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knottwire.com FEATURE: Catching Reel Big Fish on The WARPED Tour
…or doing an interview while catching a cab in Vegas after flying in from NYC for a new leg of the WARPED Tour. The rest of the band lives primarily in southern California, but the trek is no considerable expedition for the musician… …but it does provide for an interesting, if not comical, glimpse into something as simple as a cab-ride for a touring rocker. In between phrases, answering knottwire.com’s inquiries, Klopfenstein interrupts himself to keep the cabbie on proper course – and to keep the cabbie aware of who he is. “The big tour bus right there – see that big tour bus?,” he asks the cabbie, who is muttering back in broken English. “No,” Klopfenstein advises – again. “The tour bus? Right here on your right-hand side. This bus – this big trailer right here. See the bus? That’s mine.” “Um,” he re-acknowledges knottwire.com: “Sorry,” he offers, more for being stressed at this Abbott & Costello-like ordeal than splitting up the interview time. But he tips the guy handsomely, so no love is lost. However, his travel-gripes aren’t quite over: While discussing how songs are borne within Reel Big Fish, “Scotty,” as he’s often called explains that “it’s different every time, truly…” then… “…There’s no place for me to put my luggage. Huh… that’s not gonna work for me…” He continues answering: “Every time we make a record, it’s a completely different process. Sometimes Aaron [Barrett, lead songwriter/guitarist] will come in with a complete song; sometimes he’ll come in with a partial song … we really don’t have one way that works the best.” So, which is better to Scotty: Performing live or recording in the studio: “They’re both great. They’re both so completely different … I don’t like one more than the other. It’s like asking: ‘Which would you rather do, sleep or eat?’ You know – I dig ‘em both. The band’s enduring ability to reach new fans, particularly younger fans is due most likely to Klopfenstein’s theory that Reel Big Fish doesn’t take itself too seriously. “We’re a fun band,” he emphasizes with an ironic sense of seriousness. “There’s a lot of serious, fuckin’, angry, melancholy – bands don’t have fun anymore. People have forgotten to have fun with music; that’s kind of the void that we fill. We’re pretty much all about having fun.”
A key component to the fun-factor is free-flowing banter with their audiences throughout a typical Reel Big Fish show, embraced by only a handful of groups, including Crowded House, or as Scotty mentioned: The Rat Pack. “I think we’ve always talked with our audience. When we first got going… it was a very personal crowd. The audiences were generally filed with our friends. Aaron and Derek [Gibbs], as well – we’ve always been big fans of vaudeville and comedic performers. It just kind of came out of us. It was just an organic thing. We wanted to make it an experience for people. That’s where we feel most comfortable, on stage. We’re not very comfortable people in regular goings of life, but when you get us on stage, that’s when we feel like we can really be ourselves.” Reel Big Fish has seen more than its share of frustrating line-up changes, although core-members have remained since its early-‘90s formation through hit album, 1996’s Turn The Radio Off, as well as last year’s major tour with Less Than Jake. “It’s not for everybody, you know. We’ve seen a lot of gaps – in and out. It’s sad to see people go…The new guys we’ve had over the years – every time you get somebody new it brings an extra new life to the whole thing. We all get really excited. “And with the line-up we have now, I don’t think the band has ever been more content. Everyone’s really cool to get along with … we hang out more. For a long time, we’d quit hanging out as a band." ______________________________________________________________________
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