Previously on the blog, I reviewed

Twisted Crystal,

the newest album by one of the most interesting bands out there right now, Guerilla Toss. Some of the KANM music directors are big fans of the group, so we made the trip out to Dan’s Silverleaf, a popular venue in Denton, to catch the band live. Kassie Carlson, the lead vocalist, was kind enough to agree to let us interview her before the show. When we arrived at the venue, we were greeted by Kassie, keyboardist Sam Lisabeth, and a very fluffy dog. We sat in the back corner of the patio behind the bar and recorded the following interview:

Micah:

What was your previous show like?

Kassie:

We played in Austin last night, and it was really a banger, it was really fun.

Micah: Was there a good turnout?

Kassie: Yeah, it was sold out, it was crazy, they were all packed into the Hotel Vegas.

Ian: What are typically y’alls favorite cities to play in?

Sam: It kind of depends, the bigger cities are always really fun, but the flipside is the small cities that you don’t expect to be fun on paper. Like, we’re playing in Montana, and you don’t expect it to be fun, but it was a super funky place, it was really fun.

Ian: I feel like the turnout can be great in college towns, maybe there is more of an art scene and people will turnout more? I don't know if that’s been y’alls experience.

Sam: I think that happens, it helps to do all ages shows to get the college crowd out.

Kassie: Yeah definitely, because we all remember when we were under 18, and I remember in high school and trying to get into shows, but there’s gotta be more all ages places that pop up.

Micah: We’ve listened to some of your older stuff like Jeffrey Johnson and Gay Disco, but your newer stuff is a lot more accessible than the old no wave roots that you guys were originally taking on, what prompted you guys to move to a more pop-driven sound?

Kassie: We’ve just been a band for a long time so we want to change to directly reflect the way that we’re feeling instead of doing the same thing over and over again. Music is a representation of the self.

Sam: I think the last thing any of us want is to be one of those bands that puts out the same record over and over again.

Micah: Y’all definitely don’t seem to be the type to do that.

Sam: Yeah, we jump around.

Micah: When y’all were first forming what bands did y’all bond over?

Kassie: I would say the very first band we bonded over was James Chance and the Contortions.

Micah: I’ve never listened to them before, what kind of genre are they?

Kassie: Like strong jazz, rock, no wave sorta thing, and like a lot of bands were uniting over that band at the time.

Micah: What about you?

Sam: When I joined the band, I joined about three or four years ago, I think the first thing me and Pete bonded over was The Grateful Dead. I think the first conversation we had was like “oh you like The Dead,” we knew each other in college, “I remember you like the dead, come join Guerilla Toss.”

Micah: I read online that you were raised in a really religious household, and obviously a lot of Guerilla Toss’s music has themes of psychedlia and spirituality, especially with songs like “Jesus Rabbit” and “Walls of the Universe”. What’s your take on the intermingling between spiritualism and psychedelia?

Kassie: I guess I think differently than I did when I was little. I don’t think of God as like a man or anything. I think it’s more of an all-encompassing spiritual universe that we’re all connected to. There’s no way that God or the spiritual comes from humans or anything related to men or women. Humans are the most destructive organisms on the planet.

Micah: And we would have a really flawed interpretation of that kind of stuff because of our human nature.

Kassie: Yeah, but I think science is far greater than any type of religion or anything. I just think that learning about anything scientific is just so massively cool.

Micah: Yeah, because you guys definitely have a lot of science fiction themes in your music too.

Kassie: Yeah! I want to explore everything!

Micah: Do you guys plan out an artistic direction when you go into making a record or do you just kind of jam and roll with what works?

Kassie: Nah, we just kind of jam or Peter comes up with a lot of ideas.

Micah: This is kind of a funny sort of question but what are y’alls favorite television cartoon?

Sam: I’m kinda a sucker for 90s Nickelodeon, that’s what I grew up with.

Kassie: Rocko's Modern Life.

Ian: Ren and Stimpy?

Sam: I remember when my older brothers were watching Ren and Stimpy I thought it was an adult TV Show. So I thought it was very scandalous that I was watching it. I’m sure if I went back and watched it I would find that it was still a children’s show, but it definitely got kinda edgy.

Micah: My mom was really into Ren and Stimpy she showed it to me.

Kassie: All Real Monsters, that was a good one.

Sam: Doug.

Ian: Hey Arnold.

Sam: The original normcore was Doug.

Micah: What do y’all listen to right now?

Sam: What do we listen to?

Kassie: *laughs* The Grateful Dead.

Sam: Yeah, we also listen to a lot of The Dead in the van, just the other day we were listening to Pacific Northwest recordings they just re-released in really good quality, there’s always bootlegs where the quality isn’t so hot but they remastered everything and they sound great.

Micah: Do you guys have a similar jam band thing going with your shows? I’ve heard they get kind of rowdy.

Kassie: Sometimes we jam between songs, and we try to make every show different, but a lot of this newest album,

Twisted Crystal

is influenced by krautrock.

Micah: I’ve only listened to a little bit of krautrock *gestures to Ian* he can tell you…

Ian: Oh yeah, I love Can and Faust.

Kassie: Oh yeah, a lot of

Twisted Crystal

, actually all of

Twisted Crystal,

takes influence from them.

Micah: This is kind of random,  but we went to a hot dog restaurant before we came here, and we thought the menu could be one of your album covers. Do you agree?

Kassie: Yeah.

Sam: Yeah, it’s got the checkerboard.

Kassie: The person who does a lot of our art is Keith Rankin. He does Orange Milk Records. You should check out his Instagram.

Micah: I remember reading something about how for the cover of

GT Ultra

, y’all ended up going to a psychedelic museum?

Kassie: It’s from the Institute of Illegal Images. It’s a guy, and it’s basically just his house, he has hundreds of thousands of sheets of acid in his house all preserved. Yeah, he let us use a sheet for our album.

Micah: Yeah, I really like that album cover.

Kassie: It’s from the 60’s, it’s like real blotter art, obviously the tabs aren’t that big.

Aaron: I have a question, are there any Sci Fi movies you really like?

Kassie: Oh yeah, what’s the one we saw on the tour, with Nic Cage?

Mandy

?

Sam: Oh yeah,

Mandy

, the new Nic Cage movie.

Ian: I’ve heard good things about that.

Kassie: It was pretty wild, kind of weird though.

Aaron: My favorite song by you guys is “367 Equalizer”, I honestly haven’t heard that much of your music, but I’ve heard that song recently and I thought it was really cool. I know it’s an older song, but do you remember writing it?

Kassie: I do remember writing it, it was kind of a dark time honestly. But I think since then the song has taken on some different meanings. We still play that song a lot! Maybe we’ll play it tonight, maybe not, I don’t know.

Aaron: I love what you do with your voice in that song, it sounds crazy.

Micah: I was reading some setlists and I saw that sometimes you’ve played “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, I’m a very big Velvet Underground fan. I don’t know if you’re going to play that tonight, but if you did it would be cool!

Sam: Stick around and find out!

Micah: Oh, we’ll be here.

Kassie: Yeah, you can see what setlists we play on setlist.fm, we record them and you can see how often we play each song. You could possibly predict what we’re going to play next by what we’ve played recently, if you want to get really nerdy about it.

Micah: Yeah, I do that a lot! That’s where I found that you played The Velvet Underground’s song.

Kassie: We’ve got thirty songs in rotation right now on this show.

Micah: I think my favorite song of yours... I honestly wasn’t into that strange of music at the time. I was really into New Wave at the time. I’m sure you know Anthony Fantano, I saw you on one of his underrated albums list. He said “these guys mess around with New Wave a lot,” so I told myself I’d check it out. I would play “Betty Dreams of Green Men” on loop all the time. I really love that song. I love all your songs, but that one has definitely been one of my favorites.

Kassie: That’s awesome!

Ian: I like everything on

Gay Disco

a lot, I really love that one.

Micah: Yeah, it’s crazy.

Aaron: Thank you guys so much for talking to us!

Kassie: Okay, awesome!

Aaron: Good luck on your show!

Kassie: Thank you!

The Guerilla Toss show itself was incredible. Their unique style blending noise, psychedelia, new wave, no wave, punk, and experimental rock together played out very well live. They took songs I had already loved and cranked the energy up to eleven. It was incredibly noisy, wild and surprisingly danceable despite all of the chaos. The band’s love of performance and energy really shine through when their music is performed live. If you haven’t listened to Guerilla Toss before, I recommend listening to either their newest record,

Twisted Crystal

or my personal favorite,

GT Ultra

. I’d say both are pretty good entry points to the band.

Thank you to Kassie, Sam, and the rest of Guerilla Toss for giving us the opportunity for an interview and putting on an awesome show. I’ll make sure to catch another show the next time you’re in Texas.

Written by Micah Gonzalez

Photographs by Micah Gonzalez Interviewers: Micah Gonzalez, Ian Craig, Aaron Dailey