Ok. Where do you see the band in a few years…

Kevin: 2013?

(laughter)

Right. In two or three years the new record will be coming out.

Mike: Broken up, beating the shit out of each other until I die.

Kevin: Then rotting.

Adam: I don’t know. I can’t tell you where I’m going to be next week.

Mike: We almost broke up a couple of times.

(laughter)

So we could almost break up again. Or we can break up. Or we can break up, or we can break up.

Adam: We weren’t very happy with how we played tonight. We’ll probably break up tonight…

Kevin: Do you know how many “Band Talks” we’ve had?

Adam: It’s ridiculous.

Kevin: We have interventions on a monthly basis.

Who usually calls them? Do you ring a little bell?

Kevin: We all of the sudden walk into this one room, and we just sit there until someone says “Ok, let’s talk.”

Adam: “This is what I don’t like.”

Mike: Well honestly, it’s been a tumultuous experience anyway. We can’t really say when we’re going to be going in. I know I’m going to be doing something, and that’s playing videogames.

Adam: We’re five very different people, and like, we’re still learing how to fight with each other.

Is there a lot of inner squabbling in the band? Do you guys get along?

Kevin: At first, it was, like, really bad. But, I mean, we knew we’d end up working out eventually. Like, we were like “Oh, we’re going to break up.” But now we deal with things a lot better now with each other. We know how each other are, because we basically live in van with each other at months at a time. You need to learn, and you need to deal, and you need to grow up.

Mike: I get mad when people leave their money in my wallet.

(laughter)

So I start yelling about that, and they start bitching at me. So I kick everyone in the world’s ass-all at once-and drive a van into the sunset.

(laughter)

So the answer is “Yes.”

All: The answer is yes.

Ok.

Adam: I think the band takes over sometimes, and it’s what we do all the time so it consumes us. And, we are friends and we do hang out outside of the band, and it’s important that we take a break from talking about it. We just come [and hang out] like normal people.

(Kevin: Hey, Nick. Come here, man. It’s Lambgoat)

Nick, come here.

Kevin: Nick knows Lambgoat.

Nick BTBAM: Lambgoat. Yeah. Good times. Howdy Lambgoat.

Hi Nick. How’s it going?

Nick: Lovely.

Kevin: See how Nick answers the questions for The Red Chord.

(laughter)

What do you think about these guys [The Red Chord]?

Nick: What do I think about them? Ehh, they’re not too good. I don’t know. They’re incredibly sloppy live, you know. They’re a fucking mess. This guy [Mike], you know, they need buy some shit that doesn’t squeal and make sort of horrible noise all the time.

(laughter)

You know. They’re just washed up.

Do you think they should start playing some radio-friendly…

Kevin: Nu-metal.

Nu-metal rapcore?

Mike or Nick: They should covering some Disturbed song I imagine.

Kevin: You didn’t hear the one we did tonight?

Adam: Oh yeah.

Mike: OO-OO-AH-AH!!! (mimicking Disturbed).

Adam: Did you know there is a Disturbed cover band? There is a Disturbed cover band. That’s ridiculous.

Really?

Adam: Every time I see nu-metal kids, I think “Dern-ner-ner-ner-ner, Dern-ner-ner-ner-ner. Der-ner-ner-der-ner-ner OO-OO-AH-AH.”

(Nick leaves)

Kevin: See you later, Between The Buried And Me.

Adam: Be in the studio and make that monkey noise and think, “Hey, that’s good. That’s cool!”

Mike: Nick is an awesome guy. I want to hug him every time I see him. And I do.

That’s very sweet of you. How about if you’re doing a new record, Adam, would you still be designing it yourself?

Adam: Yeah, probably. Unless they voted me and said “I hate everything you do, you can’t do it.”

Kevin: No, we’d definitely let him do it. All of our designs come from him.

Mike: Yeah, it’s good.

What about if there was another artist who approached the band and said, “Hey, this is what I envision about The Red Chord.”

Adam: Yeah, I mean I’m totally down with working with other people. My best friend lives in Brooklyn now, and he’s an incredible illustrator. And I hope to work with him in the future. Maybe not necessarily for The Red Chord record, but whatever is going to work the best and look cool. It’s not about “Oh, I have to do this myself.”

How about any specific bands you want to go on tour with going forward? You mentioned Between The Buried And Me and…

Kevin: Between The Buried And Me and Premonitions of War.

Adam: We want that tour to never end.

(random yelling and laughter)

We want to tour with Premonitions of War and Between The Buried And Me until we die. Because Between The Buried And Me is the best band ever!!

Mike: Actually, I want to tour with Pizzacato 5.

Pizzacato 5? Ok.

Kevin: Electric Wizard.

Adam: Electric Wizard is awesome.

Mike: Electric Wizard. And Cheebo Mato. Sean Lennon is in that band, you know. Cheebo Mato is amazing, and I wanted to role with them.

Kevin: We were actually listening to Mandy Moore today.

Really?

Mike: We were listening to Mandy Moore in the van today.

I can understand that, because…

Kevin: She’s hot.

Besides that, but the constant grinding and hardcore.

Kevin: You gotta be gay sometimes.

(“Yeahs” all around)

Adam: You need underage girls to break up the monotony.

Mike: It’s not gay to look at underage girls. And here’s another point-

(laughter)

I thought I’d bring this up. You know the movie The Professional?

Yeah.

Mike: Well, Natalie Portman is in that, and I don’t care if she’s 12. She’s hot. When that movie came out, I was also 12. So it’s totally ok for me to watch that and say “She’s hot.” I’m the same age as her. I think about the same age.

I have to confess that when I saw that freshman or sophomore year in college, she was hot as a little girl. But not like in a dirty, pornography way.

Mike: But how old are you?

25.

Mike: So yeah, when she was that age you were only a couple of years older than her, so it’s not that bad.

Yeah, not that bad.

Mike: So, back then, when that movie came out and you looked at that, that was ok, right?

But I looked at it later.

Mike: I know, but it doesn’t matter. She’s older.

Adam: She’s really short. She’s really, really short. She goes to Harvard, and when I went to college, into the city, we’d see her eating pizza. Actually, there were kids in my dorm that would go “Natalie Portman Hunting.”

Really?

Adam: Yeah. We would just waste nights following them around and laughing at them. And we’d catch her eating pizza. She’s like, I don’t know, probably not even five feet tall.

Sounds like good times.

Kevin: Are we talking about Guy?

(laughter)

No, we’re talking about stalking Natalie Portman.

Adam: …[indiscernible] of Natalie Portman.

Mike: Natalie Portman is an attractive person.

Adam: She’s intelligent too.

Kevin: We saw her in Boston once because she goes to B.C. I think. Or B.U.

Adam: No, Harvard.

Kevin: Harvard.

Mike: However, I want to buy the movie Sweet Home Alabama.

You wouldn’t?

Mike: I want to.

Oh, you want to.

Adam: She’s not in it.

Someone: Reese Whitherspoon.

Mike: I know, Reese Whitherspoon.

Yeah, Reese Whiterspoon. What was it that turned you to Reese Whitherspoon?

Mike: What was it that turned me?

Kevin: From Natalie Portman to Reese?

Mike: I was never obsessed with Natalie Portman. I’m just using that as an example.

Oh, I see. I thought it was something like, “I saw Legally Blond, I loved her after that.”

Mike: I actually never saw that, but, in fact, I’ve only seen like two movies with her in them.

Adam: What’s that movie she’s in where she’s a total slut?

Kevin: Freeway.

Someone: Free Willy?

(laughter)

No, it was the one with her and Sarah Michelle Gellar?

Mike: Freeway. It has Keifer Southerland in it. Like he picks her up. She’s a hitchhiker and she’s all screwed up. He tries to sexually molest her, she shoots him in the face, and he has, like, this big fucked-up face lip-thing.

Are you sure that’s Reese Whitherspoon?

Mike: Yeah, it’s Freeway. And later on, she’s in prison, and she takes a toothbrush and wraps it in Saran-Wrap around it, burns it, and shapes it into a knife and stabs someone in the chest?

That wasn’t Juliet Lewis or someone else?

Mike: No, no. It was Reese Whiterspoon.

Kevin: So, this conversation is about looking at 12-year-old girls.

Adam: No, it’s about heroin.

(laughter)

This interview may raise some “red flags” on the Internet.

Kevin: Yeah, I know.

Adam: We go crazy when we go on tour and do heroin.

Wait, you’re not a straightedge band?

Kevin: Oh, we’re straightedge. We just do heroin and drink a lot.

Adam: Eat meat.

Kevin: Do 12-year-old girls.

Mike: All I do is drugs. That’s all I do. And then I put X’s on my hands and say I’m straightedge. And then I go do drugs later and say I’m not straightedge anymore, even though I have them [X’s] tattooed on my hands, because I’m a fucking loser.

(laughter)

Ok, I’m going to ask you some lyric-related questions.

Kevin: We can try answering them.

Adam: I’m a real good liar.

Ok. Guy has mentioned he uses everyday things and event as influences when writing lyrics. Books, movies, his dog, whatever.

Adam: His job. Yeah, his dog. He works at a weird pharmacy, slash…

Kevin: He’s a short-order cook at a pharmacy.

Adam: Yeah, one of those old-school pharmacies where they make burgers and stuff.

(laughter)

Are you serious?

Adam: He’s a short-order cook at a pharmacy. He also sells scratch tickets, does keno, and sells liquor.

Wait, a pharmacy like CVS?

Kevin: Yeah. No.

Adam: Family owned. Like an old-school pharmacy that has three isles of medicine drinks, stuff like that.

Mike: Like piles of malt drinks.

Adam: Yeah. There’s like three isles of medicine with dust on it. Some stools where he makes some food. The other side’s got some liquor. They’ve got scratch tickets, keno.

Mike: Outside nearby the building, they’ve got a mental home. And there’s like something else crazy going on.

Kevin: Basically, a lot of the songs come from the mental people that come from the home, and go into his work, and sit there. And the guy just sits there and talks all day, every day.

Adam: He interviewed them one time.

Mike: Yeah.

Adam: He’s got an interview somewhere.

Mike: Some guy that talks about…he taped over it by accident. But some guy who talks about how he has no penis. He says the best line ever. He says (old man impression) “I used to have a penis. It came from heaven, and it went to hell!!”

(laughter)

But he accidentally taped over it. The guy is…amazing.

It’s a damn shame. I would’ve like to have heard that.

Adam: Yeah, it was great.

Do you think, aside from those personal events, do things at a macro scale affect his lyrics? Say, 9/11 or the war with Iraq? Would he ever write something about that?

Adam: I don’t think he would.

Kevin: No.

Mike: No.

Why not?

Kevin: He’s only affected by things that are stupid, because he’s an idiot? I don’t know.

Mike: I don’t think he’d write something about that, because…

Adam: It would be his personal opinion, and we all have different views on that.

Mike: I mean, there is certain things, if he were to write a song that directly opposed a belief of mine, I wouldn’t say “I don’t want to play the song.” It’s sort of like, his lyrics do sort of talk about things we agree on, like the selfishness of people. Things like that. You know, things that well sort of…whatever. I’m not giving a good explanation because I don’t write the lyrics.

It’s all right.

Mike: That’s my interpretation, I guess, of his stuff.

Adam: I like Guy’s lyrics. They’re interesting.

Mike: I like them.

Kevin: They’re interesting. They make no sense.

Adam: No, they do make sense to me.

Mike: They make sense, just not to a lot of people.

Adam: I like Guy. He has nice teeth.

Someone: He does.

Adam: Man, there are some obscenities being yelled back, over yonder.

Let’s see, how about stuff outside of The Red Chord. Guy and Kevin had Mosh Etiquette going on...

Kevin: Uh…

But not anymore, right?

All: No, no. That was a long time ago.

Kevin: That was a few years ago.

Mike: I wrote a few reviews for it. They were harsh and they ripped CDs apart.

Adam: I went to the website a few times.

Kevin: We were very, very strict on reviews, and barely gave anyone higher than a seven. So, it was like, if you made it any higher than a seven, you were like amazing.

Mike: You are amazing if you have our approval.

Kevin: ‘Cause, I mean, we’re The Red Chord!

(laughter)

You’re the end all of opinions.

Mike: Mark in, like, parentheses or whatever that that’s a tongue-and-cheek comment.

Guy mentioned that he wanted to do his own fanzine at some point. Is that something he’s still considering?

Adam: Guy wants to do a lot of things. Seriously, he’s like the busiest kid I’ve ever met. He has so many aspirations and goals.

Mike: He’ll probably do them all eventually, but he’s probably not going to do the ‘zine thing for a while.

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