These Are Shark Infested Waters

All one has to do is read this bands tour journal to see the insanity they bring to the road. And believe me, these guys are relentlessly touring. With the fairly recent success of their latest release, Hot Damn!, ETID can be seen in issues of AP and Spin magazine. To add to their hectic touring schedule, the guys have recently been added to the Ozzfest list for the summer.

Now, to be honest, I was a little anxious about interviewing someone from this band. In addition to being a big fan, after reading some of their previous interviews, it was apparent that these guys were notorious for random and arbitrary interviews. So when I saw they were coming to the area, I jumped on the chance to interview someone from the band, and the good fella’s at Adrenaline PR hooked me up. In actuality, when I interviewed Keith, he was a lot more reserved than I thought he would be. The conversation ran everywhere from talking about the new album, to Keith’s disgust for Axel Rose. Anyway, I came away from the interview pretty satisfied with my questions answered, and some funny dialogue in between. Check it out.

Interview conducted in person by Mike Barajas. Live pictures provided by Mike Barajas.

Name: Keith Buckley
Band: Every Time I Die

BW: I’m here with Keith Buckley from Every Time I Die, could you just tell me a little bit of how the band got started.

KB: Um, in 1998 me and my brother Jordan just wanted to start a band. I was kind of occupied with school and was originally going away to school so I kind of left it up to him to recruit people that he might know around Buffalo to join, and Andy (Ratboy) and him have always been in bands together ever since they were little so they came as a package deal. Then we went through a bunch of bass players, like guys that we knew from shows and went to school with and stuff like that. We’re with Steve now, which is pretty cool since we went to high school together.

BW: Now you said that you were attending school when ETID got together?

KB: Yeah, I was, uh…I was going to a school at Virginia Tech at the time, so I wasn’t home a lot, but I knew I was coming back.

BW: What were you going to school for?

KB: Um…I think it was political science or something like that.

BW: This year, ETID has had a pretty hectic touring schedule, like Warped Tour dates, Hellfest, European tours, stuff like that. Does it get old being on the road all the time?

KB: Oh, no man, I love it, I wouldn’t know what to do if we weren’t always doing something (Meanwhile, Keith’s been trying to light his cigarette for the past couple minutes in the wind), are you getting how totally inept I am at lighting a cigarette here? Hold on…(turns around back to the wind and gets it lit)

BW: How was it different playing something more diverse like Warped Tour, then going to play the all metal Hellfest?

KB: Warped Tour, honestly, seems like bunch more young kids and we played a stage that wasn’t even really associated with Warped Tour, it was just like a DIY punk stage that most the kids really weren’t interested in. But, I dunno, I think there’s a level of professionalism in the hardcore scene that you see at Hellfest, then you see the professionalism of bands at Warped Tour, and you can see the gap there is between, like, real, real, real bands that have been doing it for twenty or thirty years like Bad Religion and stuff like that. Then you go to Hellfest and its just like, kids are runnin’ around screaming like they don’t know where the rest of their band is and everyone’s trying to find something to eat. I mean, its amazing because its on such a different scale, but its so important like in the same aspects of being in a band and being able to incorporate with other bands, I guess its really all part of the same family but you just realize different levels of it all. But I mean, I do like Hellfest better than I like Warped tour though.

BW: Talking about different fests and tours, I saw you guys are on the list for Ozzfest this year. How’d you get hooked up with that?

KB: Honestly…man, I have no idea.

BW: Really? That’s a pretty big gig to just kind of stumble upon.

KB: Yeah, actually, we were away, we were in Europe for the month, and our manager and the guy that runs our label, Karl, was just told us that they were really just tryin’ to get us on, so I mean, we were all like “um, sweet,” but we didn’t think it would really happen. I guess Karl just kept tryin’, and kept putting in bids and stuff, and he kept us updated with how the meetings were going, and then just like two weeks after the tour in Europe, they told us that it was confirmed and that we were on. So I mean, we came home, and we had to start promoting the fact that we were on Ozzfest, which was pretty cool. I mean, it just seemed like a pipe dream at first, and then it just kept getting more and more real until it actually was.

BW: I saw that you guys just recently were featured on the Guns and Roses tribute album.

KB: Yep, yes we were.

BW: How were you guys approached with that, or did it just come out of nowhere?

KB: Well, no, unfortunately we’re so scatterbrained that we were actually approached a long time ago and between writing and recording and touring we never had the time to sort of learn a song and go record it, you know, make recording time when we knew we were going to be home. So, this has actually been kind of in the making for a long time, almost a year I’d say. We just figured that everyone would, you know on a compilation like that, be expecting all these songs to sort of have a hardcore metal twist on them, so yea, we definitely didn’t do that at all. We just sort of kept the song true to form. I mean, honestly I’m not a big fan of Guns and Roses so I didn’t care how it turned out, I mean I really hated the idea that I had to listen to Axel Rose and, man…just that I had to say what he said irks me because…man, he’s a horrible person.

BW: Have you seen the way he looks lately? He looks so messed up.

KB: Yeah, he’s horrible… my god, he’s awful.

BW: Yeah, he had cornrows last I saw.

KB: Yeah, he has cornrows and he’s had like eight nose jobs, man he’s just a mess, he should’ve stopped a long time ago. Man, and then he came out and did that MTV awards show or whatever it was…yeah, he’s just atrocious. I mean, Bucket Head? What the hell is that? Who has a Bucket on his head, that’s the best thing you can think of as a shtick? Yeah he’s just…whatever.

BW: Yeah, I know what you mean. Now coming away from the Axel Rose bashing, you guys have been on Ferret Records, which is a pretty small label, for quite a while now. Are you guys still happy with a small label, especially after all the success Last Night In Town and Hot Damn! have had?

KB: Yeah, we’re very happy, I think being on a label that is still very independent like Ferret allows you to have the freedom that you want to write what you want. I mean, Karl is such an astute business man, which is quite different from your perception of him if you’d ever meet him, he’s usually drunk and screaming about something, but I mean, he knows exactly what to do and how to get things done. So I mean, you could either stay with a label like Ferret and be with friends and write what you want to write, do what you want to do, and you know just have a good time doin’ it, or you could go to a major label and get swallowed up, which I’m sure would’ve happened to us. I mean, it’s happened to a lot of bands lately that I know of, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention before, but it just seems like bands that are going to major labels are getting lost in the mix, and I don’t want that to happen to us.

BW: Just kind of off gear, I’ve really been wondering about the cover of Last Night In Town…who are you guys beating the crap out of?

KB: Ha, yeah, that’s actually my old roommate. He’s George and Steve’s roommate now. Yeah, he’s just a friend that decided to pose for the picture. Man, he got really into it though, like he let us actually spit on him and stuff.

BW: Were you guys actually hitting him, or is that just a very convincing photo?

KB: Ha, no, no, I guess the photo’s pretty convincing though. We never actually hit him, but I mean we tried to make it as real as possible. Like I said, he let us spit on him and kick him around a little bit, but yeah he was drunk too, so I guess that’s why it turned out to be such a good picture.

BW: Ha, fun, fun. Well this is question pertains to your newest album Hot Damn!, it seems a lot more thought through and mature than the previous ETID releases, were there any expectations going into the studio for this one?

KB: No, not at all. I guess it was such a (phone rings)…I wont answer that…but, it was such a raw writing and recording process, that tried not to tap into too many of the influences that we had and just sort of go with what we remembered we were capable of, you know what I mean. I think that with Last Night In Town we were listening to a lot of stuff that we usually listen to and being like, “I want it to sound like this, I want parts like this, tones like this,” and this time we just sort of called upon what we knew we had instinctually.

BW: Did you guys expect it to be, I guess, as successful as it has been? I mean, since the success of Hot Damn!, ETID has been selling out a lot of shows, and like, tonight, first night of the tour, its almost two hours before the doors even open, and I’m sure you’ve already seen the huge line of kids waiting to get in.

KB: Wow, I know, I mean I honestly didn’t because we have such a small band mentality you know and we always will. Its like everything good that happens to us is just a total shock and surprise, which I guess is good because it keeps us humble and definitely keeps us excited about doing this.

BW: ETID’s lyrical originality stands out a lot, and helps the band stand out a lot in a very repetitive genre, what’s your lyric writing process, or are you just rambling?

KB: Man, you know I really wish I could plan or blueprint what I did to write something because I get so nervous every time I have to do it, and if I had something sort of set, I’d be like, “Oh, I know what I gotta do, this is what I gotta do, and this and this,” and then boom, I’d have it. But I mean, every time I have to write I panic, I just freak out, and I just sit, and I sit, and I sit, and I stare, and I listen to the song over and over. Then I guess I just sort of build a basic framework that sort of fits the vibe of the song and the music itself and just the sort of tone it sets for itself. Then after that, it’s a little bit easier, and I guess I just let it happen after that.

BW: How long did Hot Damn! take to write?

KB: About three months or so.

BW: That’s cool. Now, lets talk about some of your stories from the road. I heard something about your tour with Nora and Poison the well, you had a problem in some…

KB: Oh, in Lancaster…

BW: What happened there at the club, you got in some sort of scuffle?

KB: I don’t know… I mean, some guys were sort of…yeah, it was pretty crazy…

BW: Something about being barricaded in your room backstage?

KB: Yeah…it was a mess. We were playing and we didn’t realize that crowd surfing, by the way crowd surfing is just hysterical to me and I love it and I love seeing it. But any way, I didn’t know that you couldn’t crowd surf so I asked the kids to crowd surf, because its funny. So some kids started doing it and the bouncers were like yelling at me from the side of the stage like, “Tell them to get down,” something about a no crowd surfing policy, blah, blah, blah. So in the situation of these bouncers attacking all these kids, I was like, the kids are surfing and the bouncers are the sharks, which I thought was pretty clever. So I said over the mic, you know, “these are shark infested waters, you might not wanna surf here,” and the bouncers thought I was insulting them for some reason. I dunno, being compared to a shark is compliment if you ask me. But anyway they thought I was insulting them so then they got their posse and started doing all these crazy like covert op. signals to each other from across the room, they were like (Keith starts doing hand signals in the air), and they like start signaling for everybody to get into position, and I’m like “what the fuck is going on?!” So yeah, they just start fuckin beating kids up and throwing them down stairs and shit, and Derek from Poison the Well comes up behind stage while we’re playing, and is like “You gotta come back here immediately when you’re done, don’t go back out there!” So we get done, and they all come in and there’s five of them surrounding me yellin’ at me, then they followed me into the back room, and I’m like “Get the fuck out of here,” Jeff from Poison the Well’s like, “Get the fuck out of here,” he was all like “you’re not in a band, get the fuck out of here,” just being a dick head to them. So then the bouncers were like, “fuck you, we’re coming back with more people!” So we were like, oh shit. So Jeff goes up on stage and Poison the Well started playing and making fun of the bouncers, and it was just all over, then they started throwin’ kids down the stairs and trying to get to the back room. So me and a few guys in the Bronx actually had to set up a barricade so they couldn’t get into the room, and they were pounding on the door and trying to kick it down.

BW: Now I heard Nora didn’t even get to play at that show did they?

KB: No they played, they weren’t…oh wait a minute! Yeah you’re right! They weren’t allowed to play that show, but they came there…I think that was the situation, they got into a big scuffle last time they played there, so they wouldn’t let them play there. Yeah, that’s what happened, again, because of all of the bouncer stuff.

BW: Do you guys often piss off security at clubs?

KB: Man, I don’t think so, no. I mean I’m not an idiot, I know that those dudes know how to fight and they’re a lot bigger than me and my friends so I’m not gonna like spit in their face and try to call them out or anything. But I mean, I can think of a handful of instances in which the bouncers were…well it kind of required us to stop playing because they were being real damaging to the kids in the crowd. So I guess, not usually, the thing in Lancaster was sort of a rare occurrence.

BW: Alright, well this question goes back to you guys being on tour a lot. It seems like you guys have a reputation of being pretty wild on tour, doing a lot of crazy stuff. On the website, you guys posted some stuff about the Cali, Texas, Florida tour…

KB: Oh yeah, man that tour was so crazy.

BW: Yeah, you guys wrote some stuff about making out with 50 year-old moms…

KB: Ahh, yeah…that was bad.

BW: Run-ins with the cops, Girls Gone Wild filming? For a short little tour, you guys had some crazy stories…

KB: Yeah, for such a short tour, that tour was only like ten days, some of the most crazy stuff happened. I mean, we got to ‘recruit’ for Girls Gone Wild, which was…of course awesome, man…that was just…

BW: How did the you guys get involved with Girls Gone Wild?

KB: I don’t know man, their bus was just pulled up along side of the road in the main strip in Austin, and we just went over and started talking to them, and they were like, “you guys should go out and get girls for us.” And, that bar that we played at in Texas, you can pretty much drink all you want for free, it’s a great bar, so we were already really drunk, so we didn’t really have good judgment at that point, so we were making some bad calls with the girls we were bringing back. So then they got mad at us and told us to not do it anymore, but it was fun while it lasted. And then in Texas, yeah, that whole crazy thing with the family and the 50 year-old woman, that was just…yeah it ended really badly actually, there were a lot of repercussions when we went home that I don’t really think I should disclose, but yeah, it wasn’t over that day, it went into us getting home and getting emails and stuff about those people and what had happened.

BW: You said something about how the cops took your video camera and you couldn’t release any video until the trial was over, what was that?

KB: Ha, oh yeah, we were just joking, man, I forgot about that.

BW: Well, I was gonna ask what your biggest tour horror story was, but it seems like you already covered it.

KB: Yeah, in retrospect, that’s it, the whole marriage…thing. Yeah we got involved in an established situation that we shouldn’t have been involved in. I mean, it was fun at the time, but looking back on it, that’s the biggest horror story that we’ve had so far.

BW: Any plans to calm down on tour in the future?

KB: Well, I don’t think so. Like right now we’re just excited to be out because the weather’s getting nicer and we just got back from Europe

BW: Now this is the first date on this tour right?

KB: Yeah, it’s the first date and there’s already a big crowd, and like, we haven’t toured the U.S. in two and a half – three months almost, so we’re really excited to be out.

BW: Now, Hot Damn! just got released in Europe not long ago didn’t it?

KB: Yeah, it actually got released like just a week after we left there, so we don’t really know how it’s going over there, but the tour went well, so…yeah.

BW: Any recording plans for the future, are you guys just gonna tour a while, then go back to the studio?

KB: Well yeah, after Ozzfest we’re gonna go back to the studio and write a lot, and hopefully have a new record at least recorded by this time next year.

BW: Alright man, that’s all I got, thanks a lot.

KB: No problem man, enjoy the show.