A waitress walks by Jim Wickerath as he takes a sip of water and lights a cigarette. She asks Dan Morrison if there is anything she can get him and he declines. The two of them, members of the band Unkald 4, discuss an upcoming performance.

The band is relatively new, only having been around for about a year, says Morrison, the guitarist. Before Unkald 4, Morrison and Wickerath, the bassist, were playing in a project called Bent.

When Bent fell apart, Morrison and Wickerath decided to form a band. They found drummer Rick Love, who said he knew a guy that would work well with the band. That man was singer, Nick Pugvy, also known as Mr. Nic. They began practicing together and it was out of these practices that the band’s name was created.

“Our name came about when we were practicing,” Wickerath says. “Something crazy happened in practice, and somebody said, ‘That’s uncalled for.’ The name stuck. Later, one of the guys looked at the name and said, ‘Hey, you should spell it like this, and that’s how it happened.'”

Morrison says a lot of the songwriting takes place during practice. He will make something up and the rest of the band follows.

“Usually, I’ll come up with a riff,” Morrison says. “Everybody starts playing along with the riff and the singer puts words to it.”

Morrison and Wickerath describe the band’s music as edgy and hard-hitting. Morrison says the members don’t write their music to appeal to any certain audience.

“It’s got to appeal to us,” Wickerath says. “If it doesn’t jive with us, then we drop it right there.”

Later in the discussion, Pugvy walks into the diner and sits beside Wickerath. He joins in on the conversation.

“Generally what happens is some mood we are all in at the time will come across in what we write,” Pugvy says.

Unkald 4 works hard to bring its mood to its audience. Pugvy says the band tries to interact with the audience and have a few laughs at the same time.

“If you go to one of our shows, you will see old-time entertainment,” Pugvy says. “We interact with the crowd. We play what is our own without any emphasis on any decade. We play whatever the hell we want at the time.”

Wickerath says the band loves performing for people. The audience serves as an outlet; a good audience helps energize the band and helps make the band perform better, he says.

“It’s real for me,” Wickerath says. “It’s the feeding off the crowd that gets me going. During a show, we feed off of the audience and they feed off of us.”

Stage fright is generally not an issue when they perform for a crowd, Wickerath says. The members of Unkald 4 generally have a few drinks to loosen themselves before a show.

“I try to keep my mind off the show as close to the show as possible,” Pugvy says. “If I don’t keep my mind off of the performance, I freak the other guys out. I’ll down a few Shastas, and I’m ready to go.”

At their next show there will be a wet T-shirt contest. Morrison and Wickerath smile and nod.