Audio Karate
by Dave Sharp on Jan 19th, 2010
Audio Karate is name that has hovered just inside my conscience for years. The name was more than familiar, but the music and the men behind it has always loomed just outside of notoriety. However, when the opportunity arose to chat with Art Barrios, I found a great opportunity to devote large blocks of time to listening to and familiarizing myself with Audio Karate. I’m glad I did it. – Dave Sharp
Sinizine.net would like to thank Art Barrios and the rest of Audio Karate for their aid in conducting this interview. Also, our gratitude goes out to the staff at the Modified Arts in Phoenix.
SZ: As usual –can I get your name, what you do in the band.
ART: My name is Art and I play guitar and sing for Audio Karate.
SZ: You guys worked with Bill Stevenson with the recordings and what not. I want to know how that went but I’d also like to know a little about the experience playing with him on the Warped Tour doing the Descendents covers?
ART: I will start with the record. He’s got a studio in Fort Collins, Colorado where he lives so that was awesome because we got to just go out there because we are from LA. We spent like 2 weeks in the studio. We lived there too. It is equipped with like a home sort of. It’s got a kitchen and everything so everyday, just morning to night, we were able to work on the record. He’s awesome. He’s got like perfect pitch so he drilled me, especially on vocals. He was really tough on the drummer. He really brought good performances out of us. He was just tough on us and knew that we could make a good record. The Warped Tour thing; I think the last four or five shows Punk Rock Karaoke joined and I had seen on their roster that they did Myage from the Descendents and I’m like, “I want to do it, but it would it be sweet if I could get Bill to play the drums” so I talked to him. I’m like, “Hey, I just signed up to do Myage from you guys and do you want to do the drums for it?” Bill’s a weird guy and he said, “Yeah, maybe, all right, I don’t know I will be over there right now.” Luckily his wife was over there and she’s really nice; she got him to go over there. And then yeah, he did it. He was iffy about doing it because he didn’t think he would do it well but he did it great. It was awesome. It was totally good.
SZ: How many times have you played the Warped Tour?
ART: We did last summer and we did the summer before so it was our second summer doing it.
SZ: Has it been a cool experience?
ART: Yeah it’s always awesome. The first year we did it was just one week. We were in the Midwest like Kansas where it was 100 percent humidity. It was horrible, horrible conditions in this van so it was murder. Even with that it was the most fun time we ever had. This year was the same thing in the van. The weather wasn’t as bad because it was the end of August. We were on the east coast. We did two and a half weeks and that was even better because we had made friends and we had more friends. We got to party on buses and stay out of the heat. It’s an amazing experience, it really is. Sense of community is fucking awesome.
SZ: You guys played Warped Japan didn’t you?
ART: Yeah we did the first one last January.
SZ: How was that?
ART: That’s like the best of both worlds because you get Warped Tour and then you get Japan, which is like the most amazing country I have ever been to, so you get this great combo. You get taken care of. Everything gets taken care of. The hotel we stayed at was way too nice for us to stay at. We got in trouble actually. It was awesome. That was like an amazing time.
SZ: Lady Melody I noticed, especially compared to Space Camp, has a really new feeling of maturity and technicality. I really noticed that. It seems like a big step. I was wondering what your intentions were going into the recording of Lady Melody?
ART: For us I guess it was sort of a conscious and sort of subconscious decision to do it. We knew that we wanted to step away from the first record, which was a little more like towards the vein of pop punk. We were like, “Let’s just do something that sort of represents us now.” So we’ve been listening to different records more kind of indie stuff. So we were like, “All right, we will make this kind of record.” We couldn’t help but make the record and we were also trying to make a different record. That was definitely a different approach to like make it more musical and do some different stuff, make it a little more complex – more interesting, you know?
SZ: Are you going to take the same approach going into the next album or do you feel like you’ve found your niche right now?
ART: I don’t know. We’ve talked about that a lot. We already started demo stuff. It sounds like it’ll be something like Lady Melody but probably a little more focused. My gripe with Lady Melody is that it is a little eclectic. It is a little here and a little bit of this. My favorite records were like, at least when I was a kid, were like Nevermind and Dookie which like every song was so good but it falls within the same sort of sound. My dream would be to make a record like that where it’s like 11, 12 songs where every song is fantastic but it doesn’t stray too far away from a certain sort of sound that it accomplished. Hopefully we can do something like that. That would be ideal.
SZ: One band I’ve seen Audio Karate compared to a lot is the Ataris. In all honesty I see a lot of comparisons between older stuff in relation to your Space Camp and then the change with their So Long Astoria to Lady Melody. There seems to the same kind of maturity level that’s grown in both of them. They have had a huge leap of success in the last year and whatnot. Is that something you strive for? What are the goals in your band right now?
ART: I don’t know. We’re pretty happy where we are just kind of an indie band. We sell records and we tour. I guess it would be nice to have that kind of success but you hear horror stories about being on majors and stuff like that. We don’t know. We are on Kung-Fu and we are happy with being on Kung-Fu. We don’t know. It is kind of just up in the air. We are going to see where this third record goes. Who knows? But yeah the Ataris comparisons we’ve heard all the time. We hear it less now that the new record (was released). To be honest I have never heard the Ataris until we were done with our 1st record. I think the main thing is that two of their biggest influences are Descendents and Lagwagon and those are our two biggest influences when we first started writing songs so it makes sense that our songs would sound similar to them.
SZ: I don’t really want to pigeonhole you guys. I never would call you punk or emo or anything like that. Names get thrown around left and right. So, if you had the opportunity to have Audio Karate grandfather some sort of new genre what would you call it?
ART: I don’t know. I’ve never been able to really like coin a term but I would like to be, if anything, be a band remembered for being a California band. At least for me, when I hear CA bands I always know they are CA bands before I hear them. There is just something in the singer’s voice or something in this sort of vibe. It goes back to like Beach Boys and its present to like AFI and Red Hot Chili Peppers, even Thrice. I would like to sort of do something in that sort of vein, where we would be remembered as being a great CA band. Plus we are Hispanic so it sort of gives us a different edge I think sometimes. We come from a different background.
SZ: One thing I am trying to do is I am trying to end my interviews with some random question out of this book. So I am going to pick one randomly… Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 5 years to become extremely attractive?
ART: So if I died at like 85, I would die at 80 instead? Sure. I don’t know. Maybe.
SZ: That’s all I’ve got. Is there anything you want to plug? Tell me real quick what that plans are with this tour, maybe where you are at recording, and future tours?
ART: This tour wraps up tomorrow at home in LA. Then we head to England with the Vandals for two weeks. Then we are going to just be home working on a third record. Try to write a good record, see what happens.
Interviewer: Dave Sharp