Machete Avenue

I love Machete Avenue. Their EP is amazing, everyone should own it – so I was excited to sit and talk to them for a bit. Chad was in town by himself, as the band’s van had broken down the night before and he hitched a ride with the guys in Protest The Hero while Scott stayed behind with the van. Luckily, Scott arrived at the venue just as they were about to start, they hastily set up the piano and played a short set, and sadly, they didn’t give out the rose like they normally do because it was all rushed. But that’s just extra information that most people don’t care about, you want the interview, and it went good. We talked about the EP, their full length, the benefits of peeing sitting down and the band’s one night in jail among other things. Thanks to Chad for doing it and to John for setting it up.

---

Bobby: First off, this is your third date on the Tour & Loathing Tour, are you excited to see how it turns out?

Chad: Yeah, I’m really excited to see how it turns out. We’ll see how it goes. Kind of a different type of bands then what we’re used to playing with, so we’ll see how the crowd reaction goes. Hopefully it will be alright.

Bobby: Last time you guys were here, you played with City & Colour, a much more mellow show. This time you here with much harder bands, like Protest and A Wilhelm Scream. How do you like touring with the harder bands?

Chad: Well, I grew up playing in that scene, with the harder bands and stuff like that. And a lot are my friends, like I knew Dallas from before, all those bands, so I’m just used to playing with them. So when we play the acoustic stuff, some of the kids get it, some don’t, some are like “fucking fags, get off the stage” stuff like that. It’s a lot of fun. Obviously we fit better with the City & Colour crowd, we do a lot better with the mellower stuff – but it’s not too bad.

Bobby: Like I just said, I saw you guys play with City & Colour a few weeks ago, and after that set you guys gave out two roses, which you said you do after every show. How did that tradition get started?

Chad: You know what, I don’t know. I think we wanted to play with roses on the table and our wine, like really intimate, dark, moody environment. And I think a girl at the very first show that we did it in, I think it was in London, our hometown, and the girls were just like “give me the roses! Give me the roses!” and then people actually came up to us after the show asking if they could buy a rose off of us. It was really weird, so we were like “okay, let’s hand out roses after every show.” It’s kind of our thing to do; we thought it was kind of cool.

Bobby: At that show, you guys said you couldn’t find any real roses so you gave out plastic roses. Have you guys ever not been able to find any rose to give out at a show?

Chad: No, we’ve always had them. We’ve always have roses, wether they’re fake, they’re dead or they’re alive, or yeah, we’ve never been without.

Bobby: At that show, another thing I found interesting was your merch table. CDs, 5 bucks. T-shirts, 20 bucks. CD and T-shirt, 15 dollars.

Chad: Yeah, that’s right.

Bobby: Why did you….

Chad: We can’t talk about that, that’s like marketing. That’s just how it goes. Because we want to sell CDs, we want people to hear the music more than anything. So we thought combos, cheaper than just buying a shirt, so they’ll get a CD and a shirt. And it worked really well.

Bobby: Oh definitely, everyone was walking out with a CD.

Chad: Oh man, it was amazing. We had a great time, all the kids were treating us really well.

Bobby: Last week, I think it was the 6th, you guys were in California and you got into a little incident.

Chad: *laughs* Just a little, yeah.

Bobby: What happened there?

Chad: Alright, let’s clear it up here. We went out to some bars around the Santa Barbara area and we got pretty loaded, drank a lot, what not. And we were walking around the streets afterwards, just having fun. And there was this group of guys and they were harassing some girls and we were just yelling at them like “What the fuck are you guys doing? Fuck off,” that kind of shit, and then they started yelling back. And we got closer, closer, and then brawl. Then the cops showed up, threw us in the drunk tank overnight, but they let us go, they didn’t charge us. Which would have sucked because we would’ve gotten deported probably from the States if they had charged us and then we wouldn’t be able to tour there. So that’s basically what happened, to sum it up. There’s a little more, but you know, we don’t need to get into that shit.

Bobby: How was your one night in jail?

Chad: I don’t remember; I was passed out on the floor.

Bobby: Okay, last January, on your myspace page, you guys posted that you were filming a video for the song “Young”, how did that go?

Chad: Yeah, it went really well. It turned out incredible. It’s more for a promotion thing, for shopping around, we might put it on the internet for kids to download – stuff like that. But yeah, it turned out really well.

Bobby: The song isn’t on the EP, so when…

Chad: It’s going to be off of the new album, so probably not till the fall. We’re looking for a September release for the new album, in case you were wondering.

Bobby: Have you guys recorded it yet? Like I know when you played with City & Colour, you played a lot of new songs.

Chad: Yeah, those songs on the EP, they’re older, they’re a lot older. We’ve been playing them for a while. We play a lot of new stuff just to keep us interested in what we’re doing kind of thing. But yeah, we recorded like a six song demo with a lot of new songs on it, just because we wanted to, and those are going to be on our full length. We were gonna put out another EP actually, and then a full length, but we figured we’d tack those on. So it’s going to be a lot of songs for really cheap. Like seventy minutes of music for ten bucks, so it’s gonna be pretty sweet.

Bobby: And that’s gonna be in the fall sometime?

Chad: Gonna be in the fall, gonna be a big one.

Bobby: Awesome, I’m looking forward to it. When I got the EP, I listened to it like twenty times in the first three days.

Chad: Are you serious dude?

Bobby: Yeah, it counted it on my iPod.

Chad: Ah dude, that’s awesome. Thank you, you don’t understand how much that means to me, that’s amazing.

Bobby: So yeah, I’m hoping Scott gets here in time today so you can play.

Chad: Oh yeah, I hope so too, or it’s just gonna be me up there fucking shitting my pants.

Bobby: Okay, on that EP, you guys have a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, why did you decide to cover that?

Chad: Okay, everyone asks that, because everyone thinks it’s cheesy or they don’t get it; like a band like us, why we would pick that song. Honestly, it’s just a personal thing of my girlfriend and me, it’s our song. And I honestly just did it for her and it wasn’t supposed to go on the album, and it just did. Some people like it, some people think it’s funny, stupid, gay, I don’t know, whatever, I like it.

Bobby: How did it end up finding its way onto the album?

Chad: I thought it turned out really good and I really liked it. I haven’t heard a version of any Cyndi Lauper song that a male has done, like a male vocalist. I thought it turned out alright, it’s not bad, kind of cheesy, but whatever. I don’t give a shit. It was for me, that’s the reason I did it.

Bobby: Your website, which was just recently launched, said that you guys were “resurrected from a dying screamo/style-core scene of London,” and of course, you used to be in Blue Skies At War, why do you think there’s such a drastic change from Blue Skies to Machete?

Chad: I was never… I had a… Okay, I have to be careful with this one, just because. But, um, I lost the love for that kind of music years ago. I don’t know, I can’t really tell you, I just got sick and fucking tired of the way the music scene was becoming. It used to be all about passion instead of fashion, venting instead of trending, and now, that’s what it all is. It kills me inside to know it’s not like that anymore. So I just decided to try something new, do what I want to do, fuck everything else.

Bobby: What do you think of the whole emo fashion wave that’s coming over now?

Chad: What do I think about it? I think you might as well just be a Nazi. It’s just bullshit. Like it’s so far gone now, I don’t know what to expect in the future, like what’s to come, but I hope someone will try to change some things and open some people’s minds and show them that they don’t fucking need to follow their friends, and what’s cool and what’s not. Like a song because you like a song, not because you’ve got a studded belt or a fucking blonde streak in your hair. That’s just my opinion.

Bobby: Okay, I love going to concerts, I try to go to as many as I can. But of course, there’s always some that are more memorable than others. So thinking back, what are some concerts that you went to that were really memorable for you?

Chad: My favorite show ever was in Detroit, Michigan, and it was at the Shelter and it was Planes Mistaken For Stars. They’re one of my favorite bands, this was before; they were big underground, but they’re a lot bigger now. But it was just the dirtiest, raw show I have ever seen. They had their pubes hanging out off the top of their jeans, they were just dirty. It was so intense and I just fell in love with that. I loved it.

Bobby: Okay, If you could tour with one person or band, dead or alive, still going or broken up, who would you choose to tour with and why?

Chad: Tegan And Sara. I love Tegan And Sara and we’re trying to work on it right now, trying to get them to do a tour with us just because I love the music. I think it’s amazing, it’s really good.

Bobby: Hopefully you can set that all up.

Chad: I hope so too, that would be amazing.

Bobby: Okay, now onto a bit more unusual questions that I just like to ask at all my interviews to keep it interesting.

Chad: I’ll try man. I’m pretty sketchy right now, I’m not gonna lie to you.

Bobby: First off, if you were a member of the opposite sex for a day, week, month, however long you wanted, what would you do and why?

Chad: What would I do? What would every guy probably do if they were the opposite sex? I’d probably sit there and masturbate all day and play with my boobies, and I don’t know, that’s all. *laughs* I don’t know man; I haven’t really thought about that, you know? That would be the first thing I’d do, because I’m into that kind of stuff. What would you do?

Bobby: I don’t know, I’ve heard a lot of different answers, and they’re all interesting. Like A Wilhelm Scream just said “I would pee sitting down, because that’s what girls do.”

Chad: *laughs* I sometimes do that anyway. If I’m lazy, I sometimes sit down and pee. Bad answer, but whatever.

Bobby: Okay, this is a kind of odd question, because you guys are just a duo. But I always ask it, so I’ll ask it here. If you guys were stranded on desert island, with no food and nothing to eat, who would you eat to survive and why?

Chad: I’d eat Scott because he’d be the only one there *laughs*

Bobby: You wouldn’t forfeit yourself for him?

Chad: No! *laughs* Actually, in a way, he’s pretty skinny. I don’t know how well he’d taste. But yeah, yeah, I’d eat him.

Bobby: If you could have one thing at this moment, anything at all, what would you have and why?

Chad: *Holding up his half-empty beer* Another beer.

Bobby: Another beer?

Chad: Fuck yeah. *Brian from A Wilhelm Scream walks by, overhears, and hands him a beer*. Oh, I got one! Thanks Brian!

Bobby: There you go. It’s a miracle!

Chad: That’s amazing! Ask me again.

Bobby: *laughs* Okay, could you tell us something about the band or one of its members that not many people know about? Like a little quirk you or Scott do on the road?

Chad: Scott likes Korn and Tool. I think that’s a little odd. I’m just kidding. Just kidding Scott! Hahaha. It’s hard man, I don’t know. I’m moody, but that’s not really a quirk. I don’t know, I honestly can’t think of any.

Bobby: Fair enough, I guess we’ll end with an easy one. Tomorrow’s Easter, are you doing anything to celebrate?

Chad: No. I’m not a religious person.

Bobby: Okay, I guess that’s about it, thanks a lot. Do you have anything you’d like to add?

Chad: Nah man, thank you for your support, you have no idea how much it means to me.