Project Description
Interview with
JAKE KILEY
from
STRUNG OUT
Interviewer – Deyan Stevic
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Exploding onto the southern California punk scene, STRUNG OUT were one of the first bands signed to Fat Mike’s Fat Wreck Chords, issuing their debut album in 1994. It was the band’s sophomore effort however that truly proved Mike’s faith in the band was so very well placed. ‘Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues’ was thirteen chucks of socially aware punk speed pop metal riffage that guaranteed carnage every time the play button was hit on the dash. Hear these songs played live and you’re talking something else again – a veritable maelstrom of shoutalong moshing craziness resulting in ringing ears, sweat soaked tees and huge smiles on the faces of ecstatic fans.
22 years later and STRUNG OUT are a monster of a band, and for the first time ever the band are playing ‘Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues’ in it’s entirely. From the biting “Firecracker” and siren call of “Somnombulance” to the fraying id of “Bring Out Your Dead”, “Solitaire” and “Wrong Side Of The Tracks”, these are songs that that will suck you in and leave you joyously wasted.
Deyan Stevic from Amnplify caught up with Jake Kiley for an update recently.
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Q: For those who don’t know the band’s background tell us how it all started, if it’s possible to wrap up over 20 years in just a few sentences?
A: Sure well the band got going back in 1991 and basically Jim Cherry, Rob Ramos and Jason Cruz met up, were friends and decided they wanted to start a band kind of like Bad Religion, Descendents, Social Distortion kind of vibe so they all met and got it going. I saw the band play at a party in ’92 and through a mutual friend got involved and just really got into it, I thought it was a really cool balance of traditional punk rock with more musical heavy metal sort of aspects and that was kind of what I was into at the time as well so it was just a really great thing to come together. Coming from a small town, it’s pretty remarkable that we all met each other and had the same likeminded vision for what we wanted to do. Since then it’s just been about keeping that challenge going, keeping the creative process going and somehow we survived 25 years later, it’s remarkable.
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Q: Yeah absolutely, in your opinion what do you think it is it that has kept you guys together for so long? I mean 25 years is a long time, what’s the key for maintaining longevity?
A: Yeah man, I mean I wish I had a secret I could tell you, it’s really just been that we all get something out of this that’s really crucial for us. You know, for me I just love being on stage and getting to play my guitar in front of a live crowd and I love the songs that we write, like we’re all really involved in our songwriting process, it’s very much a group thing so we all feel really connected to the songs. And I love it man, to get up there and see people appreciate what we’re doing and to play off that and be able to perform for them, that to me is everything. And to get to travel and meet people and get to talk to you, get to come down and play for you guys, it’s a dream come true for me and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. You know, it’s a bit of a sacrifice to be in a band in some ways in that you have a lot of commitments and you’re always on the road going to places, but for me, that’s what I’ve always wanted so to me that’s no sacrifice. But I know some musicians get to the point where they struggle with the traveling and they don’t want to be away from home for as much time but for me personally it’s a luxury and I’m just very appreciative. So we just need it in our lives for different reasons, I think the other guys are pretty similar in that they get something special out of it that fulfills something in their life that they need.
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Q: So you’d say you probably prefer touring and playing live rather than producing music?
A: Well they’re both cool and absolutely yes I prefer the touring aspect of it. I mean, doing the recording is fun, it’s creative, it’s exciting to record and the spontaneous moments when things come together in the studio and you take the song to another level that you didn’t know it could go, yeah that’s fun. But to me that’s really just the academic process. That’s you know, setting the table and then the feast is being able to get up there and playing the songs in front of people that respond to that work. And when you put out a record you never know how people are going to take it, and its kind of a crazy thing to think my career is based on someone’s opinion of my art. Like, we could put everything we have into this record and, at the end of the day, no one might like it and it might not sell 10 copies and we can’t tour at that point because no one f***ing likes it. But, so far we’ve been really fortunate that people have responded well to the records we’ve made that we’ve created a really solid fan base and following that have stuck with us through pretty much everything we’ve done and they’ve allowed us this chance to travel and perform and do my dream so I owe it all to the fans for allowing us to play these shows and coming and buying tickets and giving us this opportunity. You know, the writing process is fun and it’s necessary because without that you don’t have anything to perform but it’s a yin and a yang. You can’t have one without the other but I greatly prefer getting out there and being on the road and being in the clubs and doing that, that’s me.
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Q: Well by now you guys must be practically family but are there ever any times when you just need a break from working together?
A: Well yeah, and I think we give ourselves a pretty good break. We don’t crush ourselves by touring so much that we burn out and things like that where some bands have maybe done that but for us we’ll go out for a month, five, six weeks then we’ll come back and take a month off and then we’re ready to go out again. Sometimes tours line up to where we really are pretty busy for up to 6 months where it’s almost back to back and if the opportunities are there you do it but it can get like a bit of a groundhog day thing where just it’s endless. When you’re on the road, every night’s like a Friday, you know, you’re playing a concert and people are there, they’re excited. Even if it’s like a Wednesday, a Thursday or a Monday, everyone’s there and it almost feels like a weekend and if you indulge in drinking every night and doing drugs all the time sure that can burn you out and really exhaust you so, as we’ve gone on we’ve learnt to pace ourselves a lot better. If we’re out there and we have a lot of shows coming up, we’re not going to super hard on the partying, we’ll taper that back and really put the shows and performance first. I mean I can only speak for myself but once I’m home for a couple of weeks, I’m pretty much ready to get back out there because for me there’s nothing more rewarding and exciting than the travel and meeting people and playing these shows. But yeah, you need to be smart about it. You don’t want to go out for a year straight, two years straight. That’s when bands have break ups and they get sick of each other. Some people are just more suited to it than others but we’ve found a pretty good balance of giving ourselves enough space.
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Q: So other than the band members, who do you think are some of the key people that have played a role in your journey?
A: Well certainly our booking agents and our record company Fat Wreck Chords being able to have a home with them. It’s a real family environment, we’ve known everyone there for years, we’re on a first name basis with everyone over there, they’re all fans of us and we’re all really proud of working together with each other. That’s been a really great thing to have because I think with some labels, there’s a distance between the band and the label, there not a lot of trust and the label’s just there to try to make money off the artist and the artist doesn’t really feel connected. That can be a bad thing for some people but for us that’s why we stayed with Fat Wreck Chords our entire career because there’s that really fun vibe and Fat Mike, knowing what it’s like to being in a band and to tour we can always use him as a mentor and ask him “what should we do? How should we deal with this? How would you deal with this?” And he’s always been there for us and Erin, his ex-wife, who’s always been there as well has been amazing and all the other people at the label are very supportive and we can call them up and just chat about anything and if we need information or if we need money for plane tickets they’re there for that and they give us creative control which, I always hear stories about labels that want to control the band and don’t want to put out records sometimes if they don’t feel the label should be doing that. For us, we’ve never ran into that. We’ve always had a very great comradery and mutual appreciation. So having them on our back is great and our booking agents that we’ve had around the world have been a real key for getting around to places and keeping our name out there so it’s all a machine, you know, like you’re part of a big machine keeping it going but it’s all people, we all have a love for it and I think that’s what’s allowed us to persevere through it all.
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Q: So you’ll be touring in Australia playing your sophomore album “Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues” in its entirety. What is it like over 20 years on coming back to play such an iconic album live?
A: Yeah it’s a lot of fun, I love it myself. I’m someone who’s never grown so far from my roots to where I can’t relate to our old records. I love the old records. To me, it’s a snapshot of where we were at the time but at the same time they still feel incredibly relevant to me. It’s not like “oh god, I have to play these songs that I can’t relate to anymore, you know 20 years ago I was such a different person.” But, for better or worse I’m really not, I’m pretty much that same dude and I think we all have our roots are still really intact and we’re really proud of that record and we’re proud of all our old stuff so we continue playing most of those songs in our set anyway. We play about half that record in a general set as it is, it’s one of our most popular records, it’s our highest selling record so it’s always been a big part of our set. So, for us to just do the whole thing it’s actually a lot of fun and it’s really fast the whole way through. Every song is pretty much 200 beats per minute so the whole thing goes by in about 25 minutes when we do it live so it’s really quick and for the rest of the set we can do a variety of songs throughout our career. So it’s a really cool thing, and most importantly the fans respond to it, the fans love to hear those songs, they’re psyched to for it and at the end of the day that’s everything.
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Q: This is sort of a follow on from that, you’ve already answered half the question but a lot of the times with bands like yourselves who have a lot of albums under their belt, usually a lot of songs from albums get lost in the shuffle when it comes to playing them live. Are there any particular songs from the album that you’re really looking forward to playing live again?
A: Well yeah, even though we do a lot of them live you’re right, there are some that don’t get as much attention. So, hard to say off the top of my head but the song “Monster”, that’s one that we don’t always play so that’ll be fun to have in there. The song “Rotten Apple”, that’s one that we haven’t been playing for years and recently we brought that one back so that’ll be great to have in there. But yeah, just in its entirety it’s really cool to play the songs because when you write a record there’s something special about the sequence of they all work together and it’s a lot of fun to then go do that live and make that sequence your show. Because there’s a lot of energy to it, there’s a lot of thought put behind that sequence when you make the album so sometimes when we’re writing our live set it’s like “Oh god, does this flow right? Do these songs work together right” and sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t but with an album it’s almost guaranteed that the flow will be good, people know what’s coming next so they’ll be excited to hear the whole thing. So it relieves some pressure on our end to it as a live bulk because now we have the set laid out, we know what we’re going to do, it’s the set. Well, at least the portion of the set.
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Q: So, I mean over 20 years on from the album’s release, how does it feel seeing it continue to reach and influence younger audiences and what does it mean to you seeing these newer fans in the crowd as well as the older ones?
A: Yeah it’s great to always see people out there, younger kids coming to the shows still that are just getting into the scene and it’s pretty that 20 years later it’s still relevant because, I always figured by this point just in life that our records might not even be relevant to anyone anymore. That whatever was going on in music today would be so far beyond what we were doing in the 90s that no one would really care about it except for the older fans that grew up with it. But what we’re seeing is that we’re living in this pretty nostalgic society where guys my age in their late thirties/early forties, they’re clinging to the stuff they grew up with because we live in this hyper technical age now with information coming at you so quick and everything being so high tech that it kind of freaks you out at your core and it’s kind of creatively stunted a lot of things. Like I feel like we’re living in this nostalgic, stunted era where most movies coming out are remakes of old movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s and it’s like Star Wars is the biggest thing in the world, like why the f*** is Star Wars still the biggest thing? That came out in 1978. But, for better or worse, things are still rooted and people are clinging to the things they grew up with which has helped us stay relevant which I’m surprised by. Like I said I’d always figured we’d be has-beens or something but, you know, the kids are still into it too so I think part of that is because what we put out in the 90s was so true to us that it’s aged well. It’s not like some of the bands that came out in the 90s who probably aren’t doing as well but for us, and a lot of the bands on Fat Wreck Chords for instance, it’s aged well and within punk rock it’s still pretty cutting edge compared to what’s coming out today. And honestly there’s just not a lot of rock music coming out today, at least here in America in Los Angeles which used to be a hard rock town. The Sunset Strip had everything from rock and roll in the 70s and 80s and now it’s all DJs and electric indie-rock and it’s just all this s*** that, there might be a guitar on stage but you don’t f***ing hear it. So I think our bands are almost the last defenders of hard rock just in general, just blazing guitars, fast drums. And every time another band like Ozzy Osbourne retires or Judas Priest who are on their last tour, when those classic guys go away who’s going to fill their place? Not to say that we will but we’re at least carrying that torch of organic rock and roll, it’s not digital, it’s not f***ing DJs. So I think maybe that’s kept it relevant as well but I’m just pleasantly surprised that we get kids coming to it and that we still have this solid fan base after all these years.
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Q: Obviously you guys and a lot of other bands have played such a huge role in paving the way for many new, up and coming bands so I’ll ask you, are there any new punk bands on your radar that you really think have taken the ball and ran with it?
A: Well there’s definitely some up and coming stuff, one of our favourite bands right now, our buddies “La Armada” from the Dominican Republic and they all moved to Chicago and they’re incredible. They’re these Dominican kids that just love it and they’re just a force to be reckoned with. When you see them it’s just incredible the way that they are on stage and they’re not a brand new band, they’ve been around for about 15 years now maybe even longer. But relatively speaking they’re a newer band and they blew us away, we’re always trying to play shows with them. The “Twilight Creeps” are a cool new band we met on Warped Tour and our friends “Poor Habit”, though they haven’t played shows in a few years they were one of our favourite up and coming bands and I’m really hoping they get it back together because they were a great band that just had some personal issues to where it’s stopped them from touring but I would love to see them get back at it. There’s a band called “The Darlings” from Los Angeles who are really great as well. So there are some good newer bands unfortunately but I don’t see them in the mainstream. You rarely ever hear a new rock band on the radio or on Saturday Night Live or the Tonight Show, there’s hardly ever a hard rock band or a rock and roll band at all. It’s all this weird kind of like indie rock stuff which is cool but there’s still a hunger for loud, blazing guitar amps and drums and that’s what we’re happy to fill.
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Q: So you’re coming back to Australia again, how do you think our crowds compare to the American ones?
A: They’ve always been great crowds, every time we’ve come down to Australia it’s been a great tour, a lot of kids coming out who were really into it. And yeah dude, I mean honestly there was a point in time when I thought Australia was getting a little spoilt because you guys were getting a lot of tours and it felt like our tours weren’t as exciting as they used to be. But I know a lot of festivals have kind of died off there now. I know festivals like Soundwave ended but I’m excited to see the kids come out and go nuts again. Like anywhere, when you get a lot of shows it kind of takes away the specialness and when we were coming between 1999 and 2008 to Australia those were some of the best tours we’ve ever had anywhere, it was unbelievable. Then it seemed like things died off a little, the scene wasn’t really thriving, at least for us, as it had been. But I think that was due to the fact that you guys were getting flooded by a lot of bands and a lot of festivals to where now, I could be wrong, but it seems like its slowed down a bit so I’m really excited to see the response for this next tour.
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Q: Well we love you guys here so I’m sure you’ll get a great turnout, kids going crazy. You’re definitely right about the festivals though, it’s a bit of a shame, there’s been a bit of a resurgence recently but really not as much as it was 10-20 years ago.
A: Yeah and it’s a bummer for you guys you know? It was great that you guys were getting all those shows and getting those festivals, I think that’s a great thing in general. But sometimes when you get a flood of stuff like that it doesn’t make it as exciting as it used to be. It’s more like “Oh well they’ll be back again in 6 months so I don’t have to go this time” whereas in the older days I think everyone was so excited because there weren’t as many tours coming through and it had taken us so long to finally get here that the energy was just unbelievable. So after coming off that it’s just a hard thing to sustain and to keep that excitement to what it was. But we’ve got great fans there, we’re just super stoked to play to anybody, whoever wants to come.
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Q: So who would be your dream band to share a stage with?
A: Oh gosh, well you know we’ve been so fortunate over the years that I’ve got to say we’ve played on some incredible bills. We came down there with Bad Religion which was amazing. We’ve got on tour with the Descendents, NOFX and all the bands that we grew up being into. The metal guy in me I would love to do a run Iron Maiden or Slayer even though we’d probably get booed off stage but that would be pretty fun to do something like that which we haven’t done before because we haven’t crossed over to the metal world much. But I think we could hang with some of those bands especially in the right environment, the right countries and stuff like that. But in our own scene we’ve just been so fortunate that we’ve gotten to play with most of the bands that inspired us coming up. Just a month ago we played the Musink Festival out here, Descendents were on it, Fear was on it, Adolescents were on it. So to be on the same line-up as those guys that’s huge, and the 15-year-old Jake inside me is just going crazy that I get to play with those guys and get to know them. I’d love to come down to Australia with NOFX, like Fat Mike’s doing the Punk and Brew tour up here, it’s this festival he’s putting on where it’s a beer festival and it’s got NOFX, Bad Religion, Descendents are on some shows I think. There’s just a tonne of great bands, and I’d love to see something like that come down to Australia and be a part of that.
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Q: Wow, that sounds awesome. Just hearing those bands, I think we’d love to get something like that here. So you’ve released 8 studio albums and 1 live album, is there room for any more in the near future?
A: Oh yeah definitely, we’re writing the next one right now. We have an EP coming out next month, it’s an 8 song acoustic record which is the first time we’ve done something like that so it’s interesting to try something new. It was really just about stripping down the songs and making the vocals really shine and making the music interesting but just supportive of the vocals. It’s just another side of us that we’ve never really delved into so we’ll see how that goes, you know, it’s a fun thing that we can break out these acoustic songs here and there and do like small side shows here and there around them. But we’re also working on our next full length record which we’re hoping to have out next year. I don’t think anything’s slowing down, we just got a new drummer recently and it’s reignited this fire in us, it’s insane. We’re the most fired up and excited about playing shows as we’ve been in honestly 15 or 20 years.
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Strung Out
Tour Dates
Thursday 21st June MAROOCHYDORE Sol Bar
Friday 22nd June BRISBANE Brightside
Saturday 23rd June GOLD COAST Miami Tavern
Saturday June 24th BYRON BAY Byron Bay Brewery
Tuesday 26th June NEWCASTLE Small Ballroom
Wednesday 27th June BATEAU BAY Long Jetty Hotel
Thursday 28th June SYDNEY Factory Theatre
Friday 29th June NARRABEEN Narrabeen RSL
Saturday 30th June MELBOURNE Croxton Hotel
Sunday 1st July MELBOURNE Frankston Pelly Bar
Wednesday 4th July ADELAIDE Fowlers
Thursday 5th July BUNBURY Prince of Wales
Friday 6th July HILARYS Northside Tavern
Saturday 7thJuly PERTH Hell Hole
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