Calabrese

I had the honor of sitting down with Bobby from Calabrese at one of their Chicago shows for an interview. Calabrese is an amazing horror rock band from Arizona. You can check Calabrese out for yourself at www.CalabreseRock.com and www.Myspace.com/Calabrese and see that they are the world's greatest horror rock band.

1. Can you give us a brief history of Calabrese and how you guys got started?

I'm not sure what year it was, maybe 2001 or 2002 we were all in separate bands at the time and one random day Jimmy said to us "Hey you want to start a band and write music we want to hear and just do the kind of image that we like?" We all grew up on the same kind of music it was just kind of like a natural thing. With that we said alright. We already had the instruments. We just started writing some tunes and that was that, we just did it.

2. You guys are based in Arizona but you're originally from Illinois. What made you guys go to Arizona and how different is the scene out there compared to out here?

Nothing too dramatic but when we were younger our parents moved out there so we went with them. Me and Davey, the drummer, we were pretty young at the time and Jim was a little older than us so I don't remember too much of the scene back then, I know Jim was into whatever was going on at the time. We went out to Phoenix and found out it was very hot and deserty and that's where we were so we just decided to do it there.

3. What are some of your guys' influences, musical and non musical?

Musical first, a lot of bands like the evil sounding bands. The trifecta Misfits, Samhain, Danzig, that kind of stuff. I like a lot of surf stuff like Man Or Astro Man, Type O Negative, Black Sabbath, early rock and roll like The Stooges. Non musical I guess just comic books and reading, like weird novels. Jimmy and I are really into like grade Z, gross novels about weird gross stuff and it's just a weird mindfuck when you're reading it and it gives you all these weird ideas. So that's how we do it.


4. That's actually one of my other questions. Since we deal with comics and film as well as music what are some of your favorite comics or characters.?

Well I can't speak for the other guys but growing up I never really got into the superheroes and stuff, I was always more into the indy stuff. Over time I finally realized it was more fun and realized it could have it's cool side. I like the horror comics like Tales From The Crypt, that kind of stuff. The staples like Iron Man and Spider Man are always fun. It's just tough to catch up cuz God damnit comics are expensive. We get them here and there or if we got a friend with a bunch of comics we'll steal them and read them.

5. What's your creative process like when you guys write songs?

It's pretty easy in a way because all we do is we get a riff that we're working on, bring it to the table and let the other dudes listen to it, try to jam it out and see if it sounds good and if it does then it goes on to round two and try to get a chorus going. Usually it starts with the chorus, like a melody and then we build it off there, more like a cool little riff, nothing like "Hey guys I got a whole new song, here we go let's do it" it takes months for songs to come. We try to make each song really great so we try to play them out here and there and if nobody claps at the end of the song we're like "Uh I think we'll have to skip that one or change it" or sometimes we ask our friends "What sucks about that song?" So then we try to change it or tweak it until it's the greatest it can get and then come out with a whole list of songs for a new album.

6. Your artwork is just fuckin' amazing. Does the same artist do all your artwork and do you have a say in what goes on or do you just give someone an idea and let them run with it.

Growing up we always liked the bands that had really crazy artwork for their albums and posters and tshirts. We were really inspired by the band Electric Frankenstein, they have all this weird stuff, they even put out books specifically of all the artwork they've had and we've always loved that kind of weird style. The same with White Zombie before it became Rob Zombie, just like all the weird artwork. So if we find out about an artist and just hit them up on the internet or something and ask them if they want to do something. Right now we've got a bunch of artists and we just give them an idea like we want a skull with a snake coming out of it's eyeball or something and they'll come up with something probably ten times better and they'll be like here you go. We like to get as many different artists as possible, it's cool to have a giant library of artwork instead of just like one image.

7. You guys recently did a video for Voices Of The Dead with Brian Pulido, how did you come about working with him and what was that like?

It started when we played a comic book shop in Phoenix called Atomic Comics and he was there doing a giveaway or something and he saw us play and thought we were really good and he wanted to do something with us and gave us his card. From there we kept in contact and one day he said he wanted to do a video for us so we signed on to it and it was cool. We had a video done before so we were like it's going to be good. When we showed up it was a legitimate thing, we had extras and all this crazyness. We were like "should we come into the editing thing and edit it with you?" He said "Nope, I got it all under control." So when he premiered it and showed it to us we were like "Oh my God this looks phenomenal, I can't believe it, we were so good!" He really helped us with that, I think it's on Youtube now with up to like a million plays so that's cool. He really made us a great video and I think we're going to do another one with him soon. He's a really good guy and he's into all the same junk we're into.

8. You guys have toured with some amazing bands, who were some of your favorites and who would you like to tour with in the future?

We like playing with our friends' bands out in Arizona, they're called Hour Of The Wolf and Zombeast, they're really good friends of ours and they just happen to have really good music so we like playing with them and keeping that cool Arizona thing going on. We didn't really tour with Tiger Army but we opened up for them in Phoenix and that was really great. I'd like to tour with the Ramones but they're dead. Still living I would say AFI, AFI would be cool, I think we have the same kind of sound but we're a little bit different so we wouldn't be stealing their sound.

9. If you could sum up the band into one song what song would it be?

Oh jeez, I would say Voices Of The Dead. I don't know why but it sounds good.

Me: A lot of people either love or hate that question. It's got more love than hate so I leave it in there.

The only reason I think that is we made the video out of it and it's a slight promo for it. No, I have no idea, I think it's one of our best songs that we wrote and when people hear it they're always like "Oh man that song's great" and we're like "really?" We were kind of afraid about it at first.

10. Any upcoming projects or events you'd like to tell people about?

Nothing too crazy but hopefully by early next year we'll have a new album with like 12 or 13 songs. It should be cool, hopefully it's a lot better than the last one because you always have to get better and if it sucks then...we're sorry.

11. Anything else you'd like to tell the people out there reading this?

If you're an artist hit us up, we're always looking for new artists to get our image out there with their own kind of style. If you're a movie producer or making independant films it'd be cool to do something with you or make a soundtrack for you or a song. If you got a podcast we'll do something with you.

Me: What about the fans reading this?

We thank you, without you guys we'd be pretty much nothing, so it's all about you. Thank you for coming to shows, thank you for supporting us, we appreciate it.

--Interview by Shaun May