There are a lot of great artists coming out of our fair city these days spanning all genres–duos, trios, folk and indie artists and electronic artists galore. Amidst all that we’re happy to let you into the world of a good old fashion rock quartet known as The Knew. Veterans of the Denver scene, they’ve played with great acts such as Deer Tick, Manchester Orchestra and Cold War Kids. These gentlemen were gracious enough to invite us into their practice space, kicked us some beers and shared a little bit about their music and their take on being independent musicians in this day and age. Have a read…then have a listen…then go see them live.
Denver, Michigan, California and Nebraska….we’ve all been in CO for a long time, though.
How long has The Knew existed?
Six years respectively
Do you have a manager?
Everything we do is all us. We’re mixing a new album and are looking for some help. But the straight up manager/label system isn’t as true as it used to be. These days you have to get a PR agency and a booking agency…anything to generate buzz. We’re willing to do whatever to promote.
You guys have toured with some great bands including Deer Tick, Cold War Kids and Manchester Orchestra. How did those come about?
Everyone we’ve toured with has been so cool and it’s funny that none of them turn out to be much different than we expected. A lot of bands come through Denver and we’ve kind of been around long enough that local promoters and venues are pretty cool about making that work. Tim knows a couple of the guys from Cold War Kids so that’s how that worked out.
Who were you influenced the most by growing up?
We’ve all got our own different influences–Everything from Dillinger Four to Huey Lewis, hip-hop and old school punk. There’s so much to pull in from all over the place.
What’s been the best way getting yourselves heard?
Constant badgering mostly…just trying to get our name out. We give a lot of our music away for free too. We’ve never really followed a protocol. We just have good attitudes and we love playing music. We really enjoying doing this and that seems to work itself out. Blogs are huge too. We’ll seize any opportunity with someone who wants to talk to and write about us—help us get heard. Some bands these days are gaining fame by being super anonymous and reclusive. We could never pull that off. It’s too much commitment and we like being out there and talking to and playing for everybody.
How do you feel about the music scene in Denver? Do you think it’s top tier?
It’s getting there. Denver can be fickle…think in terms of sports teams. Some venues, for instance, don’t have the attitude of wanting to do anything to make a good show work. Even if they like the band, if they’re not going to bring in enough money they won’t make it happen. There are some other cities…Austin for example where there are just strips of venues, most of them not making anything, but all having shows because they want to be a part of something bigger. Even having more shows for free brings more people which in turns brings more crowds which, if you play well, hopefully means next time you can charge. Venues don’t always see it that way. Lion’s Lair on East Colfax is still a place to catch great shows, though. They’ve got the spirit. We would like to see Denver get there.
Is the musician community pretty open and welcoming?
Yeah but it’s also kind of cliquish. We have our groups of people. And there are other groups. But we all respect each other as professionals and we do help each other out when and if we can. The reality is that for most of us, the Denver local scene is the most we’re going to get. So we want to make sure it stays cool.
What’s the best festival you’ve played?
Monolith was the most underrated festival in the country. Shame it’s not around anymore. Such great lineups but bad weather every year.
Favorite place to play?
Honestly Lion’s Lair. We like playing at Larimer Lounge too but Lion’s Lair always has such great shows. Road 34 in Fort Collins is also great. And the Knitting Factory in LA…but it’s not there anymore. The Double Down in Vegas is a must.
Your last album, Pulperia got some good attention. How has that helped you and what’s happening now?
We’re really proud of that album. What it did more than anything was really give us something to go back and reflect on and figure out where we want to go from there. We’ve always strived to have the best sound live. So being able to hear what we were doing and use that to make changes to our live set was pretty helpful. This new album is going to have a much bigger sound. Each song has at least double the amount of tracks. The whole thing is long as shit…over an hour. We want to have shit tons of fog and lights and just go big when we play it too. We went with the idea that there’s nothing you can be too overly conscious about. The sound is huge.
What’s the writing process for the new album been like?
All over the board really. Some of the songs came together super quick and others we keep coming back to. Some of the songs we had written while we did the other ep but we pushed them off till they were ready. We just kind of know when a song is right. If we’re still playing a song a month after it’s written we usually at least want to get it recorded and see how we feel from there. We don’t go into the studio with tons of songs…we kind of whittle it down along the way so we’re more focused when it’s time to go.
Are you guys going to do the new songs for the new album during your two night NYE weekend shows at the hi-dive?
There are 13 songs on the new one and we’re planning on playing at least 10 of them.
Who is playing with you?
The 30th is Broken Spirits and the Dendrites. They’re both a great time but The Dendrites are an absolute blast…old school jazzy ska…really fun live. The 31st is the Strange Americans and Faceman, who has played with us on NYE for the past 2 years – he’s always able to pull together a great show.
So what else is in store for 2012?
Well we’re going to send a ton of advanced copies of the new album out which will hopefully structure where we go. We want to get it out to friends and people we know and kind of let it build. We’re taking a different approach from duplicating a billion cd’s and vinyl. We’re going to take it slow and see what happens. Beyond that, there’s no real actual plan. We want to get around regionally in the states as well so as not to burn out our audience locally and we’d like to head out with a band we enjoy being around and we can learn a lot from.