Hot Hot Heat
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
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On a particularly beautiful summer weekday in the vast island expanse of Victoria, British Columbia, suits scuttle from lunch breaks, children rush from school and the sounds of the waning hours of summer are indisputably audible over a long-distance phone line. But sitting alone, splayed out on his mother's lawn on the phone's northern end is creaky-voiced Steve Bays, lead singer of Hot Hot Heat. No work suit to wear. No more school to attend. No attention paid to the summer's end.
Soft-spoken and not particularly arrogant, the 20-something seems much more "Victoria townie" than world-traveled rock star. His knit sweater-clad neighbors probably couldn't agree more.
With slightly downturned lips, carefully pruned hair and a tight hipster wardrobe, Bays' visual appearance is much more suited to the ant farm of Los Angeles musicians than the sleepy going-ons of his hometown. So is his music. For a guy that says "aboot," wasn't in the original lineup of Hot Hot Heat, and hails his sound as "kinda dance, kinda poppy, kinda faggy, kinda rock," Steve Bays has come a long way.
Beginning as keyboard-heavy dance screamers in 1999, Hot Hot Heat eventually took on Bays, guitarist Dante DeCaro and more indie-punk aesthetics two years later. The group -- including founding drummer Paul Hawley and founding bassist Dustin Hawthorne -- overwhelmed Sub Pop loyalists with its 2002 EP Knock Knock Knock, which subsequently led to a full length called Make Up The Breakdown, and a deal with Warner Bros.
And now here we are. Talking. Rock star to journalist. Journalist to rock star.
NATN: Hey Steve, how are you?
Steve Bays: Good. I'm actually on my mom's lawn in her backyard.
NATN: Where does she live?
SB: She lives in Victoria. Kinda close to the beach and its nice and sunny.
NATN: It's finally nice up there?
SB: Yeah. It's been a pretty nice summer here. I haven't really gotten a chance to be here. We've been driving during the day so I'm pretty pasty.
NATN: So you've been on the road for a while.
SB: About 14 months with the exception of about six weeks. Total.
NATN: So you're glad to be home then.
SB: Kinda. Whenever we get home I want to go on tour again. I mean, I definitely like being at home but when I get here I don't know what to do with myself. Usually I spend the whole time rushing around preparing for the next tour anyways. Doing things like making posters, getting designs made for new stickers or new T-shirts. Or sorting out stuff with other bands. We're always planning the next couple of tours.
NATN: So the label doesn't take care of the details for tours like posters and stickers and things like that?
SB: No, I mean, that's more of like a management thing. They take care of the details but as far the designs we either design things ourselves or get people that we like, so we're always kinda looking for
new people. There's a girl from Victoria [and] we really liked her shirts so we got her to do some designs. There's these kids in Montreal that did a show flyer for us once and we really liked their stuff so got them to do our last U.K. single and our last T-shirt. I kinda subscribe to the, "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself" school. Because otherwise, it's not what you wanted in the first place.
NATN: Well, it's good that you have control like that.
SB: Oh yeah. People think that if you sign to a major label that they do everything for you and they force you to do things their way, but it's exactly the same for us. We got to write the same songs that we would have been writing and record the way we want to record and do our designs the way we want to do it.
NATN: So it's been a good experience at Warner Bros.?
SB: Totally, yeah. I mean, this record is still on Sub Pop but Warner has been helping to set up press and radio and stuff.
NATN: So you don't have to move to Los Angeles and wear nice sunglasses and drive a nice car then?
SB: No, no. I'm not an L.A. person. Actually, when I go to L.A. I really like it but I think I have a skewed perspective on it because everyone is very nice to us when we're there.
NATN: That happens when you have hype.
SB: Yeah, but, I, well, yeah, anyway, I don't think I could actually live in L.A. unless I actually grew up there.
NATN: Visiting is fun though. Do you guys party pretty hard when you travel around or are you pretty low-key?
SB: Um, I don't know -- it depends on how you define partying. We're usually looking for fun things to do. It really depends on the tour schedule, so if we're not traveling all day we get to hang out with people and have fun. Usually if we can't hang out its because we have to leave really late that night or really early the next morning and it;s hard to get sleep on tour. On this tour we get to do multiple dates in each city so we actually get to enjoy ourselves.
NATN: It's about time. You've been on tour for so long.
SB: I know! Exactly. It's hard work being on tour.
NATN: A lot of indie kids are listening to your music. Do they dance at your shows?
SB: People get into it. Usually most people dance or move around. We kind of try and send off the message that you don't have to dance but we like people feeling comfortable to do whatever. We have fun songs and if you go to our shows, it's because its fun and you don't feel obliged to go because its super arty or something.
NATN: Highbrow?
SB: Maybe it is a bit arty but that's not the top priority.
NATN: You used to do punk stuff earlier in your career, is that right?
SB: Yeah. I have been in punk bands since I was 12. I used to promote shows here in Victoria and we all met through the punk community.
NATN: Is it different onstage to go from punk to what you're doing now?
SB: Not really. I guess I've always kinda been changing what I like to do at shows and how I like to perform. The main difference now is, before I didn't really think of it as a performance. I thought, you just kinda play your music but in the scene we grew up in people were so into it and would freak out live and put their head through the bass drum or smash the mike into their face. So that was just a given that if you were having fun you would freak out.
Maybe now we're more conscious that we're putting on a show but it doesn't mean that we do anything that we wouldn't normally do. Plus, we've been doing this for a long time and you learn new things every show. The main thing I learned was just [that] people enjoy seeing people that are having fun. Music fans, even people that have never picked up an instrument in their life, are very smart and see through bullshit so you kinda have to be sincere and be yourself. If you're kinda in a weird or quiet mood or not in the mood to put on the same type of show, you can still be honest about it. People respect that more than if you have this mask that you put on every night and do the same routine every night.
NATN: So when you're in a solemn mood, how do you perform differently?
SB: To me, if feels like I'm putting on a completely different show but when I watch videos of shows when I didn't want to be there and was all suicidal, I felt that the show was totally fine. I think I might just say less between songs. I don't usually say much. Sometimes I talk too much. It depends.
NATN: People like to hear you talk sometimes.
SB: I like people to know that I'm not just putting on just another show. I figure that if we're not having fun then it's not a good show, so it's just a matter of figuring out how to have fun. Usually an hour before we go on we'll start getting excited and by the time we get on we're ready to bust it out.
NATN: So it's still fun?
SB: Totally.
NATN: Can you imagine yourself doing anything else?
SB: I'd like to make movies but I don't think I'd be as good at it.
NATN: What kind of movies?
SB: Probably documentaries or really dry comedies.
NATN: Have you worked with cameras then?
SB: Yeah, but nothing good. I've played around for almost 10 years, making movies. It's all part of the learning curve. Nothing worthy of displaying to the public.
NATN: So you're going to shoot your band's videos?
SB: Well, we're doing a video and I'm co-directing it.
NATN: That's a start. Do people still think you guys are from New York?
SB: More actually from the U.K. I can do a Scottish accent but that's not my style (laughs). In England they called us reggae. In Australia we were ska.
NATN: On the new album, are most of the songs autobiographical?
SB: Yeah. They're all from real life. There are certain themes that are always going to come up in every band. Like love. If you're a good musician I don't see how you could be passionate enough about music to be a good musician but not be passionate about love or in love or understand those feelings. Any time people try and do art based on something they don't know, people see right through it.
I remember being in a film class in Victoria at the University of Victoria last year and there was this guy that just annoyed me so much and he talked so much in class and answered all the questions and was kinda a know-it-all. For his movie -- he had to make a movie and show it to the whole class -- it was all about sex and drugs and it was like he was living vicariously through his movie but had never done these things. It was really bizarre hearing someone talk about something that they didn't really understand.
Not that I would ever write a song about drugs. People see through that. I would rather him write a movie about his real life and that would probably be sitting at home and watching TV and playing "Dungeons And Dragons." I'm sure he would have 1,000 subtleties he could throw into that plot but instead he just had a loose idea. All good art is attention to detail.
CALEY COOK |