Stabbing Westward Sick New World Fest RECAP

Krysta and Walt talk about his experiences with Stabbing Westward at Sick New World Fest.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Yeah, welcome to the pod.This is Cool story Bro. I'm christ
Is Eliah with my co host WaltFlaccus. Cool story Bro is a behind
the scenes look at what goes onbehind the stage. Speaking of we're going
behind the stage with Walt. StabbingWestward played Sick New WorldFest this past weekend,

(00:22):
and Walt, I have a lotof questions. First of all,
you're listening to this, You're notwatching this, so you need to know
that Walt has a really cool Tshirt. It's all black, it's like
a neon green color. Yeah,yess Yeah, it's a weird it's a
weird green like a sea boom neongreen thing. But it's got I love

(00:43):
black pocket pocket teas, and thishas got a like how many concert events
do you go to that have pocketteas? It's awesome. It's just a
nice little logo on the front.Then all the bands on the back.
Now I know what we need todo for the Stabbing Westward merch line.
We need pocket T shirts. ButI have a lot of questions. So
first of all, well, beforewe get into the questions, I just

(01:03):
want to say I'm so proud ofyou because I saw on the Stabbing Westward
Instagram page. I saw reels goingup and videos and I was like,
that's Walt and it's all because ofyou. You've You've given me some tips
as to how do I easily andquickly do things on the Insta page,
and it's all you Christa. SoI do appreciate the help and listen,

(01:26):
you know, like I'm listening toyou and I'm taking your advice. And
it's cool that you actually were ableto see that because like that one like
if you go to the Stabbing WestwardInstagram page, there is a reel of
us backstage just before the turntable turns, because there was a turntable stage.
So while one band is playing theit's on a circle and half of it

(01:49):
is facing the audience, the otherhalf isn't facing the backstage, and while
the band is setting up, theother band is playing out there. And
so I took some some quick videoof us setting up back there. I
love it, you know, itreminds me of so I saw. I
think it was last weekend of theweekend before Blink one eighty two came to
Chicago, right and right before likethe show was about to start, all

(02:10):
the lights dim and I get anotification on my phone that Travis Barker had
gone live, and that's exactly thesame thing he was doing. It was
them walking to the stage, themtaking that group pick and then walking onto
the stage. And as you know, someone that's like watching, it's such
a cool look because there's things,you know, we see what happens on
the front of the stage, right, we don't see what happens behind the

(02:30):
stage. So things that are probablyevery day to you. Okay, you're
walking up at the stage, thatprobably feels like going to the grocery store.
But for the viewers, it's likethat's a viewpoint that you will ever
get. To me, it seemsreally boring. But really yeah, I
mean it's like we're just standing aroundon stage. We're trying to you know,
while the production team is trying tohook up microphones and plug everything in.

(02:50):
We're just standing around like this isborn. We're waiting for the show
to start. So but I canunderstand that it is a mystery to other
people and they would be interested init. So that's why I shot that.
Our drummer he took video, hesaid, his phone facing out from
his drum kit and so for thefirst five minutes of this video, it's

(03:13):
looking right at the tarp of theback of the backstage area, and you
can see people running around doing thingsright in front of it. And then
finally it's go time and it startsto turn, and so the phone is
static, and then you just startto see the background change, and you
know, the microphone that's right infront of him days the same, and

(03:34):
it's getting excited because suddenly it turns, and then you start to see the
crowd. You're like, oh wow, yes, but he stopped it right
before he started to play, whichwas halfway on the turn, so like
you see a little bit of thegrowl, but then he stopped it.
But for him, though, Ithink it does make sense because he plays
drums. I think that's the onewhere that really doesn't because when you're hitting
it, it vibrates so heavy.So I can see how for him that
was probably a practical matter. Butnext time you're lead singer, you guys

(03:59):
have like a turn like that.Now he knows what to do. Yeah,
it was pretty It's pretty cool.It is or even think of because
this is my thing. So Ihave never actually been to a festival where
they had that turnstyle. Yeah,but have heard that it's a thing.
So how many stages were there?There were four stages at six New World.
It was in Vegas at the Fairgroundfestival grounds there. It was really

(04:20):
well put together. I thought,same people that do Lalla put this on
Live Nation and it was really wellorganized. Two main stages right next to
each other, and it would beone band on one band setting up on
the one next door to it,so it kept going back and forth,
back and forth. That's kind ofa typical thing. They'll do that at

(04:41):
riot Fest here. But then therewere two other stages in another section of
the festival grounds that were kind ofadjacent to each other, but they had
turntables. So I was just lookingon our third stage, the spiral stage.
Sixteen bands played throughout the day,back to back to back to back
to It just kept rotating. Butthere were twenty one bands playing on the

(05:02):
fourth stage. They had shorter,shorter sets, a lot of bands.
It's a lot like forty almost fortybands right there on those two stages alone.
It's crazy. So it was theturntable is cool. I like it,
although it's just the pressure to getyou can see that the production staff

(05:23):
was really struggling to like every everyband's got their own set of inputs and
you know, drum sets that theyhave to mic up and it's a it's
a lot of work to keep itall straight, you know, and they
do the best they can, anduh it's festivals are hard because you don't
get sound checks. You just kindof throw your gear on stage, plug
it in and hope for the bestthat the crew is professional enough. And

(05:47):
we just we just went for it. I mean, it's just like all
right, time to go, andwe've done enough of these and we are
The set that we played for thiswas pretty much classic, you know,
like a lot of the hits andall of that. So we've played songs
enough that kind of can do itin our sleep. So it's pretty pretty
easy and fun and the correct Idon't know if you saw any photos of

(06:08):
the crowd, but like massive,it was pretty big. It was a
pretty We had a great time slotbecause later on in the day, once
you got to Incubus, deftnes Cornand System of a Down, everybody was
at the main stage. So forus to be on the third stage just
before that stuff started to happen yes, we had a big crowd, so
it was baking hot. It waslike ninety something degrees nothing but sunshine,

(06:31):
So people were kind of a littlelethargic just because of that. Totally get
it, but you could tell everybodywas into it. No, absolutely well,
and that's like I totally get howfrom like a production standpoint that probably
is really difficult, but as aas a viewer, right, So I
attend a lot of EDIM concerts andfestivals, and what I like about EDIM

(06:51):
music that I don't want to sayannoys me about non edium. Maybe a
noise isn't the right word, butmaybe I struggle with a little bit because
I'm impatient, and that's a meproblem. Is exactly what you're saying is
that whether it's you know, arock show or a pop show or what
have you, you have that deadspace in between acts while they're setting up

(07:12):
the new equipment. And it happenspretty much in every genre except for EEDM
specifically, because you've got one setof gear and you have a flash drive,
that's really that's really it. It'slike you just bring your US your
uspeed stick and you just stick itin and then you're good. To go.
But yeah, when you have drumsets, uh and amps and all
that stuff to plug in keyboards,it's a little bit more. It is

(07:38):
a lot more to it. Andso to use the turntable is a cool
way to to try to do itquickly and to have that where it's just
constantly turn it around and a newband. And I think that's why you're
able to get a large group ofpeople. If if a stage like that
with the lower bands were to godark while another stage was going on and

(07:59):
you were set up, people wouldfilter away and you wouldn't have an audience
so by for every band. Soand like, okay, so by now
you're kind of like your your seasoned. You've done this. You guys are
good. You know this isn't yourfirst rodeo. But I wonder is there
still any kind of like anxiety Butbecause you mentioned you don't get a sound
check, is there a little bitof anxiety of I hope the equipment I

(08:22):
imagine it's more technical. I thinkI think that's exactly it. That's a
really good point. That is reallywhere any butterflies would come from. It's
not because there's people out there.You want there to be people out there,
but it's yeah, will everything work, especially you're when your monitors are
inner ear monitors, so you're wearinglike EarPods and you don't know. You've

(08:46):
just told the guy because they're like, all right, everything's plugged in,
good to go. I'm like,no, we haven't heard any of our
monitors yet. We don't know whatthey're like, Oh, let's do that
real quick. Yeah, let's dothat real quick. Sols that don't monitors,
can you explain that concept? Monitorsare what the musicians listen to.
So like there's a guy who runsfront of house sound for the audience,

(09:09):
but then there's also monitors that arefor the band, because like, there
are some things that I don't wantto hear, and there are definitely people
that don't want to hear me andmy microphone and people not everybody wants to
hear the keyboards. So everybody wantstheir own little mix of what they need
to hear so that they can playtheir best show. And the monitor guy

(09:31):
makes all that stuff happen. Butwhen and there's usually wedges speakers on the
stage that face the musician. You'veseen those on stages before, but we've
gone into an era where almost everybodynow uses, you know, in ear
monitors, which you plug in yourears and then it's all right there in

(09:52):
your head, which is great.They're wireless, you can move around,
it sounds the same no matter whereyou are on stage. But it's also
you can't get away from whatever mixthe mix engineer of the monitor engineer is
giving you. This is getting alittle technical, I know, but it's
no. I think it's interesting because, like, as a DJ, my
monitor is a literal like monitor andit's facing because again that's one of me,

(10:13):
so it's facing right at me,and it's it's purely because there is
a delay. I'm sure there's asound theory behind this, but by the
time you hear it in the crowd, I my ears are already ahead of
it. So getting that monitor rightfacing towards you is a much faster way
to hear what's really happening and sothat you're not just stuck in your headphones

(10:33):
the entire time. But to hearAs a band, that's for me definitely
interesting that you can kind of pickand choose, like, well, this
is what I need to make surethat I'm performing my best, and it's
not just like when I saw thoselittle ear things, I always thought they
were like earplugs, like to protectyour ears from sound damage. Well,
and they can. They work inthat regard as well, which is great

(10:54):
because it can get really loud onthis stage, but if you have these,
you can regular the volume and itdoesn't have to be so loud because
they do block out the extraneous soundand then you get to listen to what
you want see and I love that. And so this festival was it one
day, two day, three day, one day, all of these bands

(11:15):
one day. I was really thinkingthey would do what they did with when
We were young, which is atthe same place, and add a second
day of the exact same festival,which I think fans would have liked,
because one of the biggest complaints Iheard about this one was I can't see
all the bands that I want tosee because there's just so many great bands
on this bill. And I totallyget that. And if you were to

(11:35):
do it a second day, youcould see the bands that you couldn't see
in one day, but they didn'tdo that, so you had one shot
to pick your best lineup through allof these bands. And you know,
I think at the end of theday, everybody was like completely stoked,
just because any one of these stageswould have been the great festival in its

(11:58):
own right, but then you putit all together in it on one day,
it's pretty amazing. Oh absolutely,And I guess I agree with you
that I also think that would havebeen a good idea to have the two
days. But I did see mixedreviews about that for when we were young,
a lot of people feeling like thiskind of sentiment of, well,
if it's two days, then itshould be different artists. So maybe that's

(12:18):
potentially something they were trying to Yeah, I know, and a lot of
people were saying, like it shouldbe two days, same artists, yeah,
and not like the same show bothdays and have let the bands play
longer. But you know what,maybe it's a little add or adhd of

(12:39):
me too. I kind of liked, you know, just we had a
half an hour play the hits.Next band pretty much played the hits.
It's like it made for a greatfestival environment as opposed to hearing songs that
you don't know because you might notbe deep fans of all of these bands.
So I kind of like just havingit be short and sweet like that.

(13:00):
Oh no, one hundred percent.I love when I DJ. Forty
five minutes is my sweet spot.Yeah, yeah, because thirty minutes,
you're right, you're playing all thehits, so you don't have a lot
of You got to get right tothe meat of it. There's and I
think the way I DJ, someof it is a little bit more atmospheric,
a little bit more flow. SoI need that downtime to build back
up. But thirty minutes, it'snot the end of the world. I
can knock it out an hour andit's so funny what that fifteen minutes.

(13:24):
It makes a huge difference when thelast couple of times I DJ, I
found like I struggled to find PhilI did. Our slots in the last
like last ten minutes were always alittle like all right now, I'm just
kind of like, yeah, you'rejust throwing it, throwing some stuff in
there. Yeah, you're throwing iton the wall, saying what's it is?

(13:45):
It is weird that like thirty minutesfeel to me personally, feels a
little rushed for you as a band, it's feeling good to you forty five
minutes, I really think, isthat sweets up, But yeah, that
fifteen minutes, which really is likewhat for a band, that would be
three four songs? For DJ maybeif you're doing quick transitions, maybe ten.
But yeah, you get to apoint where you just kind of hit
a wall and you're like, oh, yeah, why am I hearing.

(14:07):
It's a little different when you're doinga headlining show, though, because then
the audience is there for you,yes, and they kind of want some
more deeper tracks. So I knowwe were talking about the festival, but
the night before the festival, weplayed a headlining show in Vegas at a
place called the Brooklyn Bowl. AndI'll tell you this little funny story.

(14:31):
There's a lot of stories about thatshow. I could tell. We were
all very stressed because flights were canceledgoing into the airport in the Vegas and
our singer Christopher and Bobby, ourdrummer, their flights were delayed, delay,
delayed, and finally Christopher's like,I'm driving. They're in LA so
they're like, I can't take achance on this flight because I've got to

(14:54):
show. We gotta show that night. So they drove, typically a four
and a half hour drive, ittook seven because the traffic was it's a
Friday going to Vegas, so itwas crazy. Bobby his flight got bumped
back, bumped back, and sofinally he did the same thing. He
showed up at seven ten and doorsopened at seven thirty, so we just

(15:18):
squeaked in a sound check, soeverybody was really stressed by the time the
doors open. We played the show, and during the show, we played
a song for a couple. Afan of ours is from Germany and she
got the word got to me thatshe was getting married that day in Vegas

(15:39):
and coming to the show, andit was asked if we would play her
favorite stabbing Westward song, which isa song that we never play, we
haven't played in twenty plus years.I said no. I said no,
we can't do that. These arethe songs that we have and blah blah
blah. And they asked Christopher aweek before and he's like, yeah,

(16:00):
okay, we can do it.Oh dude, I'm trying to help you
out here, man, And nowhe just made more work for himself.
But we worked up this song.Never had a chance to play it together
as a band because I'm in Chicago, they're in LA They played it together,
but we haven't played it all together, and so we come to the
set. We're like, are wegonna do it? Yeah, we're pros,

(16:23):
let's do it. So we startedto play the song and Christopher's telling
them the story about how this girl. Just before the show started. He
said we should check to make surethat they didn't get cold feet or something
like that. And then I lookedat my phone and it was from the
person who requested and they said,yeah, she's not making it to the
show, and so like, well, do we still do it? I'm

(16:45):
like, yeah, we're still goingto do it because we worked it up,
and so Christopher told the story andwith the fact that this person got
married and then they couldn't make itto the show, but we're still gonna
play it for you anyway. Andduring the first chorus of the song,
somebody's waving their arms. They didmake it to the Showy and her and
her new husband. We invited themon stage while we finished playing the song,

(17:10):
and it was it was an awesomemoment and like, again, a
song we haven't played in twenty twoyears, and to do it for a
fan like that was pretty cool.No, that's amazing, especially the fact
that they got married, and theirfirst thought was, I know how we're
going to celebrate stabbing West where itreally you know, like you have moments
like that in music, Like againI went to Blink one eighty two,
and I remember the first time Iever really Brian has been in love with

(17:34):
me since like the day he metme. He's told me, like literally
since the day he met me,We're gonna be together. I'm married whenever
you are, just let me knowwhere and when and I'll be there.
And I remember the first day Iactually started looking because we were just friends,
I started looking at him as amaybe was. We were in the
car listening to all our old favoritelike emo songs, and it was a
Blink one eighty two, like missYou came on the radio and we're just

(18:00):
like rocking out to this song,and it five years later, you get
the total flashback of like all ofthose emotions and memories. So to have
them like commemorate really their marriage withyou guys, like what an amazing moment.
You know, music is a verypowerful thing and it has that it

(18:22):
has that power where that that emotion, that memory. Their songs are like
memory capsules for me because when Ihear a song I remember certain times in
my life or reminds me of aperson or thing, and that's just that's
my life is in the music thatI've listened to, I've I've heard over

(18:44):
the years, and it's just it'llalways be, It'll always bring it back.
I'm what an amazing feeling, justlike for you guys as well,
to know that you're kind of likethe keepers of these memories, well for
some of them, I mean,yeah, I guess that's one of the
things that you know, we seepeople say you got us through hard times
blah blah blah, and which isamazing that our music was there to help
support or somebody to find that they'renot alone or that they shared these things.

(19:11):
It's an amazing thing to have createdsomething that people have that connection to
and that never gets old to hear. But that is one of the things
that you hear a lot, andyou know, it is cool that they
still come out after twenty years tohear these songs because it has that powerful
memories and meaning of what it wasin the nineties for them. So is
it ever kind of weird for youthat, like, I mean, it

(19:33):
is definitely to me. It seemsvery cool, But is it ever kind
of surreal? Maybe? Is themore you have all these people being like
your music got me through x yZ. Well, it it is.
But it also I've learned to beyou know, thankful for that. I
mean, it's like, it's amazingto have been able to create something that

(19:53):
helps somebody. And you know,we just do music that we like and
to put out our thoughts and whatnot. But to have people rally around it,
gravitate towards it and have that connectionwith it is It's an amazing feeling.
It really is really great. Peopleask me like, does it freak
you out when people get stabbing Westfor tattoos? Yeah? But and you

(20:18):
freak me out more now. I'mlike, you know what, I'm happy
that our music was able to meanso much to this person that they want
to permanently put it on their bodies. So that's you've learned to be comfortable.
I have learned to be comfortable withit. No, that's awesome.
I'm looking at this lineup. Didyou get a chance because I know that,
I mean, show days are generallyvery busy, especially with your guys

(20:41):
whole last minute situation, but didyou get a chance to kind of check
out anyone. I checked it.I spent most of the time on our
stage, which was the Spiral stage. I saw Orgy was the first band.
Our guitar player also plays an Orgy, so I saw them, But
then it was it was brutally hot, so we stayed in the air conditioned
trailer for most of the day untilwe had to start setting up. During

(21:04):
so I heard the Birthday Massacre,who played with us played with us the
night before. Lacuna Coile played rightbefore, so I heard them while we
were setting up, and then theMelvin's as we were tearing down, and
then went back to the trailer,and then came back to see came FDM
Skinny Puppy and she wants Revenge Mylife with the Thrill Kill Cult on the

(21:29):
stage next door Ministry. And thenI had to take gear back to the
hotel. But then we went backto see Sisters of Mercy. I saw
a little bit of Turnstile from theartist's tent, and I saw I could
see on the screens Incubus and Cornand System of a Down who played for

(21:49):
two hours. System of a Downplayed for two hours. Yeah, I
didn't think they were. Look atthe schedule, they're not supposed to play
that long, but they played forever. They had like thirty songs on their
side. It's something crazy, butthey were good. They must be amazing
live. Just think about the energythat there were songs bring. I see.

(22:10):
I didn't I didn't physically venture tothe main tent, main stage areas,
but everybody who did said that itwas like Mayhem is like you.
You couldn't even get into the VIPbecause they had too many people in there,
so it was it was just alot I see of people in front
of them, especially for Corn andSystem of a down that was like that

(22:30):
was Mecca. It was where itwas going off. But you're in the
artist booth, so you're watching iton the screens. Yeah, so I
know that my first experience being inthat general area. I was not in
the artist camp. I worked alot of palus the last year with I
Heart, so I kind of gotto go behind stage and be with all
the media people. But I thoughtit was a really cool experience. A

(22:52):
lot of my friends asked me whatit was like. So I think some
of our listeners might be interested inkind of what that looks like, so
you get to festival, there's adifferent entrance and take us from there to
the artist's tent. Yeah, forus, we had to meet at a
certain area outside the festival where wegot our credentials and then we got into
a van and golf carts and werewhisked to the backstage area. And it's

(23:18):
kind of like you know amount ofif you've seen videos of like Disneyland and
how like there's like you see everythingwhen you go to the park. I'm
sorry, but then on the backsideof everything is like like there's like a
Disney World. There's like tunnels andeverything is underground. But behind Disneyland,

(23:40):
there's like backstage, behind everything thatgoes around the entire park, and it's
it looks like you know, backstagearea with workshops and studio entrances and crazy.
That's exactly what this was like.So we would drive these go carts
or these golf carts into this littlearea which was nothing but like a bunch
of trailers with AstroTurf set between them, which was nice because otherwise it was

(24:03):
just black concrete asphalt, so itwould be baking hot, which just for
everyone, just because Walt wears allblack everything always all the time. So
ninety degree weather on black. Ohnot everybody. Every one of these bands,
or at least everybody on this lineupis wearing black, especially on our
stage. So we're all the gothindustrial people. So I mean, what

(24:25):
do you expect? Yeah? Um, so so we get taken back here
and then there were food trucks forthe artists. Um, and we had
tickets so we could get catering fromthe food trucks. And then there was
they have was their tacos. Therewas a taco truck. There was like,
I had a Bogogie chili Philly cheesesteak. What is that? It

(24:49):
was like so it's like a Koreanbeef cheese steak. It was great with
fusion. It had a toll fusion. They had a vegan truck. Yeah.
So there was a Greek truck whichwas kind of interesting. Greek truck
in Las Vegas, Lucas. Thoselike Deep Fried like no balls with the

(25:12):
honey sign me up. I willbe anywhere anytime if you're bringing those.
Yeah, that was good. Andthen they had a big giant tent with
TV's on every stage. Although themusic was blaring through these giant pa speakers
of the main stage, so youcould kind of sit there in the shade,

(25:36):
eating, drinking and watching what wasgoing on in the stages. So
that was actually really nice. Andthen but actually you could take a tram
back around the outskirts of everything andget around to the stages. They had
like a like a Universal Studios tramthat would go to a stop at every
stage, come back to the artistvillage, stop at every stage. But
it was actually easier for us towalk through the crowd and just go right

(26:00):
to our stage. So we afterafter we started, after we played,
we went back and we watched alot of the bands from uh, the
where the people were. That's amazing. And then when you're like kind of
back there and it's only a day, so it's a little bit different.
It's not like it's like Coachella orsomething, whereas a couple of days was
it a little bit like like summercamp where you're running around seeing all your

(26:22):
friends like summer camp. I mean, it's less like. Uh. The
way it was set up was,um, there were would be three trailers
uh set up in like uh huh. If you're there's a square, one
side would be open, so likeas trailer. I can't describe it like
a like a you exactly, thankyou um. And so you'd have like

(26:48):
two bands in each of those trailers. So each quadrant had six and then
there was a communal ground in between, and then there was another set of
another you with six bands, andthen everybody would kind of filter around.
So it's kind of nice because everybodywould just everybody knows everybody these especially around
the spiral stage with the industrial scene, it's so small and incestuous that everybody

(27:08):
knows everybody. So it was justit was like summer camp. All of
these bands that you know, somehave toured together, but others dream of
touring to all together, and herewe were all together on one show.
Is really great, just being bestfriends making Macromay bracelet. Oh that's exactly
exactly right, best friends. Ilove this well, this has been fantastic.

(27:30):
I have so many more questions,but we're running out of time.
We might have to do a parttwo on us to do a part two,
So let us know if we shoulddo a part two, and also
let us know if you want tobe Walt's new penpal. He's accepting applications.
Macromay bracelet will be included. Yes, please thanks guys, thank you, Bye.