Marc Brownstein knows more about the Disco Biscuits than you do. He’s analyzed the tapes, heard your complaints and watched the Disco Biscuits grow from one of the University of Pennsylvania’s most popular party bands into the pioneers of the modern trance-fusion movement. He also happens to be the Disco Biscuits’ bass player and, for many, one of the jam-scene’s most recognizable faces. Below, Brownstein discusses his band’s recent string of shows with Umphrey’s McGee, forthcoming album, evolving relationship with STS9 and the road from Copper Mountain to Camp Bisco (the band will host its festival from August 16-18 at Indian Lookout Country Club in Mariaville, NY).

MG- The Disco Biscuits and STS9 came through the club ranks somewhat independently, with the exception of playing a few shows together around 99. Now, after years apart, youve shared the stage a number of times this summer: at Jam on the River in May, at the Greek in July and at Camp Bisco in August. Why start collaborating more regularly at this point in your career?

MB- We’ve bumped into STS9 a lot over the years and we’ve obviously become friendly with them. They played the first Camp Bisco. I lived right around the corner from them for many years in California and I’d run into the guys at breakfast. It was always baffling to me that we’d offer them Camp Bisco each year and they’d always turn it down. Then this year I called [STS9 bassist David Murphy] and said, “We’re offering it to you, even though we know you’re going to turn it down.” And he told me, “No, no, I think we’re going to take it this time.” And I kind of rolled my eyes and was like “Yeah right, sure.” But they did.

For a while there was some weirdness and I was kind of interested to hear what Murphy had to say about that [in his recent Jambands.com interview]. I think there was that weirdness and we weren’t sure what that weirdness was about until we read that interview. He talked about Sector 9 coming up and not wanting to be compared to the Disco Biscuits. The easiest way for them to accomplish that was to not play with the Disco Biscuits; to stay away from us in order to create their own thing. It was kind of compelling for me to read that and the reason they’re doing Camp Bisco is that we’ve matured enough to move past that weirdness.

That article cleared the air for me because there was always a little bit of awkwardness over all of those years and I wasn’t really sure where it was coming from. That definitely broke the story. And now I know where it came from and that means a lot because you kind of get to that point where you’re like “Well maybe it’s personal. Is it personal? What’s the deal?” Somebody said something to me a bunch of years ago. I think it was one of the guys in Umphrey’s. They said, “If we’re gonna rise to the top, we’re gonna rise to the top together.” It’s kind of like the old adage, “Together we stand, divided we fall.” But that is the way this scene is. I was just talking about that with Trevor [Garrod] from Tea Leaf Green this weekend. I said, “You know, we really should team up as much as we can.” We’re playing shows with Umphrey’s and we play shows with Sector 9. Now we know that our fans want full, 2-set shows and we do provide that on a regular basis for them. But in order to grow in this scene, in order for STS9, Umphrey’s McGee and the Disco Biscuits to grow past this plateau that we’ve all grown into, we have to band together.

MG- You and STS9 played together a few times early on at Wetlands and other venues. What do you remember about that those gigs?

MB- One of them was actually a Jambands.com show [6/5/99], but the show I remember most clearly was at the Exit/Inn in Nashville [on 5/5/99]. We did a whole week of shows with Sector 9 at that point and that one stands out to me because there were about 30 people there. We played a particularly ridiculous “Bernstein and Chasnoff” and one dude ran from the back of the room where everyone was standing and did the most freaked out, freaky dance.

We opened for STS9 once at the Chameleon club and they opened for us at the Variety. It was always hard because you could never really figure out who should open for whom and that was kind of always the hard part of playing together, for us. There wasn’t any weirdness of us sounding like Sector 9 or Sector 9 sounding like us. For us, we were always trying to not sound like Phish.

I thought it was really cool that there was this Southern version of the Disco Biscuits. Simultaneously, music was moving in the same direction. It was like it couldn’t help itself. It was an inevitable merging of sounds. It’s just crazy that it happened at the same time in America. They were the three bands [the Disco Biscuits, STS9 and the New Deal] that were experimenting out of the realm that has been traditionally accepted in the jam-band scene.

Phish had evolved so much, but you couldn’t just sit with their sound. You have to make your own sound. You had to make something new. So it is about evolution and it is about pushing the envelope forward and breaking down barriers and experimenting with new sounds and new vibes. I mean, clearly there are other bands around the world were toying with the same issues. But for us, it was just like “Well, if we’re going to play with Sector 9, who’s going to headline and who’s going to open?” and there was no definitive answer. We weren’t doing anything like on D.U.M.B. tour where we were like, “Alright, we’ll just switch off.” Clearly there were some markets we should have headlined in, but didn’t, but at the end of the day all you are missing is the light show. It really doesn’t matter.

MG- By and large, do you feel your fans have been receptive to the D.U.M.B. tour?

MB- I think that there was a period where the crowds needed to warm up to the whole idea. The first couple of D.U.M.B. shows it was definitely the Biscuits crowd watching the Biscuits and the Umphrey’s crowd watching Umphrey’s. There was clearly some crossover, but it was until really Raleigh and Atlanta where we started to feel everybody. By Copper Mountain it was clear that everybody was watching both bands. When I got off the stage and I kind of walked around the village a little bit and hit up some parties. I’ve been hanging out with Biscuit kids in the Biscuit scene for 12 years and I was relishing in the Umphrey’s scene on D.U.M.B. tour. It’s all new kids and it’s just a different vibe. It’s just new and fun. We have a lot of close friends from the Umphrey’s McGee scene whom we’ve met over the last three years. We’ve become really close friends with some of their close friends. It was then, after our show together in Copper, that it all started to come together for me.

We were hanging out at this one party that was primarily Umphrey’s fans and there was an overwhelming vibe, a shift in the way that their fanbase was treating us. And it was clear. It took a year, or maybe two years, of constant working together, playing together, being together, side-projects, main projects, whatever it was. There were all kinds of collaborations. There has been two years of collaborations and I think that finally, after two years, we’re feeling the love. I’m feeling the love from Umphrey’s’ crowd and I know that they’re starting to feel the love from our crowd. That’s huge because, as Dave Murphy said, “there are places in the country where we don’t do well.” We can sell out the Tweeter Center and STS9 can sell out Red Rocks, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Disco Biscuits, Sector 9, Umphrey’s McGee and Tea Leaf Green and all of these bands have a really long road ahead of them in terms of growing into their potentials across the country. These are four bands from different regions of the country that have enormous, enormous potential and if we do band together, we can save our scene.

MG- In certain ways what you’re saying reminds me of the original H.O.R.D.E era.

MB- And, of course, the metal scene of the 80s blazed that trail. And the hippie scene of the 60’s blazed that trail too, when Janis Joplin and Starship and the Dead and all of these bands would go out on the road together. You know it’s a no-brainer. It’s a business practice that has been practiced for 40 years and even going back obviously into the 30’s and 40’s with the jazz groups that would go out together. You take these groups, you package them together, and you have results.

Now in the jamband scene, over the last 5 ,6, 7 years, the results hadn’t always been as glowing as people were hoping they were going to be. When you put String Cheese and Leftover Salmon and moe. and Galactic together, the Hoodoo Bash or whatever, the results weren’t always as glowing as they could have been. We calculated, based on knowing that information and we tried to do the right thing and play smart plays. When we went out with Umphrey’s, we tried to do it in the right way and do it in a way where we could put these bands together and have it be one plus one equals two-and-a-half and not one-and-a-half.

MG- Was it a conscious decision not to collaborate onstage with Umphrey’s McGee each night?

MB- It’s funny that you actually just pointed that out. I think people expected us to come out and do Brain Damage every night and have Brendan [Bayliss] sit-in on five songs a night and have me sit in with Umphrey’s. That expectation was out there, but that was never really our intention. I think right when we got to the tour, the question was asked, “Are we gonna get together and collaborate constantly?” It was me and Brendan in a room on the first night, before the first show and I said, “Well what do you want to do about the collaboration issue?” and he said “What do you think?” and I said, “I think we should hold off on it for a couple of days. We should get out there and let Umphrey’s be Umphrey’s and let the Biscuits be the Biscuits and that’s the best thing we could do for our bands. We’re not out here to be one band. We’re out here to show two fan bases that both of these bands are terrific bands, in different ways.” It was such a great experience, being out there on tour with Umphrey’s. Obviously, it’s not even close to halfway done and what I would say to our fans is: get used to it, because we love it. It’s not going to end anytime soon.

It’s so good for us and good for them, musically and otherwise. Personally, just being on tour with your friends, it just makes tour that much more fun. And that’s the key to having the Disco Biscuits crush from night to night. When we are having fun, we crush. And when we’re not having fun, we could go out there and play good shows, but in order to really blow people’s minds, we need to all be feeling it, one every level. We need to wake up every morning and say “Thank God we’re on tour right now.” There needs to be a love of your own band for people to love it. It’s just like with anything. People always say it. It’s like when you’re growing up and they tell you “You need to love yourself first and then other people will love you,” when you’re growing up and learning how to interact socially with other people, how to have a girlfriend. I remember when I was in eighth grade and I would get advice from my older brother’s girlfriend: “Just be confident and love yourself and other people will love you, too.”

It’s the same thing. If you love the art that you’re doing, other people will feel that and you’ll feel that love coming right back at you. And there’s so much of that on D.U.M.B. tour that you feel it every night. When I got off stage at Copper Mountain and had some Umphrey’s fans walk up to me at that party and express their love for what was going on with the Biscuits, it made it all worthwhile. The last three years of hard work and collaborations that were done together, it made the whole thing worthwhile. It was really exciting to have a hard-core touring fan of Umprhey’s McGee come up to me at the party on Saturday night and say “I was absolutely blown away by the concert that you pulled off tonight and I just want you to know that you added a ton of fans to your fan-base.”

I was standing with my best friend Sunday night at Copper Mountain watching, Umphrey’s from the soundboard, and he turns to me, in the middle of “Nothing Too Fancy” and they’re just ripping it up, and he goes “Dude, Umphrey’s is sick!” And I was like “Dude, what have I been telling you? I’ve been telling you this for three years!” And he goes “I didn’t really believe it, I think because their name is so silly. I didn’t think that a band with such a silly name could be so good. And I was like “Dude, the Disco Biscuits? What are you talking about? We all have silly names.” And he was like “Well, until you see it, you just can’t believe. It’s hard to believe that something can be so good until you actually experience it for yourself.”

That’s what we’re doing man. We’re out there trying to spread the love and let people realize that we’ve got some really good friends out there who are amazing artists. Like I said, I think it’s working. I think people are opening up to the thing. I don’t know what people areI know there are naysayers out there. I’m not ignorant. But I don’t know what the naysayers are saying. I don’t pay attention to it and I kind of just have this feeling that it is a vocal minority. If there is even a vocal minority, then it is a minority. When you take the Disco Biscuits and Umphrey’s McGee and put them on a show together and 3,300 or 3,500 people are showing up and the concert field is filled from the second that the opening band starts to the second that the closing band ends, you know that you’re doing the right thing. So it was a really great summer tour. It was really fun.

MG- After all these years on the road, some of which weren’t so glorious, how have you learned balance touring with your family and personal life?

MB- Well, it’s a complex issue. First of all, and this is very important, you can’t be out on the road for too long. If you don’t find a good balance in your life between your family life and your touring life, you’re gonna be miserable when you’re out on the road. The bottom line is, that was our number 1 objective over the last three years. Finding a way to come out and balance the two sides of our lives. We’re getting older. We have other priorities in our lives now that aren’t the band and that’s always kind of been the thing that pulls on you, ever since 1999, when the band had our first period of breaking up. It was that thing that pulls on you. I have other things in my life. You need to find out how to balance, just like with anybody in any job.

You also have to find a way to treat the people in your band and in your crew with utmost respect at all times. As someone like me who gets frustrated very easily and has been known, in the past, to have a bad temper, that’s very important to me. You have to find a way to mitigate the damage that you do by getting frustrated or having an incident with your temper out on tour. And the way to do that is to grow up and mature and not have those incidents happen. So for us having fun on tour is just as important as treating each other with respect. We’ve obviously matured a lot over the last ten years. We’ve grown up together. We’ve grown up as friends and brothers and family. I think you get to a certain point where you just learn to co-exist peacefully.Everybody has mood swings. Everybody. There’s nobody who doesn’t sometimes wake up and feel like this isn’t where they want to be today or they just aren’t feeling it or whatever it is. But you have to control those. You can’t let it weigh on other people and you need to get some space for yourself. And that’s another huge issue.

Another way to make touring more fun is by doing what we did with Umphrey’s this summer; going out with other bands, having a great tour manager like we do and planning fun things. Like we were driving from L.A. to Colorado and we take our day off in Moab. We pull into Moab and our tour manager Mike [Polans] rents us a van and he says, “Everybody get in the van” and he drives us out to Arches National Park, where we spend our day off. That’s what we did last week. It’s just a minor thing, but it really isn’t that minor.

It could be pulling into San Francisco and Mike turning to everyone and saying “Hey, tonight we’re eating at House of Nanking. It’s the greatest Chinese food on the whole West Coast. Let’s go! Who wants to come?” And then you go and you have this amazing experience in Chinatown and you eat the most unbelievable food you’ve ever eaten and that’s because that’s what our tour manager cares about. He cares about us eating the best food in the country. He cares about us spending our day off in them most beautiful place in the country. He cares about that stuff not just for us but for himself, which is why having a guy like that on board is so important. Mike has changed everything for us, because the way he tours is to make the tour bearable. So there are all these issues there’s routing and that’s a huge focus for us.

So, a huge focus for the Disco Biscuits is keeping the band feeling positive. And if we can keep ourselves feeling positive, which we have for a huge amount of years now, things are going to move in the right direction. Ever since we found that inner-balance in terms of our relationships with each other and our relationships with our music and our relationships with our expectations and the future of the band, what we expect to happen and how fast we expect it to happen and what we think our potential is. And ever since we’ve sort of come to peace with that, things have been moving forward as fast as they ever have.

MG- How do you feel the Disco Biscuits’ semi-touring hiatus has affected the band’s growth?

MB- It’s weird because in some places that made us bigger. In some places, we disappeared and we had to start from scratch like we were the Pnuma Trio or something. No disrespect to Pnuma. Love you! Love you Pnuma! But it’s like when we go to Arkansas for the first time in six years, nobody’s heard of us out there. We have the advantage of having marquee slots at Bonnaroo and marquee slots at Wakarusa and marquee slots at Summer Camp and 10,000 Lakes and High Sierra. So we do have the advantage of being able to kind of lay low for three or four years and then come out big in a region, which is kind of what happened with Summer Camp and Wakarusa last summer. I think kind of everything moving in the right direction at the same pace, it worked really quickly to bring us back a legitimate force in some places. And like I said before, we have a long way to go. When you see our potential in New York and Pennsylvania and Colorado for Sector 9 and Milwaukee and Chicago for Umphrey’s, you look at these bands and you say “Well, if you can play Red Rocks or you can play the Tweeter Center or you can play the Aragon for three nights, then you should be able to do that anywhere in the country.” It’s just a matter of doing the right things, putting the time in, putting the hard work in and working together to get there.

MG- For instance, opening for String Cheese in Berkeley clearly exposed you to some new west coast fans.

MB- At our age we’ve learned to take our ego and check it at the door. Ego will crush you. We, the Disco Biscuits, needed to recognize that early on. We were with Sector 9 in front of their fan-base at the Greek Theatre the other night and they’re going to be in front of our fan-base in three weeks. And I know, I mean I was standing there on stage when those six thousand people gave us the warmest reception we’ve ever received in California the other day. We were standing there and it was just a massive ovation. It was years of hard work and strategy and it was the luck and the decision to fly from Minnesota to get in front of that fan-base on that particular afternoon. It’s just like things fall into place sometimes. We weren’t going to be anywhere near there and we said “You know what? This is an opportunity that we can’t turn down.

Michael Travis told me last week that he is only interested in listening and playing electronic music and it’s crazy to see their evolution. You can see from the side-projects why they are breaking up, they are interested in all these styles. But I have faith that they will get back together in a few years, maybe just more electronic. I remember when the Disco Biscuits played Colorado early on some of their crew came down to see us and a few months later they had “Rivertrance.” Around the same time Phish was getting more into their synthesizers and “Tube” or whatever. Everyone was moving in the same direction at the same time, the collective unconscious. Now we can go out there and play a phat [instrumental, electronic] “Boom Shaker” and people will go nuts. That wasn’t always the case.

But it feels great to see these bands. And Sector 9 has its own style. It’s kind of hybrid between the Phish scene and the Biscuits scene. It’s a little bit more hippie, but it still has that kind of urban, hip-hop flair to it. So you kind of just see that there’s this whole new generation of kids and this is what they know, this is what they’ve been brought up with. They may like Phish or they have never even heard Phish. The key is that they’re coming into the Disco Biscuits, Sector 9 and Umphrey’s McGee shows with a fresh slate in terms of what they’ve been exposed to. This stuff is new and exciting and fresh and modern and they’re embracing it. They’re embracing it stylistically and they’re embracing it musically and they’re out there, just like 20 years ago with the Dead and 10 years ago with Phish. They’re out there putting their heart and their soul and their money and their time and their effort into touring around with these bands. It’s still happening. The scene is alive. The scene is strong and fresh. We’re out there on the road every night, watching it, cultivating it. You can see it in bands like Pnuma who were influenced by the Biscuits and Sector 9. [Pnuma’s Alex Botwin] is a great electronic producer in addition to being a great bass player.

MG- With String Cheese’s future in question, how would you describe the current state of the jamband scene?

MB- Maybe the scene got a little bit smaller after Phish broke up and after the Dead disappeared. Well there are new bands out there and we’re working it, man. We’re working it hard and we’re cultivating a whole new generation of young, fresh, music loving children. And that’s what this is all about, for us. It’s about getting out there and spreading the love.

MG- What is your ideal Camp Bisco lineup? Can you name some bands you hope to book in the coming years?

MB- We target electronic bands and some of the bigger bands like Umphrey’s, the Twisted Records crew and this new Brooklyn dance scene. Hopefully, LCD Soundsystem will be playing next year. Last year was amazing. We had Thievery Corporation and the Roots and so we had kind of started to move in this direction of hip-hop and indie-electronic, but I think this year’s lineup kind of takes the cake in terms of amount of more well-known artists. Just across the board. There are more well-known artists at this Camp Bisco than there ever have been. You’re not just talking about well-known artists; you’re talking about geniuses. You’re talking about people who have gotten critical acclaim across the entire world. Amon Tobin? Come on, are you kidding me? That guy’s an unbelievable, unbelievable musician/artist. And god, there are so many we haven’t even gotten yet. Squarepusher, LCD Soundsystem. We’re going to get em! Squarepusher’s coming, I promise. We’re gonna do it. I’m not gonna rest. I’m not quitting this band until Squarepusher plays Camp Bisco.

MG- Since Simon Posford first played Camp Bisco in 2005 you have collaborated with him in several settings. He also recently produced some new tracks for the Disco Biscuits. Are those tracks going to be included on the same album you were working on when we spoke earlier this year for Relix?

MB- It’s all for the same CD. There are just new tracks and a new direction. The CD has been developing and growing. Most of the stuff that we played for people a while ago are not gonna be on the CD anymore.

MG- Like some of the hip-hop influenced material?

MB- Actually a lot of the hip-hop influenced stuff is making the CD. A lot of that stuff is going to be on there. But some of the stuff that we were writing at the same time that we were working on the hip-hop stuff that was more Biscuit-influenced, I think a lot of that stuff has kind of fallen by the wayside and there’s kind of a new direction we’re taking. We’re trying to make the CD sound complete and whole and we’re kind of struggling with that, because we’ve moved in five different directions at the same time. Artistically, we’re exploring a lot of different fields. We’re exploring down-tempo and dub, but we’re also exploring indie-rock. We have a lot of different feelers out there in terms of where this music’s gonna go, so we’re trying to fit it all together and make it sound cohesive. The inspiration that we’re drawing out of all the work we’re doing in the studio is kind of slowly working its way into our improv.

MG- Do you feel these new songs have influenced your current live sound?

MB- We’re not playing the songs yet, but the vibe of the improv is definitely affected by that. And then there’s the [new drummer] Allen Aucoin issue, you know. Allen is just killing it. He isn’t just formulaically playing trance-jams like he was the first few months we were playing with him. He’s feeling it and he’s bringing his own flavor into it and he’s kind of taken his own direction with it. And that’s inspiring. That makes being on tour fun. When Allen takes you the top of the “Morph” jam like he did the other night in San Francisco, you can’t help but come off the stage with a smile on your face. The guy is doing things that is pushing our band to new limits, new heights.

We’re not done with this thing yet. We’re growing, we’re pushing forward, we’re changing our music and we’re evolving our sound. Murphy talked a lot about evolving his sound in the Jambands.com interview I was reading and it’s such a key. It’s such a key component to growing artistically to grow your band and to grow in general. You need to grow with the scene. Your music needs to evolve with the music of the world. You can’t just let other shit evolve past you and stick where you are. That’s not gonna work.

MG- It is interesting that you mention that because the jambands who have survived have, by and large, adapted to current musical trends, whether that is electronic, indie-rock or more progressive hard rock.

MB- Exactly. And that’s exactly why, from the very beginning, I thought that those were the three bands [STS9, the Disco Biscuits and Umphrey’s] that were going to emerge. They were the three bands that were experimenting out of the realm that has been traditionally accepted in the jamband scene.

MG- What are your current goals as a musician?

MB- In certain ways, it’s not about being in a big band,’ it is about being able to survive as a musician without getting a new job. We all reached at level. Umphrey’s bus is about as nice at Dave Matthews’ bus. We all have houses and nice cars. So, at the level we are at, have we survived? Have we reached our goals? In terms of reaching your potential as a musician, that is a never ending goal that shifts and changes. Now the greater electronic producers and great jamband musicians are rubbing elbows in the studio. We have been open to it for years. The hard part was getting the electronic producers to agree [laughs]. Now, I’m sitting the studio with Posford ripping bass lines and having him say something like, “Give it to me deeper Brownstein.”

MG- A few of my friends recently went to see the Bays at the Glades Festival. I found it interesting that even though it is an electronic music festival, they described the crowd as “European hippies.”

MB- Posford is almost the European Disco Biscuits in that he is enormous in some circles and in other places nobody knows who he is. Posford just e-mailed and said, “He was knee deep and mud that the vibe was great.” He said it best, “The scenes have been merged.”

We have a song that was written by Barber and the guy who wrote “War with God” on the Ludacris album, and produced by Simon Posford. So, here we have the king of the psychedelic trance world coming together with the Philly hip-hop scene and the jamband scene. Like come on! It’s too much! World’s are colliding.

MG- Just throw in DFA to do a re-mix and you’ll get all four worlds together.

MB- For us, we have 35 new songs that nobody’s heard and there’s like an incredible amount of inspiration that we’re drawing out of that, because we have a new sound that we’re working on in the studio and it’s sort of seeping in a little bit in the live show. People may not know it, people may know it. One of my good buddies said something to me last week on the West Coast tour. He said, “You guys are getting extremely psychedelic this week. They keyboard lines that are coming out, they’re very like sweet and psychedelic. He said a lot of “very Posford influenced” stuff was coming out. Well, we’d been sitting in the studio with Simon Posford for a week, you know?

MG- You have been playing music long enough to see your fans grow into everything from Investment Bankers to Interpol’s lighting designer. How would you describe the evolution of your fanbase?

MB- It’s so hard to imagine ten years ago, when everyone had seen Phish and they were playing 100 shows a year, that there would be a time when Phish wouldn’t be there anymore. It’s so hard to imagine a time where there were kids who had never seen Phish or never seen the Grateful Dead. And those kids were six years old at the time. So, here you are, looking at six year-olds and saying “in ten years you’re my target audience?” This kid is like watching Elmo and singing Barney and now he’s singing “Nughuffer” and watching the Camp Bisco DVD.

So, there definitely is disconnect in your brain when you’re trying to imagine these six year-olds being Biscuit fans in ten years. But, they are now and it’s amazing because there is a Biscuit fanbase. At Copper Mountain we’d sit at the sound board and pick Umphrey’s fans and Biscuits fans from the crowd. Well hell, it’s real easy. It’s all in the hats. Is the brim flat or is the brim curved? Curved brim equals Umphrey’s, flat brim Biscuits. The flat brim hat thing isn’t like a Biscuits crew thing. The Biscuits crowd borrowed it from the hip-hop world. The Biscuits crowd dresses more urban, with hip-hop clothing. The Umphrey’s crowd dresses a little bit more preppy, kind of college fraternity clothing. So it’s cool. It’s cool that Umphrey’s has a crowd and that the Biscuits have a crowd and you can identify them from their style, from how they look. We have our own style. It is what it is. It’s not patchwork and patchouli; that’s Phish’s style. It’s great because that was our style when started out. That was our target, that’s who we were hitting up. But they didn’t have New Era flat brim hats back then.