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After
recovering from having their gear stolen whilst on tour in the US,
Poison the Well are in a surprisingly good mood. I had a chance to
sit down for a quick chat with guitarist Ryan Primack ahead of their
appearance at Manchester Apollo supporting Rise Against.
MM:
So how’s the tour been going so far?
RP: Really good, thanks. It’s
our last tour of the year. It’s been a lot of fun to be out with
Thursday, we got on really well with them and we’re old friends with
Rise Against as well so it’s more of like a big hang-out session.
MM:
What have you got planned for when it’s finished?
RP: I’m
going to home, put my feet up and have a relax session. Go
fishing, go to the beach and generally just enjoy the Florida weather in
the winter because everybody else is cold and I’m toasty warm ha-ha!
MM:
This is the second time you’ve been over to the UK this year, how do
you find it as a place to tour compared to other countries?
RP: To me, everywhere is pretty much
the same by this point. The accent’s different and some of the
attitudes are different but there’s the same amount of redeeming and
non-redeeming qualities and usually on tour you meet mostly cool people
anyway who are into the same shit as you are. For me, I like
touring over here a lot because it’s different to where I live and
I’ve been around there enough at the moment.
MM:
When you were starting out, who were the big bands for you?
RP: To be
honest, it was really just a bunch of local bands from where I live.
Bands like Culture and stuff like that were my punk rock shows when I
was growing up.
MM:
How’s the response been to the new album Tropic
Rot since it was released?
RP: Same as every record we ever
release – 50/50 at the moment and then 6 months later the percentage
is more like 75-25. Sometimes it takes people a while to wrap
their heads around it.
MM:
How do you feel it differs from Versions
and the other previous records?
RP: I think it’s a little more
aggressive than Versions. It’s
equally as adventurous but just in a different way. I think it’s
more focused and it makes more sense as a record instead of being kind
of all over the place. Our entire career has been about forward
motion and not doing the same thing twice so I think it’s a good
representation of continuing in that tradition.
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MM:
What was the inspiration for the album title Tropic
Rot?
RP: That’s really a Jeff (Moreira,
PTW vocalist) question but I think it’s like a little snide
comment at Florida and how it seems to a lot of people who go
there on vacation compared to people who live there who see it
as a cesspool of boredom.
MM:
You recently had your van and gear stolen whilst on tour in the
US. What happened there?
RP: We
went out to eat some food late at night, brought the van back to
the hotel, went to sleep and when we woke up in the morning
everything was
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gone.
We thought someone had maybe moved the van during the night for
some stupid reason so we walked around the hotel parking lot and
once we got to the front again we were like “dude is this for
real?” It was a major bummer; a lot of irreplaceable
things were in there.
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MM:
Has any of the gear been recovered or anyone who did it been caught?
RP:
Nothing. Even when the cop came he was only
there for about three minutes and was just like “you should just give
up hope now, we rarely find anything like this again” and I was like
“alright dude, thanks for the confidence!”
MM:
I read something about a t-shirt that you were going to create which
kind of parodied the whole experience?
RP: Yes, we did, we had it on sale in
the States. It was the Detroit Tigers baseball logo on the front
and on the back there was a list of all the equipment along with the
serial numbers.
MM:
The 10 for $10 tour this year in the US that you were a part of was a
revolutionary idea, how did you become involved with that?
RP: Our
friend Tim who’s a booking agent in the States – he books
Thursday actually – he decided he wanted to put together this tour to
kind of make a statement and he’s always known that we’re on board
for doing stuff like that so he just called us up and we accepted right
away. I think it’s an important statement to make. I think
people sometimes forget that just because you can charge a certain
amount, it doesn’t mean that you should and maybe be a bit more aware
of what’s going on in the world at the moment. I mean, we’re all up
shit creek really. Over here, over there, Europe, the US,
everywhere is up shit creek financially at the moment. Just
because something has become an acceptable amount to pay, it doesn’t
mean it’s necessarily the best idea.
MM:
What was the reason for your split with Atlantic a few years ago?
RP: They
wanted us to be a band that we were never going to be and never wanted
to be. We were just fooling each other and it was best to part
ways before it gets ugly and ruins things.
MM:
So it was an amicable thing?
RP: Oh no,
they hated us for it. They wanted us to work with songwriters and
we’re just not that band, it’s not who we are.
MM:
Do you feel more comfortable now you’re back on an indie label?
RP: Yeah
but to be honest all labels at this point are almost obsolete.
I’m always thinking about what’s in front of me as opposed to
what’s going on right now and in three months our contract is up so we
won’t even have a label after that.
MM:
You mentioned going home and taking time off but have Poison the Well
got anything planned for 2010 at the moment?
RP: Not
yet, no. We’re just going to crapshoot and see what happens.
We’ve been going hard since February so everyone’s just a bit tired
right now and needs a little brain rest and some time off.
MM:
Ok cool. Well thanks for taking the time out to talk to us and good luck
for tonight.
RP: No
problem, thanks for taking the time out to care about our band, thank
you very much.
Interview by: Adam G. |