Interview by Hannah Fulkerson & Zach Galsky

Written and Transcribed by Hannah Fulkerson

It was August 2025 when I was on a deep dive for new music, when I stumbled across a band my friends tilted their heads at the name. The band P.E.E. (That can sometimes be stylized as Potentially Egregious Error) from San Francisco started their indie rock band in 1993, with members Kelly Green Morrison, Jim Stanley, Andee Connors (also a member of A Minor Forest & J Church), and Tiber Scheer (also the bassist for Lowercase). This band has not only an attention catching name but mesmerizing lyrics as well as exhilarating riffs, P.E.E. Is a now up and coming blueprint band for a lot of artist in today’s scene, with grind-pop and math-rock riffs, but indie pop vocals, especially with the resurgence of the band gearing up for their 30th anniversary of “Now, More Charm and More Tender” and first performance in 16 years at Noise Pop Fest in San Francisco California.

“Now, More Charm and More Tender” is such an infectious album released through March Record label. With intense riffs and jerky yet perfectly timed transitions, my friend Zach Galsky and I got the opportunity to talk with the group about their entire discography, the resurfacing of P.E.E. And what is the future of P.E.E. now with an entirely new fan base such as ourselves.

What is the origin of P.E.E. ?

Jim moved to San Francisco in 92, meeting Kelly though other bands based in California. She was one of the few people he knew as a musician and after seeing her band play they talked about playing music ogether, as that started Kellys other band broke up, originally they started with a different bassist and drummer before Andee and Tiber. The name PEE was thrown out by Jim as they needed a name for an upcoming show. 

Jim was the one who gave the name, Kelly endorsing it, they played their first show with Andee’s band a minor forest. 

Their original drummer Jason quit, then Andee came in and quickly learned the songs for the upcoming shows they had in SoCal.

Billed on noise pop fest as PEE, why is that?

Andee: I was desperate to do anything to make it less, pee, less like “PP” even now with the label reissuing our records, going over shirt ideas that were like “haha” pee,something goofy. The periods made it seem like it could stand for something else, but it didn’t really. 

I didn’t expect that to be on the noise pop poster. We use that acronym for our group texts and other things, but it was used to make it less of a word and not explicitly mean pee, nobody knows what it means. It was the last desperate attempt to make it another name whilst keeping it.

 There is a single that was released under the name of Miracle Research Center Staff, a name that didn’t stick, becoming the name of the record. They have changed the name and meaning around, which I admire keeping people on their toes.

So.. why did it end, did you guys just go different directions or…..

Their last show was in 99!

Kelly: Jim and i were dating for a lot of years and then we stopped, so it was kind of awkward to be in a band together and not dating anymore was apart of a package for me. So that was kind of it for me.

Jim: that wasn’t the only factor, we had agreed to keep playing after the breakup. The other major factor was we had got fatigued of the name. Through the whole history of the band we thought about changing the name. We also had lost our practice space in San Francisco

Jim: We played a small little tour, we agreed at the end it would be our last show as P.e.e and we’d get back together and play… we just went off in different directions at that point. So it was never really, an explicit, we were breaking up… were not playing music together anymore, but it was an inertia thing.

Kelly: We figured out how to be friends quickly!

ZACH: Back to the name, what was the issue? Is it P.E.E as the bodily excretion, or was it wanting a certain i dont know about image, but wanting to take yourself seriously in a way?… or this has passed the point of no return, like we’re pee and lean into that?
(side note: shout out Zachshots)

Kelly: If we were starting out now and we were pee, maybe we would embrace it more than we did back then, but i am speaking for myself here. I have come to embrace it

Jim: Likewise,
We needed a name to play a show , so we didn’t have a lot of investment in it at all, then you know you get known for it in the scene, then that’s your name…
and i think for me it came more from punk rock, anti establishment, a little playful, but not supposed to be super jokey, necessarily. But then the jokines really took over. Then we were on the record label that put our first record out, they had a lot of twee bands or pedalcore, making something cutesy attached to it as well. The brand of “pee” wasn’t our intention.

Andee: The first album being more cute, it made sense, but then by the time we made the second record, the songs were long and complicated, definitely pushing boundaries musically. The name was always a conversation that we didn’t want to have. We just wanted to play cool weird music with cool weird bands.

Tiber: Locally the name transcended itself, because people knew the music, but outside of that it was a stopping point.

Kelly: everywhere we went we had to explain it. That feels like, if you have to keep explaining your name you’re gonna get exhausted

Andee described it as “the totally genius Halloween costume you come up with, that every single person asks what you’re supposed to be”

Han: not wanting to be put in a bubble of genres, What was a P.E.E. Show like? Y’all have opened for bands such as Cheap Trick, Jawbreaker, and Jimmy Eat World. What was the genre meshing of it all in the California scene.

Kelly: It was really different back then, it feels like the scenes that came after us fit better than the scene we came from. We were always on the outside of every scene. We would play with what would’ve been 1st or 3rd wave, i dont know..

Han: There’s too many genres, too many waves

Andee: i do think it was the timing,timing had a lot to do with it. It was 1995 and being connected with my other band, we were connected with Boys Life, Giants Chair, and Jimmy Eat World, all of these Midwest emo bands. Now I’m not complaining but with the resurgence of “Midwest emo” now were apart of it

Jim: it didn’t exist at the time

Tiber: were not really emo or midwestern

Kelly: but im here for it though! It totally resonates with me and if we had been playing back then at that time it would’ve been a better fit for us

Andee: And I do think as people we have really varied tastes, and I used to run a record store that was sort of genre agnostic, so I think we loved playing weird bills with weird bands and still do. With our new show Nuzzle is a screamo band. Not a perfect match, but same era and we like the same music. (Shout out nuzzle you are awesome)
Even now, talking about playing with some friends in the Midwest. We have the friends and connections that have held strong pre internet.

Han: the resurgence is so cool and I feel like genre meshing is kind of over rated now. as a booker, if everyone can get together and fit under a similar umbrella, it all works out!

Kelly: Especially if they’re nice! The thing that resonates with me about Midwest emo is the niceness. A lot of our favorite shows have been in the Midwest, because of the kindness

Han: we have got to get y’all down to Texas

Andee: The coolest part of the scene was just the DIY-ness of it. We didn’t have the internet, without facebook, without instagram, you had to reach out to friends and other bands you knew, and you’d play in houses and basements. One of our most memorable shows was in a gazebo in a state park where all these kids just showed up and played in the park. Like, I think that’s not as common now, and it’s much easier to, like, book and put together tours, but back then it was very much about the band you saw in San Francisco, oh they live in Chicago, we call them and try to book a show together, then become friends. I think those sort of connections have really stood the test of time and we are sort of revisiting that too.

Zach: on the topic of friendship and connection, one of my favorite tracks “Mannequin 3” off of the Zum Audio VOL. 2
including Grandaddy, Modest Mouse, Duster, and Jason Molina. I’m curious about that mixtape and any information you have on that.

Jim: George Chen does Zum, is a friend of ours, him and his sister Yvonne. He’s based in LA, formerly San Francisco he’s switched to standup comedy.

Andee: My other band has only played 3 shows and they’ve all been George Chen. He put us on multiple comps I think

Jim: comps Were more of a regular thing in the 90s, comps with zines, or a lot of other bands that didn’t have all the material ahead, when recording was a lot harder/ more work than it is. They were recorded to get bands known.

Andee: George was a big booster for the scene in general, there are probably a bunch of bands that you know or like he had something to do with helping them come up. He put out my other bands first record and was a huge P.e.e supporter since the beginning and continues to be a great supporter

Zach: It’s really heartwarming to hear that, it resonates with it with my own experience touring in a scream band now. It is still similar to sleeping on floors, putting people on with other members of the scene, independent recording, labels, cds, tape makers. I wonder, this isn’t something anyone can answer definitively, but if there’s this nature to diy music, maybe, you know whatever this amorphous Midwest emo term is, but that we’ll just persist and persist through generation and through bands.

Kelly: We really hope so. Whatever its called its a beautiful thing and im so glad we have been apart of it in some little way

han: It’s like the forefront. I think diy is what brings everyone together and community is super important

Kelly:Totally…everyone has a thing that they bring to DIY. You know, you might be a musician, you might do something totally different, everyone has a place.

Han: its the best community that I have found, especially not going into it as a musician, but being able to bring people together with the love of music, everyone loves music! And it is super important to me to be able to curate that.

But, what also is super important to me, switching into this, y’all’s lyricism. It’s extremely captivating to me. I love y’all’s writing style, and i just want to know what inspires it? How do you write your songs? What brings yall together creatively?

Jim: Good question I mean I think if I reflect on it mostly… I studied creative writing in college. It wasn’t super premeditated, I’ll put it that way, it wasn’t like we sat down and said, let’s write an album not about our childhood.

Kelly: But we did. That record is totally like, every single song is, something about our childhood, but it’s something that’s real about our childhood not made up.

Jim: Yeah I’d say if there’s any… It’s not even intentional to me but may be more like alright. There’s a song, and I don’t even know which one came first but this one, there’s one that has childhood aspects in it, and then we liked the way it ended up, and we would generally write our own lines. We wouldn’t be writing each other lines, but we liked the way it kind of mashed up.

Kelly: And sometimes they’re only tangentially related.

Jim: Yeah but then they mash up and kind of create something else, and so we liked that. Maybe then that sort of inspires the next song that we write thematically, but it wasn’t a super premeditated, intentional thing, like, let’s go write 12 songs about our childhood.

Kelly: No not at all. But one thing that is premeditated is that a lot of our song titles have nothing to do with our songs whatsoever and that is 100% Andee’s fault.

Andee: basically one of the interesting things, musically, is that, unlike a lot of bands. The guitar, the drums… The drums and guitar tend to be locked in which makes it a lot different. right I mean, Tiber and I are still locked in, but usually you could have a band and have the bass and drums going, and then the guitar goes over the top, but I think a lot of the writing was… Jim writes these very complicated parts, and then so the drums have to lock into the guitar, which I think gives it a very unique sound.

Zach: yeah definitely similar to that grind-pop sort of way that you guys have termed it. Yeah, I wanted to talk quickly about the instrumentation, like, you know, I listen to a song, like I hate all vegetables, and, you know, it’s just… I really can’t even wrap my head around, sort of, like what comes first in that regard? Something that’s so incredibly intricate like you know a lot of music is but, really just to another degree. I’m curious, do we start with guitars or start with drums and guitar?

Jim: It’s fairly standardized but again it’s just sort of the way it worked with us. It wasn’t that talked about, but usually I have a song idea, the roots of a song, my part basically. Maybe not fully arranged or maybe not fully done, and then I bring those ideas to practice, and some of them would turn into songs, and so everybody wrote their own parts. My guitar part

Andee: I think you would come in with a semi done song then we would often change the arrangements. I tend to be really good at the connectors.bridge versus chorus, but getting from one to the other when they’re totally different. It is sometimes challenging so I like that part of it sort of navigating those Inbetweeners but then Kelly kind of like this is not insulting. I hope that…

Kelly: I can’t wait to hear what you have to say

Andee: Then Kelly adds all of the stuff on top, makes it pretty and chimney and jangly and you know Jim’s building sort of the foundation and Kelly gets to come in and just talk it feels like paint with pretty colors and really cool unlikely harmonies, another thing that differentiates it from other bands.

Han: I agree

Zach: absolutely

Jim: There are some songs that are a little bit more not that many but we’re on the first album where the song came out to me at once lyrics and the song and so those are a little bit more. Everybody wrote their parts, but it’s kind of already written when I present it, those didn’t change a lot like Kelso. There aren’t many like that the other ones are more constructed.

Andee: They’re not normally structured so in writing our own parts we continue to move it further away from conventional pop you know like you can’t just play.a lot of the times i dont even know why time signature this is in, Even relearning these songs now I’m like oh God why did we do that?

Jim: Andee and I definitely had a I don’t want to say it’s a love hate but maybe just a love love but not always on the same page of like should we repeat that part? It’s a good part then if he liked it sometimes I would be just like no we’re only doing it once. But that was a creative battle. That was more fun than anything else and

Andee: I’m a big fan of the whole one and done like bands, like Guided with Voice and stuff where they write the most incredible chorus you’ve ever heard and only do it once.

Kelly: One minute song yeah I love that. I mean that’s the extent of my capacity

Andee: but when we did this thing, we’re one minute songs instead of having one minute so we packed it in 20 different parts of one song which makes it also a little different.

Zach: Well, that’s another element that I feel like the debut album sort of the second. I heard it and I was totally hooked. I always felt it was very much an album I think plays so well for me and Hannah‘s generation, maybe particularly like the songs are super short and it has what people on the Internet described as a random or shit post album art. I understand you got it at the garage sale or something? The picture of that dude?

Andee: it is hanging in my laundry room

Zach: its in your laundry room?

Han: thats so sick

Zach: there are these elements, I’ve always felt like, you know really suited super well for sort of post 2020 music listeners, and yet I feel like compared to a lot of other 90s bands in terms of major touring success have seen of resurgence such as Duster, Cap N’ Jazz, or Everyone Asked About You, you guys are getting that moment now. So I’m wondering if you feel that it’s nice to receive your flowers in terms of this resurgence? What are the plans, if it’s too sort of push into a second act for the band or to see what happens.

Han: yeah I was going to say what is the future of P.e.e. looking like for y’all right now?

Kelly: We’re talking about it a lot. Actually it’s really fun to see our music resonating with the whole new generation and it’s really fun to come at it with a totally new perspective myself too. I’m in a different place than I was back then and all of us are

Andee: I mean, we don’t. It’s not that we don’t care but we care differently than we did the first time when they started happening. The first thought I had was where was all this when we were actually a band you know and now we have lives and kids and jobs and other bands and even though it’s super fun and exciting, it doesn’t have the same kind of, we just care differently. I’m really surprised and humbled and I think it’s really flattering that so many people who weren’t even alive when we were playing the first time are digging what we do

Kelly: I would love. I mean we’ve been talking about doing a little tour as I mentioned just seeing you know if there are people who want to see us we would love to play for them. It sounds really fun. We wouldn’t rule anything out.

Andee: The first record is getting reissued on CD and I don’t think it was ever properly on LP so there’s an LP and CD and tapes. I don’t know about the second record, but we’ve gotten invitations from the East Coast and from the Midwest all over the place to play shows it’s a little bit harder now that we’re not 20 to get our shit together so all four of us are free and we can go somewhere from 2 to 3 weeks but I think we’re all excited I mean mostly for me to be honest it’s fun to be playing these songs again and it’s just fun having an excuse to hang out with people I’ve not seen on a regular for a decade or more so just being able to hang out and do something that we all love and be friends is kind of the best part of being in a band.

It’s still really fun to play these songs, but also really hard.

Zach: What’s been the hardest song to relearn? I’m really curious.

Andee: I think it’s different for everyone. Today was the closest I’ve come to playing. I hate all vegetables right, and then uncle Tupelo there’s this weird part in the middle in Andee wants to impregnate me. There’s a weird part in the middle of struggling like crazy to get.

Jim: We never wrote anything down. The hardest part is the muscle memory doing it together. I can try relearning and watching and listening to the limited video that there is which there isn’t really that much but it’s really when we’re together. It’s sort of oh that’s what I do, but I need to write it down.

Andee: I live in Oregon. We’re in San Francisco right now. I don’t even have drums where I live so I’ve been learning all these songs on the couch drum set.
Jim’s right like I don’t get it and then the minute I sat behind the drums with everybody half the songs came back to us and not completely but you know in a way where I’m like. Oh this totally makes sense now.

Zach: Well the east coast is super excited for you, New York especially, we have bands and bookers dying to get you guys.

Han: yeah I book out in Texas, but im moving to New York sometime this summer, so east coast or Texas I’ll be everywhere!

Kelly: There was one show in Houston on tour with Jimmy Eat World, we met this guy who made us vegan fettuccine and we slept on his floor.

Han: It’s that southern hospitality I’m telling you!

What in y’all’s reunion are y’all hoping to gain from this experience, what bands are yall hoping to play with, if yall already have something lined up besides Noise Pop.

Kelly: We have been talking to, for example, the booker for Gilman to play a show at some point. In the 90s it’s a legendary venue. I told the booker to book bands you think would enjoy playing with us. It’s kind of fun just to see what happens, because it’s a whole new world. Again, were all going to feel differently I don’t know andee’s more opinionated

Andee: I am. I work in the music business.

Kelly: So we all slightly have different opinions,but I just want to hear what these bands are like and go where people will enjoy watching our music, and with bands that want to play with us, you know?

Andee: I think we will end up doing a mix of new, real younger bands and then bands we were friends with back in the day.
We played a bowling alley back in Chicago called Fireside Bowl, every band you’ve ever loved has played there. Out of the blue the guy who books has reached out for us to play there.
I think we will end up playing with a lot of new bands that we haven’t heard of yet, which is cool

Kelly: You’re a booker, you tell us who you think we should play with.

So I made you guys a playlist!!!! Listen, I saw you guys were playing with two artists I had on here already so… looks like I’m onto something…

Zach: i was curious, im probably not the only one who thinks that they’re clever to ask this question but im curious, in Andee wants to impregnate me with one half of Uncle Tupelo, if its Jay Farrar or Jeff Tweedy

Kelly: It’s Jay Farrar

Andee: Always Jay Farrar.

Kelly: I mean Jeff Tweedy is great, but it was Jay Farrar

Andee: i now regret that song title because I didn’t know we would be talking about it 30 years later, but i thought Kelly had the most beautiful voice and Jay Farrar, to me, is probably one of the best singers of all time, so i thought well, if Kelly and Jay Farrar had a baby it would be the most incredible. That basically is where that came from.

Zach: That baby is probably in a band that sounds like P.E.E. now.

Kelly: Yeah oh my god it’s so true he’s in one of those Americana bands.

Andee: But yeah that’s probably one of my most regrettable but also proud song titling moments.

Jim: the titles came from conversations we were having where usually it would be Andee, but it’s always Andee, but would say something then everyone recognized what he just said and then, oh no that’s a song title

Andee: I think that was maybe a thing in our scene because my other band A minor forest was the same way. The waiter at Denny’s would say something crazy and I’d be like that’s the name of our new song.

Kelly: must’ve been a thing in your scene Andee, just you, your band, and your other band.

Zach: the scene of my mind

Kelly: The scene of his mind is exactly right.

well that basically wraps up, unless you’re listening to the audio then you heard way more of what I transcribed #real as #fuck.

It was such a great opportunity to talk to an inspiring group of people along side a friend who shares the same admiration. I am deeply appreciative and hope to work with Zach again and hopefully get the chance to meet Kelly, Jim, Andee, and Tiber eventually 🙂
You can find P.E.E. On instagram @pee.band or on any streaming services 😀 or if you’re lucky enough their upcoming shows March 1st at noise pop, April 10th and 11th in Pomona and Los Angeles!
You can find Zach Galsky on instagram @zachgalsky or in his two bands @cashonlytonys or @zachshots2002 on instagram or wherever you stream music
You can also find me Hannah Fulkerson on @hannahfulkers0n or here! On WHATEVER!

Thank You for Reading!!!