Cave In: An Interview with Stephen Brodsky

These guys have impressed me with just about every release they’ve managed to push with all their label trouble.  Sure Antenna wasn’t my favorite but there were still some amazing songs and riffs on there. Bands like Thrice would still be playing the same songs without the influence of Cave In and the rest of the Hydrahead Records roster for that matter. I caught the last few measures of The Stephen Brodsky Quartet at the Hydrahead showcase at sxsw. It was meh…okay. I can appreciate it but goddammit every time I hear the opening to ‘Big Riff’ I pop like 16 boners (figuratively not literally). Mike Thomas and I worked out the questions for this one so I can’t take complete credit for it. But I wrote the intro so…yeah. Like, enjoy it okay?

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In the Stream of Commerce

From playing in garages and recording on a four-track tape machine to signing to RCA, Cave In has seen quite a transformation over the past decade. Frontman/guitarist Stephen Brodsky has been the voice of this Boston-based quartet, which has always had a tough time fitting in. Maybe that’s because their rock-meets-hardcore-meets-metal-meets-something else sound has captivated and bewildered listeners and critics alike.

Call it what you will, but Cave In has become an underground staple these days; one of those bands that has seemingly been around forever. Brodsky was kind enough to take some time to answer a few questions about the band’s past, present and future.

Shane: Have you felt the impact personally of Hydra Head moving to L.A. and Isis changing its locale?
Brodsky: I know the Hydra Head fellows had felt as though they did all they could in Boston. I miss poking around their office and bothering Mark by wiping boogers on him while he works.

SR: Has it ever been a conscious decision as to how much screaming and singing you do in Cave In?
Brodsky: As soon as Caleb stepped up his role as a vocalist in the band, it pretty much sealed the deal for me to continue doing what I now do as a singer in the band.

SR: Could you ever have imagined your band or any of the other bands you’ve been part of having the type of impact you have had?
Brodsky: We’ve always been ambitious. I never wanted to be stuck in one place, geographically and musically speaking. If you make those kinds of feelings known, then people are bound to respond in one way or another.

SR: What kind of direction do you see Cave In going from here musically, if you can see that at all?
Brodsky: With Ben now playing drums, our musical spectrum for the future is broader than any of us could imagine. He has his own bag of tricks that we can now dig through and play with. Our record collections have grown since our last recordings too—stuff like Zappa, Sun Ra, Black Mountain, John Fahey… This always has an impact on what we want to do, as well.

SR: How do you view the immense popularity metal and metalcore has taken on in recent years?
Brodsky: I might try and get more into black metal. I’ve heard some cool stuff recently—it was far more melodic and listenable than I could imagine. And there’s a whole slew of people making black metal solo records, which kind of blows my mind.

SR: Did you feel a responsibility of sorts to take over vocals in the band when you did? Is it hard to have that responsibility to the band?
Brodsky: The four of us felt like we had a good chemistry going, and we weren’t up for attempting to find another member. It was better to have a smaller group of people—less heads to butt, so things could happen a bit quicker. I sang lead vocals in previous bands, so it wasn’t that big of a deal for me to do it in Cave In.

SR: What is your songwriting process like, musically and lyrically? How much does practice and just jamming play a role in your actual songs?
Brodsky: Writing tunes is a bit different now than it used to be. Everyone’s role as a musician in the band has become more refined, so that now there are ideas coming from multiple places and bouncing all around. Jamming is a good way to surprise yourself and the other guys in the room. They might hear something that you don’t necessarily feel grabbed by.

SR: What are you and your band mates’ relationships like outside of the band? How much time do you spend with each other?
Brodsky: Adam and I live in the same town and we’ll hit up Ana’s Taqueria for amazing burritos. Caleb has been living in L.A. for about a year. He’s visited on a few non-band related occasions and we always make time to kick back and listen to records.

SR: If you had to pick one genre of music and one band that has influenced Cave In the most, what and who would it be?
Brodsky: Converge is a band we have always admired, and it goes way, way back. Then there’s Sonic Youth, who never made the same record twice and have always been ahead of their own game musically.

SR: How much has Ben’s contribution as Cave In’s new drummer played in both songwriting and playing live?
Brodsky: He’s a musician in his own right, and we’re beginning to mold ourselves to what he is capable of doing. It’s a great means for us to enhance our own abilities as players. We can be blistering fast if we wanted to—he’s also not afraid to use a thunderstick.

SR: What was being part of the Major Label machine like for you as an artist and a business?
Brodsky: As an artist, it was like being a deer trapped in oncoming headlights. As a business, it was like taking a music industry course and skipping almost every class.

SR: What are some common misconceptions about the relationship between an independent band moving onto a major label and how did you deal with the transition?
Brodsky: Total freedom is a funny thing. They tell you not to worry—you’ll have it they promise! But you never really are totally free. We were never free of a constant barrage of opinions from people who actually understood little to nothing of our history as a band. Dumb s**t like the placement of our band name on the front cover of Antenna—that managed to produce a number of weird phone calls being made back and forth. Certain people felt it necessary to argue over having the band’s logo placed in the top left corner, as a selling point so that record buyers will have an easier time finding our album in stores. It’s one example of what these people get paid to do, and in most cases it’s way more money than the artists will ever see.
SR: What is the most gratifying experience you’ve ever had while playing or
writing music?
Brodsky: Anytime the fretboard trips me out in an unexpected way. I’ve been playing
guitar since I was 12 years old, so at this point, those little moments are always welcome to come around, though it’s never a certain thing. Sometimes they grace me often, other times they shack up somewhere far away where I can’t access the sounds of ’em too easily.

SR: Are you currently writing and recording any more solo material?
Brodsky: Yeah, I just finished a new album. Well, the tracking is finished but it won’t be mixed until April. And I’ve already written about two more albums’ worth of new stuff since the writing for this recent one has been finished. Mucho brain activity.

SR: What is the status of Virgin, the Converge/Cave In collaboration?
Brodsky: Too many cooks in the kitchen. Certain ones complain about using classic-metal tasting spices, and others want it to be free, loose and weirder. Who knows when that thing will ever see the light of day. I truly hope it will, but I also haven’t been saving my appetite for it.

SR: We’re a non-profit youth initiative and the majority of our readers are young aspiring musicians. If you had some words of advice, what would they be—in two different contexts, one being advice for a fledgling band and another for the person who is just starting out on an instrument?
Brodsky: Relax your hands. It should never feel painful. And I know of bands whose
members will scream, yell and fistfight each other, and that has always struck me as being a bit bizarre. I’d recommend avoiding those situations.

SR: When can we expect the next Cave In record?
Brodsky: I’d like to say it’ll be recorded in summer 2006.

Bad Religion: An Interview with Greg Hetson

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When it comes to bands that have made their unique mark upon an ever-expanding world of music, Bad Religion’s 20-plus years of playing rank up there with The Beatles as far as influential bands are concerned. Of course, many of those bands may never play the Hollywood Bowl or the Bowery Room in New York, but each year they’ll be on Warped Tour, The Take Action Tour and headlining their own sold-out shows. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if that’s the case, then Bad Religion is flattered beyond all expectations. Their latest release, The Process of Belief, is another example of what it means to push limits and push sound—to move past what may be expected and surpass everything that came before.

The history of this prolific punk rock machine began almost two decades ago as a reaction to an environment that was not only hostile to punk rock music but also an industry that wasn’t taking any chances on anything that couldn’t turn a profit. Three teenage friends growing up in Southern California met and began rehearsing in a garage, playing shows and recording a completely DIY EP. Brett Gurewitz, Greg Graffin and Jay Bentley soon realized, much like their counterparts in Black Flag and Minor Threat, that to get anything done they had to do it themselves. With that, Brett decided to start a label called Epitaph Records to release the now classic, How Could Hell Be Any Worse?

Several years later and a couple band members more, Bad Religion was soon becoming more than just a hobby. With the addition of Greg Hetson on guitar, Bad Religion’s sound was fully rounded out into the melodic buzz saw attack, a signature sound they have become famous for. 1987 was a good year for the band. They recorded the classic, Suffer, an album that held fast to their punk rock values while embracing a high amount of production quality. Soon after the success of Suffer, three more albums were released—No Control, Against the Grain and Generator—creating a veritable quadripartite of punk rock genius.

From that time on, the band managed to release one album a year, and in 1993, during a time when punk rock music was taking a loose hold on the mainstream, they were signed to Atlantic Records and managed to land a hit with the track, “Infected.” In 1993, the record Recipe For Hate, which hosted guest appearances from such greats as Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano (“It Struck a Nerve”) and Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, who lent his signature voice to several tracks (“American Jesus” and “Watch it Die”), further broadened Bad Religion’s scope as musicians and respected artists. The years to follow had the band jumping from Atlantic to Epic and finally back to Atlantic. With the release of their latest record, The Process of Belief, the band was once again at home with Epitaph and under the wing of their friend and musical brother Brett.

During the times when Brett was involved heavily with the label, Bad Religion hired the talents of former Minor Threat guitarist, Brian Baker. A triptych of guitar talent was formed with Hetson and Brett, and the three brought a new aesthetic to the idea of what makes a band. Eschewing everyone’s expectations and pushing well past any predetermined ethos, Bad Religion took on the year 2002 with magnified intensity, bringing The Process of Belief to the forefront of progressive rock music.

Hetson always wanted to play guitar, but he was never in school band. “I wasn’t in school band because I wanted to play guitar but they didn’t have guitar in band,” he says. “There were a couple of schools in my district that did. I remember seeing them wheel around these Pignose amps for guitar and bass.”

Some of Hetson’s earliest influences in music were such guitar-heavy bands as The Beatles, Credence Clearwater Revival, Queen, Judas Priest, The Ramones and The Buzzcocks. Early L.A. bands like Black Flag and X inspired him as a player as well. His first guitar “was a cheap Harmony electric all-in-one that I got when I was 12. I play an (Gibson) SG now through two Marshall straight cabs and a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier. I also have a Marshall 6555, Silver Jubilee (released in 1987 to celebrate 50 years of Marshall business), which has a little more output than a JCM 800.”

Hetson began, as many do, by taking guitar lessons, learning the basics and hoping that one day, he would be playing in a band of his own. “At about 16, I started playing along with some friends who also wanted to learn how to play. I think I was about 19 when I started with the Circle Jerks. Basically what happened was I quit Redd Kross in front of the Whiskey, and Keith (Morris, singer of the Circle Jerks) overheard me saying I didn’t want to be with the band anymore, and he said, ‘Screw those guys let’s start our own band.’ He said, ‘I know a bass player,’ and I said, ‘I know a drummer.’ And that’s kind of how it all came together.”

So how did Hetson start playing with Bad Religion? you might ask.

“They actually gave me a demo tape. One day we were all hanging out at Okie Dogs. It was a place we all used to hang out at after shows. I really liked it and became friends with the guys. We (The Circle Jerks) were going to be on the Rodney On the Rocks Show the next week, and I said something like, ‘If we like the tape we’ll play it over the air.’ I started getting them opening slots on our shows and air play and somehow I ended up in the band years later.”

When it comes to orchestrating six members of a band, it takes lots of patience and practice. Fortunately for Bad Religion, having three guitars transfers well in both a live and recorded setting. Hetson says, “Surprisingly enough, recording is pretty easy because we do so many overdubs and layering anyway. Live, it kind of just works. We don’t do a lot of the shows with him (Brett), but when he does we’ve usually got enough going on that it works. Part of the time we’re all doing the same thing and other times others are doing different accents and things that were on the record. So it kind of works out—we thought it would sound like a wall of mush but it actually sounds good.”

The writing process for Bad Religion is collaborative. “For the most part it’s collaboration, but sometimes someone will come in with a complete song,” he says. “If you look at a lot of the songwriting credits, [they’re] always attributed to pretty much everyone.”

The new Bad Religion record is about half way through the mixing process. Hetson says, “It’s coming out really great. I think everybody is really happy with it. Some really strong songs. Some heavy lyrical content, as usual. It’s a little darker, lyrically than the last record maybe. There’s a lot of stuff going on these days for inspiration.”

Bad Religion has always been at the forefront of music both politically and socially with their various contributions to charities over the years and their songs inspiring fans to think outside of the box. The auspicious title for their soon-to-be-finished record is The Empire Strikes First, and like Hetson said, it has some ”heavy lyrical content.”

Of course, the lyrical content of Bad Religion’s songs has always been a message of self-empowerment, articulated positively by a UCLA master’s degree/Cornell University Ph.D. (Evolutionary Biology/Zoology/History of Science) wielding Graffin. They also have a band-sponsored research fund that “was created to allow students to pursue field-oriented investigations in cultural or natural science,” according to Hetson. “It is an award with an educational focus and is meant to promote self-motivated discovery, practice of the scientific method, and experience in scientific writing.”

With two decades of music behind him and many more ahead, Hetson, like his Bad Religion band mate Brett, decided to start a label with long time friend and producer, Steve Kravac. The two met at Westbeach Studio some years prior and decided to take their experience as musicians and give back what they had learned in the business to younger bands. According to the Porterhouse Web site, “Each band added to the Porterhouse roster has been selected for their individual merits as opposed to the strategy of many indie labels that adhere to a sonic likeness to create label identity.”

Hetson says that in music today, “People can’t tell Trapt from Incubus. You can’t tell one from the other. They all jump up and down, choreographed in time to the music. The most important thing is to create your own identity. Classic punk rock bands like The Clash didn’t sound like The Ramones. The Adolescents didn’t sound like Black Flag. None of the bands sounded like each other and maybe that’s why no one is selling records anymore.”

Hetson added some words of wisdom, saying, “The best thing you can do when you’re first starting is play the music you want to play. Try to create your own identity and style, and stick to what you believe in musically and philosophically. Do something with a twist.”

With that kind of grassroots individualism in mind, Steve and Hetson have managed to produce great records from bands like Speedbuggy and the newest edition to the Porterhouse family, Lightweight Holiday. Porterhouse is essentially run out of Hetson’s garage where they built a Pro Tools studio. “We’ve got enough room in there to cut drum tracks. It’s a two-car garage and if we do drums in there, we have to track them in the control. We’ve got a good-sized iso booth where we can fit a couple guitar amps and get some decent vocals out of. We’ve got two rooms, one small and one pretty big.”

When it comes to sonic differences between analog and digital sound, Hetson says, “I guess analog sounds better but you know, well they both sound pretty damn good. Analog sounds better but for convenience sake, Pro Tools works better. We do some of the drums on tape, depending on what the bands budget is and the rest on Pro Tools. We’re doing the new Bad Religion record with the drums on analog and everything else on Pro Tools. When it comes to time saving and money saving, you can’t beat it.”

Porterhouse is a small band’s dream. The Web site invites bands to send in unsolicited material and that’s essentially how Lightweight Holiday was discovered. “They just started sending in demos and after about a year-and-a-half of listening to their stuff, I had them open up for The Circle Jerks and checked them out live. Then we went in to rehearsal with them and told them, ‘We really like you guys but try this out and this out.’ They liked how we were approaching things and we said, ‘Let’s do a deal.’ They were really receptive to our feedback. Some bands are really reluctant when it comes to offering feedback, but they were really receptive.”

When all’s said and done, and the feedback from the amps reverberates to its final decay, Bad Religion isn’t just some average punk band you might listen to on your MP3 player, or in your car on the way home from school. They are, without hyperbole, an institution of integrity. By posing questions and always challenging their fans to think first, Bad Religion is an example of an ongoing legacy that hopefully inspires more young bands and fans to follow their dreams.
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This ranks up there with one of the more remarkable interviews I’ve done. I definitely got the best of two of my favorite punk bands with Greg being part of BR and Circle Jerks.

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Situation of Noise: An interview with Justin Pearson of The Locust

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In our Starbucks coffee driven fast food and reality based short attention span world, certain challenges arise to the creative minds of our generations. Sometimes these challenges are met with variant modes of creative outlet and of recent years it seems to be occurring in music. The base for era spanning communication has always had a home in that many of societal problems coexist in the ethereal world of sonic composition and creation of ART. Art is merely a means to an end. It can take many forms, painting, poetry, architecture, and most importantly for the purpose of this feature, music.

The Locust are in the trenches of their self-described “noise terrorism” war on contemporary and conventional thought. Formed in 1995 from the ashes of San Diego based noise core bands, Swing Kids, Struggle, Crimson Curse and about a dozen other notable bands, they have seen their fair share of current trends rise and fall with the fickle youth of America. Themusicedge.com had an opportunity to speak with Justin Pearson; the bass player of The Locust and his musical background is about as peppered as the bands laundry list of line up names.

According to J.P., “I’ve always liked music since I was a little kid, when I was 5 or so I was going to go see KISS but my mom said I was too young. We used to always pretend with tennis rackets and stuff. Then when I was ten or eleven my mom’s cousin let me borrow his guitar then eventually I picked up a bass.”

J.P. adds his history on lessons by saying, “I taught myself. When I first moved out to San Diego I took lessons from this guy and all he would do was show me how to play rock songs, so he’d show me this riff. But I never really learned how to play. I only took like three or four lessons from the guy and I thought it was a waste of time so I ended up messing around with other people. My friends and I that also didn’t know how to play, we didn’t know together so we figured things out that way.”

The Locust not only manage to destroy conventional thinking about how music should be arranged but they also have a tendency to create from that chaos some pretty technically proficient song structures. Their sound is somewhere between chaos and harmony, with an emphasis on controlled chaos. When seeing them live recently at their record release show (the new record is called Plague Soundscapes, its on Epitaph/Anti Records) at San Diego’s, Off The Record, playing to a packed house, it was noticeable to most in attendance that it was really hard to see them if you happened to get there one second late, like I unfortunately did.

Their sound is brutal and not for the faint of heart but one cannot deny the musician ship it takes to create such music. Not only does The Locust have an amazing zeal for creating music, but also most of their cleverness comes in the way they merchandize. Instead of your typical T-shirt, hooded sweatshirt fare, most Locust items consist of Skateboards, compacts with “The Locust” logo on the mirror and the standard aforementioned products.

J.P.’s musical tastes are as eclectic as his music, although he retracts his former fascination with KISS, “I think they are so lame. I hate KISS a lot now and I’m not into how misogynistic they are, but when I was a little kid I like the way they looked.”

Adding, “I really was into Styx and Boston when I was really, really little. Then I got into break dancing and early rap like Run DMC and Beastie Boys. It’s weird though because I grew up in Phoenix Arizona, it’s a total hesher state and everyone is into heavy metal. So I got into metal, I ended up living a couple blocks away from some of the guys in Slayer and that really intrigued me. The whole metal punk tie and I ended up getting into punk. The first band that got me really interested in music was the Sex Pistols. I stumbled upon some of the really early skate punk tapes that Thrasher (magazine) used to put out like Septic Death, but I didn’t want to limit myself musically so I take from everything.”

J.P. has played in some of the early GSL Records-style noise-core bands, like his first band which he states, “I got into my first band when I was about fifteen years old called Struggle, that was the first band I was in that was a real band. I was in a band called Swing Kids and The Crimson Curse and I’m also kind of still in this band called Holy Molar, it’s a weird project band. The Drummer lives in Portland and the singer lives in New York. I started The Locust about seven or eight years ago.”

The Locust has for all intensive purposes, felt their share of success. What could be construed as more successful than being used in a John Waters film (Cecil Be Demented)? And with their recent sign to punk rock powerhouse Epitaph and its subsidiary, Anti, The Locust have no choice but to prove that you can be aggressive in your approach when playing music without being predictable. And it’s unpredictability that separates The Locust from other bands. “A lot of people, especially drummers play the same beat, they obviously aren’t being creative. Whatever makes that band works is their deal,” says J.P.

As far as the writing process goes, J.P. says that its group oriented, “It kind of mutates over time and we all kind of write equal parts it just depends, someone will come to practice and they’ll have a couple parts to work with and we’ll build off of them. For instance Joey (Keyboards) will have these parts that are virtually impossible to translate onto guitar and base so it will force Bobby (guitar) and I to write around it and work with what he’s doing but not be playing the same exact riff which is good because it adds some great dynamics. Also Gabe (Drums) writes some insanely complicated beats on drums and we’ll work around those parts and Bobby and I will add some riffs that we add. And after we have a basic skeleton we’ll dissect it and take it apart and make time signatures weird and slow certain parts down and speed certain parts up. Make it a little bit confusing a little bit more creative and over time over a period of a week or two we’ll butcher it some more, then the last step is adding vocals to it and we’ll all decide what parts to sing.”

Beware of The Locust, their music will challenge and dare most people to rethink their concepts of what songs should sound like. Most importantly, The Locust are composing songs of the future and Plague Soundscapes is the vessel they are using to slowly bring in the fans from the conventional crowds.

the locust
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Done in June of 2003, without having a home I figured I’d post here and as such I haven’t changed anything from the original, just added this little footnote. Justin Pearson was one of my very first interviews for themusicedge, which is hilarious considering how conservative the parent company of the site was and is and the kind of ‘obscene’ content The Locust always get lambasted about. At a later time some ‘concerned’ perpetual meddler wanted me to take down the article, luckily I stuck it out and provided a compelling argument to the suits that if our ultimate job was to inspire young people to create music then who are we to sensor what kind of music is created? I also thought it fitting for a first feature, especially after my dour interview with Taboo from The Black Eyed Peas who had, at the time, just added Fergie to the group. Justin is one of the few people, aside from Ben Koller (Converge, Cave In) who supported the basic tenants of that site from the beginning and has always made himself available for interview(s) and linked to whatever it was I happened to be working on at the time. He suffers from being incredibly likeable, maybe that’s why I think of him as an artist more than I think of him as a musician. Maybe I’m just full of shit too. He’s doing a post called “From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry” for HYPEzine.com. Its a tour diary.

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