PEPPER INTERVIEW
(L to R: Bret Bollinger, Kaleo Wassman & Yesod Williams)
Hawaiian reggae rock three-piece, Pepper, just recently embarked on its 2007 US Fall Tour supported by the newer generation of superstars The Expendables and Passafire. Pepper drummer and all-round awesome guy, Yesod Williams, stopped by for hopefully his first of many visits to The Pier for an upfront and personal discussion into the Pepper reggae and rock 'n' roll world.
The Pier: Hey Yesod, firstly I saw the live stream from Las Vegas earlier this week. It was amazing to see Vegas raise the bar so high straight off the bat for this tour?
Yesod: Yeah, it is like a double edge sword. Starting in Vegas is real cool, but almost ending in Vegas is a little better, as you always blow it out in Vegas. I don’t know if you saw it on the live stream, but everyone from Hawaii calls Las Vegas the ninth Hawaiian Island and that’s because tons of people from Hawaii move there. The college is real big for scouting people from Hawaii and a lot of our big Polynesian friends will go to Vegas and do security at the clubs and the hotels.
Las Vegas is great and is almost like playing in Hawaii cause the whole crowd is strictly from Hawaii, so it is pretty inevitable the bar is going to be high and we always look forward to it.
The Pier: You guys co-headlined the Warped Tour this year. What was that like and were you well received amongst all the punk and emo kids?
Yesod: It was cool and yeah we did stick out like a sore thumb, but it was a good thing you know? In the past when we have been on the tour we were on the Volcom stage or the side stage. There you are basically fighting for a crowd, but being on the main stage there is already a built-in crowd even if no one knows you. So we were definitely sticking out and caught people’s attention, as we didn’t sound like all the other bands playing.
I think it was the perfect year for Pepper too, cause this whole emo thing is on its way out. So we would always say on stage, ‘welcome everybody to your half hour emo break for the day.’ Even the emo kids with the mascara and tight pants were laughing. It was us, Killswitch Engage and the legends like Pennywise and Bad Religion definitely stabbing the final nail into that emo coffin on the Warped Tour for sure.
I think it went by real well and it’s good for anyone’s band to be on that tour, cause it pays off for next time you come round later on tour. I mean tonight we were in Denver and we are playing a place called the Fillmore, which is over two times as big as the last place we played before Warped Tour. Kevin Lyman has done a great job at building bands on that independent level.
The Pier: So what’s it like touring non-stop? Pepper is one of those bands that has developed its following on the road.
Yesod: We are firm believers in the slow build, the longer it takes to build the castle the longer it is going to take to fall down. We love it though. The only real bad aspects is it gets to you being away from home so much and you go through certain times on the tour where you feel that you are going crazy because you haven’t been home in so long. The second thing is, being from Hawaii we all grew up surfing, as you know most places in the US you can’t surf so that is another sacrifice for being on the road so much.
What’s funny about touring is that we are a band that enjoys touring way more than making albums. Then we made the last album, No Shame, and it was such a good experience, as we worked with a few different producers that were all musician first turned producers like Nick Hexum from 311, Tony Kanal from No Doubt and Paul Leary from the Butthole Surfers just to name a few. They could really see through our eyes being musicians themselves. It was a real fun environment and one of those things where first priority was fun and second priority is recording the songs, you know what I mean? It sounds counter-productive, but it turned out to be the opposite and the recording and the energy is so much better. Nowadays it is pretty much up and up, being in the studio or being on tour is pretty much enjoyed the same.
The Pier: That’s sweet you found a way to enjoy recording more. So how did you end up working with all those different producers? Was it through recording In With the Old at the Hive (311 Studios)?
Yesod: Yeah that is kind of where the seed was planted. We did In With The Old with Ron St Germain and he got us into the Hive Studio because of his long relationship with 311 and that’s where we first met the 311 guys. For such a huge band they are so down to earth.
Couple of years went by where we toured with the In With the Old album and it was funny, a song (Give it Up) from the album before, Kona Town, hit the radio pretty strongly. So we had all these major labels offering us deals, but the contract we had with Volcom was that we had to sign with a Warner Bros owned label. We ended up signing with Atlantic right after that had kind of happened. Just days after we signed, Nick Hexum called us up cause he was starting a label and was like, ‘I hear you guys might be signing another deal and I just wanna see if you might be interested in my label?' We couldn’t cause we just signed with Atlantic. He was like, ‘Well maybe you can send me some demos and maybe I can produce it?’
It started with just a plan of him doing three songs. We sent him some demos and he chose his favorites. Next thing we knew three songs turned into eight songs. So that theory of having fun first and recording second actually turned out to be so productive we ended up doing almost three times the amount of songs than we originally planned.
That even carried over when we hooked up with Paul Leary cause our management has known him for years. Working with him back in the day with Sublime, so that’s how that initial contact was made. That was the same thing, let's pick three songs, oh ok those songs are done let’s do three more. At that point we had a good 14 songs done. So we rounded it out by doing one with Tony Kanal and a couple with Michael Patterson who was the only ‘producer’ producer we worked with, but even then he still created a real mellow and unobtrusive working environment.
It actually took the longest it has ever taken us to record an album, mainly due to all the jumping around to different studios. So six months went by before it was done, but it seemed quick. As they say, ‘time flys when you are having fun.'
The Pier: Now No Shame has been out for over a year now, are you happy with how it has ultimately been received?
Yesod: It’s been great, but in my opinion the record label didn’t really come close to what they could have done to promote it. I think that is a problem with all major record labels. These days they really have tunnel vision and focus on what’s on the radio and if you don’t sound like what is on the radio they are too nervous to put any money into you or even manpower.
It was just a one album deal and it set us on a perfect plateau where we can release our own albums now through our own label, Law Records. So that’s what we are going to be doing from now on. In a sense it was great; it got us out of this other record deal so we are free agents now and we made a killer record in No Shame and we own that record now too.
As far as how the album was received I think it has been great. A real good sign of No Shame is that we play pretty much every song from it live. Where with our other records there was always a few tracks that kind of never really would see the light of day on stage. That’s kind of like our goal now. We will look at a song and think of whether we can realistically play it live and if not, what’s the point to put it on an album when we can make a stronger point by being able to play it live.
For example, I Like Your Style from No Shame is this keyboard, electronic sounding track but we figured out a way to play it live and we do that song live almost every night. So that is a real gratifying sign when all the songs can be played live. I think all the fans really dig it and I think it is the first album we have carved out our own niche as far as our sound goes. You can hear a song from that album and know straight away it is from Pepper.
The Pier: You guys sure seem to generate a lot of material. Is that why you put out To Da Max earlier this year?
Yesod: Yeah big time. That To Da Max is actually going to be an ongoing series of CDs. As it says on the tile, ‘Mistake and Outtakes.’ We have so much of that. There are even songs that might not make it on the next To Da Max series, but older songs we might bring back we haven’t used on a CD.
To answer your question, Kaleo and Bret are fucking vending machines of music. They are constantly writing music and it is unbelievable. I am a bit slower. This new album we are about to be making, I got a batch of six to eight song ideas. However, these guys are constantly pumping out stuff though. It’s a blessing as I am sure there are some bands out there that will struggle to write one album, while we struggle to weed the songs down to one album you know what I mean?
There’s a wealth of material and that’s just the new stuff. As with the To Da Max stuff, what we are going to do is release the new Pepper album in 2008, six to eight months following that we will release another To Da Max. That’s kind of going to be the plan just to get it all out, otherwise all this material is just going to sit there and no one will be able to enjoy it.
The Pier: So speaking of writing for the next album, do you have any recording plans for it yet?
Yesod: This new album we are going to put a lot of songs on it and with all this material why not. It is fairest to our fans to put as much music as we can on there. So people can expect 15 to 16 songs on it. We are going with only one producer for this CD and have Paul Leary produce the whole thing. We are also going to only use the studio we worked at with him before, Total Access in Redonda. The guy who owns it, Wyn (Davis), is such a cool guy and it is such a cool family environment.
As far as a title goes we haven’t thought of a title yet, but we know the plan is to record it in January and February. We are going to be releasing it in the summer time and then we are going to head out with Slightly Stoopid next summer doing an amphitheatre tour like they did with G Love this summer. We will be doing those 3,000 to 5,000 seat places to help support the release of the album. It will be similar venues to this year’s Summer Haze Tour and the only other thing the same will be Slightly Stoopid in the line-up.
The Pier: So a lot of people have been asking for a Slightly Stoopid, Pepper and The Expendables tour. Is this going to be it?
Yesod: In my eyes I think it would be awesome for the tour to be us, Slightly Stoopid, The Expendables and Passafire. That would be a fucking perfect world for me. We have to see cause you always have the promoters input. They will want to have an established name opening up. I think this summer was Ozomatli which is a pretty established and considerable band, so we’ll see. But those bands I mentioned is what I am going to push for - I will tell you that much.
The Pier: One thing that always amazes new folks that go see you guys live for the first time is how full-on and energetic you are. I feel like most new people to your live show always expect a real mellow affair and then they get the shock of their lives.
Yesod: Yeah, that is a bit of common misconception that our show must be real laid back and real mellow. And we are like, ‘nah we are not about that. We like to put on a high octane rock show.’ That’s because of the music we grew up listening to and the shows we have seen, that’s what we appreciate when we go to see a live show. That’s what we are all about. If we don’t leave it all out there every night, then we haven’t done our job you know what I mean? We don’t want to take anything back on the bus with us. It has to be left on stage and with all the fans.
The Pier: Oh yeah, that’s a really cool attitude. So you have a video coming out for the song Your Face? What can you tell us about it? I hear it tries to capture some this of live insanity.
Yesod: Yeah that is coming out any day now. It’s real cool. We got the idea from the old Bon Jovi video Wanted Dead or Alive. Which is all live footage pretty much. So our video is basically a montage of live footage and slow-motion footage of Pepper hanging out. We kind of took the whole premise from that video and we had a friend, Ariel Willeford, who is a director who makes a lot of successful surf videos film it. He came out and spent about two-three weeks on the Warped Tour with us and basically had the camera on all day and night. He put together this really cool video. They have always been my favorite videos, the live videos cause you can really capture that energy.
The Pier: The live DVD you put out a while ago is fantastic and then there is the great Searching for Haj DVD, where you guys get to demonstrate your acting chops. Any plans to release another DVD sometime soon?
Yesod: Yeah they are both kind of different. The Searching for Haj DVDs, there is only one now but there will be more, are kind of like come and hang out with Pepper and see what it is like backstage or on tour. Then there are the live shows. That first one was two shows back to back at the Troubadour (Hollywood). So we took the best of both nights and edited it into one show.
We are actually dying to make another live DVD, that last one was great but we feel we have really stepped up our live show tenfold since then. We wanna get something more current that represents our live show these days. The thing is being free agents now we can do any of that kind of stuff, which is great. When you are with a record label, lots of different opinions can get the way. So we have a real cool feeling of freedom right now.
The Pier: Nice. Let’s talk about your record label Law Records then. What made you want to start a record label in the first instance?
Yesod: I have always looked up to Fat Mike from NOFX and them having Fat Wreck Chords and of course there’s Epitaph. When I was growing up in Hawaii we got all that music from surf videos. They would have music like Pennywise and Bad Religion. When I first heard Sublime they did that Descendents' cover. So that was the first time I got to hear all that independent music.
It got to the point where I would buy anything with an Epitaph or Fat Wreck Chords logo on it because they were labels with credibility. You knew if you bought one of those CDs from those labels you were going to like the music. If you look at a CD that says fucking whatever major label name on it, they just don’t have the credibility of putting out real solid music all the time. They are just trying to sell records not support good music.
So I have always looked up at them and the whole Law Records thing came about from my dad. Back in the eighties he was in a hair metal band called The Law. The logo for Law Records is actually their band’s logo (haha). They were doing really good and who knows if they hadn’t broken up I might have had some huge shoes to fill or something like that.
They were at a point where they were selling out all the places on the Sunset Strip, back in the Motley Crue days. Once you got to that point of selling out all those clubs people were starting to look at you. Nowadays, it’s more like, ‘how about you sell out every fucking club across the country and then we will talk’ (haha). They were at that point where they had made an album, but weren’t going to sign with anyone and were initially going to release it on Law Records. Just before it was released, they were living the full living in decadence lifestyle and doing tons of cocaine and all that stuff. The drummer got busted for cocaine and went to jail for a long time. So the band broke up before lightning was going to strike.
So we got the idea because of our first album Givin’ It. We brought that album over to California with us, when we first moved here and had Volcom selling it for us. We realized that we paid for that album and that we owned the master. So right there we were like, ‘let’s re-release it and add some more songs to it on our own label.’ So that’s when Law Records became a concrete idea.
Eventually we hooked up with Arena Productions who we grew up with and put out that hip hop CD, then The Supervillains, Passafire and now Pepper’s CDs. We are super pumped I think we are getting to that point I was talking about with Epitaph etc. We got that label with integrity now and kids have trust in us when they see a Law Records logo on a CD.
I am almost envisaging a second coming of Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords. Cause our good friends Slightly Stoopid have their own label as well, where they are now releasing all their albums on and The Expendables too. Between the two of us I think we can forge ahead and be the cool new labels.
The Pier: Good luck with that, I'm sure both labels will do well. So what else does the band do in its limited down time? Sounds like you are pretty busy with Pepper and the label.
Yesod: We try to live what people call normal lives. I am not saying that in a bad way, but we enjoy getting away from it all, the whole music business. It keeps us sane. When I am at home, personally we hang out with family and friends. We grew up surfing so we try and get in the water any time there are waves. I golf a lot too and over the last few years I have got really into it. That will become my next passion besides surfing. Then we eat as much sushi as we can! (haha)
The Pier: I hear the Kona Town Music Festival is going to be on this year in December. So you are going back to your homeland for that?
Yesod: It’s going to be on December 15 and it is going to be really cool as it will be on the football field of the high school we graduated from. We are really pumped and it’s like one of those big achievements in the whole timeline of Pepper for sure.
We got a couple of really cool local acts playing, Iration they are from the same island as us. There is also a legendary Jawaiian band called Ho'aikane. There’s us, of course, and this year it looks like we are going to be bringing over Pennywise as the big special guest. The whole theory behind the festival is to give the kids something to look forward to and enjoy. Growing up there we know not many bands ever make it out to Kona so we want to fix that for the kids these days.
The Pier: That's really cool. Ok one final question and it is a little personal. However, I got to ask what is Bret doing with his hair and beard? Have you seen the movie Knocked Up? Is it like that? Is he doing it for a bet - he has to grow out all his hair for a year?
Yesod: Oh yeah. I love that movie. Every chance I get I give it to him. I like the one, ‘whatever late era John Lennon.' That shit is so funny. He actually cut it down a little bit on this tour. I guess his lady at home wasn’t having it and so he had to trim that bitch up a little bit. He still has the nuts mane coming off his face though (haha). I personally think it is some of his eighties roots coming out in him if you know what I mean? (haha)
Thanks to Yesod for hanging out at The Pier and answering all our questions (even the hairy ones). Make sure to go catch Pepper on their Fall Tour and you might even be lucky enough to hear some of the band's new songs.
Also check out some more Pepper goodness on the interweb here: Pepper Web-Site Pepper MySpace