Noise Therapy: Rob Thiessen

 

12/12/02

by Rebecca Clark

 

 

 

So where are you right now?

I am in Earlville, NY.  DO you know where Syracuse, NY is?

Ummm yeah

 I live about an hour from there

Ok cool.  We are just going to New Orleans right now

Ohh are you?

WE are going to New Orleans for some lunch or something like that.

 

So you guys are on tour right now with Ill Nino and 3rd strike all that still?

Ill Nino and 3rd Strike are not with us right now.  WE are just with Otep and a band from New Jersey called E town Concrete and Ill Nino is doing all the east coast dates so we hook up with them next week.  So its just Otep is headlining right now.

 

Ahhh I have heard about them but have never seen them live.  So how is the tour going so far?

Its been going really good we were with Flaw starting in September.  We were with Flaw, 3rd Strke and The Color Red.  We did that for eight weeks.  And then we just hooked up with Otep about I guess its been three weeks now.  And 3rd Strike was on all the west coast dates and Ill Nino is doing all the east coast dates.

 

Ohhh Ok I got you.  Have you had any places that have been your favorite to stop at so far?

Ahhhhh there have been lots of places that have been really cool.  Like the Chicago show was really good.  New York City we played with Ill Nino at the start of this tour at Irving Plaza.  That was crazy.  It was sold out and there was people stage diving off of the second balcony and stuff like that it was crazy.  That has probably been the best show so far.

 

Compared to the smaller club shows and the bigger markets what do you like to play better?

There is good things about both.  We have done like arena tours before where you are playing in front of 10,000 people and then we have done club shows where you are playing in front of 300 people.  With club shows you can kinda get more up close and personal with people like you are right there and they’re right there.  With an arena shows people are kind of more set down and stuff like that.  They are both good.  They are just different.

 

Ok.  What got you involved in music in the first place?

All of us I think kind of listened to music our whole lives since we were little kids.  I can remember being like five years old and my friends older brothers had Judas Priest records and stuff like that that I would listen to and totally get into it.  And then when I was younger I totally got into the early Metallica stuff and Slayer and stuff like that.  A lot of my friends would either play guitar or drums so I just grabbed a bass because I figured I could get into a band right away if I started playing bass so that is pretty much what happened. 

 

What do you think you would be doing right now if your music career didn’t take off?

What would I be doing?  You know what I have no idea.  I have been doing this so long that’s all I know.  I do not think I would be very good at doing anything else.  I would probably be driving our bus.  Driving bands around.

 

<laughing> When you first started a band what were your goals?  Did you always want to make it bigger.

I think what everybody who is in a band obviously wants the fame and fortune kind of thing and your face on a magazine and stuff like that.  But we mostly do it because we really enjoy it.  Like everybody in our band are like best friends we all hang out together at home and stuff and its kinda cool we get to travel around in a buss all over North America with my best friend and basically go to a rock concert every night.  You know we sit back and watch Otep every  night or we sit and watch Ill Nino every night.  So you go get to see some of your favorite bands every night.   And You know Playing on stage is awesome.  So if we achieve some kind of fame with it I mean that is definitely cool.  You know I do not want to be waiting tables or on welfare 20 years from now <laughs> So I wouldn’t mind making some money at it so you know I can buy a house and kind of hang out and do music for the rest of my life.  But if that doesn’t happen you know at least I would have had a little fun trying anyways.

 

Yeah!  How do you guys choose your set list I am not really that familiar with your music yet because I just recently picked up your album so I don’t know how you would choose it….

We kind of change the sets depending on what tour we are on.  Like right now we are out with Otep and they are really heavy so we are kind of playing more of our heavy songs.  And then if we go out with somebody who is you know not as heavy then we kind of throw in a couple of more mellower tunes or whatever.  Usually we just kind of gauge how the audience gets into it.  If we are up on stage and we play a song and the audience just doesn’t get into it we will just pull it out of the set for a while and then try it again later.   But the set we have got right now is the same one we were doing on the Flaw tour and it went over really well.  Like all of Flaw’s fans totally got into it so we just kinda kept the same set because we know what works now.

 

Ok.  What band has been your favorite to tour with so far?

Probably Flaw has been the best tour.  We really got along with those guys and we are going to see them in Louisville in a couple of days here and they became really good friends of ours and stuff.  And I mean all of the bands we have been out with have treated us really good.  Otep is awesome.  I would say that our music and Flaw kind of blended together the best though.

 

Flaw is really great!  I like them a lot. They were one of the first bands who let me cover them for my website.

That is cool!

<We talk about them doing a possible tour with them in January and the Method to Mayhem tour>

 

What was the hardest track to lay down on Tension?

Probably “Inside” because it was a song we had to kind of fight with our record company and producers to keep the way it was because its kind of unconventional because its not really a radio kind of arrangement.  We didn’t want to change it and they wanted us to and we ended up winning in the end but it was a battle though!

 

What inspires your writing?

The whole band basically wrote the music for the album and Dave and I the singer we both write the lyrics.  Like he will pick a song and say I wanted to write the lyrics for this song and I will go I have an idea for this song and I will write the lyrics for that song.  So we kind of split it up 50/50 on this record.  Most of our lyrics are about stuff that effects our lives you know just personal experience.  We are not political or anything…. we don’t want to get to crazy.

 

So you usually write the music comes first when writing a song and then the lyrics?

Yeah the music comes first.  I know I have a bunch of lyrics written right now that I have kinda been writing on the tour that I will probably try and write the music to but usually we come up with the riffs and then we will build a song around it and then the lyrics come after the song is written.

 

Do you guys have complete control over your recording?

Yup.  If the record company says that they hate that song then we ask why and then talk to them about it b we have creative control.  They don’t tell us how to write songs and they don’t tell us what we should sound like or anything so totally cool

 

What keeps  you sane on the road?  Do you have any hobbies or anything?

The bus we have is from Canada so there it has hockey on all the time so we watch hockey all the time and we watch The Simpsons, which is our favorite TV show.  And that kind of keeps us sane I guess.

 

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Uhhh I dunno that is a good question.  Probably doing exactly what I am doing now calling you from a tour bus!

 

What is in your CD player or MP3 players right now?

I am listteing to the new Killswitch Engage CD record and I just got the new Stone Sour record and Saliva.  So that kind of stuff.  I think Stone Sour is in the CD player actually right now as we speak.  So that would be the answer to that question.

 

Do you have any guilty pleasures in your CD collection?

You know what Ill Nino’s publicist just asked us that the other night and you know not really.  I don’t really have anything that is a guilty pleasure.  Its all cool! 

Come on you don’t have any Spice Girls in your collection?

No.  NO Spice Girls!  That would be wrong!

 

Do you have any plans for the next single?

The next single is probably 99% going to be “*69 ( wait for nothing)” which is the third track.  That’s kinda more of a radio tune but it goes over really good live.  We do an all girl mosh pit for that song and we make all the guys stand off to the side.  And in Dallas last night it went off.  Like these girls were doing a full circle pit it was awesome!!

 

<laughing>That’s cool!  Do you have any last words?

No.  Just to come out and see us live and tell people to go to our website we update it everyday and there is a bunch of cool stuff up on there.  Its www.noisetherapy.net

 

Ok thank you for calling me!  I really appreciate it!

Right on Rebecca! Bye!