Chris Smith has been in some really great hardcore bands. Neil Perry, The Now and Get Fucked are all well worth the money. His new band, Welcome the Plague Year, is amazing as well and they have an album coming out soon on Chris' new label, Turnstile. This interview covers topics mentioned above as well as some other stuff.

PL: State your name and what you do for the band.

CS: I'm Chris and I play guitar. (decent lengthed pause) Yeah, thats it.

PL: I was looking around for a Welcome the Plague Year website and I couldn't find one. Do you guys have one?

CS: No, we're setting one up right now. There's a lot of information at the label's website (Turnstile Label). Thats getting worked out as we speak. One of my friends is doing it. We'll keep that pretty updated. I think someone else who I don't know is working on one as well. I don't know. But I know that you can find out anything about us far enough in advance on the Turnstile website.

PL: How important has the internet been for bands today?

CS: Its hard for me to say because it seems that its been pretty important, but I don't really play too much of a role. I'm never on message boards and I'm never on MySpace or Friendster, but it seems to have a huge impact on it. It hasn't had a huge impact on me personally; well, um...yeah, it has, but not in the same way. I mean Email and everything makes things amazing.

PL: You recently started Turnstile Records, which is a sub-label of Robotic Empire.

CS: Yeah, its a sub-label. Originally, me and Andy started talking cause he said that he wasn't gonna do vinyl anymore cause he's really trying his best to do this for his life and he's really into it for the right reasons. He was like "vinyl is just holding me back. I want to do stuff for these bands and these bands are growing" and stuff like that, so he wasn't really gonna do vinyl anymore and I thought "that sucks." I think that he's making the right decision, but maybe I should do vinyl, and that quickly went out the window. Uh, what were we talking about. laughter The question was about this being a sub-label.

PL: Yeah, I was just gonna see if you could explain how that works.

CS: How it works now is real simple. Me and Andy are real tight friends. I run everything independently from him. We just help each other out with things. He helps me out immensely. He's sat me on my ass and explained how everything's run and he really helps me out, but the investment and everything like that comes from me and everything else is done within the website and all that. We're just gonna help each other out by sharing ad space, promoting each other's stuff, trading distro stuff. We're gonna split a release coming down the road. I think we might split a discography of a band from Virginia called Canephora, who we both think is a band that was not widely heard at all and was really amazing. And he actually introduced us to the singer of Canephora, Sean, who became the singer of The Now, but we never recording anything with him; we just played a bunch of shows. And I don't know whats going on with that now. He's always in Virginia. I don't know.

But the involvement basically is a friendship involvement, but everything between the two labels is run independently and we just help each other out.

PL: Do you want to talk a bit about the releases you have lined up so far?

CS: The label's not gonna be too much of a big thing for me. I've played around with ideas in my head, like everybody else who thinks about starting a label and why they want to do it. The main reason came; we started this band, and I had the money so I was like: why don't I just put out our records, and all the money would go right back into the band. I learned from past bands that its just impossible to be a self sufficient band. We ended up los ing a lot of money and this and that. I'm not really interested in making a career making money, but I would love to be the self sufficient band and be able to survive. And I'd love for us to go on tour and it not to come out of people's pockets. I don't care if we make a fucking cent, but it'd be great if we could go on tour and the band just sustain itself; we could buy a van and do all these things. So that came from that: doing our own records.

And then I stumbled upon this band. I've been handed a lot of demos, never anything that I've really liked off the bat and was like, "Wow, this is really good." So I checked them out and then one of my friends joined the band, and thats what happened. I was just like, "I'll do your record." Just saying that, it took control.

PL: Thats the band that I just bought? I forgot the name already.

CS: Trouble Every Day. They're a pretty new band, but their stuff is pretty good. My intentions with the label is just any music that I think I can help be heard that isn't being heard or doesn't have a chance or I may be the first chance, I'll do. If I'm inspired by a band to do something with it, but I'm not doing it to make a full time thing out of the label. I couldn't tell you how many records I'm gonna do. I can't see me doing more than three a year. I couldn't even tell you if I'm gonna do it past the first three or four records.

PL: This is the second time I've seen you guys (NOTE: they didn't actually play the show) in about three months and you only have a demo out. Is it really tough touring D.I.Y. with no label help?

CS: Its tough touring all the time. Basically, we decided early on that we were gonna do this ourselves, so thats why we haven't had a super amount of label help. I think Andy was interested in doing something, but he was also really busy with other projects. I'm sure Greg from Level-Plane would be into it if we set him up with some stuff and said, "hey, we want to do this with you." But they're all busy doing their stuff. We don't have anybody begging; knocking down our door to put out our record. Plus, we haven't been together that long; just over a year, so there's no reason we should have all these records out. You really have to establish yourself as a band. So, I think we're right on track.

And, your question was its really tough. Its always tough. We've had label support and labels support us all they can and still its not enough.

PL: What other bands were you in?

CS: I played in Neil Perry and The Now. And I played in Get Fucked, but thats something we're not gonna talk about. I'm not supposed to talk about it. If you want any information on that, its up to Alex T. He's just a mastermind I guess, or the spokesperson; one or the other.

Its not a super serious thing. I put a lot of time and energy into a lot of other things that I do, but with this...You can get the same fufillment out of spontaneity and just going and just doing something and not caring what comes of it. It was a pure product of spontaneity. It was just urgent and we never spent more than a half hour on a song. We really haven't played a lot and we're not gonna be playing a lot. I heard that we may be doing a small tour or something like that. I don't want there to be any pretensions about that band. It is what it is and if you like the recording. We definitely had the intention of it sounding sloppy.

PL: The recording quality sounds like it was done on a four track.

CS: It was all intentional. I don't think Josh, who recorded it would ever record something like that if...but he was into it. He's doing a great job with his studio. Josh is the guitar player for Hot Cross. He used to play with me in Neil Perry and The Now. He's a good friend and we go way back.

PL: What would you like to change within the music industry?

CS: What would I like to change within the music industry. Thats kind of a tough one. I'm gonna need a pause on that one. Just off the top of my head, I think what Mike from Querencia talked about last night with the changes are just the feelings of some sort of heirarchy in music with people in bands. If you look at it as a community, its just all these people involved, and you're no cooler cause you're in a band. There's lots of things I'd change about the music industry. I don't feel part of the music industry. I wouldn't call myself a full blown musican. I've worked with and met people that were real musicans. Its just a different thing.

PL: Are house shows like this better than playing in clubs or on stages?

CS: I don't really like playing on stages. Our singer refuses to play on stages. I don't really care, but nothing beats a packed-ass basement show. Its great. Its great sound and the feeling. It really all depends on the show, the people that are there and how you're feeling at the time. There's tons of factors in any show. But I don' think I've ever played on anything too big, where I would be able to say that I didn't like it. I've played in auditoriums, but thats kind of the extent of that. To me, they just kind of sound crappy, which is the main reason I don't like them.

PL: Do you have any final comments?

CS: Um...no, no. I don't have anything else to say.

Interviewed by RF

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