PipemanRadio Interviews Avatar at Aftershock 2023

0:04 Hey, you have done to censure? Why pray you young? Whycoume America. It's time for the Adventures of pipe Man on W four c Y dot com West pom Beats, his number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the White Man. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio, and I'm here with Johanna s. Off the record, we talked about how cute I am. So I'm already in a great mood. There you go. I love it. Yeah, because we were talking about I wouldn't be able to miss you because you know, you're very like easy to spot in the crowd. But then even without being on stage, you're easy to spot in the crowd because also, for the record, I was the one saying I was cute, and I still haven't heard it from anyone else today. So it's it's a rough morning. Let's ask your tour manager. Oh, that's deeply on professional coming, I know, right. Yeah, So after Shock? How many times have you played after Shock? This will be the third time? Nice? Yep? Yeah,

1:38 doesn't the media artist area keep getting better and better? We are we are yet to find out, buddy, I think so, but I remember first time, feeling very cozy, and I don't think it was as scorching hot as it's going to be today. And it was interested how Fan gave us an Avatar shaped cake and oh that's cool. Always the first time we saw black widow in the wild and in the porta potty, and that's not a good place to see one though, of all the places. Don't want to see them there, no, no, no, no. Well I'm glad it didn't bite you because, you know, because it wasn't a urinal side of this, it would have been an interesting bites to get. Yeah, so I'm in South Florida. We have two spiders that would freak out.

2:20 One is a brown recluse, which basically, John, Yeah, you have two spiders literally, yeah, basically will eat your flesh. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's one. Yeah. And then there's these banana spiders that are about this big. They're like, oh no, like six inches big, and they're up in the trees so like you're walking through they can jump down on you. Yeah, no, we have don't. We don't do that. Up in northern Europe. We have moves, but you can spot those. Did I ever tell you the story? I probably did about when I had went to a wedding in Sweden. Oh no, I don't.

3:00 I don't think you did. Oh. I gotta tell you this because you'll love it. So we're at we were up in like Uppsala. Yeah, and the bride's parents were reindeer farmers. Oh so like saw me from Wayne North? Yeah yeah yeah, And so I was married at the time. I didn't eat meat, but my wife did. And she's eating the meat. She didn't know what it was, but I did. I'm like, does that me good? She's like, yeah, it's really good. I'm like, you're eating Rudolph. Because you know Americans they think reindeer are this fictional character on Santa movies only, and she's like, what are you talking about. I'm like, Ing's parents are reindeer farmers. That's reindeer meat.

3:42 And she's like, there's no such thing as reindeer. Okay, sorry, sorry, I left at your whole nation now though, right and there it is so oh man. And it was super high then too, Like they told me it was like the hottest on record. While I was there, I'm going there fair at all, it's gonna be nice and cool. It was as hot as this. If not hotter that year I went there, it's over for all of us. Basically, how do you do the whole six month six month thing with the sun and no sun? Do you do writing of all the music during the darkness and then perform during the light No? Yeah, no, For one, I think if it wouldn't be like that, if I would have moved somewhere where it's, if I would move too close to the equator, I would miss it like crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you you know, you build your Cicadian rhythm.

4:36 I guess around the climate you grow up in a stuff of course. Yeah. And if you don't have those the amount of stuff that you get done on a rainy ues state in November, yeah, no, it's it's one month worth of summer stuff, you know. I guess that's the thing. It's hard to get stuffed, That's what I'm saying. It may hits and it starts being nice. It's as a while for everything slows down, you know, and people loosen up, and that sticks around to around September. Maybe people are readjusted. It'll be functioning again. So you get your stuff done. You know that I'm saying about the perfect time to write music when you have that right record, I know, so you end up touring a lot. There's you know, what we do is a bit of a hamster wheel anyway, you know that keep running in where there's always the European tours tend to be late and early in the year, right, and every kind of when we get closer the summer, we come over here and the tail end of the summer, and the summer is usually not always, but usually dedicated to European festival season, you know, right, So in that hamster wheel, yeah, we usually spend that time on the road and writing by necessity happens because I mean I write two lines of lyrics every tour.

5:53 Maybe, so the real work in music happens throughout the year, which I think, to be a bit more serious about it probably is, you know how it should be beneficial to you know, totore of life in different shades. Absolutely, And I even I grew up in New Jersey, so I get what you're saying. Like Memorial Day weekend where I lived, it's like the world opened up. Yeah, Labor Day weekend shuts down and the rest of the year you're like hibernating and hustling work wise because in the summer you're too busy partying because it's so nice out. Yeah, and I know stories of this people who have been, you know, moving to north this way to like who travel north for vacation in summer and meet all these wonderful, open, lovely people. It's so much fun. They make so much friends on the places they go to, the things they get to see. So that screwed, I'm moving here, and they do. And by the time you know they carried their Akiya couch and their Billy book shelf stuff into and assimilated themselves. Everyone's calne. Where do they all go? And the people get this post moving depression going because we're living cycles like that. Yeah, totally. You know, it's you know, the ant and the Grasshopper fable.

7:10 You know that you still have to work to get to get space to lose it like that, and there'll be a functioning society. I think it's the reason why such great music comes as sweet and personally because you playing time to be creative. Right. You spoke about the Hamster wheel, and I say that all the time about if you're going to take a positive out of COVID artists got the chance to jump off the hamster wheel and like be creative for the first time in a long time, because you're not like go go go, go, go go go. You had no choice but to be creative because there was no live views. Yeah, that shook things up a bit. Then. I think that climates would with Northern Europe. Sure, as far as why we do a lot of good music seemingly at least, you know, adjusted for population, it's kind of crazy. I think also has to do. I think it has more to do with that, you know, the welfare state thing, honestly, where there's room for failure because I know if I have people, if I know people from more southern Europe and stuff that would have similar dreams or ambitions and everything, there is in a higher pressure in the culture to like, oh no, no, you need to educate yourself now, to get going on your career now, to secure you a future right now. And I think in Sweden my feeling is always this wigal room to try and fail and learn and get life experience and

8:41 that thing of you know, end up if you're gonna go for you know, study some stuff that you show up there a bit later in life. Yeah, all my three out of four siblings ended up kind of doing it like that and therefore stuck with it and enjoyed it more and are more certain in their career choices than you would be otherwise. Well, a great point too, because that's so true, you know, because when you're you got you have to do or die. Basically you usually make the wrong career. Then you become a doctor, you know, yeah there or which you know is an awesome profession to have, so as I'm not saying that, but it's just again that wiggle room. And then I also think it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because it is kind of then in the culture that it's a thing to do where you know, the value of our representation in any situation that is nice to have heroes that look like you you know, share gender, skin color, whatever, that thing. I've come to understand more of the value in that. And the thing is, do you know the town Fagishta, No, exactly, That's where the Hives are from. Oh really, and every little Fagusta in Sweden tends to have their own little the Hives.

9:54 So if you're a Swedish kid, you can like yeah, I could. Okay, what the hell? If they could, then maybe I can too. And we all had that, you know, or kind of so that kind of feeds into it too. That becomes this valid career thing, or at least or thing to do with your life, at least when you're young and parents are chill about it too overall, you know. So, yeah, you know, I gave you away a lecture because of the weather thing. But there you go. I love it, though, so would you? Would you say that we're with you? What was there some thing that happened or you saw or experience that gave you the concept of Avatar?

10:37 No, it grew over time because first, foremust I joined Avatar? There was so that that stupid name was already in place. I had nothing to do with it now because John and Jonahs meant first, and they had a singer for two rehearsals that they were too scare you know. The Swedish fear of conflict was strong enough that they just disbanded and keet the rehearse room and started a new band without him. So there's a question of definition if I'm the first singer after or not. Because we were all so very young and that's place you're still learning to play no and so No, it's been something that we've figured out together over time and keep on figuring out together over time.

11:24 You do change it up, which is good, Yeah, because I think that's that's important to us, Like we are want to do things that we are fans of, and we want to surprise ourselves and we want to I mean a huge reference point for me and what I'm about to say now would be like someone like Devin Townsend, right, who I am a lifelong fan of. And one thing that makes it life long is that his project of you know, self discovery and putting that into music is constantly ongoing. That Now, their last album, Light Worker, came out now he was just about to turn fifty, I think, and that's the only album that will sound like a Devin Townsend just about to turn fifty with a teenage kid and this and that and a mortgage and know whatever's been going on in his life as opposed to that. He got a lot of attention in his late teens early twenties, but it shows not to get stuck in that realis that wasn't good for him, and that's an ongoing journey which means that potentially, because that makes every unique experience in his life will give makes all the music unique in what comes out. In that sense means that potentially he's always has his greatest work ahead of him in a way that if you were, Hey, remembered girls, girls, girls, I could be see him out a daughter. But I'm writing one of those second you know that doesn't happen.

12:46 Yeah, you know, So then there's not the law of diminishing returns. And I mean, and we still feel there's so many different angles and directions to take in what we're doing, where some sometimes we feel very much with what feels very serious to us, like hunter Gatherer, or we really screw around trying to see how stupid can we get away with being and having fun, you know during something comedic with Avatar country right and all of that that we get to. Yeah, So it's like I said, an ongoing, there's not a vision for Avatar that this is the thing I love that I mean, and I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I love that. Well. First, I'm gonna comment on the Devin Townsend thing because it made me think of an interview I had with Joe from the Vandals and he knows I'll never ask this, but everybody always asks him when are the Vandals coming out with new music? And he said, he said, why do people keep asking me that? Who wants to hear a fifty year old write a punk rock song. We're not gonna do new, you know. So when you brought up Devin Townsend, that is what I love because you know you do it. You can't be a fifty year old, right, and like as if you're a teenager, no, you know, so you got go by what's going on then, and as far as you guys go, what I love about is there some bands, even bands that play here at Aftershock this year that yeah, I I need to go see the said I can repeat what they're saying in between songs by now, you know, whereas your sad can repeat what I'm saying between songs on this tour, right, And

14:20 that's what's great about avatars, Like every show you might not know what to expect, you know, and that's what keeps it growing and long term, because it'll get old after a while if you just keep playing the same set for ten years. Yeah no, so yeah, we try and you try to balance that because also it's still head and metal man, right, and you know if as much as you know, for instance, Judispriese Firepower was such a return to forum that it's you know, oh thank you, you know. Yeah. With that being said, when I see them, of course they with that, I want to see that. But I also need break the law and I need to say that. The next song we're gonna play for you tonight contains the word law in the title, breaking the what Mike out to us exactly. So you have to balance kind of I think tradition also matters, and that communal thing that is a show totally and it's that and to get that to treat to find the right flow and the set please and to have that kind of by right to show energy in what you're doing well at the same thing. Then. But that being said, we on the last couple of tours when our new albums come out, we have played roughly half the album on every tour confidently and obnoxiously, and we will keep as we will keep aiming for really making our best album ever ever.

15:45 Retime, we're gonna shove that down people's throat, no matter how much of the gold and oldest, you know, that, and it should be. If you're an artist, you gotta grow. You guys have an experience. You know, you get better at your craft, so you have to expressed to allow yourself to get better, you know, because it say, it's a weird. It's a weird dynamic there when people start to really expect what your band is about. But for us, it boasts down to yeah, you know, riffs, metal and then kind of whatever goes makes sense and an absolutely incredible performance that nobody should ever miss. Yeah, we'd like to run around. I love it. Any final words for our listeners? Final words, Well, we can say some fine words such as purple, burglar, alarm. Those are some fine words. Hard to save your Scottish can you try? Hey, I can. I'm not Scottish, but I try to see a Scottish man say purple, burglar or alarm and it might be difficult. I'm going to ask when my Scottish friends doing that. I love it. I can't wait for your set here at after Shock, and I can't wait to see a lot more of you guys. Thanks a lot for being on your adventures. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipement on w fur Cui Radio