As Sparta prepared to end their stint early as co-headliners of the SnoCore Tour due to unforeseen circumstances, drummer Tony Hajjar was nice enough to sit down and spend some time with Street. The band -- who came into being after At the Drive-In announced their "hiatus" in 2001 - put out their first full length album Wiretap Scars in 2002, while opening for some of the best bands around. Do you find it weird touring during wartime? The war is so fucking annoying. It drives me nuts, like how every time it's on TV you stay glued because you want to see the next fucking smoke bubble come up. It's disgusting... like if you've ever been around war, you'll never want to look at it on TV that much. I grew up around war, I grew up in the Civil War in... my last memory of Lebanon before I left to the US - I was five years old, and a neighbor told us to go up to the top of the apartment building we were living in and there was a missile stuck in the top of our apartment building that was a dud. I mean that was the night before I came to the US, I could have never come. My sister tells story of how -- we're Christian -- and how the Muslim troops were going through in the Civil War and they had heads on sticks of the people they had just killed. When you really see that, you won't be fucking cheering every time someone says the name George Bush in Atlanta, Georgia. So what happens after this tour? After this tour, now we have eleven days off. We're doing a tour with Bad Religion - we're doing two weeks with them. Then we have a day off, and we go straight to the first Pearl Jam tour. Those are some pretty good bands. Yeah, I mean I was talking to Darryl last night from Glassjaw, and he was just like, "You motherfuckers, you guys are so lucky." The tours we've been asked to do, and the tours that we said no to because of time and stuff like that, are just amazing. Is it the band's management that says Pearl Jam or the Queens of the Stone Age really want to have you? Well the thing is, with Queens and Pearl Jam and Bad Religion, its all been through band members talking. Like Brooks [Wackerman, Bad Religion's drummer] came to see us in L.A., and called me the next day -- you know, band-to-band, drummer-to-drummer type thing. The Pearl Jam thing was literally because the monitor guy we had on the Weezer tour worked for the sound company. He said the first thing I do when I go on the Pearl Jam tour is give Eddie a CD, and he gave Eddie the CD and we got a call from Eddie Vedder. And then the Queens thing, we became really good friends in Australia -- we had met them years ago in our old band and stuff like that, but we became really good friends when we were in Australia for three weeks in January. One day, Josh [Homme] comes up to me and just goes, "the tour's yours if you say yes." It's literally band member to band member, which is the way you're supposed to do it. What do you guys do in your time off - besides when you only have one day. I just bought a house and when I go home - I've only spent 13 hours in my house. I got my house on a Monday six weeks ago, and I got it at 4 o'clock, I got handed the keys, and its just like what the hell, I fucking own a house. I moved - all of my friends helped me - from like 4 to 12 - and then at midnight - I went to sleep at one, woke up at 6 and started this tour. I literally got up and flew to Albuquerque. Then when we played LA, we played the Mayan - it's this place in downtown LA and that night I went home and I slept and I woke up and left.. So have you guys started writing more material for a second album? I think that there's ideas there. think we're in a very lucky situation because all of us write music, it's not like we're depending on Jim or Paul or whatever, like, "come on, can you guys write some songs?" I'm excited, I think we're very, very lucky and did a really good introduction to the world and now its kind of like less questions about our old band and people are asking about us now, which is goddamn right, it's fucking time you know. So in September we're going to start writing again, we're going to buy a building in El Paso, Texas and build a studio and use our money correctly and then use the other part of our recording budget and record the record. So we can make a home for Sparta and Sparta's friends. So if there's a band that needs to record to go out on the road, they can record. Is that going to be a part of the record label you guys have? Yeah, the name is almost official. The first thing we'll release is our vinyl for Wiretap, and then if it all works out, I've been talking to Dredg, we're going to let our their vinyl for their full-length also. If you record collection was on fire, what would you save? Master of Puppets on vinyl. Do you have a lot of belt buckles [noticing his odd belt buckle]? Oh yeah, I collect belt buckles. What's your favorite one? I have this really cool oval-shaped Jack Daniels, and it says where the distillery was made and all this stuff, its really cool. And my buddy used to be a firefighter and he gave me a really cool one with an engine -- you know, one's too big to wear, it brings my pants down but they're really cool and stuff like that.And this is my latest one [points to the one he has on], my two best friends are doctors so I kind of wear it for them.

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