TWO RECOVERING PUNKS AND AN INDIE ROCKER WALK INTO A BAR.
And Chris (guitar/vocals) answered the questions about Not Here to Make Friends.
Talk Show Host is an indie punk trio from Toronto, Canada. The band has been playing together since 2015 and has two EPs under their belt. Their 2016 release, Perfectly Competent, earned a 7/10 review from Exclaim! magazine and drew comparisons to Green Day, Against Me! and Bob Mould.
What was the biggest fun during the making of the last album?
Recording with John Dinsmore was lots of fun – he’s got a great space and he let me use his 50-year-old hollow-body Gibson. For me, I think the day I spent recording the guitar leads was the most fun I’ve ever had in a studio – the vocals were done and I didn’t have to worry about the lyrics anymore, and we got to add all the little flourishes that we wished we’d had time for on the previous two EPs but didn’t get around to.
At what point, during writing, rehearsing, recording, did you knew you were on to something special?
I can’t speak for Fab & Sean, but my overwhelming self-doubt keeps me from ever being sure of this. I still get cold sweats when I think about the weeks leading up to recording and the sleepless nights I spent writing and rewriting the lyrics. Even after listening to the first mixes, which sounded incredible because Olive is a genius, it took me a few weeks to accept that we did, in fact, have a bunch of songs worth releasing.
The music industry has changed a lot (or so they say). What did it bring you? And what not?
The fact that we can self-release our stuff and still have people in other countries listen to it is the biggest thing. For the most part, we are so far removed from the actual music industry that it makes us laugh sometimes. We’re a good fucking band. We know it and the people who hear us know it, but optically, we’re irrelevant. We’re three white dudes in our mid-30s playing 90s throwback guitar rock in 2017. We don’t have a sexy narrative so any attempts at getting the attention of anyone in the actual industry are generally a waste of time. We’ll keep doing what we do until someone notices. If they don’t, fuck ’em.
She tells you she will decide on a 5-song-mixtape if there is going to be a second date. Which 5 would you put on?
1) Tom Petty, “American Girl” (top five of all-time)
2) Paramore, “Hard Times” (one of the catchiest damn songs of 2017)
3) Weezer, “Do You Wanna Get High?” (every tape requires some =w=)
4) The Velvet Underground, “Rock & Roll” (I’m just currently obsessed with “Loaded”)
5) Andrew WK, “Party Hard” (no explanation necessary)
Holy shit, that’s an awesome mix tape.
The meaning of ‘success’ has changed over the years. When will the new record be a success?
It was a success the second we finished it. These days, you can’t really measure it any other way. If you set the bar high in terms of songwriting & sound fidelity and you meet it, then that in itself is a success. We know we won’t see a dime from it and we know that Punknews isn’t going include it on any year-end lists, but we know we made a solid record, so we’ll just coast on that smug definition of success for now 🙂
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