Tuesday 27 September 2011

"Hello Fascination" - Breathe Carolina The Interview


David Schmitt & Kyle Even- Breathe Carolina
Est.1987 were lucky enough to hang out with Breathe Carolina last weekend as they swung by Leeds Cockpit on their UK Tour...


We caught up with Kyle and David ahead of the show.





Heya guys, how's it going? Are you enjoying  touring outside of America and coming back to the UK?
K- Oh yeah. It’s a lot more of an adventure in the UK. It’s like you’re a little kid again – finding all these new things.
D- Yeah, you never know what’s going to happen. You just have to go into it with an open mind.

Do you prefer being on the road with the extra band members or in the studio writing/recording?
K- They’re both different. It’s weird because this last record we did “Hell Is What You Make It”, we actually had our touring boys there with us in California. It’s just so different, tour is so much more .. I don’t want to say spontaneous, because we definitely have a schedule, but it’s new people every day, where as you’re static in the studio. We have our Cali family keeping us real.   

With your new album “Hell Is What You Make It” – did you feel under pressure now that you’re more established?

Hell Is What You Make It - Out Now

K- I felt like there was more pressure for “Hello Fascination” [the previous album], just because it was our first “working with producers” release. With this album, especially watching D[avid] in the studio, he knew exactly what he wanted and I feel like it was very fluid. We worked with a lot of people this time around but Ian Kirkpatrick, who produced our album- he made us feel like Breathe Carolina.




Did you deliberately try to make a progression with this album from previous albums?
D- It was super natural, everything about it was.
K-The 1st song we wrote for the album was “Blackout” which is the single and we weren’t trying to make a single, we weren’t trying to do anything, we were just writing songs. It’s weird now you ask that questions, because it’s almost like I am thinking about the next record; Is there a pressure to do the next one? Back in the States we’re getting radio play- we are almost top 40. I think I feel the same right now – the more you think about it, the further away you’re going to be because you’re over thinking. It has to be natural or it’s too fabricated.

David Schmitt & Kyle Even- Breathe Carolina
I know that you recorded your earlier songs yourself using Garage band – do you think that it’s important for bands to have that creative control when they are starting out so they can develop a unique style?
D- I think it gives you a good perspective. It was one of those things where you feel more accomplished just because you did it by yourself. Your first time doing it, you have to do it by yourself because bands that just get picked up and then get people to write songs for them usually don’t last. When you do it yourself, you know you’re going to be alright because no matter what you’re always going to write music and you’re going to love it.
K- You have more of an opinion about the music that you’re making because it’s that stylistic expression that comes with it. It’s not just “alright what you got?” it’s “this is how we do it”. We did a cover of Billy Jean recently but we don’t know if it’s going be released anytime soon. It’s funny whenever we do cover tracks, because once the bridge hits we always call it the “BC twist”- we throw in our flavour.

“Lauren’s Song” the final track on the album- I hear that there is a really nice story behind it?
D- Yeah it’s our friend Lauren, literally our best friend as far as us and our band. When we first started recording “Hell Is What You Make It” she was there for a lot of the recording process. And we went on tour she ended up getting hit by a car on Sunset Boulevard and died. We got the news the next day and we were all shocked. It was dark for us at that point because it was a girl who would pick us up anywhere. The first time I met her she didn’t even know me but she let me stay at her house and ever since we were best friends for two and half years.  It was a tragedy and we wanted to write a song for her – not so sad but more like a celebration.

Kyle Even on stage at Leeds Cockpit

What would you be doing if you weren’t in Breathe Carolina?
D – I wouldn’t want to know! I graduated high school and then six months later we started this.
K – D[avid] saved me for sure.
D- We just all found each other at the right time in all of our lives. We used to live together and we would be dead fucking broke.
K- We had a house and everyone that lived there, none of us had jobs but we always made rent though – somehow!
D- We would find a twenty dollar bill on the ground and it would make our lives.
K- It did happen once – we were sitting in line and this guy in front of us dropped it and D[avid] just steps on it and we just stood there for a while until the guy left. Then we did the ol’ “yawn and stretch” and we ran out of there with it...
D- ...ordering Chipotle!! We started Breathe Carolina then everything just changed so fast – we’ve never really done shit besides this for a long time so hopefully we won’t have to do anything else.

I know that you were both in bands during high school- how was the music scene in Colorado growing up?  Is that what inspired you to form bands?

Tour Dates

D- Awesome! The music scene was sick in Colorado. People were having house shows like every weekend and everyone would just go no matter what kind of bands were playing. Now there is just no music scene in Colorado, as far as local scene.
K – It’s just so different. To me it seems like it’s disappeared, but then there may be places we don’t know about.




What do you guys like doing outside of the band? I know you have a clothing label...

K – Yeah Blush is the clothing label – we did that with our friend Josh Umbrella [of Umbrella Clothing]. We’ve been doing that for a little while and it’s been going well and we’re having fun with it.
D – When I’m at home I just usually go out, hang out with family and play disc golf occasionally.
K – Blush is kind of the only real thing that we put a lot of time into. BC is always the “90%”.
And finally, what’s next for Breathe Carolina?
D- We go home and we have a few radio shows in October and then we starts a US tour in November. We do a bunch of clubs and we also are playing radio festivals; it’s all intertwined together and in the new year we are heading to Australia and Japan.

Thanks guys.