2 [INTERVIEW] SRG Presents: An Interview with Red Fang

Words by Nik Christofferson
Interview by Matt Abramson and Nik
Video by Jerry Howard


If you follow SRG on Twitter or Facebook you probably saw our incessant online ranting concerning one particularly amazing Portland road trip a couple weekends ago. The premise for a SRG crew road trip to see one of our collective favorites in action on their home turf came to light the second I saw they had booked the show. The “Red Fang Trip” as it has become known then took shape when Matt, Jerry, and our accommodating PDX host Don ‘Chile’ Ortega all signed on. An evening of epic “metal and beer” proportions and an interview opportunity was the plan, but what we got was so much more.

One of the first things we heard on arrival to Dante’s was Red Fang’s sound check of “Reverse Thunder”, which immediately added to the stokage. What came next was so absurdly mammoth no words could describe; only high fives were mustered. A new Red Fang song and it was beyond anything and everything we could have imagined. First thought, look out Baroness, look out Melvins, Red Fang is going to shake up the heavy music world in 2010. All of a sudden the interview we were waiting on was given whole new meaning.

In the basement beneath the Portland venue, Matt and I sat down with Aaron, Bryan, John and David for our little chat. With Matt being the talkative one and I being much more of a behind the scenes type person, he did a great job bringing out the best in the guys. We talked band origins, that rad video for “Prehistoric Dog”, the PDX music scene, Seattle experiences, and most importantly the new record. The guys were super candid and gracious participants, all the while giving us a bird’s eye view into their humble rock and roll world. From the successful interview to the killer sold out show that followed, we can say without a shadow of a doubt that great things are on the way for Red Fang fans; most importantly the shear monstrosity of the new material previewed that night.

It is my pleasure to present the SRG Red Fang interview:


Matt: So how did the band get together?

David: Well, the short version is we played in some other bands before, me and John, back in North Carolina and then John and Brian were in a band and then I joined that band and then Brian left for a while and we started playing with Aaron and then we all got back together and started Red Fang. That's pretty much it. We've been playing in other bands before Red Fang for a really long time.

Matt: What's the story on the name?

John: Of the hundreds and hundreds of really hilarious names that we thought up, it was the one that was the least shittiest. It was probably the one where we were like, "Fuck it, we got a show coming up, we got to have a name and I guess that one will do."

Aaron: I think someone was talking about Bluetooth.

John: I thought of the name "Dead Tooth". I thought that sounded cool.

Aaron: And then it went to "Black Tooth", but that sounds too close to Bluetooth.

John: So then it went to "Black Fang", but we can't be Black Fang because that's ridiculous - but "Red Fang" is totally not ridiculous!

Brian: There's also some D&D related thing, there's a Red Fang Tribe or something. I'm not sure what it is, but we're definitely named after that.

Matt: The D&D thing ties in, the video for "Prehistoric Dog" is totally fucking hilarious. What's the deal with the concept? Where did it come from?

Aaron: I don't think that there was a concept, I think it was just basically our friend Whitey who was filming us, who's a totally rad filmmaker. These guys had been bugging him for years to do a video for older bands and finally he was like, "Hey guys, I got an idea for a video. Come down and meet me at the bar." And he just laid it all out.

Matt: So how much fun was it filming that, and where did all the beer go?

John: All of it went in, and some of it came back out.

Aaron: It came out both ends.

[Laughs]

Brian: We had 4,000 beer cans. Whitey was upset at how "few" cans we had amassed, he wanted it to be waste deep or something.

John: He was like, "What the fuck?!" He wanted it to be like six feet tall.

Matt: Well y'all buried a fucking dude in cans!

John: That dude is always buried in cans. That was our friend Chris Coyle. He's always with us on the road and does the blog, takes pictures and sells our merch and stuff. Everyone that was in the video was friends of ours.

Brian: The cans came from some of us working at bars. So that helps.

David: My basement smelled bad for a while. We had trash bags full of cans and they started to smell bad. And then we started trying to clean them. We would practice, then after practice we would sit outside in my driveway and dump water in them and cut them up.

John: And none of the speaking parts in it were scripted.

Brian: For sure, I want to plug the Bugs. The two guys that were in it.

Matt: Were they the boffers?

John: Yeah. Paul and Mike from the Bugs, they weren't reading lines or anything, they just started riffing it.

Brian: They've got a great garage duo where they come up with like a third of their set on the spot. They're a terrific local band.

Nik: Any other good bands that Seattle people should know about from Portland?

John: Salvador.

Aaron: You probably already know about Black Elk.

John: The Nether Regions.

David: The Ax is amazing.

Brian: Diesto is a really good heavy act.

John: Pure Country Gold. Mongoloid Village is sick! They have the best drummer that I've seen in a long time.

Matt: Are people trying to come North or is the Portland scene pretty self-contained?

John: We had a hard time getting shows in Seattle for a long time. And then when we did, no one would show up. It wasn't until recently that we've had a string of pretty successful shows there because we opened for bands that people go see.

Brian: It used to be a lot worse, I think. I don't know if it's Portland paranoia, but when I first moved here it felt like Seattle was looking down their nose at Portland.

Aaron: But it's not like that anymore, that was like ten years ago. I don't feel like Seattle has the same complex that it used to. Seattle got a lot friendlier. Portland, too.

John: With our old bands we had friends up there, then all of a sudden it was like "Fuck! Who do we know in Seattle?" Bandwise, we didn't have any good "bro" bands.

Matt: The guard changes so often.

John: Yeah, and you take a couple years off of not going up there and then everything's changed - you have no fuckin' idea what's going on. But we've had a blast up there, this year we were up there three or four times.

Brian: I feel like we played Seattle more than we played Portland last year.

Aaron: We played five shows in the last half of 2009.

Matt: I saw you at El Corazon with 3 Inches of Blood and it was great. Is the hand shaking a tradition before the show?

John: It started on tour with Kylesa and Saviors.

David: It came from Brian's old band, the Last of the Juanitas, and we used to do that as something where we're like "All right, we're gonna make this music all together." It's a connected thing.

John: Take a deep breath, now let's fuckin' punish 'em.

Aaron: Often times when you're on tour, after you've been on the road for thirty days, before a show sometimes you all go separate ways like, "I don't want to eat what he's eating," or whatever and you don't see each other until right before you go onstage so you forget, "Oh wait! We're a band. It's not like I'm just a guy doing a job tonight, I'm actually friends with these guys." I mean, sometimes.

Brian: Yeah, I like at least one of these guys.

[Laughs]

David: It's like a team before a game.

Brian: We almost went with the "everyone wears brown"... that didn't fly.

Matt: Let's talk new album. In progress? What's going on?

Brian: It's in the can! It's in the bag.

Aaron: It's basically done. We just have to master it.

Matt: Where did you record it?

Aaron: Here in town at a place called Type Foundry and also at Amore!Phonics. Chris Funk produced the whole thing. And we mixed it in Nashville at this super fancy studio called Blackbird studio.

Matt: What kind of shit can we look forward to? We heard the new song at soundcheck and we were literally fucking high fiving each other. Where's it going to go?

Aaron: Kind of all over the place.

John: This new record is fucking way heavier and way softer all at the same time. It's weird. But what I like about this record versus the last record is even though it's kind of all over the place with song styles there's a cohesiveness to it because it was all recorded together, the last album was three different recordings thrown together on one album with tons of time apart. This one is going to flow a little better and make a little more sense. And it sounds huge!

David: We still have to come up with a title for it.

Matt: What about "Red Fang Bites"?

Brian: "Fangdango".

[Laughs]

David: We recorded seventeen songs and then we mixed fourteen or fifteen so it's going to be fourteen songs double vinyl or at least ten songs.

Matt: Any release date?

Brian: This year. We're all chomping at the bit to get it out there and tour on it, we're all really proud of the record.