Exclusive Interview

Justin St. Vincent from Xtreme Music interviewed Kevin Gibson and Rob Kleiner of Tub Ring on April 19, 2004 Toronto (ON), Club Rockit.

Xtreme Music: Well it’s great to be here with Rob & Kevin from Tub Ring, how exactly would you describe your own music?

Kevin Gibson: It’s rock.. orchestrated, kinda crazy but at the same time we like to just make really intricate music. I’m a big fan of poppy vocals and Rob really listens to a lot of intricate music so when we write together, he usually layers and makes this really lush composition, and I like to put poppier vocals over that.

Xtreme Music: What would you say are your main influences and how have they shaped your musical direction?

Rob Kleiner: We try to like listen to all sorts of different genres of music and just do a lot of music listening and just get influenced by everything that’s good that’s out there.. you-know..

Xtreme Music: Any particular bands?

Rob Kleiner: As far as rock stuff goes, uh.. Kevin listens to Self.. a lot!

Kevin Gibson: Kinda what i was trying to say what we are going for.. really intricate music with poppy vocals and I love the band Mindless Self Indulgence, Jellyfish, ELO I like a lot.. Queen and stuff like that..

Rob Kleiner: We listen to like a lot of Beck, Mr. Bungle, Radiohead, Enon, Brainiac.. crazy stuff which tries to go all over the place.

Xtreme Music: Excellent! I recently picked up the Fantomas record – Delirium Cordia.. have you had a chance to listen to that yet?

Kevin Gibson: Um.. yeah, it’s not really my cup of tea..

Xtreme Music: Yeah, it’s their sorta take on ambient music really..

Kevin Gibson: Yeah, it’s cool.. I respect what he’s doing it’s just not my thing. I like sing-a-longy..

Rob Kleiner: I bought the new Ruins record, that’s on Ipecac.

Xtreme Music: Oh Awesome! Yeah, I was able to see them in San Francisco last time I was there.. and Ruins was fantastic, those two Japanese guys are just crazy!.. What innovative production techniques do you incorporate into your music?

Rob Kleiner: With the new record gonna be out in August.. we have become like in love with the world of pro tools, digital recording. We try and lay down over a hundred tracks worth of stuff for a song and then weed out the bad stuff and make the good stuff blend in with the core elements of the band.. the guitar, the bass and the keyboards, drums and vocals.. and then just to use up as much space and sound as possible with overdubbing other musicians that we have come in.. as well as using a lot of cutting edge electronics.

Xtreme Music: So how does your latest album differ from the other ones you’ve released in the past?

Kevin Gibson: I think it takes what we think are the best elements of our last two.. I think Drake Equation – it was a little heavier at the same time and like maybe a little crazier at times and then Fermi Paradox the album itself.. the songs maybe a little poppier but we orchestrated them a lot better, brought in a lot of different instruments. I think we took the best of both worlds on the next one and made the new one a little crazier, a little heavier but at the same time orchestrated it.. just like he was saying, totally layered. It’s one of those albums that after you know it.. if you listen to it on headphones, you’ll pick out weird sounds that you didn’t hear before.

Rob Kleiner: I think a lot of like bands constantly say they wanna try and find a perfect blend between pop and like craziness. We are always trying to find that perfect blend too and I think this album is the closest blend of those that we’ve ever gotten.

Xtreme Music: Sounds fantastic – I’m really looking forward to hearing it! So what was it like working with Trey Spruance on Drake Equation?

Kevin Gibson: It was great! He was such a good guy.. he came out. We didn’t really know what to expect. We knew he was gonna be producing it and obviously we figured that if nothing else, that he.. it would be cool to have his name on it, even if he sat there and said: “Yeah, that sounds good”.. you-know help us (laughter). He came down to Chicago and he had all these ideas in mind and brought some toys from California and stuff that he wanted.. and he had a list of amps he wanted to use. Just really into it. I mean he would work like 20 hours a day coz we didn’t have that much time to record the album as we didn’t have a huge budget or anything. So what we could afford we did and it was great he put in so much work..

Rob Kleiner: You can tell when he does something he gives it his hundred percent.. you-know what i mean.. like when he commits to doing a piece of art i think he just goes all into it. It was great working with him, it’s like I think everybody in the band’s mutual childhood idol sleeping on our couch for.. (laughs).. three weeks. So it was like a dream come true.. it was really great! He’s one of the most fascinating story-tellers and mind’s you’ll ever meet. He’s a really interesting guy.

Xtreme Music: Brilliant! So where would you find your inspiration lyrically and musically?

Kevin Gibson: Um.. you wanna go for the music (gestures to Rob), I could go for the lyrics..

Rob Kleiner: Musically, I find my inspiration just from other music really. I try to listen to as much music as i can. I think you have to be a music lover before you can be a music maker.

Kevin Gibson: We were having that discussion the other day.. just like sometimes bands are like: “Well I’m not going to listen to other music coz you-know then it’ll influence what I’m writing”. It’s like no man.. listen to as much as possible. There’s so much out there at anytime..

Rob Kleiner: I think the more influences you can draw on, the better your art is gonna be and I think people making music today.. you can tell the good ones from the bad ones. If you could get a look at how big there record collections are, you’d know which ones are the good ones and the bad ones. A lot of the popular bands that are out there, their record collections are maybe like you-know.. [gestures a small stack of CDs].. (laughter).. a stack that big. Whereas like, some of the more innovative people out there probably have a wider range of influences.

Kevin Gibson: Lyrically, um.. I think when we started off a long time ago, our songs were more jokey coz I was a little uh.. insecure almost of not wanting to sound cheesy.. (laughs). So i’d write cheesy songs on purpose so you couldn’t say: “That’s cheesy!”.. because, well I did that on purpose (laughter). I think just.. I’m totally not selling myself out almost by doing that.. so I think I started to get really into what I was into and I really enjoyed science.. you-know i have personal things and I have nothing against love songs, even though we don’t have many of them. I just think that they’re done by people that can do it a lot better than I can.. and it would almost sound tripe if I tried to go the same route. So I just took things that I’m passionate about, like science and kinda spent the last three albums still with this weird crazy story in my head.. that it’s kinda this very loose narrative and then the next album and then.. a whole new world opens up (laughs).. and see where I go from there.

Xtreme Music: So do you know where abouts you’re gonna lead onto after this next album is released?

Kevin Gibson: Um.. lyrically, no.. and that’s almost exciting just coz it’s like an open book at this point. So actually, there’s still gonna be elements of what I enjoy but that’ll be interesting. I think that the fact that we just finished this album four days ago, put the last tracks in.. we haven’t really given too much of a thought to what the next one is gonna sound like (laughter) but..

Rob Kleiner: Hopefully, we’ll continue to like evolve and just get better hopefully.. and be more experimental and more listenable at the same time.

Kevin Gibson: Like when we finished Fermi.. we were happy with this, we’re not gonna.. sounds really good, it’s really orchestrated and everything. We just started doing this one and felt that we had progressed and we were happy about that. So now we’re pretty happy with the album, and who knows where we’re gonna be in a few months when we are writing again. So hopefully still progressing..

Xtreme Music: So after the tour has finished do you simply just go straight back to writing new material, or do you give yourselves all a break from the band?

Rob Kleiner: We usually try to be like as productive as possible when we are off tour. We try to keep writing songs, like little by little. Uh since we tour so often it’s.. uh sometimes hard to find time to write songs. So it’s like.. as soon as we get home, that’s what we try to start doing is trying to write songs usually.

Xtreme Music: So how has the live tour been going and what has the crowd reaction been like?

Kevin Gibson: So far this tour has been phenomenal! We’ve been touring ourselves for a while. We’ve gotten lucky and gotten a few bigger tours that got our name out. I think we have a pretty decent live show, it’s really high energy so people get interested. This tour we just got off a bigger tour before. We took a couple months off to finish the album and we’re basically touring the album that isn’t out yet.. just to, you-know, get people acquainted with the new material before it’s out in August. So far it’s been great! It’s been a great turnout every night and great crowd reception.

Xtreme Music: So what would you say has been the best experience in the band’s musical career? It’s a tricky question but..

Rob Kleiner: Well we went to Japan, and that was a really great experience. We got to open for some of our favorite bands of all time. We got to go on tour with Mindless Self Indulgence and we’ve gotten to play with a lot of great bands that we’ve always respected. Working with Trey Spruance – an idol.. that’s another really great thing. So it’s hard to say.. I dunno, there’s great stuff all the time, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it.

Kevin Gibson: Yeah, definitely fun what we’re doing! It’s a lot of work, we still have a long way to go to make a nice.. not even a nice any kind of living at it.. but just we gonna keep trying and hoping that we get more and more people out to the shows and build everything. So as far as great experiences, just the whole thing has been a good experience and hopefully there’s better things to come!

Xtreme Music: I’ve noticed that Tub Ring has toured with some of my favourite bands, to mention.. Estradasphere, Dillinger Escape Plan, Dog Fashion Disco.. what was it like touring with those guys?

Rob Kleiner: GREAT!.. (laughter)

Kevin Gibson: Estradasphere.. that was one of our first tours. We had been playing for a while but just didn’t really set out to tour. We had done a couple of small tours, so that was interesting in a couple of ways. Was our first way of going town to town to town and all over for a few months and at the same time getting to know those guys coz obviously we were acquainted with each other through Trey, he did both of our albums. And they were just phenomenal every night, just to watch them.. what they could do. Uh let’s see, Dillinger.. our drummer was always in awe of their drummer (chuckles), going up to him like a little kid and then like: “I brought you some sticks, could you should this drum solo here!?” (laughs).. actually, that was cool, and he got a kick out of that..

Rob Kleiner: Dog Fashion Disco have been friends with us.. we’d been friends for a long time and it’s awesome to tour with you-know people that you’re really good friends with.. and like they’re an awesome band that are trying to do something a little bit different out there than everybody, and it’s awesome to see you-know their success.. you-know, it was awesome to tour with them. They’ve always like, totally supported us and i think whenever they’re doing interviews, they always give a shout out to us coz we toured with them..

Xtreme Music: Awesome! Hopefully I’ll be seeing them next week when they come to Club Rockit, actually that’ll be an awesome show. Trey Spruance has brought many Bungle fans to your music, which is an absolutely great thing! Is there any future work you can see with Trey?

Rob Kleiner: We just put out.. there’s a compilation that just came out that has a new Secret Chiefs song on it, and one of our new tracks on it, as well as a Dog Fashion Disco song.. so I guess that’s kinda technically working with him..

Xtreme Music: (laughs) Indirectly, sort of..

Rob Kleiner: Yeah, I dunno.. I would love to like do a tour with Secret Chiefs 3 or something like that and we have the same booking agent. So something like that, definitely possible. Um.. although I mean there’s nothing concrete right now.

Xtreme Music: And how did you first come to meet Trey Spruance?

Rob Kleiner: Uh, me and Kevin.. when Mr. Bungle were touring Disco Volante, actually followed Mr. Bungle around for a bunch of the dates in the states. Quickly they noticed that we were coming to all their shows, and so they started letting us in, like backstage every night. We’d get to the shows early and watch the sound check. We got to be kinda friends with the crew and the guys in the van and um.. then after that we were doing a lot of Tub Ring stuff in between you-know Disco Volante and California, trying to kinda evolve Tub Ring’s sound and a lot of people always compared us to Mr. Bungle and so when they came through on California, we went to the California show and Trey you-know luckily actually remembered who we were.. and just told him that we were trying to do some different kind of music and we were looking for a producer and loved his production stuff.. and handed him a demo and asked him if he would do it when his tour was over, and he said that he’d check it out and get back to us. We thought we’d never hear from him again, but he called a couple of days later and said he was up for it.

Xtreme Music: That’s sweet! Well thank you very much Rob, thank you Kevin.. it’s been a pleasure!