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By: Sander van den Driesche
Photos by Alan Swan
Earlier this month I went to Studio 24 in Edinburgh to see The Safety Fire play their first Edinburgh gig as part of another European tour with fellow progressive metal bands Protest the Hero and The Contortionist. I caught up with guitarist Jo Ardiles and had a nice chat with him about touring, the band, and humour in music.
(((o))): Hi Jo, how are things? How’s the tour going so far?
Jo: It’s been a good tour, we’re halfway through now. It’s a bit weird as normally you would do either UK first or last and then Europe, like you’ll do Europe in one chunk and then the UK in one chunk. But we’ve done a bit of Europe, come to the UK for half of it, then back in Europe for the end of it. It’s a little weird, but other than that it’s good to be back with Protest the Hero and The Contortionist again, who are all good friends of ours.
(((o))): This is the third tour you’re doing with Protest the Hero I think?
Jo: This is actually the fourth tour with them. After the third one I thought it would be the last, but here we are. We’re filling in for The Faceless who couldn’t make it. It’s all a bit last minute as we were told about it a week before the tour started.
(((o))): So, you don’t have any obligations preventing you from joining a tour last minute?
Jo: Well our bass player Lori couldn’t make it this tour as he couldn’t get the time off work, as it was too short notice. But luckily everyone else has jobs that we can come in and out of, so we said yes, made sure everything was fine and printed up our own merch, which took a long time, but we managed to do it. It’s all been very last minute, I’m sure we’ve forgotten a million things. We barely had enough time to wash our pants you know!
(((o))): Who’s playing bas for you on this tour then?
Jo: We have the bass on backing tracks. Which is good actually as he doesn’t make any mistakes, he’s never late, he doesn’t complain and doesn’t drink our beer! (laughs). It’s a shame Lori can’t be here, but we really wanted to do the tour. As I said we’ve done three tours with Protest the Hero already and it was nice to be able to hang out with them again.
(((o))): You guys are quite a bit different than The Faceless though, but I think you guys actually fit better on the bill with Protest the Hero and the Contortionist.
Jo: Yeah The Faceless are very heavy, very technical. The thing is that we’ve been around with Protest the Hero quite recently through Europe, so I think whoever was putting the tour package together was thinking to bring in someone a bit different to bring in different people. But I’m more than happy to fill in.
(((o))): How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard you before? Lori previously described it is as “a sex machine gone wrong due to misuse.”
Jo: Hahahaha, that sounds about right! (laughs). It’s always a tough question. If you’re looking for a serious answer I would say progressive metal, but I’m not sure if we really fit in the metal category anymore? The last album had some heavy moments for sure, but maybe we’re now best described as progressive heavy rock. It’s tough putting labels on music as you don’t want to put someone off by labelling something different before they even heard it.
(((o))): Let’s have a little chat about the band’s history. You all met at University or something like that, right?
Jo: When the band started we were all at secondary school. We started when we were like 15 years old. This wasn’t The Safety Fire yet, it was with all the same people, but we called ourselves something different. We started calling ourselves The Safety Fire when we were doing our A levels, we all started to take the band a lot more seriously then. We all took a gap year before going to University and kind of tried to push it a little bit further to see what happened. Then we went to University and couldn’t take much time off, but we still met up often and we released the Sections EP while we were at University. That was as much as we could do with the time that we had. It was tough as everyone was just in different places. Then after that we all started to push it a lot more seriously.
(((o))): Are you all working in jobs you studied in University for? And are your jobs secondary to the band?
Jo: No not really. Well of course our guitarist Dez has as he produces music and that’s what he studied in University. Luckily that kind of job is your own time that you put into it. I studied animation, so I wanted to be more of a concept artist, you know for films and games that sort of stuff. For that kind of job, if you’re freelancing then that’s fine you can come in and out whenever you want and you make money for the work you’ve done, but if I wanted like a proper office job then I wouldn’t be able to get the time to do the touring. Usually in one year, half of the year we’re touring. Luckily for us we don’t have any kids yet or a family that we have to provide for essentially, I mean most of us still live with our parents. It’s not easy at all as with the band we’re not making enough money to support ourselves. Luckily we all have jobs where they either understand or you can come in and out off quite easily.
(((o))): Have you seen that article about Pomplamoose and their tour expenses and lack of money they’ve made during their tour? What are your thoughts on that?
Jo: I’m not sure what being in a band like that is like, because they’re a pretty big indie band, they make a lot of money. But when we’re on tour we try to spend as little as possible. A lot of the things they said they lost money on, we would never lose money on because we wouldn’t be spending money on them. For us selling merchandise is where we’re making money. This tour we went to Ireland, which we have never been to before and that’s like 13 years of being a band and Ireland is next door, how have you never been to Ireland? That’s insane! But the ferry costs so much, because when you get there you have to sell a certain amount of merch or you’re making a loss. Regarding this article, I didn’t really read it a lot, but I saw a lot of people saying there’s no way that they should be spending that much money.
(((o))): So, how was the first time in Ireland then?
It was great! It was a bit weird as we had people coming up to us, like this guy in Dublin for example who said he’s seen us three times, in like small gigs we played in London. It’s really nice to know that people will travel to come and see you if we can’t make it to their country or whatever. But Ireland is great. Dez and Sean have family there so we had family and friends come down who we hadn’t seen in a while. We got to spend a nice day together as well as we had a day off in Dublin. But yeah, we played some really good shows; great turn out, nice reception.
(((o))): It’s nice to see more and more bands making their way over to Ireland as they always seem to be the place in Europe bands not always go to.
Jo: Yeah absolutely.
(((o))): As your last album came out in 2013, I take it you’re working on new material?
Jo: Yes we are. We were meant to start recording in December, but because of the last minute tour we have to push it back a little bit. The plan is to get a new album out next year, as early as we can get it pretty much.
(((o))): With Dez being a music producer, I take it he records and produces everything for The Safety Fire?
Jo: For the last album Mouth of Swords we did the vocals at Britannia Row Studios in Fulham. Pink Floyd did a load of stuff there which was quite cool. We recorded the drums in a separate place somewhere, and we did all the guitars at Dez’s house, as it’s cheap to do it there and we can blast them out quickly. So there’s no need to pay a big studio to do those. I think we’re probably going to do something similar again for the next album. Then we get Jens Bogren to master it as he worked with Opeth and on a lot of albums we really like, so that’s cool. The album will be released on InsideOut Music again as well.
(((o))): What about the humour in the band, especially in the videos and band photos? Are you worried that some people might think you’re not taking yourselves seriously?
Jo: It can put some people off, especially if they haven’t seen it before, or they haven’t seen any Facebook posts, as we put on a lot of pictures on there that may be a little bit funny or whatever. If they haven’t seen us some people are a bit like ‘What’s going on? Am I meant to be taking the music seriously?’ I think what we’re trying to say is that it doesn’t really matter what you look like or what you’re doing, the music you’re putting out is the thing.
(((o))): I think it’s great as too many people are taking this music thing way too serious sometimes!
Jo: I can’t always stand it. You watch so many videos and they’re like looking at the cameras all seriously. For me the music speaks for itself. I don’t think we need to be portraying any tough guy attitude or anything like that.
On tour there are so many moments where you’re not doing anything, you’re waiting around for hours, you’re bored out of your mind. So to pass the time you’re doing stupid things. Like earlier this tour our drummer Calvin had just taken a shower and he was on his phone with his towel wrapped around him before he put on any clothes, and Sean just came through and he took a picture of him and he was joking that he needed to put it up as his profile picture on this dating app called Tinder. So we had the picture and then we got to the venue in Gothenburg they had a LED screen and the guy who does the lights for us, who’s our friend, he said to pass him some pictures so he’d put them up in the back while we were playing. And we sent him the picture of Calvin and we said we just want this one. And Calvin didn’t know until he looked over his shoulder at the gig. Yeah that was a lot of fun. (laughs)
(((o))): What releases have made a big impression on you this year? Anything people should listen to?
Jo: I’m not sure if they’ve come out this year or not, but I’ll give you some records I have listened to a lot this year. I really liked Sunbather by Deafheaven. I got into it really late as I thought I was going to hate it as everyone was going crazy about it when it came out. But then I put it on and I was like this is actually pretty good. We saw them when we were in the States with Protest the Hero and Deafheaven was touring with Between the Buried and Me and we had day off in the same venue that they were playing that night, so we got there a day early and watched them. They were really good. At the moment I’m listening to the new Run the Jewels album, Run the Jewels 2, which came out pretty recently.
It’s not always progressive stuff I’m listening to. I go back to classic albums for me like I listen to Between the Buried and Me any day. It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, if I don’t know what to listen to I just put them on. Oh and Childish Gambino, he released an album called Because the Internet, that’s really good. I listen to that a lot as well.
(((o))): Do you listen to any of the old classic progressive stuff, like old King Crimson for example?
Jo: Honestly, I’ve never really tried. I know a few guys in the band do. Hmm, old stuff, does Opeth count? I listen to them a lot. Mastodon as well, mainly the older records. I’m big on their heavier stuff, like Remission.
(((o))): Do you like the older Opeth as well rather than the newer Opeth?
Jo: I haven’t actually listened to the new Opeth yet. I haven’t given it a chance. After Watershed I stopped. But going back to stuff I listen to, Doris by Earl Sweatshirt is another one I really enjoyed.
(((o))): Thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to me Jo, hope you’ll have a good gig and rest of the tour!
Jo: Thanks!
