Lithium Magazine

Conducted Backstage at Uproar Festival

www.myspace.com/hailthevillain
 
By Laurie Lonsdale
Photos by Scott McAlpine

Laurie: So nice to meet you.  You 'hail' from around the same area as me, you’re Oshawa-based, right?

Joe: We ARE Oshawa.

Laurie: (laughing) Okay, well, I live in Durham as well, and I know the area really isn’t big on clubs that cater to your genre of music, so I’m assuming you gravitated towards Toronto to make your mark. How and when did you make that happen?

Joe: We played the Horseshoe (Horseshoe Tavern located in downtown Toronto) right after we recorded “Population: Declining” a few years back. So we thought, “We’re not going to shop our record to major labels, we’re not going to shop our record to agents or management, we’re just going to play live. If they notice, they notice, if they don’t, we’ll pack it in; we’re just going to see if we have a great enough product. Sure enough, it was weeks and we got approached by Warner (Bros. Records), our agent and management all in the same month.

Laurie: Okay, are you looking over my notes and reading ahead on me here?

(Laughing together)

Joe: No, I’m not.... (still laughing) but Durham region was super kind to us, the Dungeon was great in Oshawa. Whitby, that’s where I actually was born, doesn’t have anything and neither does Ajax when it comes to venues.

Laurie:  So in your opinion, how good is the Toronto scene for opportunity?

Joe: For bands like us it’s a battle because there’s not a lot of heavy music, it’s more of an “indie” scene, so people like that, “ding, ding, ding” music and we just wanted to, “thump, bam, thump”. We have that different mentality than a lot of Canadian music, but Toronto’s a very scenester, hipster type place.  To make our mark we had to be different. I’ve got a lot of mental problems that come through on stage; it’s like a circus act, so that’s really what does it.

Laurie: You said literally weeks before you signed the deal with Warner (Bros. Records)?

Joe: Yeah.

Laurie: Was there a label rep in the crowd of a show one night that noticed you, or did someone tip them off?

Joe: It was news. We mixed (their studio album) with Mike Fraser out in BC - he did AC/DC, all sorts of great bands, like Slipknot and Airbourne. He just came down to Canadian Music Week and said, “I just did Hail the Villain and if you haven’t seen it, you should.” And then we just started getting calls left, right and center.

Laurie: That’s really good.  Your songs obviously hooked them.  So, what inspires you to write?

Joe: For me it’s the darkness of stuff. I was always a really isolated teenager but as soon as I started to come out of that, I still kept those mentalities. I think for me, I don’t really get those moments of inspiration so much as I love to just sit down with a pen and paper and just start writing thoughts. Those thoughts become songs.

Laurie: Interesting…… and definitely dark, which brings me to something else that’s dark and currently happening with Villain……  your comics.  Your band is kind of unique in the respect that you’re double-dipping with your career, right? Because now you’ve got the whole comic strip thing going on as a result of your album graphics, and then Rune Entertainment approached you. Before you know it, out came a comic book as well as your interactive website. Tell me a little bit about that and how it came to be.

Joe: It came to be because we’ve seen so many generic logos, records; just everything looked generic - Myspace layouts, Facebook pages. Everything looked the same, and for us it needed to be different. I said, “Let’s do a comic book style record for the cover”, then we said, “No, let’s WRITE a comic book. No that’s a stupid idea, let’s make a movie. No, that’s a really retarded idea…… but let’s do it anyway.” And we forced our hand into Warner and they thought it was a really great idea too, and here we are with comic books out today, actually by our merch stand. Videos are being made episode by episode to tell the movie. We went to Singapore and met with a dude whose got lots of money and is interested in making it a full 3D thing. Those little kind of pipe dreams are starting to connect together now and I don’t think we’re double-dipping anymore, we’re expressing our entire creative side whether it be sonic or visual.

Laurie: So the movie is more along the comic strip line, right?

Joe: Right.

Laurie: Is it continuing with the characters you’ve already used in your videos and stuff?

Joe: Yeah. Those are the characters. The “Take Back the Fear” video is kind of setting you up for what is about to happen, kind of giving you a little back story into what the people are like. You haven’t even met the main villain yet, he will be appearing in the next video.

Laurie:  Do you create the story as you go?

Joe: We actually wrote the whole story ahead of time so that came about before we even put the record out. We knew what we were doing ahead of time when we met up with Warner and everybody else, it just kind of fit together all at once.

Laurie: When you start on the second album, are you going to develop it the same way?

Joe: I think absolutely not. I think what we have to do is one-up ourselves and go somewhere else with it. I think that I don’t want to abandon these characters; I think it’d be great if they were taken somewhere else with our story by other people. I think what’s most important for us is to keep writing great songs and that’s where we are right now.

Laurie:  So “Take Back the Fear” ended up being a single, do you see any more singles coming off of this and another video?

Bryan: That’s a record full singles, there’s twelve hit singles on that record.

Joe: We didn’t even try; we don’t even know how to write a hit single, that’s the biggest problem for us, we just want to write good songs.

Bryan: Yeah, we wrote that record (“Population: Declining”) to really please us. It was like, “Let’s make a record that we’re proud of”, and look what happened, there’s nothing but truth in every one of us on that record. It’s really shone through, that’s good.

Laurie: Cool. Your band came highly recommended to us for Canadian Music Week this year, so we (Laurie and photographer Scott McAlpine) really wanted to see your show.  However, we had to cover Fanfest (Universal Records and MTV Showcase live at Masonic Temple) first.  So, even though we headed to the Hideout as soon as we could, we still only caught the tail end of your show.   Your fans we’re jam packed into that club, so much so that you could barely move, and they were lined up down the street. Did you expect such a fan base? What does it mean to you?

Joe: No, we didn’t think that was going to happen, I actually wrote a blog the next day apologizing to everybody. We did not want to play the Hideout, that wasn’t our intention.  We wanted to do something a little different because every year it’s been getting better for us at Canadian Music Week. That was kind of a strange thing that got thrown together last minute for us to play. We were shocked and yes, it really does make us excited to play and that we are getting such a good following in Toronto. We just did the MOD Club and five minutes before we went on no one was there, we went on and the place packed.

Laurie: MOD Club makes more sense for you guys because it’s so much bigger and can hold your audience better.  So when I read that you playing somewhere as small as Hideout, I was like, “What the fuck are they doing there?”

Bryan: Oh I know! But there’s something really cool about playing those little places.

Joe: And people are going to talk about what you just said that you couldn’t get in, so they’re going to talk about that.

Bryan: But there’s an energy when people are that close to each other, it’s combustible, you can feel it, you know what I mean? It’s a really cool experience. There was a place we played back home called the Wing Shack, very similar vibe, very small, intimate, that’s the way we started. We started playing this place (The Hideout) and it really brought back the memory.

Joe: Do you know the Wing Shack, Laurie? Have you ever heard of it?

Laurie: Yeah, I have.

Joe: It was where Nevada Bob’s was in Whitby. The Wing Shack opened up and three rock stars would play it every Thursday from Harem Scarem, Sass Jordan and Killer Dwarves. So we’d go in there for five bucks every week and watch how to do it right. That’s how we learned how to play a live show, watching those three just kill it, playing songs from the sixties through the seventies and that was the only genre they touched. We really got a good insight on how to write but really how to bring a live show.

Laurie: So you actually studied your live performance before you did it?

Joe: Oh yeah.

Bryan: We were watching these guys every week.

Joe: We still do. That Sevendust tour we were like, “What’re you doing there?”

Bryan: We’re playing with our heroes; you’ve got to take a note.

Laurie: In addition to being stoked to be able to play here tonight, are there any bands on the bill that you’re actually anxious to see because you draw influence from them?

Joe: I thought Airbourne was fantastic every night, but they’re not going to be here today, unfortunately.  They’ve been the best in my opinion. Stone Sour have just kicked ass. I know it’s funny because they’re both Roadrunner (Records) bands, but I think that’s the type of energy that Roadrunner goes for, is that type of show. I’m not interested in video screens and pyro, I’m interested in great rock bands playing great rock songs and that’s what those two bands have done every day.

Bryan: We don’t really get the opportunity to watch though, we get up and play, and once we tear down we really miss most of the show. We’ve seen some Stone Sour, but Hellyeah, they play with Vinnie Paul (ex-Pantera drummer, brother of the legendary guitar hero “Dimebag” Darrell).

Laurie: Yeah.

Joe: I think everyone should see Halestorm too, that singer is fantastic and she’s got pipes. The band can really play.  The drummer is one of the best we’ve ever seen.

Laurie: I’m actually interviewing them next (Halestorm).

Bryan: Fantastic, tell them we’re fans and we thought they were fantastic.

Laurie: Okay, will do.  So, what’s next for Villain that you want the fans to know about?

Joe: Lots of touring. We’re going to continue to be on the road so we’re going to stay connected to fans through live shows and hopefully everyone will come out. The next video, “Runaway”, has been shot and finished and the new comic books are already out. So basically I just want all of our fans to just continue to be involved and we’ll take the time to meet you and do whatever it takes.

Laurie: Excellent. Well, you sure as hell put on an amazing live show so good luck tonight.

Bryan: Thank you.

Joe: Thank you very much.

Laurie: My pleasure, thank you so much for your time.