PipemanRadio Interviews AxMinister About Napoleon and More
On this episode of the Adventures of Pipeman, Pipeman speaks to AxMinister, a band that has a unique style of music. They create music that has a story and a foundation. Nicholas Klaus, the bassist, vocalist and accordion player for the band, joins...
RSS Feed On this episode of the Adventures of Pipeman, Pipeman speaks to AxMinister, a band that has a unique style of music. They create music that has a story and a foundation. Nicholas Klaus, the bassist, vocalist and accordion player for the band, joins Pipeman on the show. Nicholas talks about how he had to learn the accordion for their latest album, and he did it without any prior lessons. He played the accordion for the first time in the recording studio and it was featured in their song, "Napoleon". Nicholas Klaus reveals that he does not require many takes for his recordings. He usually does his takes once or twice and only punches in when he is feeling off. Nicholas is proud of his nickname, 'One Shot Klaus'. The band's obsession with Napoleon Bonaparte is also discussed in the show. The drummer of the band suggested writing a song about Napoleon, and the band ended up creating a 17-minute song that covers Napoleon's life from his birth to when he took control of the French army. The band plans to create three more songs about Napoleon, each one longer and more epic than the last. The conversation also touches on the topic of bilingualism in Canada. Nicholas Klaus talks about how Canada is a bilingual nation, and he only knows about 10 French words, despite the Canadian system's attempts to teach him French. Pipeman mentions his trip to Montreal, where he discovered that the French spoken there was better than the French spoken in France. Nicholas Klaus talks about the rejection of Michael Ignatia, a candidate for Prime Minister who spoke with a Parisian French accent, by the people of Quebec, who preferred their low-brow French. The best way you can connect with the band is by going to axminister.ca for all of the latest information. You can stream the music on the major streaming platforms and follow them on all major social media channels, most of all MySpace! Live, AxMinister really wields their weapons of choice to great effect. “We put on a show, as we play medieval characters on stage. Sometimes we make a human sacrifice as our guitarist solos, other times we chant and pour blood on ourselves. We try to be theatrical and our stage show is constantly evolving.” “vir fortis” is due out May 11, 2023 and available for pre-order on Bandcamp. The Age of Napoleon…The Rise, is act one of a 3 part saga, inspired by the rise and fall of the French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. It is just over 17 minutes long, starts at his birth in Corsica, and ends with the French revolution, and young Napoleon as Captain. The following two songs are about Vlad the Impaler (aka Dracula); two historic looks, through a supernatural lens. “A journey through history, we examine the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the story (along with the myth) of Vlad the Impaler. The songs are historically accurate, and the lyrics for the 17 minute Napoleon song, are academic; this EP is a history lesson.” – AxMinister The artwork for the album are oil paintings by our drummer Bas. Bas is sort of obsessed with Napoleon Bonaparte, and there at least 2 more songs about the French Emperor to be released in the coming years. The Napoleon song has been in the works for over 5 years. 2. Nicholas Klaus had to learn the accordion for ‘The Age of Napoleon…the Rise’; fortunately, being of Eastern European heritage, it came naturally to him! The melody that appears at the end of the Napoleon song, on the accordion, as well as the guitar outro, are one of the melodies for part 2 of AxMinister’s Napoleon saga, to be released in the coming years. 3. The two Vlad songs were always meant as two parts, and the band still refers to them as Vlad 1&2. The original Vlad 1 got scrapped, with only the main melody carrying over to Vlad the Impaler…Son of the Dragon. https://axminister.ca/press/
0:04 Hey, you love them too, Sure, I'm I'm Wake up America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipe Man on W fourcy dot com. West pom Beach is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the White Man, as I saw you, right, dear, your final brad on a fake spike. You are when the pike's sharp. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures. I'm NW four CY Radio and I'm here with our next guest band that has some like amazing, amazing music. Why is it amazing? Well, they're great musicians, but it also I like music that has like some foundation to it, a story to it, not just just a bunch of words, but something that has meaning. And that's exactly what these guys do. So let's welcome to the show. X minister, how are you great? This is Nicholas Klaus here. I play bass and
1:34 to the vocal duties. Nice nice, Well listen you also do one other thing. I want to just bring this upright off the bat. I understand for this new album that you had to learn the accordion. That's right. Well, you know, I'm I'm I. I come from the swamps of Eastern Europe, so I'm genetically disposed to play the accordion. Didn't take one lesson. I just they just passed me the recordion. I said, press record. They said, don't you want no one to know what you're playing? I said, no, no, I'm just gonna let my genes take care of it. Nice. So at the end of Napoleon or song Napoleon, you can hear me playing the accordion unrehearsed. You know. You know what I love about that is like even like when I voiced commercials, usually the first time is like the best time. So you better record me that first time. I don't want and just like you said, I don't want any practice or anything. Just record me the first time, because if I have to do it two or fifty more times, that's what's gonna happen.
2:46 The second will turn into fifty. It's always right the first time, right because exactly look, I didn't play a bass because I have great musical skills. I just know because there's four strings, it's less confusing. And you know what, talk to any any producer that we've worked with. They'll tell you that I always do my takes once or twice. Maybe maybe if I'm feeling off, we'll have to punch something in. But no, I'm a one shot Klaus. I love it. But that's what my mama calls me. Well she's pretty smart then, because that, I think, seemed to me that is a true artist, because a true artist can just do what they do, you know, it just comes naturally. Look, Nicholas Klaus has an eagle better stuff. You better hold back the compliments. It's already went to my head. I already have to remind my bandmates who the leader is every single time. Well, speaking of leaders, talk to me about the obsession with Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a great man, very misunderstood.
4:00 And our drummer comes to me and says, I read a book Napoleon for Dummies, and I want to write a song about Napoleon. And I'm like, yes, let's make it super long. Let's make it five minutes. And then Steve said no, no, no, let's make it six minutes. Then then the drummer bassb On Bismarck said no, let's make it eight minutes. And I said, I gotta stop being whims my friends, So we wrote a seventeen minute song about Napoleon and it only covers him from his birth until right where he sees the control of the French army right after the French Revolution. We plan on actually doing three songs about Napoleon, and each one's going to be more longer and more epic. We already started working on Napoleon Part due, but the Napoleon part n is, you know, is a pretty epic in itself. I was just speaking French for your Florida listeners.
5:00 You know, we come from Canada. We're a bilingual nation. There you go. You know, it is funny because I will tell you that I when I went up to Montreal once it was Marie Yes, French would say yes, And I think they speak better French there than in France, to be honest, you know, actually the French say that they kind of speak like this low brow French. About five or seven years ago, I don't know when it was, the Liberal Party of Canada had a candidate that wanted to become prime minister. His name was Michael Ignatiev and his whole thing was that he spoke with a Parisian French. So the French people of Quebec rejected him in mass Wow. Yeah, his French was Parisian. Ah, that's great, and you know they really look the Canadian system try to teach me French. They didn't. It didn't work. I know ten words, you know, well yeah one until the knew one in two you knew one and two so you knew one in two. Cat sank CeCe. You're doing better than probably almost all the listeners right now, maybe except come on,
6:30 except the ones in France. Are we what's your market? Are we only in this Florida? No? No, no, no, the whole world, the whole world. As a matter of fact, I go on tour and I do radio coverage at like all in most in major music festivals, and one of them I do is hell Fest, which I'll be there in June, and that's in France. That's in France. It's in Clisson, France. Yeah we we no, no, So we need to get you guys to play on that festival. That would be appropriate. Oh you know what, there's only one festival that ax Minister will never play, and that's Live Aid. Those African children are weak. Why don't they just move where the food is? That's that doesn't make sense to me. Well, you know, it's funny. I was just down in Bali. And one thing I noticed there no Bali, Indonesia, Oh yes, yes, And you know what I noticed there is I noticed that they would never be hungry in Indonesia because everything grows there like it. There was just fruits and vegetables everywhere because they grow everywhere, so you would never starve. Move to mom Bally, Yeah, exactly. What's what's wrong with those people? We are the
8:01 world, we are, the children were not anything. As minister is a very individualistic band. We believe in me myself and I well, you know what, though, you could bring your weapons to that festival and just go and like take everybody out that you don't like weapons and friends, Come on, my friend, those people believe in gun control like you wouldn't believe it Canada. That's why I used the medieval type of weapons and they don't have rules for that. Maybe you know who knows. The French have been known to give up, you know, aren't you watching the news in France right now? They were protesting the raising of the retirement age. And guess what they gave up? My crown one? What can you do? Yeah?
8:54 Well, and I can't say with all his glory he lost, you lost? Okay, true too. What was that guy in Wellington and Waterloo? Yeah, Captain Wellington I think was his name. Yeah, he defeated tough Napoleon. Well, you know, I gotta say I'm in the United States right now. I can't really talk about anybody else because we're a little fricked up right now. Oh no, don't say that America's a great place. Oh you know what. When I was growing up in the Communists Eastern Europe, I had friends, I had family members who immigrated to Chicago, and they used to send us these amazing packages. And when I would open up these packages and have Coca Cola and oranges magazines that I couldn't understand, I just thought like America was the greatest country in the world. And in the eighties, my dad took me to see Eat and you know that scene where Eat hides in a closet full of boys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I was like, what what's going on? The kids in America have so many toys like I had my you know, my wooden toy truck, and maybe you know some tin soldiers, tin Soviet soldiers. Yeah, yeah, they have to be Soviet soldiers for sure. Of course, of course, So that's when I realized that something's not right, something's not right.
10:24 And then I saw Back to the Future part one when Marty McFly plugged in that amazing amplifier that blew them away, and skateboarding and that little town holding onto cars. Yeah, I had. I had a love affair of with America. And you know what's money, it's I actually did that. When I was a teenager. I used to grab on the car bumpers with my skateboard. See, and we didn't even know what a skateboard was. You want not a skateboard, you had to take you know, take wheels off your roller skates and try to make them. There was no road, there was no there was no skateboards there. And you know what, let me tell you this, my friend, I was in the West German when I was immigrating there. My my family went there and we claimed the refugee status in West Germany. And I was watching on TV as Ronald Reagan was in Berlin saying, mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall, you know, so I will I will not. In Canada, it is very popular, it's very popular to hate on the States, you know, part of the Canadian identity is to say that we're not Americans. You know, when you ask somebody what does it mean to be Canadian, they'll say, oh, well, we're nicer, We're nicer, We're not Americans. You know that is that is their main point, you know, And I'll I'll never say that.
11:45 I love hearing what you're saying, because you know, there's a and people in my country too. They whine and bitch and complain, and then they should be hearing you to realize that, you know what, they got it pretty good they do America, you know it lets you be what you want to be, that's right, absolutely, you know what you should have seen the COVID insanity that we had in America. I'm sure your lovely listeners were following the freedom convoy truckers and the crazy heavy handedness of our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the way he was freezing bank accounts treating them as terrorist, and the state sponsored media, the Canadian Broadcasting Company was just cheering him on every single step of the way. While you're great, Governor, mister Ron de Santis was opening up everything you had boxing matches, UFC events. Well, you know, while kids were trying to well in Ontario, kids were wearing masks and trying to learn over zooms. What kind of a sick person makes a four year old child put on a mask and make them go into kindergarten? Yeah, you know, sick people well, but you know, I don't want to say that they Canadian. I'm also a very proud Canadian.
13:05 Well, you're a great musician and a great artist and great entertainer too, and we should definitely have another discussion for all this. You know, you're right, Well, talk about music, my friend. Yeah, because I gotta get to my next interview. But meanwhile, let's tell everybody how they can get your new album, how they can connect you on social media, check out your live shows because your live shows are badass and they have to te and catch them, so give them only an intel, and how they can buy your merch too. That's right, Listen you The best way to get a hold of us is ax Minister dot CA. That is Canada c A. And it's not Axe Minister, it's a x Minister. Because there was a band in the eighties called ax Minister, but they quit.
13:54 They're quitters. You know, they never went anywhere not like us. We started in two thousand. It's been twenty two years since we're there and we're not gonna stop. Also, you can follow us on the great Spotify network. You can give you how to find us on Apple, iTunes, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and most of all my Space. That was our first that was our first website. We're not going to give up on my Space. I up doorloaded every single day. Tom is my still my top friend. Tom is the man, and so are you, and so is your music. I love it by our album. I'm gonna see this Florida truly the great state that it claims. That is kind of you'll see.
14:48 Oh trust me, my friend. We all Canadians visit Florida in the winter. There we can see if we're gonna get some optics in our listeners. You know, I want to see our band camp numbers go up. Oh yeah, band camp. You can always find us on band camp, buy our merch buy our album, support live medal this. We're a Canadian band at love America. You know well, we love you. Definitely support and support you. And thanks for being on the Adventures of Pintment. Oh thanks pike Man, thank you for listening. To the adventures of Pintman on W for Cui Radio.