Montreal Rocks met with Paul Koehler, Silverstein’s drummer for a quick interview on their tour bus, a few hours before their performance at Le National on February 27th, 2016. For the review of the show, click HERE.
Montreal Rocks: Thanks a lot for having us today. It’s been exactly one year since you last came to Montreal, for the “Discovering the Waterfront” 10 year anniversary. How important was that tour for you?
Paul Koehler: I think it was important to have a celebration of the album for us but also for our fans. We realized that the album impacted a lot of people. It was a great time to celebrate it and to go on tour. Having fans come out every night was a good way to connect and reconnect with them and kind of further the relationship there. We also went on that tour for our most recent album, as it was important for us to remind people that we are still making new music, we just wanted them to be aware of that.
MR: Were you happy with the fans’ reaction to this tour?
PK: Absolutely, yes! Both with the tour and the new album.
MR: A documentary was released earlier this year by Rise Records about the tour. You guys had to relearn every song for that tour, and almost level down your skills since you weren’t as skilled at the time. Shane Told even admitted he didn’t remember some song lyrics How challenging was preparing this tour for you?
PK: It wasn’t really that challenging. It’s just always funny I think because an album is like a snapshot in time. Even when you make the album, the songs are still very new to you so you learn them in that context of recording and you work on them. Once you’ve played them a thousand times and played them live, and then went back, things evolve and you see things differently, especially with the same song time and time again. It applies to any album I guess. You know, every artist would go back and be like “Oh yeah, on that day and that time and that setting, that’s how I heard the song”, and things change as you become more familiar with it.
MR: Last year, you released your 8th album “I Am Alive in Everything I Touch”, after 15 years as a band. How do you keep that drive, and passion in the writing process and touring?
PK: I think we’ve gone into that cycle of re-tour, quite a bit, quite extensively and then once we’ve done that for quite a while, that’s when we usually go away and make an album. So by that time you’re ready to be creative again, you’re excited by the change, so then you go and lock yourself away, you be creative and work really hard in the studio. By the time that’s done, you just want to go out and play again. You just want to be free from that and be able to go back and play for fans and be released from that. This cycle back and forth I think makes it a good balance and that’s how it keeps both sides happy.
MR: Your last album was really conceptual, every song’s setting in a different city. Can you tell me more about the recording of that album?
PK: Recently we realized that having an underline concept or theme helps the album to have more focus and allows us to be more even creative beyond just writing songs. It’s always tough because that also provided another challenge and that concept requires a lot more planning, but overall it was executed pretty well.
MR: What Silverstein song on the album are you most proud of and why?
PK: Overall it’s a good album, it’s very diverse. I feel like we’ve stayed true that we don’t want to put out a record that’s very similar throughout. We like having a lot of differences as you go, and I think it was true of that. Somehow people like Late On 6th being a very challenging track because we knew what we wanted to do with it but we never know what we’d come across and that was really cool.
MR: Over the years, you had the opportunity to travel the world and to see many cities and countries, which one would be your favorite to perform in?
PK: We love them all, but it’s tough to choose. We’ve seen a lot of places and on top of that you have the cultural experience of being there so even in places that we don’t have many fans there but it’s still amazing to go see. We’ve played in forty different countries worldwide, which is quite a bit. Europe has been very kind to us, Germany specifically. Australia has been very kind, and North America has been consistent throughout even since our very beginnings. Again, it’s nice to have a change. We can always return to one place and become regulars so it’s nice to come back and forth. Now we’re touring in Canada, and we haven’t toured in Canada that much. It’s nice to be closer to home but also being familiar with that place. The constant change makes it fun for us.
MR: When it comes to play live music, what would be your favourite song to perform for the fans?
PK: Every while, my favourite changes because the songs we play vary a lot. For example, tonight we’re going to play different songs from the older albums from the very beginning to the most current ones. I like playing those songs because they’re fun and they’re so different. The new ones are so focused straight ahead; the songwriting has been better, stronger and more calculated. Overall, the difference is the variation that makes it fun.
MR: Do you think any of your songs are underrated?
PK: We all agree that we have a song called I Will Illuminate from This Is How the Wind Shifts Addendum. I feel it’s underrated because I don’t think people knew it existed because it just got buried. I think it is a really strong song that portrays what we would feel.
MR: Would you have any final words for your fans out there?
PK: We’re entering our 16th year and it’s been a long journey and I’m super happy to be here and I can’t wait where we continue to go. It’s gone far longer than we anticipated so we’re very grateful.
Interview – Maxime Le Huidoux
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