Interviews

Interview: Poison The Well

The first thing you’ll notice about Poison The Well is the number of ex-PTW players they’ve racked up. Since they only formed in 1997 it seems a little excessive for there to have been twenty-one different band members. Mind you, that’s one hell of a reunion party! Sonic Dice sent their in-house hardcore expert, Ioannis ‘Bobatron’ Pelegrinis to their recent Cambridge gig to have a chat with guitarist, Ryan Primack, and find out just what’s going on…

I remember seeing you guys rip it up last year at the Junction in Cambridge with Gallows and Lethal Bizzle. What were your impressions of Cambridge? What was that show like?

That show was super fun, I remember some kid broke his arm at that show. I had a really good time, that’s it.

I’ve noticed that as a band you have gone through quite a few line-up changes. Has it changed since last year? Does that affect your songwriting?

[Laughs] Yeah! Same line-up as on the last tour. It doesn’t really affect [the songwriting] though.

What sort of music do you listen to?

Absolutely everything. Jazz… I’ve got a really big country music obsession lately.

I’ve noticed that there’s been a revival of country in alternative music and certainly in your latest record Versions and the video for ‘Letter Thing’. How do you explain that turn to country, was a it a conscious decision?

Yeah, I think we all grew up hearing some form of Americana music and just tend to ingest it and try to use it to our benefit.

I realise you probably get asked this a lot, but how would you define your music to someone in the street?

I really don’t take the time to figure that out, I’d probably just say something like polka to try to be ironic, but it’s not very funny, so I usually just say ‘I have no clue’.

I’m quite fascinated by the use of tags like ‘emo’, ‘punk’ etc and the categorisation of music as such. What do you make of them and do you think there is any use for them?

I try not to pay attention to that kind of stuff, it seems absolutely irrelevant to me. A band’s a band, you know? I think the tags maybe like “Oh this is a band that’s pretty heavy” or “that is a band that is pretty mellow”, like those tags are somewhat useful, but are also extremely nebulous and it leaves a lot for a person to decide once they hear it themselves, instead of someone giving this very detailed tag for them to go “I’m really not into stuff like this, so I’m not going to listen to it” and they might miss out on a very good band.

How do you feel about politicised music? Do you feel art should be a goal itself (“art for the sake of art”), or the means for politics and ideology?

I think it just depends on the artist. I think politics are a part of music whether they are spoken about lyrically or not; they always have some sort of relevance in what’s going on, either the way you run your band, either the way you put yourself across to people lyrically, or whether it’s just something that’s sort of unspoken. It’s never been a big part of our band, because it’s five people with very different politics and ideas on a lot of things, so it’s just something that we never really touch base on very literally but I think that there are examples of some sort of politics but they are very nebulous and left for the listener to decide.

What about your own politics? What message are you trying to get across with your music?

If there was any political focus it would just be the daily, complete and total struggle to not get bogged down and let life beat you up…

[At this point of the interview, unfortunately, other members of the band and road crew came into the room and it got a bit noisy. Ryan was explaining how the focus of their music is to get people to think about all the things that make them feel depressed and angry. A few minutes and a couple of glances later, the party moved next door.]

How do you feel about drinking and drugs on the road? Do you think the drinking and partying is part of the touring lifestyle?

We’re not druggies! We have beers occasionally, some of us don’t, some of us do, some of us drink, some of us don’t. It didn’t happen that way because we were on tour, it just happened because that’s the people we are. It should be a personal choice, I don’t think it really matters to anybody else. If that’s the way you want to live your life, then you should live your life that way, unashamedly of course. A lot of room should be left for different strokes for different folks. [Tolerance is important] no personal choices like that demean your character in any way.

Thanks for answering my questions!

No problem.

Band Link = Poison The Well

Big thanks to Andy @ Ferret for helping set this interview up.

(Photo by By G. Fouste)

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