Vintage Interviews Archives - Damian Burford: Freelance Writer/Podcaster from Denver, CO & Napa, Ca

Vintage Interview: Adam Carson, Drummer of AFI. On the streets of Dallas, Texas. Halloween 1999?

Originally printed on HAND CARVED MAGAZINE.(RIP) The Scene: October 30th 1999. Dallas, Texas. In front of Insomnia Coffee Bar.It seems our dear Friend Scandalist was deep in the Halloween spirt. After watching AFI we were left with little to do and even less cash. So what did we do? We stood out in front of Insomnia, while Good ole Scandalist decided to, Moon people, Show people his breasts, Yell in unsuspecting people’s faces and then chase them down the street and yell at them some more. After a little over an hour of watching the master moon taxi cabs and Hippie buses, We just happened to run into Adam from AFI. Here is the interview we conducted that shortly followed: Damian: I’m here with Hunter form AFI. Its that correct?Adam: Nope.Damian: Who are you?Adam: My name is Adam.Damian: Oh. [pause] Now I feel like a retard.Adam: HaHaHa. We’re off to a great start here.Damian: They told me you were Hunter. So I’m going to ask you some questions about you running Checkmate Records even though you don’t run Checkmate Records.Adam: You can ask me anything you want about Checkmate Records. I’ll answer it the best I can.Damian: So, uh, How long have you been in AFI?Adam: Since its conception. Probably eight years. Eight and a half.Damian: Have any regrets?Adam: None what so ever.Damian: None? Now, All Hallow’s EP came out recently. Tell us a little about that. What’s up with that?Adam: The All Hallows EP is a four song EP that came out in the beginning of October. It has three originals and a cover of Halloween, by the Misfits. Its obviously Halloween themed. There’s a thousand, limited edition, orange vinyl seven inches and a bunch of CDs. We like it. We think its among the best stuff that we’ve done.Damian: So have the Misfits heard the cover?Adam: I don’t know. But we’re going to be touring with Danzig in a couple of weeks. So he might start asking us for his mechanical royalties. Damian: Are you excited about that?Adam: Yea, I’m excited about it. We haven’t actually gotten permission to do the song. So I don’t know if he’s going to be fining us or not. The Danzig tour should be cool. We’re going to be playing in front of a lot of people who have not seen us before. They probably won’t hate us. But you know? Its rock ‘n roll.Damian: Well its officially Halloween now. You guys are playing Fitzgerald’s in Houston tomorrow night. Any special surprises for that show, that we’re going to miss because we’re in Dallas?Adam: I think so.Damian: Can you tell us about that because we’re not going to be there?Adam: Nah. You’ll have to read it on the Internet or something.Damian: Read it on the Internet? Come on…Adam: Nothing to crazy. There is a certain Halloween feel that we like our shows to have. Every show so we’re not doing a hole lot different. It will be fun.Damian: Now this isn’t your first tour with Sick Of It All. Have you been getting a better response this tour versus the last tour with them?Adam: I think so. When we did that first tour we were largely unknown in the cities we played. We’ve since toured extensively by ourselves. We have a small fan base in every city. Which is cool.Scandalist: Did I frighten you when i started screaming at you?Adam: No.Scandalist: Oh, well. I’m sure it was annoying.Adam: You actually didn’t scare me. I was expecting you too, I was hoping you wouldn’t….Damian: Alright, Now there were people here tonight just to see you, then they left as soon as you got off the stage. Does that make you feel good?Adam: In a way that makes me feel good that people are coming to see us. On the other hand, I find it ridiculous that people pay money to see Sick Of It All and don’t even stick around. They don’t realize that Sick of It All was the reason most of these bands on the bill are there, the reason we do what we do and love it so much is that Sick Of It All sets such a great example. These guys have been doing it for fifteen years and they love what they are doing. They are not going to stop any time soon. They have made it their life. They have made it their career. I think it is sooo Amazing and admirable that they day in and day out just grind away. Cause they are not a huge band. Its a lot of work for them. They do it because they love it. That’s completely inspirational. I’m amazed that people leave without experiencing that. Such as yourselves…Damian: Well We drove about 3 hours basically to see you guys play.Adam: That’s so flattering. Its really cool. I think you guys missed out on not watching Sick Of It All.Scandalist: So what inspires you?Adam: Pete’s coffee. Then the conversation went to someone talking about sex and then Adam excusing himself because he was, “Missing out.” End.

Vintage Interview: The Ataris in Longview, Texas circa 1999. Interview about Hotel fireworks shenanigans.

What can I say looking back at this all those years ago? Some cool stories, but I was still figuring out what and how to do interviews and make them interesting. You can see some of the out of the box ideas like, “What kind of video game would the Atari’s be?” And things like that. I do remember Kris being very kind to us, and I really remember leaving this chat enthused. I also stole Kris’ Porn Star T-shirt. I later tried to give it back to him some 10-15 years later and he politely declined it and we had a good laugh about my dumb ass fanboy stealing clothes right off a touring musician’s back (or in this case the sweat soaked shirt was left on the table where we had our chat.) Photos also by Damian, who never really did master how to be a concert photographer. I had the chance to see The Ataris, back in August of ’99, when they opened for Good Riddance at the Galaxy Club in Dallas. I was impressed by their show. I was surprised to learn of their chance coming to Longview, Texas and I jumped at the chance to interview Kris after the show. Currently the band is signed to Kung Fu records with two releases, “…Anywhere but here,” and “Blue Skies, Broken Hearts … Next 12 Exits.” They also have an EP out on Fat Wreck Chords, “Look Forward to Failure.”-Damian– Damian: So Kris. How many times have you had your heart broken?Kris: Hmm… About four times that really mattered. Damian: It seems every song on the new album is about a girl. Any particular reason why?Kris: I wrote most of those songs over like a couple year period and I was going through a lot of changes in my life. I think that it was basically that the record was a transition from like moving from one place to another and getting over past things and trying to move along with my life. There were a lot of things I left behind when I moved.Damian: SO, How is your relationship with Kung Fu Records?Kris: We can’t complain too much. They definitely got us to where we are today as far as they helped me start and move out to California and get our first record out. You know we basically did all the other work ourselves. Went out and toured ourselves. We fuckin played shows for five people across the country a couple of times and once we put out the EP on Fat, that boosted our sales a ton and Fat Mike was kind of responsible for the ripple effect of us actually starting to blow up a little. So I give Kung Fu some credit and I give Fat some credit. Now the only problem we have with Kung Fu is that kids are telling us theat they can not find our records on Kung Fu, but they can find the one on Fat. So we’re working with Kung Fu. We’re trying to make the best of this situation. We’re doing fairly well as it is. We want to keep eye to eye with our label.Damian: Now I heard you guys were suppose to do a full length on Fat, but something happened with the EP and Fat canned ya’ll.Kris: Nope. That’s completely false. We never had any kind of intentions of doing a full length on Fat. We have one more record on Kung Fu and weather or not what we do after that is unknown. We’d like to do a full length on Fat after that and I’m sure that it would probably work out but that is sooo far away. I’ve got the whole new record written and we probably won’t record. We’ll just be touring for the next year, I’m sure. We’re probably going to go to Europe and tour and probably Australia and come back for another U.S. tour. Then we’ll probably record. So our next record probably won’t come out till 2001 at this fucking pace.Damian: Now I saw you guys play with Good Riddance in Dallas, there seemed to be more of a hardcore type audience, did you feel alienates in any ways playing with them?Kris: well you know some crowds are hit and misses. All the other shows we played with the Good Riddance have been excellent. We’ve done a lot of shows with them. Same way with a lot of other bands. We’ve toured a lot with The Vandals, We’ve toured a lot with Lagwagon, A lot with the faster Fat style punk bands or whatever they tend to draw a more punk, you know, whatever type of audience. And We’ve grown on people like that. Its like we can’t win every audience over. We just take the good with the bad and try to make the best of every situation. If one guy is being a fucking chump, that’s fine. Let him be. In the end, we’re still gonna have a good time.Damian: So how have you evolved as a sing writer since the first album?Kris: I think that when I recorded most of the first record I recorded it probably from like sixteen till, actually fifteen till nineteen or something and during that period most of my musical tastes were pretty standard. I didn’t branch out and listen to a lot of variety. I was pretty Ramones, The Queers, Decedents, The Misfits. That stuffs all pretty good. Now I listen to such a wide variety of things that I’m influenced by so many different types of music and so many different types of bands. That’s definitely helped my song writing as a hole and also learning stuff from being in the studio with different people. Working with Joey Cape in the studio was a hole big learning experience. That guy is one of my best friends and I totally respect him as a song writer. He’s given me a lot of tips

Vintage Interviews: A Wilhelm Scream/Smackin’ Isaiah interview from circa 2005. Black Sheep. Colorado Springs.

Originally published in Mostly Harmless Magazine #0 & reprinted for Mostly Harmless Magazine #1. This interview has also been published as a Mostly Harmless Podcast episode. This is a Vintage interview with A Wilhelm Scream circa 2005. This interview took place in Colorado Springs at the building that would eventually become the home to THE BLACK SHEEP. The interview was one of the first interviews, where I was finding my footing. Learning to banter and jump back and forth. I look back at this interview and it reads like AWS were such assholes, and years later I reconnected with their touring guitarist Curtis Lopez and it turns out the guys were huge dicks at this early point in their career, but who wasn’t a huge dick in their 20’s? But what I remember of that night, was being madly in love with this little band since their previous adventures in Colorado Springs with Pinhead Circus a few years earlier, when the band was still touring as Smackin’ Isaiah. AWS showing up in Colorado Springs during this particular summer was just what I needed to jump back into my hobby of interviewing bands, after a few years of depression inspired sabbatical. I loved this interview. I had so much fun bantering with the fellas. I had so much fun being shit talked by Nuno to ask questions faster! I was hanging out with my heroes. This interview was published on Myspace before becoming the center piece of Mostly Harmless Magazine Issue #0, before being reprinted in Mostly Harmless Magazine Issue #1 in 2005. While on Myspace, I took the audio from this interview and turned it into what would be a prototype for the eventual Mostly Harmless podcast, in fact the very first Mostly Harmless Podcast episode is this interview, along with an interview with THE ERGS, to show people what I was going for with Mostly Harmless. Thank you to Nuno Pereira, Christopher Levesque & Curtis Lopez for taking the time to talk with an awkward 24 year old kid as he was just discovering his love of PBR and harassing bands with questions. This interview helped my life take off into the direction to the place that I am today. I will be forever grateful to AWS for this night, the memories and all the great shows I’ve witnessed them at in the last 20 years. Want to listen to the audio of this interview? Download the Mostly Harmless Podcast preview episode from: https://mostlyharmlesspodcast.com/flashback-episode-1-w-a-wilhelm-scream-the-ergs/ Thank you to Nuno Pereira, Christopher Levesque & Curtis Lopez for taking the time to talk with an awkward 24 year old kid as he was just discovering his love of PBR and harassing bands with questions. This interview helped my life take off into the direction to the place that I am today. I will be forever grateful to AWS for this night, the memories and all the great shows I’ve witnessed them at in the last 20 years. Want to listen to the audio of this interview? Download the Mostly Harmless Podcast preview episode from: https://mostlyharmlesspodcast.com/flashback-episode-1-w-a-wilhelm-scream-the-ergs/ —————— “The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect first recorded in 1951 for the movie Distant Drums. It has been featured in dozens of movies since. …It is probably the most well-known cinematic sound cliché.” -Answers.comThere is nothing “stock” sounding about the unconventional band known to the world as A Wilhelm Scream. With their gripping melodies and invigorating guitar parts of punk, metal and jazz, AWS burst onto the scene in 2002 as Smackin’ Isaiah, with their release, “Benefits of Thinking Out Loud,” on Jump Start records. Shortly after, CHRIS LEVESQUE joined the band and that’s when everything, including their name, changed. They signed up with Nitro Records and recorded “MUTE PRINT” in 2004 with the Blasting Room crew of Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore. After years of relentless touring, June 2005 found the band back in Colorado Springs, supporting The Lawrence Arms. The following interview transpired after several, SEVERAL alcoholic beverages … (thanks to Willow for editing this for me…) Nuno: Check. Check. One. Two. Nuno Pereira. Lets go. Fucking do this shit. Drink beers.That’s Nuno. Who are you?Chris: I’m Chris, dawg.Cobra: Cobra.Chris: AKA Rabbit, AKA Rookie of the Year.Cobra: Or just Curtis.Chris: AKA Tiffany. Cobra, how long you been in the band. You’re new, huh?Cobra: 3 months? You don’t know any of the songs off of … Umm …Chris: “Benefits Of Thinking Out Loud.”Cobra: No, No, and if I knew I was going to be getting so much shit every day… I would have fucking learned the whole thing.Nuno: It was a tough regiment …Chris: When I joined the band, everyone wanted to hear shit off of “A Way to A Girl’s Heart is Though Her Boyfriend’s Stomach.” So I know exactly how you feel.Cobra: I will learn it, I promise.Chris: They were all like “Play ‘Bowling.’” and I don’t know that shit. I know why you guys changed your name, but why did you guys change your name?Chris: Because Smackin’ Isaiah was a SHITTY name.Nuno: You heard it here first. Chris is fucking correct. It was a terrible name. Thank you Chris for joining the band and giving us a fresh start.Cobra: When I first heard of the band …Chris: Nobody liked the idea of A Wilhelm Scream. And I pushed that shit, so hard, until other people liked it.Nuno: And he always pushes hard, by the way, ladies.Chris: Yeah. Really hard.Nuno: Next question, next question. Next question.Cobra: Wait, wait, wa …Nuno: No!Chris: No waiting!Nuno: Next Question!Cobra: I thought it was a ska band when I first heard the name.Nuno: SHUT UP FUCKING ROOKIE!Chris: Ease up, Rabbit So what kind of confusion did you guys run into? ‘Cause when I was looking for Smackin’ Isaiah, I fell in love with you guys. Last time you were here, I was looking for Smackin’ Isaiah. And I was wondering what the fuck happened to you guys… Now you are A Wilhelm Scream…Nuno: We tour