PipemanRadio Interviews Kissing Candice at Louder Than Life 2023

0:04 Hey, you live on too ssum from four see Wow, Wake up of America. It's time for the adventure. So pipe Man on W four cy dot com west poon beats his number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man. This's the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm here with Aunt Donna, a dreamer of kissing Candice Nice here at Louder than Life. Very stoked to be here.

0:59 Oh it's cool as hell this festival, isn't it? Yeah? Absolutely? Wait and way bigger than I thought. Really, So what was your vision before coming here of what Louder in Life would be. I mean, we knew it was like a big festival, but the scope of it is way bigger than I thought. So super awesome, we know, DWP. I mean they're you know, top tier. I mean we did Mayhem Fest in twenty fifteen, you know, which was great. But you know, you know, you see photos of the past years, but when you're really here and you see the crowds, you know, god smack last night Olympics get we watched that, you know, just just everybody so so great, so positive. Everybody's like one big family. It's it's great here. It really is great energy. Nice. So what was that moment in life where you decided this is what you needed to do? Oh my god, I was like four. My father's a drummer, so it's in the family.

1:51 I'm a big Frank Zappa fan. I know that doesn't fit in here, but that was kind of my upbringing and I had as a kid. I knew I had to do it. And then I heard Iron Maiden one. I was in seventh grade, and I knew that that twin guitars hooked me nice. And see that all makes sense because even us, all us metal adds we like Frank Zappa and stuff like that. That's where it started, you know, like we come from that and then we evolved to made it exactly and everything else, same insane energy. So I grew up in a house that, you know, was listening to oldies and stuff like that, like the Stones, the Beatles. My dad was a huge fan. But I never was really like down the musician past. But in high school I was just always like the center of attention, like a goofball, Like I knew I wanted to be like some sort of entertainer. And then uh, I saw a bootleg video VHS tape A showing my HVS a VSA VHS tape of Slipknot Detroit nineteen ninety nine, and I'm like, what is what is going on? And I was like, this is music, this is mahaman, this is stage show. And then that was it. I was just in local bands and just you know, I wanted to get to where I am now, and it just like it all made sense to where this exact moment, you know, I love it, and that slip Knot. The story makes sense because I saw both slip Knot and mud Veine third stage oz Fest ninety nine and I'm like, oh my fucking god. And my first show ever a concert was Halloween Night, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City,

3:23 two thousand, slip Knot headlining direct support by Hate Bread and mud Veine opening up. Wow. I saw that live and I knew from then I wanted to do something theatrical. Yes, the masks came later on, but like I just knew I wanted to do something all in that ball of blacks. Interject here because I'm from Jersey with big Jersey exit, I'm from I'm from Door, Jersey. I'm from Lil Falls, Montclair, roseland originally I live in Morris Sound. My father's from Paterson, told Away area. So all right, nice Jersey boys. Hey, what is vis I mean? Yeah, I'm not growing up. I always had older friends. Has been all friends. But in nineteen ninety six when they reformed, Michael Graves gets a lot of ship. But I went to that Resurrection tour at Vernon Valley and again that changed the thing. It was like the blending of horror movies with a you know, I've been into the earlier mismiss stuff, but to see Alive and more like more metallic really hit home with it. So and I was big into wrestling, so those two things at the same time we're hitting.

4:19 So here's interesting for me. Is my first concert ever, although I don't consider the concert because of what it was. It was Beatlemania Madison Square Garden. Wow. Yeah. But then my dad moved me to California in nineteen eighty Okay, so as you can imagine, I lived on the Sunset Strip during that eighties. Ship you got to feel the rock and roll man. My first club show ever Motley Crew before they had an album. Then they were horror punk at the roxy on the Sunset Stress. They put on such a show. They tried to burn down the rocks. He bring in satan In and shit, I'm like, I'm never going to a real concert again. Yeah, you know yeah, And like bands don't do that.

5:11 You can't do that. It's like, we want to do stuff, but it's like you gotta play it safety these days. Back then the gloves were off, it was it was whole chaining and and we we want to bring that energy back that, you know, the mysteriousness of being in a band and the entertainment. Anybody could watch five guys on stage in jeans and a T shirt, which is great, but it's like, bring it back, make this normal, make I agree, burning down the venue, make it normal, you know, like let's let's rock and fucking roll. You always thrive on the fact that you may not like us musically, but if you come away, let's say you have a girl from wood from whatever, watch all I don't like metal, you still watch us. At least it was entertaining. So I feel like there's an aspect that that has been missing a lot of music, and we definitely try to cater to that. I agree, whole hardly. And like there's bands I started liking because I saw their live show. I didn't like that till I saw it their live show, I'm like, oh my god. And then there's the others to your point that I really like. I'm like, oh, they're playing at this festival.

6:10 Yeah, I'll stay back here. Yeah, Like you could. You could sound great, you could have you know, a great production on stage, which is all great, but it's like if you're not from front to back giving your one hundred percent and doing something a little over the top, it's like, okay, great, I could stay home, listen to the record. Right. Live shows are supposed to be just that. It's that extra step because art is art, so you have to combine all the art, not just the music part of that art. And I think music is that it's it's all art, it's not just the music, and it's supposed to be a snapshot in time that you'll never that someone else won't have that same experience. So we try to do no, if five people today remember walk away from this festival and talk about us, that's five more people than you know before, then we're talking about it. And that's how it starts.

6:56 That's how it starts. So how do people connect to you guys on the socials on the web by your merge all that great ship? Right, it's it's the usual suspects with the social media. Yeah, kissing candas dot com. Uh, that'll that'll link you to our Facebook, our Instagram, kissing Underscore Candice, Yeah, merch Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, all of that kissing candas can't go wrong. Ci n D. I see a lot of people at ci n D A C no no, no, uh yeah, but we're all over social media. So and you know, I love about your band name and don't love so. One of the first girls ever that like I was like madly in love with but probably wasn't gonna get her name was Candice. She's the one that got me into punk music and Sabbath and UFO and shit. But she was like, you know, she was going for the I was in high school. You know, she was going for the older guys. You know, But to this day it's still implanned in my brain. So like I hear your name, it gives me heartbreak and good ship. And that's the reason why we're standing here Because in high school I was after a girl named Candace. I only got to kiss her once and that was it. So she's the reason why I exist right now in this mask and we're doing what we do. So yeah, so now which socials how we are now? Has she tried to reach out thinking maybe that's about her? She? I found her years ago on Facebook when

8:28 it first started blowing up, and she was she was the perfect family, you know, two dogs, two kids, a picket fence. Yeah. Yeah, she took a different path in life, and then a couple of years ago I tried to relok her up, to reach out, let her know what I was doing, and she went off the grid. So yeah, one day though, when we're huge, I'm gonna show up with a care package for her and be like, thank you very much for high school days. Yeah yeah, right, there you go. Yeah, good stuff. What's the craziest story on your music journey so far? Craziest story on your music journey so far? Just spend two minutes with our bass player and that'll kind of sum it up, right. Our bass player is he just keeps us going, He keeps us on his toes. He's amazing, but he is the most It just does a lot of wacky shit. Yeah, it always ends us up in some weird situation or talking to somebody, so I can give you isolated examples, but hopefully he shows up here later or whatever. But he's always keeping us on our toes as far as again putting us in bizarre situations, meeting weird people from crackheads to you name it.

9:33 So yeah, yeah, we've met some interesting people because of him. You know. There there's there's PG stories, there's R rated stories, but it's like it's all in good fun. We did have a thing where we were touring for a while and for some reason, I tell me it was in Florida, someone took a ship next to our van every single show in Florida, every time we played this venue, like hawkwork, it was a pile of shit. At some point, I love Florida. That doesn't surprise man. We're trying to figure it out, and it just became one of those things we knew we were playing around there, it was gonna be a big human sized turret outside, and we would hang around the van before the showing, after the show, and it seemed like as soon as we were away, we'd come back and there was a part of ship by the trailer, by the tire, by the front. Yeah, so maybe it was one of the other bands you're playing with, Like practical jokes. We were like, maybe it's a promoter, maybe it's the sound guy, who the fuck knows, but whoever it was, might it might as well be. But either way, good stories. It was great. Yeah, but it's just random stuff like that that makes us want to continue our journey to see where we end up. You know. Yeah, there you go, and I hope you continue your journey because you guys are badass. Thank you, and listen those stories you're talking about. Your basis that that's what makes us fun too, right, because otherwise sometimes it is monotonous being on the road.

10:48 People don't realize you gotta break it up with stupid shit. Oh yeah, yeah, and you know, well we've been together, you know, playing the especially the three of us that player, Dreamer and I for a while now, so it's like we we know, you know exactly what his move, next move is gonna be, and we just we crack up. It's like a really dysfunctional marriage. I'm sure you've heard that. Every band kind of says that. But at the same time, we always kind of pride ourselves on the fact that everybody's so different outside of the band that it's almost allows us to accept everybody's idiosyncracy so much more because it's so prevalent. Yeah, so all of us are into really different stiff stuff. We dressed differently, we act differently. So when we come together, you see a lot of these guys are brothers and other bands. But if they're so similar that they'll fight, yeah, we see like, oh, we know this guy's like this, this guy's like this. Are kind of giving them his space and it allows everybody to be weird and also we never fight. I think it makes better music too, because nowadays there's so many bands that it blows my mind that like they play like a they put a formula to their music and they are all the same, so all the music sounds the same nowadays, I think the blending of personalities what is what makes a band unique?

12:01 For sure, it has to be. It's like, you know, when we sit down to start spitball and ideas, we all like different music. We all like the same heavy music. But it's like he gets his inspiration from somewhere completely different than me. Yeah, you know, he's thinking about the guitar tones. I'm thinking about what the stage lights are gonna be, and when we come together, it's like a perfect storm. Yeah, I love it. So anything else we want to let the listeners and know about that we haven't touched on already. We're coming free in the new year. And I know a lot of bands say that, but like we're We're we're coming full speed ahead. You know. Uh. People want to say stuff about the bands that do masks and makeup and stuff, but it's like, we're not stopping no matter what. Yeah, it's coming back. But you know you won't see you won't see this, you know, I ever stopping.

12:50 I like the mask thing because I like the mystery part of it. Number one, the theatrics of it, and number three. Okay, Like I've hung out with War without their masks several times and I've said to them like, keep the keep the costumes on. We're going Oh yeah, we're rolling with it. Yeah. So anyway, thanks for being here at Louder and thanks for being on the Adventures of play Man. Appreciate you very much, Broth for happing, Thanks for having us man, it's been a blast. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of plate Man on W four CUI radio