Poison The Well Interview with Ryan Primack, Chris Hornbrook, and Jeff Moreira
Posted on July 19, 2007 at 8:00 am by admin
Way Too Loud: How will you re-create some of the songs from “Versions” live?
Ryan Primack: I don’t think we put to much emphasis on making sound exactly like the record. We’ve changed tempos for the live environment. Some instrument and parts aren’t there, but that’s kind of the point. Why go see a band when you could hear the same thing and not leave your house?
Chris Hornbrook: I feel like, just like you said, it’s a different beast when it’s live than it is on the record. When it’s live, it’s 2 guitars, bass, drums and vocals, and sometimes a keyboard, which Ryan does. I feel like that’s essentially the band that we are, and the record that we made has all these cool sonic qualities to it, but when you come to see us live, you’re going to get 5 dudes.
Ryan: I think a lot of times for us, and me personally, especially, we’ve always been a bit leery of doing tracks. You know how some bands suddenly have 86 things that weren’t happening before, because they’re just playing to a DVD?
WTL: Oh yeah, like before a song starts.
Chris: Or even during the song! Say the drummer has a trigger pad, and he’ll hit it within time because he’s listening to a click [track], and like Ryan said, there’s 80 things going on, but there’s only 3, or 4, or 5 dudes on stage.
Ryan: There’s also 85 thousand things that could go wrong, and you could look like a total yutz! (Laughs) Even more than that, I’ve always been leery of that stuff because I’ve always enjoyed not having all the tools that we have when we record at my disposal. It forces you to play different, and it keeps thing really exciting as a player.
Jeff Moreira: Sometimes we try and get our guitar tech to play some of the extra guitar parts, but on this tour we haven’t had a chance to pull it off because pretty often the stage is too small, so we can’t have all the gear, or all the keyboards set up. It’s pretty bare at times, but I don’t think anyone suffers from it. We’ll probably have to wait until we headline before we can play everything as close as possible to the recording of “Versions”.
WTL: How long with Brad Clifford (touring guitar) and Mike MacIver (touring bass) stay with Poison The Well?
Jeff: For now it’s just me Chris and Ryan. It’s kind of like a test period, I guess? We have a problem with getting people in our band, and then, from day one they’re in our band. We don’t know who they are until 6 months later. It’s like having a girlfriend. The first 6 months to a year, it’s all flowers and candy, and the next thing you know, they don’t flush the toilet! There’s something you don’t like about them!
For now it’s just us 3. We’ve been in the band for awhile, and we know how things work. Right now we don’t have Mike, because he’s back home in New York City taking care of some personal business, so we have our friend Tom playing bass.
WTL: There’s no one else lined up after them?
Chris: No, if they ever choose to leave at any point, it’ll be like “Ok, who’re we going to get to fill that spot?”
Ryan: I would rather not have that happen.
WTL: They’re the guys you want to stick with for now?
Ryan: Well yeah, we haven’t even approached writing songs again for another record. I just started putting a little bit of ideas together, so right now, I’m just trying not to over-think things.
Jeff: Brad’s been with us for a couple of months now. I think if he can stay through this touring cycle, he’ll probably stay with us.
WTL: Who was the guitar player before him?
Jeff: Jason Boyer. He was with the band for about 2 years, but it was through a recording process with him, so we didn’t play a lot of live shows with him. He went to pursue his art, and he got married.
WTL: Are you going to try and get on a standard album cycle? I’ve noticed the release of your albums has been -
Chris: Inconsistent?
Ryan: Well yeah. For 3 full-lengths and an EP, it went like that. Then you run into people who tell you one story, and then a different one, and then you end up an sort of an impasse.
WTL: Can I dare to say that “Versions” was your heaviest album? That was my interpretation.
Ryan: That’s mine too!
Chris: That was the intention of it.
Jeff: I think it is. I’ve heard a lot of kids complain and say “Why did you go all soft?” I just think it’s a different type of heavy, as opposed to the very blatant chug. Lyrically and musically it’s a lot heavier than our other records, so thank you for saying that!
Ryan: It was supposed to be a really “frustrating” record to me. It’s supposed to be really heavy, yet tense most times. Then it opens up, and certain parts become more dynamic. I think that record has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of things that are heavy now, to me, seem so far from being heavy, because there’s not content emotionally, there’s no tension within the delivery. It’s sort of like, bacon and eggs, and hash browns, and then you could have sausage and eggs and hash browns if you’d like. A lot of heavy stuff comes off as a math formula, like the quadratic formula to write a heavy song.
Chris: There’s very few bands that do something interesting and heavy, but the ones that do definitely stick out.
Ryan: To their detriment, or their benefit. I mean, there’s some people who are totally psyched on the Betty Crocker recipe. As a musician, you strive to live off your band, and that Betty Crocker recipe is pretty attractive because most listening audiences would rather have the Betty Crocker recipe rather than grandma’s homemade. Not that I’m saying one’s better than the other…
Chris: Grandma’s does have a tendency to be tasty though.
Ryan: But it also has a tendency of being different from batch to batch.
Chris: Very true…
WTL: (Laughs) All the metaphors in there..
Ryan: Druggies and music! They just go together! (Laughs)
WTL: Can I ask about the lyrics, or…
Chris: Jeff isn’t going to tell you.
Ryan: He’ll ask you what it means to you.
WTL: What does the title of the song “Nagaina” reference?
Ryan: It’s a characters name in a film, a book, a TV show, I’m not really sure
Chris: I could be from the World Of Warcraft…
Ryan: (Laughs) Yeah! It could be from the World Of Warcraft!
Chris: It seems to have died out with him [Jeff].
Ryan: No he quit, he doesn’t even play it online.
Chris: Did he sell any of his shit on ebay? I know you can sell your characters on it.
Ryan: I don’t think he sold his character. I don’t think he could’ve gotten that much for it anyway.
Chris: It wasn’t like he was a… master warcrafter.
Jeff: Did you ever read Rikki-Tikki-Tavi? It’s a story about a family, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a mongoose, and Nagaina is one of the cobras that’s trying to kill the family, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi saves them. Now the lyrics aren’t anything about that, I just named it Nagaina because it was the strongest character in the story that I remember from when I was a little kid.
My thing is always the same. I used to tell people what the songs were about, and then a kid came up to me and said one of the songs was his favorite, and it helped through some rough stuff, and he asked me what the song was about, and I told him, and I ruined it for him. He told me that it wasn’t what he thought the song was about, and it would effect him the same anymore because it wasn’t his exact interpretation of the song. I’ll never tell anybody what they’re about because it’s not fair for me to ruin what someone thinks about a song. It’s special to them because it’s not exactly what I had written. I guess I would feel the same way too if I had a song that was really important to me, and then I talk to the singer, and he says it’s about marshmallows! I’d think that sucks! That song was important to me, and your writing about marshmallows! (Laughs)
WTL: Versions has gotten a lot of good critical reviews. Has there been anyone who doesn’t get it?
Ryan: Lambgoat didn’t get it…
WTL: I read that one!
Chris: It was awesome. They said we ripped of Converge, but yet Ryan doesn’t listen to Converge.
Ryan: I Do! I like that record “You Fail Me”.
Chris: They were talking about ripping off the first song on that. When I listen to it, I could hear maybe some similarities, but…
Ryan: Like what? Close in tempo?
Chris: No, just like hectic.
Ryan: Oh, ok.. Well, whatever…
Chris: Like Converge is way me hectic because Converge is Converge.
Ryan: I don’t really pay attention. I always feel like I’m a latecomer to the game on reviews. For a little while I got them, and then I was just like, whatever. I really don’t care.
Chris: I think it’s cool that there’s a lot of people out there that appreciate it, and some people understand it. The people that don’t understand it, that’s cool too.
Ryan: For me to get mad because somebody gave it a bad review would possibly be one of the most narcissistic things ever, and I’d like to think that I’m not that self-involved.
WTL: How about the kids?
Ryan: Oh there’s a lot of kids that don’t like it at all!
Jeff: A lot of kids don’t get it. I don’t know yet, actually. It always takes a little bit for kids that like our band to get into the records that we put out. It usually takes 6 months for me to notice whether kids are getting into it, or they’re not. When “You Come Before You” came out, kids weren’t into it, but they got into “Tear From The Red” more, but when “Tear From The Red” came out, nobody liked it. It seems like whenever the record have comes out, people get into the record that came before it. Now, when we play stuff from “You Come Before You”, kids are really excited. I think when our next record comes out, kids will be pumped on “Versions”.
Chris: It’s because of the Betty Crocker recipe. It’s brainwashed kids into thinking a certain way. When you present something different, not all of them want to be accepting to it. There’s some kids that maybe didn’t like it at first, and then they listen to it and say “Ok, I think I get it a little bit more.”
Ryan: It’s really been a growing process with a lot of people who bought it. I think a lot of people were expecting something much different, and were disappointed by what they got.
WTL: Perhaps some people were looking for a part 2 of another album?
Chris: I don’t see in what way that people think that we would repeat ourselves in any manner.
Ryan: I guess we have set a precedent, which is a bad thing to hope for from us… It’s been awesome because there have been people who didn’t like the last 2 records that really like this one. There have people that didn’t like anything from us that like this one. There have been people who only like the first one that like this one, and so forth. The people that think it’s awesome, it’s like they get exactly what we were aiming for. Even the people that aren’t interested in it, it’s cool because, I would never be the person to say “Well, you’re just lowbrow then…”. It’s cool because that’s supposed to be the idea, because you like what you want, and not like what you don’t.
Chris: We’re not trying to sell anybody anything they don’t want. It’s terribly easy.
Ryan: We’re not going to put a bunch of false pretenses on the music to try and sell people like it’s some sort of cupcake in the first place. Does that sound crazy?
WTL: Ok, I’m going start going back in time now…
Ryan: Alright, let’s get this thing [referring to my car] up to 88! (Laughs)
WTL: I’m wondering how well you got to know the guys from Suffocation on the Strhess tour, because every time someone brings up that tour to them, they always mention Poison The Well.
Ryan: They were kind of fast friends on that tour. I have no idea why it happened, I have no idea why it went the way it did, but we just ended up becoming really fast friends. Some of us, and some of them would always be watching each others band, and always chatting, and always trading thoughts on life in general. We both have very similar attitudes towards music. Obviously, you can tell that Suffocation is a band that’s going to do whatever the hell they want, no matter what anybody has to say.
Jeff: They’re really cool dudes! They’re funny! And they’re fun to watch live too! I used to be into a lot of death metal, because I used to play Dungeons & Dragons when I was 13, and I had lots of friends who listened to death metal, so I knew death metal through them, and through my sister. I always remembered that Suffocation was one of the bands that all my friends listened too. It was cool to call them and say “Dude, I’m on tour with Suffocation!”, and they’d say “What? Why are you on tour with Suffocation?”, because they think of my band as like a sissy band, you know, because we sing and stuff. They said “You guys aren’t brutal enough to go on tour with Suffocation!”
Ryan: It’s funny going on a tour like Strhess Tour, and seeing all the kids that are coming to these shows, and knowing that Suffocation is playing, knowing that their first record came out in ‘91, and they were far crazier than any us, far before any of us ever even decided we wanted to something a little bit left of center with music. They were pioneers of the whole idea of that. It’s really cool to know they said stuff like that, because I didn’t know that. It’s pretty awesome.
Jeff: We ended up being friends with those guys more than any of the other bands on that tour, even the bands we had already known.
WTL: I heard that there were a lot of kids who went to see that tour who were prepared to see Suffocation, even though they weren’t death metal kids.
Ryan: Absolutely! I think that’s because of the fact that they’re the genuine article. You can’t mistake it with them. That’s one of the greatest points of their band. From the minute they wake up, to the minute they go to sleep, they’re always them, playing or not playing. There’s no stage personality versus off-stage.
WTL: I was wondering about that, since Frank has such a signature style on stage.
Ryan: He’s crazy off stage too! He’s a loon! It’s great!
Chris: In the best way possible.
Ryan: I’m not talking in a negative way. He is one of my most favorite people I’ve met on tour. He’s an incredibly intelligent person.
Chris: He does have that karate chop thing. He loves it!
Ryan: “This song is about killin’ people, cause that’s what I like to do!” (Laughs)
Jeff: Frank makes the best between song banter! He said one time “Go into your local graveyard, and dig up any broad, any broad you want, and do whatever you want with her!” [sees my Suffocation belt buckle] You’ve got a sweet belt buckle dude!
WTL: There’s a lot of people out there who think that if you play music, it should be for the money and rock stardom. What do you think about that idea, especially from the standpoint of an unsigned band?
Ryan: I guess that depends on what your idea of rock stardom is. For me, when I picked up a guitar, I thought I’d never be able to pay my rent, not that I can save much past that. My job is to wake up and play music, henceforth I wake up and love what I do, which makes me miles ahead of most people in life, so I’m completely satisfied and content with that.
Jeff: I think that even if we wanted to do something like that, it wouldn’t be possible. If we sat down and tried to write a single to be a big band, the kids that really like our band would see right through that, and it would probably be the worst song ever. I don’t know if I know how to write a pop song. I don’t think Ryan could do it either, since he writes the music.
Chris: I guess if you wake up, and you want to get paid playing music, that’s cool. Like Ryan said, if you’re happy what your doing what your doing, then it’s not fake.
Ryan: There’s nothing wrong with being a pop musician, if that’s what you want to be.
Chris: There’s phenomenal musicians that play with ok pop bands, but they’re doing it because they get paid. Some of them have their little side projects, or their other band that is their main focus, which is their creative outlet that they do. Everybody has to work, everybody has to pay their bills.
Ryan: I have no problem with success, financially, or materialistically. My outlook on life is that I want to do it my way, I don’t really want to play the game. I’ve got certain ideals, and a good outlook on life because I do what I love, so this is the best case scenario that I could ever have.
When I was in college, I did stupid conventions playing guitar, making $175 an hour. It wasn’t rewarding though, it was me being bored.
Jeff: For me, I don’t think it’s worth it to put all this work into something just to be a flash in the pan, and you become that band that people remember for just because you were a band that was big for a couple of minutes with no integrity. I don’t think I’d have fun playing in a band with music that I didn’t back.
If you’re writing music to get big, your obviously trying to write music for whatever the times are, and then you’d be writing some singy songs with some fake heavy arts, and I’m guessing that’s what’s big nowadays. It would be boring to tour in a band for 2 years on songs that are like poppy.
We’ve been a band for awhile, and done all this work. We were 18 when we started touring, like most bands did back in the day, you jump in a van and play shows. There was never a time when you thought your band was going to get big because what we played wasn’t going to be big. Like going to see Earth Crisis, they were never big, but they were big to me, because I’d go and see them, and there would be 200 people there, and that was huge to me. Obviously now, that’s not a big band.
To put all that work into it, and then jump on a major label and completely change your sound to cater to this scene where you want to be big is very lame and pointless… for us.
Do I think it’s wrong for people to play music to get big? I don’t know. If they want to do that, then that’s fine, I mean somebody has too!
WTL: Some people would say that caving to what a major label what’s is exactly what a band should do. What are some good reasons for not doing that?
Chris: If you’re not sold on the idea. If you don’t believe in it, why should you do it? If a major label is telling you to jump off a cliff, should you do it because they’re telling you to do it? I know it’s an extreme way of saying it. There are certain things, if you don’t believe in, you don’t back it. That’s the way I feel about it at least.
Ryan: What he said!
Jeff: Well, we’ve been screwed over by indies and majors. The only difference was that we got a big push from a major that we didn’t get from the indie. We had to work harder at the indie to get screwed anyway.
We’re jaded now anyways after dealing with a major label. If you sign with a major label, you’re going to have to do whatever they want you to do. They’re going to tell you that they respect your band, that they understand what you mean, and what you stand for, and it all ends up being bullshit, because they don’t. If you sign to a major label, you’re going to have to write singles, and live this major label lifestyle, because they don’t understand. They don’t understand why you don’t want a bus. Your on a major, why wouldn’t you be on a bus? Why don’t you want to show that your this major label band? Indies are the same shit anyways, except most of them don’t have the money to want you to be on a bus, but they still want you to do thing’s that you normally wouldn’t do in order to sell records. Nowadays, there’s a fine line between what an indie and a major, because most indies are bought out by majors anyway.
Just say no, and have a middle finger, and you should be ok!
WTL: What would be some of the things that people wouldn’t think of that a label would try and push on you?
Jeff: They’ll push for you to go to big producers to help you write songs, obviously. I think it’s horrible for a band to work hard, and then go into the studio and have some dude tell them what to write. They’ll push tours on you. They can shelve your band if your record doesn’t have singles on it. They can keep you in the studio for a long time. Lie to you.
I guess it’s pretty known. Most bands who I know that are going to sign to a major know what they’re getting into, it’s just a question of it your willing to let yourselves deal with those things. If you’re willing to play the game and do whatever it takes to make them happy, to make your band big, it’s all good, and you’ll be fine, and you’ll have a long 2 years on a major label before your no longer relevant, and then music moves on without you.
Regardless of whether or not we’re relevant now, because we’re like an old band, we just try to continue to do things our way so the kids that do understand our band and appreciate it always know that we don’t do things that would ruin all the work we’ve done for our music and our band. When we’re done, I want to be known as a band that did things the way that we wanted to with integrity.
If your not willing to play the game with a major label, then it’s the worst decision you can make in your life.
WTL: Some people think that being on a major label equates to rock stardom, free money, each member having their own bus, hookers and blow, mansions and sports cars, going to the Grammies, dating movie stars and supermodels…
Chris: All the stuff that comes along with it, right?
Ryan: What planet does that happen on?
Chris: That’s some shit that they project on TV so they make everybody think that’s what happens.
Ryan: And that’s something that people can tend to project on you, because they want to be pissed off about something. They want to get mad and say stuff like “you signed on a major label, and you sold out all your ideals”, but half the indies that are on the market are owned by majors in some format anyway. They use majors as stockholders in their corporation, private investors. However you want to disguise it and put clown makeup on it. Who cares who puts out your records? Who cares? The Beetles were on a major label. Are you going to tell them they’re sell-outs and they didn’t do anything for music? Ok, sure, why not.
Chris: Putting on a credible front. But getting at your question a bit more, people I don’t think they realize that if you get any type of advance or anything, you have to pay ti back. It’s recoupable. They’re not going to give you $500 000 and say “You can have it because we like you a lot”. You have to pay it back in one way or another.
Ryan: In finance or blood, one of the two.
Jeff: I forget what the percentage was of bands that are actually successful on a major label. If you don’t live up to their expectations, they’ll shelve you. They’ll keep you in a contract you can’t get out of, they’ll give you hardly any money to record so your record sounds horrible, and you have no time to record it, then you sell nothing, and your stuck on this major label that won’t let you leave. You can’t just go and start a new band because your under contract by each individual that the label has first dibs on every recording that you do. If you get on a major label, you have to get pretty lucky or have a really good lawyer to get out of it. But no, you won’t get lots of blow and buses and cool stuff like that. You can! But you’ll be in debt.
WTL: Was there any label involvement on “You Come Before You”?
Chris: It was basically heads banging out of time when they came to listen.
Ryan: Oh, that was amazing! I will say this; the “Versions” stuff that I brought to different labels that we were talking too was 100 times better. A certain person I met up with in New York… I thought he was having an epileptic reaction, but he was just into it.
Chris: I think I know who you’re talking about…
WTL: I’ve always thought that you got better with every album. Do you think that people beat up on “You Come Before You” because it was on a major label?
Jeff: I don’t want to think that because that’s how I used to think when I was 16 years old. When a band signed to a major, I didn’t like them anymore. It wasn’t like “hardcore” or whatever. But, I don’t know. I hope not, because that’s kind of stupid to think that way. I don’t think it was a record that sounded like we were trying to do anything other than what we wanted to do at that time.
Chris: No, I think people beat up on “You Come Before You” because it wasn’t that great of a record.
Ryan: I don’t know. I didn’t pay attention to any of the reviews on that one at all.
Chris: Neither did I.
Ryan: I was completely oblivious that time because it was so out of our normal scope out of what was going on. Our personally lives in and of themselves were just so much different. From the day the record was done being recorded, and being tracked, and mixed, we were on tour for the next 12 months, with like 3 weeks off. I just didn’t care what was going on with the record, I was just concerned with playing the next day. Just keeping myself straight for that.
I don’t think it’s a horrible record, I just think it’s unfocussed. It’s all over the place, in the wrong kinds of ways, even though this current record seems far more all over the place, just in the right kinds of ways.
Chris: There’s more continuity to this record.
Jeff: They gave us complete creative control like they said they would give us. When we signed to Atlantic, we thought we had creative control, it was what we were told, but halfway through the touring cycle for “You Come before You”, everybody who signed us to Atlantic got fired. When we got signed to them, we told them we weren’t going to sell 500 000 records or a million records.
We took hardly anything for a signing bonus. What we took for a recording budget what was tax deductible. Atlantic never understood why we said no to most of the things they wanted to do. We never took tour support unless we were going to Europe, where we needed a bus then. Other than that, our band is self-sufficient. We pay for everything, and it’s always been that way.
WTL: Why not tour in a bus?
Jeff: A bus costs $1000 a day. When you tour 10 months out of the year, that’s a lot of money that could help your band do other things, as opposed to giving it to the bus company. I like the van because we can stop at the mall and go to the movies on our days off. It can get pretty unbearable sometimes, but that’s fine, especially since you’ve been doing it for so long.
We all drive, well some of us do, because not all of us have licences, so they have to sleep on the floor, they get punished somehow! It’s an even trade that gives more room for other people to sleep. We have hotels every night, so we can take a shower and not smell bad. What you pay for gas, insurance, and 2 hotel rooms is nowhere near what you would pay on a bus.
WTL: Do you have a day jobs?
Jeff: We tour so much out of the year that it would be impossible to get a day job. And there’s no need to, because it’s like a normal job, that pays a little bit better than working at Wal-Mart or something.
WTL: It sounds like you’ve toured even more than 10 months before.
Jeff: It has been before. When we toured on “You Come Before you” it was a long time, but we’re not going to do that because it stressed a lot of people out, and relationships got really messed up. We would tour 6 months and have a week off, then 3 months, and have a few days off. We were exhausted to the point where we would pick at each other. I didn’t want to be in a band anymore. If you have a girlfriend at home, it stresses that relationship. There needs to be a balance between your real life and band life.
We’ll tour 2 years on this record, but we’ll split it up so that it’s comfortable.
WTL: I’ve heard of bands playing 300 shows a year.
Jeff: Hatebreed does stuff like that. We did a tour with Hatebreed, and they didn’t have any days off at all. We played here, and I had no voice. It was really cold. I could scream, but I had no voice. I had these little cards to show to people when they came up to talk to me! Our “Tear From The Red” record came out, and they asked us to go on tour, and that really helped our band out. It was flattering to have dues in other bands like us enough to bring us on tour.
WTL: Did Jeff take vocal lessons for “You Come Before You”?
Ryan: Brian Anderson.
WTL: Did he teach anything for harsh vocals?
Ryan: No, it was just for singing.
Jeff: I went to 2 people to teach me how to scream, but it was a fake scream. There’s lots of bands that do it, and you can tell when they do it, because it’s really “airy”. I don’t want to learn to scream that way because it’s cheating, and I hate when bands do it.
I don’t think you can actually go out and learn how to scream. If your screaming, your screaming! Just get mad and yell at somebody or something!
I did go for singing because after screaming, it stretches your vocal chords out so much that it’s really hard to stay in pitch, or you could close up your throat. The job of really screaming can be very difficult. I went to 2 people just to get a better grasp on what I need to do to sing in key a lot better than I was, because I’m not in key all the time. I’m not going to lie and say I’m the greatest singer on the planet. I scream pretty good! I’m good at that! I try as hard as I can to stay in key when we play though.
WTL: So when you scream, it’s at a high volume?
Jeff: Yeah. When we record records, we have to change the filters on the mikes because it breaks them.
When I started screaming in a band when I was 16 years old, screaming was just screaming, so I just screamed. That’s how my body got used to it. I could imagine that after awhile, if your not screaming correctly, you’ll destroy your vocal chords, and you’ll get nodes, and you’ll need surgery to get them removed, and then you can never sing again, or scream. If you find a way to be comfortable with it, you can scream for as long as you want.
I want to figure out how I did it so I can put a video out!
WTL: If most people tried to scream like you, wouldn’t they be hoarse by the end of the day?
Jeff: Yeah! Maybe this isn’t the best advice, but what I did is that I would just scream until I lost my voice, then I’d rest, and then I’d come back, and I’d scream until I lost my voice again, and again, and in the process, after awhile, your body gets used to it, and you don’t loose your voice anymore. Then you figure out where to scream so that you never have your vocal chords smash into each other, because that’s what’s going to destroy your vocal chords.
When we’re on tour, I can tell if the other bands are screaming from their throat, or if they’re sick, or what they’re doing wrong, or how many days they have left before their voice is shot.
Vocal lessons aren’t going to teach you how to do that, unless you go to someone who’s going to show you how to cheat scream.
WTL: I thought Jeffs scream sounded a little different compared to the older material.
Ryan: Every year he gets further out of puberty, so his voice gets lower. It was so funny, because when the first full-length came out, his voice was so high, piercingly high, and then you tour for a year and play 300 shows, and all of the sudden he sounds like a bear! Then you play 700 shows, and he sounds like a moose! (Laughs)
Chris: Every year he gets older, and his voice gets a little deeper. With “Versions”, he wanted to do different dynamic variations, he didn’t want it just to be balls out, and then singing.
Ryan: Ebb and flow.
WTL: He voice keeps sounding deeper and fuller…
Chris: Some people think we just got a different singer. I just tell them no, he just grew up.
Ryan: His final testicle dropped! (Laughs)
WTL: I’ve had a bit of trouble finding promotional pictures of you guys. Was that just me, or was that intentional?
Jeff: We’ll do a professional photo shoot, and they’ll say it looks great, and then we swear it always looks the same! I can never remember anything cool about the way that we look in pictures. If we can get people to still use the old ones, we can convince people that we’re still young!
Ryan: We just don’t take very many promo pics. Some bands keep doing picture session after picture session. We do the same thing in every one of them, so it looks the same. I’ll have a different t-shirt on, so it looks different. Who cares what I look like anyway?
Chris: Kids care…I mean, not that I care, because I see you every day! Kids that like what you do are going to care. Sometimes we’ll have different jeans. Some things, we just don’t understand.
WTL: Do you think that helps to keep it a bit more focused on the music?
Ryan: It seems like image is what actually seems to get people listening to music these days, and it’s such a repugnant concept to me. We’re not going out of our way to promote that there’s no image, we just are ourselves. We’re not going to put on makeup, or suits and ties. It’s really uncomfortable.
WTL: Some bands have attempted to rip you off. How do you feel about people taking your influence in that way?
Ryan: I never notice. It would make me nervous if I did, because that would be a really big step into narcissism.
Jeff: Well, I’m in the band, so I’d like to think that somebody doesn’t sound like our band. If a band is influenced by us, that’s very flattering and awesome, because I never thought I’d be in a band where anyone would want to be influenced by us, and to care, and make their music kind of like ours. We change all the time, so after awhile, I don’t even know what it sounds like anymore.
Chris: I think imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
Ryan: Some friend of mine the other day sent me a text message saying the new Deftones sounds like your second record, and I was like “Huh?”. I listened to a song, and thought that person was on crack… even though he doesn’t do any drugs… I just couldn’t understand it. I guess it’s just because I know what’s goes behind doing it between us, that would never make it sound like us to me. I have some much backlog with the songs that there’s no way anyone elses songs are going to carry that kind of story.
Jeff: there are bands that I listen to, and I’ll say it doesn’t sound like us, but it does sound like Cave In, because essentially, I think we ripped of Cave In! (Laughs) That was one of the bands I would listen to when I was younger that would sing and scream and had heavy parts.
I don’t want to take credit for sounding like something because that would so cheesy to sit here and say “Yeah, that band sounds like us!” everybody draws influenced from everything before that. So, if anybody sounds like us, then they’re ripping off Cave In!
Chris: We’re friends with the guys in Dillinger Escape Plan, and I listen to bands that people say are influenced by them, and I don’t hear it. It might be crazy, but that’s about it. Because I know the dynamic between Chris and Ben, and what they had, I understood it. When you see your friends write, and how they interact, it makes sense how they write music.
WTL: I can certainly see where you’re coming from, because I used to say the same thing when I got into Dillinger Escape Plan. I’d get bands that I thought sounded like them, but after awhile, I realized…
Chris: They were different? I think most of those bands, I don’t want to say more death metal influenced, but, I know Chris, their drummer, or their old drummer, and he basically takes complex fusion patterns and speeds them up. That’s how he comes up with it. A lot of the other bands, they listen to Dillinger Escape Plan, and they listen to death metal, and other heavy bands, but they don’t really listen to what influences Chris. He listens to all different spectrums of music.
Ryan: They don’t listen to the dudes that influenced the dudes. People don’t realize that Chris is a big music historian.
Chris: He’s really well versed in everything. Dillinger Escape Plan has a specific sound, and I think you can kind of imitate it, but I don’t think you can re-create it.
WTL: I did an interview with See You Next Tuesday, and they named you as a band they’d love to tour with, and they said that Jeff really influenced the lyrics. Your two bands are bands that people would say don’t sound alike at all. Perhaps when they say they’re influenced by you, they mean that they take inspiration from you to be creative.
Jeff: It feels good! (Laughs) I’m never good with things like that. It’s still weird to hear stuff like that, not that I hear it all the time or anything. The few times I hear it, it’s weird. It’s cool. It’s very flattering and nice for somebody to say that.
Ryan: That’s a really cool compliment. If I had a positive effect on anybody as far as giving them some sort of emotion that puts them further into music, that makes me completely flattered out of my mind. It’s cool! Things like that to me, make sense, because everybody gets it from somewhere. There would be people that I would be completely starstruck and awestruck to because of the effect that they had on me. I’d have to look at them and say that they’re one of the reasons why I love what I love. Everybody has influences, and everybody has inspiration, it’s just how you go about expressing it is the important thing.
Chris: Betty Crocker or…
Ryan: Nobody will ever know how much I rip off Rush! But I do it all the time.
WTL: When you first started playing and touring, were there a lot of bands that you could fit in with at all?
Chris: When we started? No.
Ryan: I don’t think so. Remember those shows at home? Nobody at home for sure, and then when we first started touring, we always ended up touring with noise bands.
Chris: Noisier, more technical.
Ryan: We would just play anywhere with anybody, and that’s always held true with us. It wasn’t weird because of that. We had no problems playing with any kind of bands.
Jeff: We went on tour with Stretch Armstrong and Nora. I don’t think those bands sound like us. We’ve been on shows with Brothers Keeper, Walls Of Jericho and Disembodied, and none of those bands sounded like Poison The Well, except for Cave In!
Chris: We prefer to play with different bands. Who wants to go to a show and hear the same band over and over? I think this tour with Saosin is cool, because we’re heavy compared to some of the other bands. Whether it works for us or to our detriment, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
WTL: The bands that are playing before you, aren’t they a bit lighter?
Ryan: Most of the bands on this tour, besides us and Saosin in some sections are much more laid back. I wouldn’t say easier to pallette, it’s just a little bit more restrained in certain areas, and we kind of come on like a ton of bricks. A lot of people are prepared, and a lot of people are unprepared.
Chris: The expressions on the unprepared peoples faces are pretty awesome.
Ryan: Yes, it’s pretty priceless.
WTL: I don’t think you guys would be afraid to play in front of an audience that doesn’t get you.
Chris: Actually, it’s a nice inspiration.
Ryan: I wouldn’t say I like it better, but when they don’t get it, at least I’m doing something that they haven’t experienced before, which makes me psyched.
WTL: Even for the people that don’t get it, you probably play full-force anyways.
Ryan: Yeah, I play for me, first and foremost, and then the people that I play on stage with , after that it just kind of goes wherever, I don’t really know!
WTL: In the past, you’ve toured with bands like Cryptopsy, and both bands reportedly really liked that tour. Can we expect you to continue doing tours with unexpected bands?
Jeff: That tour was with Cryptopsy, Candiria and Origin I think…
Ryan: On the tours that we do, there’s always a coupe of bands that are really different, and that’s something we really try to push out there. On support tours, we don’t have as much of a say, we’re just happy that we get to show up. When we pick the bands, we always try to make it a broad spectrum.
Chris: That’s what I liked about the Mastodon, Against Me, Cursive tour, it was such a variation in music. It’s cool when bands understand that, and put something together like that.
Jeff: I don’t listen to any types of heavy music, so it’s refreshing to have different types of bands on tour.
Ryan: The last tour we did in the U.S. was super fun. We went out with The End, Fear Before The March Of Flames, and Heavy Heavy Low Low. All the bands were more aggressive than normal, but they all have different ways of going about it, and different deliveries. The rest of that tour had Portugal The Man, a psychedelic band.
Jeff: Our thing is, if we headline, we always try to bring all different bands. There’s nothing more boring than going to a show, and every single band sounds the same. At the same time, your not helping any kids to open their minds to different stuff. This is the only way I can think of to make somebody have to listen to a band that I think is cool We’ve brought Criteria on tour. We brought Portugal The Man, which didn’t go other so well, which sucks… It’s a bummer to have your kids, your fans boo these bands that you’ve brought on tour. It was super disrespectful to me… These bands won’t go on tour with us again because some fans won’t accept that these are the bands that we bring on tour.
Ryan: For that Mastodon tour I just mentioned, I would go and I was psyched the whole way through, and that rarely happens, except for when Rush plays, because they don’t bring anybody.
Poison The Well at MySpace
Poison The Well at Ferret Music
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