Ben Kowalewicz - Billy Talent (12/06/2012)
We recently caught up with Ben Kowalewicz, frontman for punk rock outfit Billy Talent on their ‘day off’ in Amsterdam, to have a chat about the band’s new single and album, their now defunct comrades Alexisonfire, purple monkey Jesus rumours and Nicki Minaj.
Hi Ben, where are you at the moment?
Right now my dear I am sitting in a little weird hotel room looking out to the streets of Amsterdam and the rain.
You’ve released the first single ‘Viking Death March’ off the new album and you’ve put it up on your site for the fans, why did you decide to do that and why that single in particular?
All good questions my dear, all good questions. I think we wanted to give our fans something because there was kind of this purple monkey Jesus thing, where people heard that our record was coming out in like May or June and that it was going to be called this and that and there was no relevance in any of that at all. So that song was kind of the furthest song we had finished at that point. We’re like you know what, let’s just put a song out there and give to our fans because they’ve been waiting patiently, so we just kind of did it there wasn’t really a lot of thought behind it we just thought it would be cool and we have the best fans in the world. So we thought here you go and people seem to be really digging it, so yeah it’s been a neat little thing.
What was the inspiration behind that song?
Well more or less it’s about self empowerment, standing up for yourself and it’s about finding other like minded individuals that share the same beliefs and knowing that if you’re not happy with something you do have the ability to change it and to change the world.If you look at what’s been going on over the last couple of years across our planet, people standing in the streets side by side, arm in arm and they’re making some pretty amazing changes happen. I think for us it kind of came to a head where in Toronto we had the occupy movement, we also had the G20 summit happen in our city and to see our beautiful, quasi liberal, forward minded people being shoved into this militant state, where there’s cop cars burning and people being tear gassed, yeah it was pretty eye opening.
That must’ve been horrible to watch that.
Yeah it was eye opening and I think that song kind of came out through Ian and I kind of bearing with it and being like you know what, all these people stood out there, and for lack of a better word had the balls to do it you know.
The band’s touring schedules are pretty full on; there was 20 months with Billy Talent II and then 16 months into Bill Talent III, less than a year after that. Are you guys comfortable operating at such a hectic pace?
I don’t know I’ll probably just drop dead of a fucking heart attack sooner than later, but at this point yeah, you know what we love touring and we love playing live and we have a new recording coming out that we’re really, really proud of and we’re really excited to play those songs for people and stuff. I think you need to balance your home life in this crazy world, because if you get too absorbed into it I think it ends up becoming unhealthy, not only for band but for the fans as well because then the quality of the show gets sacrificed. You still need to be inspired to get on stage you know. I see some bands that tend to just kind of go through the motions of it, you know what I mean and it’s like but that’s not the point. I think this time around we’re going to be a little more aware of our burn out factor and maybe try to space things out a little bit.
Yeah I thought you may be slowing down a little bit this tour, because it seems a little bit shorter and a bit more spaced out.
Oh you haven’t seen me slowing! Like half of it hasn’t been released yet!
I had a feeling that was happening too, because you guys keep announcing more shows!
We’re pretty much booked now til next March so yeah [laughs]
Your drummer Aaron (Solowoniuk) has been through open heart surgery! How’s he going?
You know what, it’s unbelievable the power of technology, thanks for asking that, he’s doing great. It’s been a bit overwhelming and a bit emotional at times to be honest with you, because he was pretty fucked up for a while and I’d go over and see him almost every day, he lives around the corner from me back in Toronto.
But yeah to see him barely being able to walk down the stairs, to now play for an hour and a half killing it on the drums less than four months later is, I don’t even understand! I don’t understand but he’s doing it and I love him to death and you know we’re obviously making sure that he’s not pushing himself to a point where it’s a threat.
I saw him yesterday and he’s like ‘I already ran four miles today and went and had a big bowl of fruit and I’m like going to go for a walk’, and I’m like what! I haven’t even had a coffee yet! So yeah he’s doing much better.
What was the writing/recording process like for Billy Talent X? Did Brendan O’Brien come back onboard?
No, this record, Ian produced everything, he’s been producing some things in the city and he kind of produced our first two records to be honest with you, co-produced them. On this record we thought you know what, we’re not going to get any producer, it’s going to be us. So it was the band and two engineers that we used on our second record and that’s it. It was awesome, it was cool because it was just us and we’ve been a band now for you know 19 years and Ian is technically savvy and his ear is impeccable for that type of thing, so his transition into the producer’s chair was quite natural for all of us. I think he did an absolutely outstanding job and I think not only is his song writing abilities mind blowing to me, but he now he has another feather in his cap. I hope that people enjoy the record as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it.
And how did the process go, was it pretty natural, free flowing?
No, no we’re not a natural free flowing band! We’re kind of methodical band and we draw things out, we’re not like fish you know what I mean, we don’t jam out. We’re a very methodical band and we comb through things to the best of where we think that it’s at a point worth sharing with people. But yeah I’m super stoked, I mean we’re not quite finished I still have a couple of songs to sing when I’m back home at the end of this month. But the record, we’re going to mix it in the second week of July in LA and then it should be done and ready to go by the end of September.
How do you think it’s panned out compared to some of your previous albums?
Well I mean you never really know until it’s done, done, done, but I think at this point having eleven songs done, I couldn’t be more happy. I think the level of musicianship by the guys, their playing has improved, not saying that they weren’t great before, I mean when you hear it you’re just like holy fuck it sounds really good! I think we all just kind of try to slightly without saying, kind of pressure each other to step it up a bit and I think we all kind of stepped it up a bit for this record.
There was a single on Billy Talent III called ‘Turn Your Back’ which had Anti-Flag on it, will there be anything along those lines on the new record?
Just Beyonce and Nicki Minaj!
Oh cool yeah, taking a new direction there!
No, no [laughs] there’ll be nothing like that on this one
Ok, thought it was worth asking
Yeah you know actually, I think that would be awesome if I had Nicki Minaj on the album
Alexisonfire were a regular support.
I hate those fucking guys! I’m just kidding
They were a regular support on your previous tours, so do you have any thoughts/feelings about their disbandment?
Yeah well I mean obviously I’m upset about it, when we were first coming out in Canada they were coming out as well, what happened was Billy Talent and Alexisonfire forged this comradery. The Canadian music climate at that time was pretty homogenised and not very risk taking and then all of a sudden we have these two super weird bands come out of nowhere and all of a sudden we’re getting played on the radio and having our videos on tv and we were like what, how is this happening. So yeah we definitely have a huge love affair with those guys, we’ve shared many stages and we’ve travelled many, many miles together. I saw Wade three days ago, he’s singing galas and I know Dallas is doing really well.
Yeah he was here recently
Yeah he’s fucking Dallas Green and he’s a rock star, but yeah obviously I’m upset and I know all the guys in the band really well and who knows what the future holds right?
So as you said you’ve been together 19 years, do you think how people perceive punk rock or the style of music you play has changed since you first started out?
I don’t know because it’s been so long since we started, I mean back when we were starting out we would play with any band that wanted us to play. We’d play punk rock shows, we’d play ska shows, we’d play anything, there was no real divide and now for some reason via the internet and things like that everything has to be so cut up and dissected to a point that you’re missing the point of what the song is and what music is about.
Everyone is so clicky now, ‘I listen to this very specific subgenre of music’ and I’m like alright well I don’t, I listen to fucking everything and I like the good in everything you know. I don’t know where we fit in on planet earth anymore, but I know we’re just a rock n roll band and we try to write good records and we try to stay true to ourselves and to our fans and try our best to challenge ourselves to make the best records possible. Where that fits in with the world I have no idea.
You’re already a week into the tour, how has it been so far?
It’s been awesome, it’s been pretty crazy and pretty intense, but it’s been really awesome, we’ve had already had some pretty cool experiences. We got to co-headline this massive festival in Germany (Rock am Ring) for a hundred and ten thousand people with Metallica and I got to watch Refused play and Tenacious D, The Hives, Skrillex, so yeah it’s been a pretty interesting week and today we’re in Amsterdam. We play tonight, so that should be fun and more festivals over the next couple of weeks.
It’s been a little while since you’ve toured Australia, are you looking forward to coming back?
Absolutely, I’m actually really pissed off and want to apologise to the Australian fans, if we have any, we tried our best to come last year on the last record and things got all fucked up. I won’t get into it too much, but I can promise you that we’re going to be coming back and this will be the first time, but it won’t be last time we’ll come back on this record.
So you’re doing a whole bunch of massive festivals and you’ve got more coming up you’ve announced the Rock En Siene Festival as well as Reading and Leeds festivals after Australia, is there anyone or anything that you’re looking forward to?
Well yeah I’m just looking at my touring schedule right now and wow yeah I got a lot of shows, it looks pretty long actually. To be honest with you, I’ve been really looking forward to coming back to Australia. I have a lot of good friends there and it’s a magical place, it’s a little too far for my liking but it’s worth it, it’s all worth it once you get there.
What’s next for Billy Talent? It says on Facebook you’re filming the clip for Viking Death March tonight.
Tonight yes, I guess that’s what’s next, we shot some footage at one of those festivals with this crazy technology, with this camera that, I won’t get too much into it, but it’s pretty cool. We’re using it again tonight, so we’re kind of just experimenting with some stuff, as we do and we should have the video out hopefully sooner rather than later, the record comes out September and we’ll be there in August.
So any more single releases between now and then?
Oh yeah I would imagine so, I’m not a hundred percent sure at this point what’s going on. We’ll finish the record up, which should be done by July 10th, so probably in the next month we’ll have all that stuff figured out a little more.
Thank you so much for taking time out to have a chat to with me!
Absolutely thank you for taking time out! We’ll see you when we come to Oz!
Thursday 9th August – Brisbane, The Hi-Fi 18+
Friday 10th August – Sydney, Unsw Roundhouse Lic AA
Sunday 12th August – Melbourne, Billboard 18+
Tickets on sale now.
Nazia Hafiz
Hi Ben, where are you at the moment?
Right now my dear I am sitting in a little weird hotel room looking out to the streets of Amsterdam and the rain.
You’ve released the first single ‘Viking Death March’ off the new album and you’ve put it up on your site for the fans, why did you decide to do that and why that single in particular?
All good questions my dear, all good questions. I think we wanted to give our fans something because there was kind of this purple monkey Jesus thing, where people heard that our record was coming out in like May or June and that it was going to be called this and that and there was no relevance in any of that at all. So that song was kind of the furthest song we had finished at that point. We’re like you know what, let’s just put a song out there and give to our fans because they’ve been waiting patiently, so we just kind of did it there wasn’t really a lot of thought behind it we just thought it would be cool and we have the best fans in the world. So we thought here you go and people seem to be really digging it, so yeah it’s been a neat little thing.
What was the inspiration behind that song?
Well more or less it’s about self empowerment, standing up for yourself and it’s about finding other like minded individuals that share the same beliefs and knowing that if you’re not happy with something you do have the ability to change it and to change the world.If you look at what’s been going on over the last couple of years across our planet, people standing in the streets side by side, arm in arm and they’re making some pretty amazing changes happen. I think for us it kind of came to a head where in Toronto we had the occupy movement, we also had the G20 summit happen in our city and to see our beautiful, quasi liberal, forward minded people being shoved into this militant state, where there’s cop cars burning and people being tear gassed, yeah it was pretty eye opening.
That must’ve been horrible to watch that.
Yeah it was eye opening and I think that song kind of came out through Ian and I kind of bearing with it and being like you know what, all these people stood out there, and for lack of a better word had the balls to do it you know.
The band’s touring schedules are pretty full on; there was 20 months with Billy Talent II and then 16 months into Bill Talent III, less than a year after that. Are you guys comfortable operating at such a hectic pace?
I don’t know I’ll probably just drop dead of a fucking heart attack sooner than later, but at this point yeah, you know what we love touring and we love playing live and we have a new recording coming out that we’re really, really proud of and we’re really excited to play those songs for people and stuff. I think you need to balance your home life in this crazy world, because if you get too absorbed into it I think it ends up becoming unhealthy, not only for band but for the fans as well because then the quality of the show gets sacrificed. You still need to be inspired to get on stage you know. I see some bands that tend to just kind of go through the motions of it, you know what I mean and it’s like but that’s not the point. I think this time around we’re going to be a little more aware of our burn out factor and maybe try to space things out a little bit.
Yeah I thought you may be slowing down a little bit this tour, because it seems a little bit shorter and a bit more spaced out.
Oh you haven’t seen me slowing! Like half of it hasn’t been released yet!
I had a feeling that was happening too, because you guys keep announcing more shows!
We’re pretty much booked now til next March so yeah [laughs]
Your drummer Aaron (Solowoniuk) has been through open heart surgery! How’s he going?
You know what, it’s unbelievable the power of technology, thanks for asking that, he’s doing great. It’s been a bit overwhelming and a bit emotional at times to be honest with you, because he was pretty fucked up for a while and I’d go over and see him almost every day, he lives around the corner from me back in Toronto.
But yeah to see him barely being able to walk down the stairs, to now play for an hour and a half killing it on the drums less than four months later is, I don’t even understand! I don’t understand but he’s doing it and I love him to death and you know we’re obviously making sure that he’s not pushing himself to a point where it’s a threat.
I saw him yesterday and he’s like ‘I already ran four miles today and went and had a big bowl of fruit and I’m like going to go for a walk’, and I’m like what! I haven’t even had a coffee yet! So yeah he’s doing much better.
What was the writing/recording process like for Billy Talent X? Did Brendan O’Brien come back onboard?
No, this record, Ian produced everything, he’s been producing some things in the city and he kind of produced our first two records to be honest with you, co-produced them. On this record we thought you know what, we’re not going to get any producer, it’s going to be us. So it was the band and two engineers that we used on our second record and that’s it. It was awesome, it was cool because it was just us and we’ve been a band now for you know 19 years and Ian is technically savvy and his ear is impeccable for that type of thing, so his transition into the producer’s chair was quite natural for all of us. I think he did an absolutely outstanding job and I think not only is his song writing abilities mind blowing to me, but he now he has another feather in his cap. I hope that people enjoy the record as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it.
And how did the process go, was it pretty natural, free flowing?
No, no we’re not a natural free flowing band! We’re kind of methodical band and we draw things out, we’re not like fish you know what I mean, we don’t jam out. We’re a very methodical band and we comb through things to the best of where we think that it’s at a point worth sharing with people. But yeah I’m super stoked, I mean we’re not quite finished I still have a couple of songs to sing when I’m back home at the end of this month. But the record, we’re going to mix it in the second week of July in LA and then it should be done and ready to go by the end of September.
How do you think it’s panned out compared to some of your previous albums?
Well I mean you never really know until it’s done, done, done, but I think at this point having eleven songs done, I couldn’t be more happy. I think the level of musicianship by the guys, their playing has improved, not saying that they weren’t great before, I mean when you hear it you’re just like holy fuck it sounds really good! I think we all just kind of try to slightly without saying, kind of pressure each other to step it up a bit and I think we all kind of stepped it up a bit for this record.
There was a single on Billy Talent III called ‘Turn Your Back’ which had Anti-Flag on it, will there be anything along those lines on the new record?
Just Beyonce and Nicki Minaj!
Oh cool yeah, taking a new direction there!
No, no [laughs] there’ll be nothing like that on this one
Ok, thought it was worth asking
Yeah you know actually, I think that would be awesome if I had Nicki Minaj on the album
Alexisonfire were a regular support.
I hate those fucking guys! I’m just kidding
They were a regular support on your previous tours, so do you have any thoughts/feelings about their disbandment?
Yeah well I mean obviously I’m upset about it, when we were first coming out in Canada they were coming out as well, what happened was Billy Talent and Alexisonfire forged this comradery. The Canadian music climate at that time was pretty homogenised and not very risk taking and then all of a sudden we have these two super weird bands come out of nowhere and all of a sudden we’re getting played on the radio and having our videos on tv and we were like what, how is this happening. So yeah we definitely have a huge love affair with those guys, we’ve shared many stages and we’ve travelled many, many miles together. I saw Wade three days ago, he’s singing galas and I know Dallas is doing really well.
Yeah he was here recently
Yeah he’s fucking Dallas Green and he’s a rock star, but yeah obviously I’m upset and I know all the guys in the band really well and who knows what the future holds right?
So as you said you’ve been together 19 years, do you think how people perceive punk rock or the style of music you play has changed since you first started out?
I don’t know because it’s been so long since we started, I mean back when we were starting out we would play with any band that wanted us to play. We’d play punk rock shows, we’d play ska shows, we’d play anything, there was no real divide and now for some reason via the internet and things like that everything has to be so cut up and dissected to a point that you’re missing the point of what the song is and what music is about.
Everyone is so clicky now, ‘I listen to this very specific subgenre of music’ and I’m like alright well I don’t, I listen to fucking everything and I like the good in everything you know. I don’t know where we fit in on planet earth anymore, but I know we’re just a rock n roll band and we try to write good records and we try to stay true to ourselves and to our fans and try our best to challenge ourselves to make the best records possible. Where that fits in with the world I have no idea.
You’re already a week into the tour, how has it been so far?
It’s been awesome, it’s been pretty crazy and pretty intense, but it’s been really awesome, we’ve had already had some pretty cool experiences. We got to co-headline this massive festival in Germany (Rock am Ring) for a hundred and ten thousand people with Metallica and I got to watch Refused play and Tenacious D, The Hives, Skrillex, so yeah it’s been a pretty interesting week and today we’re in Amsterdam. We play tonight, so that should be fun and more festivals over the next couple of weeks.
It’s been a little while since you’ve toured Australia, are you looking forward to coming back?
Absolutely, I’m actually really pissed off and want to apologise to the Australian fans, if we have any, we tried our best to come last year on the last record and things got all fucked up. I won’t get into it too much, but I can promise you that we’re going to be coming back and this will be the first time, but it won’t be last time we’ll come back on this record.
So you’re doing a whole bunch of massive festivals and you’ve got more coming up you’ve announced the Rock En Siene Festival as well as Reading and Leeds festivals after Australia, is there anyone or anything that you’re looking forward to?
Well yeah I’m just looking at my touring schedule right now and wow yeah I got a lot of shows, it looks pretty long actually. To be honest with you, I’ve been really looking forward to coming back to Australia. I have a lot of good friends there and it’s a magical place, it’s a little too far for my liking but it’s worth it, it’s all worth it once you get there.
What’s next for Billy Talent? It says on Facebook you’re filming the clip for Viking Death March tonight.
Tonight yes, I guess that’s what’s next, we shot some footage at one of those festivals with this crazy technology, with this camera that, I won’t get too much into it, but it’s pretty cool. We’re using it again tonight, so we’re kind of just experimenting with some stuff, as we do and we should have the video out hopefully sooner rather than later, the record comes out September and we’ll be there in August.
So any more single releases between now and then?
Oh yeah I would imagine so, I’m not a hundred percent sure at this point what’s going on. We’ll finish the record up, which should be done by July 10th, so probably in the next month we’ll have all that stuff figured out a little more.
Thank you so much for taking time out to have a chat to with me!
Absolutely thank you for taking time out! We’ll see you when we come to Oz!
Thursday 9th August – Brisbane, The Hi-Fi 18+
Friday 10th August – Sydney, Unsw Roundhouse Lic AA
Sunday 12th August – Melbourne, Billboard 18+
Tickets on sale now.
Nazia Hafiz