Transcript of an interview I recorded with Steev Esquivel of SKINLAB - 12/06/19. Full article here. MAL-
On the line talking to Steev Esquivel from SKINLAB, Steve, thanks for taking my call. STEEV- Yes, Sir, how you doing Mal? MAL- I'm doing very well. Now you guys formed in the 90s, '94 What's your memories of those days? STEEV- Oh God, the memories. Well, obviously, everything was coming out of a straight out of the grunge day. So you know, we're in need of some heaviness. Thank God for MACHINE HEAD, you know, they're from the Bay area here. And they kind of lit the fire on a lot of a lot of, you know, musicians and bands here you know, earlier on it was a little more a little bit more scarce as far as bands. Wasn't that many, not as many as are today, by all means. And you really had to dig deep to find your metal, man. MAL- Was it a bit of a struggle coming out of, as you mentioned the grandstands in getting a deal and getting started? STEEV- No, we actually we hit the ground running pretty hard. Like I said, our buddies in MACHINE HEAD just come off their first record and they're really huge. And Rob, actually, a big friend of ours still is to this day. And he's he passed our music on to to a few record companies. And you know, it only took two times we got signed. And we pretty much we had the MACHINE HEAD tour before we actually had a record deal. Because Rob was shopping us around so it made the decision for you know what showed up to be Century Media. Yeah, made a decision for them to offer us a pretty nice deal, pretty easy, because no one had that MACHINE HEAD tour, we did. So it made sense. It was pretty cool. Great time. MAL- Now, the time leading up to the first album, tell us about the first album, how did, you mentioned basically hit the ground running? Did that continue into the recording of the album? STEEV- Absolutely. I mean, we we've gotten around late, late 90s, late 94/95. And, ya know, we knew what we wanted. We actually had stickers for the band before we even had one song. But we had a, you know, felt that was the band thing was getting our name out there, we already knew it was going to happen. We had no idea what we were going to sound like. But you know, before we had one song we had stickers plastered all over the Bay Area, and yeah, music came soon after that. And it didn't take long before we were signed. I think we're, you know, I think we're playing around the circuit, you know, maybe a year or something like that before we were signed. MAL- Have you always been based in the Bay Area? STEEV- Yeah, yeah, we're, well, me personally, I'm a Bay Area boy, for sure. Now, nowadays, we have, you know, you know, the original lineup, of course, is not intact hasn't been for a while. And everybody at SKINLAB is, Snake's from Texas. Marcus is from Puerto Rico. And our new drummer Fabian is actually from Italy. Although he's been in the Bay Area for 20 years, we're international MAL- Split up in 2003. Why was that? STEEV- You know, I don't think we split up, we didn't split up, we we took a break 2003 but by the time we're hitting 2003, we were hitting it pretty hard. We were We were tour dogs were pretty much touring harder than any band out there, we had unlimited tour support Century Media, you know, we were on Century Media fucking an amazing label, with you know, tons of funding to get us out there keep the ball rolling, but truth of the matter, you know, we're killing ourselves out there. And we weren't getting much in return for it, you know, as you know, when you're a younger band, you're on a label we'll keep you out there working. And, you know, we're beating ourselves up. And, you know, I mean, literally killing ourselves, you know, ended up at the hospital a few times, you know, different members, and we just had to put the brakes on, you know, life was passing us up, we had children growing up, I did, who were, you know, didn't need to be on tour, you know, any more, I raised two boys, and, you know, they were both pretty much pretty close to taking their first steps on a tour bus and, you know, out in the world, you know, and that's not the best thing for a kid. So we put the brakes on, took a little bit of a break, you know, but all the time staying together. And, you know, just writing music and everything. And yeah, we've always been a band, we've never broken up. MAL- Does it make it hard coming back from the break? You know, going on a break, coming back, going on a break, coming back. Does it make it hard slotting back in, or have you slotted back in pretty well? STEEV- It does. We're pretty good sliders. You know, but to make the Adjust, you know, from going on hiatus to coming back was just all about having, you know, backing within somebody a label behind us. And we have that now, and Art Is War Records with the owner of the label's really behind us. And they're really supportive getting us out on tour. And they're actually the ones that made it happen for us to come to Australia. So, you know, we have, we don't have a really big machine, but we have somebody who cares about the band, and is willing to put down, you know, some foundation money for us to get out there and do this. So, really, you know, we needed a company behind the band in order to reach out to the people that we needed to reach out to and, you know, it all greases the wheels, you know, the machine and helps us do it. So, yeah, you know, a little bit of a transition and get going. You know, we've been writing this record for a while now. And pretty happy to say we're about, like, literally one weekend, away from being done. And we're really proud of it. We're freaking excited man. And that we might be a little bit older. But you know, we just, we just played our first show with our new drummer last week and proved to be a pretty bruising set. So I think we're, we're on fire right now. Man, we're ready to come get 'em. MAL- A new album, when would this be coming out? Do you think? STEEV- Well, we're hoping somewhere around October. You know, if it messes October, we might just have to wait until the first of the year, but we're really pushing and get it out. We'll be having a new single by the time we come out there. Hopefully the video or actually I think we're going to be doing a video while in Australia. So we're really excited. A lot of things happening. Everything's starting to happen right now. MAL- July 31st, you're starting here in Adelaide, then going Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, consecutive days crisscrossing the country. Good luck with that. STEEV- We've done it before. We're no stranger to Australia. We're really looking forward to it. One of my favorite places to play. MAL- And why wouldn't it be? STEEV- I know, right? MAL- Now? What are we looking forward to on the tour? You'd be playing tracks on the new album I would imagine. STEEV- Yeah, yeah. Well, we played at least one or two songs. Who knows? Maybe more. We'll see what we prepared to do anything when we come out there for sure. MAL- What's the funniest thing that's happened on tour, in any band you've been in? STEEV- Oh my god. You know, in the 20 plus years SKINLAB's been around we've had some of the funniest moments you know, we've had trailers fly off while driving down the road. By the time we come to find out you know, by the time we get to the club, which isn't that funny, but we've had you know, members of our band anywhere between getting left in the I mean, personally, I think Italy tour bus I basically got off tour bus to go take a piss grab something to eat and my road manager assured me that he'd wait for me and no no sooner that I sat on the damn toilet to take a crap fucking bus starts up and leaves without me. And yeah, Needless to say I was in my socks. And came out that I was so pissed off I broke the window of the gas station by slamming the door on accident and although I looked like a crazy frickin wild animal I was really just feeling, it was an accident and the store clerk got so freaked out he was scared it was trying to get me to leave. I'm just I don't know if you seen the panic of our face or whatever but an ambulance pulled up just at that time. And he of course them into taking me out of there and chase the tour bus so I got an escort inside the back of the ambulance with the sirens on driving down probably about 150-60 miles an hour. But they chased the tour bus down and actually caught them and To their surprise, a tour bus with a frickin caged bear in the back screaming at them. Our bus driver's pretty shocked to see me in the back of an ambulance when he thought I was at the back of the bus. MAL- It's funny now though right? STEEV- Yeah, yeah, it was actually cool. We made some good press. We got the I think Metal Hammer, like drew up a cartoon of it. So yeah, you can Google it. It's pretty funny. Man, You know, we're just ready to beat up Australia. I'm telling you. We haven't sort in probably about three or four months since our last tour. So we're, we're anxious to get out there. And we're really excited to play some of this new music and basically just get out there and touch some hands again, meet some friends and drink a couple beers and have some fun. MAL- There's plenty of beer in Australia. STEEV- That's what I remember. I won't be drinking Cooper's that's for sure MAL- I don't drink beer but you didn't like Coopers? STEEV- Oh, man. Yeah, well, trying to play and drinking Cooper's was a little hard. I think we're gonna have a better set this time to. That's what they make it look forward to see there's a more polished more serious SKINLAB. We're taking life a little more serious nowadays. You know, we were younger back in 2000 and 2002. When last couple times I came over there. The party was on pretty strong and now we're much more focused. Although we're gonna drink some beers. We'll wait till after the show. You know, we're coming out with our brothers of PISSING RAZORS there and you know, headlining over PISSING RAZORS was no fucking easy task. You gotta be firing on all cylinders. Those dirty dirty beaters are tough to follow. MAL- Right, Steev, great talking to you. late July, early August SKINLAB and PISSING RAZORS here in Adelaide and nationally. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me and we'll see you then. STEEV- Awesome, man. Thank you so much. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |