Interview with The Flatliners - Podcast 79

♪ music ♪

or months off given uh summer vacation so we're back uh kind of the first week of august uh and with kind of an older interview that we did with the flatliners uh john scott and paul three of the guys from the flatliners probably three or four months ago but uh it's pretty good it's it's enjoyable and they're young so it's kind of timeless we'll say but uh we uh i don't think we have anything to give away with this one i'm sorry we've been gone for so long and we don't we're not giving anything away but we're also kind of lazy on that so i apologize that's my own fault right there but uh anyhow uh anyhow we uh are just coming back and so we're just going to jump into uh the interviews and all of that so uh don't worry about it too much uh hope you enjoy the show hope you enjoy the flatliners and uh feel free to drop us a line at sound scene revolution at gmail.com before we get into it too much we're going to play a track off of the flatliners album on fat records i can't remember what the hell it's called for the life of me it's uh the great awake is what it's called man i got my a game going today you're impressed i'm i'm moving forward so uh anyhow the first track we'll play is called in the world files for chapter 13 hope you like it then we'll get

♪ song played ♪

hanging out uh the back area of the bottom of the hill with uh some of the guys from the flatliners hello hey what's up like to introduce yourself hey i'm all i play drums i am scott and i play guitar and i'm john and i play bass i didn't think about that one huh it's close all right so um i guess the easiest place is kind of a brief history of the band if you guys want to where you started all of that whatnot we started in uh the suburbs we're from till uh we're just a high school band really starting out just playing shows on the weekends and stuff at local community centers and stuff and then uh once we got out of high school we just started touring put out two full lengths since then our last one came out on fat records and ever since then we've just been touring straight very cool now uh what how did you guys get hooked up with fat records being all the way from toronto uh luckily they have a representative in toronto so uh her name is melanie k and she's awesome and i met her at a lag wagon show i think uh two summers ago and her old assistant who used to work for her used to bug us about he used to go see us at shows all the time he'd bug her all the time about us rob thornton rob thornton big ups but uh yeah he bugged her about us all the time so finally one day when i was like hey we have a new demo can i give it to you she's like yeah and then she's like oh i'm gonna give it to mike i really like it i'm like yeah right all right and then like a couple weeks later yeah he likes it he wants to hear more songs he's gonna call you like yeah right and then it's a year later and our records already come out and it's been going fast very cool now did you guys grow up listening to any of the bands on fat or all of the bands on fat yeah was it awkward at all was it kind of like was it was it just strange to think of or were you guys just stoked on it uh a bit of both you know of course but uh more more stoked than anything yeah very cool what would you guys was probably your favorite fat band not to put you at odds or anything and you can't say the loved ones simply because you're on tour with them that's not fair i'll say strung out propagandia up there uh yeah there's lots of good ones then yeah there's tons it's ridiculous duh duh was like the first record album that came out on fat yeah i think that was a first for a lot of people it's a pretty fucking sweet album right on right on so um i guess from there kind of you guys went from uh destroy to create uh to the great awake now what would you say is probably the biggest difference between those two albums from you guys time yeah time uh the different uh we put it at we put our first record out we wrote it when we were like 14 and 15 yeah and we wrote this new one we were like 18 and 19 to a lot of other people it still seemed really young to be writing a record but first to be on our second record just a lot of different it's a lot different from the first record because it's not just like a scout punk record all the way through not all the songs are like as fast as they can be so uh yeah anything to add we we took a lot of time right in the second record too and uh i don't know i guess just it just shows what we were listening to all the time we're listening to a vest everyone's coming in this room what do you guys want to close the trap what do you want to do it uh...

uh... if only sharpie and we don't we have no sharpies we're low budget we have a ballpoint it's all that yeah we did it it won't be but it could uh... if you so desired i forgot what i was talking about before but talking about uh... spent more time yeah yeah recording we grew up a bit and uh... and we didn't want to put out the same record twice i know everybody says that but yeah pretty much what we wanted well it's true because a lot of people talked about oh there's not as much ska on this album was that kind of like a conscious decision on every part or was it just kind of like just ended up being what we wrote there's still ska songs on our new records i don't know when we started we didn't want to write you know half punk rock half ska song a whole record too so yeah wait till our next record we're gonna have a full horn piece with it calypso music it's just uh... straight up like death metal really fast and calypso whoa with horn half and half it's gonna be a double out you just wait it's gonna be pretty crazy 2010 it's good to see your thing in a head on me i like that you weren't like 2009 and you're like let's give it a couple of years no yeah we're lazy let's face this imaginary album now it's gonna take a while to write man you can't do calypso and death metal at the time of the year that's some two year shit right on uh... do you guys have a personal favorite song off of the new album that you guys did?

last song yeah in my opinion jill iagris rino really fun song to play right on yeah um... i don't even know the names of the songs i don't know the one that we do come on i'd probably say the last song is my favorite yeah yeah which i actually someone had me i posted if anyone wanted questions someone asked what does uh... khtdr stand for? we're not allowed to tell you can't tell seriously it'll be a big lawsuit and uh... yeah children will hate us it can be whatever you want it to be that's the whole thing that's your imagination can we give a hint? uh... no no we really yeah don't worry my mom's not gonna tell me maybe we'll tell you guys after but just not not over this radio uh... internet thing over the internet that you've heard so much about you really wanna find out buy our next record it'll be hidden somewhere in the lyrics yeah buy our death metal record it'll be on the first press so you gotta buy the first press and then if you don't get it it'll be on ten copies of every subsequent press nice nice see that's how you sell albums that's market we got a new manager here oh yeah there you go believe me that's how I make the big money alright so you guys basically you did full tours pretty much straight out of high school was that weird at all?

I mean when a lot of people were talking about maybe getting like full time jobs or going to college you guys were off touring Canada yeah a lot of our friends like just disappeared and went to school which is weird but we disappeared and went on tour so really it's the best time to do it if you're gonna do it you know you can always go to school later better go to but you know once you go to school and finish that everyone's worried about what they gotta do next and everything got student loans got student loans to pay off got a you know none of us have rent to pay right now yeah we're living with our folks man we're just we're just hanging out having fun nice seeing the world was it ever like one of those things did you guys all sit down and kind of go do we really want to go full out or was it just you just kind of kept continuing on I think we all knew that we wanted to go full out I'm really bad at school so you were stoked that that man just kept going John's still in high school I guess what were you doing in the forest the forest by the school what did you do in the forest nothing cool do you write poetry and stuff oh yeah definitely tons of it he's got a big book of spoken word yeah I look forward to that hopefully one day we'll hear something maybe we'll interpret that into the next CD as well into the next CD that'll be good so are you now I don't know your ages but last I recall you were all under 21 is that correct or have you now aged we have fake IDs that say we're 21 no but we're all 20 according to Wisconsin you're 21 according to the Northwest Territories we're 21 no one knows what a Canadian ID looks like exactly we talk about this this thing in so many interviews and it's gonna get found out but we made fake IDs really but yeah we're just screwing ourselves over nobody knows what a Canadian ID looks like down here so it doesn't really matter we only got the rest of the year to use them we're almost 21 so yeah but I mean who the fuck knows you could be like that's it and it's like a piece of cardboard with a picture taped to it you're like that's it that's pretty much what we made that's pretty much what we made I think once we turn 21 I'm still gonna use mine yeah just to fool everybody just to see what works you stupid Americans gotta do the gotta bad Russian accent it's the French Canadian dude the French Canadian I will break you the Russian Canadian alright so we'll just take a quick little break out of the interview like intermission in a play kind of thing bring it back into reality before we jump back into the interview we're gonna play another track off of the Flatliners album available on Fat Records called The Great Awake I don't really remember like the hard part is I don't remember too much about the songs I just remember kind of the titles but I don't remember what title pairs up with what actual song so why not just go with we'll go with The Respirator why not that sounds kind of fancy right oh it's actually right after the song that I just selected earlier well tough you'll live with it so this is The Respirator by The Flatliners enjoy and yeah the rest of the interview and we'll have more fun stuff going on at the end

♪ song played ♪

is it all difficult like when you go to fucking when you're playing a show that's in essentially a 21 and up bar I mean it was before we had our fake ideas our first show in the states was in Fort Collins Colorado and this puny security guard wouldn't even let us chill in the in the ban room he said nah you guys can't so John made him feel extra bad and like what'd you do I like changed you guys inside him while everybody was in the club you were rubbing against him you're like oh god I can do this in the band but I like it was pretty funny he felt really bad even though they can't do anything about it like it's not their call so on a couple of our last years there's a bunch of clubs in California that are really strict so we'd chill outside the back alleyway before they play like they're like you guys can't even come inside so we'd like go right on stage and then load our gear right up couldn't even sell merch like it's nice so you get up get off and you're done I was gonna ask cause you guys were this was a while back you were slated to play in San Jose with No Use for a Name and that show didn't I don't know what happened I just found out you guys weren't showing we were told we were like when we set the itinerary for the tour that was part of we just got forward in the No Use one so we posted all the No Use shows and we weren't actually supposed to play that show and it was whole wheat bread and then we found out that day driving to the show we called the promoter like hey we're gonna be there a little late they're like you're not supposed to play at all don't worry we don't care alright we're just gonna turn around then so when did you just end up skipping in the next day we hung out in San Francisco yeah and then went to Reno the next day that's not too bad that wasn't bad it could be a lot worse yeah cause I was like I kinda I was looking forward to it and I show up and they're like oh they're not playing and it was like a local band and I was like well that's awkward yeah so we're sorry San Jose I'd say you'd come back but there's really there's no no reason ever to come back the sharks yeah but there's no like musically there's no reason to come back sharks are sick if we not even the team

I just like sharks wasn't that where we were going here alright so I just kinda wanna ask a weird question at random if you could write what is one song by another artist that you guys wish you could have written that you could take credit for wow what song made the most money no that'd be a good one that would be a good one any Beatles song Thriller Beatles Thriller yeah that'd be pretty good plus you'd have a sick music video that's just badass like I wrote Thriller you know Michael Jackson maybe you've seen it I wrote it maybe you've heard of it my work yeah what do you got you got any you got any songs John I have no idea it kinda ruins it that's a crazy question that's not someone like it's your own stuff you can't dig it as much so that's possible once you do all the work that went into writing Thriller sure what about that Wilson Phillips song hold on yeah yeah I wish I would've wrote that probably that song me and John could duet that yeah I wish we did two three four I don't even know I know a Wilson Phillips song at all someday somebody's gonna make you wanna turn around and say goodbye say goodbye to that you know that one don't you know it's hilarious don't you know things will change things will go your way go home and download that song I will Wilson Phillips hold on yeah I will look into downloading myself some Wilson Phillips song maybe some brandy no maybe if enough people don't know that song we can still write it yeah for ourselves you still have that opportunity the generation of people that knew it have moved on and now now it's your turn to say we wrote that you can move forward interview podcast interview what's up dudes yeah Ian from Dead to Me Ian from Dead to Me said what his time wasn't enough moving forward so one of the things when I was researching for this because I actually did research nice a lot of things that I've read said you guys love touring because of all the crazy stories and stuff that you get out of it what are some of the craziest things that have happened to you on tour or things that you enjoy telling in Winnipeg I was skateboarding around Little Italy for a while and hit a curb and my skateboard went through a little shop keep window and it ended up being owned by the Lebanese mafia and they were really upset with me I guess I'm not going to go into too much detail but they had hired goons come down and try to scare me and get us to pay money this was like one of our first tours I think we were 17 how much does it take to scare a 17 year old who broke oh dude you should have seen it he all ran he went back to get the skateboard and we were like no don't get the skateboard leave it no it was pretty freaky that happened I got towed once in our van while I was sleeping in it I fell asleep in our van which was it was us at a house party that we were playing and it was parked in an eye doctor's parking lot telling us you can come join us if you want loved ones are rock stars guys just to let you know alright flat liners yeah man so waking up in a tow in an impound lot was pretty cool were you officially at that point impounded with the car yeah 350 bucks to get Scott in our van back the tow truck driver loved it though he thought it was him and his wife who ran it they're pissing laughing they just saw me walk out of the car and they were just freaked out where am I how have I gotten here so did you like have to call me like I'm at a fucking impound yeah I had no idea where I was woke me up like 930 in the morning he's like can you come get me I'm like you're down the street in the van he's like no I'm in an impound lot well I was in the van you are half right you're 50-50 on that it was pretty awesome yeah that definitely sounds like it doesn't have a lot all turning aside but these guys they got their shaker and they like to move it they can come they can come I know but you guys got the whole thing fucking up okay not to be a dick it's all good okay alright we left off at we left off with he was in a van that got impounded yeah so that probably where was that now that was in Michigan in Kalamazoo Michigan fuck dude fun place yeah we played a couple of us it was a pretty funny experience nice nice just makes good stories so what do you guys got planned for the future I mean obviously you're going to be working on touring off this album for a little while anything else we have a split city coming up with this band from Canada called the Ceremonial Snips which should be pretty awesome we're each doing minute long song that's five different songs put into one it's going to be really confusing and really really fun I was putting that out no one at the moment we're both on the same record label in Canada so if they want I'm sure they might have something to do with it but we don't really know what we're doing with it yet so just kind of doing it we're on the road pretty solid until like July so take a break for like a week or two that's going to be doing most of what you're doing and then start up in the fall do a lot more US touring and then write a new album who knows who knows we gotta start doing that and then the Calypso Death Metal album yeah that's 2010 we're still going to put another album out before that between them wow yeah that is that's pretty epic that's a lot of work there we're working hard alright well before we wrap it up you guys got anything else you want to plug anything else websites I don't know yeah our MySpace is myspace.com slash the Flatliners Toronto it's the easiest thing for us to update on the road so that's our most up to date tour but our website's also the Flatliners.com maybe some good Canadian bands that people might not hear about some bands people might not know Hostage Life very good definitely check them out they're an awesome band from Toronto the Ceremonial Snips Ceremonial Snips I think they all have MySpaces just Molson Molson Ice yeah man Molson Ice is pretty awesome Labatt 50 is great Labatt 50 is awesome drink a lot of Labatt 50 if you ever get the chance to go to Canada go to Canada get the really big bottles yeah the 750 milliliters are really bigger and kids you only have to be 18 to drink in Canada so which is a plus which is a plus look at us look at us look at that live in the American dream you don't even need to take Canadian ID we still do though just because it's fun exactly if you don't push your limits you'll never know exactly very true well I want to thank you guys for taking the time thank you man and best of luck and all things in the future as well take it easy alright so that's gonna wrap up this episode with the Flatliners I want to thank them for coming out and interviewing and even though it was like a long time ago appreciate it hopefully God willing or whoever you pray to Flying Spaghetti Monster Jesus Raptor hopefully we will be back next week and everything will keep going for at least a couple of months leading up unto the fest so when I get to go to the fest again God willing we have some error of legitimacy so I'm not just like some dude with a tape recorder chasing down you know Dillinger 4 or something alright so enjoy that we'll be back next week send all your comments to our MySpace or to soundseamrevolution at gmail.com or in the comments section we're gonna play one last track off of this let's just go with these words or bullets that sounds fancy I actually remember that song because I think it references that line and so there you go enjoy the show we'll catch you all next week remember if you got any comments questions concerns send them on in hopefully we can address them and we'll get to it in a timely manner this time alright bye

♪ song played ♪