Hey guys, this is Katie from My Wish I Was Still Sleeping on WXAV 88.3 FM Chicago, and I'm here with Chris from The Flight Liners for the Fat Records 25 years tour. So how's your day going so far? How's the tour been going for you guys? Great, yeah, it's really good.
They're like, they're long nights with eight bands on the tour. It's funny that they play a show. I mean, we've been playing in like five events every day pretty much. And it's very interesting to play a show and then get a movie dinner and then you have the rest of your night, I have a pretty much.
But cool, we're in like a amazing company. Like we're one tour with most of the pump dancers who grew up with the same taste, so that's pretty cool. Yeah, I can imagine that being a pretty awesome one. How do you guys feel like being a part of something like this, like that Rex 25 years tour?
It should be, I guess, a pretty big deal, right? Yeah, I know, absolutely. It's great. I mean, like if you were to, you know, tell me like when I did it, this would happen.
I probably would have never believed it. It's definitely something like, man, we got caught up with fat, I guess, like 06. And we, you know, you kind of take like your, if you get somebody a childhood dream, you're gonna take it like, you know, one record at a time, pretty much, and it's just like don't better, better, we put a lot of stuff on fat down than the other type of what has to do with it. So they're 25th anniversary, which they're almost as old as these are messing in the flat lines.
It's really cool. And then we're talking about what happened. Yeah, I think I had interviewed you two years ago. So I was wondering, since WXV is in Chicago, would imagine you guys have played here probably a decent amount of times.
Do you like Chicago? Yeah. Yeah, good. Definitely.
I honestly think it's become probably like one of our favorite places in the States to go, and it's like really, it's been really good for our band. You know, like, we've made a lot of great friends there, and it's an amazing city full of, like, there's a lot of stuff to do outside of the show, but the show is still, you know, what holds the most memory. You know, people have always shown us such a great time in that city, but we love coming back. What do you guys like to do when you come here?
Besides, it's like your show, obviously. Do you have a time to ever do anything? We really like Chicago Diner. Perfect.
Perfect, because there's a couple of vegans in our crew, and all of us who aren't vegan really do still enjoy vegan food stuff. So it's kind of the perfect place to go for our whole, like, brewing crew and everything. I mean, I really like catching up with the friends we have in Chicago, and I guess apparently if you have them moved away recently, which is too bad. I really enjoy the whole Midwest approach to just treating everyone right and welcoming everyone into your zone and everything.
We've never felt unwelcome in a place like that, and you could even be catching up with someone that you, like, a fan of, and everyone's just so chill. That's probably one of my favorite things to do out of the plane to show. Just talking to the folks. It kind of reminds me of people of Canada.
I'm glad you like Chicago. That makes me happy. You're like the third person, I think, on the street, that's been like, I like Chicago better than any other city, or like, I like it better than New York and stuff like that. And, okay, that's a compliment.
No, it's like the epicenter of the Midwest, right? So you got a lot of cultures kind of converging there, and there's a lot of different kind of folks. There's a lot happening in the city of Chicago, but if you're a band like I said, comes every year, probably twice a year, probably usually just once, but like, you know, and like you can have a good show, and you can remember these familiar faces, and people will remember you, and keep coming back and supporting it. There's something to be said about that, in a city like Chicago, more than a city like New York or LA or whatever, like those cities have had their time.
Yeah, yeah. The cities have had their stories, though. And of course, there's, you know, some Chicago, but it is nice having like that, almost kind of like Home Away from Home 5, in a big city, you know, and have a, you know, remind you of Home 5, too. It's pretty special.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do science playing music, and that's probably a majority of what you do, but what else do you like to do besides playing music? Well, I've been doing like some like graphic design stuff for like a few years, just on and off. That's pretty fun.
Recently, I've been like diving way deeper into like just playing music and trying to like, all my time playing music, but I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I probably enjoy the same stuff. Everyone likes, I like watching movies. I like living, I like, this is summer in the outdoors, you know? Since the summertime now, we haven't really been on the road watch before this tour this year, because I'm enjoying like going to like friends, cottages and stuff and just living, just living a normal life.
Oh, that's good. So I don't know if I heard the same, but do you do some solo stuff on the side of Flatliners? Yeah, that's kind of partly, partly what I mean by like just trying to spend most of my time playing music. Like this year has been a slower year for the band touring lines, we're writing a record and we're making pretty good headway with that, but we're not really traveling a lot.
And I kind of get, that kind of go stir crazy a little bit when I'm home for long amounts of time. So yeah, I've been doing like a few, six things, which is really fun. Like I never really considered doing it very seriously until Joey K from Lagwagen approached me about this label idea he had one week records. And so this was a few years ago now, he'll approach me about it.
And a couple of songs kicking around that I thought I would like to keep as they were stripped down rather than like bring them to the Flatliners because we have a lot of songs as it is. And I think it was just like the right time that he approached me about it. And also just because it was him, I probably wouldn't turn a lot of other people down for more Joey K. Yeah, that's awesome.
You know what I mean? He's the pretty first ways of man. He really piqued my interest and I was really excited to work with him because I've always been such a massive lag-wagged band, but also like he's a pretty prolific guy in the way of like he has so many bands, so many projects, always on the go. But they always have his trademark to it.
And that's something I really admire and respect. And I was blown away when he asked me to be a part of this one week record's family. So I did the record was him last year in his house in San Francisco and then we spent a bunch of time together on the road doing acoustic tours together last year. That's awesome.
And yeah, I know, just kind of like the adventure continues. Like while the band is writing, but then we have, you know, if some of the other guys have some plans like to go away somewhere in the summer or whatever, I just booked a few acoustic trips. Okay, cool. And I just ride my car, load my truck up.
My girlfriend even came with me for a couple of these trips, which is great. Awesome. And it's more of a road trip than being on tour. That's fun.
Joey told me he was gonna be doing some acoustic stuff in October. So you'll be jumping on with him and doing some of that, maybe? No, unfortunately won't. You see, yeah, you do another one week record through the fall.
I unfortunately won't be able to make it because I think the band has some going on. Okay, all right, that works. And then we're working on something. We're hoping to have some going on.
That'd be cool. So do you know when you guys are gonna release your new album? Is there a date for it yet? Or can you not really talk about it?
No, I'm not. I'm not. Well, we could talk about it. I'm completely uncertain when it'll come out.
Oh, okay. We're still writing. And we like to take our time with it. We did just put out like a B size and rarity of compilation on that.
Yeah, it's mostly just like a culmination of all that songs we've put out on single seven inches in the past, which covers the stuff we've released on maybe like kind of obscure thing over the years. But then also we have like three unreleased songs from our last record, that language on there. We have an unreleased demo of a song that we actually never believe we recorded for the Great Awake, which was our first record on Fat, our second record in general. So that was from back in like 2006 or seven.
So there's like 20 songs on it. We kind of wanted to finally put all these things out that have been released on a million different seven inches on one thing. So that's kind of to try people over until the new ones out. When you hopefully be in the spring or summer or something of next year, but we got to finish reading and then record it.
Yeah, yeah, that I think that definitely hold me over. So I like to ask fans this question. Who are you listening to right now that you would recommend to someone that maybe a lot of people don't know about them? Or you'd be like, hey, check this band out or check this person out?
Yeah, that's a great question. I've been really getting into two bands in particular recently. What is it? Chicago actually called Twin Peaks.
Oh, we had them play a show at San Xavier actually like a year and a half ago. And they're actually pretty solid. I like them. Yeah, yeah, they're awesome.
I saw them recently over at King Tuff in Toronto. King Tuff is great, too. And they blew me away. I'd heard the name so many times, but I don't think I'd ever heard a note there.
So we totally honestly do. I was sold immediately after the first song. I heard I thought they were awesome. That's awesome.
I've gone deep. And yeah, I really check out all this stuff that they have out. And yeah, this is an awesome rock and roll band. But they have that cool kind of multi-vocal element.
You know what I mean? Each guy I guess who writes the song things with. So they have all these different approaches and styles rolled into one band. It's really cool.
And then there's another band from Massachusetts called California X. They're really cool. I think I really went through one of the labels that sent us all the crazy stuff. Cool.
Yeah, I know they're awesome. They're kind of trippy like, it's pretty, the way it's, I don't know if this would offend them or if they would like this. But they were like, if Smashing Pumpkin had a little more like fuzzy guitar tones, but had like really strong, like late 90s pop on, kind of like post-screen metal hooks. It's really powerful stuff.
And it's like, but it just sounds like these riff it, which is great. But it's so powerful. There's songs just like full speed ahead every time. Nice.
I'll definitely check them out more. You're the first person to where you mentioned, like, I'm listening to this band. And I actually know who they are. So that's pretty cool.
That's cool. So we're, the VXAV is the College Radio Station. And every year we had a college radio day. And this year it's October 2nd.
And it's when like all the college radio stations come together. You know, we play a bunch of music, celebrate music, you know, play all the underground artists and all the interviews that we get and everything. And I was wondering, your opinion on college radio was, like, if you think it's important for the music industry, and if you guys, are you personally have ever had any experience with any college radio? Yeah.
I mean, for us, like being from Canada, it's an interesting thing because in Canada, there's a can con law for commercial radio. And I believe it trickles down as far as to college radio, meaning that you have to play a certain percentage and the actual percentage I don't remember right now. We have to play a certain percentage of Canadian content on the radio all the time. So for us coming up, there's a Canadian band.
And like, you know, when we were really starting to get going, we had like a friend that worked at like the big rock station in Toronto, the commercial radio. It was really helpful for us because we got to reach people because we were Canadian bands, because we were kind of forced to bond people to do that a lot. But traveling outside of Canada, I realized so much more often how important college radio is, because there are a lot of bands out there, of course, and there are a lot of bands out there that don't get the recognition or the respect for the notoriety they really deserve. And what there's always college radio playing is kind of bands.
You know, commercial radio seems like such a tough nut to crack, you know, and it totally is, because it's just like, I mean, as things progress, like, well, maybe progresses in the right way, but things move forward, just in general, for like a human race, like people get a lot more caught up in a lot more like BS than they do. We get a lot more caught up in the bad that maybe they do the good. And I feel like a lot of folks don't necessarily realize how important something like college radio is to even just the call is or the general area, or those bands especially, you know? And it's a thing where like music is so fun, but it's something that if you really want to like, if you really want to do it, you kind of have to sacrifice almost your whole life in order to make this your new life.
And reaching people with your music is kind of the name of the game if you're in a band, right? Like that's why everyone starts a band and you want to play, you want to write about stuff, you want to play or you want to play with friends. But eventually when you kind of have some momentum going, you want to reach people, that's what everyone wants to do with their band. And I feel like that's like one of the best breaks you can get as a young band starting out is getting like a college radio station to play your stuff, because I mean, it feels good.
And like that, then the commercial radio is just, I mean, it's a rock band, these days, it's hard to get players in commercial radio, no one plays rock music anymore. Yeah, yeah, it's not like the pop and everything that's crazy. Exactly, I mean, it's like, as things move forward, when you get further and further away from, I mean, what, yeah, I guess we're rock and roll. That's just one genre and I have a bunch of pants that I'm gonna punk band for.
It is interesting to see that, because when I was growing up, in the 90s, I mean, we're all born like late 80s. So we're young dudes, I guess, still, but when I was growing up in the 90s, it was all like amazing rock bands on the radio all the time. You know, and so maybe it's just because of the era in which I grew up that really painted a picture like this is how it should be. But as you know, every decade, generations, whatever, everything shifts, everything changes.
And it seems like things change a lot quicker these days. So I don't know, I think if college radio is able to play a mix of genres, because there is nothing wrong with having a mix of music in your veins for sure. But if college radio are the ones giving those young bands, more of a chance, then hell yeah, of course. I mean, like I backed out 100% because we were there before we ever got commercial.
But in Canada, we were going to college radio stations to drop in our CD off and they'd play us. I mean, that's just to hang out and then we would like talk on the radio and play our song. That's awesome. It's always been, yeah, it's always been kind of like the underdog kind of story, right?
But with college radio, I think it's really important for people and maybe a lot of people won't re-watch that. Yeah, that'd be cool if you guys would come here and do that, I'd be totally stoked. That'd be awesome. Yeah, that would be awesome.
Wow, that was a great answer. Definitely, definitely, that was awesome. I love that. So that's all the questions I have for you.
I was trying to make this short, you know, because you guys are busy with everything and go on the road and I don't know if you guys are, are you guys playing in tonight or? We do, yeah, we're playing again at a get tonight with a massive shooter at Back Hop, Back Hop. Oh, nice, nice, that's pretty cool. Thank you very much.
And I appreciate you, I appreciate you taking time on your day to talk to me. And I'll be at the Chicago show next Monday. So if you guys are right or booth, I'll come say what's up and everything. And you know, I'm gonna be sure to all that fun stuff.
All right, well, have a good show tonight.