INTERVIEWS

The Know How | 4.6.05 Interview with drummer Bryan Wilson by Dave K

The Know How have been busting their collective ass lately, releasing a great new album on Stomp Records and touring like crazy. SID caught up with one of the most promising newer bands on the Ska-Punk circuit to see what's up....

Q: Can you give me a brief history of the band?

No problem...this story could have been fit into 17 volumes of an encyclopedia but I've edited to the quick and dirty version...so basically Skyler and Alex saw me playing drums in an Op-Ivy cover band I'd put together back in April 1997 at the dorms. They'd already been trying to get a new band going for a little while and then Skyler asked me for about 8 months to join the party before we started practicing at our friend Aubrey's house (like the title of one of our songs) in February of 1998 as an official BAND. They already had a name....it was "Those Stoopid Kids" but after we added a horn section, found a drunk bass player and before we knew it had 9 people in the band, we voted for a name change! We played our first show October of 1998 and went on our first tour August of 2000. We released our first album, "This Won't Hurt a Bit" in September 2000. A few smaller tours of the north east happened in 2001 but right after our 2nd album (HappyFunRobotKillTime) was released some band members went to Law school, some got married some got jobs and some went crazy. We basically have about 30 alumni from The Know How........

Q: Tell me about the new album.

I'm SOOOOO happy we have a new album and that takes a lot for me to say because I'm very critical of ourselves. The album just came out on March 1st on Stomp Records and is called "Now in Technicolor." I think the album really makes a statement on who we are and what we want to sound like. We have a ton of influences too, so we tried to include those in the new songs as well. This was the first time we had a producer helping us with some of the songs. It's really hard to let someone from the outside come in and screw around with your songs but Mike Rotolante did a good job with the ones we brought to him. It was a pleasure to work with Mike, who helped with production of one of Less Than Jake's major label releases a while back, and his studio is awesome! The album took forever to write too because of our various line up changes but we finally found the right people to be in the band who weren't wimps and matched both with personality and talent to the sound we were looking for. My favorite songs are "Fell For You", "Better Way" and "Surface of Things"........tell us what you think!

Q: You guys are from Gainesville, which used to be known as the hometown of ska bands like Less Than Jake and the Usuals but over the years the city music scene has been overshadowed by No Idea records and a lot of the “beard-punk” bands. What’s the scene like and how do you guys fit in to it?

First of all, we love Gainesville. Cheap living, good eats, great fucking bands that are always playing at bars practically steps away from home. What else would a person want?! The scene is unfortunately dominated by bars who operate on an alcohol budget...meaning no all ages shows anymore. There's also some stupid law in town that prohibits all ages shows in bars. But yeah, lots of beard-punk bands but overall you can find any kind of band playing on a given night. However, we don't fit into the equation that is the beard-math-alter-native-scream-blood-depression thing that has gone on here. Why? Well, the short answer does have something to do with tattoos and beards, of which many in The Know How do not have. The long answer is, I don't know why..and the best part is we don't give a shit. We do more than 99% of bands in town but still get "local band" tag on us. But you know what? We do it for our fans, and ourselves not for "street cred" so fuck'em all I say.......we steer clear of the musical soap opera that is Gainesville, Florida most of the time.

Q: What’s the ska scene like right now in Florida?

Florida Rocks! Which is weird, because the southeast in general is pretty spread out and you have to drive 3-5 hours to get from one city to the other. But in places like Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami and St. Petersburg, shows are always packed and fans skank their asses off. Even the Gainesville ska scene is always growing. The best part about Florida is that a band could do about 8 shows in different cities and they'd all be great, then go to the beach and get a sun tan. Anyway, we're doing our best down here and with our CD release shows coming up and all the bands coming through this summer, Florida will definitely give the Northeast and West Coast scenes some competition!

Q: You guys did 3 shows on the Ska Is Dead 2 tour. What were your impressions of the tour and the shows? Any good SID tour stories?

We actually played 4 shows: Jacksonville, Orlando, St. Petersburg and Tallahassee. The tour was great and it was awesome to finally have all these bands we've toured with in various parts of the USA all together in Florida. It was sort of a make-up tour for The Know How and MU330 because our last tour with them was cancelled due to hurricanes! The best part of the tour was the fact that so many people came out to support these bands, a true sign that ska is far from dead. The hardest part for us was waking up at 7am, going to our jobs and then driving to the shows only to get home each night at like 3 or 4am.

Q: Oh man, that's painful! Are you guys looking toward a time when you can quit your jobs and do the band full time or are you happy to try to balance the two?

Personally, I'd love to do as much as I can with my life so I'll never really be happy just doing one thing. Playing music, and going on tours is just part of the bigger picture, so really I think we'd love our jobs to be whatever it is that makes us happy. Right now, yeah, doing the band full time would be insanely awesome for all of us. It would definitely make life easier though to not have to run around and figure out our work schedules and band schedules and try to make the two work together in perfect harmony. I'd much rather concentrate on writing music and performing and playing X-Box.

Q: You guys just got back from Canada right? How did that go? You've had some pretty crazy experiences up there in the past haven't you?

Canada was sooooooooooo cold but the locals said we lucked out with a "warm" spell.....I think they meant a "less-cold" spell because I wore a jacket, hoodie, and gloves the whole time we were up north. The shows were awesome and playing with Big D and the Kids Table on all the shows was really cool. We're really proud of the Big D boys for their recent success because we have a long history with them and share a similar work ethic.....bust ass and play hard. The only bad part was that we didn't have our new album except for the last three shows so we'll have to get back up there soon. Canada has always held a new adventure for us everytime we go, you're right. The last time, we toured with no horns and played at a highschool. Also, some french-speaking, Nazi skinheads almost killed me when I was walking alone in the parking lot outside one of the venues. The best adventure was sitting at the border with the Warped Tour Caravan in 2003 waiting to cross the border for 6 hours......what a mess.

Q: What does the future hold in store for the Know How?

Well we're already writing new songs for another album and practicing the new songs and a bunch of old songs for our upcoming Florida CD release shows. This summer we've got a tour planned with The Planet Smashers along the northern US, northeast and back down to Florida too. We're going to go out on our own too in June for a few weeks and head back to Canada. It's going to be a great summer and the whole year in general is set up to be a good one for us. We're going to be around for a while, hell we're already 7 years old as a band so continue to look forward to more music, kick ass shows and more of us telling people how much we love our fans. Damn, it's so much fun being in this band.