War Baby Interview with guitarist/lead vocalist Jon Redditt. War Baby is an Canadian noise rock, doom pop, alternative, new wave, grunge group. November 17, 2015.
War Baby Interview
– What’s new in the world of War Baby?
We just released our new LP “Death Sweats” on October 30th. We just did a little Western Canada jaunt to cover Edmonton, Calgary, Kamloops, Victoria immediately following our record release party. Next year, we will hit Western Canada more extensively, Toronto and surrounding areas, and we have been working on a European tour for 2016. We will probably be doing a bunch of music videos too!
– How was it recording your album Death Sweats?
Amazing! We did 3 different sessions with the recordist who worked on most of our previous recordings, Jordan Koop. His studio is called the Noise Floor Recording Studio. It’s on a remote island (Gabriola) off of Vancouver Island and you get to stay at their house, and really immerse yourself in the process. Sort of like Summer Camp for adult musicians.
– How did you go about making the artwork?
My partner is a very talented graphic designer who specializes in typography (as in, I think, that’s her favorite!) She was the one who designed the whole thing and put all the artwork together (although I made some of the characters with black paper and white out pens). She also figures out any artwork issues we have. Like, this album, we wanted it to glow in black light and she figured out exactly how to make that happen. Without her, we wouldn’t have 99% of our artwork or t-shirt designs ha ha. Shout out to Hayley!
– How do you build a song up from nothing to become something?
I used to just write a whole song and bring it to the table. These days, I usually bring some rudimentary ideas to the jam space. I usually bring like three solid riffs but don’t arrange a whole song. Hopefully I have a vocal melody that works with them, but not always. Then we arrange the song together. It’s working really well, and everybody can add their own input. I’m pretty stoked on it.
– What is the strangest inspiration you’ve ever had for a song?
I’m not sure if this is strange, but here’s a notable story.
“Master Blaster” from the new record is just a song title that has nothing to do with the song lyrics. We had just written that song and were playing it for the first time a couple of years ago in Kamloops. We had run into a friend of ours, a photographer we knew from Vancouver, who we had no idea was living in Kamloops. Her boyfriend was this really funny and awesome guy and we were partying with him a bit. When we asked what his occupation is, he said “I’m a master blaster, I basically blow things up for a living!” Kirby, our drummer said “Fucking hell! That’s the new song title!”
We recently found out that this fellow has passed away and we’re really bummed about that. We feel very honored that such a cool guy inspired the song title “Master Blaster”.
– Do you have any tours coming up in the near future?
We are going to do Western Canada (more extensively) this Spring/Summer, Eastern Canada is a must next year too. And then Europe has been on our radar for a while, as P. Trash Records reissued our first LP “Jesus Horse” and will also press our new record. Nothing set in stone yet tho, so anybody out there that wants us… get at us!
– Could you describe some of your earliest influences in life and in music?
I think that I’ve always been a decently creative person but also a pretty distracted person. I am definitely somewhere on the ADD spectrum. I am also a worrier. I worry about everything. These things in my life have had a big impact on the choice to make music. Like, when I was a kid, I loved writing stories and I also wanted to make movies. But doing those kind of creative outlets require so much patience and they are so complicated. Writing music is so direct. You could create something really rad almost on the spot. I think I connected with that as soon as I picked up a guitar.
– Without social media could bands today manage to survive?
Today? Maybe not. Things don’t tend to move backwards, and if they do it tends to feel a little forced. I am old enough to remember how things essentially worked before social media (or the explosion of the internet, for that matter), so I kind of have nostalgia for that time. I think that music used to be a lot more valuable and finding a band that you really liked was something really special. I paid way more attention to articles, hung on to word of mouth way more. I listened at the right times to the campus radio, or music video station, sometimes even taping the shows. I saved my pennies to buy tapes and CDs. I went to the library and rented stuff based on fonts and cover art. My 1st band used to get phone calls about playing shows. Music used to be a real treat. It’s great that everybody has a greater level of exposure now, but it’s a mixed bag. It’s hard to qualify what era of music is better. I am probably just fond of older times because that’s what I grew up with.
– What would we be surprised to find in your music collection at home?
I’m not sure. A surprising amount of Brit-Pop?! Recently been revisiting the La’s a lot!
– Where do you see music in general going in 100 years from now?
100 years?! I can’t even guess next year. I think we’re probably due for another British Invasion of some sort in the next couple of years. Hopefully a Canadian Invasion. Maybe a British Columbian Invasion.
In a hundred years, those of us that are left in this world will probably be at least half computer and won’t really care much about music.
Check out War Baby online http://warbabymusic.com/