INTERVIEW WITH CARLOS SORIA

WITHIN PUNK ZINEINTERVIEW WITH

CARLOS SORIA/The Nils BY PHONE

SEPTEMBER 14 ,2015COURTESY OF

MELANIE KAYE PRJB: So Carlos, what is new and what is going on?Carlos: It’s going good, I’m doing some inter-views. I’m doing Pop Montreal this week and we’re playing some gigs in Ontario with Jesse Malin in October and we’re getting played on …. Here almost every day and things are going good!JB: Nice! Well the album is always fantastic and you have a lot of reviews that are coming in that are positive on it and people are liking it. I love it! So Shadows and Ghosts…we’re going to touch base on that in a second…but the lyrics in terms of the content, what was the writing process, what motivated you?Carlos: Well basically some of the songs we had were done demo style, the ones that were Alex and my songs and we always wanted to do them properly, “rock band” style because that was our main thing you know? That was good, it was a bit sad you know to do songs that I had worked on with Alex, having to do them now rather than when he was around so kind of weird sometimes and stuff. It was nice and then we worked on songs that Mark and I had, so it was a good process, the whole recording and writing process was good, it was hard work

“I’m very proud of what I did and think my little brother would be too”

CARLOS SORIA/ PHOTO J.B

but it was also lots of fun. We all went through some serious things, three of us lost our fathers, one of us lost their mom, there was personal breakups and stuff…It was three months we got to be in a great studio with a great producer and finally make an album the way we want and not have anybody dictate to us about things we had to do that we didn’t want to do, I mean people’s input is good input but you know, we got to make the album the way we wanted to. And it’s pretty close to my vision of the way it should be done.JB: And the album itself is still on Pledge?Carlos: No we did the Pledge thing to get the funds to do the album. The album, you can get it through ITunes, Spotify or the Cobra Distri-bution…. label. We also have it on our little store on Facebook and it’s also being put in stores. It’s still pretty young, about 3 months old, but it’s out there, it’s available if you do a little work to find it it’s not hard.JB: And that’s cool that people are going to do that still in this day and age – to help you out.Carlos: Well I think with us, regarding our history and our little story, it’s been 28 years and I think with the loss of Alex and that I think our fans have been good, they have stuck by us through thick and thin and now we’re seeing them start to come back and we also have a new generation of new fans that are kids that heard it second hand and now that they can come and see it, it must be cool for them. I know if I wasn’t in the Nils, I’d be a Nils fan, I’d be pretty ecstatic considering what has happened to us and we still manage to pull it off. I’m very proud of what I did and think my little brother would be too – like ‘wow you guys did it’ and he’s all over it too as I wanted and you can tell he’s still

there. It’s hard to do to lose such an important member of the band and…one girl I think from Now magazine reviewed it to say that the fact that we did the second album was a miracle and the fact that it was so spirited was a triumph and I read that and literally broke down crying because it’s like, ya you nailed it. It was nice, we are getting a good reaction so far, like I said it’s still young but

CARLOS SORIA/ PHOTO J.B

MARK DONATO / PHOTO J.B

guys like you and stuff – what you’ve done so far has helped us, so that’s what we need. We pour our hearts out, we’ve done what we can do and we’re not rich guys, we’re not young kids, everything we do is organic – we now have a manager which is something we never really had, which is nice you know that’s someone in your corner to protect you from sharks. Technically I couldn’t ask for better things. It would be nice to have a number one hit and pile of money you know, but that’ll come.JB: Peter Edwards was the producer right?Carlos: Yes we got to do it at his studio in Indica in downtown Montreal. He plays guitar in ……..Skunk and we had done demos with him a few months before and it went so good that when John came we opted to make the album here, we really wanted to make it here to be in Montreal, the first album was done in New York, we’ve done recordings in Chicago, LA, all over but never really in Montreal as an official album so we were really happy about that, to be able to go home and record and we were supposed to go for a month – we were there for three months. It was hard, like I said I lost my dad, and I lost my girlfriend and it was hard but it was also good what we did, we poured our hearts out and like many people say, the proof is in the pudding.JB: Kudos to you guys to triumph through that, it’s remarkable.Carlos: See you and I, the little guys, it’s nice to see come out and come out winning – you know it’s a sad story, if you go through the Nils’ story – I think that has a lot to do with the reason people like us, we’ve had a hard career, it wasn’t our decision, we had bad contracts, it ruined our careers but the fact that we got to do this is cool and in the end you couldn’t write a better script. I know what happened is sad and trust me I had to live through it, he was my little brother, my best friend and I lost my mind you know – the thought that we could do this, it’s an honour for him, it’s in respect for him and once again I think he would be stoked, he would have nothing bad to say about it. JB: When I saw you first at CMW in Toronto, you guys drove all the way just to play the show and then I saw you again at the Katakombs and both sets, you guys rocked it hard. So what’s the secret to still having that energy all these years?Carlos: The secret is and I don’t know if it’s a secret, is believing in what you’re doing. It is what you said, it’s hard to drive and go through so much to get there but the minute that we step on the stage, it turns into this thing. And the other thing is we’ve become experienced, we started doing this in our twenties and now we’re a bit older and we’ve become good at our trade. We got our original drummer back now and the guys – the guitar player that is with me has been for many, many years and is part of my family and we have a new guy, he’s been with us for a few years but we’ve built our moments in the rehearsal and we’re very serious about what we do. We rehearse, we don’t want to come off half-assed, playing live is very tricky, sometimes no matter what you do the night doesn’t go your way, you’ve got to prepare for these moments and we do, we rehearse hard. So it’s basically believing in what you do and having

fun doing it and also you’ve got to believe in your heart you are the best rock and roll band in the world, otherwise no-one else is going to believe it. The more you play the better you get and even if you’re not noticing, people notice. We’re very critical so to us a little mistake is something no-one’s going to see but at least we’re conscious about it. Back when we started in the 70’s and 80’s it was always a live act, a live reputation. We took our stories from the Clash and the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and just delivered it live. In the studio, it’s easier because you can work with things but live you have to deliver and deliver well and I think we’ve gotten pretty good at that. We’ve never been extravagant and doing fancy things, we concentrate on the music and the delivery of the music.JB: I think a lot of younger bands lose that concept because everything is so digitized now.Carlos: it doesn’t seem like now that’s im-portant to be a band, a rock band like us that plays music that’s not fashionable and stuff. It’s hard, as we all know – now it’ like being a guy or a girl that dancing around, it’s almost too fabricated, you know like a cookie facto-ry. Not us, we write what we want, we write about our lives, our songs are about living our lives and doing what we do and having a hard life and stuff. What we write is true, it’s not make believe and now it’s not fashionable. But if you remember every now and then a band comes along and brings rock and roll back to the front. Like the Pistols, the Guns ‘n Roses, the Black Crowes – it always comes back, it’s circular thing so I think we’re due for that because we’ve become too industrial-ized. I know this sound man and said a joke to me he was doing sound for this rapper guy and the sound guy said to him “do you want

“It’s almost too fabricated, you know like a cookie factory”PHIL PSARAKOS / PHOTO J.B

some echo or reverb on your voice” and the guy said “no just throw a little Auto tune on there” – you know, the guys’ a rapper and all he’s got is his voice and he wants Auto tune on it…JB: Talking about vocals, did you find it hard taking over?Carlos: Yeah that was the big thing, when we started thinking – Mark and I- about doing this we said “who’s going to sing?” and you know I conned little Alex into doing it because he was the youngest “you do it, you be the singer, you’ll be a star, you’ll make the most money!” He turned out to be a great singer, at first he didn’t want to do it, he was so shy but he did a great job at it. But when we did the demos, everything was good except the vocals, it was like “oh it needs work on this”, so we took a few months and did work on it and a few more shows and practiced harder but the way it came out on the album, I’m pretty proud, I’ve never been a lead singer and Mark had sung a bit in his earlier band and the Nils a bit but I had never been a lead singer and now to be the lead singer and it’s hard but now we’re getting bet-ter. We did a show in and Jason Lowenstein came up to me and said keep it up it sounds great and my friend Evan Dando, who sings on the album, he said to me keep going and it’s nice to hear from people that do it so if you keep working on it, it sounds good.JB: Like ‘For the love of Hank’Carlos: I love that song, it’s funny, when we met you a the Pouzza Fest, we had some ra-dio station from Tennessee came up to us and the guy was freaking out on that song, he said ‘I’m going back to Tennessee and on Monday morning it’s the first song I’m playing’. And it’s sort of an honour you know, for this guy to be into it so heavy.

“It’s almost too fabricated, you know like a cookie factory”PHIL PSARAKOS / PHOTO J.B

JB: Sweet. The actual cover art with the 55 bus. Where did that come from?Carlos: That came from Montreal archives, it’s the St Lawrence/ St Catharine and it’s 50’s or60’s and we thought it was cool, it’s the 55 bus, if you see the image, you know what it is, if you’ve been to Montreal you don’t need an explanation. And once again, it was about this album, everything being about Montreal, the first album was done in New York – NY producers, NY studio, and it’s a great album, people still want it, we still play songs from it but this album I wanted it to be about Montreal so what better way than to have a picture of the 55 bus.JB: and that’s what they say about New York – it can eat you alive, right?Carlos: well we had a very bad experience that we signed this great contract and within a month of our release we were charting in Rolling Stone and one minute you have this big company telling you you’re going to be the next big thing and then a year later you’re tied up in legals and you can’t record for anybody and they’re going bankrupt and they know that other people want you so they won’t let you go and next thing you know they ruined your career. It started, it sky rocketed and then a year later it killed us. It’s a simple as that, it isn’t anything we’ve done, in case you’ve heard gossip that we were doing drugs and stuff – it was none of that, they signed us up for seven years and put out an album that succeeded immediately when it wasn’t supposed to, it was supposed to be a tax write off - there you are with something you don’t know what to do with because you are not a punk rock label you are a rap label – you started this subdivision to lose money. But yet we were 20 years old, we didn’t know what to do, a big company comes and wants to sign you, what do you do? You sign the contract right? But now the music industry has changed, it’s a good thing, it’s made people be more resourceful and more creative. Now we have the power before they have it. There’s a lot more garbage but less good things that gets in now but you know the true music fan knows how to sort that out. At the same time though if you remain focused and stay true to it and remain focused you can do anything and it becomes something well-polished and beautiful and you will rise.J.B: Any chances of a further longer tour?CARLOS: Yeah man we are always looking into new possibilities and are thinking of a North American and Europe tour it’s just a matter of with who and the logistics of it. We are still young on the launch of the album so we will have to see where it goes from there, but we are having fun and working hard so that’s all you can do and we have to make things organically and do things well and make it right for us and everyone else. It’s hard work it’s not always Hookers and blow you know its real work and it’s not cheap.J.B: So how’s the energy touring?CARLOS: When you were saying what’s the secret the secret is when people react positively however short that moment is that’s what I need and whenever I feel down I talk to people and it makes me bring it back and I feel rejuvenat-ed and it gives me energy you know.

JEAN LORTIE / PHOTO J.B

J.B: So as always as you know we finish with a famous quote or book that in-spired your life and last time you gave a good one about the industry anything else come to mind?CARLOS: Ah man you put me on the spot ah let’s see “Mick Jagger sucks by Keith Richards” I can’t think of anything except, If you want a tip “when it’s foggy out use your low beams”.

Montreal : September 17th at Club Lambi (at 11:30 pm)for Pop Montreal .London : October 10th at Call The Office.Toronto : October 11th at Lee’s Palace