Hot Hot Heat's frontman Steve Bays talks to Livewire
May 22, 2005
Hailing from the north woods of Victoria, British Colombia, Hot Hot Heat is igniting quite a spark within
the indie movement. The band received a lot of
attention and acclaim after the release of their
full-length debut Make Up the Breakdown. With
hits like "Bandages," Talk to Me, Dance With Me" and
"No, Not Now" it confidently displayed it's back to
roots indie rock, quirky, but intelligent pop and
danceable melodies. The band toured relentlessly
recruiting many rabid fans along the way. With the
recent release of the infectious and highly
original Elevator the band is poised to take
it's place among the giants of the indie movement
like Franz Ferdinand, The Killers and Modest
Mouse.
Livewire's Phil Bonyata chatted with cofounder and
frontman Steve Bays on Hot Hot Heat's ascent within
the indie movement and music in general.
Livewire: What do you think of the label "indie rock?"
Is it overused now?
Bays: What it used to mean was independently released
music. What it is now is an aesthetic. I think
it's legit, I mean with a band like us - we've been
labeled "garage" to "disco punk" to "new wave" to
"punk funk." In Australia they say we're reggae. I'll
take "indie rock," that's fine.
Livewire: Hailing from Victoria, British Columbia -
what is the biggest difference between Canada and the
States?
Bays: In Canada you just feel taken care of a lot
more. You feel safe and if you get sick someone's
going to take care of you. If you get lost, someone
will tell you were to go.
If you wanna go to school there's a way to do it. In
the U.S. it's like everyone is looking out for #1.
Livewire: Do you think that your band is part of a
mini-Canadian invasion?
Bays: When I first heard that concept being thrown
around it seemed a bit bizarre, but now it does kinda
make sense. Canada has always been the underdogs. When
we toured Europe the people brought up the fact that
we were from Canada like a negative factor.
It's like we come from a country that produced Alanis
Morissette and Bryan Adams. There's always been a lot
of corporate rock acts that have done well outside of
Canada as well as a cool indie scene. I do believe
that there's been a bit of a Canadian invasion right
now. There has never been any pressure to succeed as
far as being Canadian. Like if you're a band from
L.A., I mean there are so many bands from L.A. that
sell millions. There are so many bands from all the
big cities, places with a history of spawning
successful groups like London and New York. Those type
of places there is a potential to succeed, like us,
for example, coming from Victoria - no bands have
actually done anything from there before. We weren't
motivated by anything, but to have fun. Canadian
bands are allowed a lot of time to incubate and
develop. Whereas you show potential there's a manager
and AR guy at your door trying to exploit it somehow.
Coming back to your "indie rock" comment - "indie
rock" is more of a mainstream thing right now. The
"indie rock" sound which is just independent bands
doing their thing are all of sudden cool in the
context of current popular culture. So, there is kind
of a public ear for bands like Arcade Fire or whoever,
you know.
Livewire: There's this cool punk band out of Windsor,
Canada called The Shrugs - their music is lean and
mean and they wear monocles, berets and bow tries.
They're crazy good!
Bays: Awesome! Yeah, I'm on the internet right now
I'll check 'em out right after the interview - what is
the website?
Bays: Awesome! Speaking of funny Canadian websites,
are you familiar with the Trailer Park Boys? It's like
the biggest cult on Canadian TV probably of all time
and it's slowly creeping into the U.S. and even
Europe. Basically, it's about this trailer park
somewhere in the northland of Ontario, Canada and it's
about these guys and they grow pot and have all of
these crime hijinks. It's Canadian white trash and I
think they've been filming the 5th season, so it's
been going on for awhile now, but go to their website
trailerparkboys.com - it's pretty funny.
Livewire: Your music seems to be evolving from
Make Up the Breakup to Elevator. Have
you found your sound or is experimentation always in
order?
Even when you find that groove - do you feel
the need to change for the sake of change?
Bays: No, we would never change for just change's
sake. A lot of bands have that have one unique sound
and I'm not opposed to that concept. There are certain
things that will always be present in our music,
like I don't see my voice changing too drastically.
We're always going to want it to be fun and honest and
exciting and we're always going to be a live band.
We're always going to want the music to translate to a
live concert. So within that framework I think we're
always going to branch off a little bit. For the most
part everything has to be catchy. That's scary for a
lot of bands to do - they hide behind obscure
melodies and vague lyrics with kind of cryptic
messages. We want to be straightforward and honest
which I find to be way more challenging.
Livewire: What or who is your muse?
Bays: On a number of songs off the album - they're
love songs. For a very long time I didn't want to get
close to anybody, but you find someone that inspires
you to be a better person and to work harder and to
be more passionate about life in general. It's a
really bizarre feeling - I can't even describe it.
Livewire: It sounds like you're in love?
Bays: Yeah, I'm in a relationship. On Make Up the
Breakdown I was going through this phase where I
was preparing myself for a life of being on tour all
the time and being out on the road and living out of a
suitcase. I made a point to distance myself from
everyone and relationships. A lot of is
about realizing just how unrealistic that is. I
realized I needed some sort of passion and love
outside of music because up until then music had been
everything. So, to finally let somebody in was
a big step. In a lot of ways it's made me focus on music
even more. It was about meeting someone for the sake of
love, but rather about passion. It made me take myself
more seriously - which is cool.
Livewire: How's work on the new album going?
Bays: We actually have been doing a lot of writing on
the road whereas we took a long time off the road to
write Elevator. We already have four or five
potential songs.
I think we just want to record them while we're on the
road or at least have them demo'd on the road and then
we can go right into the studio when we're done
touring. I don't want to take the time out on the road
to record. On Elevator we literally took a year
off to record. Which is bizarre to me. I mean Led
Zeppelin never seemed to stop and always managed to
make albums.
Livewire: You had producer Dave Sardy (The Walkmen,
Oasis, The Dandy Warhols, Jet, Red Hot Chili Peppers)
help make this album. How big was his influence?
Bays: He definitely had a big influence on it as far
as the songs go - we already had the songs demo'd. I
have a studio in my house - we just did it the way we
thought we should do it and then we brought it to him.
But, what he brought to the table was insane. He was
always pushing us to make it better, but in a really
constructive way. We're all very opinionated guys. We
would work 15-16 hour days and experiment with new
ideas. He got into the band and the album so heavily.
This was not just another project for him. He took it
as seriously as we did. He never tried to make us into
something that we weren't, which is rare. A lot of
producers have like a stock sound and they take your
band and try to push a square through a circle.
Livewire: Maybe you can get Rick Rubin for your next
album.
Bays: We actually started this record with him. We
started doing preproduction with him and met with him
and stuff. We do preproduction over the internet
where we'd send him a demo and he'd comment on it and
stuff. But, then we kind of realized that Rick is sweet and
we were kind of torn between Rick and Dave, but then
we realized as we got into preproduction that we
needed someone who was going to be able to be in the
studio from first thing in the morning to the last
thing at night, whereas Rick is more like the old
Motown producers where an engineer would set
everything up and record it and the producer would
come in like 5:00 PM and comment on it. Rick is
obviously a wicked producer, but we liked the idea
that Dave was still hungry to prove himself like the
same way we were, ya know. We'd still like to do
something with Rick in the future, but at the time we
were still developing our sound and doing a lot of
experimentations and we were just big fans of Dave's
recent work. We wanted our drums to sound absolutely
massive.
Livewire: How is former guitarist Dante De Caro's
replacement Luke Paquin doing?
Bays: He's amazing! He's the kind of guy that you play
him something once and he's already learned it. He's
one of those guys that's been playing his whole life
and technically
he's great. We knew we needed more than that though.
We needed someone that was also a cool singer and he
has an awesome voice. A big thing too is his musical
background - you know like what kind of bands he liked
while growing up. He really has this insane musical
knowledge. We're all about collecting new records and
talking about bands and kind of just growing as music
fans and he's totally on that same page. We weren't
just looking for someone to fill Dante's shows - we
wanted someone who would essentially play even better and be
able to write with us.
Livewire: What artists rocked your boat while growing
up?
Bays: A lot of them were just local musicians. I was
really into the local punk scene while I was growing
up. I started to promote shows just so I could get my
band to play on the same bill with bands I loved from
out of town. There were a bunch of local punk bands at
the time that gave me what I needed. I was learning drums
at that point and would watch the band with the best drummer
and learn from them incessantly. When I was learning
how to play bass I would watch the band with best bass
player and trip on that for months. I was really kind
of an obsessive kid. But then there was the music that
was all around at the time - the Stones, the Beatles,
Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and Tom Petty. My parents
liked a lot of the poppy stuff too which I think
trickled down to me. They loved like Stevie Wonder and
Billy Joel, Simon and Garfunkel, Creedance Clearwater
and since I went to the whole kind of punk scene and
then I got into the artier punk movement in around
Victoria, British Colombia and the Pacific Northwest
after that I started to revisit all the classics and
I'm still in that phase. Like, I'm revisiting Creedance
Cleerwater and I'm paying attention to the
arrangements, the harmonies and the thing that they're
singing about. Every two years you can go back and
listen to records that you thought you knew and find
something completely different about it.
Livewire: iPod or vinyl?
Bays: I like people who like to have a tangible copy.
It's way more fulfilling, I mean when I picked-up one
of our records - like the first time I saw the
Elevator vinyl it was the most fulfilling
feeling. It was heavy and thick and the artwork was
big. I can see being a collector and collecting vinyl,
but I live out of a suitcase and if you want to have
5,000 songs at your disposal you need an iPod. Dustin
our bass player carries vinyl with him on the road
because he DJs sometimes, but he goes back and forth
between the iPod and vinyl even then. On the other
hand there are things that you can't get digitally, I
mean we like old tube amps, occasionally you will find
a new drumkit that sounds as good as an old drumkit,
but not very often. It's not out of a pretentious way
of staying pure to to be pure - it's entirely based
on the sound. Sometimes I would stumble on a way to
reproduce the analog sound and eventually I think
digital will get to be as good as analog for like
recording and film, but we're not there yet. We just
shot a video for "Middle of Nowhere" and we did it all
on film cameras from the early '70s and late '60s and it
looked so rich and beautiful. Digital just isn't there
yet, but I'm not opposed to it. Especially when we
first started out, I did everything myself and I did it
all on the computer. I did our artwork, our video
recordings, did our website and it was just good
because I was a broke student with a computer.
Livewire: What pisses you off the most?
Bays: That's a good question. Let me think. I don't
like people with negative attitudes. I mean some
people have every right to be negative, but I mean you
gotta solve the problem. When you're trying to do
anything like making music or a movie or in life offer
a solution just don't point out a problem.
Livewire: If you could see any band or artist dead or
broken up who would it be?
Bays: Um, who would yours be first of all?
Livewire: I mean first of all it's tough, but mine
would actually be the Doors.
Bays: Oh, cool. Well, I mean it would probably be the
Beatles because three out of four in our band know the
most about and we can probably play their songs the
most. We're just big fans of them because they
documented so much about themselves through their
music.
Yeah, I would have to go with the Beatles even though
that's kind of a generic answer. (laughs)
Livewire: What's the weirdest thing to happen to you
while on the road or in the studio?
Bays: When we meet people with Hot Hot Heat tattoos.
That's a weird thing. That's like extremely
flattering. I think it forces us to take ourselves
more seriously. Although I never want to take
ourselves too seriously as to affect our music
negatively. It is kind of cool knowing that it is
inspiring to some people.
Livewire: What item or items do you have to
bring while on the road?
Bays: My lyric book, my dictaphone and an electric
guitar and an iPod. I mean the thing with the lyric
book is that I used to write lyrics on scraps of paper
and until I got a really nice, fancy book that I
respected. I started to treat lyrics like they
were more special. It's kind of nice to have a frame
for your "painting." Instead of painting on a napkin.
The dictaphone is very important because it might be
4:00 AM and you might be drunk and you'll hum a
melody and on a whim you'll record it on the dictaphone
and that'll end up being the single, you know.
(laughs)
Livewire: You seem to be a good looking guy - any film
aspirations?
Bays: Wow, that's nice of you to say. I don't know,
possibly. I've never been asked that before. I used to
make films all the time when I was younger, none of
them were very good, but I love it. The video that we
we did for "Middle of Nowhere" we shot it
on film and the idea was for it to look like a film.
So, we shot it like a film and edited it like a film. It wasn't done like a rock video with fast cuts and
quick edits. Yeah, I think it's our favorite one that
we've done and it has a bit of a story. Up until then
we really shied away from the concept of having a
narrative because it's a lot more naked to be part of
a story and to actually have to act a little. This
video is the first time I had to do a fair bit of
acting.
I loved it. It was awesome!
