Interviews: The Blood Brothers

And now, our third interview with the illustrious Blood Brothers. Our first ran in 2003 and our second in 2004.

In any case, the band recently issued Young Machetes, their second for V2 Records and an indelible example of the band's chaotic brand of hardcore. I had a chance to speak to guitarist Cody Votolato who talked about everything from the awesomeness of Guy Picciotto to the final farewell of Waxwing.

You can click Read More for the interview.

What were you guys going for with this new
record?

It didn’t really have a particular vision, it was more
just going into it we just wanted to explore every option we were
individually influenced by, and the different things we wanted to
write, and we weren’t really totally sure where we were
going to end up direction-wise.

So we really just started practicing one day to start writing
for the record and what came out is what you got. Some of
it came easy; some of it came hard, but in the end I think
we’re all super happy with what we got.

When we started the band it wasn’t really that serious of a thing. It was a bunch of teenagers who wanted to make some racket.

I’m hearing a bit of the side projects in the record,
both the Headwound City and the Neon Blonde stuff seemed to be
bleeding in a little. Do you think that’s the case,
or do you think it’s the other way around?

I feel like it’s probably more of the other way
around. I think just because of the nature in which we
write. You know, as individuals it kind of comes through a bit,
and any sort of band that is remotely similar that we do.
With Headwound City it was essentially just a thrash band, and by
nature Blood Brothers have always had thrashiness to it.

So I think that anything that Jordan and I would have done in
Headwound City, some of it could have been done in Blood Brothers
maybe. Vice versa for Neon Blonde because there’s a lot
more piano-driven stuff coming into play in our writing and a lot
of that was what Neon Blonde was doing so, I feel like, because
of the way we write, it kind of could translate.

Yeah. And your guitar style has changed pretty
dramatically since Piano Island. At least it
seems that way to me. I’m just wondering, is this a
conscious thing or are you just moving in a different
direction?

I mean, I feel like it’s been pretty natural. I
sort of feel like I’ve tended to simplify it a little bit
more, than say like on Burn. I don’t feel like
there’s as much complicated technicality to it. But I
don’t really know, it’s never a contrived thing for
me when it comes the guitar, I just kind of play what feels right
and what sounds right at the time. So I feel that any progression
I’ve had has been a natural one rather than a really well
thought out one.

I don’t know its exciting too, I always feel like
there’s lots of ground that I haven’t covered, that
I’m not capable yet to play, so it’s always exciting
going into a new record and feeling like I have a fresh plate on
my hands to sort of work with as far as the guitar goes on the
record.

What was it like working with Guy Picciotto
(Fugazi)?

Guy was totally rad. He - it was definitely a bit
intimidating at first - even the idea was a bit intimidating.
But when you meet him he’s totally humble and kind of what
you would want someone that was in Fugazi to be like.

Like if you think about it in your head, someone from this
band that you looked up to and respected, and you meet them and
they’re even cooler than what you had imagined.

So, it was really cool in that respect. He just always
had a good attitude and a strong presence; his ideas obviously
were always really good. He didn’t do any of the
engineering, John did all the engineering and mixing, but he
definitely was there discussing the tones of everything we were
getting, and I feel it was very important to have him there.

As far as like a vibe and an energy thing goes. He was
just totally rad.

How has it been being on V2, cause you haven’t
stuck with the same label for quite a while. This is the
first you’ve done two in a row.

Well, with the label prior to these two, it was a weird
situation because they kind of stopped being a label and then it
was hard to find another label, and V2 was definitely the best
one to go with.

I feel like they did a pretty good job with Crimes and
they seemed to be excited about this record too, so, I
don’t know, it’s hard to say.

For the last one you did a pretty cool single with
the Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck

EP. I’m just wondering if
you’re going to do anything like that again?

I know that we were doing a single for our UK single, a little
EP thing. I don’t know if there are any plans for a
US EP single or anything like that, but I guess we’ll
see. We have a video for the song "Laser
Life."

How did that video come about? For some reason makes
me think of Superman 3, but that might be just weird.

(laughs) I don’t know, you know, it was Patrick
Daughters who submitted his treatment and it was essentially
that. We got a few treatments in and that was our favorite
one. We had seen some videos he had done that were cool and
we had a conference call and talked to him about it. We just sort
of worked together on the different ideas that we had for
it. It was totally rad because it was the first time
someone had come to us with a treatment for one of our songs that
wasn’t sort of completely literal but was also just
artistically cool and congruent with the things that we like to
do and, I don’t know it was really cool.

And the whole process was totally awesome and easy-going and I
think that he’s a really great director.

How did the tour with Trail of Dead come together?

We haven’t ever played shows together before or
anything. I think we’ve met some of the guys when we
played in Texas once or twice before, but I don’t really
quite remember how the idea came up. We’re all really
excited; I’ve never seen them play but I they put on a
pretty kickass live show.

I’m looking forward to it. Also, there’s
another band called Brothers and Sisters that I believe is people
that play with them, like on the stage, so they’re coming
on the tour. I haven’t heard them yet but this band
Celebration is also doing the tour that’s totally amazing,
so I’m really excited about them as well.

One other thing that was quite interesting is that your
former band Waxwing officially broke up last year, even though
you’d been on hiatus for a long time. I’m just
wondering why you decided to put that to bed for good the
way you did?

It was just kind of like, my brother Rocky, it was his and my
band, and it was just like he has his solo thing going, and
I’m doing this, the trying to do a show once a year thing
and maybe write a record, which is kind of like, it seemed to a
little bit mundane.

We just sort of felt like we wanted to have the closure with
the band rather than have it just be like this thing hanging over
us all the time - whether or not we’re going to do it
or not. So we talked about it for a long time and just sort
of decided that it was time to finish the book on that one.

We had these two really amazing last shows and it was really
cool. It’s totally a bummer that we had to stop it
because I really enjoyed playing music with everyone in that
band, and I really enjoyed the songs. But I think that for
my and Rocky’s peace of mind, it was best to have the
closure with the band and call it a day. Rather than
waiting two or three years to play a show or write a song.

Punknews.org did an interview with Jordan in 2003 and he
talked about the kind of crap you were getting when you were
playing with more conventional bands like Glassjaw;
homophobia and stuff like that. I’m just wondering if
that kind of stuff is still kind of affecting you?

Not at our own shows of course, they’re not - It
kind of depends on who you’re playing with but I think that
sort of stuff comes with the bigger audience that you play to
that haven’t heard you, I think there’s more chance
for that just because of the way our culture is, in mainstream
culture.

I don’t know, we haven’t been on tour in a while,
our last tour was a year ago and it was Coheed and Cambria and we
definitely got a lot of shit on that tour.

I just figured that a band like Coheed would have more kind
of arty open-minded kids?

No, I feel like those exist or whatever, but for the most part
I felt like their audience was pretty mainstream, and you know
"bro-ey"

Our last tour was a year ago [was with] Coheed and Cambria and we definitely got a lot of shit on that tour.

Any other plans you have coming up? Obviously you’ve
got the tour to round out the year, but next year?

I think we’re planning on going to Europe sometime early
January.

And I imagine we’ll be out there for a couple months,
and then I think we’ll come home and probably do another US
tour but as far as who with, that kind of has yet to be
determined.

You know I’m excited to come back and hopefully do our
own headlining tour in the States that will be cool.

One thing that I was actually thinking about this year is
that the Warped Tour is kind of broadened a lot, where you
could probably play there as opposed to a couple years ago.
Would you be into it?

No it’s not really something that we’re interested
in. I mean, sitting in a parking lot all day, every day, like I
don’t know. It doesn’t really sound that fun, and
too, I don’t really know if we feel like we totally -
I feel that we could fit in, but I don’t know, it’s
hard. I feel like we would get a lot of shit on that
tour.

But yeah, it’s just never been something - there
was one year where they had advertised us as playing but
we’d never been asked. I think that somewhere down
the line someone had told them that we would do it and we never
would have. I’ll never say never but I think we
probably might not ever play Warped tour. I’m not
opposed to festivals, but it just sounds like it’s pretty
typical on the whole not to do something like that.

You are about to hit your tenth year together. I
remember hearing that you were being billed as a Waxwing side
project and stuff like that, and I’m just wondering, how
does it feel to be hitting ten years as a band and kind of
proving that wrong?

It’s pretty crazy man, I have to say, because I’m
only 24 now, and when we started I was 15 so about a third of my
life has been in this band. It’s also really crazy to
think about too, the fact that we - I don’t know
- when we started the band it wasn’t really that
serious of a thing. It was a bunch of teenagers who wanted
to make some racket.

We never had any ambition to turn our band into a career, and
from year to year different things started, it just became like,
the flow of the way things were and I just kind of
happened. So it’s always kind of crazy to me that
we’re still a band and its totally awesome as well because
I love being in this band and I love everyone in the band, so
it’s really exciting to say and I’m really proud to
say that we’ve been a band for ten years and we started
when we were 15.