Spotlight on Skiba - Kerrang! Interview | April 2015
Between fronting Alkaline Trio and taking over Tom Delonge’s touring duties in Blink-182, Matt Skiba has become rock’s most in-demand man. It may come as a surprise, then, that he’s also releasing his second, sombre album with side-project Matt Skiba And The Sekrets. K! pinned down 2015’s busiest blode to bag the interview that everybody wanted…
- Hi, MATT! HOW HAVE THE SHOWS WITH BLINK BEEN?
“They were great, we had such a blast. It’s weird as hell being up there singing someon else’s songs! It was new territory for all three of us, but not necessarily in a bad way! The crowd freaked out and had such a good time, which just made it all so much fun. As of right now we don’t have any plans to play more shows. I’m excited to have a bunch of Alkaline Trio touring to do, and until that’s out of the way I won’t know what’s going on with Blink, but I’m definitely having a great time playing with those guys.”
- HAS THERE BEEN ANY TALK OF RECORDING TOGETHER? WE NEED TO KNOW!
“Yeah, we’ve been talking about it quite a bit, and we’ll just have to see what happens, won’t we?”
- IF YOU CARRY ON WITH BLINK, HOW EASY WILL IT BE TO JUGGLE THREE BANDS?!
“Wll, there are no plans as of yet to tour The Sekrets - there had been some talk about it, but then Blink came along and that got set aside. Alkaline Trio has a lot of downtime, which makes it easy to branch off and do these other projects, but IF Blink continues to tour with me then that’s two full-time bands, so it will be a case of prioritising and just balancing those two. That’s not to say that means there would never be a Sekrets tour, it just might take some finessing!”
- WITH THE NEW SEKRETS RECORD, KUTS, DID YOU INTENTIONALLY SET OUT TO GET AWAY FROM ALKALINE TRIO’S SOUND?
“Yeah, a lot of the last Sekrets record was leftover Alkaline Trio songs. I wanted to do something different this time, but, to begin with, I didn’t know in what way. I hooked up with producer Rob Schnapf (Elliot Smith, The Vines), who had never even heard of Alkaline Trio. I liked that! We collaborated a lot, playing off each other’s ideas, and I drew a lot of inspiration in the keyboards from David Bowie, too. Then when Hunter [Burgan, Bass] and Jarrod [Alexander, Drums] came in and heard what we had come up with, I let them run with whatever ideas they had. This combination resulted in a record we’re very proud of.”
- WERE THERE ANY MOMENTS WHER YOU THOUGH ‘OH GOD IS THIS TOO GREAT A DEPARTURE FOR ME?’
“No, that wasn’t an issue at all. If we liked the way it sounded, we recorded it. At one point Rob said, "Well, I still don’t know what your other band sounds like…but this is pretty fucking good, Matt!” (laughs).“
- AND WHY WAS IT CALLED KUTS?
"I wanted something snappy and back in the day when people were making records for vinyl, they often referred to each track as a 'cut.’ In no way, shape or form is it influencing anyone to go cut themselves, but there’s also some pain involved in the lyrics and I wanted that juxtaposed with the way we had been using the word in the studio.”
- WHERE WAS THAT PAIN COMING FROM?
“I was having some issues with a friend of mine that influenced the lyrics greatly. I didn’t have a hard time expressing that when we were recording, when things are troubling me they pour out. If everything’s peachy, that’s when I het a brick wall!”
- WITH IT BEING SUCH A DARK, SERIOUS RECORD, WAS THE TONE IN THE STUDIO QUITE SOMBRE?
“No, it was a blast, we had so much fun! We were watching a lot of this reality show [Homocide Hunter] and we lached onto a character Kenda. Every time I blew a take, Rob would yell, "Eat a dick, Kenda!” One day we had Chinese food delivered, and I delicately extracted the message from a fortune cookie without breaking it, and replaced it with another that said, “Eat a dick, Kenda!” He didn’t take a breath for about 45 minutes, he was laughing so hard. I get very serious about my practical jokes!“
andulkaphoto
jbbartram-illu
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
pixelskylines
vaporwave
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
gummygunk
