A Chat at the Merch Table with Pat and Eric of AFFIANCE
After an amazing--although entirely too short--performance by Affiance, I headed on out to the merch table, the land that I blame for all of my money disappearing to (I'm seriously not even kidding, you NEED to see how many band shirts I have; they're pretty much all I wear). Of course, I had to stand on the outskirts, making sure all the new Affiance converts were able to talk up the band members and buy some records. When the crowd had cleared up, I realized that Dennis (the lead singer), who I had been planning to interview, had taken off for the airport to drop off a friend. However, I got to talk with Eric (the bassist) and Pat (the drummer), who turned out to be these super way cool dudes.
First order of business was obviously to find out the scoop on a new album, which we've all been earnestly waiting for. Eric said there'd be some "new stuff coming out" since they're actually "80% done with the album," but Eric is saying “We haven’t really talked our game plan yet for the coming year. We’re still with bullet tooth. Still a lot of closed door conversations with our manager and some other people in the industry.” I just can't wait for next year since, apparently “2014 is going to be full of anticipation. A lot of potential energy just ready to take off," and that's just too much anticipation. I mean, c'mon, 2 months in a teenagers mind is forever.
We all know Affiance is a very lyric-oriented band, so I was really curious to know how they came up with the deeply political lyrics that they have. I was especially interested in learning about a certain line in "Kings of Deceit," where the words are "power doesn't come from the barrel of a gun." However, the rest of the song suggests the opposite by telling the story of JFK's assassinator. Pat explained that the “shooter in the case thinks he has all this power because he has the gun and he’s the one dethroning the king if you will but we’re saying the power isn’t in the weapon or the gun but in the people.”
Pat was also talking about how Brett (rhythm guitar) starts with the shell of the song, the main ideas for the meaning, then “Dennis pieces everything together and does a lot of his writing in the studio." Eric added in saying, “Dennis is the guy that just takes care of the message. He’s an extreme extrovert and likes to talk.” In fact, Dennis likes to take care of everything at the last possible time. Eric seemed to take great humor in this, laughing that “Brett already has lyrics written for the third album. Dennis has no idea yet.”
Life on tour as a small band is rough, and the Killswith Engage tour was extremely hard for Affiance. Their van broke down so many times that afterward they decided to run a full-fledge IndieGoGo campaign with all sorts of wild perks to raise the money for a new van. Eric described the new van to me as this airport shuttle with all the seats ripped out and bunk beds built into the walls. Seems to me like a pretty comfy place. Not only is the van a problem, but what are they going to afford to eat? The Las Vegas show “was a great show," Pat was excitedly pronouncing. Of course I thought he was talking about their playing but..."We were fed swordfish that night. We don’t get something like that. Usually you get fed like chicken or
vegetables and at the House of Blues they were like here’s this swordfish! I don’t like fish but I had to have some.”
As we all know, every band has those classic funny stories, and I was delighted to hear one of them. “The funny thing is," started Pat, "when the promoter got [the deal] from the booking agent the promoter thought he was buying this package for x amount of money which was ridiculous because the amount that we get paid is not the amount that the tour was worth and here’s our promoter saying yea great and on the flyer it says us and then Protest the Hero underneath us. So there’s this whole week when people were buying tickets for this Protest/Architect show with us headlining it.” I really hope they kept some of those posters.
My dad and I have been thinking about bringing lamps to every Affiance concert as a joke (if you don't get the joke go watch the "Call to the Warrior" music video) and Eric told us “I’ve been trying to push for doing this thing—once we can afford
to do so—and every city we play in we go to a thrift store and buy a lamp.” We agreed that next time Affiance comes to LA we'll bring them a lamp. :)
Thank you Eric and Pat for that fun conversation!
First order of business was obviously to find out the scoop on a new album, which we've all been earnestly waiting for. Eric said there'd be some "new stuff coming out" since they're actually "80% done with the album," but Eric is saying “We haven’t really talked our game plan yet for the coming year. We’re still with bullet tooth. Still a lot of closed door conversations with our manager and some other people in the industry.” I just can't wait for next year since, apparently “2014 is going to be full of anticipation. A lot of potential energy just ready to take off," and that's just too much anticipation. I mean, c'mon, 2 months in a teenagers mind is forever.
We all know Affiance is a very lyric-oriented band, so I was really curious to know how they came up with the deeply political lyrics that they have. I was especially interested in learning about a certain line in "Kings of Deceit," where the words are "power doesn't come from the barrel of a gun." However, the rest of the song suggests the opposite by telling the story of JFK's assassinator. Pat explained that the “shooter in the case thinks he has all this power because he has the gun and he’s the one dethroning the king if you will but we’re saying the power isn’t in the weapon or the gun but in the people.”
Pat was also talking about how Brett (rhythm guitar) starts with the shell of the song, the main ideas for the meaning, then “Dennis pieces everything together and does a lot of his writing in the studio." Eric added in saying, “Dennis is the guy that just takes care of the message. He’s an extreme extrovert and likes to talk.” In fact, Dennis likes to take care of everything at the last possible time. Eric seemed to take great humor in this, laughing that “Brett already has lyrics written for the third album. Dennis has no idea yet.”
Life on tour as a small band is rough, and the Killswith Engage tour was extremely hard for Affiance. Their van broke down so many times that afterward they decided to run a full-fledge IndieGoGo campaign with all sorts of wild perks to raise the money for a new van. Eric described the new van to me as this airport shuttle with all the seats ripped out and bunk beds built into the walls. Seems to me like a pretty comfy place. Not only is the van a problem, but what are they going to afford to eat? The Las Vegas show “was a great show," Pat was excitedly pronouncing. Of course I thought he was talking about their playing but..."We were fed swordfish that night. We don’t get something like that. Usually you get fed like chicken or
vegetables and at the House of Blues they were like here’s this swordfish! I don’t like fish but I had to have some.”
As we all know, every band has those classic funny stories, and I was delighted to hear one of them. “The funny thing is," started Pat, "when the promoter got [the deal] from the booking agent the promoter thought he was buying this package for x amount of money which was ridiculous because the amount that we get paid is not the amount that the tour was worth and here’s our promoter saying yea great and on the flyer it says us and then Protest the Hero underneath us. So there’s this whole week when people were buying tickets for this Protest/Architect show with us headlining it.” I really hope they kept some of those posters.
My dad and I have been thinking about bringing lamps to every Affiance concert as a joke (if you don't get the joke go watch the "Call to the Warrior" music video) and Eric told us “I’ve been trying to push for doing this thing—once we can afford
to do so—and every city we play in we go to a thrift store and buy a lamp.” We agreed that next time Affiance comes to LA we'll bring them a lamp. :)
Thank you Eric and Pat for that fun conversation!
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