13 minute read
THE NIGHT MARCHERS
ROGER CLYNE & THE PEACEMAKERS – TURBO OCHO (Emma Java) Former ‘90s alt-rocker heading for the border
ATTENTION – STAND STRONG (Self-released) & I HATE KATE – EMBRACE THE CURSE (Glassnote) Two frontmen try to get a second chance
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THE ROOTS – RISING DOWN (Def Jam) & ATMOSPHERE – WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, YOU PAINT THAT SHIT GOLD (Rhymesayers) Will progressive rap for food
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NEIL DIAMOND – HOME BEFORE DARK (Columbia) Introspective collection from an often-underrated balladeer
OHN REIS HAS A KNACK FOR STARTING and abruptly stopping some of the best bands around, including Rocket from the Crypt and HotSnakes, just to name a couple. So prepare to get your hopes up and your hearts broken yet again with news that Reis has formed yet another brilliant new band, The Night Marchers. Reis sat down with us recently to talk about the new band (with the sort of colorful description only he could come up with) and the just-released Rocket From The Crypt live CD, and to remind us that he’s “still the best.” As if there was ever any doubt… When did you start putting together this new group?
About nine months ago I started putting ideas on tape and inquired as to everyone’s availability. We cut the ribbon by spray painting our band name on the side of my old high school. We then broke the champagne bottle on our bow by making our first sticker at Kinko’s (pressing of 85). From there, our prolific nature continued to flourish with several designs for an aborted t-shirt project and then finally getting ac cepted to MySpace. You’ve got some of your old band mates in Night Marchers, right? Yeah, J. Sinclair and Dner and myself have seen each other naked as well as played in HotSnakes. Thomas Skitsos is the wild card and the wild man from the French outback of Montreal. He has been in the concert business for years as a bass tech for Crash Test Dummies and monitor man for Men Without Hats, so he really knows his stuff. For fans who know you from RFTC and Hot Snakes, what does the Night Marchers sound like? We sound like everything else on MySpace. Our sound could be described as GGAllin and Hall and Oates riding down a water slide at a boogie woogiethemed water park, but instead of water it’s ShaNa Na’s pee pee mixed with the blood of Christ. It’s kinda typical adult thrash, but without the Benihana beat. It’s definitely different than my previous bands, to some degree– more traditional than either RFTC or Hot Snakes, but with the inescapable sameness inherent in the some of its particles. When The Crypt and Hot Snakes ended, did you consider taking time off or leaving music for good? No. That never crossed my mind. The record was delayed a bit. Was there a problem with recording?
No, the capturing of data went without a hitch. Trying to fit such massive jams on one CD proved to be a bit of a problem. Eventually we changed pressing plants. It only ended up pushing things back a month or so. What are the plans for the band after the record comes out? Touring? Yeah, we got shows, practices and more recording scheduled. All that sorta band stuff. You also have a final Rocket From The Crypt CD/ DVD coming out. When/where were those songs recorded? It’s out now and it’s called RFTC RIP. It’s a document of our final show which happened Halloween 2005 in
San Diego. Is Swami Records coming out with anything new in 2008?
I have some things planned, butI have often opened my mouth prematurely on the matter only to let down nearly dozens of people. I’ve been working on another installment ofAllSystems Go which is the ongoing collection of RFTC rarities and vinyl only recordings that are no longer available. This one will be Volume 3 and will most likely be a two CD package and the final release in the series. We recorded and filmed a couple of HotSnakes shows on our final run of shows. I remember the audio sounding great, but there is so much footage to go through that it’s gonna take a while to get to that one. Dan Sartain, Beehive and the Barracudas, The Spits all have amazing recordings almost ready to go. We’ll see what happens.
As a musician and label owner, do you get a lot of demos handed to you at shows? Do you listen to all of them?
I do get quite a bit of unsolicited material from bands that have no idea of the kind of music Swami releases. I think it’s the product of being on some listing of labels in some “how to make it in the music industry” book or pamphlet. I do get cool stuff time to time from people who are genuinely into the Swami universe of noise and that always gets my attention and I am happy to check it out it. I appreciate the opportunity to stay connected to the music of the street. So yeah, I listen to all of those. I don’t really put out that much stuff and everything I have done thus far has consisted of me reaching out to the bands instead of vice versa. So historically, I’d say it’s probably pretty useless to send in something to the label in hopes of getting a lucrative recording contract. This is especially true when you take into account that my tastes are so extremely refined. Do you still have the radio show? Yeah, I’m still spinning records on 94.9 FM in San Diego doing the Swami SoundSystem. It’s been a lot of fun and a perfect foil to the notion of curbing my record store spending. It’s way cool to hear from the people of the street as to what sounds are offering them relief. So in that regard, it’s also a way to get turned onto new/ old/new-to-me sounds. Anything else you want to add?
I’m still the best. Thanks for giving me the platform to remind you. I’M STILL THE BEST. THANKS FOR G IVING ME THE PLATFORM TO REM IND YOU. MUSIC INTERVIEW
WHEN JOHNNY COMES
MARCHING HOME Former Rocket From The Crypt Frontman John Reis On His New Band, The Night Marchers J BY JOHN B. MOORE
PG 21 • insiteatlanta.com • June 2008 ESPITE HAVING MORE THANHALF a dozen records under their belt at the time, it seemed like Death Cab for Cutie still had something to prove to the record-buying public after signing to Atlantic Records. Their first major label release, Plans, not only appeased longtime fans, but brought in a slew of new ones. The scrutiny gone, Death Cab is prepping their next full length, Narrow Stairs, a slight departure from the band’s customary sound. Though it certainly won’t be classified as metal, the guitars are a little louder and the sound a tad more confrontational. That being said, it still sounds very much like a Death Cab record. Drummer Jason McGerr recently spoke with us about the new record, being a drummer for hire and the beauty of nerdy passions. What can you tell me about the new record? It has been described as more aggressive. How would you describe it?
Adventurous, maybe. It’s sort of like we raised our voices is an easy way to put it. I’ve described records in the past as Tranatlanticism was an inhale and Plans was an exhale. Before you take a big leap you need to take a big breath, so this would qualify as that leap or that jump. It’s very much a culmination of the live band we have become. I don’t feel like it’s this huge, adventurous, bloody crazy thing like everyone seems to quote us as having said, but still it has more teeth. Having heard it, I think it still sounds very much like a Death Cab record. That’s the thing. All the time you read about bands who say, “We really wanted to go off the rails with this one to be totally different. We secluded ourselves for 18 months …” Whenever I read those stories and buy the record, I want to say, “Yeah buddy, it still sounds like your band.” You can’t ever stretch that far from who you are as a band. Ben ( Gibbard) sounds like Ben and the songs sound like Death Cab songs and the production sounds like a Chris Walla record. But it has, hopefully, bits and pieces of everything we have done in the past as a band as well as some new things. Some different energy, and it is very much coming from more of a live performance perspective rather than a very surgically composed album. So Chris produced this one as well? Chris did produce this one. He is the producer. He definitely has the whole thing in mind-- the road map of how it’s going to come together. We all chime in and we all selfproduce our own parts, but he’s credited as the producer. The only differ ence with this album as opposed to the last is that we brought in another engineer; the guy who does front-of-house with us when we play live. His name is Will Markwell. We wanted Chris to be playing guitar more than sitting behind the console this time, and it allowed us to capture more of that full band live sound. It was still very much produced by Walla, but it was nice to have one more set of ears in the room that we trust, but that could also be transparent when necessary. Do you have a favorite track on the record yet?
I like a lot of the songs for different reasons. I think “Grapevine Fires” is one of the best songs Ben has ever written, but I love the energy we captured on “Long Division.” It’s one of the more fun songs to play live. Have you started playing all of the songs live yet? We’ve started playing about seven of them live right now, just to get a feel for them and to see how people are reacting even before hearing the record. Once the album comes out we’ll be playing more. It’s got to be the right time and place and it’s got to fit into the set. It’s also difficult when you’ve got a catalogue of six records now to choose from. What we need to do is take a fan poll and have our fan community help build our set list. Have you thought about putting out a full live album? We kind of have one-- the John Bird EP from 2007-- and we have the Drive Well, Sleep Carefully DVD, but hopefully… We’re geared up to be recording all of our live shows and it could be that something winds up being put together at a later date. I don’t think anything will come our immediately because we’ve got to let the record sit for awhile. Also the rest of the world is doing this for us when you get on YouTube. You can compile your own little live album. You joined the band in 2003?
October of 2002, but the first shows we did were in 2003. Was it odd at all to join a band that had been together for awhile or had you already known the guys?
I had known the guys. I played in a band with Nick (Harmer) for three years before Death Cab had started and that band never really went on to do anything, but we had time together. We had been in some trenches and sweated it out in the practice space and spent a lot of time together as a rhythm section already. I had known Ben and Chris for years just from being in Bellingham (W A) when all those guys came there for school. We hung out and we were contemporaries, going to each other’s shows. In between drummers they had asked me before at different times to play in the band. The timing was just never right until just before Transatlanticism. Nick and I wound up filling in for a bass player and a drummer for this band, Juno, and one night after practice we were talking and we said, “Why don’t we just play together?” We had this musical crush on each other for years and we admire what each other does. I thought they were a really great band, so I said, “We should just work together on the next re cord.” He went back and talked to the band and, long story short, we got together and when we started to play it was, “ Oh, so this is what good chemistry feels like.” The rest is history. I know you’ve played drums for a number of differ ent bands, like Tegan & Sara, in the past. Is there anyone else you’ve been playing with lately? This guy named Matt Nathanson. I did half a record for him last year. There’s a deep catalogue of things, but most of those are either out of print or hard to find. Tegan & Sara was the biggest commercial release I was a part of. Do you enjoy the chance to be able to play songs outside of your main band? Definitely. Literally, you get to wear a different suit to work. As a drummer in a band, I’m not out there as a drummer for hire. I’m not a chameleon who gets hired to do this stuff all the time. It’s more that someone is really into the way that I play or the sound that I get, so when they ask me to be involved in their record they are genuinely excited just to hear what I have to offer, which gives me a lot of liberties to throw in a whole bunch of stuff out there that I typically wouldn’t do. That’s really the fun part. So will you be playing on the next Slayer album? ( Laughs) I’d be all for it! I’ve got some double bass chops. That would be a dream come true to be some incognito drum mer that plays on all these different records that you would never ever guess. The video for “I Will Posses Your Heart” seems like a major undertaking, filmed all over the globe. Are videos important to you as a band? ( Laughs) Everything is important to us. Everyone in the band has a vested interest in everything that is creative, from the artwork to the lyrical font in the artwork and every thing else… All of my band mates just get really into things like this. Because we all have these super nerdy passions for all these creative endeavors, we all have a lot of friends that share these same passions, like Aaron (Stuart-Ahn, who directed the video). BY JOHN B. MOORE D Death Cab For Cutie On Their Eagerly
Awaited Follow Up To Plans
