Steve Choi…you sir, are a liar!
On their whistle-stop tour of the UK, we managed to catch up with, RX Bandits guitarist, Steve Choi. We asked him a few questions about the band’s new look, Lord Byron, touring without a horn section and a bunch of other cool stuff. You know us, we’ll never fail to come up with the goods.
By the way, Steve’s a liar because they totally played ‘Overcome’. Thanks for not spoiling it for us, dude.
Ian Critchley: Hi Steve, how’s it going, are you ok?
Steve Choi: Yeah man. A little sick, but I’m alright. I’m living.
IC: How’s the tour been so far?
SC: It’s been good. We’re only at the fourth show in. The weather’s good man, we’re not used to this sunny weather in England.
IC: I know, yeah. Now that you haven’t got a horn section in the band, how does the live experience differ?
SC: I don’t know man. I guess you’ll have to figure that out during the show and you can tell me.
IC: Does that mean you won’t be playing any older material?
SC: We play a little bit but, since we’re still doing this world tour for the new record, we’re still focusing on that mainly. Obviously there’s some older stuff in the set still.
Anthony Barlow: Mandala is your first album as a four piece band, how did the recording experience change from previous albums?
SC: Well, I think it differed. It definitely differed, but I don’t think it had to do with the lineup so much as it did just being older. Like every record. The next record is always different from the last. Not necessarily so much because of the set up, just because of your musical growth, your growth as a human being and growth in general.
AB: Have you any word on the Mandala DVD?
SC: No. Not yet.
AB: You decided to distribute the album for $2.99 on Amazon. What was the decision behind that?
SC: It’s just marketing. It’s just promotion. It’s great for exposure. Amazon does that with a lot of groups, we weren’t the first to do it. A lot of bands do that sort of thing.
AB: How did that work out for you?
SC: It worked out really well. It was number one in sales for Amazon and stuff so…
IC: This might be a bit of an awkward question, but was there or is there any bad blood between the band and Chris Sheets?
SC: No bad blood.
IC: Was it all totally friendly?
SC: Yeah, we see him here and there. There’s no bad blood. We don’t roll like that.
IC: Who’s idea was the video for ‘Hope Is A Butterfly’?
SC: It was a treatment written by an Italian director, his name is Andrea Giacomini. He’s done a Gnarls Barkley video and stuff like that. It was his idea, it was his concept.
IC: It kinda reminds me of The Mars Volta’s Frances The Mute artwork…
SC: Yeah, I can see that, just because they have stuff over their head, but those were like velvet bags in cars and stuff. It’s a little different.
IC: So you’re not paying homage or anything?
SC: No. It has nothing to do with that. A lot of people wear suits with different things on their heads *laughs*
IC: *laughs* You left Drive-Thru Records for “unspecified reasons”. Can you talk about that, or are the reasons still “unspecified”?
SC: We don’t even think about it, dude. Honestly, it doesn’t even mean anything. The fact that people in England or anywhere would still even think about that just shows that they’re not keeping up to date with us. That was so many years ago and it was never a big part of our identity. Who releases our music and who we do our business with, for RX Bandits as a band, is seriously, totally, not our priority. Obviously, it’s there, but it. by no means, defines any part of us whatsoever.
IC: Alright, that’s fair enough.
AB: Is there any chance of a Sound Of Animals Fighting UK tour?
SC: Well you’d have to ask Rich [Balling], who’s the mastermind, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.
IC: Is that because of lack of demand?
SC: There’s probably a lot of reasons. I mean, everybody’s busy so…
IC: A lot of people I’ve spoken to know who RX Bandits are, but don’t know The Sound Of Animals Fighting.
SC: Yeah, right. They know who Circa Survive is and don’t know The Sound Of Animals Fighting is.
IC: It’s a shame really. The album name And The Battle Begun, that’s a Lord Byron reference isn’t it?
SC: That kind of mixed with this Watership Down type story that we had written originally, conceptually, before the album had actually been recorded. It was this kind of story that we wrote, that we didn’t end up using for the record. Yeah, it’s somewhere between those two. You guys are the first people to ever, ever catch that reference.
IC: Yeah? When I looked into it, it said that it’s repeated in a lot of his work. I’ve been reading through some of it today and it’s not popped up yet, but I’ve only just started reading it so…
SC: We don’t idolise Lord Byron or anything.
AB: Speaking of influences, you appeared on a Bob Dylan tribute album.
SC: Yeah, we recorded ‘The Death Of Patty Carol’ for that.
AB: How much of an influence is Dylan or RX Bandits?
SC: I know Matt is a big fan. I would say we all appreciate him. Musically, obviously there’s a lot of political lyrics and subject matter and I guess he’s been an influence in that. Like, we want to use the influence we have to say something and bring issues to people’s attentions. I don’t think he’s the first, we’re not the last and it’s something that musicians even feel a responsibility to do or know, you know?
IC: You were saying that you try to be socially outspoken, has anything changed on this record?
SC: I think that the lyrics definitely went more introspective, rather than talking about the climate of the world and people in general. I think, especially Matt, had more of a personal focus on these songs lyrically.
AB: We heard you recorded in Matt’s basement, is that true?
SC: Basement? Garage. We record all kinds of stuff there, we used to practice there a lot and he still does a lot of recording there.
IC: It seems insane that it’s recorded in a garage with such high production values.
SC: Well we haven’t recorded anything we’ve released fully in the garage, but there’s been stuff here and there. It’s not about the studio, it’s about the person’s ear. If they can hear a good sound, they can get it anywhere. Whether that’s in a bedroom or in an expensive studio.
AB: You record all of your songs live because, you say, bands should be able to play their songs live. Do you think there’s a lot of bands that get lazy when playing live?
SC: *laughs* i think there might be. There’s some out there, yeah. I mean, we don’t try to judge other people or think we’re better than other people because we choose to do what we do. We just do it because that’s the way we want to do our music. We do it because we want to get that feeling and that approach. I’m sure there’s lazy people in every aspect of art and life. We’re not really thinking about it when we do that, we’re just thinking about ourselves and our listeners.
IC: We’ve got a question we’ve been asking everyone we interview. We want to make a tally of it really. If Chuck Ragan from Hot Water Music, Henry Rollins from Black Flag and a shark had a fight, who do you think would win?
SC: A shark?
AB: Yeah.
SC: Probably…I think the shark would probably give up after Henry Rollins talked it’s ear off, yelled at it and berated it until the shark felt so sheepish and nothing. All the while Chuck Ragan would kinda be sitting at the wayside.
AB & IC: *laughs*
IC: Cool. You said that there’s only a few older songs being played tonight, is one of those ‘Overcome’?
SC: We’ve been playing it here and there. I don’t think it’s on the set list tonight, just because we’ve been playing that song at every show for so many years and, of course, people ask for it because it’s a popular song of ours. Eventually a band has to decide between doing what they want to do and pleasing people. We’ve played it a couple of nights on this tour, I’m not quite sure we’re gonna play it tonight. We can’t play for three hours. Well, we don’t want to play for three hours. So some songs are going to have to be sacrificed for other songs.
IC: Alright, thank you very much.
SC: Thanks guys. Cheers.
