Interview's

by David Lee Wilson

It was a considerably gagging ball of phlegm that the music industry coughed up in the year 2000. Personally, I would have to go all the way back to the year that Debby Gibson, Tiffany and New Kids on the Block were all riding the charts to find a reasonable comparison for just how bad it was. Still, there was one record that left me feeling redemption just might be possible for the music industry, "AN EDUCATION IN REBELLION" by THE UNION UNDERGROUND. As a group THE UNION UNDERGROUND embody all of the core elements that have always made Rock music exciting and a wee bit dangerous but most impressively it is how the band combine youth rebellion with an intelligence that is unhampered by juvenile sentiment. One could extrapolate from listening to this group that the only choices South Texas allowed them in life was either to start a revolution or sign a recording contract. Fortunately for all of us they chose the latter, exploding all the energy for the former on the blunt and beautiful "AN EDUCATION IN REBELLION." The most successful track from "REBELLION," to date, has been "Turn me on Mr. Dead Man" and that came courtesy of its near permanence on Rock radio playlists through the second half of last year. As "Dead Man" bled into America's consciousness via radio and MTV the band took to the road playing anywhere that had a stage and enough electricity to put on their show. Particularly successful for the band was a string of dates with MARYLYN MANSON where, night after night, THE UNION UNDERGROUND proved that not only could they hang with the headliners but that they had the best handle on what was coming next in music. Putting this knowledge to practical use THE UNION UNDERGROUND have confirmed a spot on this years Ozz-Fest tour where they will play along with the crème de la crème of the Nu-Metal crop. With that said, all the smart money is on THE UNION UNDERGROUND to emerge as this summer's best hope to regain some of the ground that has been lost to all of these limp biscuits masquerading as Metal. With an easiness that belies his ability to create the most pummeling music available today UNION UNDERGROUND guitarist Patrick Kennison phoned into the BALLBUSTER offices where he detailed a bit of his lesson plan for the countries continuing education in rebellion.

DAVID LEE- Starting with the completely superficial, this album cover is amazing, is that a little girl dressed up like that?

PATRICK KENNISON- Yeah, we figured what better way represent the title than to have a little girl on the cover because one thing that children are is honest. Adults will say, "Wow, that looks good" while children will say, "What the hell is that?" because they are honest about it. I think that children are a good medium to use for people to listen. We chose that girl from a modeling agency. She had a portfolio and she had done a bunch of ads and she was just this pretty little girl until we got our hands on her and made her look evil.(laughs)

DL- And ruined her career!(laughs)

PK- Exactly!

DL- You are doing Ozz-fest this year and that will be a chance to play with some of the best and, I think, some of the worst.

PK- Ozz-Fest will be a great thing for this band. I remember the last time I went to Ozz-Fest it was just everybody was there, the little kids, the teenagers and the older people and it is just such a good vibe that I am looking forward to being a part of it.

DL- I have seen you in various size clubs and the band really has a great visual image but I think a lot of that atmosphere comes from being in a darkened room whereas when you play Ozz-Fest it will be daylight and outdoors, does that concern you at all?

PK- You know that is very true and everyone in the band thought about it but we did do a couple of one-offs with STP and one of the DISTURBED radio shows was outside and stripped down with no lights and those were some of our best gigs ever. It felt so good to go, "Wow, we don't need to lean on a bunch of multi media devices and props." Shit, you know I own a copy of the SEX PISTOLS' "Never Mind the Bollocks" and that was no nothin', put it on and go rock and roll and that is kind of the vibe of the shows where we play outside.

DL- I was told that you had to be woken up to make the calls this afternoon, must be nice?(laughs)

PK- Yeah, just waking up at these rock and roll hours, it must be three or four here now. I do stay up late though!(laughs)

DL- Too much for a mere human?(laughs)

PK- Oh, man it is the rigors of the road!

DL- What was her name, or their names I should probably guess as you guys skyrocket upwards with this record here?(laughs)

PK- (Laughing) That is the worst part, I can't remember.

DL- See that is a good thing because that would signal an attachment if you knew the names and that would mess it up for the next town.

PK- Yeah, you see there is no cheating if you don't know the names!(laughs)

DL- Oh, a thinking mans band are we? You guys do manage to put on one hell of a show so I guess you are allowed your excesses for escape now and again?

PK- Well we do have one rule, no heavy partying before a gig. We keep it in check for us and the crew and everybody.

DL- Something that a lot of people are really getting excited about when coming to see THE UNION UNDERGROUND is the stage show. You guys really do go all out, especially for the size halls you are playing most of the time?

PK- Yeah, that is what a lot of people are saying but to us it is not that new. In Texas we had started doing this right when we started headlining clubs and we carried it on after the album came out and kind of improved on it really. It has been going good and it really isn't theatrical, it is more multi-media.

DL- It is still a pretty involved show and I would imagine it is relatively expensive, does the expense of doing it every night become prohibitive at all?

PK- You know, I will tell you what if I had gotten into this business for money I would have quit fifteen years ago. We put all of our money back into the show, always. Whether it is the video production or we even worked out a deal with our record company where if you go to Best Buy our CD is only $6.99. I will make fewer royalties because of that but I didn't do this for Royalty checks I did this for the music.

DL- This is the full CD, not a sampler for $6.99?

PK- Yeah. It is only for the first few hundred thousand copies though. But, yeah, we have always been about putting money back into the band. I think that it is stupid to pay $18.99 for a new CD regardless of how much money you have in your wallet.

DL- Especially when you can get it free off of the Internet!(laughs)

PK- Exactly! I get that question every time! It is funny because I was with Lars Ulrich when we were doing the last date of the MANSON tour and he and Twiggy were writing a song called "Napster of Puppets" and the lyrics are obviously about Napster. The origional lyric was, "I am your source of self-destruction" and I gave them the lyric, "I am your source of sales reduction." They said they were going to use it but not give me any publishing money.

DL- Now see, a bit two faced, wouldn't you say?

PK- Well, it's all right because if "Napster of Puppets" gets on the Internet I wouldn't make any money anyway. Though Napster has helped us out and people are always asking me what I think about that and I get so many e-mails from kids who heard "Mr. Dead Man' on Napster and then went and bought the album and love the record. I think for new bands Napster is great but I guess when you are METALLICA and you make more than three or four dollars off of each CD, I guess it doesn't help. I don't know, ask me when I have ten or twelve albums to my career.

DL- I do have to say that for as much as I don't like the idea of Lars suing his fans incessantly, it is just such bad PR, I do have to agree with the idea that artists or whomever holds the ownership of a work, should be paid for it.

PK- Exactly and you know what Lars said, he just wants a choice. He is not saying "Napster go away" he just wants a choice.

DL- It is strange though especially in the case of METALLICA, this is a group who gained their initial success from tape trading circles and who actively encouraged the practice which is exactly the same thing as Napster in philosophy if not in scale.

PK- Exactly, isn't it funny. Or then they (METALLICA) let you bootleg their shows. Life is full of ironies and I guess that is one of them.(laughs)

DL- You guys are getting a really fair shake of this whole business with the record having been out for quite some time now and the label is still aggressively pushing it, that must be a nice feeling.

PK- Yeah, timing is a big part of it and I think that when they (the record label) got into our band we had the independent record out and they were just in love with that record so they said, "Lets just remix that record and put it out with a new cover." We did already have a bunch of new songs so we said, "No, lets pick some of the old ones and some of the new ones and redo the whole thing" and they were into it still so that was really cool.

DL- You are feeling that total commitment then?

PK- Yeah. People like John Kolodner and his counterpart were just totally into the band from the first live show that they saw and it is still going.

DL- He seems to have given up on those eighties bands that he was trying to revive so that will probably give him some extra time to spend on you guys?

PK- Yeah, but you know, that whole thing, I pulled him aside and asked him what he was doing with all of these bands that nobody cares about anymore and he said that it was a business thing and a new RATT record costs $60,000. to make and if they sell that record to ten percent of their origional core audience the record would make a profit for the label. I will be honest with you though, we are on the Portrait imprint and getting us in there did put some fresh blood into their whole thing. I think that they said, "Whoa, there are bands that can sell 10,000 copies per week. So, I think us and IRON MAIDEN are the two bands that are doing really well for the label.

DL- The press release claims that you guys are all big time ALICE IN CHAINS fans and since that is their label as well, presuming they ever activate again, you could be working with them, that has to be kind of exciting for you?

PK- Well, the whole ALICE AND CHAINS thing fell to the wayside I think and that probably doesn't help Columbia much but yeah, we are huge CHAINS fans. I don't even think of them as being from that whole "grunge" era because I think that they really kept the Metal in there without sounding whiny. They were dark and had cool sounding harmonies. I remember seeing them open for EXTREME and they got booed! I was like, "Yeah, they sound like BLACK SABBATH with vocal harmonies, why don't people get it?"(laughs)

DL- When you went back and pulled material from the first record to use for this one did you actually go in and re-record them or did you keep all the basics and do a remix of the songs?

PK- A couple of tunes had some slight changes. I will be honest, some of the songs we recorded before we even had a band, it was just Brian and I. After we started playing some gigs we realized that there were some songs that worked better when we did this or that to 'em so there were a few makeovers but everything was basically just remixed at the same time so that it didn't sound like it came from different studios.

DL- Was this easier to do because it was all digital or did you have to curry tapes back and forth between machines?

PK- There was a little bit of that. God, we recorded this record on every medium available. We recorded on analog, straight to digital Pro-Tools and we did ADAT but you know what is funny is that people will argue between analog and digital and it is all a big load of shit because either it sounds good or it doesn't. I think that the medium, analog or digital, has little to do with anything.

DL- Do you personally have a preference to work with?

PK- Not at all. Well, analog is a little noisier and I guess to tell the truth I prefer digital only because it is easier to work with but the sound, naw, I have no preference.

DL- Does the fact that you can work with all that is available to you help you to write? Do you ever sit there and say, "Yeah, this should be run through an old tube Marshall onto some tape" or "This is better to be done very crisply in digital sound?"

PK- I thought that it would but when we were finishing the record we found that Pro-Tools has so many plug-ins that sound analog and they are a lot easier to work with that in the end it was just more reliable to use the new stuff. I mean, when you are sitting there recording you want to be able to do it quick and easy.

DL- I know it was you and Bryan Scott that started the band but I hear there is an interesting story on how your bass player came into the mix, what was that all about?

PK- Yeah, that story is hilarious. He joined the band right before we completed the record. This is the METALLICA - Dave Mustaine story relived through THE UNION UNDERGROUD. We show up on our first trip to LA to meet the record company and we hadn't had that bass player very long because there had been this revolving door kind of thing going on. He (the origional bass player) was really cool until he started drinking and by the time we got to LA he was already on strike three of "let me get drunk and start fights with the other guys in the band." So, we fired him the very day that we went to meet the record company and they said, "Hey where is your bass player?" and we said, "Oh, he was sick", "there was a family emergency" or something like that, we just made up an excuse!

DL- So, straight out of the gate you are lying your ass off to your potential employers!(laughs)

PK- (Laughing) Yep! Right from the first time we met them! We got home a few days later and our manager said not to worry about it and we all went out to a local club that we had played and then this bass player in whatever band it was playing comes out and we were all like, "Dude, that guy sounds awesome!" He was totally playing heavy and he played with a pick and his tone sounded neat. I walked over to the singer and the drummer and they were both looking at him as well and so we go, "OK, how do we steal him out of this band?"(laughs) Two weeks later we go to one of his gigs and sneak in backstage and hand him a couple of CDs and he tells us, "Well, I will listen to them and I know you are doing good but I have a band." A week after that he called up and said, "I loved what I heard and I have to come and jam with you all!" So, we took him right out of his band!(laughs)

DL- Did you at least hire the rest of his band as roadies or something?

PK- (Laughing) No, I don't think that they will talk to us! He was so good that we even re-recorded some of the bass tracks just so he could be on the album.

DL- Is the old bass player readying his tell-all book about the beginnings of THE UNION UNDERGROUND?

PK- I don't know but we had a few bass players that were here before and I don't talk to them. It is a weird feeling, I guess, like an ex-girlfriend that goes on to become a model or something.(laughs) that is what it takes sometimes though, to get a good lineup. You can read about your favorite bands and they will go through some crappy members to find out what a good one really is and that is what I think is where fortune guided us to a really good bass player.

DL- It reads well in interviews and sounds really great to hear when a band claims to be a complete democracy in all ways but that is not usually how it really is, how is it with THE UNION UNDERGROUND? Is there an attempt at democracy in this band or is it you and Bryan that pretty much set the agenda?

PK- Initially it was the singer's and my band but I will tell you what, when we finished the record and started playing these shows the other guys found their places really fast. If me and Brian are the studio guys I feel like Josh and John are kind of like the live guys because they will come up with a lot of ideas that we put into the show and hopefully that will carry over to the second record.

DL- Does the setlist or even the playing of the songs themselves change when you go into a venue that can't support the production?

PK- Oh yeah. Some of the multi-media stuff that we have we will be jamming to something and in the middle of a song there will be something that comes up, a weird audio or video or something, and it will throw a cool monkey wrench into everything. You will think that you have it all pegged and then all of a sudden it will go into something else that is just weird. It is not really a jam thing, it is more of a sensory overload kind of deal so it is just not the record straight through or anything.

DL- You already mentioned that there will be a next record so I should ask you about that, any firm ideas on where you will try and go with that one?

PK- Yeah, we are already working on it. You know the way technology is you can have a recorder the size of a laptop out on the road and that is in fact what we have. We have a portable studio at the back of our bus and it can go into a Hotel or anywhere. I will be honest, we had so many songs that didn't make this record that I told the record company, "Give us two more months and we will put out a double album!"(laughs) "Use your Confusion 1 and 2"(laughs) Yeah, we do have a lot of material left and it wasn't because it wasn't good enough it just wasn't finished. I can relate to METALLICA when they did the "LOAD" and "RELOAD" records where you get in these writing periods where you write so many songs but you can't finish them all. This record has no cover songs on it and no ballads and we are really proud of that though we do have some great ballads that didn't get used.

DL- Will some of that backlog of songs be used for "b-sides" and Japanese versions of the album?

PK- You know that is exactly what the record company talked about, "Lets get some of these tunes out as 'b-sides'" and then when they heard them they said, "Lets save these for the next record and use some live tracks for the 'b-sides'"(laughs)

DL- You have been compared with a whole slew of other acts, POWERMAN 5000 and STATIC X, how do you feel about that?

PK- I embrace any comparison to anything that may be in my CD collection and when people say stuff like that I take that as a compliment. When I saw GODSMACK for the first time before they blew up I thought "This is like ALICE IN CHAINS" and I have to be honest I don't think that they are a very origional band but god to they rock hard. I bought their CD that night just on the merits of their show. There will always be room for good songs and whether GODSMACK sounds like ALICE IN CHAINS or POWERMAN 5000 sounds like WHITE ZOMBIE or COAL CHAMBER sounds like KORN it is always about songs.

DL- That is cool that you don't mind the association, most of those other bands do though which I find endlessly humorous!(laughs)

PK- Yeah, "KORN-CHAMBER" they call them, right?

DL- Hadn't heard that one but it is worth a giggle.(laughs)

PK- Yeah. I am looking at a sticker here from CREED and what have they sold? Ten million records?

DL- I think it is more like sixteen million. . .

PK- Yeah, well, I don't think that is an origional band at all, not even five-percent origional but they do have some songs. I don't like them but they have got songs. People will say that "Turn me on dead Man" sounds like POWERMAN 5000 and I am cool with that. That is just saying that we have a catchy song.

DL- What a perfect song, by the way. The hook in that song is just masterful and, fuck it I am jealous!(laughs)

PK- Thanks, and yeah, you just get it right from the first time you hear it.

DL- Was that your intent when you wrote it or did you discover after the fact that it was something special?

PK- I wrote the music to it and I have to be honest when I write about any song I want the listener to understand what is going on before the second chorus comes up. I am not really into thinking mans Metal. I listen to RADIO HEAD but I would never write a song that takes a few listens and "Dead Man" was just one of those songs that I gave a tape of it to Bryan and he wrote the lyrics and vocals to it in one day! It only took a few days to write the whole thing, it was real fast. It came together so quick and the rest of the band and the label heard it and it was a no brainer that it was the first single.

DL- Is there an impression that you would like people to take away from this album or one of your shows?

PK- We don't have a message per se but I will say that there are a few things that make us a little different from some of the other bands that are out now. I think that we are a little less gimmick-ie and though our show is a little theatrical, people have said that our show looks like and arena show in a club and I would embrace that. I would say that this band is trying to put on a show so that you can get your moneys worth rather than guys that kind of stare at their shoes all night and whine about their childhood or whatever. I mean, there are a lot of good bands out there like GODSMACK and DISTURBED that we want to play music that leaves an impression of just having kicked your ass. If we could just be ten percent as big and cool as METALLICA I would die a happy man!(laughs)