Breathing In with… uhm Breathe In
Nada Mucho Interview
Breathe In
By Justin Vela
Walking into Oakland’s imusicast, a club in Oakland, the first person I see is Louie. The front-man of hard rock outfit Breathe In is stacking his equipment. Small, skinny, and very polite, he is laughing and joking one minute and then shrewdly analyzing you through narrowed eyes the next.
His fans all agree he’s a nice guy.
Nada Mucho Interview
Breathe In
by Justin Vela
Walking into Oakland’s imusicast, a club in
Oakland, the first person I see is Louie. The front-man of hard rock outfit Breathe In is stacking his equipment. Small, skinny, and very polite, he is laughing and joking one minute and then shrewdly analyzing you through narrowed eyes the next.
His fans all agree he’s a nice guy.
Louie’s band-mates Chris (bass) and Bob (drums) come up and are eager to do their first in-person interview.
Chris, a man who claims the only facial hair he is able to grow is a cross on his neck, grabs a beer and saunters out to the van with Louie and Bob.
The Breathe In van is a smelly affair. Given to Chris
by a friend, it’s packed with dirty clothes, a pipe,
and a collection of stickers representing nearly every band they’ve ever shared a bill with. It makes for a unique home for a unique bassist.
Breathe In in formed in 1999 when Louie and Chris moved from Hawaii to Northern California. Since then, they have hooked up with and then shed a overweight, all-controlling guitarist, two drummers, and now, with new drummer Bob, they are going strong.
Sprawled out on the van’s mattress (the “bedroomâ€), the trio are obviously comfortable with each other and constantly joke back and worth. As the temperature rises north of ninety, we begin the interview.
NadaMucho.com: First off, who are you guys and what do you do in the band?
Chris: I’m Chris. I play bass.
Bob: I’m Bob. I play drums.
Louie: I’m Louie. I play guitar and sing.
NM: Why do people yell out for Bob at your shows?
Chris: Bob is amazing.
Louie: Cause all Bob’s bros are there.
Chris: Bob, you’re my bro.
Louie: It’s an easy name to say.
Chris: One of our friends was starting a word. Instead of saying something is awesome she says “Bob awesome.â€
NM: Why is Bob awesome?
Chris: He’s just awesome.
Louie: He flies helicopters, he’s a scientist.
NM: You fly helicopters?
Bob: I fly remote control ones and real ones too.
NM: Do you ever go flying togather?
ALL: NO, NO.
Louie: We should tour in a helicopter. A old huey with a 50 caliber on top. We could carry our van below it.
That would be perfect.
Chris: In like five years.
NM: When you guys are rock stars?
Louie: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, when we’re rockers.
NM: What are your politics concerning signing to a major label?
Louie: It’s a long hair kind of thing. Once our hair
gets way better.
Bob: That’s never going to happen with mine. I shave it.
Chris: This is true.
NM: What do you think about the comparison between you guys and Nirvana?
Louie: We think that’s cool.
Chris: I haven’t heard that before.
Bob: It’s awesome.
NM: What do you guys listen to?
Chris: I got Swingin’ Utters, NOFX.
Bob: I have that satellite radio in my truck – the XM
radio. You can listen to any genre of music at any
time. I listen to the Latin channel all the time. I
listen to Arturo Sandoval and Wynton Marsalis and stuff like that.
NM: Who’s the laziest member of the band?
Louie: Chris.
Bob: Chris.
Chris: Yeah, this is where I live [gestures at the vans wall]. Right here. This is the result of my laziness.
Louie: This is the band bassist. They get to slide down notes and stuff.
NM: Do you like imusicast?
Louie: We played here a couple of times. Last time we played here a lot of people showed up, but instead of paying any of the bands at the end of the night, they just paid the film crew.
Chris: We saw the video. It was a piece of shit.
Bob: It’s a nice place, but the video stuff is like a
old rock tape from the late 80’s.
Louie: We had a bad night the last time we played here. This kid who was doing sound needs a brass knuckle to the head. He intentionally made our stuff look bad.
Chris: I gave him the thumbs down and he shut
everything off. We were tuning up and everything sounds fine, but as soon as we’re about to play you could hear him push a button or something and all you could hear were the vocals. It totally sucked.
Bob: The next band came on and they were perfect.
Louie: We had a bad time and they were dicks and stuff. We’ll see how this show goes.
NM: Bob, how did you get to be in the band?
Bob: I met Louie at a show a long time ago. I had a
video of one of two of the songs and he wanted the
video. So we met one night and went to hang out. Their old drummer from the East quit and I told them I’d play with them because we had to go to Warped Tour the next day.
Chris: It took three weeks of hardcore practicing with this bunk drummer we had and the songs sounded like shit. And then within three hours he knew all the songs and was ready to go.
Bob: We left the next morning for Warped Tour in
Arizona.
Louie: We pulled it off and it sounded really good.
Bob: The whole way to Phoenix we’re sitting in the van, and it’s like 113 degrees and I’m trying to go through all the songs in my head. It’s pretty hard when you’re melting.
NM: How hot does it get in here?
Bob: It gets bad.
NM: Did you guys take showers on the Warped Tour?
Louie: No.
Chris: We didn’t shower once. I don’t even shower now.
NM: How often did you guys sleep on the Warped Tour?
Bob: All I remember is not being able to breathe in
Phoenix.
Chris: I got about four hours in two days.
Louie: Too many people doing the slippery slide. We even forgot to play a song. Chris came up to me as we were ringing the note out before the next song and is like “’DOPPLER EFFECT’, ‘DOPPLER EFFECT’,†and all I heard was “ROOOOCK!†and went into the next song.
Bob: Remember there was that porta-potty right behind the stage and I had to take a shit right before we played. It freaking dropped in there and a thing of water came up right past my balls and landed on my hand. It was that porta-potty gnarly shit. I fucking hate those porta-potties.
Louie: You got a taste of San Diego.
NM: Who gets the most babes?
Chris: God, it would have to be Louie because he’s the only single guy.
NM: Any plans for world domination?
Chris: Who doesn’t?
Louie: You mean do we want to rock the earth?
Bob: Of course.
Louie: Everything is cool now. We just finished our demo for the new release. It’s going to be a five song 7-inch and CD.
NM: When will it be out?
Louie: We’re hoping for July or something, but maybe not. Probably not. Maybe August.
NM: How different is it going to be from your other records?
Louie: It’s pretty different.
Bob: It’s more rock.
Louie: It just rocks harder and the songs are a little different, you know? Because we have a new drummer and our other guitarist left so now we’re just a three piece.
Chris: The other guitarist Brett had such an input on what we were doing.
Louie: He was kind of a power tripper. Everything had to be his way. I sang all his songs. A lot of the songs on This Day On he wrote and he would have the way I sang it and all the words. A lot of people do that stuff. That’s not who we are now. It’s just the beginning – we’re going to keep going.
Chris: I just want to tour. I think we’re ready to go for awhile.
NM: How has touring been in the past?
Louie: It will be way better now.
Chris: It will be way better now then ever before
because we always had some bitch in the band that we had to worry about.
Bob: It’ll be so rad.
Louie: Yeah, because we’re like totally cool with each other.
Chris: And Bob’s going to be able to drive half the time. Nobody has ever been able to drive except me so I‘ll be able to sleep.
NM: Why can’t Louie drive?
Louie: He doesn’t want me to drive.
Chris: NO.
Chris: He’ll get my car towed.
NM: How many accidents have you been in?
Louie: Umm, I’ve hit two deer. That’s it.
Chris: You’ve dented many cars and just driven away too.
NM: Louie, what’s going through your head as you go crazy on stage?
Louie: I don’t know. Some of these last shows I’ve been trying to play everything good on the guitar and sing everything. I would love to just make a bunch of noise and throw shit at people, but in three piece nobody is going to cover your back while you’re playing.
NM: How many people have gotten hurt at your shows?
Louie: I don’t know. It’s happened a lot though. It’s really funny. I mean it’s not good, but yeah. I don’t know.
NM: You ever hit people with your guitar?
Louie: Yeah. I don’t mean to, I’m not mad at them or anything. It just happens. One time here at imusicast it was a girl. And the guitar was a Flying V, this dangerous motherfucker. It flew and hit her. She had bruises.
Chris: That happened in San Diego too.
Louie: I don’t remember. Back in the day I used to rub it on chicks’ boobs. During that song drone, the beginning part would be all noisy and I would go try to rub it on the boobs.
Chris: He almost broke my back. He hit me right in the spine with his guitar during one of those lame songs.
NM: Anything else you want the world to know?
Bob: That they’ll feel the rock once we get the new stuff out.
Louie: This is going to be a short release. We’re
trying to put as much into these songs as we can.
Bob: We’ve been working on these songs for a long time.
Chris: We’re making them tight as fuck.
Bob: We’re just feeling the rock. I think that everybody who liked From This Day On will like the new stuff. Everybody who likes the new stuff liked the old stuff too.
http://www.substandard.com/breathein/
http://www.warped2003.com/banddetail.asp?bandid=161