Cold War Kids

CONFRONT: Could you guys tell me a little bit about yourselves to get started?  I was surprised that you’re from California actually.  Hearing you, I thought for sure you were from New Orleans.

JONNIE: Hmm.  Which way are we going to tell the story this time?

NATHAN: It’s not that exciting a story.  We started playing like two years ago in southern California.  We all kind of had different jobs and different things going and gradually we wrote and recorded three different six-song EPs with a friend and started touring those and then kind of got offered to go on more tours and momentum grew from there.

CONFRONT: We first heard of you while we were doing research for another band and in the process of doing so we watched footage of an interview they did in France for this TV show and in that TV show they reviewed your album and we were totally in love with your stuff from there ?” as was the reviewer of the show by the way.  But looking at your tour schedule I didn’t notice any recent European tour dates.  Have you guys toured Europe before?

JONNIE: We were there for about a month, like 2 months ago.

MATT: Two full tours in Europe already.

CONFRONT: How did that go?  You have a very ‘American’ sound and I don’t mean that in a bad way but in the sense that you sound very bluesy and as I said, typical New Orleans you know what I mean?

JONNIE: It’s gone really well.  Actually sometimes they say the contrary over there, like they say we sound a little British; which is more bizarre to us than the American reference.  Like them wondering if we’re a British influenced band.  It’s gone really well.  More than we expected.

MATT: We feel particularly well received in France by the way.  France and Germany have received us well.

CONFRONT: Well the review on the French show was amazing.  She just couldn’t get over how great she thought you were.

MATT: Good.

CONFRONT: I read your lyrics and as a lover of literature, I was highly impressed with the poeticism of your words.  Who writes the lyrics?

NATHAN: Umm, we write all the music together but I usually write the lyrics.  Like I take all the ideas going on at the time and just write from that.

CONFRONT: Where do you get your inspiration?  (Pointing to the books sitting between him and Matt)  Obviously you read a lot.

NATHAN: Yeah!  These are both mine.  Just kidding!  But yeah, all kind of literature and like just phrases and ideas that pop up from different places.  Just like every writer you get like bits from different places.  Like bits of conversation and stuff like that.  David Foster Wallace was one of the writers I was reading a lot at the time; thinking a lot about.  He’s an American writer.

CONFRONT: I have to say I really liked your website, especially the fact that there is so much to read and look at.  Everything is made to be viewed to quickly now.  CONFRONT is based online but we try to not fall in the traps of the rapid fire media.  And to me, the fact that you have so much to read on your site was impressive.  Why did you decide to go that route?

NATHAN: [Matt] is the visual master.

MATT: Umm, it’s for people to read.  But really it’s more for us.  It’s kind of like our daily journal.  My mom always told me when I was a kid, we were always traveling around everywhere and she said you better write a journal.  She was pretty good about keeping a journal but my dad wasn’t and she kept saying ‘or you’ll be like your father’ and he doesn’t know what happened in 1964.  So she always made me keep a journal when we were on trips and I think I stopped doing that but I think collectively we’re doing that.  I mean you can read from pretty much day one, starting as a band, on there.  Or maybe 5 months into it.

NATHAN: Yeah usually when we’re on tour we keep up with it; the daily writing of it.  It could be like you say; most people wouldn’t log on and read it every day but for people that do, I think it could be kind of a rewarding cool thing.  It takes a little patience and it’s kind of like any writing you start to enjoy.  There’s a style to it.  It’s a slow reflection thing.  Like old man stuff.

MATT: If you don’t take time to reflect about what happened that day or that week, you can really loose sight of what is going on around you and what happened with your life.  And it’s exciting and we want to remember it.

CONFRONT: You aren’t considered mainstream stylistically but if you think about it, the things you reflect on in your music and through your lyrics are very mainstream subjects; stuff that affects the working class and so on.  How do you think you’re fitting into the mainstream musical world or what are your views on what the mainstream is today?

JONNIE: You mean in large?

CONFRONT: Yeah whatever you want to touch on.

JONNIE: I think culturally, a lot of artists that we like have been counter culture in their style or their art; definitely lots of them have made a strong impact on our culture.  And I think if you can do that, I think that’s very important.

NATHAN: I think songs are like weird things like no matter how far mainstream can get from art and all those things, stuff always creeps in and I think that that’s a testaments to the fact that although the industry can become stale, people always want different and genuine  things.  And I think that in a sense we’re kind of putting ourselves out there and saying hey, we’re gonna do this thing and like in our reception people kind of get it.  We try to be part of a larger world and people get that.  And everybody from Bob Dylan to present day Tom Waits, those people are accepted by communities that are big enough that they make a really huge impact even though they don’t make sense of what’s going on in music.

CONFRONT: In listening to the album I found that the sound was really reminiscent of…well it reminded me of what I used to listen to with my dad; just the old, bluesy, natural, guttural type stuff. And for me it picks up all those images of what it was like back then.  Do you think that that’s something we as a music listening society are finally turning back to after all those years of overly produced stuff?  You know, I don’t know if it’s me that as I get older I became more open to that type of music and I just hear it more or…

JONNIE: I think like anything in music, there are times that it’s more prevalent but there always seems to be pockets in music.  I think that…

NATHAN: Well like with The White Stripes and stuff it’s been brought back and like the idea of people like that being more popular than they were before.

MATT: Yeah the similar principles are still there.  For instance, the White Stripes it very similar to people in the late 20s maybe 30s but with different technology; which is refreshing.

CONFRONT: Just to go back to the website quickly, I was also impressed by the photography that you display on your website and the visual aspect you seem to have built for yourselves.  It seems to be much purer than what a lot of other bands are doing right now with their make up for example.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that but you guys seem to have a purity to your visual image.  Is that something deliberate?

MATT: All that stuff is done pretty in house.  Like, I do most of the design work and most of the photos we all shoot together.  Most of the band photography is done by a guy that’s close to us.  But yeah it’s very deliberate.  Very much so.

NATHAN: I think it really reflects our personalities.  Like a lot of bands that think of themselves as being very glamorous ways; like rock ways.  I think that who we are as people is very well reflected in the photography.  We couldn’t bear to let somebody tell us who we are.

MATT:  We couldn’t bear to let them do it for us when we could do it ourselves.  It’s also our own scrapbook of our memories.

CONFRONT: We have a section on the website that’s called The Daily Urges and what it is, is a sections where the readers submit bands, new or old, that they think other readers should discover.  What are some of your Daily Urges?

JONNIE & MATT: Elvis Perkins, Patrick Doug, Richard Swift…

NATHAN: Strictly music?

CONFRONT: No if you wanna suggest readings or authors go ahead.

NATHAN: Derrick Brown.

MATT: He’s a poet he’s going to be touring with us all next month.

CONFRONT: Are you guys headlining in Europe?

NATHAN: Yep and Derrick will be reading to open.

CONFRONT: I love that you’re going to have someone doing a reading to open the show that’s so great.

JONNIE: Yeah it’s gonna be great.

MATT: He’s a talented, talented poet.

NATHAN: We are very excited.  Starting with a reading makes people more open to listening to the music.

CONFRONT: What are some of your guilty pleasures musically?

MATT: For me a guilty pleasure is more something like let’s say you listen to something a lot and suddenly it’s playing on the radio.  Like let’s say Antony and the Johnsons, I’m a little weird about it or if someone else is listening to it.  I’m like: Why are you listening to this?  Bu it’s cool if they like it too.

JONNIE: I’m not guilty of anything.

CONFRONT: What would you want your legacy to be?

MATT: That we had good songs.  I can’t think of anything that a band could want anything better than that.

NATHAN: Timelessness.

CONFRONT: That’s a good one.  Well thank you very much for the time guys.  I appreciate it.

ALL: Thank you!

Cold War Kids Official Website: www.coldwarkids.com

Cold War Kids MySpace: www.myspace.com/coldwarkids