A FEW MONTH'S AGO, CONFRONT HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO SIT WITH CHRIS JOHN OF CANADIAN BAND STABILO. ENJOY!
Interview with Christopher John
CONFRONT: I guess I wanted to start by asking you about your beginnings. I know a couple of you guys started while in high school?
CHRIS: Jesse and I went to high school together. And Jesse used to play drums in my band. And then he started writing songs. He wrote the song "Everybody" and I was like ‘it doesn’t make any sense to be sitting behind a drum kit when you have a great voice and you wrote that song’ so he started singing too and we became a two singers/song writers band. And we started playing together in like coffee shops and stuff like that. We did a couple of shows and that’s the beginning and it’s been a long story from there.
CONFRONT: How long ago was that? Didn’t "Everybody" come out in 2004?
CHRIS: It came out for the second time in 2004. We had recorded it in 1999 and released it for the first time on our independent album and re-released independently to radio in probably 2001 and it did pretty well. And the last time that we re-released it was now. That’s one of our oldest songs. It was written almost ten years ago.
CONFRONT: It’s impressive that it still sounds current today. I think I heard it on the radio not two weeks ago.
CHRIS: Yeah I think it’s still pretty relevant.
CONFRONT: How do you think that the fact that you started out of high school affected or molded your success today?
CHRIS: I think it affected us in just being together for ten years we are very comfortable touring and writing together and we just know each other really well and we have so much history that it’s nice to finally be getting somewhere.
CONFRONT: CONFRONT Magazine is Internet based. There are obviously specific reasons for that, be it accessibility or ecological reasons and so on. I know your popularity has been highly based on word to mouth and stuff like that. How do you think the internet has played a role in that promotion for you?
CHRIS: Well obviously downloading has played a role. Like if somebody hears us and tells a friend to listen to this band. And especially before, being independent, people were able to download a song and listen to it. There was no other way to listen to our music. Other than that these days there’s MySpace which was a big help in spreading the word overseas.
CONFRONT: Do you have a big following overseas?
CHRIS: I don’t know if I would call it a big following. But we’ve received quite a few e-mails fans overseas. Australia, the States, not that that’s overseas but…
CONFRONT: Have you been to Australia or the States?
CHRIS: We haven’t been to Australia. We’ve been to the States a little bit but none of those people had ever heard of us.
CONFRONT: I read hat one of you said that it wasn’t about selling millions of albums but rather it was about reaching a lot of people, which I thought was interesting because one of CONFRONT Magazine’s mottos is ‘Mainstream is nothing more than the ability to reach a lot of people’. What do you hope to accomplish by reaching all of these people?
CHRIS: It’s not that we have a specific message that we are trying to shove down everybody’s throat. It’s more just that we write songs that people can relate to and I think that a lot of our songs have universal themes and [themes] that a lot of people are able to relate to. We’ve had people come to us and say ‘this song affected me this way or that way’ and that’s what it’s all about.
CONFRONT: If there is no real message that you want to share when writing a song, how do you go about writing it?
CHRIS: I just kind of write whatever comes out. Obviously there is a message or a point of view we are trying to express but it’s just kind of like, we put it out there and if people can relate to it then that’s great. Obviously we want to write songs that people can relate to.
CONFRONT: Do you take your audience into consideration when you write? Even if there is no specific message you do have very strong views particularly about the war and stuff like that.
CHRIS: Yeah we do take that into consideration and personally I try not to. I try to stay honest with myself. I try not to write… specifically a catchy song. It’s all about honesty with myself but also others, people. That’s what people can relate to I think and you can tell a song is honest and trying to speak the truth or whether it’s written so the writer can get a lot of money. You call tell.
CONFRONT: You mentioned that you wanted people to relate to you because you are honest. Do you think that that’s gonna become harder as you get bigger? Like, maintaining that connection, that honesty. Because the more fans you get the harder it becomes to please everyone.
CHRIS: Yeah it does get harder and that’s why I try not to think about it to much. I don’t want to try to please everybody. I want people who can relate to it and what I’m saying to be there and the others that don’t, I hope they find another band that they can relate to. And we don’t need everybody to like us.
CONFRONT: It must be hard to not think about that though. I don’t know exactly how many records you’ve sold of this latest one but for the next one it must be in the back of your mind that you want it to do as well.
CHRIS: We want to keep the success going and obviously we aren’t going to…ok well maybe not obviously…but we aren’t going to put out a metal record. That’s going to alienate everybody from the last record. And I don’t think we’d do a good job because that’s not who we are.
CONFRONT: Is that something that affects you writing though? Let’s say in five years you decide that you COULD put out a decent metal record, would you prevent yourself from doing it?
CHRIS: I don’t think so. I would probably put it out under some other name or something like that. Obviously it’s hard. There is a lot of pressure after success. We haven’t had huge success yet but it’s been constant. But I know a lot of bands that had instant success off that their first album and choked under it.
CONFRONT: How do you feel about the genre labels that are going around now with Emo and Screamo and punk-pop-rock and so on?
CHRIS: I don’t know. I think it gets to be a little bit ridiculous. I understand the need to kind of classify genres a little bit. But I don’t think we should put music in a box. People always ask us what we consider ourselves and what to answer to that. Probably a little bit of rock and kinda of like a pop band you know. But even the word pop brings up different images of different bands for different people.
CONFRONT: Yeah it’s garnered a lot of negative connotations lately.
CHRIS: It has a lot of negative connotations but to me pop music is popular music so you know, it’s not necessarily Britney Spears.
CONFRONT: I’m laughing because that’s the exact thing I tell people when I say we want to redefine mainstream. You opened for INXS in Canada? That’s pretty cool. How was that tour for you? It was huge venues right?
CHRIS: Yeah that was our first arena tour, playing in front of 15 thousand people. The first show was a little intimidating but the response was positive and we got a couple of standing ovations and that made us pretty happy. And the INXS guys are really nice. They watched our set most of the nights. I didn’t know what to expect but they were great. They made us feel welcome on the tour. It was a pretty good experience.
CONFRONT: How do you go back to smaller venues after that? Were you happy to go back?
CHRIS: I love doing both for different reasons. There’s a big rush that comes with being on stage in front of that many people. But I also love the intimacy of small venue and enjoy playing those shows where you can actually see the people’s faces and connect with them on that level.
CONFRONT: What are you’re views on the whole pre-fabricated music trend going on right now with American Idol or even INXS to a degree?
CHRIS: Personally I’m not into that kind of music but again I think that music is connecting to people or connection with an audience. There are obviously a lot of people out there who can connect with that kind of music. I don’t really understand but more power to them if it’s working. On the other hand, I think they have a big advantage over bands like us because they have all that marketing. If we had that much money and people behind us we could probably be as big.
CONFRONT: Yeah but then again if you look at it on the flip side, they have a team of people telling them what to wear, what to say…
CHRIS: Exactly. We could never go through that. I wouldn’t want that.
CONFRONT: On in a blurb on Canada.com it said that ‘Stabilo’s transition from Indie to Pop was effortless’ which is a fairly nice compliment. Would you agree with that?
CHRIS: You mean as a genre?
CONFRONT: No I think it was meant more as in you going from an indie act to a major label act and so on. They were saying that that transition was effortless or maybe seamless.
CHRIS: If I understand the comment, I think it was effortless. We worked pretty hard as an independent band. We had a lot of success and going with the big label was fairly easy. They were very supportive of the band and didn’t try to change who we were. And all of a sudden we had some people behind us and a team of people helping us out. We aren’t quit at the point were people are telling us how to do our hair but for the most part they are happy to let us make the decision just because we have been doing it for so long they trusted our instincts.
CONFRONT: How important do you think image is?
CHRIS: I think image is a very important thing in music and I think that maybe… my hunch is that the act that we are so un-image conscious may have hurt us; because we haven’t formulated on our image other than we’re four guys who like to play music and we do what we want and aren’t really attached to any specific scene. But I think there is certainly something to be said about image.
CONFRONT: I have never seen you in concert yet so I don’t know what your stage design is but is design and on stage visuals something that is important to your performance do you think?
CHRIS: We would like it to be. Again like I said we’re a little bit lacking in an image aspect of the band. But we have in the past thought of that and worked towards getting some visuals or some video going on in the background but as of right now it’s not there. But we would like to eventually. There is a lot of power with visuals mixed with music but right now it’s just four guys on stage.
CONFRONT: As I was telling you before, one of the things we are trying to do with the magazine is show people that mainstream isn’t necessarily a bad thing or even Britney Spears type music for the most part. What’s your definition of Mainstream today? Like, who do you think is working at breaking the stereotypes of mainstream?
CHRIS: I think anybody who sells a lot of records is mainstream. I think recently, thank God, a lot of indie artists are selling a lot of records and it not just Britney and that type of [stuff].
CONFRONT: I know you haven’t traveled that much overseas with the band but during personal travels has there been a place that stuck with you either culturally or musically?
CHRIS: I love traveling. A lot of places had an impact on me culturally. Morocco is one of my favorite places I have ever been. I also spent some time in Eastern Europe. Musically, there’s an artist from Vancouver called Geoff Berner who has a lot of, like Romanian influences and plays accordion. He plays sort of like punk rock with the accordion which is pretty cool. Then there is the Buena Vista Social Club, M.I.A. Can’t remember where she’s from, Sri Lanka or something like that.
CONFRONT: We have a section called Daily Urges which I essentially a section that readers can submit their musical discoveries and learn about artists from other people. It’s something that changes daily and includes basically just a short description of the artist and their MySpace page and what not to get people to at least consider other bands they might not know. What would be yours?
CHRIS: Well like I said there is Geoff Berner who plays accordion and calls himself the Whiskey Rabbi. Another band I’m really into is called Me About You.
CONFRONT: What were your first and last Albums bought?
CHRIS: I can’t even remember my first. I think it might have been Genesis or something like that; Or maybe Peter Gabriel. The last CD bought was Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers, the anthology. I’m a huge Tom Petty fan.
CONFRONT: First and last concert attended?
CHRIS: First one would probably a band nobody has ever heard of before. It was like a band called Tunderhead of something like that. The last concert was my own.
CONFRONT: Hey! You can’t say that. That’s not fair.
CHRIS: I can’t think of what it was. If I remember I’ll let you know.
CONFRONT: Alrighty! That was pretty much it actually. Thanks for taking the time to sit with us we really appreciate it. Oh wait, the one thing I wanted to know and forgot to ask is if you guys take care of your MySpace pages by yourselves or does someone do it for you?
CHRIS: I do it. I probably shouldn’t, ‘cause it takes up so much time that I should be spending playing or writing but I enjoy having that connection and being able to talk directly with fans. I think that’s important.
CONFRONT: Ok well thank you again. Have a good show….