…And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead

I was in high school when Trail of Dead’s Source Tags and Codes — an album that demands a spot on any end-of-decade list — came out. Bombastic, rude and ugly at moments while serene and enchanting at others, this record was nothing short of the jam. Needless to say, I blasted it to nearly every homework assignment.

Like the album, however, I’ve always thought Trail of Dead captured its traits better than any other band. Whether it’s the whimsical, uber-detailed illustrative artwork of head-Dead Conrad Keely or the pestilent snarl of second in command drummer/guitarist Jason Reece, there’s always something grandiose behind their grimness.

Of course Trail of Dead are no musical novices either. Six albums deep, they’ve honed the aural assault of multi-guitars, pulsing bass and machine gun drums since the late nineties. Eleven years since …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, they show little sign of stopping despite record label changes and member swaps.

A very amiable Keely squeezed in some time with SSv before an art gallery opening to chat about the band’s rich past, his own creative beginnings and the age limit on destroying one’s instruments on stage.

SSv: I hear you have an art show coming up tonight.

Conrad Keely: Tonight and next week, too, there’s another one.

SSv: That’s exciting.

Conrad: Yeah, yeah. This one’s a couple old friends. Nick Zinner from Yeah Yeah Yeahs is showing some stuff and Eric Foss who does the gallery behind Lit Bar [if] you’re familiar with those.

SSv: You’ve been known for your artwork in all the Trail of Dead stuff. I’ve taken an eye to it before. What’s that balancing act like as a musician. Doing the artwork and doing the music, do you ever feel overwhelmed by it at all? Or is it something that just comes naturally?

Conrad: They seem to me like the same thing. I don’t feel like they’re separate in my mind. They’re more like two aspects of the same creative urge is, I guess, what I use to describe it. I mean, ever since I was a kid, I just always wanted to make stuff. I had the urge to do this stuff, it’s like a compulsion. So, it was never a question of separating it.

I think when I was younger, when in I was in my teens, and I started to take music seriously, I felt I had to stop doing art in order to pursue music. And as I got older, I saw that it wasn’t true at all but actually I never stopped doing art. In some ways, the band was a great outlet for me continuing to pursue my illustration.

SSv: There’s an interview I read, a while back, where you said something along the lines of: the drawing stuff came more naturally than the music. But the music was more fun because it’s more of a challenge.

Conrad: Yeah, well I really didn’t start playing music until I was 12, which was the age I got an instrument that I could practice at home. I [probably would've] played all along if there had been a guitar at home but I didn’t. But art was something I’d done ever since I was two. It was one of those things where art had come naturally to me just because I had more time dedicated to it. And music was something that I had to consciously practice. When you learn something so young, you kind of forget those moments when you’re learning. So as you get older, to learn something new, it’s like a conscious effort to do so.

SSv: It’s been a long ride so far for the band. Six albums deep and still going. How do you make sense of that length of time that you’ve been together? What changes in the future?

Conrad: Well, it doesn’t seem long. ‘Time flies when you’re having fun’ type of thing. So it definitely feels like we’ve been in the band for five years not going on twelve. We like to do something that we enjoy, that we love doing as our career, as our livelihood, you can’t really ask for more. As far as the future, I don’t see any reason to stop doing what we are doing. This is who we are. We are musicians and I do art. It’s just something that comes naturally enough, I just imagine being 80-years-old or 90-years-old and wanting to write a song.

If anything, we’ll just expand what we do and try to incorporate different mediums into it. For instance, I’ve been approached with the idea of doing a comic, the idea of doing fiction and applying my art — and even the music [more to] fiction. Those are some ideas that really appeal to me.

SSv: I was just curious about how old you’re going to be before you stop smashing instruments onstage — if there’s an age limit for that or not.

Conrad: [Laughs] There was an age limit, it was 34! We had to stop three years ago.

SSv: [Laughs]

Conrad: That’s what our doctors told us.

SSv: Oh yeah?

Conrad: Just joking. [Laughs]

SSv: You got me on that one.

Conrad: He said “You have to quit right now!” [Laughs]

SSv: “Just stop. Before it’s too late”

Conrad: [Laughs]

SSv: You guys have made things work even post-Interscope. What were the good things and bad things about being on that label? Would you change anything now?

Conrad: No, because I think it was [all] a learning experience. For me, I’ve always had a difficult time dealing with bureaucracy. So, dealing with lots and lots of people who aren’t necessarily on the same page is frustrating. But there was a lot of positive stuff that came out of that experience. We got to do anything we wanted. They never told us what to do as far as creatively. Obviously there was a lot of money that was probably mismanaged or spent frivolously, as does happen when you’re dealing with major labels. At least we had that experience to put all those resources towards making the type of music that we felt like making.

I don’t think I would change anything in the past but in the future, if we ever found ourselves working with a major label again — or a corporate thing — I would try to be more involved in the management and planning of it. I think I allowed to be done by other people because I thought they knew better than I did. I guess I learned that wasn’t necessarily the case. But those are things that you grow up and you learn that stuff.

Related posts:

1. …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead – Century of Self
2. Dead Man-A Pinch of Salt
3. Internal Debate: The Dead Weather
4. The Bravery

Tagged as: Austin, Rock

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