The Gauntlet: What are you up to?
George: One of my cats has gone missing so I am making flyers to put up. She went missing like 2 or 3 days ago, but neighbors have seen her cruising around so it should end well.
The Gauntlet: Are you a cat lover?
George: I do like cats, but I think I am more of a dog person. I inherited these cats when my girlfriend, now wife, moved in with me. I really like how self-sufficient cats are. You can leave for a couple days and give them food and water and come back like nothing.
The Gauntlet: Are you ready for the upcoming Warped Tour?
George: We just got home from England 2 days ago. I am just soaking it up before we go out on the Warped Tour. We played Rock Am Ring and Rock Am Park along with some others while we were in Europe. It was a good way to get back into the swing of things. Our first show out there was almost like a party. It was pretty noticeable to us that we haven’t played in a while. I am sure kids had a good time. We hit the stage and felt like a bunch of amateurs. Two days later, it felt like we were on top of our game.
The Gauntlet: I love when bands coming off stage and are throwing their guitars around and swearing up a storm at how badly they played while the crowd is going nuts.
George: Yeah, it is easy to fall back on that. When you have been around the songs since their conception, and know exactly how they are supposed to be played, and at what speed, it is hard not to be critical. Sometimes it is a matter of feeling; a song just might not feel right to you. When you have five people playing and are all in the pocket, it just feels great. I understand that kind of frustration. Sometimes you just know when things are a little off. It is neurotic behavior and we might be over analyzing. It does come up every once in a while. With this show, we walked off stage saying we gotta pick it up and we can do better than that. We had some songs that were off tempo and stuff like that. By the time we played Rock Am Ring, we were there. At the end of the day, you are your own harshest critic.
The Gauntlet: Do you get off stage and blame Dallas if it is his fault? Do you play the blame game?
George: No, it is very rare that we have shows like that. Most of the time we play quite well. If it was one person that did something you didn’t like, you just tell them that ‘this fill or that needs to be tighter.’ Largely we look at the positives. When you play as long as we do on stage, we are destined for some positive stuff to talk about. You have to leave a little room for error though, that is just part of the experience.
The Gauntlet: You also have the Much Music Awards show later this month. You are sharing the stage with Kelly Clarkson and other bands that aren’t your typical crowd. How do you gauge if it was a good performance?
George: It is partially our crowd. Some of the kids will like us. It isn’t like we are all on the stage playing, it is still an awards show so people are there for that. The show is trying to appeal to as many demographics as they can. It is surreal that we are even doing this. It is also exciting in a way. We are one of these freak bands that have infiltrated main stream culture to some degree and that to me is really exciting. We get to go on TV and share the stage with some people we probably don’t really care about. We also get to play for some people that might not really know us. Maybe they will find something they like in us. If I had seen the Undertones play on television when I was 16, I probably would have been a punk. Or if I saw Black Sabbath or The Stooges play at that age, I would probably listen to them a lot more. I am not saying we are at their level, but we are all battling for the souls of children. I think it is better having bands like us on there than Lady Gaga who has very little to offer culture wise. I listened to a lot of the pop stuff like that when I was younger, stuff like John Denver.
The Gauntlet: Sorry, I have to butt in, John Denver in the same league of pop as Lady Gaga? John Denver was an icon in the 70’s and 80’s. He wrote his own songs and didn’t rely on vocal effects. He was pop only because he was so good at what he did.
George: Yeah, you are right. You have to give him a lot of respect. He also took on Tipper Gore during the PMRC trials in the 80’s and gave legitimacy to the cause that all these metal musicians like Dee Snider were fighting for. At the day, it was still poppier music and doesn’t reflect what I listen too now.
The Gauntlet: You just mentioned the PMRC trials, you were born in the 80’s right?
George: Yeah. I listened to a lot of music and pay attention to the music history. I was born in ’82 but know a lot about what goes on in music. I listen to a lot of pre-war blues also. I also listened to a lot of classic rock when I was younger like Creedence Clearwater Revival. It allows you to look back on music. When I got into punk, I loved tracing back the origins of the music. That brings you into garage rock and all kinds of cool stuff and then all of the sudden you are into rhythm and blues and then blues. But as for your question, I love music. When I was a kid, I loved 2 Live Crew basically because it was so taboo to listen to. It was one of those tapes you hid under the mattress of your bed to keep from your parents. Along the same lines, punk was the same way. It was responsible for getting me to listen to other music.
The Gauntlet: For me it was Suicidal Tendencies. I would listen to it on vinyl and then spend like 10 mins trying to find a new place to hide it to stay a step ahead of my mom. It was funny how I was hiding records under my bed and not Playboys like most kids.
George: Suicidal Tendencies would have been a great one to hide. My mom took away Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood as there was a song about blowjobs. I just went out and found a friend and bought his copy and then I hid it from her. I kind of had a respect for my mom doing that as she inadvertently made this art important to me by making it taboo.
The Gauntlet: Back to the Warped Tour. This isn’t your first outing with it?
George: No, but this is the first time we are doing the whole thing. We have done just a month or a little longer treks. There are highs and lows. It is a lot of fun but it is a really intense form of touring. You wake up every day at a racetrack and everybody smells and you don’t know where the bathroom is. It is also like being at a BBQ every day. People are just sitting around in lawn chairs throwing Frisbees and having fun. There is a lot of idle time and you can get in trouble. My wife was not interested in me doing the Warped Tour this time around. There were a lot of drunk dials from me last time. It was not a fun time for me. It will be a relatively chilled out tour for us. I think we will read a lot of books.
The Gauntlet: It seems like every year, several bands drop off the tour mid way through.
George: I bet the last month will be super intense. Even when we did a month and a half, it was really intense. A lot of bands can’t hack it. A lot of the smaller bands have big ego’s and badger the promoters to change their time slot and stuff. There are also a lot of cliques. A lot of the time we don’t want to hang with the fucking dorky young bands, but at the same time we are the dorky young band to some of the older bands. Then there are the in between bands that are weirdoes like us and you just hang with them.
The Gauntlet: Do NoFX rip on you guys?
George: No, but I don’t know if we are big enough to be on their radar. I think we are pretty clever too and if someone wants to come at us, they better have a rock solid foundation. I think there are a lot more bands that put it out their more and are easier targets than us. We aren’t a band with a bunch of haircuts. No one has really given us a bunch of shit.
The Gauntlet: I’d just rip on you for being Canadian.
George: [laughs] We’d hide behind our socialized healthcare, end of argument right there.
The Gauntlet: Ever have problems coming across the border to play?
George: Not really. We have cheated the border in the early days as work Visas are expensive to get, especially for young bands. It can be a very hair-raising experience at first. Once you get work visas, you are set. There have only been a couple times where we got stopped and searched. They went through every single bin of stuff we had in our trailer.
The Gauntlet: When you say ‘searched,’ there is searched, and there is ‘what are those gloves for searched.’
George: No one has stuck a flashlight up my ass yet. I know some people who have had that. I have some stupid mischief charge from when I was 17 and that came up once. As long as you are honest and not trying to hide anything they are pretty cool. Other than that, we are all relatively good. There is no sense of humor. I imagine it is a really bitter place to work. You try to crack a joke and they just look at you stone faced. You don’t have many rights at the border. They can pretty much do as they please at the border. The Canadian border patrol is just as bad as the US agents. A lot of our American friends bitch about coming into Canada.
The Gauntlet: The new album, Old Crows/Young Cardinals, drops June 23.
George: Yeah, we recorded it about three months ago. We went to Vancouver and recorded it at Armoury Studios. We only spent about three weeks there recording the instruments and then went to Southern Ontario for the vocals.
The Gauntlet: Armoury Studio’s isn’t a big name metal studio, how did you end up there?
George: It was more of a geographical decision. Everyone wanted to get away. All of the previous records were recorded locally. They were good studios, but we wanted to get away and become immersed in it. It is easy to go to Vancouver as it is a beautiful place. They also have a fantastic collection of vintage gear we could use. There were a lot of really cool guitars. They also had a live room which is something we never used before. We did all of the beds live off the floor and went back and cleaned them up later. We just all ran the songs live six or seven times all the way through. So the drums, bass and rhythm guitars were done together. The core was all done there. Live off the floor was something we wanted to try for a long time. I think it was really beneficial to do that sort of thing.
The Gauntlet: It is something not many bands do anymore.
George: Yeah, obviously there has been a lot of technological advance in recording. A lot of those advances aren’t necessarily good. I think you can make a good sounding record by isolating each instrument. You can clean everything up and polish it, but at the end of the day, I think you lose a lot of the soul of the recording. You play differently when you have headphones on and are listening to the song than when you are in a room and playing with the drummer and playing your music. I think taking steps backwards is a better way to go when recording and not pitch correcting everything and not trying to make it sleek and pristine. A lot of my favorite records weren’t recorded on Pro Tools and aren’t as sleek as they could have been. It doesn’t mean I like them any less. Sometimes I like it when Dolby doesn’t clean up the hiss. I think this is the best record we have ever done. I don’t see why we wouldn’t record this way again.
The Gauntlet: With an album like Old Crows/Young Cardinals, I imagine you guys all have your own favorite tracks off the album.
George: Yes. When we started to write down what we thought the singles would be, we all had completely different lists. Everybody had a different idea for what they thought was the best song. After a lot of deliberation, management stepped in and picked Young Cardinals. It was a nice middle ground.
The Gauntlet: Did you guys stay at a hotel while in Vancouver?
George: Yeah. We had a suite down the street. There were five of us in a suite. I was sleeping with Dallas, someone slept with Wade. It was a bad sitcom. We pretty much recorded from noon till midnight so we didn’t have much time to hangout. We’d record then come back and watch Conan and go to bed.
The Gauntlet: So you all shared beds?
George: Yeah, you do what you gotta do on the road. I have shared beds many times. We have done our share. We have also done our share of the crazy van tours where you sleep on the side of the road in the desert in between a 13 hour drive to the next show. Those are kind of fun too. You feel really alive when you do that. I think that more people should embrace all that sort of stuff about playing music. We had to suffer to some degree so we appreciate it more. I wouldn’t even say suffer as we were a new band and didn’t know any better. Sleeping on peoples floors and playing small sweaty clubs is a really good and alive feeling. As much as bus touring is convenient , sometimes you need to get back in the van and remember what it is like.
The Gauntlet: That is when you know you are real and not about the money.
George: I like that whole ‘you are all about the money’ thing. I think the word sellout is used by people who live with their parents and have no bills to pay. They have no idea how much it actually costs to tour. We are a moderately successful band. We do ok in Canada, Australia and the UK. At the end of the day, we are middle class. If this band ends tomorrow, we will all be out learning a trade skill or going back to school. I look at the term ‘sellout’ with a lot of contempt.
As much of a fan of music I am, I am also a fan of the pop culture behind it. I love the story that goes with the bands. That is the history of the band. They have these big prolific catalogs that you can go through.
The Gauntlet: It is becoming lost now with declining CD sales though. I used to love buying a CD and as it played, I’d read the Thanks on the back of the insert to find out what bands they thought were cool. You’d also get a lot of cool inside info and jokes this way. It made me have a certain closeness with the band because you knew something other’s didn’t.
George: Yeah. You’d see the band names enough and then go out and get the record. You owned a little more of that band than the average casual listener. I definitely hear that. When I was 13 years old and listening to Green Day, I found their early record on Look Out Records and it came with a early catalogue with all these great bands like The Queers and Screeching Weasel. Things have changed dramatically in the last few years; some for the better, some for the worse. I don’t want to become jaded and say ‘back in my day’ or whatever, but sometimes you feel you are losing those mediums. I remember on weekends taking all my CD’s and lining them up and spending hours making a mixtape. When I was done, that tape was just precious to me. Now if I do that with a CD, it ends up scratched on the floor of my car. There is a little sadness that all that has gone away. You can’t take back the internet though. It is nice that it is easier to get bands music. I remember driving two towns over to a little indie record shop could try to order a CD for me.
The Gauntlet: I can’t say I am very familiar with your bands earlier works.
George: That’s ok, don’t go back. The first two albums, we were young kids. On the first album, three of us were in high school. There is a lot of that record that we look back on with a degree of humility. With our second record, we were just trying to figure ourselves out. With Crisis, we found our sound, and then this one, we are building on that.
The Gauntlet: Do you ever not like being lumped in with certain bands?
George: Yes, we are a screamo band. It is like a four-letter word. We are never going to escape it. In a lot of ways I don’t mind it, but you got to admit… You do feel like you are saying something bad when you say you are a scream band. Fuck yeah, we hate as much that is going on in screamo as the next person. It is all safe now in screamo. When we first started as a band, screamo wasn’t on TV. It was largely 7” and patches. It was kind of punk. Punk was becoming close-minded. Kids found hardcore, screamo and power violence and maybe even indie rock. Maybe we are to blame for a lot of this in Canada. We got big in Canada and we were pioneers as far as infiltrating some sort of main stream culture. Then it was everywhere. There were all of these people that didn’t know the music. Then came the haircuts. When did this all become about this ridiculous fashion and selling these retarded looking t-shirts. I think that 10 years from now, people will look back on screamo the same way they look at hair metal. It is going to be a big fucking joke. That is not something that I want to be a part of. I think there are a lot of bands doing this type of music a great disservice. That is why with the last record and this record we are taking a step away from this genre. We want to bring kids to our influences in a way. None of us in the band listen to screamo bands. We listen to a very diverse lineup of bands. In a lot of ways, this record is just us distancing ourselves from this whole scene and it will hopefully give us some longevity. I think a lot of these young bands are motivated by fame and just want to be in a rock band fucking girls and getting wasted while living the rock dream. This isn’t like anything we are doing. We just want to play in a band and play music. We don’t care if there are 10 or 10,000 kids there, we just want to play music. That to me is just it, that is what is really important. Once you look at being in a band as a career opportunity, you have already lost the plot.
The Gauntlet: Won’t those bands be weeded out in the end?
George: Unfortunately they will probably be the biggest bands. It is so crazy, especially when you see a band you despise getting a 10 page feature in a magazine. They have nothing to say.
The Gauntlet: When you guys play Nevada, do you ever stop by the Bunny Ranch to say hi to Alexis Fire?
George: I don’t know. Maybe she’d be really pissed off. She might not be into us, or maybe she’d be really into us.
The Gauntlet: Have you ever had contact with her?
George: A long time ago, someone from her camp got in touch with us and wanted us to take down our website. Someone at our label years later said there was no case and that they didn’t have a leg to stand on. I am sure we have generated a lot of hits for her website. It is a pretty shocking site. You go online looking for a Canadian screamo band and end up on some lactating contortionists’ site.
The Gauntlet: I just figured you guys were bringing her along for the Warped Tour.
George: I will take my shirt off on stage, but I don’t think I can lactate.
The Gauntlet: You don’t think?
George: I have never really tried. Maybe if I sat down and really worked at it.
The Gauntlet: Is there anything else, anything you are plugging like a makeup line or clothing line?
George: [laughs] No, oh I do have a TV show I do on aux.tv