Death Party Playground, a local band from Kitchener, played a gig on Friday, Oct. 10 at Jimmy Jazz in Guelph. The crowd loved them, and after an entertaining show consisting of their latest single, “Rose” and a few friendly Weezer and Bob Dylan covers, I had the opportunity to meet with some of the band members – Kyle Taylor (lead vocals), Colin White (guitar), and Kyle Skillman (drums) at the patio to chat about their music and upcoming plans.
Danielle Subject: You guys have Violet/Green out right now, including a new single called “Rose”. Are you planning to release more in the future?
Kyle Taylor: There’s another record that we’re recording now, actually.
D.S.: When’s it expected to come out?
K.T.: Well, we just got a studio that we are living in right now, so soon, I think. What do you think? Five, six, seven weeks?
Colin White: Four weeks, to be ahead of the game.
D.S.: How’d you guys get together as a band?
K.T.: There’s a music store in Kitchener called Sherwood Music, and we’ve all worked there. So that’s kind of how that happened.
D.S.: So your name is Death Party Playground- which is one of the coolest band names I’ve heard- and when I first heard about you guys, I thought it was gonna be punk or metal or something, so it’s totally deceiving.
K.T.: Yeah, people think that a lot.
D.S.: It’s hilarious. So where’d you come up with that name?
C.W.: It was before my time.
K.T.: Yeah, it was years ago. I was in a different band called Music Box, and we were thinking of changing our name, so I sat down and just wrote a hundred names that came to mind. That one was the one I liked, and we didn’t end up using it, so when I started my band, I just used that. I like how it sounds [laughs] it’s alright.
C.W.: Five syllables. [laughs] It all comes down to the syllables at some point.
D.S.: And you guys have this Bob Dylan irony working for you- not sure if you were going for that.
K.T.: I love Bob Dylan.
D.S.: A lot of your songs are upbeat, but your lyrics are pretty dark. Who does the writing?
K.T.: I do, and then these guys embellish them for me.
D.S.: So I just want to know what you were trying to communicate with that album, because you talk a lot about destruction, waste, and corruption.
K.T.: Honestly, I just wrote a lot of songs over a period of time, and then I picked the ones I liked and made a record. Honestly, I didn’t think about it that much. It’s like one of those retrospect things- looking back at it, it’s more or less a representation of who I was three years ago. That’s the best way I could put that. What do you guys think about it?
C.W.: I have a weird perspective because I wasn’t around when he wrote all the songs, I met him through Sherwood after the fact. As far as the writing process goes, we don’t have anything to do with it. I can definitely see the Bob Dylan influence, absolutely.
D.S.: Well a lot of the writing has a lot of anger to it, but Bob Dylan has that sarcastic tone to his songs, and I hear that in a lot of your songs.
K.T.: Yeah, I think that’s trying not to take it too seriously.
C.W.: Poking fun.
K.T.: You can say what you think about something, but you’re not writing an essay for a PhD, you’re writing a song for people to drink to. I think what you write down comes out and that’s what it is, but trying to just take it lightly. Bob Dylan does that really well.
D.S.: What kinds of things influence what you’re going to write about?
K.T.: Usually there’s a song, some chords, and I have a melody. Some sort of words come to mind and I kind of build off of that.
C.W.: They almost all start out on acoustic guitar, right?
K.T.: Yeah, pretty much. Some of them are on piano, but most of them are acoustic. Walt Whitman, I think, said that when he was writing poetry, he never knew how it was gonna end. And I think that’s more or less how I do it. Just kind of build on something, and by the last line it should try to encapsulate the whole song.
D.S.: Do you have a general theme for your new record?
C.W.: Me and him [Kyle Taylor] – to kick off what you just said a few minutes ago – we found this really old warehouse downtown Kitchener, and it’s basically like 2000 square feet, it’s a bunch of big rooms, and the idea over the next however long we can live there and record there, we’re just gonna make as many albums as possible. So I’m sure in some way, shape, or form, they will all be influenced by living in a shitty warehouse condition somehow.
K.T.: Well, “Roses” is gonna be on the new one. I haven’t really sat down to try to write a concept record, it’s just I have a lot of songs and I just kind of pick the ones that sort of go together. Since I have these guys playing with me now, this one’s a lot more rock sounding. So picking more of those songs, so we can do them live. A lot of the songs off of Violet/Green we don’t do live.
D.S.: Are you guys looking at a tour?
K.T.: January. We wanna finish the record and go out with it whatever way we can. The dream is California.
C.W.: Anywhere warm, basically.
D.S.: How do you guys hold things together as a band?
K.T.: We’re all just pretty good friends, it just works out and we have a good time together – and that vibe kind of takes off on stage.