(AKA CODA)
OUR MISSION:
Our mission is to allow you, the fan, to get to know our featured bands intimately. We’re focused on bringing you in-depth interviews with the latest unsigned bands and bringing new music styles out into the light. We hope to share new music with you, by introducing you to bands that are the best thing you’ve never heard.
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I N T R O D U C I N G :
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EDITOR’S NOTE:
CONTENTS:
ow does any song come into existence?
We know how humans, animals, plants, insects, come into existence, but how is a song created? You could say it begins with a few chords, a drum line, or a bass line. Songs start with inspiration. Inspiration from something around you, even if it’s as simple as deciding whether to sit in the front seat or the back seat. Music created in recent years, for the most part, is computer generated. Voices can be modified and background music can be produced using a prerecorded piece- a whole album can be developed in a garage, a basement, or even your bedroom. Music has become “easy” due to these factors. What seems to be missing, is the fact that music should not be faked, but conceived by life. Music as of late, in this editor’s humble opinion, has lost it’s life. Music created before our current era wasn’t continually being produced. Music was thought about and worked on until it was something beautiful. It was meant to be passed down through generations to be listened to. It was given as a gift. Musicians like Johann Sebastian Bach, George Handel, Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky are still listened to hundreds of years after they created their art. There’s Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole-- their songs are never forgettable. Elvis, Muddy Waters, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Bob Dylan changed the music world forever. Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, The Sex Pistols, Weezer, The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Beastie Boys, Beck, Bikini Kill, Cake, The Clash and so many others are being washed away by the new pop music movement taking us over. Mass-media promotes cheap, quickly produced music, sung by any teenager who looks good enough to sell a million records. We think real music will eventually prevail. Music that clings to your mind and heart. Music that makes you think, that is well thought out, and created through experience. We’re here to introduce you to the next generation. Music that you might not be aware of, but will soon find out, is the best thing you’ve never heard. Thank You, Editor-In-Chief Jordan Mary editor@kodemagazine.com
Editorial And Production:
LISTENER p.5
Word Art: Dana DeCoursey Chief Photographer: Jordan Mary Content Editor: Sarah Connors Assistant Editor & Photographer: Adrian Navarro
TAKE ONE CAR p.11
Layout Advisor: Andrew Murdoch Web Designer: Peyton Pancoast Listener Photographs: Tyler Andrew
THE HOLDING COMPANY p.17
Set Yourself On Fire Photographs: Kristen Goehringer Product Development and Financial Advising: Sevan Boyajian
SET YOURSELF ON FIRE p. 21
Publisher: 48hourprint.com Acknowledgements: GoMedia Textures Daniel Davidson Stefan Surmabojov for their textures © Copyrighted and owned by Kode Magazine LLC
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KODE MAGAZINE STAFF:
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as Vegas, Nevada. In a hotel room sat the two men who comprise Listener. Dan Smith, a tall guy with an amazing mustache, and his first mate, Christin Nelson, a grizzly guy whose beard is taking over his face. They work together to make the music they’ve deemed “talk” music. This is a combination of Dan’s Southern drawl, his powerful gifts of annunciation, his word arrangements and Christin’s ability to interpret the music behind the words. Dan is a modern day bard of sorts. He sings his stories, about human truths and every day life. Christin then surrounds Dan’s words with sounds that illustrate what he’s saying. Listening to them is like seeing music as an alternative to hearing it. You can’t help but be completely drawn in, even if at first just by their facial hair.
LISTENER SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT
For this interview, we were separated by state lines and time zones. So at 1 a.m. Eastern, I got a phone call from their hotel room in Las Vegas. They had just arrived for a show they were playing that evening. They spoke of how they use art and illustration to make their music, rather than notes or chords. The pair have an obvious connection to each other which is seamless. Whether together or not, they make music. It’s a vocation for each of them- what they do with their passion. They aren’t “mainstream”, and that doesn’t mean their music has no merit. They’ve played shows with bands like mewithoutyou, Lovedrug, Astronautalis, The Myriad, and more. They tour and never stop, funding the band with their own money, trekking on, in hopes that they’re being heard by people and that people like them. This interview is not edited, this is Listener, enjoy. Why did you name your band Listener? Dan: When I first started making music I
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had the name of Listener for the project that I was doing. It was a hip hop rap project, and I just kept it. After a while, I wanted to tour with friends, and try to make music live. We had conversations about maybe trying a different name, we tried “Listener Project” for a little bit, but I guess we just decided to call it Listener in the end. So, Chris just inherited that name, yeah, sorry about that. Chris: Oh yeah, that’s fine. Dan: So we just called us Listener. I think early on whenever I first called it that, I just wanted something that was humble, and Listener seemed to be pretty humble, so that’s what I picked. What’s the music making process for you guys? Dan: I write the words for the most part, and Chris writes the music, for all parts. I will write words and make a poem or song with words, memorize it and say it out loud, and Chris will write the music parts and have those in his mind, and then we just get together and some things we’ll have already sorted out and some things I’ll just give a landscape explanation of what I want a song to be like. Chris might be able to describe it better. Chris: Sometimes we like to draw pictures of the song. Dan will say here’s the beginning, so we draw the picture-- usually a line, and then it goes in a certain direction-- on the Wooden Heart CD there’s actually the pictures that we drew, our idea sketches. Sometimes I’ll just have things together, and then Dan will say, “This part of this song, I want it to sound like a Native American chief, and a cowboy on an old buggy shooting arrows, and the snare does this,” so, it’s very visual--golden calves and bridges, and deer horns. Artistic stuff, which I like a lot more than, “Hey let’s play sixteen bars of this chord.” It’s boring to me, and Dan-Dan: I don’t even know that stuff. Chris: He doesn’t know the nomenclature
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of trained music, and I’m not trained, but I know it. I like to paint pictures and make the songs into pictures of it instead.
write that way, and some poetry style, and as the years moved on I moved on in life. In music pace and life pace, you know just all different kinda of things, and I was thankful to find someone like Chris, who has similar background. Chris: I think Indie is short for independent, which is more of a state of mind than a genre, I just wanted to clarify that for the record. Dan: So, talk music is the specific genre.
What are the biggest challenges you guys have had as a band? Chris: Counting all the money. Up late counting money, over and over again. Finding places to put it, finding places to store the money, I mean, we try to give it away, but it keeps coming in and coming in and coming in. Dan: I have a bunch of money for you. Chris: That was a joke. Our biggest challenge... well,we don’t live in the same city. So one record, we wrote recorded, and finished entirely on the road together, in the van, in houses we were playing at, every manner of location imagineable we wrote and recorded that record. Dan: Chris mixed it on his headphones. Chris: In the van, not while driving, just while we were not driving. Just in case the authorities are reading this, but that is one of the challenges, not living in the same city. The only difficult thing is figuring out how to get together for tour,and that’s it. Dan and me just work things out, I had someone ask me a week or so ago, if me and Dan ever fight, or like, what do we do when we disagree, and just, we don’t. We talk things out, we don’t get mad at each other, or get worked up, I guess we’re just fairly peaceful people. We’re actually friends regardless of the band. Dan: Yeah, we might even go play video
Any last words? games together later on. The one thing that I worry about sometimes, is when the van makes really weird noises, we’re on tour for like six months, on a stretch, and sometimes I’ll get a little stressed about that. It just keeps going, I don’t know, it hasn’t failed us. What is your future direction? Chris: Well, I hope both of us will be alive, Dan: But what if dinosaurs come back? Then, all that will matter is that we loved one another while we were still here. Chris: Saturday we will be directing ourselves to Pasadena, California for a show, and then to San Diego, and it goes from there. We’re gonna write more music, did you wanna do that? Dan: Yeah! Chris: We’re gonna write some more music. We want to make a vinyl item. Dan has ideas for two or three more records. Dan: Yeah, we’ve got a holiday album we’d like to do, and an actual album we’re going to do, and then there’s the EP 7 inch that we’re gonna do, and that’s based on a play written in the 1900’s. Chris: Our fax machine has been printing off so many record deal contracts we can’t keep up with it. Dan: It’s kind of like counting money. Chris: So we had to hire somebody, just to file all of the contracts in a file cabinet, so we can have a lawyer look at them.
Dan: I don’t even wanna talk about it, it’s just boring. Making music, and touring, and we recently got an email from the European touring agency, did I tell you about that? I emailed you I think? Chris: You texted me I believe. Dan: I texted Chris about a European booking agent possibly -Chris: In 2007, I paid for my passport to be expedited, because Dan said, “Hey dude, we’re going to Europe, we’re going to Europe!” So then what happens? We don’t go to Europe, so we’re going. Dan: Yeah, we have a booking agent from overseas who wants to sort out some shows, we’ll do that, maybe Nippon, Japan, more U.S. tours. Chris: Who knows? The sky’s the limit. What genre do you consider you guys to be? And what influences you guys to be there?
Dan: Go be awesome. Chris: Yeah, do what you do best at being awesome. Dan: Unless you’re a murderer, then please consider not being awesome. Chris: Stop murdering people. Dan: Stop being awesome in that regard. Chris: Okay, would you stop it? Dan: Okay.
CHECK THESE GUYS OUT: www.iamlistener.com To see these guys live, you have to follow their tweets of where they’ll be: http://www.twitter.com/listener
Dan: I have through the last years decided that the genre named, “Talk” music is what we do, which originated in Japan? Chris:In China actually. Dan: Right, in China, a band called Driver, and is considered to be talk music. I thought that was perfect, we could be some type of indie, but I like talk music. That’s the only way to describe it, and I was really stoked on rap music when I was in junior high and high school. I made a lot of music, and learned how to
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TAKE O NE CAR NO GENRE CAN CONFINE THEM
ou could call them post-rock, you could say they are indie, but as it turns out, trying to find a genre that fits more than one of their songs is a hard thing to do. The four piece, Take One Car, consists of Tyler Irish on vocals and guitar, Pete Scholes on guitar, Branden Waite on bass, and Brittany Maccarello on drums. With a gift for making ambience in your face and in your head, Take One Car’s passion for music can be seen on the stage and can sure as hell be heard. Currently in the process of writing and recording their new record, just after finishing a tour- in addition to playing at this years Bamboozle festival, Take One Car is gaining speed fast and are definitely not something you want to miss. Why is your band named Take One Car?
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Tyler: The band first started about three years ago, and we were driving to our first practice and Enrique, one of our old bass players, and Bob, one of our original drummers, were following one another to practice and got in a car accident. Totaled both vehicles. We ended up canceling
practice. The next day there was a joke “All of you guys should have taken one car to practice,” so it stuck with us as that. So that’s why we’re named Take One Car instead of Take Two Cars... it’s an odd story. Do you have any bands that influence you? Tyler: I listen to Brand New, Radiohead, I’m really big into Radiohead. Brittany: And country. Tyler: Yeah, I grew up listening to country. I wanted to be a country music star when I was kid. Pete: I like the Grateful Dead. Brittany: I like Paramore, Hanson, you know. Pete: Good stuff like that. Brittany: The good stuff like that yes. Brandon: Led Zeppelin, Brand New, I like Radiohead. What genre do you guys consider yourselves to be in? Tyler: Indie rock, experimental rock? We’ve been called a lot of things.
Some parts are hardcore, some parts are ambient, some parts are jazzy... Brandon: Some parts are metal. Tyler: Some parts are country sounding. We’re all over the place. I don’t know, we called ourselves experimental in an interview one time, and the guy from the newspaper said that Radiohead was experimental, so that we weren’t really experimental. I really don’t know what it is, it’s rock I guess. When did you form your band and meet up? Pete: It started in June of ‘07, that’s when the original songs started getting written. I came around three months later in September, that’s when I met Tyler and Bob and Enrique in the band. And over the course of time, we went through a few bass players and just some flakes, like people who weren’t really into playing music seriously. And Brandon is Tyler’s cousin, and Brandon came our way two years ago this Valentine’s day. And Brittany’s been with us about a year now. Tyler: Yeah, Brandon and I grew up together, and I met Pete through Craig’s List
and Brittany through Craig’s List as well. Pete: I was looking for an amp on Craig’s List, and then I saw an ad saying “We need a guitar player” and they had this live video they had done and I thought it was cool, and I thought, “Oh they seem serious.” And then when I got there they barely knew the songs, it was weird at first. Tyler and I got along, but I didn’t think we were going to. Tyler: I don’t think we still do. Pete: I don’t think we still do either. Tyler: Brittany was in the casual encounter section. Brittany: Yeah, I was... (Laughter) Brittany: I was looking for people to jam with, I wasn’t really looking for a band, I was looking to make a band. Pete: She was like, “No one wants to play with me cause I’m a girl.” Brittany: Yeah... so then I just went back, and looked through some bands, and maybe the third one in was these guys, and I looked everything up and it looked really good. So I called Tyler, and because I liked the name Taylor, so it was close. Brandon: Oh my god.
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Pete: These are parts of the story we don’t even know. Brittany: I emailed Pete and then I called Tyler, like twenty minutes later, because I couldn’t wait any longer. They sent me songs, I came here. Pete: It was a week later when you came here, and you were like let’s play. Tyler: She was like, “Is it okay that I’m a girl?” and I was like, “Yeah, we don’t care.” Pete: She sets up and we play one song together, I was set after one song. We were trying to be cool, and professional, because we had some guys come our way be like, “I like to hit metal a lot.” We didn’t want to be in a band with someone like that, but we played through one song, one of our old ones, and halfway through the song, Tyler and me started looking at each other, like, “Cool.” Brandon: I think Tyler gave me the look, like “So...” I think I looked around and I was like... Yeah. Pete: We like to say that we started a year ago, because up until a year ago-Tyler: There were so many starts and stops because of people leaving and coming. Pete and I spent two years struggling to keep this band afloat and keep it going.
Pete: We had recorded our first album and everybody left except Tyler and me, so it was just us mixing it and at the time, Brandon was in the band, and this old drummer of ours was there, and we played some shows, and he ended up disappearing... Tyler: It’s been hell until the last year, pretty much.
all these bass speakers under the stage, the room moved. Brandon: I was kinda down, because it was a clothing store. “Yeah, we’re gonna play this tiny space.” Pete: It was like that part in Willy Wonka when he opens the door to the factory and we were all like, “Woah, where did this come from?”
Where have your favorite performances been?
What’s your music making process?
Pete: We try to play as many places as possible. I mean we were home around here. We play Pough keepsie a lot, we go to Danbury, and different parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts. Tyler: Pittsburgh is always fun. Pete: We went on the road this summer for about a month, we started up here and we hit pretty much everything between here and Florida and back through the midwest, like Missouri, Tennessee... Brittany: Michigan Tyler: There was a venue in Michigan that was a thrift shop in the front, but this amazing huge space in the back. You think it’s a thrift shop, and it’s this killer venue inside. Pete: And this sound guy was a nut, with
Tyler: It’s all over the place, that’s like the biggest mess ever. Any one of us could come up with an idea and then they’ll bring it to practice and we’ll build off of it. Or we’ll all have a majority of an idea... We don’t have a solid process at all. Tyler: A lot of it’s jamming. Our original line up was someone would come in with everything, and tell everyone what to do, and now, it’s more like, I can come in with a guitar riff and Pete will have his own thing, Brandon will have his own thing, Brittany will have her own thing. Pete: And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Tyler: But when it does work, it’s nice, because it’s something that comes natural to us, not thrown upon us.
Any last words? Tyler: Last words? Are you gonna kill us? Well, we’re going into the studio, we’re not disappearing off the face of the earth. We’re really happy with the new songs, it’s a change in direction, but its not like a change in genre, it’s more like a growth, these songs are so much better than our last album. Pete: I think we all get to put our influences into it too, like our main things. Tyler, I guess your main stuff is indie rock, he gets a lot of that out. I get a lot of my jazzy jammier parts out. Brandon gets his cool intricate bass lines, and Brittany gets to shred drums. So it works out, and I think we’re all happy with what everyone else is doing, which is a first in this band. That you can look around while we’re playing and we’re like wow, all these three parts are cool. Tyler: Definitely keep an eye open, we’re going to be releasing podcasts from inside the studio, videos, Brittany is working with Tom Tom Magazine, so we’re probably going to be doing some video broadcasts there once we’re in the studio as well. We’re actually planning on releasing a very limited number of live DVD’s this fall too... Come to shows.
CHECK THESE GUYS OUT: http://www.takeonecar.com/ UPCOMING SHOWS: April 30th-- Meadowlands Sport Complex, NJ check their myspace for more updates: www.myspace.com/takeonecar
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towering white van with a long seat, carpet lining the floor of the interior, and a Led Zeppelin poster on the back door is what the five members of this hardcore blues band climbed out of to meet me. The lead singer, Carlos Valle, nodded his head while smiling from under his thin mustache. “It’s nice to see you again.” He shook my hand as the other four players lugged their equipment from the van to the sidewalk behind the venue. Carlos informed me that, “the power steering in our van went, so we’re going to call triple A or something after we play.” They had just driven around the corner and down the street with no power steering. Equipment on the ground in the brisk air of Middletown, New York, the band struggled, but managed to pull the van in behind the venue. There they had to load in ASAP so they could play a local battle of the bands. As they set up the stage they listened intently to the rapper before them. Once the rapper was done, The Holding Company took the stage for a sound check. In the beginning, the audience was ignorant as to who The Holding Company was, but when the band began playing their sound check song, the crowd surged closer to the stage by about five feet. With every song after that, the band seemed to command people to move closer and hear them. Ryan Senning’s deep Johnny Cash-like drawl coupled with Carlos’ gritty screams drew in the pre- Halloween crowd- from the scantily clad to the downright creepy. Dirty riffs from Steve Friedman and Stefan Mersch were captivating- all eyes were on their hands, moving up and down the necks of their guitars. Kyle Beach’s drumming made everyone move. By the end of the set, the crowd had come from halfway across the room to the point of threatening to overrun the band on the stage. After the last song the band humbly accepted praise and moved their equipment as fast as they could so that the next band could set up to play. About fifteen minutes later, The Holding Company, along with my group and I, sat in the back of the van. As a pipe was passed between the members of the band, the five of them seemed to be of one mind. Finishing each other’s sentences, it’s obvious that they know each other inside out. They live together, live the music, and work fluidly. Almost as if they’re brothers. These guys are a 70’s rock band in the 21st century, and they are doing everything they possibly can to continue playing their music. Why did you name your band The Holding Company? Ryan: It got named The Holding Company, because THC is a common interest among us smokers in the band, so THC. The Holding Company was pretty cool. It basically backfired on us whenKyle: It’s Janis Joplin’s band. Steve: Big Brother and the Holding Company. Kyle: So we might have to change it if shit gets real. Carlos: But I feel like the most important part is that the words next to each other look cool, soRyan: It is appealing to the eye. Carlos: Yeah, you know what I mean? Ryan: It has to be appealing to the eye so that people will notice the name before they hear the music. Stefan: And if The Holding Company is not officially copyrighted then we don’t have a problem.
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THE HOLDING COMPANY BLUES WITH A TWIST, AND IT’S HEAVY
Kyle: An all-out jam to begin with. Ryan: Most of them just start out with a straight jam. Steve: It could be a jam, or just a riff that someone presents to us, and then we build on that one part. Stefan: Basically someone gets an idea and it all just spiderwebs from there. Carlos: When we first started writing songs it was a lot of, okay, this riff is cool, and this riff is cool, so the whole song would be ten different riffs. When we played with A Life Once Lost they taught us that basically you only need two riffs to make a song and it’s just variations of the way you use it. So after that our songs definitely developed into more actual songs. Ryan: More song writing, like verse chorus verse. Stefan: Those guys definitely pushed us in a different direction. What does living together add to your music? Kyle: It makes it a lot more intense. Ryan: There’s a lot of anger in the air at most times.
Stefan: Most of the time it has to do with a member that is not even in the band, Doug. Kyle: You should know that there's another angry roommate that lives there, an angry guy that drinks a lot, and is just very very angry. Ryan: There's all kinds of shit, but we've been having a good time as friends since High School. We were basically already living together even before we had a house together. We spent our entire day together most of the time, which is pretty much how we got started, because our music taste was all the same. Kyle: We all jam to the same stuff. Ryan: Yeah, there's never a jam that someone will throw on that everyone else doesn’t dig. Everyone else knows exactly what each of us likes. Like if it's an extra funky jam we'll look at Steve-O and be like, "Yo, Steve-O, this is your jam." Or like if its some wild trippy ass shit, then Mersch is probably down. Yeah, living together has definitely expanded our music. Kyle: Make sure you say something about the angry drunk roommate. He plays trumpet though! Him and this other guy Chick plays sax, and they played on a couple tracks back in the day. Steve: I was in a band with him, the Step Right Ups, a ska band beforehand, and he just refuses to play with us. He just does not want to play at any of our shows. Stefan: He just doesn't wanna be a part of us. Ryan: He has a trumpet solo on the upcoming album. So who writes your songs? Or is it a collaborative effort? Steve: Everyone puts in a little something. Ryan: The lyrics Carlos and I do. Carlos: Yeah, it’s always everyone’s individual thing when we’re doing songs, like there’s always suggestions, like, “Why don’t you try to do this? Or try to do that?” But that part is collaborative. Kyle: Everyone brings their one part to the table.
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Steve: All criticism is constructive though, it’s never breaking you down. Kyle: Sometimes... Ryan:Well, it’s never like, “You fuckin’ suck, quit guitar,” it’s all joking. Everyone enjoys playing with each other. Kyle: We would say it just like that, but it’d be joking. Like, “Oh you suck,” but it would be a joke. Steve: We just have a really good chemistry, you know, and on the outside that’s what it’s all about. Stefan: And our influences help us work well together. Steve: And our love of THC. Why did you guys form the band? Carlos: It originally started off as a three piece, with Ryan’s brother, and then eventually we decided that Kyle played drums... Kyle: Yeah, my band just broke up. Carlos: Originally, Ryan was the drummer of the band, when we were a three piece and we didn’t have a bass player. Then we were hanging out with him and were like, “Dude, you play drums, why don’t you fuckin’ join our band?” Ryan: I played bass before I played drums. Carlos: And then after that I think we got Mersch probably about a year later. Kyle: Yeah, I called that bitch up. Ryan: We wanted to add a second guitarist. Carlos: Yeah, because all we had was Ryan’s brother. Kyle: And he was a flake master, he had wrestling and played lacrosse and all these sports, and he was younger than us. Carlos: He didn’t really have time to do anything, and then Mister Steve-O over here, we didn’t even become close friends until not that long ago. Steve: I loved you guys, I loved The Holding Company. Ryan: Yeah, we didn’t like chill. Stefan: I don’t think I saw you once in High School, like ever.
Steve: Yeah. Ryan: When we realized that he had the love of the herbal chronic as much as we did, things clicked. I was aware Steve was shredding, like I had seen his band play. Carlos: He was always like, “Yo, I wanna jam with you guys,” and we were like “Fuck yeah, you’re an awesome gutiarist.” and then we would get high and alcohol... Eventually, he made it over to the house one day-Ryan: That’s actually when Cold Cash got written, it’s a song that’s going to be on the up and coming album. It’s our first jam. We recorded it on a cassette and then it stuck around. Last words? Stefan: Roll up, rock out. Steve: Joints, blunts, rock n’ roll.
CHECK THESE GUYS OUT: www.myspace.com/theholdingcompanymusic UPCOMING SHOWS: April 16-- Location TBA (check facebook.com/theholdingcompany for more info) April 30th--Sounds Asylum, Middletown, NY @ 6
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SET YOURSELF
ON FIRE HARDCORE, HARDCORE
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first saw this band a few years ago, when their name was Revolutionary Smut, and they were running around the parking lot of a local venue. Screaming and wearing masks. The band members were different back then, and their goal was to make people angry. About 3 months ago I saw them again, at a venue in Danbury CT called Tuxedo Junction. They began playing, on the floor instead of the stage, to a crowd that wasn’t really into their genre of music. Revolutionary Smut drew them all in. Even some middle aged moms (who were surprisingly) in the audience. Revolutionary Smut recently changed their name to Set Yourself On Fire, but during this interview had not yet. They are comprised of five members, four of whom I spoke with (guitarist Jake Miller was absent). Adam Galanski, lead singer, is a showman through and through. He never stops moving, seducing his audience. Conor McEneaney’s drums are perfect in each song, sometimes even competing with Adam for attention. The complicated guitar riffs by Cody Walker, and strong bass playing by Scott Glover, are a flawless back up. This band isn’t quite hardcore, not quite metal, not screamo, not Christian hardcore, not any of what you’ve already heard-- they’re what they make of it. They play for themselves, and the fans. Once you hear them, you’ll understand.
Why did you name the band Revolutionary Smut? Scott: We got it off a t-shirt, our friend Sam Freeman had. Adam: Scott and I were the founders along with our friends Ivo and Sam Freeman, and we got it off a shirt that was from a porno convention that his uncle was in. The shirt said Revolutionary Smut and it had... Scott: Patty Hearst with a machine gun on it. Conor: I think we’ve found a significance in it, post using the name. After developing a solid line up we found a new significance in it.
What is the music making process for you guys? Adam: Usually, I’ll write a couple riffs and I’ll bring them to Cody and Scott and we will put it together. And then we bring it to Conor and he does his thing. Conor: It usually starts with the guitarists, like you or Cody will make a riff or an entire song and develop it and bring it to me, and then Scott and I usually work together. Scott: I actually don’t get my bassline together until I sit down with Conor and we do our thing. Conor: We record it too. Adam: We are constantly recording demos just to get our shit down. Cody: We do it for ourselves. Conor: We work so fast. We just got this new album out, and we have an entire new album written, plus extra riffs that Adam made. Cody: Adam sits in his apartment and writes riffs all day. Conor: He’s a songwriting machine. Cody: I wish I was like that. I go through phases where I’ll machine gun out 18 riffs and then I stop for thee months because I’ve run out. I think we all have our ruts, but Adam writes all of our main riffs. Conor: Yeah, it starts with these two, because it’s not like I can write a song with just drums. Adam: That guy from the Beatles did it, that was a good song right? Yellow Submarine. Scott: He may have written that one song, but otherwise he never did shit. Cody: I think his name was Ringo Christmas. What’s your ultimate direction for the band? Cody: To be the next Poison. Adam: We want to continue what we are doing, keep putting out more music, play as much as possible, keep on writing new things, figuring out how we can make ourselves better for ourselves, not the audience. That’s the one thing about song
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writing, it flows where it needs to be. Cody: As far as direction, I don’t care. I care about living in the moment of right now. Scott: We never planned out like, “Oh now we’re gonna start writing songs so that we can do this.” Conor: Part of the beauty of being in this band is that it’s never about anything. We all butt heads, because there is like, a member, always talking about making money. Just, first of all, you’re not making any money if you’re in a band. You’re just going to be fucking broke. Cody: There is no money in music. I work at a gas station, and I make a lot more money than everyone here. Conor: All I know is that being in this band, makes me able to function and live right now. I need to keep on doing it, thinking of this band ever ending is the most depressing thing I could ever think of. Cody: The thing is the end of this band is nonexistent. Because us four, are always going to be playing music together. Adam: We’re gonna be playing music together for the rest of our fucking lives. Even if we never make it, we will always be playing together, because we are brothers and we’ll love each other forever. No matter how angry or pissed off we get at each other, we can look at each otherthe next day and smile. And we get fuck
ing pissed off at each other, but it always works out. The best thing about this band is we’re all best friends. Cody: Because we don’t have to worry about what we think about each part. Scott: We are the most insecure band, you should see us record. Adam: Recording everyone is like I don’t wanna do it in front of you guys. Cody: Conor has to go into the bathroom and jerk off and cry before every drum take. That’s why his penis fell off. Conor: Yeah, it’s gone. It’s just a soft skin pad. Cody: It’s like in Dogma, Allen Rickman’s part. Any last words? Cody: In all seriousness, never stray away from what you originally loved in your life. As far as music, friends, and never stray away from anything that you’d feel a little emptier without. This whole album that we just put out, Skin Prison to me is universal in that a lot of people can feel that title. That title as in, we all really want to get out of ourselves a lot, and this body is a prison sometimes, and we feel just like ripping our skin off and running. And even though you can feel like that sometimes just stay close to everyone that has impacted you, like these three guys are my best friends and brothers and they help
me through feeling like I want to rip my fucking skin off. Adam: That’s how we all feel. Cody: And by the way, and if you ever listen to Skin Prison, there are two parts in there that I have literally cried to and I will fucking say that as a man right now. Adam: Which songs? Cody: In the songs Xaipe, just listen to it,and the last song Skin Prison, the title track, is to me what sums up the whole album. It comes down to that simple question that we ask ourselves every day, “Am I a good man? Or a bad man?” Conor: Elephant Man. Adam: We have a lot of songs we have had for like two years on this album, and the last four songs are shit we just wrote this year, album shows our old mentality, and we grow up throughout the album. For some reason, all our new songs are at the end. We switched into drop D, and we started writing more mature lyrics. Xaipe is all about remembering your roots and who you love, and always staying true to the people you love, and Xaipe itself means rejoice in Greek. Conor: It’s all honest, we’re not trying to say that this is the way anyone else should live, or act, or behave. Life is confusing, life is unfair, most of the shit that happens in it sucks, and it’s just our story. Cody: It’s not that we’ve been through shit that nobody else has.
Conor: Yeah, it’s our story, and that’s it. Cody: Everyone needs an outlet, and I feel bad for the people who won’t let themselves have one, because they’re afraid of admitting they get sad sometimes or... Scott: Or afraid of admitting anything that they’re keeping locked up. Cody: Like that they care about their friends, or a person, or that they don’t hate everyone. You know all my hardcore friends are like “my friends, my family” but do you really mean that? Scott: It’s all horseshit. Cody: I think this is the first time we have all sat down and said this to each other. Adam: Yeah, it’s not like we sit around all day and talk. Scott: Yeah, we got better shit to do. Cody: Yeah, I’ve never been able to say this kind of stuff. Conor: I think you’re doing the best out of all of us. Cody: Oh, well, I think I’m the only sober one right now. Conor: I think I’m the only one that is drunk... Cody: We’re all straight fucking edge. I’m kidding I’m not straight edge, but...I am ... Adam: We’re all straight edge, but we beak edge every night. Scott: Let’s shut up now. Bye everyone!
CHECK THESE GUYS OUT: www.reverbnation.com/setyourselfonfire1
UPCOMING SHOWS: Check their myspace and facebook for show updates: www.myspace.com/revolutionarysmut
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JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS; OZARK EMPIRE; NOT WAVING; DROWNING; RETURN TO STRUGGLEVILLE; WOODEN HEART; TALK MUSIC;TRAIN SONGS
| APRIL/MAY ISSUE