Show & Tell Online - interview with Brock Lindow of 36 Crazyfists

BROCK LINDOW OF 36 CRAZYFISTS

THE BIRCH HILL
OLD BRIDGE, NJ 05.15.02

The ink (html?) was barely dry before [S&T contributor] Anthony sent me a revised CD review for 36 Crazyfists’ Roadrunner Records release "Bitterness The Star". The first review, apparently, had become moot after repeated listens. The album just "kept getting better." Weeks later, Anthony would ask if he could revise it yet again.

That’s the thing with those Crazyfists... They grow on you. Even singer Brock Lindow’s Jello Biafra-like voice quivers become a comfort given enough plays.

Though they’ve a solid debut album under their belts, it’s in their live performance that the band truly shines. Almost manic, front man Lindow bounds about the stage while bandmates Steve Holt (guitar), Mick Whitney (bass) and Thomas Noonan (drums) play with immeasurable kinetic energy behind and about him.

Seasoned in and by the frozen tundra of their home state Alaska, the band, named after a Jackie Chan movie, relocated to Portland, Oregon circa 1996.

We had the opportunity to sit with Brock in the Spring of ‘02.

SHOW & TELL: So tell us about Alaska. Is there a music scene up there?

Brock: Yeah, there is. It comes and goes. Like, as I grew up it would be really good and then all the all-ages venues would vanish, and then there would be nothing until someone opened one again. There are really good bands up there, but there’s not a lot of kids to keep the scene thriving all the time. But it’s a great place. I love it to death.

S&T: Do you still live there?

B: No. We had to move to Oregon to be able to tour and stuff because Alaska’s just so far. So we’ve moved close to the city, pretty much, which was Seattle originally, but I wasn’t 21 at the time, so we couldn’t play anywhere. We had some friends living in Portland at the time and they said, "Come on down, it’s a lot more mellow," so we did that and that’s where we are now.

S&T: Now explain this to me; in winter [in Alaska] there’s no sun?

B: There’s like six hours of sun.

S&T: How do you handle that?

B: I grew up with it and I didn’t know anything different, so it was just regular, everyday life, I guess. Now that I look at it, I’m like, "Yeah, that kind of sucks." But in the summer time, it’s full-on party mode. It’s [warm and sunny] all day long. You get out of a bar at 2:30 when it’s closed, and it’s just a little bit dark out but by the time you get home it’s light again.

S&T: That’s always fascinated me, because here where we change the clocks an hour once a year and we can see the subtle difference, like "Oh, look how light it is."

B: Well everyday when it’s getting to be summer time, the news is all big on it, like, "Oh, we gained 24 minutes of sunlight today." [Laughter]

S&T: Is there an adjustment biologically? Like, when we have daylight savings, I always feel out of whack because you can get up at the same time, but it’s still dark out. That’ll screw you up sleep-wise, because don’t you want to sleep when it’s dark?

B: Yeah, but if you grow up there you’re used to it and you just adapt. You don’t know any better. I don’t even remember people, when they’d move from other places, being tripped out by it. You know, the shades are down and you just sleep.

S&T: Is your family still up there?

B: Yup, everybody’s family still lives up there.

S&T: Do you go back?

B: We haven’t played there in a year-and-a-half. We go home in two weeks to play our first two shows there, and we can’t wait. It’s going to be good.

S&T: So, you’ve been on the road that long?

B: No, we just haven’t been back to play. We’ve been in Oregon, so it’s kind of far for us to go up there and play.

S&T: How long have you been on the road?

B: Well, we’ve been doing little west coast stuff for a while, for years. But we went out to the east coast for two weeks with Nora before Christmas, and then this is the longest in the U.S. that we’ve been out. This has been almost two months.

S&T: How’s it going?

B: It’s going good. It’s great. It’s almost over for this leg, but it seems like we’ve been out for way longer. This tour started in Green Bay, and that seems like two years ago! [Laughs] But since we got down to Texas and Florida as the weather started getting nicer, the tour really started putting smiles on people’s faces again, and we’re like, "Yeah, let’s party!" But up in Green Bay and that area, it was cold as hell and we like to party a lot, but the other bands aren’t big drinkers and we’re real rambunctious, so now that the weather’s nice, I think everyone else is catching up with us.

S&T: The name 36 Crazyfists – I know the movie. Are you guys real movieheads or what?

B: Well, Steve our guitar player’s a huge Jackie Chan fan, and at the time, back in ’94 when we named the band, I didn’t even know who Jackie Chan was. So I was like, "36 what? What the hell’s that?" But now we’re all huge fans, of course.

S&T: What time do you guys go on tonight?

B: I think 9 o’clock.

S&T: And the order tonight?

B: Hotwire is first, Time’s the Enemy, and then us, and then God Forbid.

S&T: Time's the Enemy?

B: Yeah, they’re from Vancouver. They’re actually just friends with Chimaira, they’re not on a label or anything, but they fit the whole bill themselves. They came out and they’re totally crazy.

S&T: Were they on the road with you?

B: They’ve been out with us since Texas, I guess. A couple of weeks now.

S&T: What’s the best thing about being out on the road?

B: Just waking up in a new place every day is cool. We’ve never been to most of these places, so we’ve seen the country for the first time, really.

S&T: Right, right. I traveled around the country a few years ago, and sometimes you move around so much you wake up and you don’t even know where the hell you are.

B: We get plenty of that, because I sleep in the back of the van and I don’t ever look at where we’re playing next unless it’s somewhere I’ve been looking forward to going, like I knew we were coming to Jersey. But the littler places, I didn’t know where the hell we were, like Wichita Falls. Then I called my dad that night and he said, "Wichita Falls? I was in boot camp there!"

S&T: Well, you know it’s a real place if your dad’s been there. So you guys have a van?

B: Yep.

S&T: You have a driver?

B: No. Everybody rotates. I don’t do too much driving though, ‘cause I’m blind at night and most of the driving’s been at night.

S&T: You get the most sleep.

B: Yeah, me and the drummer.

S&T: Why doesn’t he drive?

B: He’s just a little girl, he doesn’t do stuff like that. [Laughter]

S&T: So, how’ve the crowds been?

B: Really good, especially since we’ve never been to most of the places. You can totally tell that the record’s been out for a month now, because a lot more people are singing along with the songs, so that’s cool. And everybody’s just super positive. It’s really cool.

S&T: A friend of mine wanted me to ask you about your voice, your style. It’s almost like…I don’t want to say break-up, ‘cause that’s not what it is, but shimmering.

B: Yeah, everybody talks about that.

S&T: My friend goes, "He’s from Alaska – ask him if he got hypothermia or something, or if he’s singing with his feet in a bucket of ice." Is it natural?

B: Yeah, it’s natural. Everybody asks me about it. I didn’t really think much about it because I didn’t think it was that obvious until everyone started asking me about it. I guess it is, but it’s just something I started doing a while back and made it more and more up to now. I never even think about it.

S&T: It’s different. This guy I’m talking about actually wrote the CD review, and he wrote it twice. He wrote it once, and it was like a good review, and then he came back a day later and said, "You know what? Wipe it clean." And he wrote it and it was a better review, he said it grows it on you, you know what I mean? He said after a while it started to grate on him – the shift in your voice. And then he came back and said he changed it mind, and that it was growing on him.

B: Yeah, I’ve read a lot of reviews like that, actually, so I totally know that my voice is not for everyone, ‘cause I know plenty of people that don’t like me. [Laughs] So it’s not a shock to me, but I think it’s good in the same sense that it makes us stand out.

S&T: Sure. Absolutely. Videos? Any plans?

B: Friday in New York, we’re doing our first video.

S&T: Very cool. For which song?

B: "Slit Wrist Theory."

S&T: Very cool. Did you have any involvement in the concept?

B: Well, we have the final "yea" or "nay," because we don’t want any cheese element with us, but the treatment that we’ve read is really cool. It’s like old-school documentary on Alaska, somewhat. There was a movie in the ‘40s or ‘50s called "Nanook of the North," we saw it in school and stuff, and it’s based around that – the stills and the old industrial look. And we’re playing live in this old loft-type-thing I read. Anyway, it seems cool. We were sketchy on the whole video thing, ‘cause I’m not lip-synching anything for the camera – we’re just not like that, you know? So we were like, we’d rather not even be in our video. But then we talked with the guy and read the treatment and it seems cool. Plus, we may not get a chance to do a video again, so we’d better not say, "no thanks." I want a video for sure, I just don’t want it to be something… I don’t really know what I want it to be. I hadn’t thought about it, but I knew I didn’t want to be posing or anything – we just don’t like that stuff.

S&T: Right. Well, you need to bring somebody that you trust to watch, and be like, "Dude, let me know if I’m doing the whole rock star thing. If I look like I’m trying too hard to be cool, cut me off."

B: Exactly. We were joking, because on this whole tour we meet all the kids after the shows and we sign all the posters and it’s awesome. That’s like the best thing in the world, signing autographs. But we were joking the other night, like, if we were back home our friends would be like, "Who the hell are you guys? What is this?" [Laughs]

We go home soon and we haven’t played an all-ages show in years and years because there’s rarely ever one to play. But there’s a really good bar that supports our band up there and they always bring us up, so now we’re playing an all-ages show. So we haven’t been around kids for a long time, and mostly at the bar it is our friends so there’s none of that [signing autographs] anyway. But back home right now, it’s such a big deal, there’s crazy amounts of articles in the paper and our parents send them to us. It’s really cool, but it was never like that before, so we were laughing about the whole autograph thing and we’re going to be scared about it.

S&T: That’s funny. What CDs are you most likely to be listening to these days?

B: Hmmm. Sade, Tom Waits, and the new Finch.

S&T: We just saw [Finch], they were very good, and I don’t really like that movement, personally. But they were fantastic.

B: Yeah, they’re really good.

S&T: What do you guys do on the road, like to kill time?

B: Just read, really. Read and listen to music. I’m reading the autobiography of Lance Armstrong, "It’s Not About the Bike." You guys gotta read it, it’s so fucking amazing. Basically, it’s not even about his sport, cycling, it’s about his life the pursuit to not quit. It’s an amazing book – I’ve cried like three times reading it. It’s a dope book, and it’s like $10 at Borders.

S&T: Do you like non-fiction?

B: Yeah. I don’t read too much other than "real life" stories. Other than magazines, I’m not a real avid reader.

S&T: We’re magazine junkies.

B: Yeah, me too. [Laughs]

S&T: Yeah, we gotta read like 30 or 40 magazines a month. Gotta. And it’s funny, ‘cause we’re like, "It’s Thursday – where’s Entertainment Weekly? Where’s The Sporting News?" We have different magazines for different things. When I walk to work, it’s MacWorld or Mac Addict. In the bathroom it’s The Sporting News. [Laughter] Do you like sports?

B: I love sports.

S&T: The Sporting News is like, the primo bathroom magazine, ‘cause you can do a little synopsis of something or you can get a four-pager if you’re going to be in there for a long time. [Laughter] It’s ideal.

B: I find that anytime you bring reading material into the bathroom, you’re in there for a long time, regardless of how long you should’ve been in there. [Laughs]

S&T: So I would guess you like hockey?

B: Yes. We’re huge hockey fans. And we’re freaking out ‘cause we’re missing the playoffs right now because we’re playing while they’re on. But when we get back to the hotel, they replay the games, so me and the guitar player are humongous hockey fans, so that’s all we talk about.

S&T: What team?

B: We’re Flyers fans. And they shit on us every year. Sorry about the cussing, but we’re getting very tired of their post-season play.

S&T: What else? Basketball? Football?

B: I like all sports, really. I love soccer and hockey, those are my two favorite sports. But basketball I like as well. My Blazers, they’re terrible too. But we’ll see next year.

S&T: We’ll see. Thanks for your time, Brock.

B: Thank you.

interview by scott sisti