The Locust - Bobby Bray
Posted on December 29, 2007 at 4:54 pm by admin
I’ve only been familiar with The Locust for about year, and being the bizarre, undescribable band that they are, I was hooked. Considering that their latest album, “”New Erections” will be appearing on my year end list, who better to have for an end of the year interview? Even if you’re not a fan, read on anyway about the crazy things that The Locust has done or gotten involved with, it’s very entertaining!
Way Too Loud: Do you find that people who even do like The Locust have a bit of a hard time understanding you? I know I’ve read a few sources that consider you unfocused, but I felt completely the opposite.
Bobby Bray: I guess I would fall into that same category of thinking that it was focused, having spent all the time making it. We certainly spent a lot of time figuring out what parts go with other parts, certainly we’re looking for cohesion. There’s also severe contrast, but we’re not the first people to do that. In terms of classifying us, that we don’t spend much time thinking about. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, once you put something into a certain word, it sort of limits the unimaginable type of thing. Human beings file certain things in their brain they can’t fully comprehend %100, not just music, but anything in general really. That creative yearning in the brain is something I think is rad, and being unclassifiable is a positive thing. I like it that way.
WTL: You’ve got 3 vocalists, you place the drums up front with the rest of the band, and of course the suits. Is all this to show you playing as a cohesive unit rather than 1 person fronting the band?
Bobby: A lot of our writing centers around drums. Having the drums up front reflects [that]. The way we prioritize certain elements of sound and music is heavy on rhythm, so having [the drumkit] up front represents our approach better. We’re also 1 cohesive entity, to make a big ruckus-ey sound.
WTL: Since you have a lot of short songs, do you put a lot of effort working in songs from splits and EPs? Those types of releases tend to get pushed to the side sometimes.
Bobby: To be honest, we fall prey to playing new material mostly. People write new music, they want to play it! We do occasionally play some old ones, “Twenty-Three Lubed Up Schizophrenics With Delusions of Grandeur” being one of them, but we don’t really go much further beyond “Plague Soundscapes”, which was a few releases ago. I guess we’re sort of sick of some of those songs!
WTL: There’s been a few bands coming out of the woodwork citing The Locust as an influence, and even having moments where they sound similar to you.
Bobby: Some of the other guys might answer this question differently. I sort of feel that we’re part of a bigger entity, running through our bodies possessing us to create certain sounds and songs, and I think that these entities are larger than any 1 human or group of humans. It sort of takes form outside of time/space, and fucking takes human beings and does what it wants with them. I think that sometimes it’s weird because there will be bands that people might grow up listening to, and maybe that band was the first band to play a certain style, you know, certain characteristics are recognizable. The next band might be better than where the original concept came from, and I think that’s ok, and that it’s alright to happen. I listen to bands, and everyone in the band listens to tons of bands. I think it’s cool that people might get some ideas off stuff that we’ve done. We certainly do that.
WTL: You’re ideas almost seem to come out of nowhere, because The Locust is so original.
Bobby: That’s the whole trick I guess, to have something new to keep yourself mentally occupied. That’s part of the reason why we don’t play our old songs. We’ve already done that. It’s trying to scratch the surface of something, reaching for something I guess. It’s a common search for many people.
WTL: With the suits, are there any problems with care, expense, or comfort?
Bobby: A friend of ours makes them, Beiben. They’re not terribly expensive, but they’re custom made. The biggest problem is that they smell horrible! That can sometimes pollute the air around the van. It brings us together, smelling our own horrible, retched, at times a popcorn and ammonia smelling craziness. It’s like the odor of those things have a life of their own! It’s like a bring trying to fucking say something! The message is fucking wash them! We don’t seem to do that often enough… I don’t know why…
WTL: Do you change the looks of the suits every time you get new ones?
Bobby: Yeah, we bounce ideas off of our friend Ben Worwuss [note: I’m not sure the smelling the name of clothing company] he’s the 1 who owns Beiben clothing. We try to make it tie in to the latest stuff we’ve been working on. Sometimes without even trying, we start brainstorming in a certain direction that’ll lend itself to that, whether we try to or not.
WTL: How did this tour package end up together? [The Locust, Despised Icon, Child Abuse, The Discord Of A Forgotten Sketch] Are you friends with the bands, or did you like some of the bands, or was it chosen by a booking agent?
Bobby: This tour was set up by Exclaim, so they were the ones that put us together. I have to admit, it’s kind of a silly name for a tour. It’s named after a sub-culture, newsprint, booklet deal. So it’s been interesting, new people. It’s also nice to have Child Abuse on tour. They had to miss a few shows because their school bus/van that they use is powered by vegetable oil, and a piston got messed up, so it wasn’t related to running out of vegetable oil, it’s just got thrashed and they missed a couple of shows. It was a big ordeal for them. It’s nice to have them on the tour, since we had known them through a few members. And then Discord Of A Forgotten Sketch is a band we just met. They’re great guys, and they’re fun to tour with, so that’s nice.
WTL: I heard that most of the time you choose bands that you’re friends with.
Bobby: yeah! When we get back to the states, we’re touring with this band Yip Yip, which is a really weird 2 piece band who’s friends of ours, and Sleeping People, a more mathy band with no singer. They’re friends of ours. There’s this band called Z’s from New York, and it’s really kind of super-mathy. That should be pretty rad. Usually it’s bands where we say “Yeah! We should tour together!” and then we set it up and do it like that. This Canadian part of our North American tour is different because it was set up by someone else.
WTL: So touring with bands you didn’t choose is very different for you?
Bobby: Yeah! For the last 8 years we’ve been touring with bands that we wanted to tour with, not bands that people put us with.
WTL: You’re very different from the bands that Despised Icon usually tours with.
Bobby: I heard they toured with Deicide!
WTL: I’ve heard you’ve had some strange merchandise in the past, so I’m just wondering if you have anything strange currently for sale.
Bobby: Right now we have belt buckles that are die-cast metal. We have in the works frisbees and toilet seat covers. Those will be shipped to New York, which will unfortunately be past out Canadian dates.
WTL: I’ve heard about some people making bootleg releases under your band name with animal sounds and baby screams. Are people doing that as sort of a joke?
Bobby: It was some people from Arizona that did it. We ended up finding out who they were because they were acquaintances of acquaintances. They felt bad and gave us some of the records. They only made a certain limited edition of those. I only heard about that one release, which was supposed to sound like a baby crying, but it was actually a full-grown adult emulating a baby pterodactyl crying. I think they just took it upon themselves that it would be a good idea. It wasn’t like a super-malicious thing.
WTL: If you were to make up a genre name for yourselves as a joke…
Bobby: It would have to have something with modern technology, fucking quantum physics, quantum computers, seemingly arbitrary… I don’t know… I guess all those words strung together! Seemingly arbitrary, quantum physic like, multi-tasking music!
WTL: I’ve heard a couple of strange stories, like a wedding staged in Hawaii…
Bobby: Yeah! Gabe our drummer and Justin our bass player got married in Hawaii, but they really did not!
WTL: Any idea why they did that?
Bobby: I don’t know, they were bored! Justin does all sorts of crazy stuff, like leaves ads with his cell phone number just to entertain himself. Like putting up signs that say “Lost pig-dog”, people call him and all sorts of weird stuff, and in that vein they started taking about getting married in Hawaii. We played there like 8 years ago with friends our ours.
WTL: I also heard about an appearance on Jerry Springer.
Bobby: That was our bass player Justin fucking with American media. It’s not that hard to do I guess! I think he went on there with a completely made up story, and got flown out to Chicago, Scott Beiben doe some work in some extra movies. She was JP’s roommate or girlfriend on the show, and he “cheated” on her, and then this whole love triangle thing with fighting and kissing.. I dunno. He ended up kissing Scott Beinben.
The Official Website Of The Locust
The Locust at MySpace
The Locust at Epitaph
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