Calibretto 13 rocks!!!
Calibretto 13 is my favourite christian band in the whole world. umm no the universe. anyways am going to devote this page to them. so far I just got an interview about them and their site ok here is
The Interview
Bundles of Sticks for the Fire
by Kindred Winecoff
Cornerstone 2000 was an insane, psychotic, hellish trip into the heart of alternative contemporary Christian
music: 38,000 often pre or barely pubescent kids, and more "Abortion is Mean" and "Jesus is cool" t-shirts than I
have ever seen in all my life. And it seemed like half of the people there were in some band or another, or personally
knew at least one or two of the bands. The whole thing seemed kind of silly, but the music was good enough often
enough to save it (maybe).
I was there was to talk with one of Tooth and Nail's newest and most untalked about bands — Kokomo, Indiana's
Calibretto 13. When they played primarily their Modern Lovers styled acoustic punk rock on the pre-fest Tooth
and Nail Day, they impressed their audience so much that they drew one of the largest crowds on the Underground
Stage later that week (a set that was shortened by the fact that Calibretto kindly gave half of their set to Boot to
Head's Side Walk Slam). Calibretto once again charmed the crowd with their boyish energy and attitude, and then I
cornered the trio and made them answer questions about gay people, The Dead Milkmen, Tooth and Nail, Rush,
censorship, and other stupid and important topics. All of the band members were present, but I couldn't tell who was
who on tape, so all of their responses are blended together to form one nice, compact answer. I hope it makes sense,
and probably so do they. Oh, and Calibretto's T&N debut is called Enter the Danger Brigade (out October 24th);
Joey sings and plays guitar, Chris sings and plays drums, and Aaron sings and plays bass. . .Kindred
"What's up with the new record?"
"The Christian market didn't like our songs. Some of them were potential problems. So, Tooth and Nail's
distribution company axed them. We used some words that they didn't like. Like 'crap' and 'whore.' We tried to deal
with [censorship] some on the album, but they didn't go for that either."
"You've been accused of gay-bashing..."
"Oh, gosh. I don't want to get into that... What's the misunderstanding? That we're gay-bashers?"
"Just that you're really down on homosexuals."
"For the interview, could you print up the lyrics to the song ['Little Gay Man']?"
[Ed. "Here you go."]
Little Gay Man
Well there was a little gay man as "happy as can be."
And one day that little gay man went on my property.
Well, watching that little gay man made me so very mad.
So I looked at that little gay man...
And I called him a little fag.
I said, "Hey little gay man, get off my property.
Hey little gay man, I hate your guts can't you see?
I don't care if God still loves you, don't even come near me."
Oh yeah, I'm so cool. I just told a little gay man to kiss off.
Am I a Christian or what?
As the little gay man was walking away I realized I done a bad thing today.
I said, "Wait little gay man, I'm sorry for what I said.
Come back I want to be your friend!"
I said, "Hey little gay man, God still loves you.
Hey little gay man, yes it's true.
Hey little gay man, God still loves you.
Hey little gay man, I do too.
Hey little gay man, God still loves you.
Hey little gay man, you can like girls again.
Hey little gay man, God still loves you.
Hey little gay man, drop that sin."
"The first half is a hypocritical Christian thinking that he's doing the right thing by condemning a sinner."
"In first person, right?"
"Right. I'm [the character in the song] in my yard, there's a gay man there, and I'm like 'Get out of my yard, faggot.'
And then I [still the character in the song] realize that 'hey, I'm a sinner too. Everyone's a sinner, and sin is sin. God
loves this person just as much as He loves me. His sin is no greater than mine. And so I say, 'hey little gay man,
God loves you too.' It's a two-verse song: first verse, he hates the gays. Second verse, he realizes that's wrong, and
doesn't, and shows them love. I wrote it when I was like 14. [laughs] Plus, at the end of the song, we say, THIS IS
NOT A GAY-BASHING SONG!"
"You've been compared to the Violent Femmes. Is that accurate?"
"I can see that on the EP, but not on the new album. Now we've matured a lot past that. Actually, we are getting
compared a lot now to the Dead Milkmen."
"Yeah, I was getting ready to say that you sound a lot like the Dead Milkmen to me. What are your major
influences?"
"Chris' is Rush. I [Joey] love the Violent Femmes, that's why our EP was like that. I don't even own a Dead
Milkmen CD. We had this sound before we even heard the Dead Milkmen. It just kind of happened that way. I
[Aaron] have only been playing [bass] for two years, so I'm influenced by pretty recent people. John from Squad 5-0
is amazing. I took some cues from his playing. Op-Ivy too [Operation Ivy, Tim Armstrong's ska band before Rancid
and one of the bands that put Lookout Records on the map]. I was into that stuff, so that's where some of my
influences come from. Dead Kennedys are cool. Our new songs are going to have a lot of Dead Kennedys kind of
stuff on them."
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah, our newer, newer songs that we're going to be doing soon. More the music than the lyrics. And it won't be
dramatic, it won't be like 90 Lb. Wuss."
"So, musically, with the newer stuff are you going to try to go for a more hard-edged approach?"
"It's always going to be clean. It'll never be distorted. And I don't think it'll be that dramatic. The new songs, the
ones we are going to be recording. They are intended for the next album, so it will kind of be a taste of what to
expect from that. One of them is called 'Christian Hate Mail,' and another is called 'Goodbye Cruel World, and they
are two of the songs that are supposed to be on the next album out in like a year from now. But I like [the
up-coming full length] a lot... I listen to it all the time. I guess that's kind of weird. [everyone laughs] We're
awesome! [more laughs] But we play a style that I wish other bands played, so I could listen to them."
"What would you call your style?"
"We call ourselves dork rock, 'cause we're dorky. We sing about dorky things like video games, but dork rock could
be Weezer, too. I don't know, we're named after a comic book character, if that says something about us. I always
call us 'clean, punk-influenced rock and roll.' What do they call the Dead Milkmen? There's a band called the
Hi-Fives that are supposed to be a lot like us. Whatever you want to call it. It's fast-paced. Hey, maybe we invented
our own style...do you guys think we did that?"
"Huh?"
"Then we'd have to come up with a new term for it."
"No, no we didn't. Everything was done ten years ago."
"No, we could name it after something in our song... like 'rock and roll' [the name for the musical genre] was in a
song. It could be like... 'High Five' style."
"I take it that that is the first single?"
"Yeah, we're shocked that T&N didn't put that on [the upcoming] Penalty Box [sampler] actually. They put a
different song on there."
"Which one, 'Get a Life?'"
"No, 'Joe's Gonna Die,' which isn't even going to be on the album. It's going to be on the EP [coming out after the
full length]. But I don't think we're supposed to tell you that. We might not even use it for the EP now, the only
reason that they used it is because Bill Power [T&N exec] thought we wanted to use all the songs that we weren't
going to be able to use anywhere."
"So, it could be a rare track, huh?"
"Man, that would suck."
"It would be cool, though!"
"See it pop up on ebay in a couple of years for like 50 bucks..."
"Yeah!"
"Tooth and Nail seems willing to help us out on the EP though; they've been good. When we say 'Christian market'
or 'Christian enterprise' we are not bashing Tooth and Nail. We really like Tooth and Nail. They've explained all the
reasons why our songs were cut [essentially due to puritanical standards held by T&N's distributor and the CBA in
general], and it's understandable, so we're not going to make a big deal out of it."
"I was talking with the Deadlines guys less than a week ago, and, you know, they had to change their album cover,
and they said 'look what happened to bands that refused to do that, like Roadside Monument. They just died.' They
didn't sell any records. They didn't really have many fans at the time. But are you ever tempted to do that? To just
blow them off and say 'Fine, we're not going to sell our record in GospeLand Bookstore?'"
"We thought about it. When we first started getting screwed up, and our songs were getting taken off...the album
cover is not what we want...everything is getting taken off, [and a bunch of] little, tiny things, I called Brandon. I
was mad. I was like, 'Why are you guys doing this? You knew what you were getting into when you signed us.' And
he basically laid it down and said, 'Listen, do you want to stay underground? Tooth and Nail is a good opportunity
for you, but you've gotta compromise a little bit. We're tired of putting out controversial bands because we're tired of
other T&N bands suffering because one guy gets his way.' And he said a lot of things that made a lot of sense. And I
want fans. We want to get out there and spread our message. So if we have to tame our tongues a little bit, water
some things down, then so be it for now."
But we still do anything we want in concert. We still do this one song, 'Sleep Around.' It's all about…sleeping
around. We're not going to stop playing that because it's not on the album. It's a good song, and people request it."
"What's 'Uncle Sam' about?"
"Just about how America has no values, no morals. It's about my perverted uncle, and how he hurts children, etc. It's
a metaphor that's basically about the country, how we've lost our morals. We're hypocrites. We claim to be a
Christian nation and we're not. It's sickening, I think. It's sad, how far America's gone down the drain. We're not
judge and jury...we're not pointing fingers. People think that we like to just point fingers, but we're sinners as well,
but sin never needs to be tolerated. We screw up, but we don't make excuses for it. We don't justify it. And now
America justifies everything. There are Do It Yourself divorce kits now, and it's no big deal."
"We were never a band for sugar-coating things. Why not just tackle the subject at hand, and get straight to the
point?"
"Plus, I think that song was a good opportunity for Joe to use the word 'whore.' [everyone laughs]"
"Are you going to write more political songs?"
"I hate political bands."
"But you just said you loved the Dead Kennedys!"
"I don't like a band that's always talking about politics. It gets old, but I don't mind having a song here and there.
We have a couple of songs that are political, but we're not all about the politics. We'll always have joke songs, and
we'll have songs that mean something, that we hope will make people think."
"What about the idea that the underground, which you are still a part of in my mind, in and of itself is a political
movement? Not necessarily by what it says, but certainly by what it does. Because it does try to undermine the
establishment, it does try to undermine the schlock that's playing on the Main Stage right now."
"As far as punk philosophy, you mean?"
"Sure."
"A lot of it seems to be just trend or fashion right now. Even as far as the underground goes. Like, it's cool if it's
underground, not because they're trying to make a stand or trying to do anything, but just because no one else has
heard it, and you've heard it first. I don't know for sure, I'm just saying this, but a lot of kids that are in the
underground movement are in it because it's cool or something. There's no anarchy movement or movement against
the mainstream, or at least not in the Christian scene."
"Yeah, I guess I don't know where we stand in this. I guess we're underground because we're not known very well,
but we've never followed the movement or anything. We just play. We started the band with aspirations to be a hit.
Maybe in some sense we sold out at the very start, but I think we just had ambitions. We didn't do it for money, we
didn't do it for fans. We just had something new, or at least new to us that we wanted to get out there. We wanted to
play music for people, and we wanted people to like it. And we have a message, too."
"As a band, we're not like 'support the scene!' We couldn't care less. We want to play David Letterman, we want to
be on Conan O'Brian. We have things to say to people."
"Hey, just as long as it's not Leno, man, I don't care."
[The group all makes puking sounds at the same time]
"No! No Leno!"
"O'Brian is where we're headed. Letterman's lost it in his later days."
"Letterman still has his moments, man."
"Yes he does, but Conan O'Brian cracks me up."
"Umm, I just lost whatever I was going to say next."
"It's probably a sexual question..."
"No, no, that's not it."
"How much batteries does that thing have?"
"It's got a lot, cause I just put in new ones."
"What about tape?"
"I just put in a new tape."
"We like to babble a lot."
"Alright, give me some back history on you guys. Like, did you play in bands before?"
"Ohhh, yeah. I played in a bunch of bands. And those guys played in some bands. We were in a band together, and
then me and him were in a band together."
"No, me and you were in a band together."
"Me and you were in a band together, then me and him. Then all three of us."
"Joe was in a band with me. Joe was in a band with Aaron. Then we all got together."
"Yeah. But not in that order. And this is the first time it has actually sounded good, heh heh heh. The other
times...oh boy."
What is the message of the band? What do you stand for? What are you trying to say or do?"
"I don't think we have just one message."
"In a summed up thing, I guess it's like most bands, but we just have a strong stance against immorality. Sexual
immorality, the way guys treat girls, stuff like that. And it has a lot more to do with the way people treat people
than anything else."
"And we're out to have a good time. We're out to have fun."
"So you're one of those 'Why can't we all get along?' bands?"
"Yeah, sure. More like, 'Don't do this anymore, and we'll be happier.'"
"We are Christians and we're trying to live Christian lives, but we want to entertain. That's why we have a lot of
humor. We're not out to be a totally serious band. We have a serious message and one that needs to be heard, but we
want people to enjoy it."
"Part of the appeal of you guys is [Joe's] dorky voice..."
"[everyone laughs] That's true. I mean, I do have a dorky...well, I've never heard it described as 'dorky' before, but…"
"He has trained himself. I think it kind of has a Gordan Gano [lead singer of the Violent Femmes] feel."
"I think a lot of the appeal has to do with the drummer, and I [Chris] sing so much and play so well, and I play so
much like the master, Neil Pierce [drummer from Rush]. Plus, I'm stunningly handsome. And I'm so modest, is the
thing. You'll never meet anyone more more humble than Chris Thomas."
"Are you guys going to try to do different stuff, or stay in the same vein?"
"We're not going to make any drastic changes like some bands. It ticks people off and it ticks us off, so..."
"Our next album is going to have horns. An accordian, maybe some violin."
"I think we're going to go ska. Maybe industrial or something. Like ska, goth, industrial or something."
"It'll be emo-ska. Cause emo's cool right now."
"Yeah, emo-ska, that works for me."
"Maybe get some of the ZAO-type vocals in sometimes."
"Wait, don't tell anyone it's ska, say it's 'rock with horns' 'cause ska's not too cool anymore."
"Anything else?"
"Wait, I can think of something witty, hold on."
"Dude, we tried the witty thing a little while ago and it didn't work."
"We've got to live up to the 'dork rock' thing don't we?"
"Yeah, so say something stupid."
"Have we been dorky enough so far?"
"Is that it?"
"Eat your Wheaties."
"Eat your Wheaties? Please don't say that. Please don't write any of this down."
[Then they all start singing "please don't let the sun go down on your anger."]
"Hey, wait, with this article, are we going to get bashed on the internet?"
"Yeah, you're going to be bashed terribly."
"Are we going to be like, 'Man, this is totally nothing like it was?'"
"That's never happened to us, so this could be our first."
"We didn't say that! We didn't do that! Aaron is NOT the handsome one!"