Mick Burgess from Metal Express caught up with Coheed and Cambrias lead guitarist, Travis Stever during their recent UK tour.
1)You’re part way through your UK tour but this nearly didn’t happen when Claudio hurt his hand. What happened?
He was boxing around with his brother and ended up breaking his hand so we got a couple of extra weeks off over Christmas…..every cloud has a silver lining!!! The only downfall really is that Thrice are only going to be able to do the UK tour with us and won’t be able to make it over to Europe which is a shame. It would’ve been nice to have a band that we knew coming over to Europe with us but….these things happen!!! Anyway, we’ve got a cool new band joining us called J.R Ewing so that should be pretty interesting.
2)Where is this tour taking you…where have you been, where next?
We play in England for a good couple of weeks and then we will be heading out to Europe straight after that.
3)You’re heading to Australia too?
Yeah !!! We come home for a week and a half then we head back out to Australia for a week or so…not including the travel days. When we finish up there it’s back home again for a tour in the States for six weeks. We’re pretty busy at the moment !!! I’m looking forward to Australia though, it’s the summer over there so it should be a bit warmer than it is here in England at the moment !!!
4)What’s the reaction been like so far. I see there’s quite a few sold out shows did this surprise you?
It’s been really good actually. The shows have been sold out. The reviews in the music press have been fantastic too which is always cool, man !!
5)Your co-headling with Thrice, how do you arrange who plays first and who goes on last?
This is a proper co-headlining show with Thrice where one night we go on first and the next night we close the show. Whether Thrice or us are closing the show it only makes a difference of a couple of songs but the crowd seem to be into both of us and have been going crazy. We are splitting things pretty evenly with the closing band only getting another ten minutes or so. If someone is coming along just to see Thrice and they are opening it’s not like they are going to get a short set or something, they’ll still get to see more or less the full show less a couple, of songs…same for us when we’re the opening band. It’s a good value for money package as you get to see a couple of great bands on the same bill. It’s all about making sure the fans are happy as you don’t want them walking away feeling pissed off !! I think we’re doing a good job of it so far !!
6)Your album Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness has been gaining rapturous reviews. Were you aware at the time you were recording it that this could be the one to blow things open for you? That’s a catchy little title there !!! It’s a grower of an album. Sometimes people don’t get it on the first listen but it’s a good thing when you keep finding new things when you listen to it. Even if you don’t like it at first but you get it later, it shows that we’ve added enough in there to catch you by surprise. I think we knew it was a great album and hoped that this would be “the one” but it has still blown us away at the reaction it’s received.
There’s been some really great reviews hut there’s been some shitty ones too but that’s natural !! Not been too many of those though but those shitty ones keep you on your toes !!
7)In this day and age it’s pretty hard coming up with something a little different but you’ve managed to do just that. How do you achieve your sound?
The writing process is that Claudio will come along with an acoustic demo and he’ll give this to me and I’ll write the lead guitar stuff to fit in with what Claudio has made. I put in the fills and stuff. Josh will come along and play along with it on his knees and it kind of develops from there.
We come up with quite a bit of stuff in sound check and there are things that we put together on the tour bus with Claudio and his guitar. Usually however it comes from stripped down acoustic stuff and we build it up from there. I’ll listen to Claudio’s ideas and come up with things that I think might be cool in there, like different lead parts and stuff like that. I’ll go away and fiddle around with it and bring it back to the band and take it from there.
This time we had a rehearsal space for a month before recording where we all went in and we all sat around and arranged and wrote the songs together. Once everyone puts in their ten cents worth these stripped down acoustic ideas become a lot more elaborate and crazy and you end up with what’s on the record. The segues and all that fancy shit are then added in the studio.
Some of the solos on the album have developed over a period of time but some I came up with on the spot. The solo on “The Final Cut” is something that was very spur of the moment and thrown together with me doing the first part on the talk box. Claudio then does the more bluesy Dave Gilmour type of solo towards the end. It came over really well.
8)Have you ever considered releasing the acoustic demos in some form?
Well a lot of the acoustic demos are Claudio’s and it’s up to him whether he’ll release the stuff he has done. The studio demos that we have done as a band are a bit weird for us to release but Claudio may release something. Some of them sound pretty good so you never know.
9)You have quite a complex yet accessible sound, is it a challenge to reproduce in a live setting?
Not really, it just comes kinda naturally. Some things are a little different live but for the most part we just do what we recorded. We use a keyboard player back there called Dave Parker who uses some triggers and he uses the keyboards to reproduce some of the sounds off the album that we can’t reproduce live such as the string section on “Welcome Home” We also use some samples for in-between songs too.
10)You are one of these band that’s hard to pigeon hole…how would you describe your music?
We throw in all different elements of rock. There’s so many punk, hard rock, progressive. We throw in all of those elements that come within the wider category of “rock” We like to throw them in whenever and however we damn well please !!!! If you like that and enjoy lots of different sounds then you might like us. To some people that can get confusing but a lot of people seem to like it and we like it so it’s cool. You know, the likes of Fishbone were very diverse but they had a huge cult following and you never knew what they were going to do from one song to the next so it kept things interesting.
11)If you had to pick one track to play to someone to impress them which would you pick?
I think “Ten Speed” is my personal favourite from the album.
12)As far as influences go, what bands have you listened to which helped to shape your sound?
King Crimson and Robert Fripp is a huge influence on me. There’s also the usual influences like Tony Iommi and Jimmy Page not wanting to sound clichéd but that’s what I got into. Everybody cites them as they are so influential and rightly so. Ritchie Blackmore is another and so is Mick Ronson who was in Mott the Hoople and Bowie. He was a wonderful player too but there’s so many influences out there. When I was ten years old I liked Janes Addiction but I’m not sure if it really comes out in our music.
My favourite writer of all time is Neil Young but again it doesn’t really show in our music.
13)The video for “The Suffering” is almost like a take on the Clash of Titans, Sinbad or Jason Argonauts type of concept. Was this your intention to create a fantasy type of theme based on the classics from the past?
It was supposed to be a little tongue in cheek but it was also supposed to be like a throwback to Clash of the Titans. It was funny but it’s cool. I don’t think it really worked and people didn’t really get it. They were kind of “what the hell is that shit !!” I don’t think we’ve had the best of luck with our videos and they don’t really seem to have hit home with people. We did a couple that we weren’t happy with and a couple that other people just didn’t seem to pick up on. Videos are a bit of a tough thing for us.
14)The use of the twin necked Gibson guitar on “Welcome Home”…was this the chance for Claudio to live out his Jimmy Page/Alex Lifeson fantasies?
He uses the twin neck and tends to use it on the opening song. The twelve string sounds real nice at the start then he’d bust into “Welcome Home” on the six string. You don’t tend to see them around too often these days but there are a couple of others out there still using them.
15)Talking of Alex Lifeson he gave you a great name drop in a recent interview. It must be very flattering having someone such as that praising your work.?
Really !!!!!! That’s fantastic. It’s funny because when we started the band no one was really into Rush, we tended to be into Pink Floyd, Zeppelin and that sort of stuff but the name “Rush” kept coming up in interviews a lot. Then we started listening to Rush and we realised what a great band they are and to be compared to Rush is a big compliment. So for Alex Lifeson to comment on us like that is really cool….I need a copy of that article…fast !!!!
16)How did you come together as a band?
Claudio and I have been playing together since we were 12. Mike and Josh have been playing together since they were kids too. Most of us have musical families. Claudio then met Mike, the bass player when he was 16. I joined this band when I was 20 but we had a different drummer. When Josh joined we changed the name to Coheed and we’ve been together for six years now.
17)Were you in bands before or is this your first?
I played in other bands before Coheed and so did the other guys, but Coheed is our first “real” band 18)This is your 3rd album, at what point did you think it was time to ditch the day jobs?
When touring took up so much of our schedule that’s when we realised we would have to give up our day jobs. We had no real expectations, we’re all just happy to get as far as we have. We don’t want expectations to get in the way too much. We’re proud to be where we’ve ended up.
19)What jobs were you doing? I was actually in pool maintenance and construction. Building pools and cleaning them out and fixing them. I got my associates degree in that but I don’t suppose there’s much call for that over here in England !!
20)There’s a fairly complex thread running through your albums. Can you explain the story? Are all the albums linked by the story?
21)Coheed and Cambria are two characters and the lyrics follow a theme and it goes along with a graphic novel that Claudio writes. All three of our albums so far are linked with a common storyline. It’s quite complex so maybe Claudio is better to answer that one !!
22)You have produced a number of graphic novels, do these follow the story behind the albums?
These are something that Claudio is involved with and they are linked in with the story. These are really cool and it’s a bit different to what other people are doing.
23)There is a special edition of Good Apollo available, what does it include?
This comes with a DVD with the videos from the album, some mini videos. We want to give fans something extra and also show how we work in the studio. We’ve also included a booklet of live shots, a graphic novel and some cards and stuff like that, you know things that we think the fans will like in a nice sort of package.
24)You have the music and graphic novels, how about a deluxe set of all the albums, comics and DVD linking the story as a collector’s issue?
It’s certainly something that’s up in the air at the moment. I guess Claudio will figure that one out later.
25)How many more instalments are due?
Well there’s Volume II of the Good Apollo and then we go back to the beginning before The Second Stage Turbine Blade so kind of like a Star Wars type of thing. There’s definitely at least two more to come linked in with the story.
26)What will you be doing after the tour ends?
Hopefully we’ll work on a live DVD to highlight the new stuff so we’ll wait and see on that one but until then we’ll continue touring and playing to as many people that want to come along and see our show.
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