A Textbook Tragedy Interview

by Diego Silva

A Textbook Tragedy stopped in Toronto with Blind Witness at the Kathedral on September 29th. We sat with Kai, singer and guitarist, for an interview just before the show began. Kai took me into the band’s tour van, which smelled like the damp corner of a high school locker room, but it was a place we could find silence and privacy. Most recently, the band has released an EP named Rain City State of Mind and a split with UK hardcore band, The Arusha Accord, as a promotional piece for their shared headlining UK tour. They have been writing for their next full-length release, set to come out in 2010. Check out what Kai has to say about the band’s future, their sound, and his anti-work mentality.

BBtBB: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. You guys are jumping on the Ontario leg of this tour with Blind Witness and We Came as Romans, then heading to Europe, right?

Kai: We’re finishing up this tour in Thunder Bay, then we’re home for about 3 weeks before we head to Europe with the Arusha Accord. They’re this super techy cool band from the UK, I think it will be a good time.

BBtBB: How did you link up with them? Was it during your last stop in the UK?

Kai: After our tour of Europe with Architects and Misery Signals we got a lot of offers with really positive response, so we weeded through what people were offering us. It was better money this time around and we have the chance to co-headline the tour, alternating who plays last. It just seemed like a good time, so we decided to do it!

BBtBB: How did the split come together?

Kai: That was mainly to hype up the tour. Their label called us and asked to do a split, only 1000 copies or something. I think they’ve already sold a lot of them and we’ll probable sell the remainder on tour.

BBtBB: Yeah, the website says there are only 500 limited color vinyl copies left!

Kai: I think they might print another 500 for the tour, but it is just a limited run. I don’t even have one, but my friends have ordered some. It’s just for the UK unfortunately.

BBtBB: You guys also have the Rain City State of Mind EP that was recently released. Tell us more about that.

Kai: We really just wanted to do a fun EP release that would hype us up a bit before our next full length. It’s just digital and a lot of people seem to be downloading it, even in torrent sites, kids have been grabbing it. We’re using it as a tool to get our name out there and people seem to be digging it even more than our last full length. Hopefully, by the time our next full length comes out we’ll be a bigger band.

BBtBB: Intimidator, your last full length, came out last year. What’s the status on the new album? How are the new songs coming along?

Kai: We’ve been demoing a ton of new stuff. We’re probably not going to record until January or February, but when we do, it should be out by spring or early summer. It all depends on how fast we sort out our American label deals. We need to see who’s going to put it out, fund it, and all that fun stuff.  Then we’ll release it.

BBtBB: Before Chis Bahris [vocals] came into the band, you were the lead singer. How has the songwriting process changed since he’s taken over the vocals?

Kai: I think the pacing of the vocals has changed a lot since, because when I was playing guitar and singing, I would have to pace my vocals around my guitar playing a lot. I didn’t sing or scream the way a dedicated vocalist would do it, I would just think, “I can play this and sing it, so it works”. Now, I still write about 90% of the lyrics, but Chris will deal a bit more with the pacing. It’s so much more fun, but at first he was a lot more timid and it took him a while to get into it. He just hopped into this band and we’d already been touring for years, but now he’s awesome. I honestly think this is his best tour yet.

BBtBB: When writing new songs, do you guys get the instrumentals down first or lyrics?

Kai: We do the instruments first. It seems we’re always doing vocals last, but I think on the next full length we’re going to have the vocals set a month in advance, but it’s always instruments before vocals. I’d like to start playing around a bit more with writing tons of lyrics first rather than writing lyrics for each song after and just making them work with songs. I’m definitely going to be playing around with that more.

BBtBB: What’s the concept and sound you have in mind for the next album?

Kai: We’re really going to get away from the transient breakdowns and try to be a little more thrash, and probably more of what you’d hear from bands like Converge. They don’t settle or follow trends unlike a lot of bands – I won’t name any – but a lot of bands that are big these days are only big because they’re doing what everyone else does. We would like to just play really heavy, fast, aggressive music that doesn’t fall back on breakdowns. We don’t care if kids don’t swing their arms because it’s almost annoying that when you play to certain crowds, kids only move when you play your breakdowns. You’ll hear a bit more balls to the wall guitar tone, heavier, faster, and dirtier riffs. I’m excited for the new material! The new demos are dark, where I feel that our old stuff didn’t feel like it was really angry enough. I think we’re a little more jaded now. (laughs)

BBtBB: You’ve been touring for years now, and your music has evolved. How do you feel your old fans have reacted in comparison to the new fans you’re making?

Kai: The older fans always yell, “Play stuff off Partial Dialogue!”, because that was our first record. We’re not a tech band anymore. We just want to be a metal band, so just call us a metal band. We’re not going to be a metalcore band or a hardcore band, though we have lots of elements in our music. I think the new fans are really open minded with us, they always expect us to be us but evolve. We’re not going to be like Tool and always sound the same. Most of our fans have stuck with us, I think. We’ve toured Canada so many times now and usually we’ll expect to see the same people in most cities. This is our best tour yet and it’s very encouraging because it would be depressing if the tours got worst, you know? (laughs) On this tour, we’ve re-ordered merch a bunch of times, selling shirts and CDs, that’s what we want to do! It seems now that when we go to shows kids are wearing our shits, so that feels really nice and I’m pumped!

BBtBB: Being a versatile band, you’ve had the chance to play with a lot of great bands that are very different from one another. That being said, what is one of your favorites that you’ve toured with so far?

Kai: I’d have to say the Architects and Misery Signals tour in January was really fun. It’s just cool to hang out with Misery Signals who really influenced us, and to befriend those guys and share a bus with them is cool. I really liked touring with Sights and Sounds as well, which is not really our sound but such cool guys. Again, Andrew being from Comeback Kid and now is a friend of mine, that’s a huge thing for me. It’s cool to hang out with your idols! (laughs) Holly Springs Disaster are really good friends of ours and that was a cool tour. I think those are my favorites. We’ve done some weird tours, like Hollywood Undead, which was really weird. Not saying that they are weird, they’re really nice guys and it was a fun tour, but it was weird as in the fact that we were playing with a rap-metal band, almost just a rap band straight up. I like doing weird tours because those kids wouldn’t come see us unless we were playing with Hollywood Undead and maybe we made 30 new fans out of that tour, who knows? Maybe we made 100 new fans, we played to a lot of kids! (laughs)

BBtBB: Last question, that we ask every band – If you weren’t doing music, playing in a band and all that fun stuff, what would you be in jail for?

Kai: I would be in jail for probably selling weed, too much of it probably. Being from Vancouver, everyone sells weed. You know, I probably wouldn’t even go to jail for that! (laughs) Weed is nothing, so it’s got to be bigger then that! I’d go to jail for stealing because I don’t like to work, so I’d have to go and steal everything like my food. I hate working! I just like playing music and doing stuff that doesn’t involve hard work. I mean, I work hard on my music and tour hard, but when I’m home I don’t want to do construction or something.  I hate it. Two weeks ago I was playing to 500 kids, now I’m laying pipe or something… (laughs) So I’d be in jail for stealing!