’t talk to him, but as I walked past him, touched his arm (this is embarrassing for me to admit but oh well). He totally looked up and busted me! I made totally embarrassed, brief, eye contact with him (my eyes saying ‘yeah I just totally did that’) and scurried out the door. I’m sure he was creeped on. I’ve witnessed it myself at the shows I’ve seen – by the fanboys that are much more into him than I am, so whatever (laughs). At least I wasn’t asking him to disseminate some random lyric or something. I’m either gregarious or completely shy to a fault.

Is there anyone in Hails’, who you’d love to use your influence in the magazine, as a way of getting into his pants?

Lisa: I just interviewed Page Hamilton from Helmet and he’s a pretty sexy older guy. I guess I should’ve threw in some ‘helmet’ innuendo in the questions.

Paige is, indeed, desirable. For older, male mortals, I’ve always fancied Henry Rollins. Do you like big, scary, tattooed mortals?

Lisa: Sometimes. Henry is a little too pumped up. I’m not into guys that obviously spend hours in the gym. I think there’s so many other things better to be doing than that.

I can’t think of any! So…you come from Punk Rock, like me. What bands inspired you, as you grew up?

Lisa: Yeah for sure, growing up in a small town I wasn’t exposed to as much, but would really seek out bands based on their thank you’s in albums, from the labels I liked, like Lookout and Dischord and things like that. Minor Threat was a big one, Avail grabbed me as soon as I first heard them. Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph came out in a big way in the early 90s and were a big part of my youth. But I liked a lot of things besides Punk, and still do. I played stand up bass all through junior high and high school and loved classical music too. It seems the older I get the more I gravitate away from Punk and get more into Rock N Roll and discovering the earliest incarnations of what inspired and became the Punk that I love. And I’m more and more interested in the anthropology of music- the stories behind the bands and artists, moreso than the technical aspects of their sound. It’s fun to investigate the lives these people had that put them on a course to make something radical and new, especially in the 40s/50s/60s when it was more of a taboo lifestyle.

Give me an example of such a mortal(s) whose life you found fascinating.

Lisa: Right now, Screamin Jay Hawkins. His life story should be a movie by now, rather than being a footnote to history. Trained in opera, WWII POW (who might have blown up his tormentor!), boxer and first shock Rocker. And he was blackout shitfaced when he recorded ‘I Put A Spell On You’.

Most intriguing! Is there any band in AMP or Hails, that you became a fan of, or at least impressed with, by simply working for the mag?

Lisa: Being that I was never a Metal head growing up, I’m always impressed by the bands and genres we cover with Hails and Horns. It’s a whole world I didn’t know a whole lot about. By virtue of doing the magazine for a few years now, I’m getting reasonably well versed in it. Not in any way close to the awesome writers I get to work with, but I love the things they pitch to me. Putting the evolution of Metal alongside the Punk and Rock I grew up with is interesting.

Do you ever find that a lot of the bands you deal with try too hard to look and sound like everyone else?

Lisa: I think there’s a lot of genres that bands get swept up in a look and sound. There’s always a lot of copycats that follow. There always tends to be a backlash to that though. The myspace/online era has changed the game, much like MTV did back in the day, where you appeal via an image to what audience you’re reaching out to. I notice a lot of the hair bands look completely interchangeable and I’m sure sound that way too. Staying power, I think lies in honesty and simplicity. If you get too gimmicky you paint yourself into a corner. I wonder how many of the kids in some of the haircut bands will completely distance themselves from their first bands as they grow up.

So…my final question…and the most important…why hasn’t Hails and Horns and AMP covered my superior group, Maris The Great and The Faggots of Death?!! We are obviously the future of Rock and roll!

Lisa: You haven’t killed all the competition yet! When you do you’ll get ALL the covers!