Stephen from the totally cool band, Stephen Kellogg and Sixers took some time out of the bands current tour to chat with us a little bit about their album, touring, Rock Boat, the response from new bands, and what happens to a band after they’ve been playing shows together for five years straight.
I first saw you guys when you were out on tour with Hanson this past spring. What was it like touring with those guys?
Touring with Hanson was great! I mean they’re great guys, and touring with them was cool. They’re good guys, they’ve got a passionate fan base and it was kind of amazing having watched them on TV as little boys and then kind of like seeing them and you know, being around them, working with them, writing and playing tunes together and stuff. It was cool.
So, you had listened to Hanson to before you went on tour with them?
I mean I had been hearing about how they… you know, that whole thing of “Wow, Hanson’s a real band”. Because they were under the radar for a while and I had been hearing like, “Wow, they’re really good. You gotta go check “em out.” Then when it came up as an opportunity to be touring together, it was like “Oh cool!” So, I did check them out and it was great… it was fun.
I spoke with Taylor a few months ago, while you guys were on tour and we were talking about the Annual Rock Boat. He told me about how you guys had actually done it before?
Yeah, we did it last year and we’re doing it again this year. They’re doing it as well so; we’ll all be on it. He had asked me about it too and… you know it’s such a great musical community. I think in these times, you have your “One Tree Hill” and it’s just a community for people who watch the show. Hanson’s fans are definitely a community and I think with the Sixers fans it’s the same thing. So, stuff like the Rock Boat becomes really appealing. It really fits into the value of the way we do stuff.
I mean on a boat for days just listening to music can be quite a time for a band and avid music lovers.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I would love to be apart of that.
Go girl! You should do it!
I should, shouldn’t I? I actually have a friend who’s going in January, and she’s going for Hanson. So, I’ll be sure to let her know you’ll be there too!
Yeah! Please do.
The fans of “One Tree Hill”, they’re – like you said – not only a dedicated community, but they’re also very opinionated and feel very strongly about the music on the show. So, my question is – how was the response from the viewers for you guys?
I think it’s been great. I honestly didn’t know that was a characteristic of the listeners, it made me kind of nervous just hearing you say it; I’m like “uh oh, I hope everybody’s happy about it.” I know it was certainly exciting for us, and the song that they used has definitely had a much bigger listening ship in the last two weeks. They used it and now we’ve been getting more requests for it at shows and stuff because it wasn’t a song we played all that often, only because I play piano on it and I’m not a very good piano player. So, I’m like “uh oh, I better go take piano lessons so we can do this song.” [laughs] But, it’s been great as far as I know and I hope everybody was happy to hear it and stuff. It seems they were.
You made a music video for the song. It’s an animated video that’s kind of done in the style of your album cover? Who came up with the idea for the video?
There’s a really cool animator, Olney, is her name and she has gotten into a conversation with our manager and had this idea to take all the artwork from the new record, which was artwork where we had a symbol for each song on the record. I’m really old school in that way, I get really into artwork as a piece of the whole album and I think you miss that in iTunes. You don’t really get that thing you can hold in your hand. We did that artwork almost a year and half ago, so it was really exciting when she was like, “I want to take that and I want to animate it and do stuff with it.” And she has a great… I wish I could give everybody it… but, she sent us the symbols of what everything in that video means and when you watch it, it sheds so much light on the meaning of her video too, but it’s really touching… like in that scene with the little ducklings. I like that scene a lot.
I loved it. I’m such an avid music fan but, I’m totally into art and graphic design. That was the main thing I was paying attention to in the video, so it was great.
Oh that’s cool! I mean, you saying that too makes me think we should put the little symbols and codes up and enhance the viewers’ enjoyment. But yeah, it’s good. She’s super, I mean she and I got on the phone and talked for like twenty minutes about what the song meant, how it was written, and then really the rest was just her hard work and her team that put the video together.
Music and art definitely go hand-in-hand, I think. Then, with having the song played on “One Tree Hill”, why do you think music is such an important part of TV and film?
Well, I mean because now it’s kind of the new “radio’. It’s just a great tool for the way people find out about music. You know, and in some ways I think it’s replacing the radio in terms of the way of mouth. The radio has gotten to a place where everybody kind of knows the music that’s on the radio is there because someone pays for that exposure. The TV and film thing is a little bit different because it does have the fit the mood and with a show like “One Tree Hill”, where people actually… you know, where that’s part of your whole experience, like “what new music am I going to hear tonight?” That’s just so exciting for an artist, like for us, to just be under the radar and have somebody take us under their wing in that way is so cool. I mean, it’s such a gift. We’re so appreciative to the makers of “One Tree Hill” and the music supervisor because it really is such a great way to reach new people.
Oh absolutely, I think after that episode aired our inboxes flooded with fans saying like “Oh, what was the name of that song that played at the end of the episode? It was so good!” You know, they have their eyes focused on the show but, then their ears alert as to what they’re going to hear next. Even the score music on “One Tree Hill”, the fans are so dedicated.
Aww, I mean it’s revolutionary, it’s very cool. It’s just exciting.
New fans that may have gotten into your music from the Hanson tour or even “One Tree Hill” they’re just discovering you guys, but you’ve been actually making music for years. Can you tell me a little bit about how Stephen Kellogg and Sixers came to be?
Well, the band basically came about because we had been friends sort of in passing and then we all graduated from the University of Massachusetts and we were working different jobs. I had played a lot of solo shows and stuff like that, basically just working, and we really put the band together based on the premise of friends… wanting to spend time with people you like. It wasn’t out of any great musical vision, it was more of like “Hey, these are great guys and I wonder if we put a band together and work hard then we could find another way to make a living that was more fun than what we were all doing.” So, that was like the bond that put the band together, it was friendship. This tour that we’re doing right now is the five year anniversary of our first real tour when we were able to leave our jobs and make music a full-time thing. While we’re totally like a new band to the mass majority of the world, you know, we’ve definitely spent like eight to ten months to a year of the last five years all together out on the road, seeing the world and playing shows. It’s been a great adventure.
How do you think your music evolved over those 5 years?
That’s a good question because I think our music has evolved a bit, but I think we’ve evolved as people mostly. I don’t think at its core that our music is that much different then it was five years ago. We have a better idea of how to present it and maybe we’ve gotten a little better at our instruments, we’re better players… or you could say that the band has gotten a bit “rootsier” then it was in the beginning. We might have been closer to like a pop band, and now we might be a bit more of a roots-rock band. You know, essentially those elements have all stayed the same, but really has changed because I think we’ve changed as people. We’ve learned to appreciate what we have, and we’ve learned to appreciate the moment a lot more than I think in the beginning. You just want to get somewhere all the time, like “well, if we could get this big then we’d be happy,” you know? You realize how insatiable that is, and so there’s been a lot of healthy, hard, fought for lessons that I think we picked up, and that’s what I think is so different. Now we have a point-of-view to offer people that we maybe didn’t have five years ago. Hopefully we were able to encourage more people and be braver about the things that we stand for now then maybe in the beginning when you’re just like “I hope everybody likes me”.
Oh yeah…
And I’m not saying we still don’t feel that. We still feel those emotions, everybody wants to be liked but there’s so much that’s dear to me and it’s so important to have a grasp on what I think is so beautiful in life. I think we’re trying to share that every night in a way that we might have been afraid to do in the beginning.
I definitely have a few favorite songs off your Glassjaw Boxer record. It’s almost hard to pick, but I love “Sweetest Goodbye”, “Sweet Sophia”, and of course “Hearts in Pain”. One of them in particular that I like is “4th of July”. Can you tell me a little bit about the song, you know… like the “back story’? I love knowing the back stories of how they came about.
When in doubt, always greyandgrey.com viagra cialis prix seek professional medical advice. Common reasons of Compression are Pressure on buy cialis overnight the nerve at the funny bone. On a final note, it is recommended that no more than one tablet a day and only if you take more than one free viagra samples http://greyandgrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Browne.pdf 100 mg tablet during a day. The issue is more common in aging men that are over the age of 40 and 70, viagra generika have male impotence to some degree.
Oh yeah, well that’s the good stuff. I mean that song is the centerpiece for the album, but it’s mostly just an auto-biographical song. Some songs you sort of write methodically and they take awhile, but that song… it was the third of July and we were all down somewhere in the deep South and we had been rehearsing in the back of this inn where we had been staying. It was the Stonewall Jackson Inn and we were all hanging out, getting ready to go to dinner and we started vamping on those chords. The guys were playing the chords and I just kind of sat down in the back and started writing all these lyrics. I don’t even know where… it terms of that you don’t know where anything is coming from, but it was like to add to that rhythm that was in my head, and I just kept writing verse after verse of things that had happened in my life. The whole thing is kind of thinking like, “well this is where I’m at.” You know? “This is what it is. It’s not a lot maybe, but it certainly feels good to have something that’s my own.” And that’s sort of the “American Dream.” You know, to have a little piece of something you can call your own, and it just kind of flowed out. The song doesn’t really have any errors about it, I mean it probably could’ve been produced to be more of a “hit’ or something like that, but it was always just this song that was like “well, here’s my story.” It all just sort of tumbles out. We change our set so much every single night but that’s probably the one song that we play every single night of the tour and I don’t see that changing. It’s such an intricate part of introducing who we are.
I don’t think it should’ve been produced in any other way. I like it just the way it is.
Well, thank you. That’s good!
You guys are on tour now, am I right?
Yes!
How has it been, how long will the tour be?
Well, we’re about seven and half weeks into the tour right now. So, we’ve been out since the beginning of September. After November 1st we start doing weekends because we all live in the Northeast, so we’re doing like three or four shows and then we go home for three or four days. Basically the tour goes strong until December 4th, so we’re looking at another six weeks of the tour but we do get a few breaks in November. It’s a pretty long one, but then we have a Holiday run which we always try to do something fun and original like last year we had a bunch of cool special guests from different bands, like my friend from O.A.R. and Pat McGee. We had all these different friends come out and play in our band with us for the Holiday run and we’ll do that between Christmas and New Years.
Now you have been doing a video blog! I’ve noticed a lot of bands using that as a way to stay in touch with their fans while they’re on the road. Were you approached with the idea or is that something you’ve been doing for awhile?
Well, the guy on that is Boots who plays drums in our band. He’s a filmmaker at heart, he loves to do that stuff, and he was making all these movies for a side band that he has. We did get approached like, “hey want to do a weekly blog for iLike?” I guess that’s who we do it through. It’s been really fun; he’s been making these little five minute movies every week that we’ve been on this tour. He’s the boss, we let him drive the ship… whatever he says, it’s like “you got it Boots”.
So, it’s like like behind-the-scenes antics?
Yeah! He makes them about whatever he wants to make them about, and we’re just participants in that. We don’t have a film crew so; he’s got to put it all together every night, whatever he wants to do. I just kind of sit back in “awe’ of like… how does he come up with cool ideas every week? But, they’ve been entertaining.
That’s cool though! A lot of bands who do stuff like that on out the road, they have other people taking care of their video production stuff. To have a band write the music, go out and play the music, do the video reporting. That’s cool.
Yeah, it’s great! I love that he’s the one doing it… its very new.
To someone who stumbled across this interview, hears about you guys for the first time and looking to check out some of your music. How would you capture their interest? You know, how would you describe your music or grab their attention to where they want to check out Glassjaw Boxer and hear what you’re all about?
That’s such an awesome question and it demands a nice, clear, kick ass answer, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to give one. But in terms of whom this band is… I always tell people, “If you come to our show, if you buy any of our records and spend any kind of time with it… and you don’t like it. We’re a ‘money back guaranteed’ band.” I don’t mean that in the sales pitchy way, I just mean it like… we’re for everybody. This isn’t just a limited thing that’s just like… if you like Pop music or if you like this or that. I think you just have to spend some time with it, and for those who don’t dig it… we’ll give them their money back. We try to have the most fun show humanly possible, and also have music that’s hopefully going to speaks to people’s hearts. So, it’s not a very good sound byte, but if someone said, “Why should I come see you? Why should I check out your band?” I’ll leave it to the brilliant journalistic abilities of someone like you to somehow kind of shave that into something sensible that someone could be like, “Yeah! I’m gonna go check this out!”
Thank you so much! It was fantastic speaking with you today.
Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and for checking us out. We appreciate it.
FOR MORE ON STEPHEN KELLOGG & THE SIXERS CHECK OUT:
· Official Site
· MySpace
“GLASSJAW BOXER”
IN STORES NOW!
photo: Megan Baker Photography