The Blood Brothers: Glad To Repulse Some Of The Kids

It's been over a year since The Blood Brothers released Crimes and the Seattle quintet have toured extensively in support of the album. Though they’ve indulged their own muses with their side-projects, Neon Blonde and Head Wound City, they’re still pretty happy about their latest album. ChartAttack caught up with vocalist Johnny Whitney and guitarist Cody Votolato to discuss the band’s past, present and future.

The Blood Brothers How do you feel about Crimes a year after its release?
Cody Votolato: I think all of the interpretations of the songs have changed from playing them live so much. I still really like the album, I really like what we did, I’m happy with it. There’s things that I would have done differently or whatever.
Johnny Whitney: I haven’t listened to the record in about a year so I can’t really comment on it. I feel like we’re at a point where we’re playing the songs on the record better than we ever have, really. How do you feel you’ve grown as artists?
JW: Well, I feel that, over the past year, the experience of doing a side-project where I basically wrote everything, it makes me feel a lot more confident to write music. Whereas on Burn Piano Island Burn I wasn’t personally really writing anything. I feel a lot more confident now than I did when we were writing Crimes.
CV: I think just as time goes, everyone gets better at what they do and expands what they do to other things and we all get more interested in doing all sorts of things with each record. That’s pretty much how it’s gone in order to not put out the same record twice.With the last three records, you guys had a record out every year.

Why did you decide to tour instead of writing another album?
JW: Well, actually the only reason that it seemed like we had a record out every year was just because Electric Children and Burn were both delayed. Both of them were delayed and came out a year after we recorded them. We were gonna stop touring after our last U.S. tour, but then we got offered to do this tour so we jumped on it. We’ve been to Europe three times on this record. We’ve been to Australia, stuff like that. There were a lot of touring opportunities that came up. We don’t really get any radio or television support, so the only way we can really promote our band is by playing shows.You guys are big enough to headline your own tours.

Why do you choose to do support slots?
JW: You can only headline so much.
CV: Yeah, before people just get tired of you. You can build a bunch of fans on your own like, that but I think the support tours that we’ve done have helped us get our headlining shows to where they are. Hopefully by the next time we come around, we’ll have a headlining spot.

If things were to end for the band right now, how would you want to be remembered?
JW: I would want to be remembered as a band that tried to do something different than the status quo of what’s on Fuse or MTV or whatever. I think with the advent of emo or hardcore or whatever becoming a really profitable thing, it’s made for a lot of... well, really generic, safe music.
CV: That’s a terrible thing.
JW: Yeah. Like when we were starting our band, we were in high school, and I think it’s amazing that we can make music that’s really repugnant to a lot of kids but at the same time, connect with enough people to be successful enough to tour and not have to go home and work at Starbucks.