OKComputer1016
05/16/09, 12:06 PM
“I think there’s a difference between being a serious band or being able to be taken seriously.”
After catching their excellent show last Sunday night at Chicago’s Empty Bottle, I made it my mission to catch up with Child Bite, whose perplexing style (as intriguing live as it is on record) left me with more than a few questions. Frontman Shawn Knight gave me some insight into the band’s lyrics, songwriting, and touring, as well as looking to the group’s future.
Why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us what you do in Child Bite.
Well my name is Shawn, and I play guitar, I play keyboards, and I sing for the band.
[Editor’s note: Zach Norton plays guitar and percussion, Sean Clancy plays bass, and Danny Sperry plays drums and has a sweet ass mustache.]
You guys play a very unique style of music. Who influences your bizarre songwriting?
Hmmm… I guess that depends on who you’d ask. I think that’s a big part of it is that we each have pretty different tastes, and everybody brings their own sensibilities to the band – as opposed to if we were all just big, like, Slipknot fans, then we’d sound like Slipknot. But we don’t.
So you guys each take a chunk of the songwriting then?
We just write it all together. Like maybe somebody will come to the table with a riff or something, but it’s not like we sit at home composing a whole song to bring it in and share it.
Lyrically, you guys put together lines like, “His fleas became all the people!” and “She has no legs!” – and you somehow make these into catchy singalongs.
For that song [“Back to the Deep Egg”], and that album [Fantastic Gusts of Blood], I was reading up on a lot of mythologies from around the world and different, like, backgrounds, and I was just picking stories that I found interesting from these cultures and giving a vague sort of retelling of the parts that I was interested in. So I’m retelling these stories that had been passed down for a long time, but not saying enough or in a clear enough manner to make too much sense of it.
You guys never have struck me as a band that made too much sense, so I would say that you succeeded! With that lyrical approach and the songwriting, how long does it generally take you guys to put together a song?
I’ll usually work on the lyrics afterwards, after we get the song done. Getting it all together, that can take anything from a day to…a few days. Something like that. But we usually work on a whole batch of songs, in phases. We’ll spend a whole month or a couple weeks coming up with lots of little ideas and making rough demos, and then we’ll come back to those like, “Maybe we can merge these two together, flush these ones out, spend a couple of days on that…” So it’s hard to say. We don’t just come to a place and write a song start to finish.
Do you have a favorite Child Bite song?
I don’t have a favorite Child Bite song. Hey, do any of you guys have a favorite Child Bite song? Hold on.
[Couple seconds of silence.]
I got one head shake, I got one “no”, and the other guy’s asleep, so… [laughs].
Really, you don’t have a favorite song to bust out live?
I dunno, I’m trying to think… we play “Banana Gorgon” a lot ever since we wrote it, and it’s always been a pretty fun one to play.
Next time you come through Chicago, you should play “I Like Friends”. That’s my request.
OK man. Yell it out next time! Because that’s one that we can just pull out. A lot of them we don’t remember very well. We haven’t gotten all Fugazi on our own asses, knowing every single song… but that’s one that we can usually just whip out.
[Pauses for a moment.]
Yeah, definitely we’ll do that one next time.
Here’s a pretty open question: What do you guys love about touring cross country right now, and what do you hate about it?
Ooooh, well, what we love about touring is that it’s a great reason to go to different places that, you know, you normally wouldn’t have any reason to go to. Like for instance we’re going to Alaska in a week and a half, and I don’t think that that would have happened for us if we weren’t doing this band. And you’re there in a non-tourist fashion… like you’ve got a reason to be there.
Then the worst parts about touring would probably be having to deal with a van that sometimes is going to be awesome, but we just found out today needs a couple grand worth of work. So we’re actually kind of stuck right now. [Editor’s note: At the time of the interview, the band was crashing at the home of Forge Again Records owner Justin Wexler]. Maybe we will get it fixed, or if the cost is more than getting a new van… Well that’s the current worst part of touring.
Fantastic Gusts of Blood was, seriously, one of the most pleasant surprises to come out of the 2008 indie world for me – I was just totally not expecting it.
That’s awesome man.
What have you guys got planned in the future as far as releases? And are you going to keep playing shows for a little while – van permitting?
Well we’re just at the beginning of this bigger tour that’s going to go until the middle of June, so we’ve got a good number of shows coming. Yeah, we’re just going to keep on doing stuff. We’ve got these three seven inches coming out this summer – we’re doing like a series. The first one just came out, and it’s not officially out yet, but we just got ‘em the night of that show you were at. We’ve got a split record with a band called This Moment In Black History in June, and then we got one coming out in July with this band Big Bear From Boston, and then one in August with this band from Detroit called Prussia.
So we’ve got the three splits coming, and that’s like our summer plan; and then we just recorded a new album, but it’s not done yet. It probably won’t be mixing for another couple of months. It’ll be a while before that one comes out, though.
Do you feel like it’s hard for Child Bite to be taken seriously with such a far-out sound? How do you feel like you guys are received?
I don’t think it’s hard for us to be taken seriously – I think it’s just that it’s a fun show and it’s a fun band. I think there’s a difference between being a serious band or being able to be taken seriously. I think there’s enough going on and things are thought out enough that we’re obviously not a joke band. But I don’t think that ever becomes an issue. It’s just more of a… we’re definitely not taking our[I]selves too seriously. We just make what sounds fun to us or is fun to play, so hopefully people will enjoy it for being, like you said, a little different from the usual.
Definitely. Thank you very much for your time Shawn, and I look forward to seeing you guys again.
Awesome dude, thanks so much.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check-‘em-out:
www.myspace.com/childbite (http://www.myspace.com/childbite)
Read My Review of Fantastic Gusts of Blood:
http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?p=19935342
Read My Review of Child Bite live in Chicago, May 10th 2009:
http://www.absolutepunk.net/journal.php?do=showjournal&j=4557
After catching their excellent show last Sunday night at Chicago’s Empty Bottle, I made it my mission to catch up with Child Bite, whose perplexing style (as intriguing live as it is on record) left me with more than a few questions. Frontman Shawn Knight gave me some insight into the band’s lyrics, songwriting, and touring, as well as looking to the group’s future.
Why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us what you do in Child Bite.
Well my name is Shawn, and I play guitar, I play keyboards, and I sing for the band.
[Editor’s note: Zach Norton plays guitar and percussion, Sean Clancy plays bass, and Danny Sperry plays drums and has a sweet ass mustache.]
You guys play a very unique style of music. Who influences your bizarre songwriting?
Hmmm… I guess that depends on who you’d ask. I think that’s a big part of it is that we each have pretty different tastes, and everybody brings their own sensibilities to the band – as opposed to if we were all just big, like, Slipknot fans, then we’d sound like Slipknot. But we don’t.
So you guys each take a chunk of the songwriting then?
We just write it all together. Like maybe somebody will come to the table with a riff or something, but it’s not like we sit at home composing a whole song to bring it in and share it.
Lyrically, you guys put together lines like, “His fleas became all the people!” and “She has no legs!” – and you somehow make these into catchy singalongs.
For that song [“Back to the Deep Egg”], and that album [Fantastic Gusts of Blood], I was reading up on a lot of mythologies from around the world and different, like, backgrounds, and I was just picking stories that I found interesting from these cultures and giving a vague sort of retelling of the parts that I was interested in. So I’m retelling these stories that had been passed down for a long time, but not saying enough or in a clear enough manner to make too much sense of it.
You guys never have struck me as a band that made too much sense, so I would say that you succeeded! With that lyrical approach and the songwriting, how long does it generally take you guys to put together a song?
I’ll usually work on the lyrics afterwards, after we get the song done. Getting it all together, that can take anything from a day to…a few days. Something like that. But we usually work on a whole batch of songs, in phases. We’ll spend a whole month or a couple weeks coming up with lots of little ideas and making rough demos, and then we’ll come back to those like, “Maybe we can merge these two together, flush these ones out, spend a couple of days on that…” So it’s hard to say. We don’t just come to a place and write a song start to finish.
Do you have a favorite Child Bite song?
I don’t have a favorite Child Bite song. Hey, do any of you guys have a favorite Child Bite song? Hold on.
[Couple seconds of silence.]
I got one head shake, I got one “no”, and the other guy’s asleep, so… [laughs].
Really, you don’t have a favorite song to bust out live?
I dunno, I’m trying to think… we play “Banana Gorgon” a lot ever since we wrote it, and it’s always been a pretty fun one to play.
Next time you come through Chicago, you should play “I Like Friends”. That’s my request.
OK man. Yell it out next time! Because that’s one that we can just pull out. A lot of them we don’t remember very well. We haven’t gotten all Fugazi on our own asses, knowing every single song… but that’s one that we can usually just whip out.
[Pauses for a moment.]
Yeah, definitely we’ll do that one next time.
Here’s a pretty open question: What do you guys love about touring cross country right now, and what do you hate about it?
Ooooh, well, what we love about touring is that it’s a great reason to go to different places that, you know, you normally wouldn’t have any reason to go to. Like for instance we’re going to Alaska in a week and a half, and I don’t think that that would have happened for us if we weren’t doing this band. And you’re there in a non-tourist fashion… like you’ve got a reason to be there.
Then the worst parts about touring would probably be having to deal with a van that sometimes is going to be awesome, but we just found out today needs a couple grand worth of work. So we’re actually kind of stuck right now. [Editor’s note: At the time of the interview, the band was crashing at the home of Forge Again Records owner Justin Wexler]. Maybe we will get it fixed, or if the cost is more than getting a new van… Well that’s the current worst part of touring.
Fantastic Gusts of Blood was, seriously, one of the most pleasant surprises to come out of the 2008 indie world for me – I was just totally not expecting it.
That’s awesome man.
What have you guys got planned in the future as far as releases? And are you going to keep playing shows for a little while – van permitting?
Well we’re just at the beginning of this bigger tour that’s going to go until the middle of June, so we’ve got a good number of shows coming. Yeah, we’re just going to keep on doing stuff. We’ve got these three seven inches coming out this summer – we’re doing like a series. The first one just came out, and it’s not officially out yet, but we just got ‘em the night of that show you were at. We’ve got a split record with a band called This Moment In Black History in June, and then we got one coming out in July with this band Big Bear From Boston, and then one in August with this band from Detroit called Prussia.
So we’ve got the three splits coming, and that’s like our summer plan; and then we just recorded a new album, but it’s not done yet. It probably won’t be mixing for another couple of months. It’ll be a while before that one comes out, though.
Do you feel like it’s hard for Child Bite to be taken seriously with such a far-out sound? How do you feel like you guys are received?
I don’t think it’s hard for us to be taken seriously – I think it’s just that it’s a fun show and it’s a fun band. I think there’s a difference between being a serious band or being able to be taken seriously. I think there’s enough going on and things are thought out enough that we’re obviously not a joke band. But I don’t think that ever becomes an issue. It’s just more of a… we’re definitely not taking our[I]selves too seriously. We just make what sounds fun to us or is fun to play, so hopefully people will enjoy it for being, like you said, a little different from the usual.
Definitely. Thank you very much for your time Shawn, and I look forward to seeing you guys again.
Awesome dude, thanks so much.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check-‘em-out:
www.myspace.com/childbite (http://www.myspace.com/childbite)
Read My Review of Fantastic Gusts of Blood:
http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?p=19935342
Read My Review of Child Bite live in Chicago, May 10th 2009:
http://www.absolutepunk.net/journal.php?do=showjournal&j=4557