Interview with Aaron Porter
Photos: Cameron Klos
theprizefighters.net
The Prizefighters started out as a side project for you, how and when did it be come a full-time band?
I probably started playing with other people in late 2005, maybe early 2006. I was living with Tim, the old drummer, and we would jam in our basement a lot and we had a rehearsal space set up. A lot of the songs I had written with Tim, kind of taught him how to play, and then eventually during a Gylbots rehearsal with Matt and Jordan over there, taught them the songs too, because Gylbots had been playing more reggae and ska stuff and it turned out to be something that I felt that we could play live. We played the first show May of 2006, I think. It’s been going for about 5 years as an active live band.
How does playing in The Prizefighters compare to playing in Gylbots?
Well, I played drums in Gylbots, so it’s nice to be up front and be able to sing. I always liked to talk when I was playing drums and I liked to engage the audience. I write all the music for The Prizefighters, so it’s great to be able to write the music and then be front and center performing it. I feel like I could put a lot more of myself into the music that way. It’s fun, but I do miss playing drums. I think being up front playing guitar, I can direct things a little bit better.
The was the one local ska band, Flipsyde, from a while back, their drummer sang and played drums.
Oh yeah, Claudio. He was a singer and drummer. I couldn’t do that. I tried to sing Prizefighters songs and play drums, like if we have a rehearsal where the drummer couldn’t make it and I can kind of do it, but I get so into playing drums I kind of…singing takes a back seat, so I can’t do it all that well. It took me a while to learn how to sing and play guitar at the same time and I’m sure if you put enough work into it you could pull it off.
How long did the writing and recording process of Follow My Sound take?
Since this was a debut album, the writing process was pretty much, just taking whatever songs we had written over the past 5 years and deciding which ones we wanted to put down. We had everything written by the time we decided to record the album. I wrote some of those songs in 2004, so like “Storms” and “Karma” for example were some of the ones I had recorded as a solo project, just by doing multi-track recording. They stood the test of time so they stayed on the album. We did a lot of work the year beforehand tightening things up and rearranging things so they’d be a little bit more album friendly. Like taking out long sections and shortening up the songs so they had more of the pop sensibilities to them. Once we actually recorded, we tracked in February of 2010 and then didn’t get everything all mastered until November, so it was a 9 month process for recording, mixing and mastering. I listened to the mixes so many different times and I produced the album too. Working with Andrew Zoellner and Shock and Audio Studio, he engineered the whole thing and was really good to work with. I would take mixes home and listen to them constantly and make all these notes and really try to engineer the sound that I wanted to get for the finished product. A lot of time in the studio just listening.
How did King Django get involved in the mastering of Follow My Sound?
It’s kind of funny how we got in touch with him. I had known him for a while. I met him when he was on tour here back in 2005 or so. I sent an email to Matt, our bass player at the time, asking him if he had any ideas for how should we approach mastering, because we were thinking of some other people in town. I accidentally copied Mark, who is in Green Room Rockers, on that email. A day later I got a reply from Mark and he was like, “I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but if you’re looking for mastering, King Django is looking for projects, he’s available to do that right now.” It was definitely a mistake that turned out to work in our favor pretty well.
I knew that King Django did a lot of production and mixing, but since mastering is kind of another animal all together, I didn’t know that was in his arsenal of skills, but it definitely is his forté and we’re really glad that we went with him. It really did put a big difference on the finished album. Like before that, I knew mastering was something that you just do when you release an album, but I didn’t know exactly what it did. I had different people explain it to me and I didn’t really quite understand it and I probably couldn’t explain it very well to you. After I got the finished product back, I knew it was totally worth it and knew that it was something that I have to do on every other release that I put out.
So there was a huge change in sound between the unmastered and mastered versions?
Probably subtle to most people’s ears, but I think to mine, since I listened to the mixes so many times, I could really tell that a lot of the stuff I was trying to achieve in the studio just with softening certain things and bringing certain things out, he was really able to achieve that. The most important thing people would recognize is that mastered vinyls are a lot louder, so when you put the CD on it actually plays it at the level that CDs are supposed to play at instead of half the volume. Then you have to crank your stereo just to hear it OK. He did a lot of EQing and a lot of other stuff that I don’t really know what goes into it, but he made things a lot warmer and brighter.
You guys lost some members and gained some members recently, has the change been easy with training in the new members?
As far as training people in goes, it’s been great. The whole point of the band has been, when were getting people to play with us, it’s not really about who should we…should we audition people, it’s more of who do we like and who wants to play in the band. That’s the biggest criteria I guess, is you have to really believe in the band and want to play with us. It was too bad to see so many people go, and they left for various reasons at various times, but it’s been really awesome working with new people. Courtney and Ryan played together in Sajak for a number of years, so their chops are really strong and are used to playing together, which is really great for a horn section. So as far as training the horns, that was super easy. New bass player has been playing session stuff for years and played with some local bands, John Wayne and the Pain and New Revolutions, we played with those guys in the past. He is very seasoned with reggae. When Tim our old drummer had stopped playing drums because of some Tendonitis issues, we got Eric who also plays in the band with Jordan called Brilliant Beast and knew our music pretty well and liked it. He hadn’t played that style much before, the traditional ska and reggae, but he picked it up like he was a pro, just like he was waiting to play it. It’s been really fun working with a new set of people. I miss playing with the old guys, but the new guys are just as fun and I can tell they’re just as passionate about the music, so it’s really great. The only challenging thing has just been the timing because we’re working on putting out new releases and we were trying to get more shows put together and that’s a lot of work as it is especially if you’re trying to train in new members and trying to write new music and make sure everyone’s up to speed. It’s a whole lot of stuff to try to do at the same time. That’s where the big challenges have come in with that.
You’ve said before that The Prizefighters play a ska/rocksteady/reggae and you said it was more difficult to play than a standard ska. How is it different and where are the difficulties in learning the traditional ska sound?
Well for me it’s sort of been an exploration and discovery, so I think it’s a lot more fun to play traditional ska than the Two Tone or 3rd Wave or punk/ska styles. It takes a lot more finesse I think because it’s really jazz. It’s ska, but you have to think of yourself as a jazz musician when you play it instead of a rock musician. I think there is a lot more discipline to it and some people would hate that, they’d want to just rock out and I think that’s fine. I got to a point that I really wanted to play a style that I love. I listen to so much Jamaican music and appreciate it so much that I wanted try and be a part of it and create more of it just because I love it so much. I found that by playing this music and trying to learn this style, it’s helped me appreciate Jamaican music even more, because I’m listening for all the little nuances that the musicians, like The Skatalites, put into their compositions and into their playing. It’s really fun just always trying to strive for recreating the music.
You guys have a tight sound on stage and you can definitely tell how you guys play live that it’s a lot tighter sound and there isa lot more finesse there than a band that just goes crazy on stage.
Even though bands that have really wild stage shows that play punk/ska, a lot of those bands have a lot of finesse too, it’s just more they’re doing their own sound as more of a rock thing where you just really play hard and play fast. You can play super tight with that, but if you apply the jazz principles to it, like if you were gonna be in a jazz combo, you could go either the really traditional, like 40’s Be-Bop route and try to sound like a Dizzy Gillespie record, or you could go the more modern jazz fusion funk and kind of play whatever you wanted to and do some acid jazz kind of stuff and you could still be tight, but there’s the different principles of what you want to achieve. I think mastering music that has been mastered by others in the past and trying to recreate that, thats almost a bigger challenge because anyone can be creative, but I think it takes somewhat of a humble stance to say “I don’t want to inject too much of my own creativity or think I can create something brand new”. I think a lot of people get caught up in that trying to do something that’s completely original. Sometimes it fits you, sometimes it doesn’t. Just to go back and say “I’m wanna play a song that sounds just like this song”. Some people think thats really boring, but in some cases I think that’s actually an homage in doing, in having some sort of preservation quality.
That was a bit of a tangent right there, but I love playing the music. The thing though that is challenging is sometimes, being the musical director for the band and composer of the songs, trying to teach the music to others in the band and explain like why I’m doing things a certain way. I am very methodical with how I do things and everything that I play or tell someone to play or want to hear in a Prizefighters song is very deliberate. I don’t want to say, “Oh yeah, maybe that’ll would sound cool, let’s do that”. I need to have a reason for doing that. Kind of like an attorney stating precedent when he’s arguing a case, saying “Well it was done like this, like this position played this like this because it had this rhythmic effect”. Saying things like that, not just saying “Oh I think this would sound cool”. I want to have something to back it up so it’s not just an ego driven song, I want it to be deliberate so when someone else hears it they’re not like “Oh that’s something new”. They’re like “Oh, yeah that sounds great, I’ve never heard it recreated before”. And sometimes communicating that people can be kind of difficult. I don’t have any sort of formal music theory training at all, like I can’t read music, I can’t write music, but I understand the music in a very abstract sort of way. If I’m telling the drummer to play a certain part, I’m not saying “Oh play this triplet over this measure and a half’. I’m saying “doot doo doot doot do doot”, I’m playing mouth drums and trying to communicate like that. It’s fun. I think everyone enjoys that learning process.
Is everyone in the band pretty receptable to what you say when you’re trying to explain things to them?
Not always, but I would say most of the time. Then again, the great thing about playing with this band and the people in the band is they all love the music too and they all appreciate the point of trying to discover how to play this music that a lot of people have passed over. A lot of the times, someone else will do the same thing, They’ll say “Oh, I think I should play it like this, because it has this effect.” And that’s something I may not have thought about or may have just overlooked. I’m not the only person in the band that has that sort of creative freedom to just say what I want to happen. I really do like it when other people take note of something and contribute too. That’s what has really brought the band from a solo project to a band that plays together. It’s not just a backing band for me, it’s an entire band that people contribute to and they explain things a certain way. I think a lot of times we do come to a really good consensus on what to play, but there has to be a reason for playing that and I think that in any band that’s important. If there are creative differences in any band, it can’t just be someone saying “Play it this way, because that’s the way that I want it, that’s the way that I wrote it.” If someone has a better idea and it’s in the best interest of the band, if everyone believes in the music.
You’ve played in the scene for quite some time. How has the the MN Ska Scene changed and grown since you’ve been a part of it and what do you see for the future of Ska from MN?
I got into the local ska scene in 1997. I was in 7th grade at the time. It had a really big impact on me as far as my personal development of just my love of music and seeing that there was good alternative music, not just indie rock or whatever was getting big then. The ska scene always meant a lot to me. In the late 90’s, it kind of disappeared and I was pretty distraught over that as a lot of other people were. I sorta stopped paying attention. Like you mentioned Flipsyde earlier, about how they were a pretty big staple band and they did a lot locally and they carried the ska scene for a while and they stopped playing . In 2003, I was playing in Gylbots at that time and made more friends that were ska fans from a while back and we’d always talk about how there weren’t any ska shows or weren’t any ska bands coming through, so I had the idea start MNSka.com because a friend of mine knew how to make websites and I knew how to book shows. I had been booking shows, so I started booking ska shows and with the website got interest from touring bands. We had some awesome touring bands come through pretty much right away, which was awesome. It’s really great for building a scene up and getting more people out to shows, getting more people aware. More bands started popping up at that point and so it seemed like a pretty big turning point and that was about 8 years ago that happened. So it’s been a pretty cool rise. To look back over the 8 years and realize that everything has actually happened. I kind of take it for granted, like how significant it is since then.
From what I remember, bands like Flipsyde and The Contenders and after Flipsyde broke up, I remember there being not a lot of ska shows any more. After a while, I found out about MNSka.com and realized there were still bands in the scene doing stuff, even though it wasn’t on as big a scale as Flipsyde was.
The cool thing about Flipsyde and The Contenders was they did a really good job about having a ska community, and that’s really what it’s all about, that’s what makes MNSka work is the community aspect and kind of a centralized visibility of the ska scene. Instead of just having some ska bands that just play around town, it’s like actually having a scene. I guess I like the word “community” better than scene just because it’s all about people doing stuff and just making things happen because they want it to, and not because they’re making money off of it. MNSka’s never been something that has profited any one personally. I’ve never taken a dime from anything I’ve done. I think that’s been helpful because it lets other people, anyone that wants to help, everyone is on the same level. No one is paying their bills off of it, but everyone is benefiting from it in the long run.
I do remember back when Flipsyde and The Contenders were playing a lot. The Foxfire Coffee Lounge in Minneapolis was open, I don’t know if you went there, it closed in like…I want to say 2000. But it was my favorite venue. It was an all ages venue downtown. They didn’t serve booze so they went out of business, they just couldn’t support themselves. That place was a very ska friendly venue. Like I saw The Toasters play there, I saw the Gadjits play there a couple times.
I remember seeing Rx Bandits play there.
Oh yeah, I remember seeing them too. Back when they were a ska band. That venue went under and that was kind of the second fallout for the local ska scene, because the first one was obviously in 1998 when The Siren Six moved to LA and Kingpin Records folded. Then a couple years later, the Foxfire closed and bands didn’t have much of a place to play anymore. There were people at the Foxfire every weekend, like regardless of what show there was and that’s really how a big scene got built up. But then in like 2003, the TC Underground opened right next to Extreme Noise in Minneapolis and I started doing a lot shows there and a lot of kids that wouldn’t got to shows otherwise, because they were in middleschool or highschool, would see shows there and there were a lot of ska bands there and that got a lot of bands introduced to the crowd. Like one of the bands introduced a different band and a lot of bands started popping up because of it. We’re working with more venues and it’s pretty much been uphill from there. Some ups and downs of course, but that’s the biggest thing, is having people that know people, having a whole scene of people that work for something. That’s really helpful for The Prizefighters playing because we have this network of people that listen to ska and go to ska shows. MNSka has a brand in a sense where if it’s an MNSka show people will know who’s booking it and who’s involved with it and what bands are playing and who’s going to be there. It’s kind of a market quality I guess.
MN has had some pretty great Ska bands in the past, if you could bring back one band which one would it be?
I just mentioned The Siren Six and I definitely would want to see them again. I doubt that they would be reuniting. They were the first local ska band that I saw. I saw them at the Whole Music Club on the U of M Campus in 1997, when I was in 7th grade. It was the first small ska show, like intimate ska show that I was at other than like at a First Avenue show or Warped Tour and they blew me away. I thought it was so cool and saw so many people there that were in the ska scene. I still love their music and thought they were a great band. I would love to see them and the other Kingpin bands like Animal Chin and The Jinkees.
Outside of MN, what ska bands are you paying attention to?
We just played a show with The Forthrights, out of Brooklyn, and Maddie Ruthless, out of New Orleans. Those guys are working hard and touring a lot so I’m definitely digging what they’re doing. We played a show with The Bishops from Omaha. We been kind of doing a thing playing with them the last couple years. Their band was active in the mid 90’s and they reunited a few years ago and are out playing again. Big fan of those guys, they are all super cool and super nice guys. The Moon Invaders and The Caroloregians from Belgium, we played with them in Chicago last summer and they’re just amazing. Definitely following them and big fans of what they’re doing. Green Room Rockers are doing a lot of stuff out of Indiana, They are touring a lot and doing a lot of great things for the ska scene. Boys Union, four members of Westbound Train, are doing sort of a similar thing that we’re doing, the really traditional…not like ska, but really on the Jazz tip. Like a lot of improve, solo kind of stuff, like guest players, and a super solid band. Those are just a few of them.
The vinyl version of Follow My Sound will be coming out sometime this summer or do you guys have a date set?
We don’t have a release date for that yet. We are still in the mixing process. We have like one more song to track currently, but we’re hoping to get all of that done this weekend. Then King Django is going to be mastering those tracks for the LP, so we will be working with him again. We were just talking with him about doing a dub track for the record, which would be pretty cool.
How will the LP and the CD be different?
About half of the songs will be from the CD. Some of the songs from the CD won’t be featured on the LP. The other half of the LP is going to be like alternate versions of songs, alternate mixes, some instrumental versions, and some dubs too. Anthony from the Drastics did a dub for the LP and working with King Django to do a dub for it too. It’ll definitely be a special edition version and very different from the CD.
You’re also working on a 7” as well, do you know when that’ll be out?
The 7” might be something we do late in 2011, because we are working with Jason Lawless and the Reagae69 project. They did their first series, which should be coming out pretty soon here. Then we’d be on the second or third series. We haven’t really been working on that as much, because we are trying to get the LP out first. Hopefully by the end of the year, we’ll have the 7” out with Reggae69 and Moondust is the record label that it’s likely going to be released on. We’re pretty excited about that, but first things first, we got a whole lot of stuff on our plate, with recording and getting the LP out, getting new members ready and shows together.
Sound like you guys are pretty busy.
Yeah, we’ve got a full plate, but it means the future holds a lot, so that’s definitely exciting.
