LiveonRelease Interview

Pop punk/rock band LiveonRelease took the time to sit down with us before a show.

You guys have had a pretty exciting year so far. You've been signed to Her Majesty's record label with Bif Naked, released two hit songs, joined a tour. Can you describe how this year's been for you?
Leah Emmott: Fun! Amazing! We haven't done touring a lot, but we've gone a lot of places none of us have been before. It's been a really great year!
Britt Black: We're really lucky that we've gotten to do and see the things we have.

What's the greatest part been about it so far?
Leah: Playing shows!
Britt: Especially with the bands we've gotten to play with. Like Black Angels that we played with at Edgefest. That was really cool! Like these two (pointing to Foxx and Collette) got up on stage and sang with them!
Foxx Herst: We opened for Goldfinger and it was such a shock for us because it was like "Wow! This is Goldfinger!"
Collette Trudeau: And doing music videos, that's a lot of fun. Our last one was done in Vancouver and all of our relatives were in it. It was just a big fun party pretty much!
Foxx: Actually the whole job's a big fun party pretty much!

How much different was your first video from your second one?
Britt: Well we filmed this one in our home town instead of in Toronto. Our whole family was in it, actually, in the crowds.
Leah: The executives were our parents!
Foxx: It was totally more fun when we had our friends and family there. And Bif was in it too. The first one was kind of a little iffy.

So has Bif been your mentor for the past year? Showing you the ropes of the business, that sort of thing?
Britt: Oh yeah! She's like the cool, I don't want to say mother, I'd say more like sister.
Foxx: She's a cool big sister! Yeah!
Leah: She teaches us a lot of things. She teaches us a lot about being on the road and...
Britt: She's been touring forever, well, for a while, and we just learn what we need to know through her.

You can't compare us to girl groups because we're not just a girl group.

Who influenced you to pick up the instruments that you did?
Leah: Well for me, I listened to...(laughs) I picked up my vocal chords when I was three just because I was just a little girl. And I wanted to sing just like Tiffany. I was one of those little girls who would walk up and be like "Hi! I'm Tiffany!" But as I got older, I decided I wanted to do rock. I don't want to sing pop no more. I was influenced by Veruca Salt, Holly MacNarland, Hole, strong feminine rock people. I was mesmerized by how hard they could be looking at the music of the time.
Collette: We've also had our families to back us up. They've been really supportive of our music careers and they're pretty much the ones who've gotten us to reach our goals. They've helped us out in every single way.

How'd you guys end up coming together? We hear it's kind of an interesting story?
Britt: Yeah, it's a crazy story. Me and Britt new each other from baseball, so she submitted a tape to my dad. Well actually, it was to me at school...
Leah: I gave her a little cassette tape of some country songs! (Laughs)
Britt: We decided to start a band, so we put an add in the Georgia Strait in Vancouver and Foxx answered it. After that, we found Collette and we were all set. It's hard to find girl drummers!
Leah: We found her!

What's the next thing you have planned to release? You've just released your last song Get With It, but do you have any ideas of what you want to release in the future?
Foxx: (Singing) "Kay sera sera, what ever will be will be." We would be happy if anything off that album came out. We'd be happy if radio stations played anything off that album.

We listened to the record earlier and we were actually impressed that you guys, being so young when you wrote it, could write really good songs.
Leah: Thank you!
Britt: We were 12 and 13 when we wrote that record!

If you could put any song off your record into any soundtrack what song or soundtrack would it be?
Britt: What about Rush Hour 2?
Foxx: Yeah! Rush Hour 2! That's like my favorite movie now.

If you had 30 seconds to sell your album to someone off the street, how would you convince them to buy it?
Foxx: Buy it or Britt'll kick your ass! She's a third degree back belt!
Britt: Please buy our record? It's okay!
Foxx: I guess if we had 30 seconds to sell our album to someone, we'd probably play for those 30 seconds. It's the best way to sell it. And not just play the CD, play live for them.

How would you describe your sound? It's not your average mainstream pop or rock music. It's not too unusual to see a girl band such as yourself in the industry.
Collette: That's true, but I don't think we're the first. I think there are other girl rock groups out there, but they're not getting as popular as they should be.
Leah: Our music's totally different from anything. You can't compare us to girl groups cause we're not just a girl group.
Foxx: We're totally different.
Leah: We really have our own sound. No one can really compare us to any one. They try and compare us to Bif's music, but we don't sound all that much like her. They try to compare us to other girl groups, but they're either much harder or much softer.
Collette: It's weird to hear that we're kind of pioneers because we're just doing what we do.
Foxx: It's kind of hard to answer that. We always have a problem trying to explain to people what kind of music we play. We usually just say rock because it's all encompassing. Rock can be a noun or a verb—just everything. We're not hard core, but we're not really punk.
Britt: We have different songs on our record too. It's so diverse. It goes from like Britney, to Faith Hill, to Johnny Cash, so it's hard.
Foxx: Our album is hard to classify, but our live shows are easy because it's just a rock show.

It's really cool to see the crowd turn afterward and start clapping and cheering.

What's it like touring with a band that used to be pop like The Moffatts?
Collette: We're playing with The Moffatts? Hmm...
Foxx: We talked about all the special stuff we could do if we were playing with The Moffatts...
Britt: If you just say Moffatts, then everyone starts to scream!
Leah: We already played a show with them and I was like "Next up are The Moffatts!" and (the crowd) was just like "AHHH!" (Screams)
Foxx: The funny thing is you don't even have to say Moffatts and they scream. You could say broccoli and they'd scream. They just scream at anything! They're such a wild crowd. They get hyped up about anything.

Isn't it kind of weird for you all though since you play a solid rock show to be touring with a band that used to be heavily into pop music?
Leah: They're trying to cross over to be more into rock now though. I think it's great that they're doing that!
Foxx: They've been so busy this tour that we haven't even seen them yet. We only played one show with them so far. Tonight is going to be our first time actually getting to watch their show, so we're excited.
Collette: And they're only a year older than us, so it's cool that we have an almost entire teenage bill.
Foxx: Bif fits in, too. She's like a big teenager anyway!

The Moffatts changed their sound drastically. Do you maybe see yourselves changing your sound in the future?
Britt: I think we're going to stay with rock music for now.
Foxx: I don't think we'll do what they did. They made a drastic swing from, I think it was country, to pop and now rock music. I think for us we'll always be somewhere within that rock genre.
Collette: But our music is going to totally evolve and mature from our experience.

What's the most important lesson you've learned from the industry so far?
Leah: I guess a lot of it's learning to deal with people. A lot of people look at us and say "Okay, you're a girl group. What can we expect?" We have to deal with something like that every single day. We always have to prove ourselves with every single show we do. We always have people coming up to us saying how surprised they are, saying things like "When we came here we thought 'Oh, it's just another girl group. They're going to suck.'" But then after, they're like "Oh, you guys were REALLY good!" So that's something we have to overcome. We have to put 110% into all of our shows to prove to everyone.
Foxx: We always have to deal with those preconceptions and misconceptions. A lot of the times, we get people telling us we were great, so it's really great in the end. The best thing, too, is having to prove yourself. Deep down, we just prefer to play to a crowd like we have tonight. Sometimes we prefer to play to the old, experienced industry crowds too though.
Leah: Yeah, and they just stand there with their arms crossed. They think because we're teenage girls, we're not going to be anything special.
Britt: They won't scream just when we come out on stage. They're just like "Yeah, well prove you're good before I start clapping."
Foxx: That's what makes it exciting, because you have to prove it to them!
Britt: It's really cool to see the crowd turn afterward and start clapping and cheering. It means a lot more!
Foxx: It's so much more real to us!

Why did you name your CD Seeing Red?
Leah: Well, when we first started out, we put "seeing red" as lyrics into a bunch of our songs.
Foxx: Well, there is "seeing red" in a bunch of our songs, but I like the imagery it conveys about anger and it's kind of a relection of how we felt at the time. Angry young women. We felt it kind of represented our struggle to be noticed in a male-dominated business.
Britt: It's also the last lyrics of the last song: "Now you've got me seeing red."

Was that planned, or just a coincidence?
Britt: No.
Foxx: That came first.
Leah: When we were naming our CD we knew right away it was going to be Seeing Red.

Did you discuss any other titles, or was it unanimous from the start?
Leah: Well, we'd talked about it before.
Britt: We had some funny ones too, like LiveonRelease Black or something stupid like that.
Foxx: Yeah, stupid things! A lot of them were inside jokes too. We talked about using a song title for the CD title too, but we thought it'd be better to use Seeing Red instead.

Where do you all see yourselves in a year's time?
Britt: Still playing. Five years from now, it'll be the same. Ten years from now, the same thing. It's easy!
Collette: Maybe a couple more records. We'll see what we can do.

Well, congratulations on this year so far, your album, your tour, and good luck at your show tonight!
All: Thank you!