Interview With Jon Toogood and Karl Kippenberger of 'Shihad'
Shihad have just released their much anticipated eighth studio album 'Ignite'. We sat down with lead singer Jon Toogood and bass player Karl Kippenberger for a breakfast chat where we discussed the new album, the Killjoy and General Electric Shows, being inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame and future plans for the band.
So, the new album 'Ignite' is out today
Jon: Yep, exciting.
How long did the whole process take recording the album, from start to finish? And where did you record it?
Jon: We recorded it all in Brunswick, which is an area in Melbourne just north of the city. A lot of Kiwi's live there.
Karl: Yeah, it's a poor place. (laughs)
Jon: It reminds me of Cuba Street Wellington
Karl: It has a real big ethnic thing, so there's lots of Turkish and Lebanese food places, so the food is cheap and yummy. Sort of little clothes shops opening up because the rent is quite cheap
Jon: Good bars and great cafes
Karl: Yeah, great cafes. So it's become a really cool kinda place
Jon: I think any place where there are heaps of Kiwi's, the coffee is really good. Which is great cause we're all fucking seriously addicted.
Karl: But anyway, Tom (Shihad drummer Tom Larkin) has a studio at the back of a cafe
Oh ok
Karl: Well, there's a cafe at the back of Tom's studio. That's a better way to put it (laughs)
Jon: And we write there, arrange there and also record there...apart from drums because we do the big rock thing, and this is a small studio. It's great for doing guitars and great for vocals, bass, keyboards and everything. But anything to do with ambience we had to go to another studio called "Sing Sing", which is a bit of a classic Melbourne studio. But how long did it take?
Karl: We were writing last year. The process of actually recording....
Jon: That was about 3 months wasn't it?
Karl: Yeah. We were lucky, because we did 'Sleepeater' last year. So we recorded four tracks with drums last year, and we finished Sleepeater which we released in February this year. So in a way when we came to do the rest of the record, we only had 7 or 8 songs to start from scratch.
And the album was fully produced by yourselves?
Jon: Yep. I think we've made enough records to do that. We've got a clear idea of what we want this band to sound like. Although, it's really weird, just for expediency we had to get a guy called Dave Sardy to mix three tracks on the record. He use to be in a band called Barkmarket which we toured with years back, and then he went on to become a mix engineer and he did things like Dandy Warhols, Jet and Wolfmother. And I really like how he mixed it, but I prefer Tom's mixes to tell you the truth because he knew from the start what we wanted it to sound like. It's cool being able to do it ourselves.
Karl: We're defintely at that point where we should be doing a lot of this stuff on our own. Or at least have the skills that we've learnt over the years to be able to do all these kind of things.
Have you got a tour planned for the album?
Karl: Yeah. we're touring through Australia all through November and probably got some stuff coming up over here in December
Jon: We've got Rhythm and Vines here
Karl: Yeah, Rhythm and Vines for New Years. But we also want to do a summer tour for the album, post Christmas around New Years.
Jon: Looking forward to Rhythm and Vines, it's going to be good.
Karl: Come November it's going to get really busy.
Any chance of performing at the Big Day Out next year?
Jon: I think so. But I think it'll be a different thing though. If we do do it, it's going to have to be a different thing.
Karl: Yeah, do something different. Hopefully we're doing it.
Jon: Yeah, hopefully we're doing it.
Karl: Wouldn't be the same without us, would it? (laughs)
You've just finished the Killjoy and General Electric shows. Where did the idea for those come about?
Jon: Originally, when we'd just worked out it was our 21st anniversary, we'd seen things like when Sonic Youth came to Australia and performed 'Daydream Nation' and we were sort of thinking it would be cool if you did every single record live, in the space of a week or something. So we were looking at it and even made plans to do that and started rehearsing while we were making this record. We soon figured out though there was no way we could do this. It was a lot more work than any of us thought. There were about 96 songs that I had to know the words too, some of which I had only sung once as a kid, and I didn't want to use a tele-prompter like Ozzy Osbourne, I wanted it to be perfect and good. So this was our compromise. Just choose two albums that we like....it was more of a proof of concept you know?
Karl: Proof of whether or not we could actually go back that far and pull it off.
Jon: And it was excellent. It was so much fun. And it was really challenging but refreshing.
Must have brought back a lot of memories?
Jon: Yeah, it brought back memories of smashing my hand to bleeding stumps. There's a reason why when you play Killjoy you end up bleeding, because to make it sound like it's suppose to, you have to hit the guitar. It's crazy.
Did you enjoy playing one show over the other?
Jon: They were just totally different.
Karl: That was the beauty of it. They were two such different records.
Jon: I honestly thought that before we came over, it was going to be the same people that went to both nights. Not the case at all.
Karl: We did it in Australia as well, and we were mainly getting guys coming for Killjoy and then getting more of a mix of guys and girls for The General Electric. But when we played in Sydney, it was nothing like that at all.
Jon: That was a total cross over.
Karl: For both nights. But I think for a lot of the old school fans, will Killjoy a lot of people haven't seen us since that record came out from when they were in University or whatever. That tour was something that brought them out of the woodwork.
I remember about 10 years ago when working at the old Sounds store in the Strand Arcade late one night, Adam Jones the guitarist from Tool came in....
Jon: Mung Mung (laughs)
Karl: That's what we use to call him, and we use to call his girlfriend Princess Mung Mung.
Jon: He's got quite a pronounced brow...
Karl: And the jaw...
Jon: He was always relatively nice to us, we toured with them. But we use to call him Mung Mung.
Karl: Not to his face (laughs)
Jon: His girlfriend was beautiful.
Karl: But what were you going to say about him?
I recognised him when he came in the shop, so we turned off the music we were playing and put on Killjoy as he was browsing the store. After about five minutes he came to the counter with a Roy Orbison CD and asked for a copy of 'the CD we were playing'.
Jon: That's awesome! Roy Orbison and Killjoy!
Karl: Who buys those in tandem these days?
Jon: Mung Mung! (laughs). That's so bad, I've been here totally dissing the guy and you finish the story with he buys one of our albums. No, he's a really nice guy.
Karl: But you know what, it was his friend's band that bumped us out of our slot.
Jon: I know, I think that's actually why we started calling him Mung Mung.
Karl: Yeah, we were supposed to be their main support for the whole tour and when we get to Sydney his mates band has bumped us. We were worried because back then we were still trying to make a name for ourselves in Australia, so the worst thing we were thinking was that people would be coming up to watch Shihad and instead they were watching this horrible band.
Jon: They were shocking.
Karl: It was like a wannabe Kyuss....but failing miserably. So that's where Mung Mung came from. But I must admit there were probably two shows on that tour where their front of house sound was so fucking good. And I suppose I started to like the band less as the tour went on, but you couldn't deny how good their sound was.
Jon; Well they had the Rage Against the Machine sound guy, and they're one of the better live sounding bands ever, I think.
Karl: Yeah.
How's it been in the US since you changed your name back to Shihad from Pacifier?
Jon: We haven't been there
Not at all?
Jon: Not at all. We have no interest in it. I mean, I love New York, love San Fransisco, love Portland, love New Orleans....there's tons of things I love about America. But we were there at a weird time. We were there while Bush was in power.
Karl: And we're at a time in our career where we don't have another 3 years to sacrifice for just one country. We sacrificed half of our career for the dream of getting there, to the point of stopping going to Europe. Now we're more relaxed. We'd far prefer to go to Europe than the States.
Jon: I mean don't get me wrong, if the right tour came up we'd probably do it. But we're not going to do everything in our power to make that happen.
How was it opening for AC/DC at the start of the year?
Jon: It was awesome.
Karl: It's been a really great year for us. The fact we started off the year with AC/DC, and I know for me doing those shows really brought the rock back. It was a full circle thing, we supported them in '92 which was my second show with the band on The Razors Edge tour, so it was really my whole career coming back to where it all started.
Jon: And the shows were completely different. Now we have all this experience, back then we were excited about the sound check! (laughs)
Karl: I'd say that last AC/DC gig in Auckland would be one of the top two or three Shihad gigs that we've ever been a part of really. It was very special.
Jon: 60,000 rock fans, it was a very special show for us.
And you're to be inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame
Jon: Yeah, but what has (Ray) Columbus done since then? (laughs). It's a total honour and my parents are so happy. I think all our parents were happy, and we were happy. But at the same time we were in the middle of making Ignite, and it's sort of like I'm not even thinking about what we've done, it's all about what we're doing now. So it was a little bit weird.
Karl: We're really appreciative but we're not at a stage in our career where we want to start patting ourselves on the back. We're still trying to prove ourselves.
Jon: We've always held the record company off from releasing a Greatest Hits because of that. Because we haven't finished the story. But very honoured.
So you envision the band going for a fair while yet?
Jon: Well, I don't know.
Karl: Yeah, we haven't really known for the last few records really.
Jon: I think after what happened in America, and the fact that we made 'Love Is The New Hate' after 'Pacifier', we just needed to see that we could make another record. I don't think we were thinking anything past that.
Karl: I think especially for 'Love Is The New Hate'. We did kinda say if it's the last, let's make it worth while. And we were thinking maybe this is the last record we've got in us. But obviously we lied (laughs).
Jon: I don't think we actually tend to plan too far ahead, apart from Tom. Which maybe I should start doing.
Karl: It's really important in the twilight years to make sure we enjoy this.
Jon: And to make sure it's fucking honest.
Karl: And as long as we don't lose sight of that, who knows?
Jon: I also think as long as we each have space to lead our own individual lives, and then be able to get back together when it feels right.
Tagged as : Shihad | Ignite | Killjoy | The General Electric | interview |
