Interviews

Bane

Interview with Pete on Apr 1, 2005 by Archive Bot

Never believe anything you hear, read, are told, or even happen to eyewitness on the first of April, a date known secretly as April Fool’s Day. The kids at the Bane/ Comeback Kid / With Honor show in San Francisco must not have checked their calendars because when Comeback Kid announced during their set that the current tour would be their last, faces in the crowd fell, a brokenhearted groan echoed throughout the venue, and I swear I saw a hardcore kid silently weeping.
 
Luckily, Bane is to honesty as X’s are to straightedge; you just can’t imagine one without the other. In their music, their lyrics, their lives, Bane is built on honesty.  So it came as no surprise that they came on stage and told us we’d all just been punkd, sans Ashton. Apparently, Comeback Kid’s elaborate ‘we broke up’ prank had been hatched and let loose upon Bane in the early hours of the day. All day on the drive to SF, cell phones in the Bane van had been buzzing, as members of Comeback Kid reported on the terrible and fabricated things that were happening - names being called, shit being talked,fistfights, actual shit being thrown.
 
The guys in Bane said on stage they didn’t buy it for a second, but I had to know more.  I pulled Pete Chilton aside after the show and demanded to know all the April Fools details, and some junk about their new record or something like that.
 
Pete: Hey, I’m Pete and I play bass.
punkbands.com: Didn’t you do the artwork for the new record?
Pete:  Actually, I didn’t illustrate it, I just did the color.  This kid we know, Dave Agganero from Baltimore did the actual illustration.
 
punkbands.com: What’s the best prank BANE has ever pulled or been on the receiving end of?
 
Pete:  Well, I think it happened today.  Comeback Kid text messaged us saying Kyle and Andrew got in a fight and they’re dropping off the tour, eveyone’s going home and they’re breaking up.  For one second we were like, “What?  That’s crazy - wait a second, it’s April Fools. We’ll get ‘em, we’ll get ‘em.”  We really did get lost this morning, so we turned it into this huge thing where Dave, Silent Drive’s drummer, drove the wrong direction eight hours, so we were ten hours from the show and were going to miss the show.  We called them and told them we were serious.  “We know you’re joking, but this is serious.”  It ended up turning into this huge thing, and they really thought we weren’t coming tonight until the last minute we pulled up.  So that was the big April Fool’s joke they tried to pull on us, but we reversed on them.
 
punkbands.com: So can I trust you today? Or, conversely, do you want to announce that you are having Lady Di’s baby or something unbelievable like that?
 
Pete: No, the most unbelievable thing is that BANE is not breaking up.  I feel that every night someone asks us of we are.
 
punkbands.com: Yeah, that’s one of my questions.  What is the new BANE album The Note like?  Why did it take so long?
 
Pete: It sounds like BANE.  I think it’s our best record.  It sounds like Holding This Moment, except a little more mature.  We kind of went backwards a little but, kid of stepped back and tried to figure out what we really wanted to be and what we wanted to do for this record.  It had to be better than Give Blood, and we felt like Give Blood was a really great record.  that’s part of the reason why it took so long, it had to be a step up.  Just so many different factors led to the delay - we’re slow to write anyway and again, we wanted it to be better than Give Blood.  Also we were doing side projects all last year, so that slowed everything down.  It’s just been a long time since we’d even attempted to do it, and then once we did, it took a long time.
 
punkbands.com: Will The Note be pressed on vinyl?
 
Pete: Yes.  Yes.  We haven’t figured out exactly what the colors are going to be, but ideally I want to do an eleven-inch vinyl, gatefold with special packaging.  So we’ll see if that actually happens.  If the budget is there, we’ll see.
 
punkbands.com: Just to confirm what you said earlier: this is not the last BANE tour?
 
Pete: No, no absolutely not.  We already have multiple tours planned.
 
punkbands.com: Why no date in Santa Cruz?  We love you down there.
 
Pete:  I don’t know, it just didn’t come up.  We discussed it.  For some reason we played Bakersfield and Fresno instead.  There’s those middle cities between San Francisco and LA.  Obviously we love doing Santa Cruz, but it just didn’t happen on this tour. We’ll be back in June, we’ll definitely play there.
 
punkbands.com: You guys have been on the road a while.  Have you answered your most famous question yet? Can we start again?  Go back to what it meant back then?
 
Pete:  I think so.  Especially this year with so many exciting hardcore bands.  Tonight was just awesome.  I think we’re in good shape.  It can happen.
 
punkbands.com: What excites you most about a live performance?
 
Pete:  I think it’s the back and forth between the audience and the band.  I just love playing my guitar.  It’s hard to even imagine doing something else.  This is such a part of my life, it’s a part of our lives.
 
punkbands.com: What do you think about file-sharing? 
 
Pete:  I mean I personally use iTunes and buy stuff, but that’s just because I like it to be very organized and nice and neat.  I know everyone else downloads from Soulseek and that stuff.  It affected us just recently though.  When Give Blood came out it wasn’t really a factor, but with this record it’s such a huge factor, and it’s like four years in the making - it’s kind of an anticipated album.  The record label is real strict.  We don’t have a copy of it.  We’ve only heard it in the studio and then the producer sent it away and that was the last we heard of it.  It’s something that we are being newly introduced to.  But we do it, it’s not like file-sharing is something crazy to us.  It’s also not like we’re losing tons of money from it.  We don’t sell that many records anyways.  We’d rather have people singing along then selling records.
 
punkbands.com: Does BANE make most of its money through records, merch, or playing show?
 
Pete:  Probably shows and merch.  The merch that we make we try to keep as low of a price as possible.  Shows - we have more expenses every time we go out, like gas goes up and whatever, but shows have gotten bigger so the money gets bigger too.  It’s a combination of both.
 
punkbands.com: Did BANE ever get into trouble with using Stewie on that shirt two years ago?  Or S.C.U.D. the Disposable Assassin?
 
Pete:  No, we never heard anything.  We actually did a Rushmore shirt too, and actually Jason Schwartzman’s manager contacted us and wanted one, so it wasn’t a big deal.  Even if people saw it, I don’t think we’re a threat to people.  I mean, we sold a bunch of them, but it’s not like we made hundreds of thousands of dollars off it or anything like that.
 
punkbands.com: Dude, do you know how ubiquitous BANE hoodies have become at shows?  It’s like strata of rock, you can tell how long someone has been around by which BANE hoodie he or she rocks at the show.
 
Pete:  Yeah, actually on this tour we tried to think of what we could do different, but everyone just loves that sweatshirt.  We don’t even carry the pullovers anymore because no one buys them.  We just decided to do different colors.  It’s like the BANE logo shirts - that’s always the best seller and the zip-ups are always the best seller, no matter what other design we have.  It’s become almost ridiculous.
 
punkbands.com: Why do old BANE hoodies have the stiched-on letters and the new ones are just screened? 
 
Pete:  We tried to get the stitched ones, but the company that made them, the only company we could find that made them, could not keep up with us.  They told us there was no way they could fill our orders.  On this tour we probably have sold seven hundred hoodies.  I’m ordering more every week and having them shipped out to the shows.  It took three people actually sewing each letter on, so we had to go to something a little faster.  The quality is still decent.
 
punkbands.com: I have a friend, he was at the show tonight, his name is Nick Bane.  Those hoodies work out great for him.
 
Pete: Really?  Wow, that’s awesome.  That’s real cool.
 
punkbands.com: Seen any BANE tattoos?
 
Pete: Yeah definitely.  Lots.  Just Aaron’s lyrics, he’s so intelligent with the way he writes and a lot of kids connect with what he’s saying.  That’s one of the reasons BANE has been around for so long and had success.  He comes up with a lot of slogans that kids really abide by so they get them inked.  I see probably one a show.  Kids will come up and show us and we always try to get photos and stuff.  The first couple just blow you away.  It still amazes me every time.
 
punkbands.com: I loved it on “Give Blood” when Aaron quotes Wes from AN.  Is there still a connection between them, and what do you think about his new band Some Girls signing to Epitaph?
 
Pete:  I’m psyched for them.  Wes actually came to our San Diego show.  Him and Aaron are good friends, we all know him, he’s a good guy.  We’re huge fans of Some Girls.  Epitaph - it’s the cream if the crop.  It’s the big leagues.
 
punkbands.com: Every band is putting out DVDs.  Will BANE jump on that any time soon?
 
Pete:  We’ve talked about it.  We’ve actually filmed a bunch of stuff.  We just want it to be different and really good.  So again, it’s going to take us a long time.  Maybe a couple years down the line.  Actually, we went to Japan last April and we filmed 40 two hour tapes of material.  SO it’s being process and figured out.  We have a bunch of stuff.
 
punkbands.com: At Hellfest BANE gave up a chunk of their set time to a band from Japan, FC5..  Are you still in touch with them?
 
Pete:  Definitely.  When we went to Japan we were with those guys and they were the nicest, craziest guys ever.  They actually have a new record coming out.  They’re recording at the Blasting Room with Bill Stevenson like right now.  And actually Aaron is going to meet them and do some guest vocals on their record.  It comes out on Roadrunner Records or something like that.  They’re just blowing up.  They’re such a great band.
 
punkbands.com: It was just amazing to see at Hellfest.  Bands only get thirty minutes to make their mark, and it was just really inspiring to see BANE give up some of that small portion of time because of a friendship.
 Pete:  FC5 was so amazing to us in Japan.  We tried to get them on Hellfest, but the politics of that fest - it just didn’t happen so we said “Fuck that!” and put them on in the middle of our set.  they deserve it.  they’re such a great band and they’re the nicest people we’ve ever met in the world.  It was totally worth it.