Last year we had the privilege of speaking with all three members of Freezepop at PAX 08 (read our first interview here). Although the interview was great, we still had a lot of unanswered questions, so we wanted to sit down with them again and get the straight scoop about what has been going on in the past year.
I had a chance to sit down with Jussi Gamache of Freezepop to talk about their 2009 tour, changes in the band, their continued success, and even some hair care tips.
Last year I went over some of the typical questions that you have probably been asked a million times, so now I’m just going to jump right in to the hard stuff.
A lot of your fans have been virtually following this year’s tour over Facebook. I noticed that Kasson was absent.
Yes.
What’s the story there?
He’s just so busy at work… like he couldn’t take any more vacation time. We did a ton of touring this year. Sean and I are both freelancers (in our day jobs) so we can come and go as we need to. But he was super-duper tied up. So we brought in a friend of ours who’s in Sean’s other band… Seth (aka Bananas Foster). So he started out as our temporary fill-in and now he’s more of a permanent guy.
Freezepop performs Less Talk More Rokk at PAX 2009. The last time Kasson plays with the band :(
So is Seth a creative collaborator, too?
Um… not yet. I mean it could grow into that. The new album is pretty much just Sean and I but there has been some talk of him contributing ideas here and there. We’re kind of changing things up in how we perform the songs before we actually release them. Before it was like we would have songs, and we would record them and then we would play them live, and now we record a demo, try it out live and see what parts work and what doesn’t work or could be improved. I think it’s the way more bands do it.
We’ll write the song and then do a demo. For example, sometimes our songs would be all recorded and then we would play it live and it was lacking a certain kind of energy that…. It’s kind of different like when you listen to an album you can get more subtleties. Once you play something live it may not come across exactly. In a lot of cases we actually have different versions of songs that are on the album than a live version.
That was a very long answer to your question…
You mentioned Seth Damascus Kennedy…
Yes, but now he’s Bananas Foster.
Bananas Foster, Michael Diamonds and Créme Bruleé
How did he get that name?
You really want to know how it happened? We were at a Bennigans in Florida, and it was terrible! It was really gross, and there was one of those little menu cards on the table and it had Bananas Foster on it and we just said “Seth, that’s your name”.
So now you have two band members named after food…
Actually if you count Crème Brulee (Alex Chen), there’s actually three. He was originally another temporary fill-in guy. He actually played the first PAX we performed because Kasson couldn’t come out to that one. He’s toured with us a bit. It’s weird. We don’t actually have a rotating cast of characters but there’s definitely certain fill-ins that we use. Actually, for this show Seth (aka Bananas Foster) is the Best Man at his friend’s wedding this weekend so we brought out another guy to play drums, Michael Diamonds.
Are there any other members?
Those are kind of the three main people that we’ve been using for a while.
So you knew Seth from Sean’s other band
Yeah, Seth and Sean went to high school together. They’ve known each other for a million billion years. We’ve even been roommates.
How do you know the other guys?
The other dudes? They’re just like friends of ours. Crème Brulee and Michael Diamonds are in a band together called Boy in Static and we’ve actually toured with them. They would be our backup guys but they were still their own band. It made it easy because we all traveled together.
A new song… Special Effects
No big tour bus. Just going in your car?
Our ideal tour vehicle is a Sienna LE because you can fit five people very comfortably and we don’t have that much gear… Yeah, no big vans for us.
Listening to the albums chronologically it seems that your sound has developed and gotten more sophisticated over the years. Some of the first albums are really simple but have really catchy tunes, but Future3 Perfect is more complicated sound-wise.
Yeah, our music is kind of a progression. It’s weird. If you look at the three albums in a row you can kind of see, but the jump from the first album to the third album is… you kind of need the second album to put it in perspective.
Do you think the sound has progressed because of the technology or as everyone has become more experienced?
I don’t think it’s an experience thing. Initially the point of the band was to keep things really simple and everything was done on the QY70 (like just QY70 and vocoder). For the second album we used the same tools but Kasson added a bunch of things on the computer. For the third album the songs were written on the QY70 but we brought more stuff in. We basically did everything we could do with the QY70.
You still write with it?
A little bit. Sean actually got his own, so it will still be around.
I thought that computer sequencing software would have made it obsolete by now.
Well, it’s kind of our “thing” so we’re not going to abandon it totally.
I saw a YouTube video of Sean totally shredding on a guitar during your tour this year.
Yeah, that’s his little dirty secret.
Sean rocking out with Seth on guitar
So has he considered playing guitar for Freezepop?
We’ll bring it in on a couple of songs here and there but we’re mostly an electro-pop band. It’s a stylistic choice I guess. Sean does play guitar in his other bands, though.
Does he actually play Guitar Hero?
Not really, no. The thing is drummers are really good at that game because it’s a rhythm-based thing. It really has nothing to do with how well you play guitar.
You’ve been on every Harmonix game up until Rock Band 2… and you’re not present at all on Rock Band: Beatles.
Yeah, what’s up with that? (smiles) When Beatles was announced Kasson asked if we were going to have a song in there. (laughs).
For Rock Band 2 we didn’t have any new songs ready at that point and it seemed like we had anything appropriate in our back catalog. We attempted to write some new stuff for it but nothing really fit, so we decided to hold out for the DLC (downloadable content).
Actually this weekend we have some DLC coming out.
I thought that since Harmonix got so big that they “didn’t need Freezepop anymore”.
No, they’re very supportive of their employees’ bands. Hopefully that will continue since the relationship with Kasson has officially ended.
Kasson’s not…
Did you not know that? We made an announcement a couple of months ago. He’s really busy and it’s gotten to the point that his involvement is only with the fun stuff while we (Sean and I) do our taxes and conference calls. Now that we’re working on the new album we started talking about record deals, and he just saw it as his time to step out.
Are there going to be any legal or copyright issues resulting from this?
It’s going to be complicated because we still have a partnership together, but we’re going to have to figure out how to go on from here. Kasson is playing tonight with us, but these are his last ones with us… it’s kind of his “send off”.
You released a track this year on the Internet called “Only You”.
Yeah, it’s by Yazoo… like 80s Classic!
Download the ‘Only You’ cover by Freezepop
Is that going to be released on an album?
It was released on a local compilation… I don’t even know if they’re for sale anywhere. (The crack research team at OCMS found it. It’s on Buffetlibre Rewind 2)
Sean and a friend of ours did a good deal of production on it, but my part was easy. I just went in and sang the words, and that was it. The boys worked on it for like a week or two I guess.
What equipment does Sean use to produce the music?
Oh, he’s got a ton of stuff. He has a lot of keyboards, but I don’t know what kind. He has like five million of them.
I know you write most of the lyrics, but how does that process work?
The way we used to do it is I would write lyrics and give them to Kasson and he would fit them into songs that he had written. Things got more collaborative over the years where we were bouncing back and forth. There’s kind of a shift now, but Kasson and I worked very slowly but Sean is just banging the songs out left and right. It’s a very different way of working. But Sean is writing a lot of lyrics now, too.
Some of the topics of the songs appear to be commentary of life… I assume “Shark Attack” came about after watching an episode of Wheel of Fortune, for example.
Kasson actually wrote that one. I don’t know if that was an actual puzzle on the show, but that is a brilliant song. I like that song because it’s really stupid but the joke doesn’t really get old.
Science Genius Girl
How do you decide what topics to write about? Do you just observe the world and say “hey that’s a great idea”?
Yeah! The inspiration just strikes. I wish I knew a little better about how it happened so I would have an easier time writing. I’ll write things down. Generally our songs have a cute and fun, although some our songs have a little serious. I guess the challenge is writing something that sounds Freezepop-y but is also not… it shouldn’t be too easy .
Now for the off-the-wall questions…
Other than Battlestar Galactica, what is your favorite TV show?
I was really into Battlestar, which is weird because I’m generally not into sci-fi, but I just got hooked on it. Our friend gave us the DVD for Christmas one year, and at first I was like “whatever”. Sean started watching it and I was just “in the room” and then it starting actually getting good. It really sucks you in. We’re sad about the demise of the series.
Other than that? I used to really like Arrested Development. I don’t know, I really don’t watch too much of TV. I watch gross surgery shows on the Discovery Channel. Oh, I really like Japanese Iron Chef… that’s really good, too.
Other than Boston, what’s your favorite city?
Oh, Boston totally wouldn’t be our favorite city. Maybe I shouldn’t dis Boston like that. Here’s the thing: Boston crowds generally have their arms crossed and they don’t really dance. Our crowds specifically are better than that. People will dance and stuff but Boston is generally a pretty tough city to play a show. They’ll be into it, but they just don’t dance.
We always do really well in Pittsburgh. A lot of weird random places that you wouldn’t think of… like Lansing, Michigan. We always have really fun crowds there.
I guess favorite ever was Stockholm. That was crazy. We spent less than 24 hours there so we didn’t get to see the city at all and it was heartbreaking because we were all looking out the window like “oh, that looks awesome”. We basically rolled into town and did a sound check and got a little food. Played the show, slept in our friend’s studio and then drove the next morning. It was very sad, but the show was awesome. Scandinavia in generally really like their synthy music. We knew there were going to be a decent amount of people there but they all were singing along. It was surreal.
We used to be a lot bigger in Europe until the video game. We actually haven’t been to Europe since like 2004. We really want to go back but we’ve really been concentrating our efforts here.
There was a big spike and now it’s plateaued a bit. We’re hoping that the next album gives us a little push.
Can you give us any information about the new album?
We’re actually playing two new songs from that album tonight. We’re hoping to actually have it out early next year. Our plan when we get back into town is to buckle down. We have a ton of demos but they’re in various stages of completion.
Do you have a title?
Not yet.
I’m sure everyone wants to know what hair products you use.
What hair products do I use to get this natural pink? Well, I use bleach. I used to use Special FX Atomic Pink and now it’s hard to find in Boston. I don’t know if they’ve discontinued it but a lot of stored just tell me “nope”. I had to try a different product this time, and it came out pretty well, but the reason I like Special Effecs was because it lasted a really long time. This is Manic Panic, so we’ll see how well it does.
So I use that and I use some sort of Garnier creme gel anti-frizz thing. It’s funny, I started using it a month ago and so many people have commented on how my hair smells nice.
Isn’t that creepy when people smell your hair?
Not like fans, but my friends! I’ll be giving them a hug and then they’ll just mention it. And then I’ll just say “Oh, it’s Garnier Fructis”!
I used to like apple shampoo. In the early 90s it was everywhere and now you can’t find it.
Oh, yeah. I believe that was Salon Selectives . The Garnier smells like non-specific fruity.
Speaking of which… what’s your favorite fruit?
Probably raspberries.
Can you speak for Sean (about his favorite fruit)?
You know, he doesn’t really eat fruit. He’ll have like bananas, but he doesn’t go out and seek out fruit. He likes fruit-flavored candy so much better than the actual fruit. Or he’ll have blueberry yogurt, but he wouldn’t just sit and eat blueberries by themselves.
What hair products does Sean use?
I think he uses some Vita stuff right now. It comes in a can. He used to use Bed Head, but now he uses some Neutragena for Men now.
Freezepop performs Magnetic at PAX 09
What do you do for fun when you’re not writing music?
We generally just go out with our friends and go dancing. Sean goes out a lot, but I go out a lot less. We just hang out with our friends, and play with our dog Simon a lot. We’re so ridiculously goobers over Simon. He’s totally our big baby. That’s the hardest part of touring is leaving him behind.
I see on Facebook that Sean is currently in a relationship with “Craig McNeil’s eyebrow”. What’s the deal with that?
Well, Craig McNeil’s eyebrow gets around… he’s just a friend of ours… and he has an eyebrow.
Just one?
Well, the one eyebrow has a mind of its own.
That’s tough. I’d like to have my friends with me… that’s one item.
But then you wouldn’t be on a deserted island.
I’d have my dog with me, and some handy tools I guess… practical stuff. Maybe some music.
What if both you and Sean were on the island together?
Probably some keyboards and some sort of power supply.
What is the meaning of life?
Have fun, and try to make other people happy too. That’s pretty good. Be a good person.
…And don’t be a dick.
1 Comment
Looks like I'm screwed on the secret of life thing if I'm not allowed to be a dick.