The story of Fluke Starbucker is the story of a whiny farmboy, a brash starpilot, a headstrong princess and an aging general. Actually, it's the story of four talented musicians who are using the force to bring balance to the Bay Area music scene.
There's Ted, the lead singer and guitarist, who got his wisdom teeth out before the interview and spent the whole night ladling liquid on his dry sockets and popping Vicodan. There's Trevor, the drummer, who is the other original band member along with Ted. He's sick tonight with the flu, and he's really only doing the interview because the rest of the guys made him. There's Derek on bass, a relative newcomer to the lineup after the original bassist left. He declined to come to the interview in favor of his couch nap. Last but not least is Jeremy on keyboards and percussion. At one time when we were alone at our table, Jeremy told me that his main musical goal for Fluke included making soundtracks for pornographic movies. I'm pretty sure he was kidding.

Fluke Starbucker was formed long ago in a galaxy far, far away (Minnesota, 1994). Ted and Trevor met in high school, and started a punk band called the Toy Yodas. "As you can see, the Star Wars theme started out pretty early," says Ted. I asked Ted and Trevor about how they met each other, and each of them had a different tale.

"Actually," says Ted, "I dated Trevor's mom
for a while when we were younger, and he and I started hanging out after that blew over." Trevor pipes in at this with, "Come on Ted." He looks at me and says, "What really happened was that Ted got pregnant when we were in high school and when his water broke I was the only one who had any towels."
Whichever of these two stories is true, Ted and Trevor hooked up with Mike, their original bass player and began making music in America's heartland. Their name is derived from a Star Wars spoof called Hardware Wars. According to Ted, Hardware Wars was designed to be the antithesis of Star Wars and throw a pie in the face all the hype. "(Hardware Wars) was completely cheesy, with flying toasters and joke names for all the characters. They called the effects in it 'Special Defects', and the whole thing looked like it was made in a basement."
Ted squirts some more liquid into his tooth-sockets. "When we first started the band, we were just called 'Starbucker'. We'd all do characters on stage. I was Fluke Starbucker, because I called it first. Trevor would be Ham Salad or Oggie Ben Doggie, depending on what he felt like that night. Mike would be Princess Ann Droid, because he had long hair." The characterizations fell away as the band progressed musically, and they took on the rest of the Fluke Starbucker name.

After a couple years, the band decided to head west. They ended up living in Oakland, and I get the feeling that they moved partially for the area's music scene and partially to be in George Lucas' stomping grounds. "The coolest thing (after the move to California) was that we actually met Fluke Starbucker, the guy in the movie.", says Trevor. "His real name is Scott Matthews, and he's a music producer now. He's produced all sorts of stuff, everything from John Lee Hooker to Barbara Streisand. We were going to be playing at North by Northwest up in Portland, and Scott happened to be in town speaking at some club up there."

"Yeah, it was cool," interjects Ted, "Scott ended up going to lunch with the owner of the club we were playing, and (Scott) asked who was playing that night. The club owner was like 'I don't know, Scootch Flarnucker, Flake Marmaduke, something like that'. Scott got it out of him that it was Fluke Starbucker, and made the club owner promise to tell us he wanted to meet us. We ended up playing our set in half the normal time so we could hang out with him because we were so eager to hang out with him. We talked for a while and the next thing I knew we (the band, minus Scott) were at some strip bar where topless women were serving us steak and eggs. The whole thing was really surreal, but Scott ended up producing "Senseless Beauty" for us and we put it on Hooker at Sea."

After releasing Paper Thin, the band's first album and a couple of years playing with Fluke in the bay area, things started to get tough for Mike. The other two could see that being part of Fluke Starbucker kept him away from his wife and daughter a lot and it was putting lots of pressure on him. During the Fall of 1998 there was a long heart-to-heart and Ted and Trevor let Mike know that there wouldn't be any hard feelings if he felt he had to leave the band. He decided to do just that.