|
 The music industry is changing. Bands are striking out on their own, forgoing to machine, and making their way in the world on their own terms. Some bands have been doing that for years though, and My Ruin are one of those. They don't go in for managers, or producers, or booking agents. They don't even work with a Label, preferring to release via their own, Rovena Recordings.
And that's exactly what they've done with their latest album 'Throat Full Of Heart', and why they've just completed a 15 date UK tour, booked themselves, with no outside help. Some say it's the way of the future, to My Ruin, that's just how it's always been.
Komodo Rock's Mike Elliott sat down with the band before the final stop
on the bands tour at the Islington Academy in London to find out more
about the album, the tour, and the ethos behind My Ruin.
Mike Elliott: So this is the last night of the tour.
Mick Murphy: Yeah.
ME: 15 dates now in the UK how has it gone?
Chris Lisee: It was going really well, its always hard to do fifteen
days in a row you know? But we put on 100% show every night, we’re
definitely looking forward to tonight but its definitely taking its
toll on us at this point. I think we’re all trying to conserve as much
energy before the shows as possible.
MM: Yeah it was pretty party atmosphere last night after the show too,
You know there was a club going on in there too… Where did we play?
Marcello Palomino: Bristol
MM: There was a big club going on we had a lot to drink man.
ME: It was a building it had a stage
MM: There where a lot of stairs.
CL: Some bands played
MM: Yeah you know, we’ve been playing hard and partying hard and having
a good time, It's been pretty smooth for the most part, everybody’s
getting along. We’ve enjoyed each others company.
ME: That’s kind of useful isn’t it?
MM: Yeah that’s cool its like a family man.
ME: So have you got any more touring planned after this, or are you on a bit of a break now?
MM: Well we're doing a show in our home town at the Whiskey in a couple
of weeks, and going to get the album out in the States, and hopefully
do some gigs but we don’t have anything set in stone. We’re just taking
it one step at a time.
ME: The new albums out this month over here isn’t it?
MM: Its out
CL: It came out on the 21st I think
ME: Of last month?
MM: Of January yeah
CL: It coincided with the start of the tour.
ME: How has it be received so far? I presume that you have been playing songs live from it?
CL: We’re playing a lot of new songs from it.
MM: People are singing along.
CL: Kids know the lyrics. We put out the video for Ready For Blood
toward the end of last year as kind of like a teaser for the album. And
on our site we’ve put a couple of new songs up each month leading up to
the tour. The kids have got familiar with it, and then when it came
out, the kids have been buying it at the shows, kids are coming to the
shows already with it in hand.
So it has been received really well. The packaging that Tairrie put
together for the record is unbelievable. It comes with a DVD of the
making of the record, the making of our video, its got two videos on
it, Tairrie’s story of her accident, So it’s a lot of value for what it
is, and I think that the kids really appreciate it.
ME: She did the artwork for the album as well?
CL: She does all the artwork for the band.
 MM: We edited and formatted the DVD, we’re very DIY.
ME: Keep it all in house
MM: Yeah that’s the kind of band we are. Whenever we try to stray from
that it just usually gets complicated. So we’re just trying to enjoy
the control.
CL: Cut out as many of the middle people as possible.
ME: Is that including the release of it trying to keep control there as well?
MM: Well it's on our imprint, it's on our label through Cargo, so that’s us too.
CL: Luckily they’re able to distribute it in the UK and Europe. Every
thing was done through Rovena Recordings, which is our label.
ME: Is that the way you like it because that way all the decisions come
down to you? You do things your way because that’s the way you want to
do them?
MM: We don’t want to have to fight for our vision all the time, because
we know exactly what we want for the most part. It gets complicated
when every decision involves a whole group of people. That’s just not
how we work, It’s a waste of time a lot of the time.
CL: No one is going to understand the vision better than the people involved.
ME: Do you find at times you want to bring people from the outside in
just to see how thing are going, to look at what you are recording what
you are making, just an out side perspective?
MM: No not really.
CL: That’s how we make our stuff. Mick writes the songs. My opinion is as far outside of the scope as it goes.
Mick writes all the music Tairrie writes all of the lyrics, it doesn’t go much farther than that.
MM: I’m pretty hard on my self too, I don’t want to put together an
album of crap songs, I spend time and energy and brain power making it
a certain way, I wanted that album to flow a certain way. Tairrie’s
lyrics are usually somewhat conceptual, especially on this album, We
wouldn’t go in and write 50 songs and record them and pick 10. We write
the 10 songs we know we are going to do, and do that.
I’ve just always preferred doing it that way; it seemed to work out this time.
This album is like a diary of what has happened in the band in the last year and a half.
And that’s what records should be.
ME: It should be personal to you, because if it is personal to you, you believe in it, you're going to write better music.
MM: And I just see it as a record, not just a couple of songs and then
filler. I can listen to it as a record, and I think that the fans of
the band do to.
ME: That’s quite important though, its saying that this is something that you need to listen to as a whole, rather than…
MM: Which is something that has been lost in this day and age, with
downloading mp3’s and every thing's digital and its great. We don’t
fight it, the market is changing and in ways its becoming easier for
artists to reach their fans.
I hate to see that packaging and the character of it all go by the
wayside. When we where kids you’d buy the album and stare at the Iron
Maiden cover and try to find the little hidden things in it, listen to
the whole record while you're reading the liner notes and all that kind
of stuff. Now it’s like you can have your whole record collection in
something this big [Makes iPod esque shape]
ME: Which you put in you pocket
MM: Which is awesome because I listen to more music on my ipod than I have in years.
ME: But there’s a down side to it. With the download culture people are
really latching on to individual songs, and forgetting that that song
comes from an overall picture.
MM: Its almost like back to the early days of rock and roll when people would press up a 45, that’s your song.
ME: Live or die by the one song rather than…
MM: Yeah.
ME: Is that a good thing or a bad thing or neither?
MM: I don’t know exactly I think its just the new generation, things
need to change every few generations I guess. Technology is just
helping that change happen right now. I don’t necessarily know if that
is a good thing or a bad thing. The industry is fucked and people need
to figure it out. It doesn’t really effect bands like us because we're
underground anyway, and people are going to buy our fucking record
because they’re into the band.
ME: And in a way your outside the industry anyway.
MM: Exactly. We don’t feel like where part of the industry, because
were not part of some big company, and we don’t go on the Ozzfest
tours, and all that kind of stuff. We are My Ruin, and this is what we
do, and we want to make records that we love, for the people who want
to hear it. It doesn’t have to be a million people, the fact that
people out there want to hear what we do…
ME: That enough
MM: Yeah that’s cool…
 ME: But you do actually have the control that you could go on the Ozzfest or you could not, if you got asked.
MM: I guess, but it costs a lot of money.
CL: Its not something that we would really consider.
MM: I’m not a big fan of going to festivals to be honest. I prefer a place like tonight is about perfect sized gig.
ME: Festivals become too impersonal…
MM: It's not about the music so much, it's more about the experience of
people who want to hangout outside and do drugs and drink and all that
stuff, and that’s all good… party on… But a lot of them just aren’t
paying attention to what’s going on, on stage. You know like 30, 40, 50
feet away from the stage.
ME: And that’s if you are in the front
MM: Yeah, front row!
ME: Its so impersonal
MM: Yeah I agree
ME: You don’t get the interaction between bands…
MM: I just find myself getting bored of places like that, and counting the minutes until its time to go home.
Some of your favourite bands can be playing and you don’t even feel it you know?
CL: If you’ve been there six or eight hours it gets monotonous after a while.
MM: Drinking cheap wine in the sunlight, you just seize up right there on the lawn.
ME: It’s been said that you're more about music than image.
MM: You mean me personally?
ME: As a band, as a band as a whole.
MM: I do think that we are more about music than about image. I think
that image is an important part of what we do though, I think that
people do latch on to that as well. We don’t look like your average
garden variety metal band. We’ve got roots in the 70’s I was a Southern
raised guy, I like Lynard Skynard, I like 70’s rock, and we all grew up
on punk rock and hardcore music and things like that, so there’s an
eclectic mix.
But I think that Tairrie is a very visual person, and she’s an artist,
so her art becomes kind of the image of the ban in a way. But we do
think that the music is the most important thing.
ME: You don’t want to stand or fall by how you look but how you sound.
MM: Yeah totally…
CL: I think that the image is influenced by the music, I don’t think
that it’s a conscious effort on our part to fit any particular image, I
think it just happens because we all have similar influences, we all
like the same types of things. I think being in this band we all
realise we have to present ourselves visually on some level, live,
though the artwork, and photographs things like that.
None of us is going to go out there with a pink Mohawk, no offence…
[laughs realising that the interviewer has pink hair!] It’s just one
of those things I’m not going to go out there in a flying space suit or
something.
ME: You’d probably look good in a pink Mohawk, or a pink beard!
CL: I probably would!
MM: Actually I was going to get a space suit for the next tour!
CL: Obviously we’re not that type of a band, we’re a hard rock band, we’re a metal band, we look like a metal band.
ME: Yeah, We do our thing and we get on with it.
MM: You can see when an image becomes something that’s trendy, bands
start all dressing the same and doing the same moves on stage and just
portraying themselves like a carbon copy of three other bands that just
came out, it boring, and uninspired.
ME: Yeah no imagination, there’s nothing personal there. so how can you
believe in the music when you can’t believe in the people that are
doing it.
MM: Totally
ME: Your side project the spoken word...
MM: The LVRS yeah?
ME: How did that come about and what are the ideas behind that?
MM: It came about with me and Tairrie hanging out, and you know, we
live together we’re a couple. We were having some drinks, getting a
buzz on, and turned on the digital eight track, recording her. She’ll
write something and just record her speaking it and I'll kind of score
it, put music around it almost like a movie.
It's different for me and that’s kind of why I like it. It’s a whole
different kind of thing, its not riffs and its not leads, which is what
I really live for but, its cool to do different things, it teaches you
about yourself. It's really dark and its kind of twisted but its cool,
its not something that I listen to that often but its fun to make.
ME: Is it very personal as well do you think?
 MM:
It's so personal for her especially, she just writes these things, some
of it is based on her life experiences some of it is a little bit more…
there’s some stuff in there that’s fantasy, it all comes together and
makes for a strong thing. We’ve had some people write us before and
just say ‘wow, listened to LVRS on headphones and freaked out’ its
pretty hardcore you know, the subject matter there’s a lot of death,
its like LVRS Love Violence Religion and Sex, that’s what it stands
for.
ME: So it’s a way of expressing yourself.
MM: Just a different way.
ME: Challenging your self in different ways
MM: Plus I get my rocks off doing my Neanderthal side project as well, which is just instrumental guitar metal, guitar rock.
ME: There’s a lot of that about at the moment.
MM: There should be guitar’s coming back in a big way. I’ve always dug
instrumental stuff, like the stuff that Jeff Beck did in the 70’s Billy
Cobham & Tommy Bolan, the song Frankenstein, I love that song. Its
good stuff So that’s a whole other thing to do that I just get wrapped
up in.
ME: So anything interesting happen on the tour then?
CL: Well we started the tour and our bus broke down! We almost didn’t
make it to the first gig, we where going about 10 miles an hour to
Peterborough, we luckily made it about an hour before the show started,
so our crew was already there, we where on the bus with our tour
manager and all our gear. We got to the gig they loaded the stuff in as
fast as they possibly could, we did a sound check for about 30 seconds,
they opened the doors and we did the show.
We thought the bus was going to be sorted the next day, we ended up
having to switch buses, then we ended up having to switch buses back,
we ended up having three or four different buses.
MP: At one point we pull up to this club, Sheffield corporation I
think, it’s a small place it hold maybe 200 people at the most and
there’s three enormous double-decker tour buses out side. This is
stupid this is just classic.
MM: It looked like U2 where in town or something.
ME: There’s nothing like making an impression!
MP: Exactly perception is reality
CL: We each get our own bus Actually Tairrie gets a bus, Tairrie’s luggage gets a bus and we all get a bus.
MM: We enjoy coming over here and even being able to have a bus, at
home we tour in a van with a trailer. We don’t live on the road, we all
have lives, we're not little kids. We do a lot of work on the band all
the time but at the same time taking it out on the road all the time,
its just not practical.
CL: There’s a lot of preparation that went into making this tour
happen. You ask what were planning for our upcoming tours, but it takes
a long time for a band like us to put things together, because we do do
it all on our own. We don’t have a booking agent just submitting us to
all these different tours; we don’t have a manager making all these
different decisions for us. We make them ourselves.
MM: We don’t just plug into the system…
CL: We don’t just take a show because its available to us, it has to
kind of make sense. So we feel very fortunate that we are able to come
over here and be able to travel around the country in a bus, a lot of
bands aren’t able to do that. We definitely don’t take it for granted.
It’s a lot of hard work.
MM: We make the most of it you know. We have a great time over here,
its hard work but its also like a vacation, We get to blow off some
steam and just play every night and fifteen nights in a row.
CL: That’s why we don’t take days of either because its expensive, we
don’t have somebody bankrolling this tour, We’re paying for this tour.
Or the kids are paying for this tour.
MM: You’ve got to pay for a bus and a crew…
ME: It is kind of that basic isn’t it if your not playing your not earning.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
