Indie-rock quartet Young Mammals are playing a show at Mango’s this Saturday to celebrate their upcoming tour. The three-week, fifteen-show trek takes them up the east coast and back; it’s the second tour for the group since releasing their full-length, Carrots, a year and a half ago. We’re fans of the group here at 29-95. Sara asked me to write something about the tour kickoff show, and I figured I’d track down bass player Jose Sanchez and ask him a few questions.

Since Jose is my roommate, I was able to track him down pretty easily (he was in his room). For the past week I’d been watching him dub cassettes of Carrots on a tape deck he'd set up on our kitchen table and listening to stories about booking and preparing for the tour, but I figured I should talk to him real official-like for this piece, as to keep the line between roommates and Professional Music Industry People fully intact.

Here’s something that bears mentioning: historically, Young Mammals suck shit at being Professional Music Industry People, at least by the standards of the Professional Music Industry. There’s no poster for the show at Mango’s (the cover is six bucks, Buxton and Eastern Sea are the openers, and it starts probably at nine) and they didn’t contact 29-95 about the show. When I mentioned the latter detail, Jose winced and said it “wasn’t personal – we’re just bad at that stuff.”

But not being Professional Music Industry People in Houston isn’t necessarily a detriment; in a town with a fertile, thriving DIY scene notoriously wary of hype, Young Mammals are just focusing on what makes sense to them. The fact that they survived and transcended their own initial status as a hyped-up teenage buzz band (say it with me now: “formerly known as The Dimes”) and the ensuing fallout/backlash, not to mention the loss of powerhouse/powderkeg original drummer Iram Guerrero, is testament to the strength of their commitment to their craft and their city. Even that he felt the need to mention their lack of promotional savvy "wasn't personal" points to a mentality more in tune with a sense of community than marketing sense.

I asked Jose why they decided to make the tape version of Carrots. Rather than wax pretentious about lo-fi or give a spiel about young bands reclaiming antiquated technology in the face of a crumbling music industry, the band’s reasoning is far more pragmatic: tapes are cheaper to manufacture than CDs, and when it came time to restock more copies of Carrots they decided if they were going to eat ramen noodles for four months they might as well be able to afford to tour as well. Plus they’re a vehicle to offer a download of the record – a version of the record with song mixes the Mammals were much happier with than the rushed CD master (epic, ethereal closer “Duck Song” in particular benefits from the second pass). The group isn’t really playing this up, and Jose wanted to make clear that they’re not trying to trick people into buying the same album twice, but having heard both versions I felt the difference was worth remarking upon.

Plus, the kids these days, they dig those cassette tapes. Oh, the kids.

Those kids in the Dimes aren’t the kids in the Dimes anymore. For one thing, they’re all over 21 – no more having to sneak into Rudyard’s to see shows (and no more having to get other people to go up to the bar to buy them burgers). Though the group undeniably had trouble coping with Guerrero’s departure behind the kit, after some back-and-forth the Mammals recently made Houston scene veteran Ryan Chavez (Grandfather Child) a full member, which has really seemed to energize the group as a whole. They’re working on new material right now; if they can keep pace with the growth they showed between the loose, noisy garage rock of their early EPs and Carrots’ ornate, off-kilter noise-pop, there’s no stopping them.

We hung out in the kitchen for a bit and talked about a lot of other Young Mammals stuff. They shot a video with Mark Armes (who made these Delilah and Wires and Buttons videos, as well as a forthcoming clip for LCD Soundsystem). Their next release will probably be an EP. They're making new shirts. After our conversation meandered into how things are going to go with him away on tour (among other things, I am now in charge of feeding his pet turtle Sheldon), Jose said he wanted me to make sure people knew the show was going to be fun. Later, when he came by my room to ask a question, I mentioned the article was turning out a lot longer than I thought it was going to (I told him this as a roommate; we’d taken off our Professional Music Industry Hats at this point). He shrugged and said “You don’t have to worry about most of the stuff I said. Just say the show will be a lot of fun. That’s the important part.”

The show will be a lot of fun, and that’s the important part.