Brian Klemm – Suburban Legends – Interview Exclusive
Written by Matt Phelps
Sunday, 11 December 2011 05:00
Introducing Brian Klemm: Sole guitarist with Californian Ska band Suburban Legends. If SL had a motto it would surely be “Always look on the bright side of life.” An infectious live band with seemingly limitless energy their feelgood tunes and anthems of positivity could even put a smile on the face of the most hardened member of the Judean Peoples Front or even The People’s Front Of Judea for that matter. Klemm-O-Tronic was recently in the UK with his bandmates touring as special guests to the mighty Bowling For Soup and I got the chance to catch up with the six string messiah/very naughty boy the day after the opening show in Birmingham to get the lowdown on what’s happening with Suburban Legends right now, where they’ve been and where they’re going. Read on for exclusive insight into the LIFE OF BRIAN…
Hi, Brian, first off I’ll say welcome back to the UK
Why thank you, it’s good to be back.
I caught you guys last night in Birmingham. I thought it went really well, how do you feel it went yourself?
Ahh good you know, we’re just getting the sea legs back because we haven’t been on tour for a while because we’ve been busy recording our new record. Just doing festivals and one offs so we’re just getting back into tour mode. But it’s all good. I was nervous going into it but after it was Yeah, glad to get started again.
Was that a new guitar for you last night? I normally see you with Aaron Barrett’s old white one.
Yeah I did have Aaron’s old white one but I actually gave it to a fan. I signed it and Aaron signed it so yeah, new guitar.
You were only just here at the beginning of the year weren’t you with Reel Big Fish, I caught you in Exeter that time. How do you find touring the UK?
Oh I love it, Oh my God. We try and come here at least once a year. But it’s so cool we’ve got to come back a second time. I’ve been chomping at the bit ready to come back here. I love, love, love touring over here so much.
You love our TV programmes don’t you? Bit of a big fan of Dr Who?
Yeah we’ve been watching it on the bus. We just started Season One of the reboot. I’m actually a really big sci-fi nut. Our trumpet player is actually obsessed with Dr Who. One of our fans let us borrow a box set, series one through to four of the new shows. We watched it for about three or four hours straight today and I’m in love. I’m gonna go home and buy it. But yeah I do love quite a few of your programmes. I love Eastenders and the Mighty Boosh.
You did have a one off headline show booked over here for Exeter which has sadly been cancelled…….
We were so pissed cos we were banking on that show and it would’ve been our first time headlining out here. We’re in the process of filling that date. We’re just waiting to hear back from our agent, gotta wait and see. We’ll pr
obably come back soon and do a headlining tour.
Yeah you really need to. Seeing you last night was really good but just having thirty minutes to play is such a short time.
You know, every time we come over here people ask when we’re gonna come back and headline but we’re so scared that if we announce a headline tour no one will show up (laughs)
I don’t think that would happen. I’ve seen you a few times now and you always get a good response over here. I think the first time I saw you guys live was in 2009 with Reel Big Fish. Was that the first time you came over?
No, we actually did a whole punk rock tour in 2005 I think it was . We came over for about two weeks but the whole internet thing wasn’t that big for us then and people didn’t have much access to our music so no one really knew who we were so we only had a couple people at each show. But then we came back in 2009 and did some proper shows, a good support tour and then we came back again earlier this year. Hopefully we can get offered a tour then we can come back here.
Like I say I saw you in 2009 then earlier this year and now again with Bowling For Soup and I’ve gotta say that each time the crowd, even if they don’t know you and your material, they’re into it almost immediately because of your, if you’ll excuse the pun, “infectious” appeal.
(Laughs) Yeah we’re really lucky that we’re such an interactive band. Even if you don’t like the music we can still entertain you and make you part of the show….and of course we’re such devilishly handsome dudes.
And so skinny too, as BFS were pointing out last night
Yeah, well believe it or not we all work out a lot but we just don’t put on muscle. Just a lot of cardio and sit ups and stuff. But that’s all going down the drain cos we’ve been drinking an awful lot of beer here (laughs)
You get plenty of exercise on stage too what with all the choreography you do up there. How long does it take to get all that worked out and nailed?
Well I wouldn’t be the one to talk to about that because I play my guitar and I don’t do all the choreography because me dancing is not a pretty thing. I’m all tall and awkward. But I know a whole lot of thought goes into it from our trumpet player and trombone player that they work a
lot on it. We have a rehearsal space with mirrors so they can practice the choreography in front of the mirrors to see how it looks.
When you were here at the start of the year with RBF I picked up a copy of your tour sampler album with a couple of new songs on it alongside a few of the old ones?
Ah yes the ‘Getting Down To Business’ album. We put that together because we had wanted to get the new album done and finished to have for the tour but we’ve been spending so much time on it trying to get everything just right cos it’s our first time doing a full-on actual Ska album for such a long time. It should be finished in November.
It’ll be more of a return to the older style of Suburban Legends then?
Yeah, I don’t know whether you’ve heard our album ‘Rump Shaker’ but some of the songs for this new one are actually songs that I wrote that didn’t make it or didn’t get finished for ‘Rump Shaker’. Like that song ‘Take the Next Step’ from ‘Getting Down To Business’ and actually the song ‘Getting Down To Business’ those were two ‘Rump Shaker’ songs.
Going back to the beginnings of Suburban Legends, maybe not too many people are aware but the late Jimmy Sullivan from Avenged Sevenfold was actually in SL for a time.
Yeah, he was our drummer yeah. Growing up our singer Vince and I grew up playing in bands with the guys from Avenged Sevenfold. Brian the guitar player, Synyster, he, Vince and I were in bands growing up playing blues and stuff, playing coffee shops and restaurants and we were in a marching band together too.
Have you got a story about Jimmy that you could give us that maybe people haven’t heard before from the Suburban Legends early days?
A story about Jimmy….. He was a very…he was Jimmy, an incredible talent, we just had an insane time. I was in middle school I think and a car would be pulling up picking their kids up from school and Jimmy’s getting all ready to go jump on the hood of one of the parents cars and just “ARGHHHHHHHHHHH!”. He would literally jump onto the hood of the car and put his face right up against the windshield and he would do that for no reason. (Laughs) Definitely quite a character.
Another thing that played quite a big part in your early day is playing in Disneyland. How did that get started in the first place?
Our trumpet player Aaron, he used to work at Disneyland and managed to meet a contact for the entertainment and kinda made nice with him and told him what we did and kept sending him videos and calling and he kept saying “Yeah we’ll check it out sometime”. Then all of a sudden they saw a video of what we did and called us and asked if we could come in for an audition. So we went in and did the audition and it was like a proper business audition in a long white room and there was four chairs right at the end of it with people in suits watching us playing. So what happened was we did the audition, stopped playing and then the suits were like whispering to each other and then said they’d like to offer us a second audition and it would be a paid audition and this time in the park. So it just kind of happened from there. Then once I ran into to the head of Disney one day in the park and I went and said thank you for having us and he was like “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you guys, I wanted you to play”. So we did an entire summer in Downtown Disney, doing four sets a night, six days a week for the entire 
summer. If you look at our wikipedia page someone actually worked it out how many sets we played in the year, was something like nine hundred sets I think. An insane number anyway.
Have you ever played any of the other parks? Tokyo? Paris?
We’ve been wanting to get into Tokyo Disney and Paris Disney but nothing yet. There’s no reason why we couldn’t, it’s just a matter of them knowing about us. We’ve been trying to get our name along to someone on the parks but hopefully they’ll get wind of us at some point. The funny thing about the Paris Disney is the fact they they were looking for bands and we were talking to the head of Disney bookings in California and said was saying Europe would be perfect, we’re gonna put in a word and try and get you into Paris Disney but I guess it just fizzled out, it didn’t come to fruition. Shame cos I would love to, I’d love to go to Paris Disney anyway.
I want to talk a bit about your musical influences outside of Ska and Suburban Legends if we could.
The two things that I’m really intense with in my musical love is that I’m a huge Kiss fan. Ever since I was in like sixth grade and I buy all their little trinkets and everything they slap their name on. I have fountains that spit blood with their faces, I have cardboard cut outs and my first tattoo was actually Paul Stanley from Kiss on my right calf. Then I got Gene on my left calf. They’re not very good tattoos but I have a leg sleeve and the guy was like “Do you want me to cover up the Paul Stanley?” I’m like NO! Leave it! (laughs) And the other one is I’m massively obsessed with Wu Tang. I have a Wu Tang W tattooed on my left arm. I’m wearing a Wu Tang shirt right now (laughs).
I was asking because I saw you last year when you were over here playing with Big D and the Kids Table and I’m sure when you were tuning up you started cranking out the riff to ‘Hollywood’ by Junkyard. Are you a big sleazy kinda rock fan?
Oh I’m a huge Glam fan. I have a big connection to all the hair bands because I used to work for a production company that dealt with all the hair bands. that’s actually how we got on our management company. Do you know the band Ratt? I’m really good friends with
the drummer Bobby Blotzer, he wrote a book and he actually put me in his book. He loved us so much that he contacted the management company that we’re on now and said you gotta check this band out. And this company we’re on they used to manage Cinderella, they used to manage Ratt, Motley Crue, they manage Nickelback so Bobby actually came to see us a bunch of times, down at Disney or in Hollywood. I’m also friends with Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns, Warrant, so the riffs that I love to play in soundcheck are things like ‘Rip And Tear’ by L.A. Guns and ‘Where There’s A Whip There’s A Way’ by Faster Pussycat. I love playing those cock rock riffs. There’s nothing more manly about it that just a big open ballsy chord. Yeah I’m a big Glam fan definitely.
You mentioned Warrant there.
Yeah I’m good friends with Jerry Dixon and Erik Turner. Turner and I actually got tattooed together. That was at Jerry Dixon’s house, we were talking about the music business and Jerry was like “You know sometimes you just need to break a guitar and say fuck you to the music business.” I said Jerry I don’t break guitars and he grabbed this old acoustic and he goes “Break this guitar right now! Just smash it!” And so Jerry Dixon made me smash a guitar (laughs)
I was gonna mention Jani Lane there. Sadly lost him this year of course. Did you know Jani at all?
Well I did a project with Jani. Saints Of The Underground.
Oh yeah? That was with Bobby Blotzer as well wasn’t it?
Yeah. I was one of the executive producers of that record. I put that together…… It was Keri Kelli who was Alice Cooper’s guitar player, he played for L.A. Guns and Bulletboys too I think. And there was Robbie Crane from Ratt. First it was gonna be Jani Lane singing then Jani was out and it was gonna be Phil Lewis singing then it was gonna be John Corabi singing then it went back to Jani and so yeah Jani did that record.
What was it like working with him?
Well I wasn’t there for his session but Bobby told me the stories. Like Jani tore up the front of Bobby’s yard because he was wasted. so I didn’t personally work with him because I was involved in the deal pretty much through Bobby but you know it’s really sad because he was a great song writer and a great vocalist. And it’s a good record.
Yeah yeah, I have it, it’s a great album, very underrated.
You should check out this other album I did. We did this Judas Priest tribute album called ‘Hell Bent Forever’. That’s how I started getting to be friends with all these hair bands because I was calling them up and saying Hey if I give you money will you do a track? From there they just started coming out to see my band play, I got to be friends with Warrant and all the Warrant wives would come and see us play.
I want to talk about Aaron Barrett too for a minute. there’s on
e question I just have to ask you. Do you have Aaron Barrett’s lips tattooed on your chest?
(Much laughter) Yes I do!
WHY?
Aaron’s my best friend, you know. We used to be room mates and we used to live right on the corner next to each other and we’d get tattooed together. We’d share the same artist, we’d book him for the whole day and I would go for five hours then Aaron would go for four or five just getting tattooed. And I said to the artist you know I’ve always wanted to get a lipstick kiss tattoo and he said “Well I ain’t gonna kiss a piece of paper for you so you better go get some lipstick and do it yourself.” So I went to the drug store, put on some lipstick and I was kissing a piece of paper and it was coming out so bad it just looked like a gorilla kissing a piece of paper. Then Aaron just grabbed then lipstick and he went off to the bathroom and he came out with a perfect lipstick kiss, I just had to get it (laughs). That’s how the whole legend with the lipstick kiss started, it’s on all our guitar picks, we have it on our stickers and now our fans get it tattooed on them too.
Well I can’t think of a better place to leave this today so I’ll just say thank you so much for your time today and sharing so much with us here at Uber Rock.
Oh man it’s my pleasure. Sometimes when you do these things the interviewer doesn’t know too much about the band but you know way more than I thought. You’ve got records that I’ve worked on so if you ever get the chance to interview Bobby tell him you interviewed me too (laughs). If you get a chance read his book, he mentions me in there, so cool that he actually put me in his book (laughs).
OK I’ll look out for that, and hopefully it won’t be too long before you’re back over here doing your own headline tour.
Yeah hopefully, I mean we’re getting such a great response and we’re selling so much merch and CDs out here that we’ve just gotta come back and do a headlining tour. There’s that worry that nobody would show up but everyone we speak to asks us when we’re gonna do our own tour over here so hopefully it’s on the cards for the future.
Cool, well thanks again for your time, we’ll see you next time.
No problem, have a good day, bye bye
Check out Suburban Legends here: http://suburbanlegends.com/
