The Pistola Press

Chris Kilmore of Incubus stopped by before their show at the Festival Pier in Philadelphia last August. He’s one of the most down to earth people I’ve ever spoken to. Incubus just finished up their Monuments And Melodies Greatest Hits tour but that doesn’t mean it’s the end. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more from them in 2010. It’s just a feeling..

Colin: So do you guys feel like old men now that you have a greatest hits out?

Chris: (Laughs) Yes, that’s a great way to explain it per se (laughs). Yeah man, you know, when they said were gonna do a greatest hits albums, I was like, “Oh no, this is the end. Are we old? Are we going to face reality here? (laughs) You know, I threw it around a little bit and thought real hard about it then the thought came to me or the memory came to me, I should say, about how many bands I got turned onto by their greatest hits album. And I sorta say, “Well, you know, that’s actually pretty cool. Hopefully this album turns on a bunch of new people.” I sorta wrapped my head around it and we put this thing out and now it’s out and I’m like, “This is an awesome album”. It’s a pretty sweet album.

Colin: Yeah, definitely, with the B-sides especially for the new people getting to your music. It shows your diversity, you know?

Chris: Yeah, it definitely shows our diversity and our growth and hopefully it shows you what direction we’re moving in and have been moving in. That’s just the revolution of the music, you know?

Colin: Right, definitely. What was rehearsal like for tour?

Chris: It was a lot different than most of the times we get ready for tour. We practice for like two weeks then breakout. Everything we need to learn, we learn like during soundcheck or something like that. This time, you know, it’s been so long since we’ve toured everybody had to start listening to the music a little earlier and get familiar in their own time before we got together. We got together, I would say, two months before we started the tour, maybe a month a half but that’s a long time for us. Jose had been taking drum lesions, I’ve been taking key lessons, Mike was at Harvard studying music theory and some science. Everybody was excited to see eachother and already knew everything. I think Jose was probably the most prepared. He came in knowing every single song in our arsenal. That’s like some 86 songs or something like that, he could play every single one of them (laughs).

Colin: That’s awesome (laughs).

Chris: Yeah, so we were prepared and we got two weeks through rehearsal and we’re like, “Wow, maybe we should have always started rehearsal this early.”(laughs) But you know, we had a good time just jamming out on new ideas and things like that. This tour has been awesome. You know I mean, my perspective is jaded, obviously, because I’m up on stage and I’m in the band and playing with these guys. But I think we’re playing better than we’ve ever played before.

Colin: Yeah, I saw you guys at Radio City(Music Hall) the other night and you guys were really tight. It was sick.

Chris: Oh, thanks man. Which night did you see?

Colin: I actually went to both nights(laughs).

Chris: Oh, sweet.

Colin: Yeah, yeah. The first night I was really close, I actually had a front row ticket through your presale. And then the next night, I was a little farther back but it was still awesome. I loved it especially in that environment.

Chris: Thanks man.

Colin: So comparing setlists from this tour and your previous tour in 2007, they’re a little bit longer. Did Mike’s hand play a role in the lengths of the sets at all?

Chris: You know, probably. Like I know for a while he had problems with his hand and he was always icing it after the show and things like that. 2007 for sure, he was definitely having a lot of problems with it. I think the break helped him out a lot and we sort of just put a setlist together that we thought would be good without thinking of how long we were playing. When we finally played the set a few times then we were like, I think we were getting ready to play LA, Los Angeles, and we were like, “Lets pull up an old set list to see what we played last time we played.” And we looked at it and it was so short compared to what we were playing. We were like, “Whoa!”(laughs) We didn’t even know that. So it’s cool. We play, I guess, an hour and 50 minutes, just under two hours with the encore and everything. Everybody in the band thinks about an hour and half is a good time. After that, people start losing attention and things like that. For me, I see it both ways. I can be at a concert where a band plays three hours if I’m having a good time. Time will just fly by but if it’s something that I’ve seen a bunch of times or if I’m not really feeling part of it, then three hours can be grueling (laughs). So we try to keep about an hour and half. We jam and we play a lot of music and we have fun so that tacks a good 20 minutes onto it.

Colin: Up on stage you have a bunch of instruments. Which one is your favorite to play at the moment?

Chris: Oh man. I don’t know if I can tell you that. That’s like pick which is your favorite kid.

(Both laugh)

Chris: The Rhodes is probably my go to instrument, the Fender Rhodes. Nothing beats the turntables and scratchin’, that’s my love. Nothing beats that but the Moog and all the pedals I have, I just like making weird sounds. So I got all the instruments hooked up to all kinds of crazy pedals. Just off the top of my head, I would say the Fender Rhodes. It can sound real crazy, I can get it to sound like a distortion guitar, I can make it sound like a weird spaceship or I can make it sound like an old vintage keyboard. Real pretty and a little platonic pitch just ringing out. It’s just a beautiful instrument.

Colin: Definitely, very cool. I noticed that you guys are playing a new version of “Dig.” How did that come about?

Chris: Well, “Dig” is probably one of the hardest songs we’ve ever wrote in the studio. We wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote it. All of our songs sorta kind of just flow and they just come out. It’s real obvious how they should go, “Dig” was the exact opposite of that. We kept struggling with it and struggling with it and it just took us a while. We banged it out in the studio and it was in a range that was really hard for Brandon to sing. It’s two different things singing in the studio and singing on the road, two totally different things. It’s like playing an athletic sport. Like running a marathon in Denver opposed to Los Angeles, you know what I mean? When you get up in altitude things become a lot harder (laughs). You know so when we actually got that one down and put it on the record and started playing it live, it became a different thing. It sort of fell out of our setlist because it was a real difficult song to make it sound good live. We didn’t want to abandon it so this time around we thought about.. we dropped it, I don’t know if it’s dropped a whole step, it might even be a step and a half, I’m not quite sure. But we dropped it down, just parts of it and parts we put back in the original key and we just messed it up. I think it sounds cooler then it does on the record.

Colin: I thought it was great.

Chris: Yeah, everybody’s real stoked on playing it and it just breaths new life into that song, you know? That’s what you need after you play these songs for thousands and thousands of times. You gotta make them fresh and creative.

Colin: Yeah, definitely. Another thing I noticed at Radio City is that your dreads are getting pretty long. How long have them been in the making?

Chris: (laughs) Oh man. I haven’t had a hair cut since ’95.

Colin: Holy shit.

Chris: Yeah, I think I started locking my hair in ’96 so I mean it’s been a long time. Most people’s hair just stops growing at a certain length. My shit keeps going….

(Both laugh)

Chris: Who knows if it’s going to stop.

Colin: Hey, that’s cool.

Chris: I think I don’t cut it just to see how long it’s gonna go. It’s so long it’s gets in the way for a lot of things. I can’t even tie my shoes. I bend down to tie my shoes without tying my hair.

Colin: Maybe you’ll get a Guinness Book Of World Records some day…

Chris: Oh, I don’t know man. Some of those guys got dreads that drag on the ground.

Colin: (laughs) Definitely. How’s Jose (Pasillas) managing being a father and a rockstar at the same time?

Chris: You know, I think he’s doing a good job at it. He really misses his kid, it’s obvious. I got a dog for the first time and I left it home and I miss her. I can’t even imagine if I had a kid. So he misses her a lot but at the same time, he’s doing what he loves to do. So it’s a weird, weird dichotomy there. You want to be home with your kid but you want to be playing music and doing what you love but he’s handling it well. He said the other day, he couldn’t look at pictures sometimes. He can’t look at pictures because he gets all teared up (laughs). He’s like, “I can only look at pictures at certain times.”

Colin: (laughs) Very cool. This may sound kind of strange but whenever I interview an artist, I always ask a random question. So um..

Chris: Ok.

Colin: Imagine yourself in a real life Jurassic Park. Would you rather get eaten by a T Rex or a velociraptor? You have no chance of getting away.

Chris: Oh, velociraptor for sure. No doubt.

Colin: No doubt?

Chris: Yeah cause they’re smarter and run in packs, you know. I think I could outsmart a T Rex (laughs).

Colin: Oh yeah?

Chris: But velociraptor is a little smarter animal, smaller, alittle faster. From what I know it’s a little more aggressive (laughs).

Colin: (laughs) Nice. While you guys were on hiatus, did you have a chance to check out any live shows or anything like that?

Chris: Yeah, you know I’m always checking out live shows and it’s always something random. I’m never really looking for shows to go see. It’s worth of mouth kind of thing comes by. So I always check shows out but it’s just random. I guess one of the groups I like to see live is The Roots. They’re one of my favorite hip-hop bands…

Colin: Didn’t you guys just play with them on (Jimmy) Fallon?

Chris: Yeah, we played with them. It was pretty sweet. Ben (Kenney), he used to be in the band. So when Ben got in the band, I sorta stopped bumpin’ all my Roots albums in the back lounge cause I didn’t want to weird him out.

(Both laugh)

Chris: But then he started bumpin’ them so I was like, “Alright, cool. We’re cool.” (laughs) Yeah, so I try to check them out, anytime they play. They got a full schedule these days. I live in the mountains in Los Angeles and I’m a hermit. I stay locked up in the mountains a lot. Sometimes I go through long stretches without seeing or hearing new music.

Colin: (laughs) Cool. Do you and the rest of the band have preshow rituals that you go through?

Chris: Not really. I just try to stay as relaxed as possible and not have a ritual. Cause then if I break the ritual for some reason then it might weird me out a little bit (laughs)

Colin: (laughs) Right…

Chris: So I’ve always been like that . Brandon (Boyd) warms up, he’s got to warm up a little before the show. Right before we go on we do this thing called the ‘claw’ where it’s just basically we all just put our hands in the middle and you know, say, ‘Have a good show’ and that’s about it. (laughs) Nothing special.

Colin: So what’s Incubus’ plan for when you’re done touring? I know Mike’s heading to Harvard.

Chris: Yeah, he’s gonna go back to school this fall. My plans I’ll probably get a little more serious into playing keys. I took a lot of lessons in the last year and it’s not really now until I sort of stepped away from them and started doing what I do with the band that I realized how much they actually helped me. And how proficient I’m getting at those things. I’m just planning to surround myself with these keyboard cats and a bunch of DJs. Try to mesh those two worlds together. I think being a DJ turning into a keyboard player or being a DJ turning into any other kind of musician, I think you have a little bit different perspective on the music. As opposed to being like trained or self taught in something. Where people can actually teach you, you can go take guitar lessons , you can go take piano lessons, you can study the history of guitar and things like that. Where the turntables, none of that stuff has really happened up until the last couple of years. I think I have a little different perspective than a lot of these keyboard cats I’ve played with. It’s always fun just bouncing ideas off of them and trying to see how they think about things. I’ll probably do that, take a bunch of lessons, maybe take some classes. Just stay on top of what I do , so it doesn’t leave me.

Colin: Definitely, that’s sweet. Do you guys have any new material in the works?

Chris: Yeah, we’ve been writing like crazy on the road. Mike’s been writing a lot of stuff and burning CDs and giving them to us. So you know, they’re all just ideas right now and until we actually get together and put them together, that’s all they are…just ideas. But there’s a lot of them. A lot of them floating around right now.

Colin: One last thing, have you in fact perfected the art of rolling?

Chris: ….Yes, yes. I can roll anything. (laughs)