Strung Out

Strung Out has been packing rooms since the early 90’s when they started out as a headspinningly fast skate punk band. As the band gears up for their 20 year anniversary (some of you may have celebrated a few years premature), they continue to put out material, tour vigorously, and draw fans from all over the music spectrum. Guitarist Jake Kiley took some time at their sold out show in Chicago to discuss what endures people to Strung Out, how hovering under the mainstream has kept from destroying the band, and the new album that will feature 23 remastered tracks along with three new sick tunes and more.

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Amy: When Agents of the Underground came out in 2009, the press release said the release of the album marked the band’s 20th anniversary.  I just read last week that you’re working on a retrospective due out this summer as you near your 20 year mark, did the band start in 1989 or 1992?

Jake: The guys started jamming in ’91. When they said 20th anniversary two years ago, it was a little premature. We were just like okay, well whatever, it’s almost 20, so we didn’t dispute it. People just kind of started saying that so we were like yeah, it’s been like 18. It will actually be 20 years this year and next year. I joined the band in ’92, so it’ll be 20 years for me next year. We’re working on this retrospective/best of album that coincides with that. It’s pretty cool; we remixed a bunch of our old songs and put 26 of our favorite songs together.

Amy: With working on the retrospective, is that the only thing you’re doing to celebrate the 20 year anniversary?

Jake: Currently, that’s the next thing coming out that’s actually completed. We’ve been working on a long form DVD forever, just trying to get all of our old footage together, interviews, and tying our whole story and history together. That’s something we’ve been working on and might come out in the next year, but it’s really hard to say because it’s been a slow work in progress.

Amy: 20 years later, how do you still keep it fresh and fun? That’s a long time to do anything.

Jake: You just have to do a couple shots before the show; ya know, get amped and revved up. Really, it’s the fans that make it fun. For us, we’ve been playing these songs for a long time, and we play them night after night. It can get boring, but when I see the reaction from the crowd, and hear them yelling out the songs and people start going nuts; that’s why you do it, because that is such a rush. It’s such a high to see people going off to your music. It’s really all about the fans making it awesome for us still.

Amy: Would you say with the progression in your sound, that your fanbase has stayed pretty consistent over the years?

Jake: As you get older as a band, your fans get older too, and some people just stop going to shows. Unfortunately, a lot of our fans that grew up coming out to our shows in the 90’s, now they have kids and more responsibilities, and sometimes you don’t draw as many girl fans as you’d like to. Hopefully, there will be a new influx of younger people, younger brothers and sisters getting turned on to the stuff and coming out. Our draw stays pretty consistent, so I think it’s a little bit of the old fans coming out, and also them introducing it to the new younger crowd too. You lose some of the old ones, but bring in some new ones; it’s kind of what you have to do.

Amy: How would you say you’ve progressed musically? From beginning to end, the albums have changed quite a bit.

Jake: For sure, but at the same time it’s all come from the same place inside. When we first started, we had the same influences; a lot of old school punk rock stuff, metal, progressive Rush-type of stuff. We’ve always been fans of a wide spectrum of rock and hard rock and we still are today, we’ve just grown more as players. I’ve listened to more stuff now, and I’m a bit better of a guitar player than I was ten years ago. You try to put more into the songs every time you write, you try to put just a little more flavor into it. We used to just want to be a super, extremely fast skate punk band, and that was what our focus was. We realized if you’re going to do that, you’re going to pin yourself into a corner where after a few years no one’s going to let you do anything else, that’s all they’re going to expect from you. We started breaking it up and doing different things, having some slower, heavier type of stuff that we enjoy, and I think today it is still a good fusion of both, it’s got all of our roots. When you listen to our last record, there are many things you can compare to the first record, but I think overall we’ve improved in a lot of ways. We don’t want to rewrite the same songs; we want to do something a little bit different than what we’ve done. Whether people like it better than the old stuff or not, that’s up to them, but we’re happy with it ourselves.

Amy: Along with the diversity between albums, it seems like you tour with a good mix of bands from different genres.  Last time you were here was with Rufio, before that Death by Stereo, this time Face to Face, is there a favorite type of band you like to tour with?

Jake:  It’s not really like we have a certain sound in mind, we’re friends with all of those guys. The guys in Death by Stereo are really good friends of ours, and I think a band like that works really well with us because they’re very musical. They have intricate musical parts, which we do as well, but they’re still rooted in the same punk/metal thing. A band like Rufio, they’re obviously more on the melodic, poppy-punk side, but some of that fanbase likes what we do too and vice versa. It’s good to take out bands that I think complement each other, but don’t sound exactly like each other. Sometimes you run into that problem where you see three bands on a show, and they all sound exactly the same. We like to take out bands that are heavier; we’ve taken out Snapcase, Bane, Comeback Kid, some really hardcore stuff, but we’ve also taken out Rufio and Blink-182 when they were brand new. There are all sorts of cool bands out there to tour with, and why not give the crowd something they may not have ever seen before?

Amy: You were in Chicago less than a year ago, how difficult is it to get away for tour with family and outside interests?

Jake: Most of us depend on this band for financial reasons, and also we love having it in our life. We love the opportunity to go out and meet our fans around the country, and be creative and be up there (onstage). It’s a very special opportunity to get to play and perform to people. We all need this for different reasons; we all needed it in our lives for the past 20 years. We have differences as people, but when it comes to writing and the music we love to play, we have a really good chemistry in that way. You do what comes naturally and feels right.

Amy: Do you guys have jobs besides the band with the frequent touring?

Jake: Luckily it’s been everyone’s living. If you tour half of the year, you can live for the other half of the year. We love the road, we love playing, but the fact that you can make a living off it is amazing. Some bands go out for a year straight, and that’ll just kill ya, that’ll make it so you never want to touch your guitar again. We like to break it up and do it in a healthy manner. It can be a little trying when you have families; our singer just had a kid.  You definitely have to reach a balance where it works for everybody where they still have their own time to have their own personal life.

Amy: In 1998 you released the compilation The Skinny Years…Before We Got Fat, then in 2009 released a B-sides and rarities album, Prototypes and PainKillers, is there that much material that does not make the cut or are you constantly writing new music?

Jake: We’re always writing, every time we write songs for an album, usually we would have two or three songs that didn’t get used for the record. They were good songs, but maybe we didn’t have enough time to finish the vocals or they were a little similar to a different song on the record, so we figured let’s not have two of the same song when that happens. After a few years, you gather ten or twenty songs together, and that’s what we did for the Prototypes was we just put together all the extra songs that we had recorded for compilations, or leftovers that just didn’t get use used, old demos. We figured some of these songs are still really cool let’s, get it out there more just for the diehards, the people that want to have everything we do. You get that out there, get some cool packaging, and we wrote a little summary about each song; it’s a fun things for the band.

For the skinny years, that was an album they recorded before I was in the band in ’91. It was always cool, but got kind of overlooked so when I joined the band. All the sudden we started writing brand new songs and started talking to Fat Mike and said, ‘forget those songs, let’s write a new record and get that out!’ After a couple years we were like those songs were pretty cool, why don’t we get that out in case people want to hear where our earliest origins were. Records like that don’t sell much, but they’re cool. I’m glad to have a CD of those songs for myself just because it was cool to listen to when I was a little kid and got into the band. Now it’s cool to have it on a CD and throw it in for nostalgia.

Amy: American Paradox appeared on the Billboard top 200 almost 10 years ago, and since then you’ve sold millions of records, toured 5 continents, and tour pretty often in the United States; how have you managed to stay in the underground/out of the mainstream? Obviously you have quite the following.

Jake: You just gotta do it and not really worry about catering to mainstream media, or trying to get your video all over the place. For some bands, that’s really all they want, and more power to them if that’s what they’re going for. For us, we’ve never really cared too much about getting all that. We saw bands that would get it, and they didn’t even seem that happy; at some point they seemed burdened by it because they’re so busy at that time. When you’re hot, they’ll keep you on the road for years. Their managers are running them dry and ragged, next thing you know these bands break-up and it’s like, what happened? They were on top of the world and now they’re done. I think that would have destroyed us if we tried to go mainstream. We’re really happy just being under the radar and doing it for the people that know and love it. We have a cool thing that we can pack rooms and make a living off it, and not have to worry about catering to the radio or writing the next hit single, which honestly I don’t even know how to do that. You do what comes naturally and you enjoy it, and for us it’s been a really positive good time.

Amy: 20 years later, what do you think makes Strung Out memorable enough that people keep coming out to the shows?

Jake:  I don’t know, maybe the fact that do it on our own terms. We write music that we love, and in turn they know it’s coming from a true source. We’re not just trying to be the next Fall Out Boy or something that is disposable to an extent. We’ve done what we’ve always done, and so our friends can rest assure that they know what they’re going to get from us; they’re going to get something from the heart, our heart. I wonder that myself sometimes, because I see way better bands than us never get any recognition or the attention they deserve. I feel very humbled by the fact that we get a lot of good press.

Amy: And a lot of fan tattoos.

Jake: Oh I know, that blows me away! I don’t know what it is that really endures people to us like that, except that our songs are very sincere.  We’re doing what we love and comes natural to us; it’s not just trying to get rich or anything like that, its therapy for us. People can relate to that and can connect with it, and it’s a really cool thing when that can happen.

Amy: Are there going to be new songs on the retrospective?

Jake: 3 brand new songs also. I think they’re actually pretty sick; they’re three of our better songs we’ve had in a long time. Its 26 songs total, 3 brand new songs, and 23 old, classics that are all remixed and sound way better than the old versions. It gives a new life to a lot of these old songs, so I’m really excited for people to hear it.