Kings and Counselors: An Interview With Write This Down

Starring:

Nate Rockwell: Guitar & Melodic Vocals

Johnny Ortiz: Screaming & Toughguy Vocals

Andy Kalyvas: Bass Guitar

Conducted by Tommy Rehbein

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. I was sitting at the newly opened Beat Coffee Shop in Uptown Minneapolis sipping on an iced caramel latte awaiting the arrival of Write This Down members for the following interview. My computer decided not to work, so The Beat graciously let me use one of theirs. A few minutes later, three not-so-clean-cut but very smiley gentlemen strolled in and we pulled up some chairs. The following conversation is what took place.

TR: First off, Let’s talk about the MPLSSCENE.com message board controversy. Essentially, someone else used your name falsely to defame This is Morning.

NR: We love This Is Morning! Our first 6 months playing shows we played w/ them every month and we’re proud of their success. We’d never criticize them about their creativity. O’Hal makes me smile.

TR: People who use others’ names to shit-talk are kind of cowards…

NR: For sure, huge cowards. It’ll blow over. As long as we’re around there’ll be drama. Something you gotta deal with.

TR: So, for the record, that was not you guys talking shit. You say there will always be drama/controversy surrounding the band. Let’s address some of it. While you’re not a proselytizing band, you don’t hide your faith, either. Has this been an issue for you guys?

NR: Yes…

AK: It’s just difficult. People judge a lot. I guess we just kind of run into some people who think we’re more than we are. We are just people who make mistakes a lot.

NR: A lot of people of people criticize us for jumping on the “Christian bandwagon” because The Chariot, Norma Jean and Underoath are doing well, but our faith is our own.

TR: You’re obviously not using your faith to market your music to Christian kids. You rarely play straight-up Christian shows.

JO: That is just our background. Its something we live out in our lives.

TR: Do you catch flack from the Christian side?

NR: Even more from the Christian side, which is kind of sad.

AK: People live in kind of a box.

NR: We find the more secular the show, the more open the audience, and the more Christian the show, the more judgmental the audience.

TR: Kind of like the Christians hold you under a magnifying glass?

JO: Yeah, our tiny mistakes are magnified.

TR: People tend to blow shit out of proportion, huh?

AK: But there are people under the Christian blanket who are really helpful, too.

TR: Generally, if you get attacked by Christians, what do they go after?

NR: We’ll go to a show after-party and just chill, and some people think that’s wrong. But Jesus would hang out at the parties. He hung out with people the were looked down upon.

AK: I just want to love the people we’re around. If we can effectively love people, whether through out music, our actions, or hanging out, that’s what we want to do.

JO: We view ourselves as equals. We’re struggling with everyone. We just want to help people out and a lot of people help us out.

TR: You talk about Christiani and secular music - Do you guys consciously make a distinction between the two?

AK: If we’re selling shoes at a shoe store, we’re still Christians. If we’re making music, we’re still Christians. We write what we know about.

NR: Our faith comes out in our music because that a big part of who we are.

JO: But we’re not here to force anything on anyone. We’re just people.

TR: So, your background will inevitably come out in your world view, just like 50 Cent came from a rough part of Detroit; it comes out in his music.

NR: Write This Down is just like 50 Cent!

TR: Let talk about your CD. I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a play on words in the title “Alarm the Alarm.”

NR:: Every song title is random and doesn’t mean anything. Our old practice space had a horrible alarm system that always went off and a poster there said “ALARM THE ALARM” and we were like, “What does that mean?”

AK: There’s no double meaning. I wish we were that smart.

TR: So, it was jut a funny poster and you thought it’d make a good title?

NR: Yeah, basically.

TR: It seems, like any band, you’re kind of sick of your first CD already and aren’t super into it anymore.

NR: Nah, it’s just… We recorded almost a year ago. Since then, we’ve been writing new stuff and our sound changed a bit. The CD is a little more poppy. There’s a slow song, more singing, etc. The newer stuff is heavier, more hardcore, not so sing-y. Once Johnny joined the band, our sound transformed to a heavier sound.

TR: That whole scenario seems common with a lot of bands and their debuts.

NR: This month we’re doing some new demos to get the new stuff out there. We only play a couple songs off the CD still.

TR: Who are you demoing with?

AK: Either Jonny B or Andy Toybox. It’s still up in the air.

TR: What are you hoping to accomplish with the new demos?

NR: Well, the main thing is so fans can hear our new sound. On the business side, we’ll put together press kits for labels and such.

TR: Do you plan on any touring?

AK: The majority of the summer we’ll be touring.

TR: That is a smart move. A lot of bands just sit around waiting for deals to fall in their laps.

AK: This summer will be fun. We definitely plan on having a lot of late-night BBQs and midday swims.

TR: Are you going to college again in the fall?

NR: Starting May, the band goes full time from here on out.

TR: It will be nice for you to get away from the oppressive NCU environment [North Central University – A very legalistic Bible college]…

AK: I don’t mind NCU. I don’t like it, but I don’t mind it.

TR: Well, ya know…

AK: We’re kind of a weird band in Minneapolis.

TR: How so, guys?

AK: We play with the metal bands, or like the Semester, and either people love us or hate us.

TR: I don’t think you’re that weird. Hybrids of metal-core and emo-pop are fairly commonplace. Anyway… So, we’ll wrap this up. The plan is to demo, shop, tour…

NR: Take it full time, maybe take a few showers.

AK: The grind.

NR: I think this past year and a half we’ve build our name up in Minneapolis.

TR: Time to hit the road before you kill your local draw.

ALL: That’s why we’re trying not to play Minneapolis much over the next couple months.

TR: That is a smart business move. Keep ‘em wanting more.

AK: Three of our band members are business majors, so…

TR: Well, there you go. Thanks for talking to me. Good luck with everything.

Tommy Rehbein (Small Towns Burn a Little Slower)

Below is our interview with Tommy Rehbein of Small Towns Burn a Little Slower and Cinema Eyes.

Why did you choose to do Cinema Eyes and what are your goals with the project?

Probably because Pat Brown is one of my closest friends and it just gives us an excuse to hang out more because we both have pretty awful schedules. That’s honestly probably the biggest reason. The goals of the project are to write some fun songs and play some stupid shows. We want to do some unconventional stuff, like we want to play in your dorm room, or maybe a bowling alley, dumb stuff like that.

Yeah we could probably get a show in my dorm room for like 10 minutes before it got shut down by my CA, but that’s your set so….

I think if we play longer than 10 minutes something is wrong. We wrote these songs and no matter what they turned out to be like 2 and a half minutes long. Whenever we play shows people are like (whiny teeny voice), “You only played three songs!” But, we don’t have time to write more, maybe this summer I’ll write some more songs and show it to Pat and Josh and see what happens.


You also have done production for a number of projects do you want to discuss why you became involved in that?

It was just something I was interested in doing and just wanted to see if anyone wanted any outside help. I’m allowed to be really creative without having to butt heads with any of my other band members. It’s a good outlet for me to just work with a lot of different kinds of bands. You get this proud big brother feeling when you work with a band that kind of needs it and they get a lot better in a couple months and are using your ideas live. Early on I did some stuff with The Semester and Gloria and I think I might do some pre-production with Gloria again. Now that they’ve got Pat in the band I have some ideas about some call-and-response vocals between Pat and Webby. I want them to try some stuff they haven’t done before and see how it flies. I would like to do more of that, but we’ll see how my schedule goes, if Small Towns gets really busy then that has to go on the backburner.

If you could go back in time and give some advice to yourself and Small Towns as you were writing Mortality as Home Entertainment what would you tell yourselves to do differently?

Maybe use dynamics a little more, but at the same time it was our first full-length album. There’s not too many bands who put out their first album and it becomes their monumental, career making album. That album is where we were at the time and I’m happy with that. I got to work with some really cool people on it like Ed Rose and Justin Pierre. I guess I wouldn’t really change anything. You just have to learn by doing things and figure out what works and what doesn’t and what you can expand on.

Has the writing process this time around been any different?

It’s been drastically different. With that first record, I’d kind of write the basic song, bring it to practice then everyone would write their parts and then Danny would put some vocals over it. With this record, it’s super collaborative. With the first record sometimes we’d start writing something and someone would always say, “No, that doesn’t sound like us.” So we’d throw out a lot of really good ideas because we were worried about it not sounding like us. With this record we’re trying everything and as a result I think we have a much better record. I also think that lyrically it’s more refined. It’s at times a little bit dark and certain times if he has a certain lyrical theme, instead of just whipping it over the music, we’ll change the music to match the lyrics. There’s a couple of times where I’ve purposely put a really messed up discord and guitar part to match what he was singing.

What’s your favorite track off of the new record so far?

My favorite song is called “Rooftops Won’t Come to You.” It’s drastically different than anything anyone has heard from us before. It’s basically just a straight up pop song and it’s heavily influenced by early U2.

Is there a general vibe to the record or is it more all over the place?

I don’t want to say it’s a concept album because everyone is doing that lately, but I think there is definitely an underlying theme. The record is called So Begins the Test of a Man. There’s some dark subject matter in there surrounding Danny’s negative experience growing up with Christianity and sorting through that. We want to write it in a way that shows someone growing and learning from it instead of just bashing on religion because I think the generic thing is to just bash on a belief system. None of us have a problem with people having personal faith, we have more of a problem with people who exploit personal faith with personal gain, so that’s on there quite a bit. This band has just been through a lot of stuff in the past few years so a lot of it is just us going through that and coming out on the other end. But, it’s written in a manner so that anyone who is listening to it can apply it to their life, like whatever personal crisis you’re going through. It should test you and stretch you instead of destroy you as a person.

What would you like to see change about the local scene?

I think it would be cool if more people were throwing shows in basements and doing more fun, stupid stuff. I think most people are just trying to get on huge shows but aren’t willing to pay their dues or help other bands out. It’s really cutthroat right now and it just really sucks. I’m really sick of going to local shows where it’s four bands who have only been playing for four months and they’re charging $8 to get in and everyone is fighting over time slots and trying to get on the huge shows. Like why are you really playing? Are you really passionate about building a community and making friends or are you more caught up in having your 10 seconds on the stage? I think that’s got to stop. But, it’s a pendulum, it goes back and forth. I’ve been around long enough to see both sides to it. The bands who are just in it for the spotlight, when their band hits rough water they just break up anyways so it just kind of filters itself out. But, there are a lot of really cool bands out there too. Every negative I have to say about what’s going on locally there’s 10 positives I can say. It seems like every week there’s a new band sprouting up and there’s some really creative bands out there.

Do your best to equate a few Minneapolis bands to superheroes.

I’d like to say that Red Fox Grey Fox is like Wonderwoman. A little bit feminine but still strong and powerful and they all fly around in an invisible jet. Gloria is a little bit like The Incredible Hulk, most of the time they’re nice normal dudes, but every once in a while Webster turns Green and freaks out. They have their nice, poppy side, but they also have their tough guy side. P.O.S. is Batman because he’s just badass. Not like the shitty, campy 60’s Batman, but the badass, super tough Batman. Declare This An Emergency is Underdog because no one really knows about them, but they should. There’s this band out there.

If you could build a superteam from members of the Minneapolis music scene, not including members of Small Towns, who would you include?

Ian Prince would have to play drums because he is hands down the best drummer to ever walk the planet, he’s better than Dave Grohl. This guy is God. He plays in Kid Dakota and Story of the Sea. I think Noel Tate from Askeleton would have to play keyboard just because he’s really creative and he’s a weird dude and he’s fun to watch onstage. I think Noah Paster would have to play guitar. Noah is one of those guys who’s in like 800 bands. Every instrument he touches, he’s good at. Noah comes up with stuff that most people wouldn’t come up with, he’s a really unconventional musician and I think he could work in any genre. Josh Korea would have to play bass. Not many people know about Maiden Korea, but Josh is just a phenomenal bass player. Josh Cain would play second guitar because he’s another one of those guys who’s able to take really messed up parts and put them in a pop music format. For vocals I’d probably want that to be Darren from Kid Dakota. So basically you’d just have Kid Dakota plus other members..so let’s do a two singer band. So for second vocals let’s go with Kelsey Crawford she was in Vox Vermillion and she’s in a band called Themes. When she sings hotness comes out of her vocal chords.

What bothers you about the music industry today?

I think bands are more concerned about selling ringtones than selling records. Packaged tours really bum me out. The way it used to be is two really well bands that could fill up a room on their own would go on tour, then for openers they’d just put two local bands on the show. That was really really healthy for up and coming bands and for local scenes. Now there’s no national effort to nurture local scenes.

What are your feelings towards file-sharing?

That’s sort of a touchy one because I don’t want to preach on a soapbox and I know I sort of come off like that sometimes. But, I think people feel that when you download a record even if it’s some huge band like Britney Spears or Metallica they’re like, “Oh it’s not going to hurt anyone.” If you can’t pay $10 for a CD at Target, or better yet spend the extra few bucks and buy it at an independent store, maybe you shouldn’t have it. There’s a lot more people that worked on it than just some CEOs on some huge labels. There’s engineers that worked on that, there’s guys in a shipping warehouse that make probably $8 an hour unloading the pallets. You don’t think it hurts people, but it does. As far as indie bands go, management just looks at those bands numbers. If there’s a band you love and you’re file-sharing their record then those bands aren’t able to get on good tours because even if you have a lot of fans, if the numbers aren’t there you aren’t really able to prove it. Being in a band that’s been touring for the past few years on an indie label, it’s cool that people that come out to shows, but it sends a message to the record label that people like you and are supporting you if you buy the record. So if you’re not buying the record a lot bands don’t get to put out a second record or get on good tours. It’s a lot of things people just don’t think about.

What’s up next for Small Towns Burn a Little Slower? When is the record going to be out and do you have any tours lined up?

Right now we’re trying to relearn all the songs we recorded. We went into the studio and tried lots of crazy stuff and now we listen to it, but we have to figure out how to do it live, so we’re just going through that process. I think Josh is going to have to start playing to a click and we’re going to have to bring an extra person on tour with us. We’re figuring out who’s going to put out the next record, but I’m not really allowed to talk about that. But, we’re hoping for a fall release so we have all summer to promote it. I think we’re aiming really high and hopefully everything will fall into place. I really hope when people hear it they’ll like it and notice growth in the band, but won’t think it’s too weird and won’t like us anymore.