...AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF THE DEAD ///
INTERVIEW BY CAMERON COOK ///
PHOTOS BY BIDITA CHOUDHURY ///
JANUARY 18, 2005 ///

Where are the malicious little elves that recorded Worlds Apart, ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's wonderfully pompous new album? Surely the sweeping guitar epics ("Will You Smile Again?"), punishing sing-along choruses ("Caterwaul") and head-banging foot-stompers (current single, "The Rest Will Follow") couldn't have been penned by the hungover Texans gathered around a hotel room TV watching, um, the urban teen drama Drumline.

"Look at those snares," beams Jason Reece, TOD's resident multi-instrumentalist and onstage one-man destruction derby. "This is fucking awesome."

A photographer from the last interview is still in the room, furiously snapping away as the band reluctantly turns off the TV and moves toward the king-sized bed.

"OK," the photographer says. "Why not, for the last shot, everyone get up on the bed and jump around?" Her suggestion is met with stony silence, as Jason looks at front man Conrad Keely from behind his shiny aviator glasses (which, though indoors, he will keep on for the duration of our interview).

"I don't think that's a good idea," Conrad says, almost to himself.

I think to myself, This is Trail of Dead. How do they transform from docile Holiday Inn guests to world-eating monsters onstage? How do the empty Starbucks cups strewn around the coffee table turn into flying guitar necks and shattered cymbals? Is this merely the calm before the storm?

As we sit down, Conrad nervously fidgets with a bottle of water, and when I inform him and Jason, straight off the bat, that their ultra-brutal set at last year's Siren festival almost left me, you know, seriously injured, I'm fairly taken aback by the honesty in their apologies, as if they're barely aware of the mass of people worshipping at their feet when they fight an endless war with voices in their heads. As the conversation evolves, touching on such cornerstones of human existence as rice farmers, Kate Bush and an innate distaste for the Partridge Family, it becomes clear that, no matter how crazy they act onstage, TOD are really just a little band from Texas who like wizards and warlocks, probably used to be Dungeons & Dragons masters and have a cripplingly cynical sense of humor. The transformation is unimportant, as long as the tunes are hard, the beer keeps flowing and the crowd keeps dodging. As the song says, the rest will follow.

I hope my tape recorder is working. If not, I'll just improvise.
Conrad: You'll make up everything we say?

Yeah, I'll just say we talked about unicorns.
Conrad: There's a unicorn on the cover of our new record.

Really? I haven't heard the new record, actually. That's another reason why I may have to ad-lib a little.
Conrad: Oh.

Most of the time, I hate talking about bands' live shows in interviews because it's kind of boring, but I saw you guys twice last year - once at the Siren Festival and once during CMJ - and both times were basically attempts on my life.
(Conrad and Jason stare wide-eyed)

It was pretty scary.
Jason: (slightly stammering) We - we almost hit you?
Conrad: We hate the audience! We wanna kill 'em!

The first time, Conrad threw a 16-pack of bottled water at my head -
Jason: (laughs) Whaaaat?
Conrad: It was just water!

The second time, Jason threw a microphone into my friend's face.
Conrad: Oooh...
Jason: I did?

It kind of blew off her nose.
Jason: (still incredulous) I did?

Yeah!
Jason: Oh, man.

She totally loved it, though. Don't feel bad. She was very pleased. Actually, she stole the mic, and it's on her bedroom mantle now.
(Both laugh)

Anyway, how would you describe your live show to someone who's never seen it before?
Conrad: Stupid. We're the stupidest band live (dramatic pause). No, just joking.
Jason: I dunno -
Conrad: We're kind of like that movie Drumline.
Jason: It's a little visceral, at times.
Conrad: We only throw quality water at people. None of that, you know, junk. I guess it's our attempt at getting the audience to be part of the show, as well. Just to be involved.
Jason: Maybe by throwing things and stuff like that, [the energy] will come back to us. We want to keep up an action/reaction sort of scenario.
Conrad: There was a sort of tradition of that when we used to play in the old days. We just kind of expected things to be thrown at us, and that was one of the things we enjoyed. It was this element of danger.
Jason: A little bit of water, a little bit of beer - you know, whatever.

Have you ever hurt yourself or anyone else, like, seriously?
Jason: Oh, yeah.
Conrad: Both Kevin and I have had a cymbal stand go through the back of our legs, and we had to go to the hospital. I've had a concussion, Jason's had broken ribs; Danny jumped off an ambulance and sprained his ankle.
Jason: (to Danny) Which one?
Danny: Both of them. Then the ambulance driver had to repair me (laughs).

Do you think that element of self-destruction gives to the performance, to the band's appeal?
Conrad: That's not necessarily the logic behind it for us. It's more of a - I dunno, more of a pseudo-philosophy about approaching music with a certain abandonment, instead of control. But then, you know, our shows aren't always that way. We've played very contained shows as well. It just depends on the night, really.
Jason: If we were to do that and not feel it, it would be insincere.
Conrad: Anyone who's ever talked to us knows we're the least sincere people you could ever meet.

I'll keep that in mind. How is the new album different from Source Tags & Codes?
Conrad: Well there are no acoustic instruments on it; it's all electronic, all keyboards. It's basically all synthesizers and samplers. We didn't play any instruments on it. Also, this is the first album which we, as a band, didn't actually play any of the music. We had other people play the parts. That was an experiment in itself: What would it be like to make an album but not actually play? In the tradition of old composers - the way that they would write for other people - we wanted to hear how our music would be interpreted by other musicians, I suppose. I don't think you can tell, though; like, if you listen to the record, you probably wouldn't be able to tell that it's someone else playing, but that may be because they were already very familiar with our style.
Jason: We were like the directors of a movie.
Conrad: It was like a Broadway musical. It was like that musical Wicked. Have you seen it?

No, I haven't.
Conrad: What? You haven't seen that musical, you haven't heard the record - what have you done with your life?

Sleeping?
Conrad: Oh, OK. Well, go see Wicked. In fact, do that before you hear our record, because our record was really inspired by that book.

How so?
Conrad: Just as a theme, about witches and warlocks, and the lives of these extraterrestrial - I dunno, just go see it.

OK.
Conrad: Go see it, and then you'll know what I'm saying. You'll be like, "Wow. Yeah, I get it."

I will definitely try to enhance the listening experience of the new record by going to see Wicked. You guys formed 10 years ago, around 1995, right? How does it feel to be 10 years on?
Conrad: It feels old, man. (Begins stretching) My joints! My back! I can't stay hard like I used to. I dunno, it just goes by really, really fast when you're playing music. Plus, I think that what we do is an extension of adolescence, in a way. You try to stay childish and immature. Retarded, I guess. Keep that essence alive. It doesn't feel that bad.

When you started, did you expect to stay around for 10 years?
Conrad: I don't know that we had any expectations.
Jason: I think we just looked at things like, "Let's try to put out a record, let's try to get out of Texas and tour."
Conrad: Yeah. I think when we started, we didn't have any expectations at all, but after our first show, and people really liked it, we were like, "Yo, we could make a lot of money." (All laugh)
Conrad: "We could be huge. Whatever it is that we have that's special, we should try to -"
Jason: " - harvest as much cash out of it as humanly possible."
Conrad: "Just try to get really big and, you know, get the mansions, get the chicks, get the cars." You know? Just get it. That's how we turned out the way we did.

Very pure.
Conrad: And, 10 years later, we still don't have the mansions. But we still have a dream!

What bands would you consider to be your peers?
Conrad: Oh, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin. Seven Samurai - they were a band that formed to help protect a small village of rice farmers. We're kind of like the Five Samurai, 'cause we haven't found the other two yet. But they're out there, waiting for us.

And the world is your rice farm.
Conrad: The people of the world are our rice villagers. (Conrad finally begins to crack up, the turns the conversation toward Danny.) Do we have any peers, Danny?
Danny: No.
Conrad: We're peerless?
Danny: We're peerless. Well, there's the Sword.
Conrad: Oh, the Sword. They're a good band from Texas. They're our peers. (Danny begins to leave the hotel room.) Hey, where are you going? You need to talk!
Danny: We've got things to do.
Conrad: No, you don't! (Danny leaves.) Satan worshipers!

Do you think that, since your glory days, the pendulum is beginning to swing back and the underground is starting to experience more dangerous rock bands, like the whole noise rock scene?
Conrad: Do you think that's the way the pendulum is swinging back now?

Maybe?
Conrad: No! Everything seems extremely safe and boring now. I don't think bands are being dangerous or daring at all! There seems to be a really big trend to reliving the Reagan years of the '80s. It doesn't seem very dangerous to me. (To Jason) Does it to you?
Jason: I think there's a certain contrived element to a lot of the music that's going on right now. It's just so clich?�. There could be so much more going on than, as Conrad said, this Reagan-years-'80s thing, and then there's the '70s-retro-classic-rock thing. People are kind of dressing as if they were in Zeppelin, but they don't sound like it.
Conrad: But then again, having said that, what do we know? I guess music just does it's own thing, you can't try to predict it. It's certainly pointless to even try to analyze it in and of the time in which you're doing it. It takes at least 20 or 30 years to have any perspective on a given decade and on what's remembered. If you were living in the late '70s, you'd probably think people would look back upon that time as the time of the Partridge Family and Sean Cassidy, because those were the biggest things in the media at the time. But, no, everybody thinks about the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and no one even thinks about the Partridge Family anymore, and they were one of my favorite bands.

Really?
Conrad: No. That was just an example.

It would be quite an experience if you indeed were influenced by the Partridge Family.
Conrad: In a way you're influenced by everything that you hear and see, whether you like it or dislike it. If you see something bad, you're influenced by it, in a different way. Yeah, we were influenced by the Partridge Family. Definitely their haircuts.

Speaking of influences, I read somewhere that you guys were largely influenced by the wonderful Kate Bush. Over the last few years I've really gotten into her music beyond "Babooshka" and stuff. Somehow that doesn't seem like a likely match.
Jason: Well, if you'd heard the new album, then you'd probably be able to tell, because there's a lot of this really theatrical approach to [the music]. She was very dramatic, especially the drum sounds.
Conrad: We analyzed the drums on "Running Up That Hill": doo-doo-doo-CHH-d-d-doo-doo-doo-CHH.... Harmonically, her music was really complex, which I don't think we even touch upon, or come close to.
Jason: She just had a mind for something way out there, more complex than anything -
Conrad: And her subject matter! What the fuck? I mean, "Babooshka." Have you read the lyrics to that song? Where'd you come up with that, Kate?

When you think about it, it's weird that she was so mainstream for a while. I mean, she had top-40 hits.
Jason: She had one here, didn't she? With "Running Up That Hill," I heard that song as a kid, when it was on mainstream radio. It sounded so eerie and different. It made you want to - I dunno. Plus, she was just so sexy.
Conrad: Normally, I'm not very elitist about the type of music I listen to. I don't listen to stuff just for the sake of it being weird or that no one else can get into it. But with her, I can see that there'll probably only ever be certain people who like it. I've turned some people onto Kate Bush, and they just couldn't get past her voice. That's one of the charms about it.
Jason: It's kind of crazy, I was reading an interview with Big Boi from OutKast, and he was really into Kate Bush. And you can tell with OutKast albums, especially the last one. We played a show with OutKast once, and we asked them about Kate Bush, and they were like: "Yeah, we love her." She has a very mysterious appeal - either you like her or you don't. ///