Chords for Sleater-Kinney - Interview - Trackers

Welcome back to Crackers.
Slater and Kinney have been creating music that's fierce, original, and a definite alternative to the current trend of Barbie girl pop.
Please welcome the very rocking Slater Kinney. _
_ _ Hi so much for coming on.
Thank you for having us on.
Yay!
And now you guys have a new album coming out in April, May?
I forget.
In late April.
Or May.
It's called All Hands on the Bad One, right?
Now tell me what's that album been like?
How's the process been?
Is it all done and finished and ready to go?
It's pretty much all done and finished.
It was a rather quick record to record.
It took us only under three weeks.
Three weeks to record a whole?
That's not normal.
It's pretty fast.
Is it?
We work really fast.
_ We worked hard and went in extremely prepared I think.
So that it would be smooth sailing.
Now when you're coming up with the concept of an album, do you write?
I mean what comes first?
Like the songs come first?
Or do you guys collaborate about sort of the theme of it?
I mean is there sort of one theme kind of centrally running through the whole album?
The songs really come first.
And then sometimes we feel like we hit on a song.
Like we hit on All Hands on the Bad One.
We felt like that was going to tie everything together.
Yeah.
We wrote that one.
And how do you guys find time to do this?
Because I know you guys have these incredibly diverse lives.
You've got tons of other passions going on.
I mean you guys all went to college and you guys are going to grad school maybe and all this other stuff.
How do you find time to tie it all together to come and produce this amazing band?
Well, it's not really an issue when you love something so much and you're passionate about something.
And so we need this in terms of having an artistic outlet.
So it just becomes easier to make those decisions when you love something so much.
And did you guys always know that [Bb] this is what you wanted to do?
Because it's not like there are a million rock and roll girl bands out there to really just like root for and that sort of thing.
Is this something that you guys struggled [N] with?
I think there's a point in your life where you have to start making decisions about what direction you're going to go in.
We all went to college.
We all studied.
And I think probably in the back of our minds we knew that music was going to play a part in our lives.
But once we started playing together and once we started making records, you have to dedicate yourself [Bb] to it.
It really takes over your whole life.
And you [Eb] have to really [N] be passionate about it and give up a lot of other things to make this [Bb] work.
And you guys aren't only passionate about your music, but the whole stance of it all.
You know that you guys are on an independent [Bbm] label.
You have been courted by a lot of major labels and yet you've sort of walked [N] away from that.
Why?
I think that for us, having control over what we do is really important.
And we feel like we [E] can really do what we want.
We can write [Gb] the music that we want and have fun with it where we are right now.
So we don't want to mess that up, really.
Yeah, [Bb] we have a lot of control over [Bbm] our image and how people present us.
[Eb] And no one controls the kinds of songs we write or how the production of the record is going to be.
And I think that's an important message to send out is to take into your own hands the means of production.
But that's got to be really hard.
As you're getting more and more popular, you have more and more [Bb] people coming up to you with these great ideas
to be on a Gap ad or with a big [Eb] major label.
Is that hard to [N] keep pushing that away or to go your own path?
I think that for us, it's just learning what we really need and what we really want.
And making this music is what is really important to us.
Other stuff is fun, but it's not the core of what we do.
I think we also allow ourselves to make mistakes, too.
We've made bad decisions and we're not perfect.
And we sort of learn as we go along.
We're just kind of maneuvering through this complex weed.
And I know that when I said that you guys were going to be on our show,
we had a lot of just wonderfully excited young women.
Just like, oh my god, I love them.
You have these devoted [E] girl fans that just love you.
How does [Eb] that feel and how important is that to you and your [G] music?
I think it's really important [D] to us.
We feel really lucky to have the fans that we do.
We're really connected to them when we play.
We [Gb] really get inspired from them when we play live, especially.
_ And we hope that people who come to [N] see us, young women who come to see us,
maybe get an idea in their head that they want to play music.
And they see us doing it and they think, I can do that, too.
I can start a band.
I can express myself that way.
Or do anything.
Or just be confident in their life.
There is a certain confidence we want in people. _
Take it all by storm.
That's great, you guys.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having us. _ _ _
_ _ _ Later in the show, we'll have more [Db] music from Slater-Kinney.
And right after the break, we'll [Eb] give you the trackers' take on which of the latest [Db] spring films are worth your hard-earned money.
So stick around.
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