IPOD
RADIO
Switchblade Sound Off: A Conversation With The Knives
By Erin Broadley
Dec 24, 2006
Veteran musician Robert Fripp once said, “Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.” If that’s the case, then the Knives are the whisky at last call that fills the cup of the tired, Sunset Strip rock scene. Emerging from a city where the music seems stuck in a cycle of premature adoration, Los Angeles’ the Knives command attention, using their DIY rock n’ roll to rub salt in the wounds of Hollywood cliché. The band (vocalist Le’Von, bassist Scott, guitarist Brane, and drummer Jonny U) took a break from the studio to chat with SuicideGirls about their experiences on tour over the past year and plans for their upcoming record, the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2005’s Skin Flicks, out now on Criterion Records.
Erin Broadley: The Knives are often referred to as a definitive “LA band” in that, being from LA informs most of your songs’ subject matter and sound. Would you agree?
Jonny U: We take pride in being from LA. We’re affected by the nonsense bullshit that we live amongst.
Brane: I don’t think it matters whether we're from here or not.
EB: Do you ever worry that the cliché of being a rock and roll band from LA hinders you when it comes to being taken seriously on a national level? Like, “Cool…another band from LA.”
JU: I don’t think that it affects us. We don’t stand for what all the Hollywood bullshit stands for. We pretty much write about anti-bullshit. For example, one of the songs on our next record is a song called “Last Picture Show” which is basically about all the actors in town and all that other nonsense which we’re not part of. We come from a very superficial city but we’re a bunch of non-superficial guys.
B: My fear is that, for a long time, I haven’t had anything come out of this city that really grabs me by the balls.
EB: Except when a girl really does grab you by the balls…
JU: Yeah, and he hasn’t felt anything like that in a really long time (laughs). We have a pretty good local following now. LA has been really nice to us lately. We live in a city that’s a pretty intense place. By being on tour and being to all these other places you realize that there is life outside of LA. And there is life in LA, as well. If you can do it here you can do it anywhere.
B: We love LA even more coming back from a lengthy tour and finding that there are even more fans here than there were when we left. You come back after being gone for such a long time and these kids give you this great homecoming and totally blow you away.
JU: I can honestly say that no matter where we’ve been in the world, I’m happy to come back to Los Angeles when it’s all said and done. I’m from Philadelphia originally but I’ve lived here for six years. When we come home and get to play in front of those kids, it makes it all even more worth it than it already is. Every step of the way, whether we’re playing in Lawrence, Kansas or Hamburg, Germany, it doesn’t really matter—it all feels great. I’ve never been in a situation like I am with the Knives where we travel and have fans everywhere in the world. We just got back from Europe and the kids there already knew the new songs we have up on the Internet! It was unbelievable.
B: Whatever song they could find on the Internet, somehow they got it! It freaked us out, in a good way.
JU: They knew these songs that aren’t even out yet but are on the Internet. We started the show and they fuckin’ flipped like those songs had been their favorite songs for ten years!
EB: It seems that your audience does its research ahead of time.
JU: They totally did their research. And we have to thank CKY for that because their fans are die-hard and actually take that time and extra step to learn the material.
B: We’ve been touring with CKY for a while so now we’re starting to get this connection and camaraderie with their fans as well. As compared to the first time we did a CKY show where their fans were like, “Who the fuck are these guys?”
EB: How did the whole Knives/CKY partnership come about?
JU: Chad [Ginsburg, CKY guitarist] and I were in our first band together back in Philly. I got Chad into music.
B: It’s been nothing but a learning experience. Everything we learn from CKY has been great.
JU: We’ve learned from them because they’re experienced and have been on the road for 10 years. I think that both bands learn from each other.
B: They’re already at this certain level…
JU: They’re at the most ideal level ever where a band can make a career without having any hits on the radio or MTV. But let's not kid each other—when we first went on tour with them, it was our first tour! They hazed us a little bit. But it’s gotten easier as every tour has come along. In Europe it was both bands and a crew, all on one tour bus. It was insane. But everybody got along like we had been family for 30 years. It felt like one big band, in a sense. Every time CKY asks us to go on the road, they tell us they want to keep it in the family. They consider us family. If you ask CKY they’ll tell you it was one of the best tours they’ve had in years.
B: Those guys have had a good time with us and that’s why they keep bringing us out. It’s a learning experience for us, and a bonding experience for them. They’ve never pulled a power trip.
JU: It’s amazing that our first album came out on an independent label last year in August and that same month we headed out on tour with CKY for the first time. It wasn’t set up that way; it was just a coincidence. Our personal ties with the band helped it all go down but in this business, wherever you can take some help, you have to take it. And we like to think we’re smart business people. So far, so good.
B: CKY’s live show has really made us step up our game. You can see it when we come back to LA after a long tour—you can see how tight our craft has gotten. Our fans see the change. I think the pressure of needing to step it up is a positive thing. CKY will tell us the nights when we suck. But they’ll also tell us when the crowd was louder for us than them.
EB: Are your fears as a band any different this time around, making the new record?
JU: Of course. This record has put a little pressure on us. Our biggest fear is not being able to top the last record. As a band, we’ve grown super tight because of our experiences on the road in the last year. The pressure is there but without that pressure you’re never pushing the limit. There was no fear with the first album because we automatically thought we weren’t going to sell anything. We were a new band. Touring has made us the tightest band ever. Touring made us realize that we weren’t as great as we thought. I respect everybody that’s trying to do what we're doing in this business. We all know this business sucks. Whether you’re a musician, photographer, or journalist—the only guys who ever seem like they’re winning are the record labels, but in 10 years they’ll probably be obsolete. Without fear you don’t have anything to push you.
EB: You could say that, without fear, you wouldn’t have rock and roll.
JU: The best thing is having the chance to play in front of the right people—the kids who actually buy your records and want to see you play live. CKY, god bless them, has given us that opportunity. It’s taken us to a level where we want to push grounds. We don’t want to just be a great rock and roll band. In the studio, we’re not thinking about anything else except writing songs. We understand that this next record has to be better than the last one and that there are expectations of us. By doing it the way we’re doing it (all grass roots—we do our own web site, we record ourselves), we’ve gained a lot of attention. Criterion Records put out our first album but we own all our own shit and license it out to other people.
EB: I think a lot of people forget how rare it is to be able to own your own music these days.
JU: It is. I’ll be the first to say that we are extremely lucky to have good things come our way, especially artistically. We’re lucky that we have a bass player that has recording gear that we can use. We’re lucky that a label came across us and wanted to put out our record. Without any of that we’d be nothing…just four dudes who like to play music. Thank god for everybody that’s helped us. We’re almost finished writing the new record and start recording in January. Most of it was written in between tours. I’d say we’re about 75-percent done. We’re hoping the record comes out next spring. We understand that we don’t want to be out of people’s minds for too long but we’re also not going to rush the music.
Veteran musician Robert Fripp once said, “Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.” If that’s the case, then the Knives are the whisky at last call that fills the cup of the tired, Sunset Strip rock scene. Emerging from a city where the music seems stuck in a cycle of premature adoration, Los Angeles’ the Knives command attention, using their DIY rock n’ roll to rub salt in the wounds of Hollywood cliché. The band (vocalist Le’Von, bassist Scott, guitarist Brane, and drummer Jonny U) took a break from the studio to chat with SuicideGirls about their experiences on tour over the past year and plans for their upcoming record, the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2005’s Skin Flicks, out now on Criterion Records.
Erin Broadley: The Knives are often referred to as a definitive “LA band” in that, being from LA informs most of your songs’ subject matter and sound. Would you agree?
Jonny U: We take pride in being from LA. We’re affected by the nonsense bullshit that we live amongst.
Brane: I don’t think it matters whether we're from here or not.
EB: Do you ever worry that the cliché of being a rock and roll band from LA hinders you when it comes to being taken seriously on a national level? Like, “Cool…another band from LA.”
JU: I don’t think that it affects us. We don’t stand for what all the Hollywood bullshit stands for. We pretty much write about anti-bullshit. For example, one of the songs on our next record is a song called “Last Picture Show” which is basically about all the actors in town and all that other nonsense which we’re not part of. We come from a very superficial city but we’re a bunch of non-superficial guys.
B: My fear is that, for a long time, I haven’t had anything come out of this city that really grabs me by the balls.
EB: Except when a girl really does grab you by the balls…
JU: Yeah, and he hasn’t felt anything like that in a really long time (laughs). We have a pretty good local following now. LA has been really nice to us lately. We live in a city that’s a pretty intense place. By being on tour and being to all these other places you realize that there is life outside of LA. And there is life in LA, as well. If you can do it here you can do it anywhere.
B: We love LA even more coming back from a lengthy tour and finding that there are even more fans here than there were when we left. You come back after being gone for such a long time and these kids give you this great homecoming and totally blow you away.
JU: I can honestly say that no matter where we’ve been in the world, I’m happy to come back to Los Angeles when it’s all said and done. I’m from Philadelphia originally but I’ve lived here for six years. When we come home and get to play in front of those kids, it makes it all even more worth it than it already is. Every step of the way, whether we’re playing in Lawrence, Kansas or Hamburg, Germany, it doesn’t really matter—it all feels great. I’ve never been in a situation like I am with the Knives where we travel and have fans everywhere in the world. We just got back from Europe and the kids there already knew the new songs we have up on the Internet! It was unbelievable.
B: Whatever song they could find on the Internet, somehow they got it! It freaked us out, in a good way.
JU: They knew these songs that aren’t even out yet but are on the Internet. We started the show and they fuckin’ flipped like those songs had been their favorite songs for ten years!
EB: It seems that your audience does its research ahead of time.
JU: They totally did their research. And we have to thank CKY for that because their fans are die-hard and actually take that time and extra step to learn the material.
B: We’ve been touring with CKY for a while so now we’re starting to get this connection and camaraderie with their fans as well. As compared to the first time we did a CKY show where their fans were like, “Who the fuck are these guys?”
EB: How did the whole Knives/CKY partnership come about?
JU: Chad [Ginsburg, CKY guitarist] and I were in our first band together back in Philly. I got Chad into music.
B: It’s been nothing but a learning experience. Everything we learn from CKY has been great.
JU: We’ve learned from them because they’re experienced and have been on the road for 10 years. I think that both bands learn from each other.
B: They’re already at this certain level…
JU: They’re at the most ideal level ever where a band can make a career without having any hits on the radio or MTV. But let's not kid each other—when we first went on tour with them, it was our first tour! They hazed us a little bit. But it’s gotten easier as every tour has come along. In Europe it was both bands and a crew, all on one tour bus. It was insane. But everybody got along like we had been family for 30 years. It felt like one big band, in a sense. Every time CKY asks us to go on the road, they tell us they want to keep it in the family. They consider us family. If you ask CKY they’ll tell you it was one of the best tours they’ve had in years.
B: Those guys have had a good time with us and that’s why they keep bringing us out. It’s a learning experience for us, and a bonding experience for them. They’ve never pulled a power trip.
JU: It’s amazing that our first album came out on an independent label last year in August and that same month we headed out on tour with CKY for the first time. It wasn’t set up that way; it was just a coincidence. Our personal ties with the band helped it all go down but in this business, wherever you can take some help, you have to take it. And we like to think we’re smart business people. So far, so good.
B: CKY’s live show has really made us step up our game. You can see it when we come back to LA after a long tour—you can see how tight our craft has gotten. Our fans see the change. I think the pressure of needing to step it up is a positive thing. CKY will tell us the nights when we suck. But they’ll also tell us when the crowd was louder for us than them.
EB: Are your fears as a band any different this time around, making the new record?
JU: Of course. This record has put a little pressure on us. Our biggest fear is not being able to top the last record. As a band, we’ve grown super tight because of our experiences on the road in the last year. The pressure is there but without that pressure you’re never pushing the limit. There was no fear with the first album because we automatically thought we weren’t going to sell anything. We were a new band. Touring has made us the tightest band ever. Touring made us realize that we weren’t as great as we thought. I respect everybody that’s trying to do what we're doing in this business. We all know this business sucks. Whether you’re a musician, photographer, or journalist—the only guys who ever seem like they’re winning are the record labels, but in 10 years they’ll probably be obsolete. Without fear you don’t have anything to push you.
EB: You could say that, without fear, you wouldn’t have rock and roll.
JU: The best thing is having the chance to play in front of the right people—the kids who actually buy your records and want to see you play live. CKY, god bless them, has given us that opportunity. It’s taken us to a level where we want to push grounds. We don’t want to just be a great rock and roll band. In the studio, we’re not thinking about anything else except writing songs. We understand that this next record has to be better than the last one and that there are expectations of us. By doing it the way we’re doing it (all grass roots—we do our own web site, we record ourselves), we’ve gained a lot of attention. Criterion Records put out our first album but we own all our own shit and license it out to other people.
EB: I think a lot of people forget how rare it is to be able to own your own music these days.
JU: It is. I’ll be the first to say that we are extremely lucky to have good things come our way, especially artistically. We’re lucky that we have a bass player that has recording gear that we can use. We’re lucky that a label came across us and wanted to put out our record. Without any of that we’d be nothing…just four dudes who like to play music. Thank god for everybody that’s helped us. We’re almost finished writing the new record and start recording in January. Most of it was written in between tours. I’d say we’re about 75-percent done. We’re hoping the record comes out next spring. We understand that we don’t want to be out of people’s minds for too long but we’re also not going to rush the music.
