THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

And all the beautiful confusion/Keeps coming back but it'll be OK." Such optimism is refreshing. The answer may also be in both the title and the lyrics of "More, More," in which Gust sings "I let myself be kissed by a total stranger/But I couldn't find a place safe enough to park/Dimmed the lights, blew out the flame that started with a spark/No one stays together in the dark." It must be more than luck bringing Gust such amorous opportunities. Talent, perseverance, and an outlook that's been missing from queer music all figure into the equation.

Gregg Shapiro: When you formed No. 2, do you feel like you were able to capture some of the momentum that you had established as a member of Heatmiser or did it feel like completely starting over?

NG: It felt like completely starting over from scratch. I didn't feel any momentum at all. It took a couple of years, before we put out our record, of writing songs and meeting with different people, trying to get to something that I liked, that I felt like I could put out.

GS: In 1999, No. 2 toured as the opening act for former fellow-Heatmiser Elliott Smith. That seems like a magnanimous gesture on both of your parts.

NG: Well, it wasn't really ... I didn't think of it that way.

GS: It just seems like, because here you are starting off with a new band, and he was going solo. Not that you needed to wash your hands of each other, but a lot of times you see these artists that formerly worked together in a band sort of separating completely. The fact that you were touring with your new band and opening for him was interesting.

NG: Elliot was a very, very close friend. He asked and we said yes. Our friendship went beyond the bounds of just being in a band together. In fact, we were friends long before we were in Heatmiser together. It seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do.

GS: No. 2 also played some shows with Sleater-Kinney. That seems like an inspired combination, representing both the male and female aspects of the queer music coming out of the Pacific Northwest.

NG: The pairing of my band with Sleater-Kinney has very little to do with anybody's sexual orientation. It's more that I'm very good friends with Janet ( Weiss of Sleater-Kinney ) , and ( have been ) very good friends with Janet for a long time. Usually when you're playing with bands, you just play with who you have relationships with and that's the reason why we would play with Sleater-Kinney, because of that. As far as who we are reaching, you know Sleater-Kinney has a very well-defined audience, who responds tremendously to their aesthetic and their message and their ideas. Ours are different than that. We certainly had fun playing with them, but I have no idea if people were responding to our ideas in any capacity that they respond to Sleater-Kinney's.

GS: What Does Good Luck Bring?, the new second disc by No. 2, is being released three years after the debut disc No Memory. How would you describe band evolution in the time between the two releases?

NG: Well, this record we tried very, very hard to get better and to do things that we've never tried before and to also try to sound like more of a band. Less of me doing and making all of the creative decisions and imposing those decisions on the rest of band. There are things on the new record where it was made up in practice, aspects of the songs that were made up in practice. The character of Paul and Jim hopefully come across more clearly. Hopefully, it's more of an appealing chemistry than the first record. Personally, I think that bands are all chemistry. So it was an attempt to have the chemistry come forward in an appealing way. Whether it really does it or not, I don't know, but that's what we were trying.

GS: "For the Last Time" is essentially a break-up song, ( with the lines "Rolling up the red carpet/Pulling out of the socket/You packed everything in your car then walked away/Now you've come to the end/And he's acting just like a friend" ) and yet it has an upbeat feel to it. Why did you create that juxtaposition?

NG: Often times, when you approach the end of a relationship, whether it's a romantic relationship or any type of relationship, like the relationship I had with Elliott in Heatmiser. All things come to an end. The sound of that song is meant to embrace it and learn from it rather than have it be this destructive and paralyzing thing. Feeling paralyzing is one of the worst feelings that I've ever had. A lot of the new record is about trying to deal with that moment in relationships when they end and you have to move on and upward.

GS: Love, or lack thereof, is a recurring theme, as we can hear on "Traveling," which has the great lines: "There's no such thing as a perfect match/For everyone who's unattached/I don't even want a perfect fit/But your target's so far out it can't be hit." Are you writing and singing from your own experience?

NG: Yes, of course. Those particular lines are trying ... to evoke this idea that if you have a really specific set of criteria for love, you'll be disappointed. You have to stay farther open or you'll never come across something that will surprise you or that you can learn from and learn how to absorb, rather than looking for someone to hire into your life like they were an employee.

GS: A little less control.

NG: Much less control, no control. That line in particular was in reference to somebody who had such a specific set of criteria that it had become so specific that it had become so small that nothing's going to hit it. I found myself to have the same set of criteria at times, without even realizing it. So that's what that song's about.

GS: Even after the "I" in the song "Is It True?" finds someone, he is still unsure of himself, as you sing: "Now that I've become attached to you/Will you go find someone new/To do the things I don't know how to do?" That's very powerful, but there's also this great underlying insecurity there.

NG: ( laughs ) Yeah.

GS: Is that an aspect of love, that there will always some threat or some insecurity there?

NG: Yes, because, certainly in my experience, there's been no guarantee. Relationships are work relationships. They're bound by emotions, which are very soft walls. They change and it's terrifying to me to sort of face up to those changes and to embrace them, but that is absolutely what has to happen if you're going to have any type of happiness with them. Those particular lines are more about a moment of being afraid and sort of voicing the fear. It's just asking these questions. The whole song is just a list a questions. Sometimes by asking the questions, you start to know what you are supposed to answer. Even though the song doesn't answer anything, it's just more about asking these questions that are really terrifying.

GS: What kind of job would inspire a song such as 8:45 AM: ( with the repeated lines "I don't want to go to work/I don't want to go to work/I don't want to go to work/I don't want to go" ) ?

NG: ( laughs ) Any day job. I don't know anybody that doesn't want to go to work sometimes.

GS: The song has an unexpected country feel to it.

NG: You know, I didn't even realize it was country until it was done, which just sort of shows you how little we were paying attention.

GS: It feels very organic that it came out that way.

NG: Those words seem to lend itself to that particular piece of music because it's sort of tired and sleepy, but marching along in a methodical way and that's how I feel when I'm getting ready for work. I was getting on my bike and I knew that I had to ride into work and I didn't want to go. I had to because it was my daily routine and I was resisting a routine and that's how that song came together. The fact that it sounds country is sort of a mistake. It wasn't clear that it was country until it was done and now I totally see that it's strangely enough a country song.

GS: What would you like good luck to bring you?

NG: I would probably say less anxiety or some type of calm that would last. Or wisdom. That's what it would be.