this is a long time coming, for sure. it’s hard for me to talk about those damn bandits without gushing like i’m 16 again, but i’ll try to manage. i got the chance to interview a band who i’ve been listening to since the year 2001. it’s always nice to be able to connect with some of the artists you’ve looked up to for so long.

anyway, i won’t waste too much time. hit the interview for chris tsagakis and joe troy’s thoughts on mandala (out in stores today), touring, dvd releases, chris sheets and a lot more.

-grizzly

Roshan Bhatt, weworemasks.com: First off, just wanted to say thanks for talking to us. I’ve been a huge fan for a long time and I know my co-bloggers are as well.

Chris [Tsagakis], RX Bandits: Hey, thanks a lot man.

Joe [Troy], RX Bandits: Of course. It’s a pleasure.

WWM: Alright, well let’s get started. How’s tour going? You’re only about a couple weeks in, right?

Chris: We’re about a week and a half so far. It’s going really nice. Good crowds.

WWM: Yeah man, it’s a pretty nice turnout tonight.

Chris: It is, it is.

Joe: We downsized though [from the big room at the venue], due to a lack of presale tickets. But with the economy like this, it’s totally easy to understand. It’s gonna be fun, though. The crowds have been good this whole tour. It’s a little hotter than last summer, though.

WWM: Did you guys have a say in putting Zechs [Marquise] on the tour? I talked to those guys a little while ago, and they were really cool.

Chris: Yeah, we had heard a lot of great things about them and know people who know them. Stuff like that.

Joe: Definitely. When I first listened to them, I thought this was really cool. I mean that’s pretty much how we pick bands by that matter. If you could look at the roster of bands we’ve taken on tour in the past, it’s definitely stuff we wanna listen to. To have them play with us every night gets us really stoked.

WWM: Yeah, it’s always good to have a band you wouldn’t mind seeing every night. Anyway, I guess the main topic of the moment would be Mandala. It’s been a while since …And The Battle Begun came out, and it’s safe to say that this was highly anticipated. Did you do anything differently this time around?

Chris: No, it was pretty similar. We recorded everything live, and recorded on tape. We had a really good room this time — some place called the Mouse House. It was really nice. Someone converted his house into a studio so it was a really good atmosphere.

Joe: Gigantic live room. It was really fun and it made the drums sound more amazing than the last record.

Chris: We had Chris Fudurich back on this record, and we didn’t have him on the last album. He’s a really good fit for the band. He really knows what kind of stuff we go for.

WWM: Yeah, because you produced your own album last time, right

Joe: Yeah, Matt spent a lot of time mixing. Just because of the stipulation we were in. We were getting out of a contract and we waited about a year after we recorded it, right?

[long pause]

Chris: Um, I have no concept of time. [Laughs]

Joe: Yeah. [Laughs] We recorded it in late spring of 2005 and it came out in October 2006. Matt [Embree] did a lot of the production and post production. I’d go over to the house and he’d be working on it nonstop. He spent endless hours making it what it was.

WWM: What was the main reasoning behind bringing Chris back on board?

Chris: We kinda just wanted the smoothness of having an extra person. When you’re in the studio, we realized we only wanted to focus on playing them and have someone else handle it to make sure it stayed on track. When we did it ourselves, we handled everything about the record. Whereas this was just a bit more relaxing. We’d wake up and play the music.

Joe: Yeah, we’d have someone tell us if it was the right take as opposed to recording it, then having to go check ourselves to see if it was the right take. He has a really good ear for our band. He knows what we wanted it to sound like.

WWM: Was this the second album you did live? Or was The Resignation live, too?

Joe: Yep, the last three.

WWM: So it’s safe to say that’ll be the way from here on out?

Chris: Absolutely, I hope so.

WWM: Good news. One of the best things about your band has always been the fact that the way your record sounds is exactly the way you perform it live.

Joe: Exactly, that’s definitely what we want. I mean we expand on a lot of it live, but for the most part, touring is our livelihood and that’s how we want to convey it live.

Chris: Yeah, and plus, once you do it that way once, and you know that you’re able to do it. You don’t ever want to go back to the old way. It’s so much more of a whole band experience when we do it live. As opposed to recording separate tracks, it doesn’t feel like you’re with your band. You’re just putting pieces together, the feeling is totally different.

Joe: I have a funny anecdote for this.

WWM: Go for it.

Joe: When we were actually recording The Resignation in 2003…

WWM: Sorry, I have to interrupt. I just wanted to say that the album came out on my birthday that year.

Chris: Shit!

Joe: Oh, tight! [Laughs]. Well basically, we pretty much had all but a few of the songs done how we wanted to do it, which was live. C-gak called a band meeting. Me or the rest of the band were confused and had no idea what he was gonna say. It scared us. I had no idea what was going to come out of your mouth, but he called us into the garage and sat us down and basically said, “I’m not going to record with a click [track] anymore, OK?” So we were all like “Oh, go ahead.” We had no idea. We thought he was going to tell us he was moving to Siberia to herd sheep or whatever the fuck was gonna come out of his mouth.

Chris: Man, I forgot about that.

Joe: It scared the hell out of us. It made sense, though. That’s how you did Progress, and you didn’t wanna do it again.

WWM: One of the biggest differences between Mandala and Battle is the lack of horns. How did you guys approach this album taking that into question. Especially because some of your fans might be used to having horns and stuff.

Chris: Well, the writing process was basically the same. It was hard to write as a rhythm section and vocals, and have horns playing the whole time. So there really was no difference. Tunes that Matt or grooves that [Joe] had played before became songs. Even one of the jams we used to do live ended up as a song on the record.

WWM: Oh, word. What song was that?

Joe: “March of the Caterpillar.” We used to just do that as an interlude and it became a song. So the process wasn’t hindered with that. That was all salt and pepper during the recording sessions.

Chris: And of course, you have the whole thing with [Chris] Sheets. I mean here and there, we’ve somewhat explained what happened. At the time, he wasn’t “there” so we kind of just kept going with the process as it was. It ended up how it ended up.

Joe: It was a more concentrated writing process. Especially when we did record as the four piece that we are now, the energy was concentrated on focusing on each other. C-gak and I did a lot of work together even more than in the past.

Chris: In the interest of constantly growing as a band, we never really start writing an album and think that we want things this way or that way. We’ve never wanted anything for sure. We just do what we feel. We don’t go in thinking about wanting horns on this song or that song, we just approach it as we’re writing. Horns, keyboards, percussion is all just stuff we decide as we’re recording. There’s no pre-conceived thing saying we didn’t want horns.

WWM: Was it more of a personal conflict or an amicable split with Sheets?

Joe: Absolutely not a personal conflict other than the fact that he’s one of our closest friends. His health issues became something that we had to personally deal with, just like with their brothers, sisters and friends, parents whatever. It was tough and I miss him dearly. I wish it could’ve been different, but unfortunately, that’s how it was dealt with. And going back to what C-gak was saying, the sounds on the new record. Steve Choi did a lot more keyboards and stuff, so there’s a lot of new sounds that we would’ve never had before, because we would’ve put in the horn section. They were brought out in such a beautiful aspect, I can’t say that it could’ve come out any better.

WWM: How was it working with Sargent House? I mean, just by being able to deal with your management, I had a real pleasant experience. So I can imagine it’s easy working for these guys.

Chris: Yeah, I mean Cathy even approached Matt [Embree] a few years ago at a show and said that she was a fan of the band. When we were in our transition stage on our own, we recontacted and got a hold of her.

Joe: We never had management. We went without it until 2006. It was a very weird situation and very weird to put our best interests in someone else’s hands, but she knows. She knows what we want. She’s on our level and is almost like a member of the band. It’

Chris: And it’s the same with Fudurich, too. We don’t work with many people. So when we do, it’s usually that they are so much on the same level, that their interests and our interests are very in tune.

WWM: You released the Bonnaroo bootleg back in 2007, do you have any plans of releasing anything like that again?

Chris: Hmm, yeah. I think there’s an acoustic show coming out soon.

Joe: There’s a lot of stuff we’d love to release. It’s kind of at the point where I wish we could record every show live.

Chris: I would love to release the stuff that we do in South America.

Joe: Yeah, like we played Venezuela last year. We’re gonna be [in South America] for a month in October, so hopefully there will be more of that to come.

Chris: There are no plans right now, but there definitely will be stuff like that at some point.

WWM: Awesome. And whatever happened to that DVD project you guys had, the Glasshouse DVD?

Joe: Yeah…I mean everything we’ve been doing. There’s just so much live footage, we didn’t wanna put something out that’s half-assed. We didn’t want to market something that wouldn’t be fully appreciated by you or us. There was a plan to do that, but I wanna do a gigantic five-hour DVD where there is clips of that, clips of other shows. Not just one show.

WWM: So what are your plans post-Dredg tour? I know you mentioned South America.

Joe: We’re doing a small run in late September. We’re taking a band out from Seattle, Wild Orchid Children. You know, the whole Kay Kay thing. That’s only going to be like 6 dates. Then, we’re hitting South America in October. Panama, Venezuela, we’re doing Brazil and Costa Rica. Trying to build a small base there, cause we like going there.

WWM: Great man. Thanks again for talking to me.

Chris: No problem man.

WWM: Good luck with the show tonight. Anything you’d like to add to our readers?

Chris: Thanks to anyone who’s supporting and buying the record. I know nowadays it’s really easy to just download everything.

Joe: Which is totally cool with us.

Chris: Yeah, and we’re not against that. But we really do appreciate anyone who actually bought it. They’re literally putting food in our mouth and rent in our pocket.

Joe: If you could put rent in your pockets, I’d be down to do it. Peace. [Laughs]

that’ll wrap it up. all the pictures were stolen from belowthesun’s flickr, who shot the show from new orleans.

-grizzly