Krist Krueger of Southerly : Q&A

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/southerlyinterview.jpg" alt=" " />About to start touring for his newest Southerly release, <em>Storyteller and the Gossip Columnist</em> (<a href="Reviews/Album_Reviews/Southerly_:_Storyteller_and_the_Gossip_Columnist/" target="_blank">QRO review</a>), Krist Krueger had a chance to speak...

  Krueger talked about why he turned Southerly from a solo project into a full band, touring for 31 months in a row, current (less intense) touring plans, why he likes instrumentals, balancing running a band and running his own booking agency, and driving from Denver to Wisconsin at no more than thirty-five miles an hour.

QRO: How’s it been, now that Storyteller and the Gossip Columnist has come out?

Krist Krueger: It’s been fine, we’re really rolling with everything, promotion-wise and all that, and gearing up to leave this coming Wednesday for the record release tour.

QRO: Southerly was originally just you, and last year it became a full band.  What was that like?

KK: Well I toured full-time for three-and-a-half-years, primarily solo, and I had done a couple of full band things in that time period, where friends had come out to support me, a three-piece thing and all that, but the plan was always that it would be a full band.  It was just a matter of the feasibility with touring full-time and that kind of stuff, to try to support other people on the road.

So it kind of finally just actualized itself, I guess.

QRO: How did you get together your current line-up?

KK: A good friend of mine is the bassist, Rob Bartleson, who engineered pretty much all the Southerly records and everything.  He runs Haywire Studios here in Portland.  Ryan Heise I’ve known for years, he’s in a band called System and Station.  I played bass with him in tours as well.  And my friend Andi [Camp] I met at a show here in Portland.  He came out when I was playing with Jeff Hanson.  That was when we officially met, and it just kind of developed from there.

QRO: You toured for about three and a half years straight.  What was that like?

KK: Umm….  It was?…

It was kind of like, I was faced with a decision to either sign a new lease, or find a new apartment, or hit the road and start touring and everything, and decided on the latter.  It was something I always wanted to do; I was always envious of friends and bands and stuff who’d been going out, touring and all that stuff, supporting their records.  It’s something I’d been wanting to do since I was fourteen, fifteen, and in some of my first bands, and I’d grown up around really solid, thriving music scene, where pretty much everybody who was older than me, my peers in bands and stuff, were out touring.  It just kind of finally – at that point, that was, what 2003, when I started?  Just decided to hit it, and go full-bore.

QRO: Did you initially intend to do three and a half years, or was it just a thing that started, and then got longer and longer?

KK: I wanted to be out and touring as much as possible, and playing shows.  It ended up developing into a lifestyle.  Just being out on the road, being out through North America, in my van…  I’m very minimalist with my possessions, so it was really kind of comforting, to know that I had everything that I needed in one mobile unit, and to just keep going and support the traveling, and support the music I was putting out and everything.

It just kind of snowballed…  It just didn’t stop for a long time.

QRO: What finally brought you home, after three and a half years?

KK: Well, it’s like anything: if you do it for long enough, eventually you’re gonna hit a point where you need to kind of step away from it for a bit.

One of the things with touring and everything is that you’re booking your life, seven-to-eight months in advance, planning and scheduling it all out.  I’d kind of reached a point, about eight months prior to the end of that stint, where I was kind of already thinking about not doing it for a while, and taking a break, but I had obligations to fulfill and to keep out there.  So I had to go through and finish all that stuff up.  Which was good – there were some great tours in there.  But it was good to take a break and be stationary for a bit.

QRO: So what are your touring plans now?  You’re covering the West Coast and Middle America – are you going to head to the East Coast, or anywhere else?

KK: I’m planning on heading out to the East Coast at the end of September, basically major markets and stuff.  We’re trying to work it out to bring the whole band out, or to package with some friend’s band, and have them support, be a backing band.

So yeah, right now, we’re just gearing up for about three weeks on the first part of this record release tour, of the western half of the states, through California and then all the way up to Chicago and Minneapolis and back, and then fly out to the east, get to New York for a bit, spend some time there.  And then we’re planning on heading back out for another Western [tour], in October.

QRO: Do you know if the tour’s going to go farther a field, like Europe or something?

KK: Yeah, we’re working on it.  At the moment we’re currently working on licensing the record overseas.  So when all that starts getting put together, then we’ll start to plan a European tour.

QRO: After all your touring, are there any places that you consistently really liked?

KK: Yeah, for sure.  I mean, there are lots… the country is so diverse.  There’s so many great spots, good venues, and just really good, supportive people out there.  It’s a lot of stuff, that when I stopped touring full-time, that I really missed.  I didn’t get to see all the different places, all the people I’ve met, and all the friends I’ve made out on the road, who I really don’t get to see, unless they come through Portland and stuff.  Which happens, relatively often: people come through town, and we spend some time…

But yeah, there’s definitely… One of my favorite venues is Kilby Court in Salt Lake City.  Just a great spot, really, really good crew of people who are in it for all the right reasons, and really have a good thing going.

QRO: What was the recording process for Storyteller like?  Did all your excessive touring play any part, in how you made the record, or what it sounded like?

KK: Basically, my recording process is to have all the songs written.  I’ll write primarily, start it out on either piano or guitar.  Then I’ll go in and start laying down the basic tracks.  I’ll go in with a click and put down either guitar, or piano, whatever the song based on, the initial instrument it was written on.  Then I’ll start filling it in, building it, start putting together parts, and then bring people in to the studio to play their respective instruments.  I just keep building it.

QRO: How did you know when the album’s finished?

KK: I kind of have a sense of where I want it to go, how I want it to feel, so when I feel it’s reached that point.  When the song is actualized, and it’s stuck in my head anymore, feels full.  When I actually listen to it and it feels like what I imagined it to be, or heard in my head that it would sound like.

QRO: Do you say, ‘I want these fourteen songs’ when you go in, or do you say, ‘I want these ten’, and then, as things are going along, you add a couple?

KK: The first ten songs were recorded about a year ago.  And then I took some time to shop the record around a little bit.  Just kind of took it easy on it, took my time with it.  By the time I’d decided on a label and everything, I wanted to build on it a little more, ‘cause I had four more songs that I thought would fit really well with it, would really round out the record.  So I went back in the studio and finished those out, and then re-sequenced the record, and had it all mastered.

QRO: What were the four songs that you added on?

KK: The new songs that we added were “Simple Simon”, “Cold Caller”, “Pistols In Paradise”, and “A Coarse Design”.

On this record, I had one track called “Building” that is on a split 7”, that was released anyway.  It was recorded for the album, and it didn’t make the cut.  It’s just a feeling, when I’m putting it together.  I got into the process with the idea of creating a complete and full album. 

The making of the record is the idea of making the entire album, not just, you know, a series of songs thrown together for the sake of a hook.

  So within that process, it’s basically what really fits together, and the song that got cut was an instance where there wasn’t really a place where it really sat well in the entire theme of the record.

QRO: There are four basically instrumental tracks on Storyteller, including the opener “Visage Sans Expression” and the closer, “Simple Simon”.  Why did you want to open and close with instrumentals?

KK: Again, back to the idea of making the entire album…  It’s somewhat of a concept record; it’s very thematic.  I think a song can certainly express itself – it doesn’t necessarily need lyrics to carry it.  I don’t feel that I always have to be actually saying something to get the point across.

And I like how instrumentals flow, it kind of breaks up the album.  It just creates an environment where people can put their own thoughts in place of lyrics, and just focus on how it actually makes them feel.

QRO: You’ve set up your own booking agency, The Crow Agency…

KK: I started booking my own tours when I initially started touring, on the road, with a calling card, stopping at truck stops and everything to book shows.  Which is thankfully a lot easier with a laptop and cell phone, and all that kind of stuff.

That started in 2003, and then I was with a couple of different agencies, between that and the starting of The Crow Agency in November of 2004.  And Crow Agency is still up and going strong…

QRO: I noticed that.  It’s handling a bunch of bands, like The Shaky Hands (QRO album review).  Do you try to really help out other bands, after your own experiences, with regards to booking?  Especially bands from Portland…

KK: I’m very local-minded.  I do all my recording at Haywire, here in town, Greyday records is a local label, friends of mine that run that.  I really just try and focus on what’s around me, and supporting the local scene, and my friends and everything, to help out other people when I can, friends that I’ve met on the road, and friends that live elsewhere and everything.  Trying to do whatever I can to point people in the right direction, as far as touring and shows go.

I had run a promotions company and record label, from about 2000 to 2003.  I wasn’t really doing very much musically, outside of just having fun in the basement with friends and stuff, and recording some stuff on a little four-track reel-to-reel.  I was doing business full-time, and then I kind of swapped.  I left the businesses and started touring full-time, performing, and then I started missing the business side of it. 

I think I have kind of a happy medium now, between being an artist, performing, making records, writing music, and the actual business side of it all.

QRO: It is strange, both heading a booking agency and one of the bands that it books?

KK: I think there’s other people in the industry that think it might be kind of a faux pas to run an agency and book yourself.  But at the same time, it’s kind of like… if I’m running an agency and an artist myself, what does it say if I don’t book myself?  For my other roster artists?  ‘Okay, yeah, I’m book you, but not myself.  I won’t affiliate my own projects with this.’

It’s kind of like having a record label and not putting out your own records.  It’s like, why wouldn’t you?  You put it all the work and effort to build it, to put out records that you want.  Your own records should be your favorite albums.  You get to pick whatever you want, so…

QRO: Did running your own booking agency, did some of that experience come out of touring so long, when you were having to book yourself?

KK: It was something that I knew I could do myself, as I’d built relationships with club owners and promoters, all over the country.  So there’s people that I know personally, that I’ve actually physically met, and hung out with and stuff.  From hearing horror stories from friends, and my own horror stories, from self-booked tours and things like that…  It was something I knew I could do for my friends, to help out, to be part of it, to hopefully help all of us advance.

QRO: Last summer, you were part of Kill Rock Stars’ The Sound The Hare Heard compilation tour, with Surfjan Stevens, Colin Meloy of The Decembrists, Laura Viers, and others.  What was that like?

KK: I’d never been on a tour like that.  Basically, there were a lot of different artists that were swapping in and out of the tour.  People would come and join a certain leg of it, and then would head home, and another person would come to take their place.  There were a lot of different people coming in and out.

It was good.  I got to meet a lot of people.  It was good to be part of something like that.  I don’t think there’s been very many tours based around compilations.

QRO: Your first full-length, Best Dressed and Expressionless, you released it on Dead Letter Records in 2004, then bought it back from them and re-released it on Fall Records.  Why?

KK: There was an opportunity to get some additional, extra support by re-releasing it.  Plus, I really like to have – it’s probably part of my OCD tendency, of having everything in one spot even as far as releases and things like that, a sense of organization.  Fall Records had released that split I did with The Conversation, and they were willing to do a radio campaign behind it, which we did with Fanatic Promotions.

QRO: That record sort of had it’s own inspiration and dedication, about some recently deceased friends.  Does Storyteller have it’s own, like you say, concept that it’s built around?

KK:

A lot of the driving force behind that is kind of the idea of being in the younger years of your life, your twenties, or even thirties, and seeing yourself as an older person, towards the end of your life, looking back, and seeing exactly what you would like to see of yourself when you’re reflecting.

“Dreams That Make Men Free” and “How To Be A Dreamer”, all kind of that stuff, is definitely based around whether or not…  “Breath Of My Youth” is definitely reflective of that.  Going out and not being caught up at all in the drama, all the weight that can certainly exist in life, everything that would cause you to hold back from doing what you actually want to do.

QRO: You talk about with Storyteller, sort of looking back on your youth…  Do you feel at all now, with your booking agency that you’re the guy with experience who tells them things they don’t know how to do, at least with regards to booking, just because you’ve toured so much?

KK: Yeah, for sure.  I had people around me, when I was younger, in junior high and high school bands.  People that I looked up to, peers and everything, who had been out, doing it for a long time, ten years older than me and stuff, playing in bands in the area, who kind of showed me the ropes and helped me out along the way when I had questions.  So I’m absolutely willing to provide that kind of support for other people who are just starting out.

Not even just as kind of payback, for all the help and support that I was given, but I remember when I was in their position, and how much that meant, to have someone to help you along with it.

QRO: Being the kind of person who helps people out, it doesn’t make you feel old?

KK: [laughter] Well, I hope not – I’m only 26…

It’s kind of invigorating, to see the cycle.  And it’s also really positive thing for myself, because every time I’m in that situation, I realize how far I’ve come myself, and everything that I’ve done, which it’s easy to forget.  It’s a good reminder.

QRO: When you book your own tours, do you try to book other of the Crow bands to go with you?

KK: It depends.  Sometimes we’ll bring support.  Typically we’ll pick the local bands to fill out the bill and play with us.  We primarily work with local bands, and focus on that, more so than bringing support along for an entire tour.

QRO: Do you think you can keep up these two jobs, going into the future, both with the band, and with the agency?

KK: Yeah.  At this point, I think I have a pretty good balance between it all.  I’m certainly not going to stop making records.  No matter how well they do.  If it ever came down to a point where I had to self-release records again, I would certainly do it. 

I’m not in it for a ‘quick splash in the pond’; the goal is to be a career musician, so I don’t plan on stopping at all.  There will be more records.

QRO: If you have any great tour stories…

KK: We were in Denver, we got to town, we played a show, and we had the next day off.  We were heading out – this was a couple years ago, sleeping at the Flying J truck stop – and got up the next day, got coffee and all that kind of stuff.  We went to start the van, and we pull out of the parking lot, and it wasn’t shifting.  We were trying to figure out exactly what was going on.

We had planned to go camping.  I was with my fiancé on tour [Heidi Wirz].  She’s an artist, she sells her artwork at the merch table, and she did the artwork for the new record as well.  The van was just not running right, so we decided to go camping anyway.  We couldn’t go faster than thirty to thirty-five miles an hour.  So we get up, we go camping, and we’re like, ‘We’ll deal with this later, we’ll deal with this tomorrow’, and we’re supposed to be in Amarillo, Texas the next day.

We’re out camping, we go down, and we’re having lunch at this village inn, trying to figure out what’s going on.  We look in the paper, and see that Wilco (QRO live review) is playing out at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.  So we went down and we found a transmission shop, but it was a Friday.  The guy hooked his tester up, and said, ‘Oh, it’ll be gonna be like $2,500, ‘cause I’m gonna pull your entire transmission.’  It was a ’94 Dodge Caravan, and I’d had just a ton of electrical problems, like just one after another, just short after short.  Like, it broke down in Austin for like a week, just tons of stuff.

I was convinced it wasn’t the transmission; it had to be a sensor or something.  And regardless, I didn’t have $2,500 to give this guy to pull it all apart.  Plus, he was like, ‘Oh, tomorrow’s Saturday, and we’re closed on weekends, so you’ll have to wait until Monday.’  And I’m like, ‘Are we just supposed to camp out ‘til Monday?’

So anyway, we’re like, whatever – we can’t go faster than thirty, thirty-five, but we’re still moving.  So we drove out to Red Rocks, and we snuck in to see Wilco.  We walked up the steps to go in, and there’s a guy standing there, like, ‘There’s no re-entry’, and we kind of pull a ‘What?  There’s no re-entry?  I didn’t…  No one told us that…’  So we got in, they played three encores; it was just a great show.

Then we went back to the Flying J after that, and got up, and we drove to Wisconsin, to my father’s place, at thirty-five miles an hour – from Denver.  And it turned out to be like a six-dollar sensor!  My instincts were correct, I just had no idea where it was, what I was supposed to do about it.

Categories
Interviews
  • Anonymous
    at
  • No Comment

    Leave a Reply

    Album of the Week