To me Kevin is that super nice guy who I drink with and talk about fruity drum machines. To the rest of the world he is mistaken for young Dennis Wilson or that ripper drummer in that soon to be huge Los Angeles band Division Day. Anyway I wanted to get to know a little bit more about Division Day so I shot them some questions:
So what’s your story, where you from, how did you boys meet, how did you end up in Silverlake?
Three of us (Rohner, Seb, and myself) grew up together in northern California, and we’ve been playing music together in one way or another since junior high. In our high school band, Rohner was the drummer, I played guitar, and Seb sang. I met Ryan when I went south to LA for college. We needed a guitar player, and I convinced him to come up north to live with the rest of us in a house in Santa Cruz for a summer, where we converted the back bedroom into a practice space, and spent the summer basically becoming a band. That was back in 2001, and it was the first time the four of us ever played together. Looking back, it was a pretty brazen maneuver for us to have Ryan move in without having ever played with us- he’d only met Rohner and Seb once before moving in- but it ended up working out. After Santa Cruz, we all finished college, which took about 3 more years, during which we’d get together in the summer to write and play shows, but never toured more than one run up to Seattle and some occasional Bay Area shows. After graduating, three of us were already living in or near LA, so we decided to settle here, got ourselves a practice space in Eagle Rock, and the rest is history.
Division Day is the name, was that influenced from the Elliot Smith song?
Yeah, Rohner picked the name when we were still in high school. We were all listening to a lot of Elliott Smith at the time, so it seemed appropriate.
What do you find to be your biggest influence on your music?
Other music, I suppose; we try to write songs that make us as excited as our favorite music does when we listen to it. Since we all tend to listen to different artists, this results in a lot of head-butting and a rather slow writing process, but I’m pleased with the results.
What would you compare your music too?
We have a hard time with this one. I always just say we play rock music, but we certainly think of it in far more complex terms when we write it. You could say “indie rock” but that’s as useless a denomination as “alternative” was in the 90’s. I’d say we are dark, melodic, dynamic, surreal rock music, but now I feel like an ass for saying that.
What would you find as your most important element in music?
I think we focus on melody above all else, we tailor our songs to carve a nice broad space for the melody to fit in. We’re also pretty obsessed with tone, I’d say almost to a fault at times- after a certain point, you have to just say “cool, that sounds good,” and start playing.
Does Seb’s calculator watch come in handy on tour? What type of calculations does Seb do? Tips, balancing of check books? Would he ever consider an abacus to wear?
He totally DOES calculate tips with it, which I think is intellectually lazy, but he’s way smart so I let it slide. I think he’d rock an abacus if one was gifted to him, though he’d likely be upset by the redundancy of wearing it in tandem with the watch- he’s really into streamlining.
What has been your best show?
Opening for the Fratellis at the Fillmore was amazing, the place was packed, we had all 30 of the colored jar lites that I made spread across the stage, we ended signing like 40 autographs after the show, totally surreal. We also had some amazing shows touring with Birdmonster last year- those guys are old friends and super-supportive, and we exhausted ourselves every night on our first run out with them playing tambourine, singing and dancing like maniacs along with each other during our respective sets. It was a total “doing it for the love” kind of experience, a nice resurgence of that impulse that initially drove us all to join a band.
What was your worst show?
Well, it turned out to be a great show, but our opening night at our Spaceland residency began horribly: Rohner’s keyboard completely stopped working right as we were about to go on stage, which for us makes it impossible to play anything. It took us a full half-hour to get a back-up rig working, and I was just sitting there watching everyone get tired and start to leave, and being so so bummed- I had been looking forward to playing a residency show there forever, and I was just watching it crumble. I’m like a kid that way, I guess, I really get excited about playing live, and it kills me to have all our preparation get wasted by broken gear. Eventually, we just said screw it and plugged in a back up synth that sounded pretty ghetto but did the job, and we rocked it, and it all turned out swell- big ups to Jean-Claude at KXLU for helping us sort out our issues that night, he’s a saint.
Your favorite Division Day track?
That changes every day, and I’m sure each of us would give a different answer. Right now, I suppose it’s “Beartrap Island”, or “Reversible”, or this new one we have yet to record called “Malachite”. I like em all!
Kevin since you have animals featured on a lot of your artwork what is your Spirit Animal? How are you similar?
There’s been much discussion about this, actually! Mine’s a toss-up between a black lab and a dolphin, depends mostly on if I’ve been surfing recently. Seb is definitely a meerkat. Rohner is a buffalo. Ryan is the eagle from the muppets.
What have you been listening to recently? Any bands we should look out for in the future?
We’re in the middle of a serious metal binge, actually. Rohner’s been seriously researching all these great European metal bands like Behemoth, Gojira, Immortal (actually, they were Ryan’s discovery, fucking amazing black metal), Dimmu Borgir, and burning me cd’s. I’m really digging it, but Rohner has totally gone off the deep end! I saw his cd case, it only has metal bands and David Sylvian records. I think the whole metal binge is symptomatic of a general desire amongst us for something fresh; you should hear some of these recordings, they’re really interesting, the aesthetic totally varies between the metal sub-genres. I even bought a double-kick pedal, but who knows how we can incorporate that into Division Day music. Other than all that, I think Ryan’s in the middle of one of his cyclical Beach Boys binges, and I keep revisiting all my favorite 90’s bands- I just burned two Hole album’s from my girlfriend. Who knows with Seb, that guy’s crazy!
Any last words?
Thanks for the interview, Randall!
Linked below is one of Kevin’s favorite tracks. It’s off the new album. Also the October tour dates are listed below. Enjoy!
10/5 (fri) Reno, NV- Satelite Lounge
10/6 (sat) Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court
10/7 (sun) Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge
10/9 (tues) Chicago, IL - Subterranean
10/10 (wed) Pittsburgh, PA - Club Cafe
10/11 (thurs) Brooklyn, NY - Union Hall (residency)
10/12 (fri) Lancaster, PA - Lizard Lounge
10/13 (sat) Hoboken, NJ - Maxwell’s
10/14 (sun) Cambridge, MA - Middle East
10/17 (wed) New York, NY - Canal Room (CMJ)
10/18 (thurs) Brooklyn, NY - Union Hall (residency)
10/19 (fri) Philadelphia, PA - Khyber
10/20 (sat) Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506
10/22 (mon) Atlanta, GA - The Loft
10/25 (thurs) Brooklyn - Union Hall (residency)
MP3 HAS BEEN TAKEN DOWN check out the myspace to listen.
Divison Day-Myspace
