11.10.05 - Volume 1, Episode #11 - Length 35:24
Counterfist was originally conceived in 1999. The past 6 years has created a dense, complex rock that touches the deepest primordial fibers of your soul. Listen to find out what makes them one of Seattle’s hardest rock bands.
Counterfist is: George – vocals, Tony – guitar, Rodney – bass, Adam – drums
AAC 32.8 MB
MP3 32.4 MB
Rodney: Independent music in Seattle is pretty great now they’re a lot of bands working really hard. It’s a good time to be alive in Seattle right now. You got the heavy, you got the hardcore, you got the punk; it’s all here, man. It’s all here in this town. It still is, always will be.
Tony: It was me and an old bassists. And Adam Clark where the first three original members. And we met up in Seattle. Starting playing, just the three of us doing some original tunes and some cover tunes and went through a couple of singers. That worked out for about a year before we originally got rid of the original singer and brought on George. He started singer for us; took over my position which was the singer at the time which was terrible (laughter). Now George is singing and throughout the process we got ride of a bassist and brought on Rodney over there.
Rodney: Hi.
Tony: That’s Rod. We actually had a keyboardist for a while as well. Figured out eventually we didn’t really need the keyboardist. Now, here we are just the remaining four of us.
( ♪ Ride – from the Album Chiral ♪ )
George: I don’t know. I guess it just carries over from being young and pissed off and wild. You just never really grow up when you are always, you know, you’ve been playing since you where 12 years old. It’s the one thing that I have never change in my life since I was that young. It just carries over with that. If I had quit music I probably would have gone onto college and done the school thing and been a boring desk job type of guy that I actually do every single day (laughter). I think a lot carried over from when you are young.
Adam: I think I just feed off people who feed off our music to drive me to write the music.
George: That’s what I meant.
Adam: To have the emotion, right?
Rodney: Absolutely.
Tony: In my performance it’s easy to pick up on what the fans dig and what the fans don’t dig.
Adam: But the emotion of music just being it’s…
Tony: You can filter things that process. As far as influences go, they just come and go. When we started the band there wasn’t such a group as Muse for instance which I am particularly into these days; listening to a lot of Muse and it seems to be influencing my guitar playing here and there, but that wasn’t an influence back when I was, like George said, 12 years old picking up your guitar. The only thing that was really around at the time was Metallica, ya’ know, so you all start with Enter Sandmand or you learn some old Led Zeppelin or something like that and that becomes an influence, even though it’s not your regular band you listen to when you jogging to school or whatever.
Rodney: Yeah, the intensity definitely comes from the crowd though, for sure. It’s definitely harder to play for people just standing there watching you. If people are moving around and digging it you definitely feed off of that.
George: And it works the other way too. When it’s not happening.
Rodney: That’s true.
George: When there’s people not moving around obviously the music is enough to move you and stuff and it should be at least if it’s not then your kinda’ doing the wrong thing, but if the crowd isn’t into at all or if nobody claps or something like that it’s really easy to get bored or not be up to optimum. When you dress up or go out of your way to look different than if you are just walking down the street then it carries it own persona over so you don’t have to really, it’s not that you don’t have to do the work as much, you know what I mean? It kinda’ speaks for itself and then you can just focus on doing the singing for me. War paint works (laughter) Scare the shit out of them.
"Independent music in Seattle is pretty great now, they're a lot of bands working really hard. It's a good time to be alive in Seattle right now. " - Rodney, Bass
