PASSAFIRE INTERVIEW

(L to R: Ted Bowne, Will Kubley, Adam Willis & Nick Kubley)

It’s about to be the biggest the two months of Passafire’s career. The band is going to drop its second album, Submersible, on Pepper’s Law Records no less and has scored themselves as an opening act on the most anticipated Fall Tour of the year; warming up the crowds for Pepper and The Expendables. Both these opportunities will bring the band a new found national exposure and by the sound of things Passafire is ready to embrace it.

On way to a show the hard working Passafire calls The Pier for a chat.

The Pier: Hey guys, first up how would you describe your music to those who haven’t heard the band yet?

Adam Willis (keys): We specifically describe it as reggae rock. That’s sort of the genre that we fall under. There are dub elements for what stuff that we do live and that is on the album, but we are also a sort of a progressive reggae rock band. As far as our inspirations go I think we all listen to a lot of different things. I know all of us listen to the classic roots reggae, but all of us too have our own musical tastes.

Ted Bowne (guitars/vocalist): I think we are influenced a lot by band called John Brown’s Body, especially in the type of reggae that we play. The Police and The Clash were like the first two reggae rock bands and then there is 311. Those three bands are who we really look up to and try to follow in their footsteps.

The Pier: So how did you originally get together?

Ted: Basically we all met through the Savannah College of Art and Design. Nick, Adam and I all met there and we just kind of messed around. We wanted to play shows and we didn’t really have a goal of making a band in the beginning, but we kind of just stuck around (haha).

Nick Kubley (drums): Yeah, we originally formed to do a school project and then we decided it sounded pretty good so we got a bassist and started doing gigs around town.

The Pier: What is the East Coast reggae scene like at the moment? You have been around for a few years now, has it grown over that time?

Adam: You get a lot of groups that do the roots reggae thing here like SOJA, John Brown’s Body, Giant Panda Gorilla Dub Squad and groups like that. Whereas us, I think is more the sort of progressive reggae rock. I wouldn’t say the scene is that strong out here at the moment. You do have your groups that are playing, but they are not touring heavily or really trying to get out there.

Ted: The bands out here are not as recognized nationally as the West Coast I think.

The Pier: You’re good friends with Ballyhoo! right? Howi (vocalist/guitarist) has been bugging me to interview you guys for a while.

Adam: Ok, yeah he is a very good friend of mine. I like all the guys in Ballyhoo!. They have been doing this for a while and are coming out with a new record soon. They, I would say are probably one of the strongest bands in the reggae rock genre that we have played with that are really pushing to make the genre more well known.

The Pier: Nice. Speaking of exposure, your songs Laquigi and Hypocrite were featured in the 2005 Professional Windsurfing Association Hawaii Pro DVD. How did that come about?

Adam: I’m not sure. I think they contacted us a few years ago. We have sort of been fortunate with things like this, where companies will contact us to be involved in extreme sports type videos. It also helps that Florida is right below us because you get a lot of surfing and that kind of thing out there.

Ted: A guy came to our show one time in Savannah and he is actually a British guy and he said he worked with some kind of windsurfing association and he wanted to put one of our songs in a video. This was just when we were starting out and tons of people were saying things like that to us. Nothing ever really came out of it and so we said yes thinking that’s the last we will hear of it. Next thing we know we get a copy of it in the mail, so that was kind of pretty cool seeing one of our songs on the video.

The Pier: Let’s talk a bit about your new album Submersible. How did signing with Law Records come about? That’s a pretty big deal.

Adam: A year ago we played a show in Atlanta for a radio station, 99X, that we are pretty close with. Every year 311 does a huge show there and they were looking for a band to do pre-party thing. Pepper was touring with 311 at that time and they got a copy of our first CD and Yesod (Williams) shot me an email about three months or so after we met them. We started out on a friendly tip and it kind of progressed where we told them we were planning on recording another album and I sent them a copy of live recordings of the new material and they really liked it. It’s almost more like a family with them than a label/artist relationship I would say.

We really want to thank Pepper and Law Records for picking us up and giving us this opportunity to tour. We are thrilled to be in this situation and are trying to enjoy it for what it is worth.

(Passafire rocking the 99X sponsored 311 pre-party)

The Pier: So how did the recording of the album go? Was there anything in particular you were setting out to achieve?

Will Kubley (bass): Well we were just looking to further expand the sound we had created thus far. I joined the band a year ago, just as we were starting to write new songs so that kind of changed the sound up a little bit, which you will be able to hear on this next album.

The Pier: Oh yeah, you can definitely hear your influence. The bass is very prominent in the new songs I have heard. What or who is your biggest influence on your bass playing?

Will: I started out and am mostly a guitarist and so that ability translated to bass is probably my biggest influence. That also brings in the effects part of my rig that I do, that is also from me playing guitar.

The Pier: So Where did you record the new album?

Will: We went to Long Island Recording Studios in Lexington Kentucky. We got an apartment there for a month and we were in the studio Monday through Saturday cranking it out. We are all really proud of how it turned out.

The Pier: Cool, now who did your album artwork I have to say it is one of the best covers I have seen in a while.

Adam: Justin Siddons is the artist, he is a good friend of Nick, he is based out of Chicago and his company is called Digital Ephemera (digitalephemera.net). From the beginning he really had a lot of good ideas and we wanted to do something more like narrative with the artwork, instead of it just being like graphic design-y. Which seems to be kind of the trend at the moment. We wanted to incorporate the whole submersible aspect and he really just took the idea and ran with it and came out with amazing work.

We definitely picked him for his very distinct style and when you see the album and you open it up it is an eight panel digipak deal. It is like a story he came up with and put together. That’s one of the things we are psyched about. We are really proud of how the music sounds, but we are also excited that the artwork turned out as nice as we wanted it to be.

We approach everything we do in that way. All of us come from an artistic background, so we are very picky about what we like and what we are trying to do. We all decided when we first started doing this, whatever we put out has to be almost like a piece of art. Even though these days a lot of people do digital downloads and we are all for that, for whatever method you get our music. At the end of the day that is great. People who buy the CD will get more if they really look at it, and even feel it (it has a matte finish). It is something we take pride in by putting out this art.

The Pier: I prefer the physical product so I look forward to seeing and now touching this finished album. Now you must be excited about this up-coming tour with Pepper and The Expendables?

Adam: We are all extremely excited. It is going to be a huge thing for all of us. We are all really eager to get out there and tour. We have always felt that way and believe if you really want to succeed as a band like ours you have to be on the road all the time touring. There is no better way to do it than this way. We have taken baby steps for so long now, so it’s going to be great for us to get this break and get out in front of the crowds and try to win them over.

The Pier: Are there any places you are excited to go you haven’t been before?

Adam: Absolutely. We are excited just to be travelling and getting to go to any of these places. Chicago will be cool as Nick and Will are from Northern Indiana, so that’s close to home for them. I’m from Washington DC originally and we are playing at the 9:30 Club, which is the club I use to go to and see live music at all the time.

Ted: These guys don’t even know this yet. I grew up close to DC, about two hours east of DC in Maryland and my friend Mike has gotten a bus to get people from my hometown to DC and back that night. There is also another bus for the Baltimore and DC area. So there is going to be two buses of people there for us that night, so that should be good.

Adam: Me personally I am excited to get out to the West, because I visited there when I was younger and I have these memories of it being really beautiful and scenic. Again we all love travel, so we are excited about the whole trip.

The Pier: Ok, I sometimes ask what people’s favorite summer hang outs are. What are Passafire’s?

Adam: My all time favorite place to be is where my family is from and I get to go there once a year and that’s Denmark. My mother is Danish and my family has a house there and I have a lot of friends too, as I used to go to school there. So it is very relaxing for me to be there and it also helps to get away from all the hustle and bustle of the US cities.

The Pier: Are you hoping to go over and play shows there one day then?

Adam: We are talking perhaps of touring Europe within the next year. I don’t know when and if that will happen. I would love to take the whole band there. Ted has been there about four years ago and he got to see where I lived for a while.

Nick: Hmmm, my favorite summer place is back home near a lake called Pretty Lake. My Grandma has a cottage out there and it’s great just to be relaxing out there.

Ted: Yeah as for mine, I don’t get to go there a lot but I used to when I was younger. It’s in upstate New York and it’s called Keuka Lake. My family used to have a house there and we used to go there every summer. That was highlight of my summer every year as a kid. We recently got to go there on our North East tour over the winter this year. We had a few days off and my dad thought it would be absurd if we had that time off and be in that area and not go and hang out at the lake. We had really relaxing time and unwind of being on the road.

Well I hope Passafire enjoyed that break as it seems the band has been busy and will continue to be for sometime. Thanks to Passafire for the interview and Chris (Finegreen) and Yesod Williams for organizing it.

You can preorder the new album (Submersible) and listen to songs from it by clicking on the picture link below.