Posted on July 30, 2010 - by Editor

Koffin Kats: Drunken Psycho Strays

Koffin Kats © Kim Ford

The Koffin Kats are a hard working band, and that’s an understatement. With the recent departure of long standing Tommy and EZ Ian joining the three piece full time, the band had been on tour for six weeks across Europe when we caught up with them after their show in Kingston, UK. Despite the sweltering condition the band had just played in to a cosy and passionate crowd, the guys were as perky and full of jokes as ever and Distorted thought it would be a good time to see how the line-up change, constant touring, new material and other pertinent issues were affecting the band and their future plans.

With Vic Victor (lead vocals and double bass) and EZ Ian (guitar and vocals) doing most of the talking compared to the less outspoken E-Ball Walls (drums) we asked the trio how the tour to date had been going.

EZ Ian: Amazing!

Vic: We like that our formula for the States is working over here in the sense that every time we tour in the States it gets a little bit better, and little bit better and every time we come here, its our third time now, it’s awesome to see the progress and the crowds coming out, even here tonight this was our best Kingston show we have seen. And that’s why we stay out and tour so much cos if you are not going to go out on the road and work for it, there is no sense having a band and sitting and waiting for it to happen.

Steve: But your six weeks has been pretty relentless and I imagine there is not much downtime?

EZ Ian: Sure and we were on tour for two months before we came out here.

Vic: Technically we have been out since March 15th or 13th?

Steve: And what is the plan after this tour then?

Vic: We are going to take a couple months off. Well not really, cos in August we are doing a split with 12 Step Rebels.

Steve: And is that going to be the same label as last time?

Vic: Yeah we are going to have it out on Stomp.

Steve: Before we talk records, you have visited some new countries (Romania and Ukraine) on this tour, how was that?

Vic: I tell you what, playing Romania, the crowds were small but they were intense, (burst out laughing)

EZ Ian: It was amazing, we played this old wine cellar or something like that, essentially this big brick warm underground place that was packed,  the place was insane- they pulled me and Victor offstage with our instruments in the middle of the set. Some of the best shows I have played in my life.

Victor: I mean for us it doesn’t take a 100 people to have a good time, you give us five passionate people…

EZ Ian: Even by ourselves we have a good time, naked!

Steve: You mean that’s when you have your best times?

Vic: I told you to keep that out of the interviews, Ian.

Steve: You do see bands though, especially if they feel they have made an effort to come from abroad, see a small crowd and go, ugh.

Vic Victor © Kim Ford

Vic: Well that’s  the one thing about this band, the three of us and even when Tommy was in the band, it pisses us off when you see bands you have paid money to go see, and they are not having a good time on stage. When you put everything in perspective I could be home right now, cleaning carpets, he (EZ Ian) could be working in the warehouse and he (E-Ball Walls) could be sorting mail in the post office. Anything beats our day jobs and I think sometimes you forget that.  We have been out for four months now and you won’t see us with a pissed off look on our face, like “oh-oh” this crowd doesn’t deserve to see us now.”

EZ Ian: You might see us with a hangover, which will happen.

Vic: Yeah if you see us in pain on the stage its cos of the hangover!

EZ Ian: Or maybe the car accident in Romania. (The guys had a nasty accident on the road).

Steve: You mentioned Tommy there and his departure. Was that a shock at all?

Vic: Well it was one of those things where slowly and surely you could see it coming and before it stopped becoming fun for him and before it was going to become really weird we sat down and we all talked and when you work so closely with someone and been friends with for  a long time, you know how people are and how they think and it was like ‘alright you are not so much into the groove anymore’ and we had been talking upcoming tours and he kinda was skirting the issue and I got what was going on. But in this life when you are gone eight months of the year, it’s not for everybody, and it might have been for someone four years ago, or a couple years ago, you get older and priorities change for some people. There was no fallout or punches in the face or anything; we sat down and we said ‘ok well we want to carry on’ and he said ‘I don’t want to hold you guys back, so who do you want to get’, and we said ‘how about Ian?’

Steve: And how easy was the transition?

Vic: The only thing that sucked was I had to teach him all the songs (laughing).

Steve: And how have you found it Ian, moving into the band full time?

EZ Ian: Well I have been friends with them for five years now and toured with them before so we always had a really good time and Tommy I were always close friends, (maybe even more than anyone else in the band, joked Vic). Yeah I would just shoot these guys evil looks.

Vic: Yeah he would talk to me, but really just talk through me, and over my head.

EZ Ian: When the time came, it came out of nowhere around Christmas, so when they asked me it was kind of shocking ya know, and I couldn’t help but say yes.

Vic: Yeah but when we called, it was like “hey Tommy has left the band” (mimicking the phone call) and he was like “hey shit I got to go”.

EZ Ian: Yeah I hadn’t talked to them in a month or so, and I thought a text message or email would have been fine, why the hell did they call me to tell me that Tommy left the band, and I figured it was either ‘would you like to finish the tour or join the band’, and it was ‘join the band’ so I said “ok”. When they asked (explaining he lives on the opposite side of the country to the other guys), I had other bands back home so it was a decision of that life vs this one and I said how could I possible say no to Koffin Kats. So I flew out, we had a week and a half to practise, and we started the tour.

Steve: So going back to what you said earlier with the split records, weren’t you in 12 Step Rebels though Ian? There is no awkwardness there?

EZ Ian: No we are good and all friends…

Vic: (Jumping in) You have to understand, he was in the band but he kind of just stood on stage and what they didn’t tell him was that they unplugged his amplifier, so he just stood on stage. It was one of those ‘feel sorry for him’ kind of things. So we thought maybe we can feel sorry for him too.

EZ Ian © Kim Ford

Steve: A charity case.

EZ Ian: I’m terminal so they are letting me play (all laughing).

Steve: So this split, you are going to be covering a song of each other, any idea on what songs yet?

Vic: Um, we are not sure yet so we are going to leave it as a surprise.

EZ Ian: It was funny though when they said we were going to be doing a cover, I was like”awesome, I probably know the song already!” But they (12 Step Rebels) even came out on some of the dates on the tour in the States, Nate the bass player and Jacob the lead singer and so did Chad the original drummer who was in my other band back home, so we are still all good friends, there is no animosity what so ever.

Vic: They were thanking us for taking him away from them, in fact when we go too Albuquerque they are going to give us the keys to the city for doing that.

Steve: Haha, so in terms of a new record for yourselves, have you thought that far ahead?

Vic: Yeah we are in the process of working through material, it’s so hard at the moment to focus on the six songs (for the split) and that’s going to be cool but as you are writing songs, other ones progress. But it’s going to be really cool sitting down and bouncing around ideas. When we write music we do it all together.

Steve: And do you get time to write on the road?

EZ Ian: We do a little bit of writing on the road.

Vic: Most of my inspiration comes when I’m on the road cos I’m drunk all the time and that’s the only time I really get inspired to write or do it, or anything comes to me really. If I was stone cold sober and sat down with a guitar it just doesn’t work.

EZ Ian: He just plays like Styx covers all day, kind of embarrassing.

Vic: Three quarters of “Forever for Hire” was written with me, a bottle of Smirnoff and a acoustic guitar and my IPhone with the little recording thing in there which is pretty sweet. And the next day I would listen to it at work with the headphones or what not and “like oh that will work, or that’s pretty cool?”

Steve: With new material for a new record, don’t you find the songs are already quite old by the time you play them live, like the recording and writing could be 12-18 months old.

Vic: That happened with “Drunk in the Daylight”. With that album we had recorded it previously but didn’t like the end product. And so we sat on it for another year and re-recorded it so by the time it came out the songs were stale to us and no sooner  “Drunk in the Daylight“ came out I was already aching cos I had a whole new idea for “Forever for Hire”.

Steve: You have out a lot of material in a short amount of time too.

Vic: That’s a by-product of us touring and being on the road all the time; its sucks when you have to wait 2-3-4 years for your favourite

Vic Victor © Kim Ford

band to put a new album out. Some bands can get away with one album every five years, but I don’t think we can or want to.

EZ Ian: We are not Depeche mode which Vic would like us to be.

Vic: It’s cool cos I have so many ideas and I don’t like to stick to just one style and types of music; I want to tap into all sorts under the Koffin Kats name and its cool to have a plethora or a catalogue. Some of our stuff doesn’t appeal to everybody and someone might love one song and hate another, and that’s what I like. You have got to give people variety; some of my favourite bands are ones that started sounding like one thing and ended up sounding like another.

Steve: Like who?

Vic: Bad Religion, The Clash, early Bad Religion is nothing like it is now but it’s still good.

Steve: And Rockabilly and Psycho seemed to see a massive resurgence a few years ago and every new band was part of the genre. It didn’t fade away but few bands survived that mini explosion.

Vic: In the States , I believe its down to Tim Armstrong, putting Tiger Army, Nekromantix on his label and giving them good distribution and getting it out there, and putting them on compilations and that had a lot to do with it in the States. But now a lot of bands we play with there is a heavy Tiger Army type influence and the beauty of the internet is that it has allowed people to find all these bands. Before I had a computer I worked in a record shop and I was lucky enough, like I knew what Psychobilly was,  but to order these cd’s you normally couldn’t find in record stores and that’s how I found out more about it, and now you just log online and Google it and get every band you could ever want.

EZ Ian: Also the up and coming bands in the States are starting to get really good, I remember when I was growing up we would play with some awful bands, like at 16-17 I was probably one of those awful bands. But now some of those younger bands play with us and they are amazing. The song writing is individual and talent like I have never seen before.

Steve: I always hope that the bands that survive have done so cos they are good enough to do so.

Vic: Well yeah it’s all a matter of originality and if you are going to be a carbon copy of another band or sound, chances are you are going to get swallowed up if you and 20 other bands are doing the same thing in your area and one band that has some originality; they are going to stick out.

EZ Ian: And when you see bands that stick with it, that’s the biggest thing. You figure out what you are doing wrong and fix it.

Steve: So who are some of these younger bands that are impressing on you at the moment?

Vic: In the States, Creeping Cadavers, a band from the NE (Massachusetts) they sound great and they scrape money together to hit the road like we did. Another band is Sawyer Family, an original sounding band.

EZ Ian: They are more stoner metal than psychobilly, they are incredible.

Vic: We have played with some really cool bands here too.

Steve: And is there a difference in the bands in Europe to US, I know that’s a generalization.

Koffin Kats © Kim Ford

Vic; You know what, maybe that was the case 10 or 20 years ago but now with music being so accusable I think it’s all blended together. There are a lot of bands in the States that sound more authentic European than European bands going for that sound.

EZ Ian: There was a band on this tour, I think in Czech Republic they sounded straight out of Texas, the most perfect southern accent I have ever heard while singing and then off stage he could barely speak English.

Vic: I said to him “you nailed the American accent” and he said (in his attempted East European accent) “Um I don’t understand”. (Cracks up laughing)

Steve: Something I picked up on one of your online bulletins was the death of underage clubs in the US.

Vic: We have this problem where all the small cool clubs are being bought out by the giant Clear Channel corporation and it sucks cos a lot of these outlets let bands get started and you can’t play these Clear Channel clubs unless you do their stupid  ‘sell 50 tickets and you can come in’ things. And its sucks cos there is less of an outlet for younger bands to play. We were very fortunate growing up cos we had this coffee house which was a punk rock squat where we played called Pharaohs, down the street from we lived and we got our start there. You don’t see many clubs like that still, although some cities will fund these clubs.

EZ Ian: That’s got to be the next evolution, city funded clubs that are all ages.

Steve: Yeah some European cities do a great job at that.

Vic: Ah man, we know when we see the awesome food spread, and a show where the promoters are only going to get 20-30 heads and not going to cover the costs, it’s like “ah man its government funded” which is awesome. When people ask me what’s it like touring Europe, I say that people appreciate the arts much more than they do in the States.

Koffin Kats plan to be back in Europe in 2011 for another tour and with a new record.