BALLYHOO! INTERVIEW
Well the next couple of weeks is going to be a pretty exciting time for Ballyhoo!, as the band will drop its eagerly anticipated new album (Cheers) after months of hard work pulling it all together. Then there will be the shows, opening for 311 and Slightly Stoopid, the big record release parties and quite an extensive Spring tour. Lucky for us The Pier managed to grab both vocalist/guitarist Howi and bassist Mista J (JR) before all these crazy times begin.
The Pier: So starting from the beginning, tell us how the planning and recording sessions got underway for Cheers?
Howi: We had a bunch of songs written and we have been playing a lot of them live. We spoke to 311 producer Scotch Ralston about the songs and he came out back in July last year and we did preproduction. Which was basically him sitting in on our rehearsals. He just sat in the back and took notes for every song. So it’s pretty funny he has the whole notebook for the Ballyhoo! album Cheers. He should try selling that on Ebay (haha).
We hit the studio in mid-July and we just started banging it out. Donald our drummer ended up tracking 20 songs within two days which is kind of amazing. We were kind of blown away that we did all the drums, bass and rhythm guitar in just eight days. Super-productive week!
Mista J: Yeah Do it for the Money had been out for two years and our live show had progressed so much from touring relentlessly. It made us a much tighter band and therefore our sound was changing and morphing into something more energetic and something bigger. We had to capture that to give to our fans that don’t get to see us and our fans at home something new to listen to. We needed a new calling card and it will be exciting to see what people think of what Ballyhoo! is becoming.
The Pier: Did you have to do much writing specifically for the album or did you have the songs all ready to go?
Mista J: We already had a good bit of the songs already written. We wanted to go into the studio well prepared and to be able to get them down as efficiently as possible. We didn’t have a crazy $100,000 budget to work with, even if we did have that budget we are frugal enough we would not spend it all and save some loot (haha). Most of the songs were done then before going into the studio, but I do know Howard wrote some of the lyrics to the songs afterwards.
The Pier: So what was it like working with Scotch? Is there any specific advice he gave you that you want to share?
Howi: His whole attitude the whole time, was let’s do as many songs as we can and do quality stuff. Forget about major labels, just do what you want to do. His thing was “rock onward.” I gotta give Scotch credit for that term and that is what we live by now. Don’t look back.
Mista J: Scotch is one laid back guy. He doesn’t say much but when he does you got to listen cause it is going to be important. He did let us just put it all in our own hands, he let us spread our wings and was pretty pleased with all we were putting out.
The Pier: Mista J, once you and Donald were done with your parts did you have any more input into the making of the album or was that it for you?
Mista J: I think I may have went down to the studio one day, but for the most part I let Howard, Blaze and Scotch do their own thing. I made a couple of suggestions of what amps to use guitar-wise. It is kind of funny cause I think Howard recorded a lot of distorted guitars on one amp and the amp I told him about before Scotch had just listened to it and made Howi come back in and re-record all his distorted guitar parts on that little amp instead of the Mesa he chose (haha).
The Pier: What was your initial reaction then when you starting hearing the finished mixes of the songs?
Mista J: I was excited. It is wild, as you have heard the songs so many times, but to hear them come together and you realize how much a mix can change them. I was just stoked with the sonic quality of the recordings, it was great to hear how cool it sounded.
The Pier: So when you listen to Cheers compared to Do it for the Money, what do you feel about the growth between the two?
Mista J: I think we have turned the page with this new album. It’s a whole new level of maturity and we were a lot freer with this album. When I listen to Do it for the Money then Cheers it just blows my mind. The best thing to do is play the song Everything from each album and it’s not only sonically different, but so is the tightness of the song and it just sounds so much bigger.
The Pier: So what was behind the inspiration to re-record Everything?
Howi: There was different reasons we didn’t really want to put out songs we had already released because we want our fans to have new songs. But that is the one from Do it For the Money, that we thought was a really cool song and we would love to make it sound even better and bigger. We had to give it a second chance as we thought it was too good of a song.
We have been including that extra breakdown part in the new version in our live shows for a couple of years. It was after we recorded it, we started playing it live with that jazzy kind of feel. We were like, "fuck why didn’t we record that?" So that was another reason why we re-recorded it.
The Pier: What is the inspiration behind the first single Phantoms?
Howi: This is kind of a touchy subject. It’s about a situation where you feel sort of betrayed by someone, but at the same time there is kind of a fakeness and a new demeanor when you are around each other. You try to make things seem ok, but they are really not. So that’s where the phantom aspect comes in. You know kind of like the elephant in the room, that metaphor. I am done pretending and let’s be real about it and try to get past it and hope there is an end in sight.
The Pier: Phantoms is such a great song, but what made you choose that as the lead single from the album above the 17 other tracks?
Howi: We were just really stoked with it. Donald and Mista J did that song together live and they were really just fighting off each at that moment when they recorded it. We thought the live energy comes off it really well and it is a different sounding song.
Radio at the moment is playing the same type of rock songs and I thought Phantoms was a really good rock song but it was different. It has a unique flavor to it that can hold up; the chorus just slams and the verses have this dance-y feel to it with the acoustic guitars underneath. Overall it just really pops. We needed to come out slamming.
The Pier: Ballyhoo! has a lot of songs about relationships and as the lyricist for the band is that what you focus a lot of your time thinking about?
Howi: You know man, all the songs come from a part of me and I try to write about real shit. Everybody goes through the bad relationship and the love feeling and all those ways relationships affect you. I don’t set out to write a whole bunch of love songs, it just kind of comes out. I am not sitting there pining all day and all night about a lost love, it is just what comes out at the time. Some of the stuff I write about is not even based on an actual person but a feeling, so I try to relate that feeling.
The Pier: The song Body Parts has some of your most unique lyrics you have penned. You have a bit of a Weird Science/Frankenstein theme going on in that song?
Howi: That’s exactly what I was going for. I had written a song and demoed it and I showed the guys. We pretty much learned that song the day before we recorded it because Scotch was going through all our demos and was like “dude this song is awesome you have to record this.” We went back to our space and jammed the shit out of it and recorded it the next day.
It was so quirky with the guitar and bass lines and then the chorus comes in and in my head I was picturing lightning and thunder and this huge castle on the top of this hill. So the lyrics came from me thinking of that and combining it with some loser guy who is looking to make the perfect woman so he can get laid and try to be like everyone else. I also had a little influence from Robot Chicken on Adult Swim, with that mad doctor putting together that chicken in his laboratory. That’s where it all came from. Quirky as the lyrics are, it all sounds cool to me and really different to what I had done before.
The Pier: Mista J you get to play some tasty bass lines in that song. It’s great to see Ballyhoo! is still bringing the funk.
Mista J: Yeah that’s was a really fun song to do. It is really influenced by Flea and the Chili Peppers. I don’t study his licks so much as just the idea of the bass being the lead instrument. Not too many people will play that role. There’s Flea, Les Claypool, and Marcus Miller. I like providing the foundation, but I also like to come out to the front and a song like Body Parts allows me to open up and get a little funky. Actually so much of Ballyhoo! does, just by the way our songs form with Howi playing rhythm and singing allows me the freedom to play more melodic and funkier bass lines.
The Pier: Overall, Ballyhoo! has always played a wide variety of styles, Howi do you ever have difficulty convincing the guys to explore a new direction?
Howi: The guys are up for anything. Though it has happened where I have come to them with a song that sounds a little bit too much like a past song we have released and they will straight up tell me. That’s where more of an argument would come from. My brother Donald is always like we need to start playing some hard shit. He listens to Tool and Slipknot and all these metal bands. He loves playing what we play. He would love to play some Primus type stuff and we will eventually. I am not opposed to it and as soon as it hits me we will do it. There is no boundaries with the band and that’s what I love about it. I see the band going in even bigger directions on future records.
Mista J: Yeah we have very open minds when it comes to music. Everyone in the band appreciates different kinds of music. I probably have the strangest iPod out of the group. If you looked at each of our iPod’s it really does explain who we are. For me I have to skip a lot of the tracks for the guys when we are in the van and its on shuffle, mine will go from Miles Davis, to Busta Rhymes to avante garde jazz, and of course a huge amount of Beastie Boys. It goes everywhere man. We are always trying to keep it interesting to us and we try to play a lot of different styles of music. Donald always wants to get to the heavier stuff, I want to play the more evolved funkier songs and Howi just wants to always write the best song in the world. Which is all awesome.
The Pier: So has anyone told you 18 tracks on one album is fairly ambitious?
Howi: There are a few reasons why we went with the 18 tracks on this album. We heard from certain industry people, the machine you know? They told us not to put that many songs on a record. You just can’t do it. Because the attention span of an average listener is pretty short, that many songs is just too hard to grasp and indulge yourself into. However, I felt the songs that we had recorded seemed to all belong together and to leave them out would be an injustice. People would say, "all you need is 14 solid songs" and I would say, "well what if you have 18 solid songs? Why would we want to deny people that?"
If you are a casual Ballyhoo! fan you can take the whatever three songs you like and throw them on to your iPod. But if you are a hardcore Ballyhoo! fan you are going to appreciate the fact there is 18 songs and you can listen for an hour on a road trip. The album is not for industry, the album is for ourselves and fans of our music. There are no fucking rules when you are an indie band.
Another reason for the 18 was that we feel like we have put out every song that we felt was worthy to put on wax. As the year goes by now we are going to be writing brand new material and have a whole new set of songs for us to be excited about for the next time. Songs like Freestyle and Waiting were songs that we have had forever and we thought they sound great now, we can’t not put them on the album. We ended up only cutting three songs from the record. The damn thing would have been 21 songs long.
The Pier: Tell us about the cover art for the album? The cover follows the title really closely.
Howi: It took me a couple months to get really happy with it. I didn’t even really think about it and it kind of just came out with putting the two beer mugs clinging together. I then thought that was perfect, what do you do at bar when you say cheers? It kind of the ultimate union, and that action is a type of respect – here we are let’s drink up. When I look at the cover that’s what I feel.
The next thing is the collage on the inside you are going to see. We sent out bulletins on MySpace asking if anyone had pictures with us from a show or wherever and to send them in. I took them all and spent four hours putting them together in this huge collage under the disk. It came out awesome, all these pictures of our fans and us all goofing off. The whole thing feels so good and that is what we were going for.
The Pier: That's great. I have always wanted to ask, what’s it like being in a band with your brother and having your family involved?
Howi: It’s awesome. I think we have that womb connection. We started the band when I was 14 and he was 12. Here we are today 13 years later and it’s definitely awesome. We will fight with each other now and then, but at the end of the day we are rocking out with each other. I can’t imagine ever looking back and seeing someone else there but him on the kit. It is a great feeling and it’s a great feeling to have your family involved in this and are doing it together.
My dad is one of our biggest fans, but he would say our little brother is our biggest fan and that he is fan number two. He totally supports what we do. My mom before she died totally supported what we were doing, that was back in the high school days. The band had only been going on for a year and she would come out to the shows during her chemo and hang out and everything. I have her here on video somewhere saying we did a great job. It was funny too, anytime we would fuck up on our report cards she would say, “no shows for us for a month.” I am sure she would love to see what we are doing today.
The Pier: Oh for sure, like how exciting it must be about the upcoming 311 shows?
Howi: Man it is crazy. I don’t know if it has really hit me yet. I think we are like “fuck yeah” we are playing with 311 and it has been a dream of ours since we were teenagers and now it is finally happening. I don’t think it will hit me until we play that first chord on stage for their crowd. We are so stoked about it and we are going to go from high to super high once we are there.
Mista J: Yeah most of the time I don’t get nervous for shows, being on stage is where I feel most comfortable and I have to say I will be a little nervous as we will be playing in front of our peers in 311. Also learning to capture a crowd of that magnitude is a whole other element. Capturing a crowd of 500 in a small bar we have always done that really well. Capturing 5,000 in an amphitheatre is going to be a whole other beast to tackle. It is going to be awesome and we are going to throw down as best we can.
The Pier: Have you talked about your approach to these shows as a band?
Mista J: Yeah a little bit, but being on stage and doing this is what we do. I think the biggest thing will be to decide on the song selection for the shows. I think we need to keep the reggae down a little bit and have more of the rocking and in your face songs. We are the starting group so people are going to want to be fired up. So we will be rocking the Friend Zone, Everything, Phantoms, Groove Rock, and all the stuff that is high energy. Of course we will have to throw Cali Girl in there somewhere too.
The Pier: What do you have planned after the release of the album?
Howi: We are planning to sling this record and sell the shit out of it. We have these record release parties coming up after the 311 shows. Those are going to be insane and then after that we are leaving for Florida for two weeks. Hopefully we will hit the rest of the country by the end of summer. I am pretty confident the West Coast is going to happen by the end of summer.
Mista J: Yeah touring and touring. I feel our music is universal, it could be played on a college station or a rock station, it is such a diverse album that I think if everyone gives it a chance to listen to it they are going to find something they like on this album. So it will be us living in van and playing anywhere we can.
The Pier: Any final messages for your fans, before this next step in the Ballyhoo! adventure?
Howi: Thanks to everyone that stuck with us over these long years. This new album is for all of you, as well as all the new fans that have come along. We hope the record touches everyone in some way and makes them feel good. We set out to put out good music that people can sing to, cry to and drive to. We hope people dig it.
Thanks Howi and Mista J for sharing the lowdown on what is going to be an insane time over the next few months or years.
Check out:
Cheers can be preordered online by clicking the image below:
