No other person has had quite an impact on the Bay Area music scene like Cole Kakimoto. For almost a decade he has played an active role in it beyond music. He’s currently the founder and owner of Print Head, a screen printing company in San Jose that’s made countless merchandise for countless hardcore bands. Musically he’s contributed to the Bay Area scene playing in bands from the San Jose area. The most popular was playing guitar for hardcore punk band Gulch which lasted from 2016 to 2022. He plays bass guitar in the death metal band Spinebreaker and punk band Seltzer. A year ago he started the nonprofit organization MILC Project which aims to increase accessibility for rock climbing and trail running activities with merchandise made by Print Head. After the MILC Project picked up steam, Cole was reached out to by outdoor clothing and shoe brand Arc’Teryx to become an ambassador while providing financial support for MILC. I wanted to better understand his journey through these diverse activities by interviewing him.
Q: Describe starting your studio and small business from scratch with Print Head.
A: I was living in Idaho at the time and I wanted to move back to the Bay. I had worked in coffee shops and I didn’t wanna do that again. If I wanted to make a living I was gonna start my own business. So I started to think, well what am I involved in? I play music. And then I thought, what’s involved with music? And then I started to think about merch. I was like, a lot of bands get merch printed, but they were all getting it done by a shop in Los Angeles. All the bay homies were getting it done there. I was thinking if I moved back to the bay and I started printing, they’d probably print with me. So, I moved back, I found the cheapest stuff I could find on Craigslist and started teaching myself how to screen print. I reached out to my friends and said, hey, I’m trying this screen printing thing out, can I make some shirts for your band? And then from there it just took off really quick and then I started doing it full time. That was 2015. It only took two weeks and I was doing it full time. Now I’m nine years into it. It all just grew very organically and very slowly. A lot of it was word of mouth. I never did advertising, Yelp, any of that stuff. As the business started to grow I was upgrading equipment and there were lots of iterations of Print Head but I took little steps and now it’s a much larger operation, there’s three of us now and we’re doing a thousand prints a day. Whereas when I first started it, I was making maybe sixty shirts a day. It’d take me all day because I was printing it by hand, now we have a lot more automation and a lot more help and manpower, so we can move a lot more product faster.
Q: For people looking to start their journey with the art of screen printing or any form of creating art for bands, professionally or just as a hobby, what advice would you give them?
A: YouTube. Just learn off YouTube, that’s what I did. I didn’t know anything about screen printing. All I did was I went on YouTube and looked up how to screen print. There’s a lot more videos now. Back then there weren’t as many. I just treated it as school, I took notes on the video and would just try and memorize the process and when I found a term or something I didn’t know what it was I would Google it and research deeper. I taught myself everything, I didn’t have a mentor or work in a print shop. I just taught myself literally from YouTube. You can learn anything on YouTube. It’s a really cool time to live in because there’s so many resources for information, it’s insane. You can learn anything, for screen printing or anything somebody’s passionate about, go on YouTube because everyone’s making tutorials and content on how to do pretty much anything.
Q: Did you ever see Print Head Studios as a way of giving back to the hardcore community and helping bands get their start?
A: Definitely. My pricing has always been pretty competitive. It’s still competitive now, I’m still cheaper than the other shops that print for hardcore bands. But when I first started I was charging the least amount that I had to so that bands could get merch made and make a profit because back then bands were only selling shirts for ten bucks. And then it jumped to fifteen, then it jumped to twenty, then to twenty five, and now you’ll see shirts being sold for thirty bucks which is crazy cuz it wasn’t like that. Back when I first started I was doing a ton of work but I wasn’t making much money. I was making minimum wage or less because I just wanted to make it accessible for the bands but now that music has grown and the genre has grown I’ve been able to raise my prices because when a band ups the price of a shirt by five bucks I can raise my prices by like fifty cents. In the beginning it was a thing to make it financially accessible for everybody, and even still now I’m still conscious about charging a price that I feel will allow the band to profit and pay for van rentals, hotels, food, or whatever they need when they’re touring.
Q: Why do you think the Bay Area hardcore scene has become so vibrant and full of so many cutting edge artists putting out new music frequently?
A: I think part of it was good timing. I think the other part was that there were a few really good bands that were happening at the same time and it pushed other people to make music too and we’re all pushing each other to make good music because we’ll hear one of our friends bands and go, “That’s so sick I wanna release something too,” and we all push each other. My generation there’s all the bands I’ve played in and my friends play in. I think we’ve helped inspire the younger generation also, and now those kids are making bands that are touring and touring internationally, now they’re being looked up to by an even younger generation so there’s so many layers to this. So I think when you get a lot of creative people together they’re all pushing each other to make better music or better things.
Q: Speaking of your time in different bands you’ve been in, from Spinebreaker to Gulch and now Seltzer, they’ve each had a unique sound, why do you think you’ve been so versatile musically?
A: For two of those bands I can’t take any credit. I didn’t write anything in Spinebreaker and I don’t write anything in Seltzer, I just play in them. For Gulch, I wrote all that stuff. But I can’t take credit for the sound of those other two bands. As far as versatility, I like a lot of different music and I feel like my playing abilities are pretty okay, so I’m able to get inserted into whatever band I can usually hold my own.
Q: Looking at what you’re doing in Seltzer, where do you see that project going?
A: We’re all just having fun with that one because a few of us play in different bands. I play in a couple bands, all the members play in a couple of bands, so Seltzer is more of a fun thing to do and that genre is a lot harder to play really frequently with that sound. It’s a lot easier with hardcore because there’s so many hardcore shows happening all the time. So we’re kind of laid back and playing when we can and hopping on shows that sound interesting to us. But I don’t think there’s any agenda with the band, we’re all just having fun with it.
Q: At what point did you decide that running and rock climbing would become more than just a hobby for you and a way of giving back to your community?
A: With rock climbing that happened because I’ve been climbing for a year or two and I noticed in the gym at least there weren’t a lot of people that looked like me or more alternative. There’s a lot of rich people climbing because it’s expensive. It’s a hundred bucks a month for a membership. I was like, how can I get more creative looking people into the space? So I decided to start hosting the events where I cover everybody’s cost for the day and they can come and climb for free so just tried to make it more accessible that way and I just wanted to give back because I’ve been really secure with Print Head, so I always like to have other projects to work on and I thought was interesting and beneficial for the community so that’s why I started MILC originally. Then when I got into trail running I realized what trail running did for me and wanted to get other people into it and it’s more accessible than rock climbing because you can just go onto a trail and run for free. Obviously you need the right shoes and hydration and whatever, but it’s a really accessible sport and I think there’s a lot of physical health benefits to it, a lot of mental health benefits to it, and I think that people just need to get introduced to outdoor activities like that because most people aren’t brought into the space naturally, you have to have someone bring you into the space so I want to be that person to get people out on the trail and show them what it could be.
Q: What did the partnership with Arc’teryx mean to you as someone who knows what it’s like to partner with creatives such as yourself professionally?
A: The partnership with Arc’teryx was a huge surprise to me that they even wanted to partner with me. I was really stoked on that and it’s been awesome to work with them and it’s nice to have their backing because they trust my vision and they will support it financially and providing people to help me run these events and stuff so it’s been really cool and I’m really excited to keep expanding what is possible with them with climbing and running and whatever else.
Q: What other athletic activities could you see MILC dipping its toes into and what’s the future for it as a whole?
A: I’m not sure for other sports. I try to pick things that are easily done locally. I think I’m gonna stick with trail running and climbing. I do want to do more with MILC. I want to do more with the clothing part of it. It’s a constantly morphing thing and will follow whatever my interests are so I guess we’ll see where my interests take me and MILC will follow that. I’ll probably come up with new ways to reach different groups of people that might benefit a bit from whatever MILC can provide. For now I’m just gonna keep it climbing and running.
Q: Any last words for our readers or anyone interested in what you’re involved in?
A: If you’re interested in climbing or trail running follow @milc.project to see what I’m doing. And for people looking for a creative outlet just know it’s a lot easier and attainable to do things like what I’m doing than people think. It’s hard to get people to take that first step. A lot of people will have these ideas and not know how to execute it, but it’s a lot easier than you think. With MILC I just put out the word and had people show up and it happened. And now it’s a thing that happens all the time so I just want people to know whatever creative ideas you have, just tackle it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to overthink it. Just start it and it’ll roll out the way it’s supposed to and you’ll learn and you’ll adapt and you’ll be able to have that creative outlet and hopefully it’ll help other people too.
Cole’s journey with each of these activities is far from over, and it’s exciting to see where he’ll go next with them or anything else he’ll create. But it’s certain that he’ll leave the Bay Area scene and anything else he gets involved with better than he found it. A huge thank you to him personally for allowing me to do this interview and his impact on the Bay Area music scene. Print Head and their incredible merch (especially tee shirts). The bands he’s played in such as Spinebreaker, Seltzer, and Gulch for their unique sound and the impact they’ve left. The MILC Project for allowing me and numerous others to improve their physical and mental health by giving us access to new activities. Lastly, thank you readers and listeners of 90.5 KSJS and KSJS.Org for tuning into this article and 90.5 KSJS FM, ground zero radio.
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