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The Atomic Bitchwax Interview with Chris Kosnik
Summer 2005 By: Natasha Padilla
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When I spoke with bassist/vocalist Chris Kosnik this past summer The Atomic Bitchwax had just finished their second tour of the year. Since then, they’ve hit the road again opening for the Moistboyz and completed a fall tour, bringing the tally past 100 for shows played in 2005 alone. Kosnik, drummer Keith Ackerman, and guitarist/vocalist Finn Ryan also laid down tracks with producer Jack Endino during a Seattle tour stop in November, and recorded a complete live show. Slated for a mid-Spring release on Meteor City, the Boxriff EP/DVD will feature four new songs and a Seattle concert. While you wait, look out for Bitchwax tracks on the new MTV series Home Wrecker, a month-long European tour beginning late February and North American dates this summer on
www.theatomicbitchwax.com
When you guys did Spit Blood (2002) did you know Ed [Mundell] was going to leave?
Well, it's kinda funny how it worked out. It's more like the band was just gonna break up anyway. We weren't really writing anything. All the stuff on Spit Blood was just demos and a mishmosh of old stuff. If you take it back a year and a half earlier when the second record came out, Bitchwax II, right at that point we pretty much just stopped writing. We were playing shows off and on, and playing a tour here and there whenever Ed had the time. We had tours booked for Bitchwax in Europe and the States, and a week before we were gonna leave Ed would say, "I have to go do a photo shoot [or something] with Monster Magnet. I can't go on the tour." Keith [Ackerman] and I would just look at each other like "You gotta be kidding
me," ‘cause you really have to change your whole life to do these things, ya know what I mean? You gotta take time off of work, and there are booking agents that just made a zillion phone calls to put this tour together for you and now you're canceling it on them. Any opportunity that Keith and I would have in any other band, they would look at it like the booking agent: they weren't gonna book us anymore if we kept on canceling stuff. So a lot of time passed, months going by into years. When Spit Blood came out we were pretty much finished at that point already. It's more like the band broke up and then got back together without Ed. He didn't actually quit, and he didn't actually get kicked out. We just reformed without him.
So how did reforming come about? Were you guys already friends with Finn [Ryan]?
[Finn] lives in the neighborhood [New Jersey] too. We've known him for years and years, even before Bitchwax started. I’ve known Finn since ‘94. I was playing in Godspeed at the time when I met Finn at the Brighton Bar, where all those bands came from. We just stayed in touch. Keith is pretty much vegan all the way. Finn absolutely is [vegan], so in typical hippie guy form he works at a health food store in Red Bank [New Jersey]. Keith goes in there to buy his groceries so he talks to Finn all the time ‘cause he worked there. I know it's not the typical story: (laughs) "Hey man, how ya doin’? I'm just here for my wheatgrass." (laughs)
They just got to talking one day and said, "Hey, you wanna get a jam together?" So we played together a few times, and Finn actually knew a couple Bitchwax tunes. He could bullshit his way through it, and we were just like "Dude, learn a couple more tunes." The next practice we had he could play the whole first record! (laughs) He's that talented that he just picked it all up. Then a few more practices later he knew the whole second record. We don't play anything off Spit Blood; we never ever did. So I called up our booking agent in Europe and I said, "We got Finn Ryan from Core playing guitar. I think it sounds pretty good. You wanna take a chance? We'd be really into it if you put together a tour," and surprisingly enough he instantly said yes. He knew of Core and that Finn was really good, so we got a chance. We went to Europe last year [2004], and then as soon as we got back Jadd from Meteor City gave me a line on Tone Deaf Booking. They said that they would book us a tour without Ed, which really surprised me. I had always assumed over the years that Ed was the selling point, but apparently it really didn't matter to these people at all, which made me feel great. (laughs) So we did a small American tour that went to the Midwest and back [east] that was only about two and a half, maybe three weeks.
Had Jadd already signed you to Meteor City?
It went like this: I had a side band going for a few years called Black Nasa. The second Black Nasa record was on Meteor City. At the time the record was coming out I didn't have a booking agent for the US. I did have one for Europe. So Jadd was like, "Let me look around for you." A few days later he got back to me and said, "I found this booking agent called Tone Deaf Touring and they're into it. They'll give you a Black Nasa tour but you gotta give them a Bitchwax tour." (laughs) So it was kinda weird how it came together. They were doing me a favor if I did them a favor I guess.
The Black Nasa stuff I heard didn't sound so far removed from Bitchwax.
Well yeah, but in content the musicianship is a lot better in Bitchwax. It's more technical and harder to play. The Black Nasa stuff is very straightforward, just big open chords. There's not a lot of jamming going on.
Just straight rock songs.
Yeah, that was the big difference between the two. Black Nasa did one tour with Tone Deaf and it went awfully (laughs), but the Bitchwax tour we ended up doing after that went really well so they were like, "Let's keep going with this." Now they're on board 100 percent. They just booked us the one tour we just went on that was for a month that went all the way up to Canada and the west coast. We're taking the summer off and they're booking another tour right now that goes from October 15 to November 20 I think, and that's another full US tour. When we get back we're home for two or three days and then we go back to Europe again for three weeks right up to Christmas. We will have played about 110 shows this year at the end of it.
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That's a lot of shows.
That was another big point too concerning Ed. If you take the tours that we did last year and the tours that we did this year, we've played more shows with Finn than we did with Ed in 10 years. We've played more shows with Finn in two years!
That's crazy.
You could see why the change was necessary.
Yeah, of course, especially since you guys are such a live band.
Yeah, that's a big part of it too. I agree. Ten years go by and maybe we played 150 shows with Ed, and now we're gonna be playing 110 shows in a year.
At what point did you decide to record and really get Bitchwax back up and running?
When I realized that Black Nasa was falling apart! (laughs) No, before I went on the Black Nasa tour last summer. The Black Nasa tour was last September [2004]. The summer of 2004 - July and August - we had started writing Bitchwax 3. Then I went away on the Black Nasa tour and it didn't go that well. I came back and for the rest of the winter right up until February we just kept on writing. It probably took about five months. Then in February of 2005 we went to the studio and recorded the record. It was really cool how it worked out. Jadd made it a priority to get the record out really quickly so we were able to book tours right away. We came out of the studio and two months later the record came out, and we were already in Europe at the time. Also, this is the first record where we toured during the release, as opposed to the older records where the record came out and we didn't do anything. Then six months later Ed said, "Oh, I got three weeks off of [Monster] Magnet I can go do something." Now everything is a lot more stable than it ever was, and I think the band’s better for it. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ed and everything, but it just wasn’t in the cards.
Exactly. So Finn wasn’t playing in any other bands? I wasn’t sure what happened with Core.
What happened was their bass player Carmine became Born Again, and rock music wasn’t part of that. Last I heard he got married and moved away, something like that. Finn doesn’t even really know what happened to him. He was here one day, he was Born Again and then he was gone.
The drummer from Core was Finn's older brother Tim. So I guess they kinda still messed around a little bit for a short time, and then Finn just didn’t play with anybody at all for a long time. His brother doesn’t play at all anymore so it’s kinda weird the way it all worked out. We all knew that Finn was great but he wasn’t playing with anybody. I think we lucked out.
Definitely. You guys both benefited from that because it’s a shame to have somebody like Finn not be playing at all.
How'd the recording go after spending so much time writing? 3 sounds a lot more polished and structured than the other Bitchwax records, plus you guys messed around a lot with vocals.
Yeah, that was another plus that Finn brought to the table; he could really sing. When I listen to the record the only thing I don’t like about it is that he sings so much better than me! (laughs) It’s like, "Oh man," (sounds defeated) but it definitely gave another side to the whole thing. Comparing this one to the first one recorded in '98, we pretty much wrote the songs over the course of a few years because Ed was in Magnet and I was playing in Godspeed. It was just the band that we had on the weekends, in between tours and stuff like that. It was probably around '95 or '96 that a lot of those songs were written, and the reason this record sounds so much different is because I’ve listened to so much other music in the last 10 years. Now I still like Black Sabbath but I don’t listen to them
anymore (laughs) I mean how many times can you spin those records? I know them backwards and forwards [like] Judas Priest and all that kinda stuff. I got older and my taste changed. I still love rock music but I like the Beach Boys too, ya know what I mean? That’s probably why it sounds a little slicker. It wasn’t necessarily about trying to wow everybody with, "Oh look how fast I can play this
fuckin’ riff." I don’t care about that anymore. (laughs)
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How long did it take you to record 3?
It was 10 days.
That’s fast.
Yeah. We actually should’ve taken more time because we were really dragging ass in the first week and then it was really rushed in the second week, so we pretty much recorded for eight days and only mixed the record for two, which is a really bad thing to do. The way a recording should go, you have two weeks: five-day work weeks and the hours go from 12 pm - 12 am. You should be able to track all the music in the first five days, and over the weekend take home the roughs and listen to everything and figure out what changes you want. You sit down with the recording and you make your notes, that way when you go back now you’re in the studio fresh. You have all worked out what you’re gonna do in the mix, and it goes nice and smooth and you can take your time and do it correctly. But we were tracking right up until the eighth day! (laughs) We didn’t get to go home and listen to it or anything. It was just go, go, go. We got there the next day, "Alright, track one here we go. Start it up. Alright, what do you think? Uh, it needs a little
fuckin’ some of this, a little bit of that. Yep. Sound good? Alright, that one’s done." (laughs)
(laughs) Wow.
Yeah. I really would’ve liked to spend more time on it. But as far as I can tell no one else noticed.
No, I would’ve never guessed. I noticed you only printed the lyrics to "The Passenger. " Is it about Ed? The lyrics are printed over Finn, so is Finn "the fuzz" mentioned in the song?
Yes and yes. But if it means anything to you I didn’t write it! (laughs) Actually, it’s really funny. Keith never really showed much interest in wanting to write anything. It was always just Ed or myself would come to practice with a riff, and Keith would just play his thing. Keith plays guitar too, and he’s pretty good at it. So I came to practice one time and he’s like, "I wrote this song on my 4-track." He played the drums, the bass, the guitar and he actually sang too; it was "The Passenger." So Finn and I are sitting in his living room and we’re both looking at each other like, "Holy crap dude, you really want us to sing that?!" (laughs)
(laughs)
And he’s just like, "It’s pretty vague dude. Who’s gonna know?" (laughs)
(laughs)
Everybody’s gonna know! (laughs)
Especially when you decide to only print those lyrics! (laughs)
Yeah, well that was an afterthought. They weren’t meant to be put on Finn’s picture; it just worked out that way. Finn’s got that picture because when you open up the CD his face is covered by the disc. We didn’t want to cheat him out of a panel. He’s shorter than Keith and I, so he had to be in the middle.
So why aren’t the other lyrics printed?
I’m lazy and I didn’t feel like typing them all out. Keith wrote his out by hand when I was doing all the other liner notes for the record so I had to do it.
OK. What’s your favorite song on the disc?
The very first one is my favorite ["The Destroyer"] and the second to last song, "If I Had A Gun," it has all the really big Beach Boy harmonies in it. That’s my second favorite just because we never really got to record anything with that kind of vocal and it was really fun. I just sang the main track and then Finn picked out all the different harmonies.
Now cover art-wise, are hot girls supposed to be the Bitchwax mascot?
The guy that did the very first record, Ryan Landau, was dating this stripper from California. He took a picture of her and worked up that cover before any of us even saw it, and went, "What do you guys think of this? " I didn’t know who the girl was either at the time. (laughs) We were like, "Dude it’s a nude chick! Yeah! " (laughs) And he goes, "I’ll make up all this other artwork that matches. It’ll look real good." It wasn’t like we went out of our way like, "Oh we want to have nude chicks on it." On the next record he did that artwork too, and I guess he wanted to stay in the realm of his own work. But that girl, if you look close at it, is actually Betty Page. He just put all this computer crap over her face and stuff, so it obscures it a little bit. Then Spit Blood was another guy, Wes
Benscoter, and he usually did a lot of death metal bands and always did this really gory kind of art. From what I understood he was friends with Jadd and he wanted to try some other stuff and not do all the gory devils and demons. So he came up with the cover, and oddly enough it had a chick on it. (laughs) No one said, "Put a girl on it;" he just did it on his own. So at that point it was like, "Dude, it’s another naked chick! Yeah, that’s the cover." (laughs) When we did this record I got Wes Benscoter again. We’re staying with the chick motif on the cover. It just seems to be our thing I guess. It was never a preconceived thing, and I think that’s probably the best way it could’ve worked out, by accident.
www.meteorcity.com
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