These Arms Are Snakes

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Dwayne: First off your names and what you do in the band.

Steve: I’m Steve and I sing.

Ryan: I’m Ryan and I play guitar.

Dwayne: This is your first time through western Canada, how have the shows been so far on the tour?

Steve: Everything’s been really good. Everyone’s been nice, the turn outs have been good. Im enjoying it. Living in Seattle we do a lot of driving in the US so it gets pretty boring, you can drive eight hours and not be anywhere.

Ryan: I think it was the Sled Island festival that prompted the whole Canadian tour idea. We played that and just a whole bunch of people came out to that and asked us “why don’t you play this town or that town?” We knew this tour was coming up so fuck it, let’s just do western Canada

Dwayne: Anything unexpected come up so far on the western Canadian leg of the tour?

Steve: I was expecting something a little more desolate I guess(Laughs).

Ryan: Just from what people have been telling us and I mean we have seen nothing in the States. We were expecting to see icy tundra.

Steve: The cities are way bigger then I expected them to be. I have always heard about cities like Edmonton and Winnipeg so it is nice to finally just be here and see it for myself.

Dwayne: I saw that you guys recently started twittering. With things like Facebook and twitter rising in popularity do you see these kind of networks being important to self promote?

Steve: That probably depends on who you ask. I mean its fine but you know when I was younger some of the mystery of Band, the band, was what intrigued me. You don’t want to hear what kind of fucking sandwich they had for lunch. I mean I even hate eating before we play, we aren’t supposed to eat. We are just supposed to get drunk and fucking freak out ya know?

Ryan: I think it serves a purpos, things like MySpace and Facebok; but you’re talking to the two wrong guys about that. I could really care less for it. Like I don’t want to know when someone took a shit; why would I want to know that?  For Steve and I, we just cut that shit out. It is a helpful resource to get the word out to the people that want to come to the shows.

Dwayne: How come you update your blog a lot more so than the official website?

Ryan: For the fans that are actually interested in us they actually check that out rather then just surfing online.

Steve: Websites are pretty obsolete (laughs). I don’t know why we even have one anymore.

Dwayne: I am someone that has never seen you guys play live before. So aside from doing some digging on youtube and various other sites what can I or anyone else expect from TAAS on any given night?

Ryan: It is really tough to describe.

Steve: I think we put a lot of energy into it. I feel like we try to make it entertaining and make it more of a party vibe where everyone is involved and having fun.

Ryan: Everyone involved and going fucking apeshit but still respecting the person next to you.

Dwayne: You released a Split 7” record with All the Saints earlier this spring on Touch and Go Records. Just recently you digitally released it; why do this and not just keep it exclusive to the vinyl?

Ryan: There was a MP3 code that came with the seven inch as well and it’s a limited Touch and Go release, so why not just release it to everybody? Instead of the select 1000 or 2000 people that got the seven inch.

Dwayne: Are you guys big advocates of releasing vinyl?

Steve: Yeah, I mean as our last record shows we aren’t the only ones. We have put out a bunch of splits and for people that might not buy the whole record they are a lot more willing to check out a couple songs on a seven inch.

Ryan: Yeah, and its just something tangable that they can hold in their hands and think “hey there are only a 1000 of these I want that. I will be one of 1000 people that has this or one of 500 people that has this.” We would get people coming back later though asking if we are going to release it digitally so they could listen to it on there computer or iPods or whatever. So it’s just kind of one of those cool little things that people enjoy having.

Dwayne: You had stated that one of the songs on the seven inch was leftover from the last record that just didn’t fit the vibe of the record. How many more TAAS songs are out there that you’re just kind of sitting on and could we ever expect a Bsides type of album?

Steve: I think we have just about everything out there.

Ryan: With the exception of two covers that will see the light of day in a matter of time but no we aren’t sitting on any unreleased material that I can remember.

Steve: There might be something out there but nothing that we are proud of (laughs).

Dwayne: You metioned that you did some covers. Can you tell me what covers and what they will be appearing on?

Ryan: For Robotic Empire Records they are doing a Nirvana (In Utero) tribute so they have a few bands on there and I think there are 11 or 12 songs.

Steve: It goes through the record in sequence.

Ryan: So, against our better judgement, we did Heart Shaped Box. It was the hit we thought it would be funny. One of the songs we wanted to do was taken.  Another one of the songs, one of our friend’s band had already covered as well so we thought “fuck it, lets do the single.” We can do this lets totally change it.

Steve: We couldn’t (laughs) we had to go back and do it 4-5 times.

Ryan: We changed the tuning, we changed the tempo ahhh you name it we tried it so we basically did a karaoke version (laughs). We went back into the studio before we left and had some ideas on how to change it and it came out way better for sure but we never want to hear that song again.

Dwayne: The last record you released was on Suicide Squeeze and the previous two albums were on Jade Tree Records. Why the decision to split with Jade Tree and take up with Suicide Squeeze?

Ryan: Jade Tree is a fucking shitty label.

Steve: They just stopped caring about what they were doing and cared more about their other careers. That’s fine and all but if you’re going to let the label fall apart don’t take everyone down with it. I mean it’s pretty lame when they try to make you pay to get off the label. It wasn’t much but still. Suicide Squeeze has just been awesome for us the entire time we talked about working with them. Before the Jade Tree stuff happened he was knee deep in the Minus the Bear stuff so he couldn’t put his full attention towards anything else and it worked out that he was there for us.

Dwayne: Do you care about fitting into a certain scene or genre?

Ryan: I think we clearly defined for ourselves that we don’t care about that kind of thing.

Steve: It started out early on in our career that we could do Minus the Bear tour or the Hot Water Music tour or even the ISIS tour and none of those bands could never really cross tour. So we started playing all these shows with these bands and we never really took any of their fans because they never really liked us. Since Easter, we were just like “fuck it lets do our own thing, our own headlining shows.”

Ryan: We would think of bands who would want to tour with us and it just got exhausting. We just went to battle on our own.

Dwayne: You once toured with Underoath and it’s been well documented that things didn’t go let say smoothly. What were the fans like on that tour seeing as you guys aren’t “hardcore Christians”?

Ryan: We sold a decent amount of merch on that tour but it seemed like kind of a empty gesture. Well I already bought my Underoath stuff and Chariot so I’ll just stop in and get your stuff.

Steve: They never really fucked with us too much and if they did we retaliated. I mean these are little kids. They didn’t stand a chance against haggard dudes like us (laughs).

Ryan: The whole thing was just frustrating and hard and we did something with good intentions to try and benfit our band and it was a terrible mistake. We won’t ever make that mistake again. I don’t want to be a part of that world, it has nothing to do with me. They can do whatever they want.

Dwayne: With the sound and style that you guys have does it give you a lot more freedom when you’re going to record new material to go in a different direction and not be constrainted?

Ryan: I think so. We have definitely tried to redo shit we have done in the past and we have never had a clear direction that we have wanted to go in. Everytime we go write another record we know where we have come from. We feel like we try to do a good job and try not to write the same record twice.

Steve: It’s not like we are going to go folk or something, we still have some musical integrity.

Ryan: Yea anything we are going to do is still going to sound like These Arms Are Snakes. I mean, each record has its own identity and a little niche that it falls into.

Dwayne: Ryan is an openly gay member of your band. Have you ever felt any hostility or homophobic insults directed at him and how do you handle that?

Ryan: I mean there has been inadvertent things butnever anything outwardly hostile. Kinda like ignorant people not knowing he was gay and throwing around certain words.

Steve: Its more those fucking idiots on the internet saying shit like “those guys are fucking fags” and I just want to ask them “do you know that there is a actual gay member of this band? You fucking asshole.” I get more hostile about it and I usually am thought to be the gay member (laughs).

Dwayne: Can you remember a defining moment in your life that has shaped the way you are now?

Ryan: There was one moment that I stopped doing music a lot and I remember chatting with my dad. He was like what the fuck are you doing going back to school you need to be playing music and I mean that’s a pretty big moment for a dad to say something like that. It’s kind of a big help in deciding your lifes path. It’s very reaffirming to hear someone else so close to you telling you to do what you want to do. So that’s a pretty big moment

Steve: I guess that reminds me of when I moved to Seattle and I was 17 and I moved with the band I was in previously. It’s kinda like I sorta knew the guys but I went out on a limb and just went with it. My life would be drastically different had I not gone there. I mean I was living in Iowa. So it’s the best move I ever made.

Dwayne: Whats up next for you guys? New album in the works?

Ryan: We start writing after this tour I think. It’s just kind of been a whirl wind and Brian’s in another band now so it makes things a little more difficult to organize. After this tour he goes out with Russian Circles and I go out with my other band for a short tour then we will all be back in Seattle in December.

Dwayne: Any final words or thoughts?

Steve: You know I never know what to say to that ….. Eat more chicken?