Graceful Degradation

Snew are from California, they play seriously kick ass music, and they bravely agreed to be guinea pigs for my first ever interview. Their latest album ‘We Do What We Want’ blew me away and you really should check it out – available now from all major internet retailers. Enough from me, over to Snew.

Q. Snew are a four piece consisting of Curtis, Andy, Mark and Cat. How did you all meet and who came up with the idea for a band?

Curtis: Andy and I met through a friend over at his place. We were both looking to put together a band and when I heard what he was into I knew this was the guy I was searching for. We started working on song ideas and when we had a few good ones we went over to a friends studio to try them out. Andy knew Cat from work so he called him up to jam with us and that was it, we had a bass player. Next we needed a drummer so after tons of auditions Mark who I had jammed with before called me out of the blue and I said “Dude, I got a new band and you’re gonna be the drummer”. Snew was born.

Cat: Andy and I met at Guitar Center. We worked together for awhile and used to jam during our free time at work. He invited me to come over to the studio and record some tracks. There I met Curtis who was working with Andy and everything just fell into place we then auditioned about 100 drummers until we met Mark.

Andy: The 4 of us just clicked the rest is history.

Mark: Snew YOU.

Q. How was your first ever band rehearsal and how have you progressed since then?

Curtis: It was a supersonic, mega blast of TNT and since then it has gone completely nuclear.

Q. Your debut album Snew You received some very good reviews, being named in the top ten albums of 2008 by SleazeRoxx.com for example. Were you surprised by such a positive response?

Mark: We knew we dug it. We put everything we had into making it.

Cat: It felt like we were giving birth to the band.

Andy: Everything that lead up to making our first album was a gestation period.

Curtis: The release of “Snew You” made us a bunch of proud mothas! Everybody around the planet high fiving us for it let us know our baby wasn’t ugly.

Q. Inevitably you guys get compared with the likes of AC/DC, I did it myself in my review of We do what we want. While you cite them as an influence, do you find the comparison limiting? It's easy shorthand for a reviewer, but do you ever feel like you're not being judged on your own merits?

Andy: We love Angus and the boys, they’re the best. Us sounding like them in any way is a complement. We don’t try to sound like em. It’s just what comes out of us. I think mostly it’s the title track “We Do What We Want” that really has that vibe. Most of the other tracks get compared to other classic bands, Aerosmith, Ramones, MC5 hell one reviewer even said Lynryd Skynyrd.

Cat: I think it’s just all the kind of music we grew up listening to, the kind of music that still charges us up. We’re in this to make tunes we wanna listen to.

Mark: We’re not in this to make art we want to ROCK!

Curtis: There are some great bands out there getting really inventive, The Dead Weather for example. Really cool stuff but somehow I don’t see myself still listening to it 10 years from now. Classic hard rock and metal is classic for a reason, year after year you still want to crank it up.

Q. With Snew World Order you guys have set up a combined fan club and promotion site. You're making heavy use of the internet to get yourselves known rather than relying on the more traditional label route. How much of a struggle have you found it to make your own mark with the proliferation of bands out there? Is it easier in the digital world to get a bigger audience for your music or with so many going down the online route is it even harder to make yourselves heard?

Curtis: The Internet has made being independent not only possibly but smart.
It takes a lot of effort and countless hours and sleepless nights but it’s really worth it. We’ve been able to create our own universe and it’s called the Snew World Order. It’s awesome!

Andy: We get to connect with the whole planet at once. That was never possible until now.

Cat; What once took a Fortune 500 company to establish a band now can be done with a PC. The possibilities are endless.

Mark: The more bands that do this the better. People are realizing that they don’t have to rely on a major label to provide them with their music any more. As more and more major bands drop their labels and go indie the world is getting hip to the idea that they can find it online. There they find the biggest bands in the world right next to bands like us where we all stand on our own merit. You either got the goods or you don’t.

Q. What was it like working with producer Bobby Owsinski and Ed Cherney (best known for his work with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton)?

Cat: Bobby O is the 5th Beatle.

Curtis: After working with Bobby for three years he knows us so well that when he says “I think you got a better one in ya” we know he’s right. Nobody knows this band better than him. He’s the one that got Ed Cherney involved. He knew he’d be the man to kick up sonically for the record. Of course Ed is in BIG demand as an engineer and mixer so getting him would have been next to impossible for a band like us except that he and Bobby are friends who’ve always wanted to work together on an album. When Bobby played him some of the ruff demos of the songs Ed was totally into it.

Andy: Ed’s got the magic touch. He’d sit in the control room during recording and just gradually twist a few knobs and BOOM, we sounded like gods.

Mark: The guy’s a genius.

Curtis: When it came to mixing I have to admit we gave Ed a bit of a hard time. He’d give us mixes of the songs and we’d go “that’s cool but can you do this instead or make that louder, blah, blah, blah” so he’d do it and then when we compared the mixes done our way to his original mixes, in almost every case we went back to his first mix.

Andy: That’s why he’s a Grammy winner.

Q. In She’s a Real Gunslinger you sing ‘She loves to work up the band’. What’s your experience of groupies been like so far?

Cat: We don’t kiss and tell.

Q. Last year you recorded a new version of Deep Purple’s Highway Star with legendary improvisational guitarist Allan Holdsworth. Who would be top of your wish list for a collaboration and do you have any other tracks in mind?

Curtis: Doing that song came about simply because Allan is a friend of mine and he and I have been talking about doing something together for years. So one day when I knew he had some time off from his constant touring schedule I asked if maybe he’d like to record something with Snew since we were going to be in the recording studio soon. When he said yes then it became and issue of “What hell are we gonna do?” Cat suggested Highway Star a while back as a possible cover for us to do sometime. We don’t really like doing cover songs, we’d rather write our own stuff. It hit me though that that song would be a perfect way for us to do what we do and give Allan some room to stretch out and do his inimitable thing. Allan loved the idea so we went for it.

Andy: I don’t know if we’ll ever do another cover song but who knows.

Cat: Our wish list for collaboration… that could go on for pages. It’s best not to ask.

Mark: Got any suggestions?

Q. Where would you like to be in ten years’ time?

The whole band: On the road!

Q. What is in store for Snew in 2010?

Andy: Touring and writing the next album.

Curtis: You can expect the same in 2011.

Cat: And the same in 2012.

Mark: After 2012??????? (most likely more of the same).

Official Snew photo by Edward Colver

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