Moist Interview

INTERVIEW WITH MOIST FROM TheCelebrityCafe.com ARCHIVES

DM) If you could sum up Moist's style in a couple of words--jazz, rock, whatever--what would you sum it up as?

JP) A couple words is hard...I would totally describe it as...uh... post-grunge...um...hard to say. We're basically a rock band, but we draw a lot of influences from a lot of different places--everything from pop music to post-punk music. I'd call it "heavy melodic..." I don't know. How would you describe it?

DM) How would I describe it? You're the one doing the music! (laughs) Maybe I'll phrase it a little easier...Each person in the band has their own style and influence. What's yours?

JP) My influences are kind of the American post-punk thing. I grew up listening to bands like Jane's Addiction and the Pixies. That's the kind of music I really dig a lot.

DM) How about the rest of the guys?

JP) Dave is more into dance music and pop music and he also likes basic rock stuff, as well. Mark is very much a 70's guitar guy whose main influences are probably Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, and Kevin--the stuff he grew up listening to--is kinda like the West Coast punk scene... Paul's musical tastes kind of go everywhere: from Air Supply to D.O.A. (Daguire, Paul says from across the room).

DM) How is it working with the band where everyone's styles are so contrasting?

JP) It works great for song writing, because if someone comes in with an idea, you know a melody line or a guitar riff or a bass line or whatever, we all just start throwing things on top of it and the end product is usually drastically different than what we started with. It works really well. It makes it so no one really knows what kind of song we're going to write.

DM) Yes, I noticed it said 'all songs written by Moist.' I see a lot of bands of today, the lead singer is given all the credit and is considered the "band leader." Is that the case with Moist?

JP) No, no, not at all. We all write equally, we all share equal credit in the writing. Dave writes a lot of the lyrics now, more than he was doing when the band started. As well there's lyrics on the album that were written by other members of the band, as well. You know, if we're jammin' through a riff, we're all kind of throwing out the ideas and he kind of picks the melody idea that fits the best and then shapes it into his own. So we all take equal credit for that. We have this general theory that a song doesn't become a song until it's actually at the performance stage. That's why it's really important to us that everyone is into this thing equally and everyone gets equal credit for equal work. So much of what we do is... it might take five minutes or four hours to work the song into shape where you can perform it then to go on the road for eighty years trying to get it just right! By the end of that time everybody's put in a lot of work, so we believe in sharing the credit equally.

DM) In today's music industry there seems to be a revival of tribute albums. There has been the Elton John, the Grateful Dead, and the Carpenters album. Is there any particular artist whose tribute album--made, not made, or possibly made in the future--you'd like to work on?

JP) Oh, that's a hard question, because I'm probably the cheesiest guy in the band. I'd love to be on the Carpenters' album, I really would. I think there's certain albums we'd all like to do. We'd love to be on a [Rolling] Stones tribute album, probably, because we do a cover of 'Miss You' that's been part of our live show for a while. And we'd all get a kick out of being on that Carpenters' album, actually, because the kind of bands that are on that album...we all grew up with that music...it's all part of our collective unconscious. I can remember listening to the Carpenters on my parents' radio. When you're first discovering music you rely on your parents' record collection...probably a Beatles tribute album, too. We've all been influenced by them, as well...and Supertramp. If there was ever a Supertramp tribute album we'd all be there.

DM) How did everyone in the band meet?

JP) We all met at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. All with the exception of Paul. We met him through friends of his who were going to Queens University at the time. He was living on the West Coast, so we met up with him when we moved out there.

DM) How does it feel to be a Canadian band in America?

JP) For the band to get where we are in Canada it was a very tangible thing. We started touring last summer for eight months. When you're touring in Canada you go right across the country and come right back and then you rehearse, or whatever, and take four weeks off, and by the time you're ready to go out again the country's ready to see you again. You basically hit all the major cities. Highway 1 from Vancouver to Montreal. It's way different in America. There's so many more people. There's so many places to be in at various times. You can't do that. You have to work really hard to cover all the cities. We were able to come back to the same cities in Canada every six weeks or so and watch our progress, and having our videos on the nation's video's channel helped as well. Every cities and every little town doesn't have an alternative rock station, or even a classic rock station but everybody gets Much Music [Canada's version of MTV]. That's where kids look for new music. Here in America it's such a big place we haven't even started yet. Socially we get along pretty good here, it's different, way different from any other city in Canada but it's not that hard for is to get used to.

DM) What is the typical 'Moist' fan?

JP) It kind of changed actually, when we were touring, we started touring last summer, we were playing all bars so are fan base was mostly university students and young working people who would be in a mood to see live music. But because of the power of video, we kinda hit different demographics then we expected, so now more of our fans 16-26 I guess. And I think they're kind of people who listen to Pearl Jam and Nirvana, but I think that in many ways Moist is an antidote to that. It's lyrically depressing as any Seattle band but I think there's a certain kind of musicality to it.

DM) Is there any particular area which has more of your fans?

JP) It's kind of everywhere. Our last Canadian tour was sold out coast to coast. I think that we have our best time in Montreal. I think that's where our fans are the most Manic. It's really great playing in front of 2,000 French Canadians and they're all singing along with their french accents. They don't necessarily know what the words mean, but they know them all by heart anyway. It's really, really fun for us.

DM) It seems like you found a small 'Beatlemania' reaction in your small microcosm of the world.

JP) Yeah, to sum extent, they line up and they scream like crazy. Especially in Montreal. The rest of the country, they're a little bit more reserved, but not much more.

DM) If you were in my position, interviewing musicians, which musician would you love to interview?

JP) I would love to interview either Michael Stipe or Perry Farrel. I'd like to interview Michael Stipe, or even Bob Mould, because they were doing what is now pop music before it became pop music. They are the pioneers of College Rock and what is now Alternative Rock in many ways as well. They stuck it out for a long time, watched their fan base grow an grow, and I think that they are both VERY creative beings more so then just in terms of music, they have very good political ideas. They've managed to change their careers as they go and they can write different kinds of songs for very different periods of their life, and still stay true to themselves.

DM) Well, I always wanted to know what was the picture on the cover of the album? [referring to the silver, modern art looking picture]

JP) It's a rib cage. A friend of ours from Vancouver, whose very skinny. We painted her silver and photographed her ribs. We wanted to just make and interesting record cover. it was kind of a striking image that we had an idea of. There's no rational for it at all, we just thought it would be an interesting cover. If we had called the album gold then we would have painted her gold. We were looking through the songs that were on the album, and we saw we had a song called 'Silver' on the album. We thought it was a very interesting song because the song says what the whole album says in one song.

DM) How is this tour going with Collective Soul?

JP) Well we haven't started yet. We start living it permanently tomorrow. We haven't met them yet, but we played a show with them in Cleveland. It was Collective Soul and Green Day and us, and a pile of other bands. A couple of guys in the band met a couple of them, but it was very brief.

DM) Are you nervous about playing for a band that you've never heard more then the cd of?

JP) I think we can hold our own. We've opened for some pretty heavy bands. We've opened for the 'peppers' a couple of months ago. Opening for the Peppers is probably one of the hardest bands to open for, because they have one of the best live shows of any band. Playing with Collective Soul, I'm really curious to see them live and anxious to see them. I think we'll do fine with their crowd.

DM) Any band that you'd never want to open for at all?

JP) I don't know... peppers was pretty tough, but we'd probably anybody. We've done some odd gigs, but we'd play anywhere any time as long as people are there to see us.

DM) What's the oddest gig you've ever did?

JP) We did a show in Vancouver where we were scheduled between two comedy acts. That was very weird. We did this strange show in Lansing on Saturday that was part of an Octoberfest celebration. It actually ended up being really cool, but when we got there, it was weird. They shut off part of the street. It was kind of like a street party kind of thing. We were playing on this very small stage that was 6 inches off the crowd. The kids who were there, we get some radio play there, and the kids who were there really dug it. I know we've done some weirder shows around, but I can't think of them now.

DM) Out of all the tracks, which one would you consider your favorite piece?

JP) It fluctuates between three songs. I think Silver is a really cool song. Lyrically, I like it thematically. I really like that song. It really has a good vibe. Things really came together with that song. I like Picture Elvis a lot, that song has a lot of meaning to me. And F????? was the other one I really like a lot.

DM) Now just looking from a bass guitarist's perspective. If I wanted to be a better bass guitarist, which one of these songs, might be something to listen to?

JP) My influence, bass playing wise are people like Mike Mills from REM and Eric Avery from Jane's Addiction. They're not flashy players. They write lines that work well within the song. I would pick Silver in that sense. F???? but beautiful is flashier but I think there's something really nice about how simple the bass line of Silver is.

DM) If you could choose one song to be a hit, which would you choose to appeal to the masses?

JP) I would say Push probably. Silver gets a really good response in Canada because the video has done really well there. It's the second video in Canada which has done really well there. But Push is a really good song to introducing people to the band, it gives a really good cross-section and overview.

DM) You said 'Picture Elvis' has a lot of meaning to you, why?

JP) Because I wrote it. I wrote the song in Toronto before the band started.

DM) The song mentions a woman named Barbara. How does she relate?

JP) Barbara is my grade 11 girlfriend. That was many years ago, but she is somebody I think about quite a bit. Just because I wonder what the hell she's doing these days.

DM) Did she ever hear the song? Why don't you send her a copy?

JP) I haven't spoken to her in many years, and I don't know where she is, either. I would be to shy about sending her it. I'm not sure how she'd react about a song dedicated on the album to her. I think I'd like her to know but I'd like her to discover on her own.

DM) I'm very impressed at the story behind Picture Elvis, but why Elvis?

JP) I picked Elvis as being an archetype of a media figure. The whole song is about the way two different people look at the world. So much of what comes to us, especially what we look at every day, is constructed by mass media. Elvis is the archetypical figure of that. Nobody has any idea of who Elvis is, or was. He's this figure that has been totally mediated and totally constructed. It's just taking that as an example. It's not necessarily the most apt title for the song, but it kind of stuck The song is generally all about coming to terms of your own existence in a world that is very mediated and very constructed. The one character in the song believes that they can get everything they need to out of the world through reading, watching television and looking at pictures and that kind of stuff. And the other person is... perhaps it's the same person, it's a transition the person has gone through as somebody who wants to get out there and the ways he experiences it.

DM) The last question I normally would ask is, "Is there any question you wished I asked you?"

JP) No, you've done real well actually. A very entertaining interview. I can't think of anything.