Interview with Halloween Alaska

WRITTEN BY NATTALIE TEHRANI

Interview with Halloween Alaska in support of Champagne Downtown

By: Nattalie Tehrani

PunkTV.ca: So your new album Champagne Downtown is coming out on April 7th…can you tell us a little about how the recording process was and what fans can expect on this album?

Yeah well, it was recorded mainly in Minneapolis. It took us over a couple of years to get us in the studio. I was in Los Angeles for a while and then in Wisconsin, so we just had to pull together and we hooked up with Chad Blake and he was incredible. There are much more distinctive sounds on this album than our previous albums. I think it’s broader, unlike our other stuff which was mellower. In this one we are more guitar oriented rather than pop oriented.

PunkTV.ca: You guys have a song based loosely off of a novel called Jerk, California…are you guys into literature and do you derive some influence from reading?

It was actually like a one time thing, we loosely based that song off of the novel. In general I love to read, we love to watch movies and just keep up on everything. Reading isn’t our direct influence.

PunkTV.ca: You guys did a song for the OC. Doing a song for a mainstream show....was there ever that fear of being called sell outs or were you guys sure as soon as you hear about the project?

Well, no because the songs that were played on the OC was released on our record first and then the director of the OC licensed a couple of our songs. Um, so it wasn’t written for the show, it wasn’t a conscience decision. Mostly we were interested in having our music exposed to a larger audience and people we haven’t been able to reach yet. It was a cool opportunity.

PunkTV.ca: Exactly, you guys reached out to people who didn’t have the opportunity to check you guys out. It got you guys a wider scale of fans, I’m sure.

Definitely, it was a very positive experience.

PunkTV.ca: So you guys covered an LL COOL J song…so in the future what other covers do you guys plan on doing?

Well, the new record is just all original music. We didn’t include any covers on the album but we didn’t consider doing some covers just for the fun and releasing it. A certain number of people took our LL Cool J cover to be more ironic and clever than it was intended. I think it was just very Ernest kind of cover. I was a fan of LL records since the beginning. People thought we were trying to start a new genre, when it wasn’t what we intended at all.

PunkTV.ca: I thought it was quite refreshing. Very unique. It was a very cool collision of genres.

Aw cool, thank you!

PunkTV.ca: If you could ask your fans a question…what would it be?

Well, I would ask how they feel about music formats. With this record we decided to put it out on CD’s and on vinyl and of course on itunes. It seems like that the business is changing so people aren’t buying physical CD’s or records anymore, so, is it still worth while to buy physical music products.

PunkTV.ca: So basically are you an old school CD shopper or a more modern digital user.

I will say, the vinyl might not rank as high as most people don’t have record players.

PunkTV.ca: For those that do, however, it would be pretty legit to have a vinyl! The audio quality usually exceeds that of digital too.

I agree!

PunkTV.ca: We have two questions that PunkTV.CA usually asks all our interviewees. The first is, which of the following have you experienced: seen the face of God, seen a ghost, or had an alien encounter before.

Well, I don’t think I have seen a ghost but I might have heard a ghost actually. I heard a voice that there was no logical explanation. Hopefully it wasn’t a schizophrenic episode. I have not seen any aliens and I haven’t seen god.

PunkTV.ca: What would surprise people to learn about you?

O gosh….

PunkTV.ca: Sorry, threw a tough one at you.

Well, I’m not sure if it is surprising but our base player Matt is sort of a singular person out of the group. So pretty much every song, he changes the tuning of his base, which at times can be very difficult for us. The scary think is, is that he wrote all the tunings for each song on a piece of paper and only made one copy of it. So if he lost it, are band would be done. We were terrified to hear that.

PunkTV.ca: Oh no! Tell me you guys hit the nearest Kinko’s and made copies of it! That’s your band’s life line in a file!

Yeah, we made sure we did.

PunkTV.ca: Well awesome talking to you, thank you so much for taking the time out to do this!

Oh it was my pleasure! Thank you!