Russian Circles – Mike Sullivan, Dave Turncrantz, Brian Cook
Posted on May 29, 2009 at 12:07 am by admin
From the archive I ended up digging up this wonderful long lost interview with instrumental Russian Circles. I think this interview might actually be a year old! We’re always about opening our minds at this site though, and Russian Circles was the first instrumental band i ever had a chance to interview. The live show they put on is very intense as well, and very different, as the music tends to be based on simplicity as a way to get right to the pure emotion.
Way Too Loud!: Since a lot of bands love to talk about this, what influenced you, and what got you up and playing?
Mike Sullivan: When we were younger, we’d listen to a lot of bad metal and hair metal too, and then in 8th grade I got into punk rock, and then after that I realized there was all sorts of other stuff out there besides punk and metal, like Fugazi and [inaudible], and they sort of set the groundwork for how we should work a band, and the values that surround the whole culture of music.
With conventional music and pop music of the past, you can mess with the formula and get different results and a different interplay of instruments. [Looks over to Dave] And we finish each others paragraphs!
Dave Turncrantz: (Laughs) Yeah! I grew up with early punk rock, then Metallica, Pantea, heavier bands and Slayer and whatnot. I pretty much started play drums to punk when I was really young. That’s where I came from.
Brian Cook: I really liked Chicago and Survivor when I was really young, but I thought only their singles were good, the rest of it was just kind of crappy and obnoxious. But when I heard stuff like the Pixies and Fugazi, it was like every song on their records were solid and intense, and that’s when I think I really started getting into music, and got obsessed with it, and wanted to know more about it, so I started going to shows. I liked the whole package, and the way you sort of conduct yourself, and operate and things like that.
WTL: What would you say got this band together?
Mike: All of our other bands sort of came to an end, so we started playing together. All of our other bands were more technical and ended up being boring because you couldn’t grab on to anything. People were always so overwhelmed with mediocrity, so we figured we’d dumb this [Russian Circles] down a little bit, and figure out something that’s easier to latch on to, so the whole goal from day one was to keep it really simple. Not minimal, but refined.
That’s what the latest record is about, how we can make it a bit simpler, and more stripped down but still retain its – dare I say – groove.
Dave: I played music with Mike a long time ago in St. Louis. We’re both from St. Louis, and we were in a punk band together in high school and we kept in touch. We were both in bands that were a cluster fuck of shit going on, and when those bands started falling apart we got together. We knew we wanted to play music still, and we started Russian Circles. Brian came in later.
WTL: [To Brian] The way you came in, I heard that the expectation was to add your own thing.
Brian: Yeah! They had already done “Enter”, and they sent me demos for “Station”, and I tried to come up with things to play along with it, then we met up at practice and realized that everything I’d come up with at practice was pretty lame. They kind of laid all the groundwork, so I just get the free ride.
Mike: He changed our whole look around!
Dave: We wore really baggy clothes before he came in! (Laughs)
Mike: His whole “no shorts” policy on stage totally changed our world! (Laughs) I mean, I know they’re comfortable, and I like to be able to move in clothes on stage, but the pictures show it!
Dave: It was just me and Mike who wrote the songs, it had this super guitar drum rhythm, and he kind of aired it out in a really good way. On the next album though, I definitely think it’ll be more… um…
Mike: Guitar and drum? (Laughs)
Dave: We’ll be working with Brian on the next record, so it’ll be a bit more spanned out instead of saying “Hey, learn bass lines in six days, and get ready to record for a week!”
WTL: How does the writing process work?
Mike: We’ll start off with some ideas, then Dave and I will deconstruct those and get the foundation of what we like about it, then throw away a lot of stuff, and trim the fat essentially. Certain riffs cause a springboard to more ideas, like fast or slow, or more aggressive, less aggressive. Some soft songs get really heavy and vice versa, then we feel it up. On the last record Brian came in and filled it out. We’re really looking forward to messing with the formula and playing more together as a band, and writing. I can play guitar as much as I want and come up with all these riffs, but they’re very guitar oriented, but there’s not much flow. Three instruments make a song, rather than one at the forefront with everyone else backing that up. There’s less interplay there, and it’s kind of flat.
WTL: It sounds like you’d really like to get to writing a new album.
Mike: With “Station”, we’re proud of it, and it’s great.
Dave: We’re not pressing any more though. There’s only 100 copies! (Laughs)
Mike: Those songs are great – we know those now and they’re fun to play! We’re always throwing stuff away or revising or changing or revisiting riffs and messing with them. Even when we’re done a new record, we’re always seeing what we can grow from.
Mike: The EP was pretty much a demo for “Enter”, so “Enter” is pretty much and extension of the EP. There wasn’t really supposed to be an EP, we just kept on giving the demo to friends, and when we went on tour we thought we should make more of them for gas money, so that’s how that happened.
The change from “Enter” to “Station” wasn’t really thought out. We didn’t sit down and talk about how we we’re going to change it up, so we just play whatever we’re going to do. Whenever we play something heavy it never works out, and when we try to write something soft it doesn’t work out, but when we write whatever happens, we know what feels right and what doesn’t. There’s no conscious effort. It wasn’t until we started playing for friends that they started saying “This is way different!”. Is it? We thought it was the same thing and the same style! We don’t think about how something will be perceived, so we don’t have any expectations at all. We write a record that we wanted to write.
Dave: For me, there’s a lot of stuff on the new record that I don’t really like. Every time I’m in band, I always look back at something I write, and I really like it at the time, but I always think I could’ve done something different. We had already written everything and “Enter”, not intentionally, and we just didn’t want to do anything over again because it’s easier to write something that you’re comfortable with, and we tried to do things that worked out. It seems like the same formula, buts it was definitely different than “Enter”.
Brian: When I first heard “Enter”, it was like one piece, like also the songs transitioned into one another. There were breaks, but it seemed like there were so many ideas in each song the whole album was about one thought than an actual song. With “Station”, each individual song had it’s own very distinct, individual idea. I also felt like the songs on station were more song-like, so when I was writing, I was wondering how I can make that even more apparent, so I tried keeping the sam bass lines throughout the song without filling it up with as many parts as possible to keep in consistent, and locked into one idea, and I think that makes it a little different from “Enter”.
Dave: Showboating was the last thing we wanted to do. If a part was good, no matter if it was easy or if a fucking 4th grader could play it, then just as long as it sounds good and its fun, that’s all that matters.
The older I get, the more I like simple easy shit! I can’t listen to crazy tech stuff anymore, it just drives me crazy! I can get through a song and a half, and my mind just freezes. I just need something relaxing and soothing structure-wise. A band I always liked was Spoon. They always had a super-minimal way of writing songs, but yet they’d all come off as really, really awesome, and they’re really good at doing it. I’ve always admired them for what they do.
Brian: I think the thing that always attracted me to punk music and hardcore as opposed to traditional metal was that it was so easy. It was so basic that anyone could do it, and it sort of had this un-populist air to it, because anybody can fuckin’ play it, and that’s what makes it fuckin’ cool! It’s not for an elite class of musicians, but when you start playing for awhile you realize that you can actually do some of that fancy shit, then you can say “Hey! I’m a credible person! I can play a lot!” Now it’s kind of going back to the old style. I’m just sick of people trying to open a show by showing all the shit they can do. That’s great. You can play a lot of notes really fast. Can you write a song? Can you hold my attention for 5 minutes? Bringing punk back…
Mike: Our next album is going to have 19 songs! (Laughs)
WTL: Is there any meaning behind the title of “Station”?
Mike: Nothing directly. It’s like most of our songs, it’s kind of something more personal that makes us who we are, and not the general popular, so we don’t share with anybody. Well, not today! (Laughs)
WTL: How did you get hooked up with that Coheed and Cambria tour?
Mike: They were taking bids, like different bands offer different amounts, and we figured we do something like a charity to help people with leukemia, then we’d use it as part of the pat-to-play thing with Coheed and Cambria! (Laughs)
Dave: On the real though, they asked us to do that tour with them, and there’s a lot of off markets that we weren’t hitting on this tour. We thought it’d be a good idea for us to play in front of a lot of people in weird, southern states.
Mike: A lot of the places are locations that we wouldn’t be able to hit ourselves unless we were supporting another band, and we’re always up for diverse bills. If we do a metal tour, then we’ll do some after that’s very independent or something very noise oriented, or hip-hop or whatever. We can just keep changing it up. The more stagnant is, the more it is. We like all kinds of music, and its something we’ve never done before. It was only 10 shows. Baroness said it was a good time, so it sounded like fun!
Brian: It feels really weird because I feel like it’s not really our scene, but if we play El Paso on our own, there might be 10 people there, and a few of them will probably be Coheed and Cambria fans because El Paso doesn’t get a steady flow of bands coming in to play, so their information on music is probably coming from MTV or magazines, MySpace and things like that, so we’ll just take a chance and see what happens with it!
Dave: They’ll either love us, or hate us! Or kinda like us, or kinda hate us. Anything could happen! (Laughs)
WTL: How did the choice to be an instrumental band come about?
Mike: The band I was in prior to this was instrumental, and I was used to that, and being from Chicago, there’s all kinds of instrumental bands. A lot of amazing bands never got much national or international attention. They’re amazing musicians, and I never thought twice about having a singer. When we started this band we didn’t have any intentions to tour at all, we just thought is was something fun that we like doing. We gained some attention after awhile, but it was never a concern. We thought about getting a singer in the first few practices, but then we thought there’s not that much room left. There’s enough going on.
Dave: We’ve even thought about doing some little vocal stuff here and there. Who knows? We’re not throwing it out.
Mike: A lot of other bands have vocals, and that sounds great. Some bands have awful vocalists , and some bands have awful guitar players so it just depends. With this kind of band, there’s more freedom without a vocalist. I don’t see myself singing anytime soon!
Mike: We would’ve alienated everybody!
Dave: I think it totally benefitted the way we write music. We can do anything we want.
Mike: We can just hit a note for one minute and not worry about it. Some poor singer would need a tambourine, or have to clap.
Dave: It’s good when we go to venues and do soundcheck, the sound guys are so happy! We don’t even need a vocal mike to talk back. They don’t have to throw that into the mix, so they can just make us louder, or just worry about the instruments. We don’t need to worry about some dude making awesome banter between songs in whatever city they’re in.
Brian: It’s such a relief not having between song banter. If you have a really articulate, comfortable person in front of a microphone it can be amusing, but it’s always such a gamble, but then if you don’t say anything, like some singers just stand round and wait for the band.
Dave: The best is when someone says “We’ve got merch in the back!” Really? That and “Tip your bartender!”
Brian: I remember seeing this really spazzy emotional hardcore band, pulling at their clothes. The singer was curled up in the fetal position while the rest of the band had feedback going, then they turn their amps off, and he’s still there. He says “We also have shirts and CDs…” Oh god, really? (Laughs)
Mike: We need a merch vendor walking around with CDs and a hat! (Laughs)
WTL: You’ve only had one lineup change. What can attribute your stability to?
Mike: It’s been four years now. It’s kind of personal with all the musical parts, and when your traveling you do need to make sure that people do get along. When your on tour, everything comes out, so you see the real person. Brian wasn’t just like “Why not? Lets try it out!” He’s someone we already thought was decent. We don’t have any intentions for big lineup changes. Even the first few years with Colin were good. With only the three of us, I don’t think there’s a lot of room for personnel changes.
WTL: What beyond music influences you to play?
Mike: Planet earth, the Discovery Channel! (Laughs) It’s all sad but true! Science in general. This might sound kind of lame, but driving around our country [the United States]. A lot of people don’t get to see how beautiful our country really is. There’s so many amazing places in this country that we’re privileged to drive through. It really effects you, and you take into account that you’re driving to all these places playing in front of 30 people, or 300 people, or in our case 30,000 people… (Laughs) Driving around playing your music is a very free experience, and between the jack-shacks and the advertisements, you get to see our country.
Dave: Before we recorded “Station” we drove out and went through the Badlands and Yellow Stone National Park, and that was definitely mind-blowing. but we couldn’t find a Starbucks there though… (Laughs)
Mike: Chicago is a busy hectic city, which we love, but its great to get out of the city and take it in. Everything is a little bit more harmonious in nature, it’s not all this stuff from man-made crap all thrown together. Seeing all the advertisements does bum you out, but once you get out there. The drive today was beautiful. We went through Pennsylvania and we didn’t see any made-man anything. It was a breath of fresh air.
Brian: I think because music is something that bonds people together is pretty inspiring. It allows you to travel all over the place. We get to go to other countries and hang out with everyday people that are foreign and unfamiliar, and I just think that’s pretty awesome, and fortunate for us. I think it helps to inform the music that you write because you have all these experiences, and your horizons get broadened, and you appreciate different cultural values and whatnot. There’s bands that I know that travel around the world in their own little bubble and they don’t interact with other people, and they aren’t interested in the world that’s going on around them, and I think it’s sad because they’re missing an opportunity to soak up so much culture.
WTL: Which size venue do you prefer playing in the most?
Mike: The smaller ones are way more fun.
Dave: The 300 capacity ones are the ones that I have the most fun in. We’ve played 700 capacity room show on this tour, but even though soundcheck was good, we just didn’t feel any connection with the audience. I mean it was fun and we had a good time. We played a show in a place called “The Middle East” upstairs with 200 people, and it was so much fun, and it felt like everybody was just right there, then playing the 700 capacity venue, everybody felt really far away. It was just weird.
Mike: We’re a bit more vulnerable on bigger stages, and I feel like we should be doing more than just playing music.
Mike: It’s less organic, because you have less control over the overall sound, whereas the soundguy has the final say on how everything’s mixed. When we’re self-contained, we can take care of the dynamics ourselves, like quiet or loud. The more variables you have, the less impact you have on the final product. I love playing in any sized venue, but the smaller venues are definitely more fun.
WTL: Who would you like to tour with who’s both feasible, but not obvious?
Mike: Um…
Dave: You don’t like very many bands! (Laughs)
Brian: Sigur Ros, the Icelandic band. Their DVD…
Mike: They’re pretty amazing.
Dave: I would love to play with the Flaming Lips with all the stuff they’ve done.
Brian: I’d like to play with Wilko just to see how that kind of shit works. I’d like to play with The Melvins. If Faguzai ever tours again, I’d love to tour with them, or Shellac. Yes would be great. We’d do really well with Yes I think. Rush would be great.
WTL: Have you ever lied about your band name, or what it means?
Dave: All the time! At rest stops, guitar centers! Not because people know who we are, just because you don’t want to get into a conversation about it.
Mike: The best thing that I’ve heard is that some guy told me “Yeah, Russian circles is a gymnastic move on the pommel horse! That’s where you guys got your name from, right?” no… But yeah, a gymnastics move, a further expression of our art through body movement. (Laughs) The real meaning comes from a hockey drill actually.
Brian: A lot of bands say they’re in Jimmy eat World. What’s always surprising is that no one actually knows what Jimmy eat World actually looks like. I know one band said they were Jimmy eat World, then they did something tacky, like ask where they could get cocaine. I tell people that we’re in Driveshaft!
Russian Circles at MySpace
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